Court Opinion

ID: 9426855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:06.632624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.479330
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
dissenting.
I join Mr. Justice Rehnquist’s and Mr. Justice Powell’s dissenting opinions, but I add this comment to point out yet other significant differences between this case and our prior cases involving alienage-based classifications.
With one exception, the prior cases upon which the Court purports to rely involved statutes which prohibited aliens from engaging in certain occupations or professions, thereby impairing their ability to earn a livelihood. See, e. g., Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U. S. 572 (1976) (Puerto *13Rico statute permitted only United States citizens to practice as private civil engineers); In re Griffiths, 413 U. S. 717 (1973) (membership in state bar limited to citizens); Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634 (1973) (participation in State’s competitive civil service limited to citizens); Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410 (1948) (state statute denied fishing license to persons “ineligible to citizenship”); Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33 (1915) (state constitution required employers to hire “not less than eighty (80) per cent qualified electors or native-born citizens of the United States”); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886) (city ordinance discriminatorily enforced against aliens so as to prevent Chinese subjects, but not United States citizens, from operating laundries within the city). The only other case striking down a classification on the basis of alienage, Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971), involved the denial of toelfare benefits essential to sustain life for aliens, while needy citizens were given such benefits. The Court has noted elsewhere the crucial role which such benefits play in providing the poor with “means to obtain essential food, clothing, housing, and medical care.” Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254, 264 (1970) (footnote omitted).
In this case the State is not seeking to deprive aliens of the essential means of economic survival. Rather, pursuant to its broad power to regulate its education system, the State has chosen to provide some types of individuals — those it considers most likely to provide a long-range return to the local and national community — certain added benefits to facilitate participation in its system of higher education. The State is certainly not preventing aliens from obtaining an education, and indeed it is clear that appellees may attend New York colleges and universities on an equal footing with citizens. However, beyond that, the State has provided certain economic incentives to its own citizens to induce them to pursue higher studies, which in the long run will be a benefit to the *14State. The State has not deemed such incentives as necessary or proper as to those aliens who are unwilling to declare their commitment to the community in which they reside by declaring their intent to acquire citizenship. Such simple declaration is all that the statute requires.
In my view, the Constitution of the United States allows States broad latitude in carrying out such programs. Where a fundamental personal interest is not at stake — and higher education is hardly that — the State must be free to exercise its largesse in any reasonable manner. New York, like most other States, does not have unlimited funds to provide its residents with higher education services; it is equally clear that the State has every interest in assuring that those to whom it gives special help in obtaining an education have or declare some attachment indicating their intent to remain within the State to practice their special skills. It has no interest in providing these benefits to transients from another country who are not willing to become citizens. The line drawn by the State is not a perfect one — and few lines can be — but it does provide a rational means to further the State’s legitimate objectives. Resident individuals who are citizens, or who declare themselves committed to the idea of becoming American citizens, are more likely to remain in the State of New York after their graduation than are aliens whose ties to their country of origin are so strong that they decline to sever them in order to secure these valuable benefits.
I therefore conclude that the State of New York has not acted impermissibly in refusing to dispense its limited tax revenues to give assistance to aliens who by clear implication reject the opportunity to become citizens of the United States. Beyond the specific case, I am concerned that we not obliterate all the distinctions between citizens and aliens, and thus depreciate the historic values of citizenship.
If a State desires — and has the means — nothing in the United States Constitution prevents it from voluntarily giving *15scholarships to aliens, even to those who reject United States citizenships. But nothing heretofore found in the Constitution compels a State to apply its finite resources to higher education of aliens who have demonstrated no permanent attachment to the United States and who refuse to apply for citizenship.