Court Opinion

ID: 9425337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:25.599283+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.844198
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court except insofar as it suggests that a State may impose a one-year residency *455requirement as a prerequisite to qualifying for in-state tuition benefits. See ante, at 452 and n. 9. That question is not presented by this case since here we deal with a permanent, irrebuttable presumption of nonresidency based on the fact that a student was a nonresident at the time he applied for admission to the state university system. I recognize that in Starns v. Malkerson, 401 U. S. 985 (1971), we summarily affirmed a district court decision sustaining a one-year residency requirement for receipt of in-state tuition benefits. But I now have serious question as to the validity of that summary decision in light of well-established principles, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which limit the States’ ability to set residency requirements for the receipt of rights and benefits bestowed on bona fide state residents. See Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S. 330 (1972); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969). Because the Court finds sufficient basis in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to dispose of the constitutionality of the Connecticut statute here at issue, it has no occasion to address the serious equal protection questions raised by this and other tuition residency laws. In the absence of full consideration of those equal protection questions, I would leave the validity of a one-year residence requirement for a future case in which the issue is squarely presented.
In addition, I cannot agree with my Brother Rehnquist’s assertion in dissent that the Court’s opinion today represents a return to the doctrine of substantive due process. This case involves only the validity of the conclusive presumption of nonresidency erected by the State, and, as such, concerns nothing more than the procedures by which the State determines whether or not a person is a resident for tuition purposes.