Court Opinion

ID: 9458500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:53:37.473461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:47.313081
License: Public Domain

*319WISDOM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent.
Frampton has, in my opinion, lost in this Court because he took a circuitous route in addition to the direct route available to him. He chose to attack the Louisiana statute by suing the draft board that relied on the statute to deny him his choice of civilian work as a state employee. This route is fraught with obstacles, as the majority opinion points out. In addition, however, Frampton, by supplemental complaint, attacked the statute head-on by suing the appropriate state officials under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and seeking a declaratory judgment under the Federal Declaratory Judgments Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201.
Frampton has standing to attack the statute. He is faced with the choice of accepting alternate service in a job other than the one he now occupies or being inducted. He must make that choice because the draft board is relying on the statute he attacks. By directly attacking the statute under 28 U.S.C. § 2201, moreover, Frampton also avoids the problem of Section 10(b) (3), 50 U.S.C. (App.) § 460(b) (3) (Supp. V), which troubles the majority.
The statute prevents conscientious objectors from securing state employment and, as a result, from using state employment in public welfare work as alternate service. I would hold the statute unconstitutional. First, federal legislation specifically sanctions the conscientious objector status. The state law preventing employment of one who secures that status is in direct conflict with the federal legislation. Second, the state law impermissibly burdens Frampton’s free exercise of his First Amendment right to be a conscientious objector. Finally, the statute, singling out conscientious objectors for different treatment, has no rational relation to a legitimate state interest, to say nothing of its promoting a compelling state interest.
Because the statute is unconstitutional, the draft board may not rely on it to deny Frampton alternate service in a state employment such as the one he now occupies. Certainly, by any rational standard employment in public welfare work should be an acceptable alternate service.