Court Opinion

ID: 9557837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:58:34.791527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:33.764725
License: Public Domain

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that the district court properly applied rational-basis review to a Tennessee law that differentiates between temporary resident legal aliens (alternately referred to as nonimmigrant aliens) and permanent resident legal aliens (alternately referred to as immigrant aliens). Because I believe that this classification discriminates against a suspect class, I dissent on the ground that the district court should have applied strict scrutiny instead of rational-basis review. See Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 372, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971) (“[Classifications based on alienage, like those based on nationality or race, are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial scrutiny.”).
*538A key consequence of applying strict scrutiny is that the burden of proof shifts from the plaintiffs to the defendants. Compare Midkiff v. Adams County Reg’l Water Dist., 409 F.3d 758, 770 (6th Cir.2005) (“Under rational basis review, a plaintiff faces a severe burden and must negate all possible rational justifications for the distinction.” (quotation marks omitted)), with Middleton v. City of Flint, 92 F.3d 396, 404 (6th Cir.1996) (“Under [strict scrutiny], [the defendant] must prove that it had a compelling state interest when it enacted its plan, and that the plan is narrowly tailored to further that compelling state interest.”). I therefore believe that we should remand the case to the district court for a more complete development of the record under the proper standard of review.
I. ANALYSIS
LULAC challenges a Tennessee state law that precludes temporary resident legal aliens from obtaining a full driver’s license. They can instead obtain only a driver’s certificate, which entitles them to the same driving privileges as both permanent resident legal aliens and citizens, but denies them the benefit of official state identification. In fact, the certificates state in bold letters “NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION,” or some substantially similar phrase. The principal issue in this case is whether the Tennessee law’s differentiation between permanent and temporary resident legal aliens implicates a suspect class so as to warrant strict scrutiny. The majority concludes that it does not, and that rational-basis review is accordingly the proper standard. To support this conclusion, the majority relies on the majority opinion in the only other federal-circuit ease to have decided this precise issue: LeClerc v. Webb, 419 F.3d 405 (5th Cir.2005). Curiously, neither party cited LeClerc in their briefing.
In LeClerc, the principal reason that the Fifth Circuit declined to extend strict scrutiny to laws discriminating against nonim-migrant aliens was that “the [Supreme] Court itself has shied away from such expansion.” 419 F.3d at 419. The majority finds this reasoning persuasive. Maj. Op. at 533. To be sure, the Supreme Court has never specifically held that temporary resident legal aliens, as a subset of all aliens, are a suspect class for equal-protection purposes. But this silence alone proves little. As an initial matter, equal protection is not one of those substantive areas of the law where, as in the case of qualified immunity under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or federal habeas corpus under AEDPA, the degree to which Supreme Court precedent is “clearly established” determines the likelihood of relief.
In addition, the Supreme Court has addressed intra-alienage classifications in state laws only a handful of times since 1900 — an inordinately small “sample size” from which to conclude with certainty either that the classifications addressed in those cases collectively constitute an exhaustive list or that an as-yet-unaddressed classification would necessarily receive different treatment from the Court. A closer look at three of those cases strongly suggests that a classification of the kind at issue here would receive the same strict scrutiny that each of the classifications in those cases received.
The first case is Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U.S. 410, 68 S.Ct. 1138, 92 L.Ed. 1478 (1948), where the Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny to, and ultimately held unconstitutional, a California law that prohibited only those lawful aliens who were not eligible for federal citizenship — a group that, at the time, included all Japanese aliens — from fishing in the ocean off of the state’s shores. Even *539though the classification was only intra-alienage, as opposed to all aliens versus citizens, the Court found strict scrutiny to be appropriate. The Court noted in relevant part that
[a]ll of the foregoing emphasizes the tenuousness of the state’s claim that it has power to single out and ban its lawful alien inhabitants, and particularly certain racial and color groups within this class of inhabitants, from following a vocation simply because Congress has put some such groups in special classifications in exercise of its broad and wholly distinguishable powers over immigration and naturalization.
Id. at 420, 68 S.Ct. 1138. Similarly, the Court determined that California’s justification for the law was “inadequate to justify California in excluding any or all aliens who are lawful residents of the State from making a living by fishing in the ocean off its shores while permitting all others to do so.” Id. at 421, 68 S.Ct. 1138.
LULAC persuasively argues that the classification at issue in the present case is in effect the same as that at issue in Takahashi — that is, between citizens and those aliens eligible for citizenship, on the one hand, and all other aliens, on the other — because only permanent resident legal aliens are eligible for citizenship under federal law. The majority, however, does not address this argument in its opinion.
Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971), is the second case on point. The Supreme Court, citing Takahashi, again applied strict scrutiny to, and ultimately held unconstitutional, an Arizona law that denied welfare benefits to those aliens who failed to meet a 15-year durational residency requirement. All other aliens, as well as citizens, were exempt. Id. at 367, 91 S.Ct. 1848. The Court reiterated its prior precedent that “whatever may be the scope of the constitutional right of interstate travel, aliens lawfully within this country have a right to enter and abide in any State in the Union ‘on an equality of legal privileges with all citizens under nondiscriminatory laws.’ ” Id. at 377-78, 91 S.Ct. 1848 (quoting Takahashi, 334 U.S. at 420, 68 S.Ct. 1138) (emphasis added). Most importantly, Graham made explicit what the analysis in Takahashi and the rest of the Court’s alienage jurisprudence had necessarily implied — namely, that “classifications based on alienage, like those based on nationality or race, are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial scrutiny” because “[ajliens as a class are a prime example of a ‘discrete and insular’ minority for whom such heightened judicial solicitude is appropriate.” Id. at 371-72, 91 S.Ct. 1848 (citing United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152-53 n. 4, 58 S.Ct. 778, 82 L.Ed. 1234 (1938)) (footnotes omitted).
The third and final case on point is Nyquist v. Mauclet, 432 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2120, 53 L.Ed.2d 63 (1977), where the Supreme Court, citing Graham, applied strict scrutiny to, and ultimately held unconstitutional, a New York law barring only certain resident aliens from receiving financial assistance from the state for higher education. Those resident legal aliens who had applied for citizenship, as well as those who were not yet qualified for citizenship but had filed statements indicating an intent to qualify and apply, were exempt from the prohibition and allowed to participate in the assistance program. Id. at 3-4, 97 S.Ct. 2120. Most pertinently, the Court stated that “[t]he fact that the [challenged] statute is not an absolute bar [against all aliens] does not mean that it does not discriminate against the class.” Id. at 9, 97 S.Ct. 2120. Instead, “[t]he important points are that [the challenged statute] is *540directed at aliens and that only aliens are harmed by it.” Id.
The majority adopts virtually the entirety of the LeClerc majority’s analysis to distinguish the Supreme Court precedents discussed above, but it does so without even mentioning the numerous criticisms to which that analysis has been subject. In so doing, it also overlooks many of the plaintiffs’ related arguments on appeal. A brief review of the procedural history in LeClerc reveals the considerable extent— and passion — of those criticisms.
LeClerc was a consolidated appeal from two diametrically opposed opinions from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. In Leclerc v. Webb, 270 F.Supp.2d 779 (E.D.La.2003), the district court determined that a Louisiana law precluding nonimmigrant aliens from sitting for the state’s bar exam was subject to only rational-basis review. In contrast, a different judge on the same court in Wallace v. Calogero, 286 F.Supp.2d 748, 762 (E.D.La.2003), held that the law triggered strict scrutiny because nonimmigrant aliens were part of the general “resident alien” suspect class. This difference in the applicable standard of review, moreover, proved dispositive: The district court in Leclerc upheld the law, 270 F.Supp.2d at 801, whereas the court in Wallace declared it “unenforceable,” 286 F.Supp.2d at 764.
The debate continued once the cases had been consolidated for appeal before the Fifth Circuit. Judge Stewart issued a lengthy and detailed dissent to Judge Jones’s majority opinion. In his dissent, Judge Stewart vigorously disputed the majority’s conclusion that nonimmigrant aliens were not a suspect class and that laws discriminating against them were therefore subject to only rational-basis review. As an initial matter, Judge Stewart dismissed as unfounded the majority’s wariness “about ‘expanding’ strict scrutiny review to nonimmigrant aliens as a distinctive suspect class in the absence of a-black letter holding by the U.S. Supreme Court to that effect.” LeClerc, 419 F.3d at 426 (Stewart, J., dissenting). He instead emphasized that “the Supreme Court’s statement [in Graham] that ‘al-ienage is a suspect class’ by definition includes nonimmigrant aliens as part of that class.” Id. The Court’s post-Graham caselaw has only reinforced that literal meaning, in Judge Stewart’s opinion, because “the Court has still spoken of a general ‘alien’ suspect class” “[djespite the Court’s familiarity with the distinction between immigrant and nonimmigrant aliens.” Id. at 428.
Judge Stewart especially took exception to the majority’s “heavy” reliance on the statement in Application of Griffiths, 413 U.S. 717, 722, 93 S.Ct. 2851, 37 L.Ed.2d 910 (1973), that “[rjesident aliens, like citizens, pay taxes, support the economy, serve in the Armed Forces, and contribute in myriad other ways to our society.” First, he noted that nonimmigrant aliens, as a matter of fact, “do pay taxes, support the economy and contribute in other ways to our society.” LeClerc, 419 F.3d at 428 (Stewart, J., dissenting). In addition, he argued that a focus on “an aliens’ [sic] ability to serve in the Armed Forces or pay taxes” is misplaced because, as a matter of law, “the basis for aliens’ [suspect] class designation seems to be premised on aliens’ inability to vote, and thus their impotence in the political process, and the long history of invidious discrimination against them.” Id. at 428-29 (citing Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 218 n. 14, 102 S.Ct. 2382, 72 L.Ed.2d 786 (1982), Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law 618-19 (1997), and Takahashi, 334 U.S. 410, 68 S.Ct. 1138).
*541The Supreme Court’s post-Graham caselaw directly supports Judge Stewart’s criticism. See, e.g., Regents of the Univ. of Calif v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 290, 290 n. 28, 98 S.Ct. 2733, 57 L.Ed.2d 750 (1978) (noting that, although the Court has never held that “discreteness and insularity constitute necessary preconditions to a holding that a particular classification is invidious,” “these elements have been relied upon in recognizing a suspect class in only one group of cases, those involving aliens” (citing Graham, 403 U.S. at 372, 91 S.Ct. 1848)); Foley v. Connelie, 435 U.S. 291, 294, 98 S.Ct. 1067, 55 L.Ed.2d 287 (1978) (clarifying that the Chuham court’s rationale for subjecting alienage-based classifications to “heightened judicial solicitude” was that “aliens-pending their eligibility for citizenship-have no direct voice in the political processes” (citing Carolene Prods., 304 U.S. at 152-53 n. 4, 58 S.Ct. 778)); see also Recent Cases, Fifth Circuit Holds That Louisiana Can Prevent Non-immigrant Aliens From Sitting for the Bar, 119 Harv. L.Rev. 669, 674 (2005) (“That nonimmigrant aliens work under a different tax structure, cannot serve in the military, and face mandatory departure from the United States, for example, does not justify offering them less constitutional protection; if anything, these restrictions render them more powerless and vulnerable to state predations — more ‘discrete and insular.’” (citing Carolene Prods., 304 U.S. at 153 n. 4, 58 S.Ct. 778) (emphasis added)).
Judge Stewart’s dissent was not the Fifth Circuit’s final word on LeClerc. Following the decision of the three-judge panel, the plaintiffs petitioned for rehearing en banc. The court denied the petition by the narrowest possible vote of 8 to 7. Le-Clerc v. Webb, 444 F.3d 428 (5th Cir.2006). Two of the seven judges who would have reheard the case en banc filed dissenting opinions from the denial of the petition. In addition to Judge Stewart, who effectively reprised his original dissent, Judge Higginbotham used pointed language to highlight both the weaknesses and the consequential dangers in the majority’s analysis. He described the majority’s decision to exclude nonimmigrant aliens from suspect-class designation as “a bold step not sanctioned by Supreme Court precedent.” Id. at 429 (Higginbotham, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc). Judge Higginbotham also criticized the majority for its “puzzling” silence in ignoring the doctrine of federal preemption, or what he referred to as “the trumping constitutional power of the federal government in controlling the nation’s borders, including matters of immigration and naturalization.” Id. Specifically, he found that the majority’s decision to “relax[ ] scrutiny of state regulation of aliens as the federal regulation of them is increased” “is too ambitious for me.” Id. at 430; see also id. at 429-30 (calling the LeClerc majority’s reasoning “perverse” and “exactly backwards” because, in “drawing] distinctions between different classes of aliens, it shifts responsibility over aliens from the Congress to the States”).
Commentators have also questioned the analysis in LeClerc. One has referred to the majority opinion as a “short-sighted and bureaucratic decision that misconstrues precedent and misapplies equal protection analysis.” Recent Cases, 119 Harv. L.Rev. at 670. Most “counterintui-tive,” in that commentator’s opinion, was the majority’s insistence on nonimmigrant aliens’ temporariness given that “the Supreme Court [has] never differentiated equal protection review based on status as an immigrant or a nonimmigrant alien” and that “the governing cases also appear to downplay the relevance of aliens’ transience.” Id. at 673; see also LeClerc, 419 F.3d at 428 (Stewart, J., dissenting) (“De*542spite the Court’s familiarity with the distinction between immigrant and nonimmi-grant aliens, the Court has still spoken of a general ‘alien’ suspect class.”). This non-differentiation, moreover, could be, and has been, read as “implying that the precise status is not [the Supreme Court’s] focus, as long as it is a legal status.” Kathleen Ann Harrison, LeClerc v. Webb: Rational Scrutiny Analysis of Equal Protection Claims by Nonimmigrant Aliens, 25 Miss. C.L.Rev. 273, 281 (2006). Indeed, as discussed in greater detail below, the only exception to the Graham rule that aliens are a suspect class is in regard to illegal aliens. See Plyler, 457 U.S. at 219 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 2382 (“We reject the claim that ‘illegal aliens’ are a ‘suspect class.’ ”).
No matter the specific nature of their respective criticisms, the commentators have shared Judge Higginbotham’s overarching concern about LeClerc’s “bold step” and its significance for the future. That is, the exclusion of nonimmigrant aliens from suspect-class designation “may be setting a dangerous precedent that could serve to erode the rights of nonimmi-grants in other contexts.” Harrison, 25 Miss. C.L.Rev. at 282; see also Recent Cases, 119 Harv. L. Rev at 676 n. 62 (“[P]ermitting state governments to single out nonimmigrant aliens in this manner could promote anti-alien employment discrimination based on seemingly neutral qualities like ‘transience.’ ”). Those “other contexts,” of course, could be significantly more harmful to nonimmigrants as a class than the exclusion from a state bar exam, as in LeClerc, or the inability to obtain a regular state driver’s license, as in the present case.
The majority here, however, fails to address any of these criticisms and, in fact, never acknowledges that there was a dissent in LeClerc at all. Even the majority in LeClerc itself recognized the closeness of the issue, conceding that the relevant Supreme Court precedent contained “some ambiguity.” 419 F.3d at 415. Although my specific reasons for dissenting largely mirror those already expressed by Judges Stewart and Higginbotham, and in turn are echoed by the commentators, I believe that a larger jurisprudential principle is driving the debate.
At its most basic level, my disagreement with the majority here and in LeClerc is a fundamental difference of opinion regarding the proper role of the federal circuit courts in addressing issues that the Supreme Court itself has never specifically resolved. The majority appears to adopt the cautionary approach of the LeClerc majority, “declining] to extend the Supreme Court’s decisions concerning [permanent] resident aliens to different alien categories when the Court itself has shied away from such expansion.” Maj. Op. at 533 (quoting LeClerc, 419 F.3d at 419). I, on the other hand, would adopt what is in essence the more literal approach, taking the Supreme Court at its word when it reaffirmed in Graham that “classifications based on alienage ... are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial scrutiny.” 403 U.S. at 372, 91 S.Ct. 1848.
Stated differently, the majority apparently believes that the Supreme Court’s generally applicable pronouncements should not be applied to a narrower context that they ostensibly cover unless and until the Court does so itself. Yet despite its avowed reluctance to jump ahead of the Supreme Court, this is precisely what the majority has done. Its holding in effect presumes that the Supreme Court would withhold suspect-class designation from nonimmigrant aliens if it were to decide that precise issue. See LeClerc, 444 F.3d at 429 (Higginbotham, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc) (describing the LeClerc majority’s decision to ex-*543elude nonimmigrant aliens from suspect-class designation as “a bold step not sanctioned by Supreme Court precedent”). This holding not only is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s more general language regarding alienage, but arrogates the very power upon which the majority professes to be so reluctant to infringe.
I believe that the canons of statutory interpretation provide a useful, albeit inexact, analogy to the situation before us. All federal courts, including this one, are well aware that “[o]ne of the most basic canons of statutory interpretation is that a more specific provision takes precedence over a more general one.” See United States v. Perry, 360 F.3d 519, 535 (6th Cir.2004) (citing Green v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co., 490 U.S. 504, 524, 109 S.Ct. 1981, 104 L.Ed.2d 557 (1989), and Radzanower v. Touche Ross & Co., 426 U.S. 148, 153, 96 S.Ct. 1989, 48 L.Ed.2d 540 (1976)). A corollary of this canon is that “[a] general statutory rule usually does not govern unless there is no more specific rule.” Green, 490 U.S. at 524, 109 S.Ct. 1981 (emphasis added). In the absence of a more specific rule, in other words, the general rule governs.
The majority’s holding in the present case is inconsistent with these well-established and uncontroversial principles of law. It ignores the Supreme Court’s general rule that aliens constitute a suspect class and, following the LeClerc majority, creates a more specific rule for nonimmi-grant aliens where no such rule otherwise exists. I am not familiar with any authority that permits the lower federal courts to interpret Supreme Court precedent in this manner, which is totally at odds with the widely accepted method for interpreting federal statutes.
To be sure, the lower federal courts interpret Supreme Court caselaw to create their own in-circuit law all the time. That is, after all, our job. See Northcross v. Bd. of Educ., 302 F.2d 818, 824 (6th Cir.1962) (“[Tjhis Court must follow the supreme law of the land, as interpreted by the Supreme Court.”). But creating in-circuit law as a natural extension of Supreme Court precedent to meet new facts patterns, on the one hand, and sua sponte carving out exceptions to still-good Supreme Court law to do so, on the other, are vastly different things. See West v. Anne Arundel County, 137 F.3d 752, 757 (4th Cir.1998) (“Our task ... is not to predict what the Supreme Court might do but rather to follow what it has done.”).
This case presents a number of serious constitutional questions, the least of which, somewhat ironically, is the merits issue of whether the Tennessee driver’s license law runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Answering that question can come only after a determination of the appropriate standard of review, which itself must follow a decision as to whether the individuals burdened by the law under review fit within a “suspect” classification. This initial determination is the most critical of the three, in my opinion, because beyond simply setting the analysis in motion, it necessarily expresses a value judgment as to the status of legal aliens in our society. See Foley, 435 U.S. at 294, 98 S.Ct. 1067 (“The decisions of this Court with regard to the rights of aliens living in our society have reflected fine, and often difficult, questions of values.”). Most lower-court judges are unsurprisingly and properly cautious in making those value judgments as a matter of course, and I share the majority’s inclination to defer to the Supreme Court to do so in this case. But contrary to the majority’s shying-away rationale, the Supreme Court has spoken regarding the individuals at issue here, having proclaimed unequivocally in Graham that “classes based *544on alienage, like those based on nationality or race, are inherently suspect and subject to close judicial scrutiny.” Graham, 403 U.S. at 372, 91 S.Ct. 1848.
As noted above, the Supreme Court has carved out only a single exception to this general rule, holding in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 219 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 2382, 72 L.Ed.2d 786 (1982), that illegal aliens are not members of a suspect class and that state classifications against them are accordingly subject to the far-more-forgiving rational-basis standard of review. That the number of exceptions remains at only one a quarter of a century after Plyler is especially pertinent to the present case because, during the very year that Plyler was decided, the Court confronted — but explicitly bypassed — an opportunity to create an exception that would have covered the subclass of aliens at issue here. See Toll v. Moreno, 458 U.S. 1, 9-10, 102 S.Ct. 2977, 73 L.Ed.2d 563 (1982) (determining that, because the University of Maryland’s policy of denying nonimmigrant-alien students the “in-state” discount that both citizen and immigrant-alien students received for tuition and fees violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, “[w]e ... have no occasion to consider whether the policy violates the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses”).
In bypassing the equal-protection question in Moreno, moreover, the Supreme Court necessarily left undisturbed the district court’s holding, later adopted without qualification by the Fourth Circuit, that all legal aliens “who maintain their place of general abode within the United States,” whether “immigrant or nonimmigrant” aliens, are “wrapped ... in the suspect classification blanket” and entitled to have laws that discriminate against them subjected to strict scrutiny. Moreno v. Toll, 489 F.Supp. 658, 663-64 (D.Md.1980), aff'd by Moreno v. Univ. of Maryland, 645 F.2d 217, 220 (4th Cir.1981) (per curiam) (affirming the district court’s equal-protection holding “[f]or reasons sufficiently stated by the district court”). Reading Plyler and Moreno in conjunction with Graham yields the inescapable conclusion that all lawfully admitted aliens — permanent and temporary alike — remain members of an inherently suspect class.
II. CONCLUSION
For all of the reasons set forth above, I would reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case for reconsideration under the strict-scrutiny standard of review. I therefore respectfully dissent.