Court Opinion

ID: 9650889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:54:13.375523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:26.839475
License: Public Domain

*175CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
By manufacturing a “three-tier” analysis of equal protection claims the Court has created a veil of tiers which shrouds this essential issue: whether the two-year residency requirement for municipal office here is reasonably related to legitimate government objectives. I would hold that it is.
The provision under attack is found in N.J.S.A. 40:72-1, part of the Walsh Act, which sets forth the commission form of government. It requires that “[e]ach member [of the municipal governing body] shall have been a citizen and resident of the municipality for at least two years immediately preceding his election.” Almost thirty years ago this precise durational residency requirement was upheld in the face of constitutional attack. Stothers v. Martini, 6 N.J. 560 (1951). In Stothers, this Court held that the legislature is free to prescribe reasonable qualifications for elective municipal offices and that the very same requirements challenged here are “wholly proper” when measured against the traditional rational basis test. Id. at 567. Fifteen years ago this Court acknowledged the correctness of Stothers. Gangemi v. Rosengard, 44 N.J. 166, 172 (1965). See also Hardy v. Ruhnke, 47 N.J. 10, 24 (1966). The rational basis test used in Stothers was again applied in Wurtzel v. Falcey, 69 N.J. 401 (1976), to uphold age requirements for political candidates.
Now, with the most recent of these well-reasoned cases on the books a mere four years, the majority overrules them. By applying a more exacting test than the traditional rational basis test used in Stothers and Wurtzel, the majority disembowels these two cases. In place of the rational basis test—the test generally applied to constitutional challenges to candidate eligibility requirements, L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §§ 13-19 (1978)—the majority resorts to an intermediate standard of review. The authority for this constitutional innovation is said to be found in Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972), and Bullock v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 92 S.Ct. 849, 31 L.Ed.2d 92 (1972).
*176However, those cases do not furnish the support claimed for them. Dunn, which involved a challenge to durational residency requirements for the right to vote, is readily distinguishable on its facts. It is well established that while the right to vote is a fundamental right, the right to run for office is not—as both the majority and dissenting opinions in Wurtzel, supra, took pains to emphasize. See 69 N.J. at 403 and id. at 407 (Pashman, J., dissenting). Bullock involved a filing fee requirement for political candidates. The Court found that the filing fee created “barriers to candidate access to the primary ballot, thereby tending to limit the field of candidates from which voters might choose.” 405 U.S. at 143, 92 S.Ct. at 856, 31 L.Ed.2d at 100. Strict scrutiny was applied because of the requirement’s direct relation to the resources of the voters. The fee requirement accorded unequal weight based on economic status and denied the voters the opportunity to vote for a candidate from their socio-economic group. In later cases the Court cites Bullock as an example of the type of case which calls for strict scrutiny because a legislative classification impermissibly interferes with the exercise of a fundamental right, Massachusetts Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 312 n.3, 96 S.Ct. 2562, 2566 n.3, 49L.Ed.2d 520, 524 (1976), not as an example of an intermediate scrutiny case as the majority uses it here. The United States Supreme Court also describes Bullock as involving “filing fees that were so patently exclusionary as to violate traditional equal protection concepts.” Lubin v. Panish, 415 U.S. 709, 715 n. 4, 94 S.Ct. 1315, 1319 n.4, 39 L.Ed.2d 702, 708 (1974). In Lubin, a more recent case involving filing fees for political candidates, the Court distinguished Bullock on its facts and applied the rational basis test. Id. at 718, 94 S.Ct. at 1321, 39 L.Ed.2d at 710.
For the very reasons that the United States Supreme Court has refused to extend the reasoning of Bullock, I would not apply it to the facts here. Where legislative distinctions are not predicated on wealth or race and there is no substantial impact on the ability to exercise the fundamental right to vote, strict scrutiny is not applicable to election cases. McDonald v. Board *177of Election, 394 U.S. 802, 89 S.Ct. 1404, 22 L.Ed.2d 739 (1969). See also Hill v. Stone, 421 U.S. 289, 297, 95 S.Ct. 1637, 1643, 44 L.Ed.2d 172, 179, reh. den., 422 U.S. 1029, 95 S.Ct. 2617, 45 L.Ed. 2d 686 (1975).
In applying the rational basis test, I am satisfied that the imposition of a two year residency requirement as a prerequisite for holding elective office in a Walsh Act community is well within the legislative prerogative. As noted by the trial judge here,
the durational residency requirement insures that the prospective candidate has been exposed to the local government and its people and he is thereby familiar with and aware of the conditions, needs and problems of that government. It also gives the voters of the government an opportunity to gain by observation and personal contact some firsthand knowledge of the candidate for those local offices. Additionally, it serves to prevent frivolous candidacies by persons who had little previous exposure to the problems and desires of the local citizens. Residency requirements have always been thought to be a necessary means of achieving the goal of knowledgeable and qualified people in high public office as evidenced by the requirements for the various public offices in the U.S. and State Constitutions. Furthermore, durational residency requirements at least allows the prospective candidate to fulfill their obligation to become familiar with the wishes of their constituents.
Additionally, as pointed out by the intervenors-respondents, the substantive distinctions between the powers, duties and responsibilities of Walsh Act Commissioners and those of council members elected under the Optional Municipal Charter Law, N.J.S.A. 40:69A~1 to -210, known as the Faulkner Act, are sufficiently clear to support a legislative determination of the need for a durational residency requirement in a Walsh Act municipality. Walsh Act Commissioners have much greater executive and administrative powers and responsibilities, in addition to other legislative and judicial functions, than do Faulkner Act council members.1 The Walsh Act contemplates the division of authority and imposition of individual responsibility in departmental work. Each commissioner is assigned the responsibility for a single department, N.J.S.A. 40:72-4, and is *178accountable for its functioning. See Pashman v. Friedbauer, 1 N.J.Super. 616, 618 (Law Div.), aff’d, 4 N.J.Super. 123 (App.Div. 1949). See also Oliver v. Daly, 103 N.J.L. 52 (E. & A. 1926), for the types of problems to be encountered by the commissioners in the operation of their respective departments. Whereas in Faulkner Act communities council members make collective decisions, acting in a collegial fashion, the commissioners in Walsh Act municipalities are called upon to exercise individual decision-making functions.
Whether these individual responsibilities in turn are such as to require the conclusion that there is a concommitant necessity in Walsh Act communities for greater exposure to the conditions, needs and problems of the people and government of the municipality we need not decide. The question is simply whether the legislature might reasonably have reached that conclusion, whether we agree with it or not. It seems to me beyond argument that the legislature could have decided that the two year durational residence requirement of N.J.S.A. 40:72-1 ensures that the candidate for commissioner will have been present in the community for at least that period, thereby affording him the opportunity to learn of its conditions and needs and to become aware of any abuses and inefficiencies requiring correction. It could likewise have determined that at the same time the voters will be allowed to gain some first-hand knowledge of the candidate, the better to help decide whether he is competent to discharge the duties of a commissioner.
Accordingly, I would give effect to the statute2 and affirm the trial court’s judgment upholding the constitutionality of the two year durational residency requirement in Walsh Act communities.
Justice POLLOCK joins in this dissenting opinion.
*179SULLIVAN, J., concurring in the result.
For reversal —Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, SCHREIBER and HANDLER—5.
For affirmance—Justices CLIFFORD and POLLOCK—2.

For an informative discussion of the development of the commission form of government culminating in the Walsh Act, see Grogan v. DeSapio, 11 N.J. 308 (1953).

It is interesting to observe in passing that even if Senate Bill 1282, to which the Court makes reference, ante at 172 n. 10, were law and applicable to this case, Matthews would be ineligible to run for city commissioner in Atlantic City, inasmuch as he could not satisfy that bill’s requirement of one year residency.