Court Opinion

ID: 9468929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:26:55.321079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:07.110813
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge, specially
concurring:
The appellees have urged this court to strike down certain provisions of Louisiana’s dual employment law,1 arguing that the statute violates the Due Process, Contract, and Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution. I concur with Judge Gee and find that Louisiana’s law does indeed pass constitutional muster. However, I wish to add a few words in support of the panel decision.
1. Assuming There is an Equal Protection Issue, Dukes Controls and Anything Goes
To the extent that there is an equal protection problem presented in this case, the resounding and reverberating words of Dukes,2 cited in Judge Gee’s footnote 10, imprison my concurrence. With its holding in Dukes, the Supreme Court has made it clear that in a case such as this, we must apply the test of “minimum rationality”3 and that this test means little more than “anything goes.”
I hope that my few words of concurrence are not animated by verjuice, but I feel that I must register my dismay at the prospect of being bound by Dukes. While subservient and obedient to the hierarchical superiority of the Supreme Court, I sound no retreat from the proposition that the ordinance challenged in that case was violative of the Equal Protection Clause. However, my beliefs on this question are not controlling here. If there is an equal protection problem presented by this Louisiana statute, it is Dukes which provides the standard by which we must act. I woefully and sorrowfully concede that under the rule set forth in Dukes and its progeny, Louisiana’s dual employment law withstands equal protection scrutiny.
2. ... But Is There an Equal Protection Problem ?
There is a threshold question in this case which needs to be addressed. The parties and the District Court have assumed that this dual employment statute poses an equal protection problem. To the extent that there has been analytical dispute, the controversy has focused upon the proper standard of equal protection review to be applied. However, I would question whether we even need to reach this issue, for it seems that this may not be an “equal protection” case at all.
*137“The equal protection clause mandates similar treatment of persons in similar situations.” ante, 671 F.2d 137, at 131. In order to invoke equal protection scrutiny, it must be established that the challenged statute treats people unequally; that the law singles out a particular group or class of persons for special treatment. However, we have never been told what group or class of persons is specially penalized or advantaged by operation of this law.
La.Rev.Stat.Ann. 42:63 § E provides that no person shall simultaneously hold two full-time state or local government jobs. The statute does not deny any person the right to any one full-time public sector job. Similarly, the law denies every person the right to two full-time government jobs. Who is being singled out for unequal treatment? A statute may indeed be foolish or ill considered, but equal protection analysis is only triggered if legislative folly is dispensed unequally.
This law — like any law — may indeed affect different people in different ways, but this does not in and of itself make for an equal protection problem. As the majority has pointed out, the crucial question is whether the statute treats similarly situated people unequally. This statute does not do that. Louisiana has merely said that no one may simultaneously hold two full-time state or local government jobs. Although it may affect different people in different ways,4 the law itself does not single out any group for a special benefit or penalty.
Because I believe that there is no equal protection problem presented by this statute, I would not reach the level of scrutiny question addressed by the majority. However, since the majority has chosen to treat this cause as one which presents an equal protection issue, I would in the alternative concur in the finding that the challenged statute survives the “anything goes” test mandated by the Supreme Court in Dukes.

. La.Rev.Stat.Ann. 42:63 §§ A, E (West Supp. 1981).

. City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1976). In that case, the Supreme Court upheld a New Orleans ordinance which purported to ban all pushcart peddlers from the streets of the French Quarter, but which provided an exemption for two sellers who had been operating for more than eight years. The exemption conferred a virtual monopoly upon these two vendors.
Writing for a panel of this Court, I held that there was absolutely no rational basis for believing that the two specially favored hot-dog vendors (one of whom was appropriately named “Lucky Dog, Inc.”) would be any more picturesque than sellers of more recent vintage. We therefore concluded that the ordinance’s special exemption violated the Equal Protection Clause. Dukes v. City of New Orleans, 501 F.2d 706, 712 (5th Cir. 1974). However, the Supreme Court chose to uphold this officially sanctioned wiener cartel, opining that “[t]he
city could reasonably decide” that the exempted vendors “had themselves become part of the distinctive character and charm that distinguishes the Vieux Carre.” 427 U.S. 297, 305, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 2518, 49 L.Ed.2d 511.

. Over the course of the past decade, equal protection review has become something of an opthamological exercise. For looking at challenged statutes, the Supreme Court has prescribed trifocals. In certain special cases, we are to use “strict scrutiny;” in others, “intermediate scrutiny,” and in cases such as this, we are limited to the test of “minimum rationality.” Of course the word “scrutiny” connotes a process whereby we make a careful examination to see if anything is wrong. In fact the standard of review called for in this case, minimum rationality, can hardly be termed scrutiny at all. Rather, it is a standard which invites us to cup our hands over our eyes and then imagine if there could be anything right with the statute.

. The 55 m.p.h. highway speed limit provides a familiar example of a law that affects different people in different ways, but which is not thought of as posing an equal protection problem. The new speed limit has had a dramatic effect upon those who were accustomed to driving at 65 m.p.h. That group of people has had to give up something. In contrast, the group which always traveled at 55 is less affected. Finally, those who do not drive at all, aren’t affected at all.
The speed limit is a rule which affects different groups of people in different ways, but the law itself does not single out a class for special treatment. The rule applies to all drivers equally and we therefore do not think of it as posing an equal protection problem.
Like the speed limit, Louisiana’s dual employment statute also affects different groups of people in different ways. Those who hold two full-time government jobs are most dramatically affected, for they exceed the “one job only” limit; those who hold one government job are less affected; and those who do not hold a government job are unaffected. However, because the dual employment rule applies equally to all — denying everyone the “right” to two government jobs — it does not pose an equal protection problem.