Opinion ID: 1837726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: our scope of review

Text: The most difficult and delicate decisions to be made in cases such as this, where constitutional questions are raised, are whether and when to defer to the undoubted discretion of the Legislature to classify, to discriminate, and to choose from alternative remedies for discerned evils, and where to draw the line between permissible and unconstitutional action. The considerations to be used in making such decisions have been stated in Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, 153 N.W.2d 414 (N.D.1967), at 423: The State and Federal Constitutions require all laws to have uniform operation, and the granting of any special privilege or immunity as to any class of citizens is expressly prohibited. The constitutional limitations do not, however, prohibit classification, provided such classification is reasonable for the purposes of the legislation, is based upon proper, justifiable distinctions concerning the purposes of the law, is not arbitrary, and is not a subterfuge to shield one class or to burden another, or to oppress unlawfully in its administration. Our review of constitutional questions has some similarity to but is different from the review by the United States Supreme Court, particularly as to its review of State legislation. And our approach through the years to constitutional questions has differed from the approach of that Court. It is a commonplace that in the years between 1890 and 1937, the Supreme Court of the United States declared many state statutes regulating business and labor unconstitutional as violations of the Fourteenth Amendment. Paulsen, The Persistence of Substantive Due Process in the States, 34 Minn.L.Rev. 91, 93 (1950). And see Lincoln Federal Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co., 335 U.S. 525, 69 S.Ct. 251, 93 L.Ed. 212 (1949); Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 83 S.Ct. 1028, 10 L.Ed.2d 93, 95 A.L.R.2d 1347 (1963). Since 1937, that Court rarely has declared State law unconstitutional on substantive due-process grounds, although often doing so on procedural due-process grounds. In more recent years, that Court has modified its post-1937 hands-off attitude toward State economic and social legislation and has examined such legislation under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than under the Due Process Clause. Some commentators have noticed a remarkable resemblance between the old substantive due process and the new equal protection. Wellington, Common Law Rules and Constitutional Double Standards: Some Notes on Adjudication, 83 Yale L.J. 221, 311 (1973). The Federal examination of State statutes under the new equal protection has been on two levels. On the one level there has been a group of cases involving inherently suspect or fundamental interest classifications, which are subjected to strict judicial scrutiny. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 93 S.Ct. 1764, 36 L.Ed.2d 583, plurality opinion (1973); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S. Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969). The suspect classifications include those based upon some immutable characteristics determined solely by the accident of birth such as race, national origin, sex, or illegitimacy, which violate the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility. Frontiero, supra ; Glona v. American Guarantee Co., 391 U.S. 73, 88 S.Ct. 1515, 20 L.Ed.2d 441 (1968). At the other level, which involves non-suspect classifications, the Supreme Court has used the traditional equal-protection analysis, under which a legislative classification must be sustained unless it is patently arbitrary and bears no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental interest. Frontiero, supra ; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 426, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). Some commentators now are suggesting that the Supreme Court is using a new intermediate analysis, a strict scrutiny test, requiring a close correspondence between statutory classification and legislative goals. Tribe, The Supreme Court, 1972 Term, 87 Harvard L.Rev. 1, 121-122 (1973); Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 92 S. Ct. 251, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971). Such a test closely approximates the test historically used by this court and some other State courts, discussed below. The State courts have not all, and not always, followed the changing approaches of the highest Court. As pointed out by commentators (Paulsen, The Persistence of Substantive Due Process in the Courts, Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 34, p. 91; California Law Review, Vol. 61, p. 273-286; Northwestern Law Review, Vol. 53, p. 13-32, p. 227-255; 80 Harvard Law Review 1463, 1967), even after 1937, the State courts continued to examine legislation on the basis of whether it complied with substantive due process, as well as equal protection and other constitutional provisions. Certainly this court has done so. Throughout the years this court has regularly considered constitutionality of statutes under Sections 11, 13, and 20 of our Constitution, quoted above. We have had no hiatus such as the Federal courts had in their journey from the old due process to the new equal protection. Whatever our individual preferences might be as members of this court (and some of us might have preferred a greater degree of judicial abstention), it cannot be doubted that the power of this court to examine challenges based on the State Constitution and to decide them has been regularly invoked and regularly exercised, even during the period when the Federal courts were not doing so. A partial listing of our constitutional decisions from before 1937 to today indicates a steady course of constitutional adjudication. Peterson v. Panovitz, 62 N.D. 328, 243 N.W. 798 (1932); Asbury Hospital v. Cass County, 72 N.D. 359, 7 N.W.2d 438 (1943), 73 N.D. 469, 16 N.W.2d 523 (1944), affirmed, 326 U.S. 207, 66 S.Ct. 61, 90 L.Ed. 6; State v. Cromwell, 72 N.D. 565, 9 N. W.2d 914 (1943); Herr v. Rudolf, 75 N.D. 91, 25 N.W.2d 916 (1947); F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Gray, 77 N.D. 757, 46 N.W.2d 295 (1951); Fradet v. City of Southwest Fargo, 79 N.D. 799, 59 N.W.2d 871 (1953); State v. E. W. Wylie Co., 79 N.D. 471, 58 N.W.2d 76 (N.D.1953); State v. Miller, 129 N.W.2d 356 (N.D.1964); Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, 153 N.W.2d 414 (N.D.1967); Melland v. Johanneson, 160 N.W.2d 107 (N.D.1968); In re Estate of Jensen, 162 N.W.2d 861 (N.D.1968); Wallegham v. Thompson, 185 N.W.2d 649 (N.D.1971); Coal Harbor Stock Farm, Inc. v. Meier, 191 N.W.2d 583 (N.D.1971); Christman v. Emineth, 212 N.W.2d 543 (N.D.1973). While some of our decisions would pass muster under the inherently suspect criteria [for example, Tang v. Ping, 209 N.W.2d 624 (N.D.1973), and In re Estate of Jensen, supra , and others under the traditional equal-protection analysis], it may be that some of our statutes which we have declared unconstitutional might have passed the Federal constitutional screening. Such results are to be expected under a dual constitutional system. The Federal courts examine State statutes only to determine if they comply with the United States constitutional mandates, as in Silver v. Silver, supra ; we examine them for that purpose and also to determine if they comply with State constitutional mandates. In addition, Federal courts should, and usually do, defer to State courts as to interpretation of their own statutes. No one should be surprised if a statute passes the one set of standards and not the other. The duality of our role was most recently recognized by the United States Supreme Court in North Dakota State Board of Pharmacy v. Snyder's Drug Stores, Inc., 414 U.S. 156, 94 S.Ct. 407, 38 L.Ed.2d 379 (1973). We had held a North Dakota statute unconstitutional on Federal constitutional grounds, deeming ourselves bound by Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U.S. 105, 49 S.Ct. 57, 73 L.Ed. 204 (1928). The Supreme Court overruled Liggett, and said, We reverse and remand . . . and free the courts and agencies of North Dakota from what the State Supreme Court deemed to be the mandate of Liggett, i. e., to consider the case on State constitutional and statutory grounds, free of outmoded limitations of Liggett which was based on the old due process limitation on State action. We have, of course, exercised our power of constitutional adjudication with what each membership of the court deemed appropriate restraint: presuming that each statute is constitutional unless there is clear proof to the contrary, resolving doubts in favor of constitutionality, recognizing that the Legislature has a broad power to make classifications, and declaring laws unconstitutional only if there is no room for any question or doubt as to their constitutionality. Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, supra ; Christman v. Emineth, supra . With this background in mind, we feel obligated to consider the constitutionality of the guest law, now that the matter has been brought before us for the first time, and to determine whether the statute contains arbitrary classifications violative of Sections 11, 13, or 20 of the North Dakota Constitution. Melland v. Johanneson, supra . And see Hjelle v. Sornsin Construction Co., 173 N.W.2d 431 (N.D.1969). Even when a statute has been in effect for a long time, our duty to consider its constitutionality, when the matter comes before us, continues, and this duty has been performed even in the face of prior holdings of constitutionality. Melland v. Johanneson, supra , overruling Lindberg v. Benson, 70 N.W.2d 42 (N.D.1955). Furthermore, as the foregoing historical comments show, we are obliged to use different standards in considering federal constitutionality and state constitutionality.