Court Opinion

ID: 9426856
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:06.635364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.480640
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell, with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Stewart join,
dissenting.
I am persuaded, for the reasons set forth in Mr. Justice Rehnquist’s dissent, that New York’s scheme of financial assistance to higher education does not discriminate against a suspect class. The line New York has drawn in this case is not between aliens and citizens, but between aliens who' prefer to retain foreign citizenship and all others.
“The system of alleged discrimination and the class it defines have none of the traditional indicia of suspectness: the class is not saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.” San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 28 (1973).
Our prior cases dealing with discrimination against all aliens as a class, In re Griffiths, 413 U. S. 717 (1973); Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634 (1973), and against subclasses of aliens without regard to ability or willingness to acquire citizenship, Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971), do not justify the application of strict judicial scrutiny to the legislative scheme before us today.*
*16I also agree with Mr. Justice Rehnquist that the line New York has drawn in extending scholarship assistance in higher education is a rational one. I see no basis for the Court’s statement that offering incentives to resident alien scholars to become naturalized “is not a permissible [purpose] for a State.” Ante, at 10. In my view, the States have a substantial interest in encouraging allegiance to the United States on the part of all persons, including resident aliens, who have come to live within their borders. As the New York Legislature declared in enacting a predecessor to the present financial assistance scheme:
“The future progress of the state and nation and the general welfare of the people depend upon the individual development of the maximum number of citizens to provide the broad range of leadership, inventive genius, and source of economic and cultural growth for oncoming generations.” 1961 N. Y. Laws, c. 389, § 1 (a).
As long as its program neither discriminates “on the basis of alienage,” Graham v. Richardson, supra, at 372, nor conflicts with federal immigration and naturalization policy, it is my view that New York legitimately may reserve its scholarship assistance to citizens, and to those resident aliens who *17declare their intention to become citizens, of both the Nation and the State.

The Court’s reliance on the personal status of the appellant in In re Griffiths is misplaced. Our observation that Griffiths herself was eligible for citizenship but did not intend to apply, 413 U. S., at 718 n. 1, was hardly more than a factual “aside.” The challenge in that case was to *16a Connecticut Rule of Court that flatly required an applicant for admission to the bar to be a citizen of the United States. Neither eligibility for naturalization nor intent to apply was relevant under the Connecticut scheme. There was no question that Griffiths had standing to challenge a classification against all aliens, just as Mauelet and Rabinovitch unquestionably have standing to challenge the classification, before us today. Yet because the scheme in In re Griffiths “totally exclud[ed] aliens from the practice of law,” id., at 719, we had no occasion in that case to consider whether a more narrowly tailored rule would be permissible. Had we done so, we would have confronted the additional question, not presented here, whether the exclusion improperly burdened the right to follow a chosen occupation. Cf. Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410 (1948); Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33 (1915).