Court Opinion

ID: 9596314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:48:17.305695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:34.879971
License: Public Domain

FORT, J.,
concurring.
I agree that the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court in Ortwein v. Schwab, 262 Or 375, 498 P2d 757 (1972), and its construction of Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 US 371, 91 S Ct 780, 28 L Ed 2d 113 (1971), is, as the court here points out, controlling on the due process contentions here urged.
Concerning the Equal Protection claim, the Oregon Supreme Court in Ortwein considered Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 US 164, 92 S Ct 1400, 31 L Ed 2d 768 (1972).①
*228In Weber the United States Supreme Court defined the requisite tests as follows:
“* * * The tests to determine the validity of state statutes under the Equal Protection Clause have been variously expressed, but this Court requires, at a minimum, that a statutory classification bear some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose. * * * The essential inquiry in all the foregoing cases is, however, inevitably a dual one: What legitimate state interest does the classification promote? What fundamental personal rights might the classification endanger?” 406 US at 173, 31 L Ed 2d at 777.
That court, in applying those tests to a statute which cut off the rights of unacknowledged illegitimate children to workmen’s compensation benefits in some but not all circumstances, said:
“* * * [I]mposing disabilities on the illegitimate child is contrary to the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing. * * (Emphasis supplied.) 406 US at 175, 31 L Ed 2d at 779.
Accordingly, it struck down the statute.
By analogy to that test of Weber, the question here may be stated: Is imposing disabilities on the faultless and the indigent contrary to the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing?
Respondent here concedes that there may have been a total absence of wrongdoing upon the part of any of petitioners here. He also concedes that certain of the petitioners are indigent. He does not contend such condition is the result either of wrongdoing or *229lack of individual responsibility in tbe indigent petitioners. No claim was made in Ortwein that the indigency of the state welfare recipients including payments made as aid to dependent children reflected either wrongdoing or lack of individual responsibility.
The Oregon Supreme Court in Ortwein held:
“* * Using the phraseology of the United States Supreme Court, we are of the opinion that the right to obtain judicial review of a ruling of the State Welfare Division is not such a ‘fundamental personal right’ that it is in violation of the Equal Protection Clause to make such right dependent upon the ability to pay a $25 filing fee. Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Company, 406 US 164, 92 S Ct 1400, 31 L Ed2d 768 (1972).” 262 Or at 383-84.
If, as the court in Ortwein holds, to deny an otherwise existing right of appeal to a welfare recipient, or child beneficiary thereof, because of indigency is not in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, whether viewed in the context of “a fundamental personal right” or that of a valid classification, clearly the statute here challenged is not.
Therefore, in the light of Ortwein, I conclude we are required to hold that the Equal Protection argument here must also fail.

 See also, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 US 438, 92 S Ct 1029, 31 L Ed 2d 349 (1972); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 US 645, 92 S Ct 1208, 31 L Ed 2d 551 (1972).