Opinion ID: 745382
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evolution of Rational Relationship Test

Text: 12 It is helpful in placing this appeal in its proper context to review briefly the history of the rational relationship test. A good beginning point is Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905), decided over 90 years ago. Lochner, a Utica, New York baker, had been convicted under a New York law limiting to 60 the hours bakery employees could work, and his conviction had been upheld in New York's highest court. In reversing that conviction the Supreme Court ruled New York's law was not a legitimate exercise of its police power, but rather an arbitrary interference with Lochner's freedom to contract with his employees and thus violative of his substantive due process rights. Justice Holmes wrote in dissent state laws may regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might think as injudicious or if you like as tyrannical as this. Id. at 75, 25 S.Ct. at 546 (Holmes, J., dissenting). Over 20 years later, while discussing the line legislatures must sometimes draw he said, presciently, again in a dissent, when it is seen that a line or point there must be, and that there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, the decision of the legislature must be accepted unless we can say that it is very wide of any reasonable mark. Louisville Gas & Elec. Co. v. Coleman, 277 U.S. 32, 41, 48 S.Ct. 423, 426, 72 L.Ed. 770 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting). 13 In United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 154, 58 S.Ct. 778, 784, 82 L.Ed. 1234 (1938), the Court moved closer to Holmes' view when it observed that where legislative judgment is called into question and the question is debatable the decision of the legislature must be upheld if any state of facts either known or which could reasonably be assumed affords support for it. A finding of a court or a jury verdict arrived at by weighing conflicting evidence may not substitute for it. Id. 14 As Justice Douglas, writing for the Court, said in Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 488, 75 S.Ct. 461, 464, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955), the day is long gone when legislation is required to be logically consistent with its aims to survive a constitutional challenge. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it. Id. In the area of economics or social welfare, the latter being the category under which this case falls, as distinct from those freedoms guaranteed citizens by the Bill of Rights, a state or one of its political subdivisions does not offend the Constitution simply because the correction of a particular evil creates classifications that result in some inequality, so long as the classifications have a rational basis. See Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 484-85, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 1161-62, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970). Nor is it the role of courts to speculate whether the evils proposed to be ameliorated by the law could have been better regulated in some other fashion. Mourning v. Family Publications Serv., Inc., 411 U.S. 356, 378, 93 S.Ct. 1652, 1665, 36 L.Ed.2d 318 (1973). 15 Moreover, it is not the state that must carry the burden to establish the public need for the law being challenged; it is up to those who attack the law to demonstrate that there is no rational connection between the challenged ordinance and the promotion of public health safety or welfare. See Kelley v. Johnson, 425 U.S. at 247, 96 S.Ct. at 1445. The Constitutional presumption in this area of the law is that the democratic process will, in time, remedy improvident legislative choices and that judicial intervention is therefore generally unwarranted. We will intervene in the extraordinary circumstance where it can only be concluded that the legislature's actions were irrational. Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97, 99 S.Ct. 939, 942, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979).