Court Opinion

ID: 9534327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:38:40.258471+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:16.927767
License: Public Domain

*405Judge BRIGGS
specially concurring.
I join in the majority opinion. However, the opinion does not directly address plaintiffs’ contention that the supreme court’s decision in Duran v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office, 883 P.2d 477 (Colo.1994), which upheld against an equal protection challenge the classification created by §§ 8-42-107(2) and 8-42-107(8)(c.5), C.R.S. (1994 Cum. Supp.), is distinguishable based on the evidence presented in this ease. I write separately to explain why, in my view, the supreme court’s decision is controlling and cannot be distinguished.
Section 8-42-107(8)(c.5) provides that when an injury results in the total loss or loss of use of an eye or any member specified in the old schedule in § 8-42-107(2), first codified in 1915, then benefits are calculated, not under that schedule, but under the new schedule in § 8-42-107(8), C.R.S. (1994 Cum. Supp.), enacted in 1991. See Colo.Sess.Laws 1991, ch. 219, § 8-42-107(8) at 1309-11. Benefits for partial loss or loss of use of an eye or any specified member continue to be calculated under the old schedule.
The essence of plaintiffs’ equal protection claim is that it is irrational to require that benefits be provided for a partial loss or loss of use of a member under the old schedule, no matter how close to total that partial loss or loss of use may be, while at the same time providing disproportionately greater benefits under the new schedule for the total loss or loss of use of the same member. However, as aptly pointed out in the majority opinion, the supreme court in Duran v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office, supra, expressly upheld this statutory scheme against the precise equal protection challenge plaintiffs raise in this case.
Plaintiffs seek to distinguish Duran on the premise that it lacked the broad evidentiary record present here. For example, the supreme court in Duran noted that: “No empirical evidence was presented to establish the extent to which any generalization regarding the similarity of injuries holds true.” Duran v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office, supra, at 483. Nor was there reference in Duran to evidence comparing the ease in calculating benefits under the two schedules.
Plaintiffs argue it was this lack of evidence that led the supreme court to conclude that the classification created- by the old and new schedules was rationally related to the governmental interest in efficiency and fairness. They characterize the decision as a rejection of an “as applied” equal protection challenge.
In contrast, plaintiffs in this case introduced evidence to rebut the assumptions underlying the decision in Duran. Plaintiffs contend that based on this evidence we should distinguish the supreme court’s conclusion that this statutory scheme is rationally related to the governmental interest in efficiency and fairness.
Plaintiffs’ argument in effect is that the evidence they presented at trial satisfied their burden “to negative every conceivable basis which might support [the challenged statutory scheme].” F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, -, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 2102, 124 L.Ed.2d 211, 217 (1993). However, no matter how persuasive plaintiffs’ evidence may seem, in my view we cannot distinguish the holding in Duran based upon it.
The distinction relied on by plaintiffs depends on the unfounded assumption that if the supreme court in Duran did not discuss a piece or a kind of evidence, the record before it must not have contained any such evidence. More importantly, plaintiffs’ argument reflects a misapprehension of the role of factfinding in resolving an equal protection challenge previously resolved by a higher court.
The supreme court in Duran held that, because receipt of workers’ compensation benefits is not a fundamental right, the rational basis test must be applied. A statutory classification concerning these benefits therefore does not violate the right to equal protection unless it has no rational basis or is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.
Under this test, a statutory classification must be upheld against an equal protection challenge if there are any reasonably conceivable facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification. Factfinding thus *406plays a different role even in the initial consideration of an equal protection challenge:
The Constitution presumes that, absent some reason to infer antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted.
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In other words, a legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data.
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The assumptions underlying these rationales may be erroneous, but the very fact that they are ‘arguable’ is sufficient, on rational-basis review, to ‘immuniz[e]’ the congressional choice from constitutional challenge.
F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, - , 113 S.Ct. 2096, 2101-04, 124 L.Ed.2d 211, 215-218 (1993); see also Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 110-11, 99 S.Ct. 939, 949, 59 L.Ed.2d 171, 184 (1979) (“In ordinary civil litigation, the question frequently is which party has shown that a disputed historical fact is more likely than not to be true. In an equal protection case of this type, however, those challenging the legislative judgment must convince the court that the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker.”).
The supreme court in Duran in effect determined as a matter of law that the facts are at least arguable as to whether the payment of benefits under the different schedules in §§ 8-42-107(2) and 8-42-107(8) is rational. It therefore concluded the statutory scheme is not unconstitutional. The relief plaintiffs seek would require us not to distinguish that conclusion, but to reach the opposite conclusion.
That the evidence presented in this case may appear to rebut the presumptions on which the supreme court’s conclusions in Duran was premised provides us with no authority effectively to overrule it. Furthermore, if the supreme court’s legal conclusion were subject to being distinguished based on evidence presented at a later hearing, the constitutionality of the same statutory scheme might vary from case to case, depending on the efforts of the parties and the skills of their counsel.
Plaintiffs are therefore left with the argument that, when this statutory scheme is properly understood, no set of facts can be conceived that provides a rational basis for paying benefits under the old schedule in § 8-42-107(2) for injuries resulting in the partial loss or loss of use of a member while paying disproportionately greater benefits under the new schedule in § 8-42-107(8) for the total loss or loss of use of the same member. In light of the holding in Duran, plaintiffs' argument, whatever its merits, must be addressed either to the General Assembly or to the supreme court.