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Text: We agree with the Government that our decision in Boddie does not control the disposition of this case and that the District Court's reliance upon Boddie is misplaced.

A. Boddie was based on the notion that a State cannot deny access, simply because of one's poverty, to a "judicial proceeding [that is] the only effective means of resolving the dispute at hand." 401 U. S., at 376. Throughout the opinion there is constant and recurring reference to Connecticut's exclusive control over the establishment, enforcement, and dissolution of the marital relationship. The Court emphasized that "marriage involves interests of basic importance in our society," ibid., and spoke of "state monopolization of the means for legally dissolving this relationship," id., at 374. "[R]esort to the state courts [was] the only avenue to dissolution of . . . marriages," id., at 376, which was "not only the paramount dispute-settlement technique, but, in fact, the only available one," id., at 377. The Court acknowledged that it knew "of no instance where two consenting adults may divorce and mutually liberate themselves from the constraints of legal obligations that go with marriage, and more fundamentally the prohibition against remarriage, without invoking the State's judicial machinery," id., at 376. In the light of all this, we concluded that resort to the judicial process was "no more voluntary in a realistic sense than that of the defendant called upon to defend his interests in court" and we resolved the case "in light of the principles enunciated in our due process decisions that delimit rights of defendants compelled to litigate their differences in the judicial forum," id., at 376-377.

B. The appellants in Boddie, on the one hand, and Robert Kras, on the other, stand in materially different postures. The denial of access to the judicial forum in Boddie touched directly, as has been noted, on the marital relationship and on the associational interests that surround the establishment and dissolution of that relationship. On many occasions we have recognized the fundamental importance of these interests under our Constitution. See, for example, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535 (1942); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923). The Boddie appellants' inability to dissolve their marriages seriously impaired their freedom to pursue other protected associational activities. Kras' alleged interest in the elimination of his debt burden, and in obtaining his desired new start in life, although important and so recognized by the enactment of the Bankruptcy Act, does not rise to the same constitutional level. See Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970); Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U. S. 78 (1971). If Kras is not discharged in bankruptcy, his position will not be materially altered in any constitutional sense. Gaining or not gaining a discharge will effect no change with respect to basic necessities.[6] We see no fundamental interest that is gained or lost depending on the availability of a discharge in bankruptcy.

C. Nor is the Government's control over the establishment, enforcement, or dissolution of debts nearly so exclusive as Connecticut's control over the marriage relationship in Boddie. In contrast with divorce, bankruptcy is not the only method available to a debtor for the adjustment of his legal relationship with his creditors. The utter exclusiveness of court access and court remedy, as has been noted, was a potent factor in Boddie. But "[w]ithout a prior judicial imprimatur, individuals may freely enter into and rescind commercial contracts. . . ." 401 U. S., at 376.

However unrealistic the remedy may be in a particular situation, a debtor, in theory, and often in actuality, may adjust his debts by negotiated agreement with his creditors. At times the happy passage of the applicable limitation period, or other acceptable creditor arrangement, will provide the answer. Government's role with respect to the private commercial relationship is qualitatively and quantitatively different from its role in the establishment, enforcement, and dissolution of marriage.

Resort to the court, therefore, is not Kras' sole path to relief. Boddie's emphasis on exclusivity finds no counterpart in the bankrupt's situation. See Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 547-555 (1949).

D. We are also of the opinion that the filing fee requirement does not deny Kras the equal protection of the laws. Bankruptcy is hardly akin to free speech or marriage or to those other rights, so many of which are imbedded in the First Amendment, that the Court has come to regard as fundamental and that demand the lofty requirement of a compelling governmental interest before they may be significantly regulated. See Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 638 (1969). Neither does it touch upon what have been said to be the suspect criteria of race, nationality, or alienage. Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365, 375 (1971). Instead, bankruptcy legislation is in the area of economics and social welfare. See Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S., at 484-485; Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U. S., at 81; Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56, 74 (1972); Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 U. S. 535, 546 (1972). This being so, the applicable standard, in measuring the propriety of Congress' classification, is that of rational justification. Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603, 611-612 (1960); Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S., at 485-486; Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U. S., at 81.

E. There is no constitutional right to obtain a discharge of one's debts in bankruptcy. The Constitution, Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, merely authorizes the Congress to "establish. . . uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States." Although the first bankruptcy law in England was enacted in 1542, 34 & 35 Hen. 8, c. 4, and a discharge provision first appeared in 1705, 4 Anne, c. 17, primarily as a reward for cooperating debtors, J. MacLachlan, Bankruptcy 20-21 (1956), voluntary bankruptcy was not known in this country at the adoption of the Constitution. Indeed, for the entire period prior to the present Act of 1898, the Nation was without a federal bankruptcy law except for three short periods aggregating about 15 1/2 years. The first statute was the Act of April 4, 1800, c. 19, 2 Stat. 19, and it was repealed by the Act of December 19, 1803, c. 6, 2 Stat. 248. The second was the Act of August 19, 1841, c. 9, 5 Stat. 440, repealed less than two years later by the Act of March 3, 1843, c. 82, 5 Stat. 614. The third was the Act of March 2, 1867, c. 176, 14 Stat. 517; it was repealed by the Act of June 7, 1878, c. 160, 20 Stat. 99. Voluntary petitions were permitted under the 1841 and 1867 Acts. See 1 W. Collier, Bankruptcy ¶¶ 0.03-0.05, pp. 6-9 (14th ed. 1971). Professor MacLachlan has said that the development of the discharge "represents an independent. . . public policy in favor of extricating an insolvent debtor from what would otherwise be a financial impasse." J. MacLachlan, Bankruptcy 88 (footnote omitted). But this obviously is a legislatively created benefit, not a constitutional one, and, as noted, it was a benefit withheld, save for three short periods, during the first 110 years of the Nation's life. The mere fact that Congress has delegated to the District Court supervision over the proceedings by which a petition for discharge is processed does not convert a statutory benefit into a constitutional right of access to a court. Then, too, Congress might have delegated the responsibility to an administrative agency.

F. The rational basis for the fee requirement is readily apparent. Congressional power over bankruptcy, of course, is plenary and exclusive. Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U. S. 433, 438-439 (1940). By the 1946 Amendment, 60 Stat. 326, Congress, as has been noted, abolished the theretofore existing practices of the pauper petition and of compensating the referee from the fees he collected. It replaced that system with one for salaried referees and for fixed fees for every petition filed and a specified percentage of distributable assets. It sought to make the system self-sustaining and paid for by those who use it rather than by tax revenues drawn from the public at large. H. R. Rep. No. 1037, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 4-6 (1945); S. Rep. No. 959, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 2, 5-6 (1946).[7] The propriety of the requirement that the fees be paid ultimately has been recognized even by those district courts that have held the payment of the fee as a precondition to a discharge to be unconstitutional, for those courts would make the payments survive the bankruptcy as a continuing obligation of the bankrupt. In re Smith, 323 F. Supp., at 1093; In re Ottman, 336 F. Supp. 746, 748 (ED Wis. 1972). See O'Brien v. Trevethan, 336 F. Supp. 1029, 1034 (Conn. 1972).

Further, the reasonableness of the structure Congress produced, and congressional concern for the debtor, are apparent from the provisions permitting the debtor to file his petition without payment of any fee, with consequent freedom of subsequent earnings and of after-acquired assets (with the rare exception specified in § 70 (a) of the Act, 11 U. S. C. § 110 (a)) from the claims of then-existing obligations. These provisions, coupled with the bankrupt's ability to obtain a stay of all debt enforcement actions pending at the filing of the petition or thereafter commenced, §§ 11 (a) and 2 (a) (15), 11 U. S. C. §§ 29 (a) and 11 (a) (15); 1A W. Collier, Bankruptcy ¶ 11.03 (14th ed. 1972); 1 id., ¶ 2.62 [4] (14th ed. 1971), enable a bankrupt to terminate his harassment by creditors, to protect his future earnings and property, and to have his new start with a minimum of effort and financial obligation. They serve also, as an incidental effect, to promote and not to defeat the purpose of making the bankruptcy system financially self-sufficient. Cf. Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S., at 74-79.

G. If the $50 filing fees are paid in installments over six months as General Order No. 35 (4) permits on a proper showing, the required average weekly payment is $1.92. If the payment period is extended for the additional three months as the Order permits, the average weekly payment is lowered to $1.28.[8] This is a sum less than the payments Kras makes on his couch of negligible value in storage, and less than the price of a movie and little more than the cost of a pack or two of cigarettes. If, as Kras alleges in his affidavit, a discharge in bankruptcy will afford him that new start he so desires, and the Metropolitan then no longer will charge him with fraud and give him bad references,[9] and if he really needs and desires that discharge, this much available revenue should be within his able-bodied reach when the adjudication in bankruptcy has stayed collection and has brought to a halt whatever harassment, if any, he may have sustained from creditors.