Court Opinion

ID: 9633833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:02:38.050264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:42.972481
License: Public Domain

BROWNING, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The majority recognizes that the “ownership theory” espoused in early Supreme Court opinions is denigrated in more recent pronouncements. See Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385, 402, 68 S.Ct. 1156, 92 L.Ed. 1460 (1948). Also in disrepute is the “special public interest” theory occasionally advanced to justify state discrimination in favor of its own citizens in matters of “privilege” as distinguished from “right.” See Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U.S. 634, 643-45, 93 S.Ct. 2842, 37 L.Ed.2d 853 (1973); Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 372-74, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1970). All that remains is the traditional Equal Protection issue: Does the higher license fee charged nonresidents for hunting elk in the state serve a legitimate state purpose?
The contention most strongly pressed by the state is that the difference in license fee serves the legitimate purpose of imposing upon nonresidents a fair share of the cost of maintaining the elk herd. As the majority finds, however, “the ratio of 7.5 to 1 [or 28.2 to 1] cannot be justified on any basis of cost allocation.” The majority does not discuss the other purposes advanced by the state to support the discrimination—implying (and I agree) that there is no reasonable relationship between the discriminatory license fee and any of the other purposes advanced by the state. Each such justification is shown *1011by the record to be either logically or factually unsupportable.
The majority nonetheless sustains the discrimination on a novel theory not suggested by the state or supported by any authority.*
The ultimate state interest relied upon by the majority is the unquestionably legitimate and important one of conservation. The asserted relationship between the discriminatory license fee and conservation is not direct. The state employs discrimination, the majority suggests, to further conservation in an indirect and, in my opinion, impermissible way.
The majority holds the discrimination against nonresidents to be justified because the state might rationally conclude that if nonresidents were not discriminated against and thereby discouraged from participating in the elk hunt, the number of residents who could participate would be so small that, the residents would be unwilling to maintain a vigorous conservation program. In short, an otherwise invidious discrimination against nonresidents is justified because the state may rationally consider the discrimination necessary to induce residents to support the state program required to conserve the herd.
In more general terms, the principle appears to be that the state may burden access by nonresidents to a finite local resource in order to increase the share available to residents and thereby maintain a political base within the state for the support of state efforts to conserve the resource. Put in another way, a state may justify the constitutionality of a discriminatory statute by showing that political support by the class of people to be benefited by the discrimination is necessary in order to continue the program that benefits them.
I do not believe discrimination for such a purpose is permitted by the Equal Protection Clause.
Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. 250, 94 S.Ct. 1076, 39 L.Ed.2d 306 (1974), involved a constitutional challenge to an Arizona statute requiring a year’s residence as a condition to an indigent receiving non-emergency medical care at county expense. The state argued that “the requirement is necessary for public support” of modern and effective public medical facilities because the voters believed the requirement protected them from an influx of low-income families such facilities would otherwise attract. The Supreme Court rejected the argument, stating, “A State may not employ an invidious discrimination to sustain the political viability of its programs.” 415 U.S. at 266, 94 S.Ct. at 1086.
The Supreme Court cited with approval Cole v. Housing Authority, 435 F.2d 807, 812-13 (1st Cir. 1970), invalidating a city’s durational residency requirement for access to low-income housing projects. In Cole, the city argued that a durational residential requirement was “often the key to survival of [public] housing” because voters believed such a restriction to be necessary to avoid benefiting newcomers as against longtime residents. The Court of Appeals rejected this reasoning, stating, “The objective of achieving political support by discriminatory means ... is not one which the Constitution recognizes.” 435 F.2d at 813.
Memorial Hospital and Cole involved infringement of fundamental rights that could be justified only by a compelling state *1012interest. But this does not make them inapplicable. These cases rejected justification of discrimination on political grounds because justification on such a basis is inherently inappropriate, not because the right infringed was fundamental.
A holding that discrimination by the state may be justified by showing that the state could rationally believe such discrimination was necessary to secure political support for a program in the public interest, would lead inevitably, if indirectly, to the conclusion that invidious discrimination can be justified by popular disapproval of equal treatment. As the court said in Cole, such a rule “would rationalize discriminatory classifications which are constitutionally impermissible.” 435 F.2d at 812. Addressing essentially the same point in Memorial Hospital, the Supreme Court said: “ ‘[pjerhaps Congress could induce wider state participation in school construction if it authorized the use of joint funds for the building of segregated schools,’ but that purpose would not sustain such a scheme.” 415 U.S. at 267, 94 S.Ct. at 1086, quoting Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 641, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed. 660 (1969).
The majority’s rationale is at odds with the principle that constitutional rights are not subject to abrogation by majority will. As the Court said in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 1185, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1942): “The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.” See also Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S. 713, 736, 84 S.Ct. 1459, 12 L.Ed.2d 632 (1963).
The rule applied by the majority is impossible to limit. It would immunize even the most arbitrary discrimination from constitutional attack whenever it could be contended reasonably that the discrimination was necessary to obtain political support for the state activity.
Access to outdoor recreation is increasingly important to our society. It is significant, for example, that the number of visitors to national and state parks doubled in the decade 1960-1970. U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical History of the United States 1970. In fact if not in law, recreational resources constitute a vital national asset. The sentiment that state residents have a preferred claim to such resources within the state is unworthy of protection “under a Constitution which was written partly for the purpose of eradicating such provincialism.” Cole v. Housing Authority, supra, 435 F.2d at 813.
I would hold Montana’s discriminatory license fee unconstitutional.

 The majority states (note 20) that the result reached in this case is in accord with the results reached in Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519, 16 S.Ct. 600, 40 L.Ed. 793 (1896); McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 391, 24 L.Ed. 248 (1876); In re Eberie, 98 F. 295 (N.D.Ill.1899); and State v. Kemp, 73 S.D. 458, 44 N.W.2d 214 (1950), appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question 340 U.S. 923, 71 S.Ct. 498, 95 L.Ed. 667 (1951). As the majority notes (note 10), the first three cases rest on the “ownership theory,” rejected in subsequent decisions, and, in any event, not readily applicable to elk, 75% of which are killed on federal lands. Dismissal by the Supreme Court of the appeal in State v. Kemp did not involve a ruling that the discrimination was constitutional. The statement filed in the Supreme Court in opposition to jurisdiction pointed out that violations of state statutes not claimed to be unconstitutional had occurred that were sufficient to sustain the conviction.