Court Opinion

ID: 9427546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:08.162984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:07.893882
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice Marshall, and Mr. Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
Appellant is the father, rather than the mother, of a deceased illegitimate child. It is conceded that for this reason alone he may not bring an action for the wrongful death of his child. Yet four Members of the Court conclude that appellant is not discriminated against “simply” because of his sex, ante, at 355, because Georgia provides a means by which fathers can legitimate their children. The dispositive point is that only a father may avail himself of this process. Therefore, we are told, “[t]he fact is that mothers and fathers of illegitimate children are not similarly situated,” ibid.
There is a startling circularity in this argument. The issue before the Court is whether Georgia may require unmarried fathers, but not unmarried mothers, to have pursued the statutory legitimization procedure in order to bring suit for the wrongful death of their children. Seemingly, it is irrelevant that as a matter of state law mothers may not legitimate their children,1 for they are not required to do so in order to maintain a wrongful-death action. That only fathers may resort to the legitimization process cannot dissolve the sex discrimination in requiring them to.2 Under the plurality’s *362bootstrap rationale, a State could require that women, but not men, pass a course in order to receive a taxi license, simply by limiting admission to the course to women.3
The plain facts of the matter are that the statute conferring the right to recovery for the wrongful death of a child discriminates between unmarried mothers and unmarried fathers, and that this discrimination is but one degree greater than the statutory discrimination between married mothers and married fathers.4 In order to withstand scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, gender-based discrimination “ ‘must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.’ ” Caban v. Mohammed, post, at 388, quoting Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 197 (1976). Because none of the interests urged by the State warrant the sex discrimination in this case, I would reverse the judgment below.
I
The Georgia Supreme Court suggested that the state legislature may have denied a right of action to fathers of illegitimate children because of its interests in “promoting a legitimate family unit” and “setting a standard of morality.” *363241 Ga. 198, 200, 243 S. E. 2d 867, 869-870 (1978). But the actual relationship between these interests and the particular classification chosen is far too tenuous to justify the sex discrimination involved. Cf. Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U. S. 762, 768 (1977).
Unmarried mothers and those fathers who legitimate their children but remain unmarried presumably also defy the state interest in “the integrity of the family unit.” 5 In any event, it is untenable to conclude that denying parents a right to recover when their illegitimate children die will further the asserted state interests. In Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Ins. Co., 391 U. S. 73 (1968), we were faced with the same argument in the context of an unmarried mother’s attempt to recover for her child’s death in a State allowing wrongful-death suits by parents of legitimate children. Even though that mother — like appellant in this case — had not pursued a statutory procedure whereby she could have unilaterally legitimated her child and thereby become eligible to sue for the child’s death,6 we held that it was impermissible to prevent her from seeking to recover. What we said in Glona about unmarried mothers applies equally to unmarried fathers:
“[W]e see no possible rational basis ... for assuming that if the natural mother is allowed recovery for the wrongful death of her illegitimate child, the cause of illegitimacy will be served. It would, indeed, be farfetched to assume that women have illegitimate children so that they can be compensated in damages for their death.” Id., at 75.
See also Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164, 173 (1972).
*364II
Another interest suggested by the Georgia Supreme Court, which a majority of the Court today finds pervasive, is that of “forestalling potential problems of proof of paternity,” 241 Ga., at 200, 243 S. E. 2d, at 869. Whatever may be the evidentiary problems associated with proof of parenthood where a father, but presumably not a mother7 is involved, I am sure that any interest the State conceivably has in simplifying the determination of liability in wrongful-death actions does not justify the outright gender discrimination in this case.
The Court has shown due respect for a State’s undoubted interest in effecting a sound system of inheritance that will not unduly tie up the assets of the deceased, including his real estate, and prevent its transmission to and utilization by his heirs and the upcoming generation.8 Formal documentation of entitlement to inherit may be significant in avoiding unending litigation inimical to this interest. But the State has no comparable interest in protecting a tortfeasor from having his liability litigated and determined in the usual way. There is always the possibility of spurious claims in tort litigation, and *365the plaintiff will have the burden of proof if his parenthood is challenged.9 The legitimization requirement is not merely a rule concerning the competency of evidence10 but an absolute prerequisite to recovery for the wrongful death of a child, barring many who are capable of proving their parenthood, solely because they are fathers. It denigrates the judicial process, as well as the interest in foreclosing gender-based discriminations, to hold that the possibility of erroneous determinations of paternity in an unknown number of cases, likely to be few, is sufficient reason to forbid all natural, unmarried fathers who have not legitimated their children from seeking to prove their parenthood and recovering in damages for the tort that has been committed.11
Much the same is true of the rather lame suggestion that keeping fathers such as this appellant out of court will protect wrongdoers and their insurance companies from multiple re*366coveries. This claimed danger is but one of many potential hazards in personal injury litigation, and it is very doubtful that it would be exacerbated if the Georgia statute in this case were stricken down. Assuming that there might be a few occasions where multiple recoveries are threatened, steps could be taken to settle liability in one proceeding, just as actions to quiet title to real estate need not be reopened.at every turn. Whatever risks there may be, however, are not sufficient to justify foreclosing suit by the many, many fathers like Parham, about whose parenthood there is very little doubt indeed.12
Ill
The fourth and final interest suggested by the Supreme Court of Georgia as a rea-son that the state legislature may have denied the wrongful-death action to fathers such as appellant is that “more often than not the father of an illegitimate child who has elected neither to marry the mother nor to legitimate the child pursuant to proper legal proceedings suffers no real loss from the child’s wrongful death.” 241 Ga., at 200, 243 S. E. 2d, at 870. Unlike the previous hypothesized state interests, this last does at least provide a plausible explanation for the classification at issue. Yet such a legislative conception about fathers of illegitimate children is an unacceptable basis for a blanket discrimination against all such fathers. Whatever may be true with respect to certain of these parents,13 we have recognized that at least some of them maintain as close a relationship to their children as do unmarried mothers. Thus, in Caban v. Mohammed, post, p. 380, we struck down a statutory discrimination in adoption *367proceedings against all unmarried fathers, rejecting the assertion that “broad, gender-based distinction ... is required by any universal difference between maternal and paternal relations at every phase of a child’s development.” Post, at 389.14
Nor does the discrimination against fathers of illegitimate children on the basis of their presumed lack of affection for their children become any more permissible simply because a father who is aware of the State’s legitimization procedure may resort to it and thereby become eligible to recover for the wrongful death of his children.15 Particularly given the facts of this case — where it is conceded that appellant signed his child’s birth certificate, continuously contributed to the child’s financial support, and maintained daily contact with him16- — it is unrealistic to presume that unmarried fathers (or mothers17) having real interest in their children and suffering palpable loss if their children die will, as a general rule, have pursued a statutory legitimization procedure. Only last Term, we indicated that resort to this very process in the State of *368Georgia is not constitutionally acceptable as a surrogate measure of an unmarried father’s interest in his child.18
Moreover, it is clear that the discrimination at issue in this case does not proceed from merely a considered legislative determination, however unjustified, that parents such as appellant do not suffer loss when their children die. Rather, the particular discrimination in this case is but part of the pervasive sex discrimination in the statute conferring the right to sue for the wrongful death of a child. Even where the deceased is legitimate, the father is absolutely prohibited from bringing a wrongful-death action if the mother is still alive, even if the mother does not desire to bring suit and even if the parents are separated or divorced. The incredible presumption that fathers, but not mothers, of illegitimate children suffer no injury when they lose their children is thus only a more extreme version of the underlying and equally untenable presumption that fathers are less • deserving of recovery than are mothers.
If Georgia would prefer that the amount of wrongful-death recovery be based upon the mental anguish and loss of future income suffered when a child dies — rather than on the “full value of the life of such child,” as the statute now provides 19 — it may amend the statute. But it may not categorically eliminate on the basis of sex any recovery by those parents it deems uninjured or undeserving.

 Although Ga. Code §7A-103 (1978) provides that a father may petition, with notice to the mother, to legitimate his child, mothers are not given a similar right. At least one State provides that either parent, or both, may legitimate a child. La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 203 (West 1952).

 The plurality not only fails to examine whether required resort by fathers to the legitimization procedure bears more than a rational relationship to any state interest, but also fails even to address the constitu*362tionality of the sex discrimination in allowing fathers but not mothers to legitimate their children. It is anomalous, at least, to assert that sex discrimination in one statute is constitutionally invisible because it is tied to sex discrimination in another statute, without subjecting either of these classifications on the basis of sex to an appropriate level of scrutiny.

 Men and women would therefore not be “similarly situated.” Yet requiring a course for women but not for men is quite obviously a classification on the basis of sex.

 The opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart shunts aside the readily apparent classification on the basis of sex in Georgia’s wrongful-death scheme by stressing that appellant’s child was never made legitimate, but it is only the fortuitous event of the mother’s death in this case that makes legitimacy even relevant. In the case of parents of legitimate children, only the mother may sue if she is alive; the father is allowed to sue only “if [there is] no mother.” Ga. Code § 105-1307 (1978). See also infra, at 368.

 Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U. S. 259, 265 (1978). See also Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U. S. 762, 769 (1977).

 See n. 1, supra; Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Ins. Co., 391 U. S., at 79 n. 7 (Harlan, J., dissenting).

 But cf. Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Ins. Co., supra, at 76 (“Opening the courts to suits [by the mother of an illegitimate child] may conceivably be a temptation to some to assert motherhood fraudulently”).

 See Lalli v. Lalli, supra; Trimble v. Gordon, supra, at 771, and cases cited therein. Where discrimination on a basis triggering heightened judicial scrutiny is alleged, judicial deference has given way in the context of other statutorily created entitlements, see, e. g., Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636 (1975); Gomez v. Perez, 409 U. S. 535 (1973); Griffin v. Richardson, 409 U. S. 1069 (1972), summarily aff’g 346 F. Supp. 1226 (Md.); Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164 (1972), including wrongful-death recovery; Glona, supra; Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 68 (1968). In Weber, the Court, per Mr. Justice Powell, expressly analogized the state interest in deciding who may sue for wrongful death to the interest in deciding who may receive workmen’s compensation, and rejected the assertion that the interest in the latter is as substantial as that in intestacy succession, 406 U. S., at 170-172.

 See also Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Ins. Co., supra, at 76 (“That problem [of fraudulent assertion of motherhood] . . . concerns burden of proof”). Although appellant in this case has substantial evidence of his paternity and it is clear that but for the legitimization requirement there would be no challenge to his capacity to sue, other unmarried fathers whose paternity is challenged may be unable — particularly when, as here, the mother is dead — to offer sufficient evidence to convince the factfinder of paternity.

 Cf. Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S. 495 (1976) (upholding the denial of survivors’ benefits under the Social Security Act to illegitimate children unless they are entitled to inherit under state intestacy law or are able to show paternity in one of several other ways, including written acknowledgment by the father, 42 U. S. C. § 402 (d) (3)).

 Certainly, the Court has not shown such solicitude for the problem of an erroneous determination of paternity when the claimed father is the defendant rather than the plaintiff. See Gomez v. Perez, supra, at 538 (holding that a State must entitle illegitimate, as well as legitimate, children to paternal support: “We recognize the lurking problems with respect to proof of paternity. Those problems are not to be lightly brushed aside, but neither can they be made into an impenetrable barrier that works to shield otherwise invidious discrimination”).

 See also Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 76 (1971) (“Clearly the objective of reducing the workload on probate courts by eliminating one class of contests is not without some legitimacy. . . . [Wjhatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex”).

 See Lalli v. Lalli, 439 U. S., at 268-269.

 In 1977, 15.5% of all children and 51.7% of the black children bom in the United States had unmarried parents. U. S. Dept, of HEW, National Center for Health Statistics, 27 Vital Statistics Report, No. 11, p. 19 (1979). The suggestion that anything approaching a majority of the fathers of these children would “suffe[r] no real loss from the child’s wrongful death” is incredible.

 In Caban v. Mohammed, post, at 393 n. 15, we noted that even a father who establishes his paternity in Family Court pursuant to N. Y. Family Court Act §§ 511 to 571 (McKinney 1975 and Supp. 1978-1979) may not object to his child’s adoption, and thus refusal to allow such objection was not related to the State’s interest that the father “sho[w] that it is in fact his child.” As explained, supra, at 364-366, I have no doubt that this state interest is insufficient in this case also, since even those many fathers presently able to prove their paternity are precluded from bringing suit. Caban certainly did not intimate that the failure of that father to have previously established his paternity might suffice to justify discrimination against him on the basis of presumed differences in maternal and paternal relations.

 241 Ga. 198, 199, 243 S. E. 2d 867, 869 (1978).

 See text at n. 6, supra.

 See Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U. S. 246, 254 (1978).

 See Ga. Code §§ 105-1307, 105-1308 (1978) (“The full value of the life of the decedent, as shown by the evidence, is the full value of the life of the decedent without deduction for necessary or other personal expenses of the decedent had he lived”).