Court Opinion

ID: 9474744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:07:38.94083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:18.603263
License: Public Domain

IRVING L. GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent because I do not believe that the challenged residency-or-office requirement can withstand even the most deferential judicial review.
The majority correctly notes that the challenged rules are both overinclusive and underinclusive. See majority opinion, supra, at 1054. General rules tend to be imprecise. The question in deferential equal protection analysis is how imprecise the challenged rules are or, as the majority puts it, whether the rules create “a classification ‘whose relationship to an asserted goal is so attentuated as to render the *1056distinction arbitrary or irrational.’ ” Id. at 1053 (quoting City of Cleburne v. Cle-burne Living Center, — U.S.-,-, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3257, 87 L.Ed.2d 313, 324 (1985)).1 The Supreme Court has described the legal standard applicable in deferential equal protection analysis as follows:
A classification “must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.” Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U.S. 412, 415, 40 S.Ct. 560, 561, 64 L.Ed. 989, 990 (1920).
Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 76, 92 S.Ct. 251, 254, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971) (applying rationality review).2 Upon a review of the record in this case I conclude that the challenged rules are indeed unreasonable and arbitrary.
According to the majority, the stated and implicit goal of the residency-or-office rules is “to foster the efficient and effective administration of justice.” Majority opinion, supra, at 1053; see also Matter of Frazier, 594 F.Supp. at 1183. It cannot be enough for these purposes that particular administrators or bureaucrats “like” the challenged rules or think that they are a good idea since they have always been the rules. Yet an examination of the trial testimony reveals that this is essentially the justification that has been offered in support of these rules.
The defendants in this case put on five witnesses at trial: the clerk of the Eastern District Court, two magistrates from the Eastern District, and two judges from the Eastern District. As might be expected, all five witnesses made sweeping, conclusory declarations to the effect that their residency-or-office rules were a reasonable means of furthering the legitimate governmental goal of efficient and orderly administration of justice. See, e.g., Tr. at 216, 233, 246, 270, 291. Beyond these self-serving conclusions of law, however, several interesting themes emerge from a review of the testimony: (1) the local rules are, as it were, sacrosanct, and any departure from them would lead swiftly and inevitably to ruinous chaos and certain disaster; (2) nonresident lawyers and other outsiders (the “out-of-staters”) have a bad attitude in that they show insufficient interest in or respect for the local rules; (3) the “out-of-staters” are the main cause of trouble in the Eastern District.
Clerk Whyte testified that “Lawyers in Louisiana give us fewer problems than lawyers outside Louisiana. And to tell you the truth, I wondered why myself.” Tr. at 162. According to Whyte,
Also they are — again, not universally, but generally more often, I will say more often less responsive. It is not as easy to get them to return a telephone call. It’s more difficult to get them to return a telephone call, and generally to comply with the rule when they have been spoken to.
Id. at 156.
Magistrate Johannesen elaborated on the defects of out-of-state lawyers as follows:
Well, the problem I’ve encountered with the out-of-state lawyers are that they come into a case, then I tell them to *1057go get the rules and read the rules and follow the rules, which most of them won’t do____
They drop out of the case without notifying the court. They won’t file a motion to withdraw like the rule requires, and they just create a lot of problems.
... [T]he out-of-state lawyer ... just wants more than he should get. And most of them, we just don’t get the courtesies from them that we should get from a lawyer.
Id. at 178-80. Magistrate Wynne related similar experiences with out-of-state lawyers:
Well, generally they’ve been bad experiences. We have a lot of trouble controlling out-of-state lawyers. Generally they are not familiar with our local rules, the pleadings many times do not conform with the manner of pleading that’s acceptable in the Eastern District of Louisiana. I’ve had difficulties in certain situations.
Id. at 201. As examples of these difficulties Magistrate Wynne mentioned the following:
Well, say you represent a client, and just for an instance, instead of filing under our rules and proper notice pleading, you get an improper pleading____ Also, they improperly send it to me. This happens all the time, and I read the motion — they call it a rule — and I look at it and say, “Well, gee, this person ought to have this motion heard, but this lawyer has done it in improper form.” Now, what do you want me to do, sanction that lawyer? Call him up and tell him, “I’m going to hear your motion, but you are going to pay $200 to the court?” What do I do? I call him up, and say, “Why can’t you follow our local rules?”
Id. at 221-22.
We’ve had a lot of problems with the local rules about filing things. I’ve had out-of-town counsel and out-of-state counsel mail pleadings to me, “Dear Magistrate Wynne, Enclosed please find this motion.”' I’m not the proper person to receive those. The clerk of the court is. And that has caused problems because I will give it to the clerk of court. Please file this document, et cetera, and maybe they will need an expedited hearing, but they haven’t complied with our local rules____
Id. at 203. According to Magistrate Wynne, many of these problems could have been avoided if the attorney had been in closer proximity:
Q. In closer proximity. How close?
A. If he could have gotten, if he could have come without — or would have willingly come to our courthouse within an hour of anything you needed, or two hours.
Q. Well, that’s true, though, whether he’s in Biloxi [Mississippi] or whether he is in Lake Charles [Louisiana]; is it not?
A. I would presume so, but I will tell you in all honesty, and I am under oath, I have not had problems with lawyers that practice in the Western District of Louisiana. They don’t give the Eastern District any trouble.
Q. You do recognize that’s about twice as far?
A. I know, sir. I don’t know why it is____
Id. at 226.
Finally, Judges Wicker and Sear testified to the intractable problems presented by out-of-state lawyers. Judge Wicker stated that *1058Id. at 246.3 Judge Sear summarized his experience with out-of-state attorneys as follows:
*1057With our docket in this district, you cannot be a watchdog or a policeman on every attorney that comes into this court. The only resource that you have is to have control over the attorneys that appear. And if they are from out-of-state, you lose that control, and it can cause havoc with your docket.
*1058I find that lawyers who come from out-of-state are more interested in the obligations that they have to the courts before [which] they regularly practice than they do for our court. They have a greater respect for them, perhaps, but more than that, they focus their attention on those matters to the neglect of ours____
Id. at 261.4
I think, Mr. Sessions, that most lawyers that engage in practice in this district follow our local rules. I know those that practice in my court do. And they attempt conscientiously to follow those rules, and lawyers from out-of-state do not____
Id. at 272.
The testimony excerpted here is neither extraordinary nor inexplicable. Insularity and provincialism are not peculiar to the Eastern District of Louisiana but form part of a widespread, basic socio-cultural pattern.5 This explains why, for example, most people cheer for the “home team,” no matter how bad it is. Similarly, in our vocabulary the outsider is one who behaves in “outlandish” ways.6 Nevertheless, when basic protections guaranteed by the Constitution are at stake, socio-cultural explanations of this sort cannot suffice as justifications. The equal protection provisions, and our federalist scheme generally, impose a measure of cosmopolitanism and uniformity in areas where local interests would otherwise take their own course. This is particularly so in light of the Supreme Court’s recent proposed amendment to Fed.R.Civ.P. 83. See Order of April 29, 1985. According to the Advisory Committee Note on this amendment, “The expectation is that the judicial council will examine all local rules, including those currently in effect, with an eye toward determining whether they are valid and consistent with the Federal Rules, promote inter-district uniformity and efficiency, and do not undermine the basic objectives of the Federal Rules.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 83, Notes of Advisory Committee on Rules (West 1985).
Even if the above considerations did not apply, there áre still further weighty and compelling reasons that the appellees’ position in this case is untenable. Once Frazier had made out a prima facie case of an equal protection violation, appellees could have responded in either of two ways: (1) They could have defended their rules, as applied to Frazier, on grounds that he did not qualify under some uncontested provisions of the rules {e.g., that he was not in fact a member in good standing of the Louisiana bar); (2) or they could have made a showing that these contested rules, even if they do cause an insupportable hardship as applied to Frazier, can nevertheless be justified as constitutional in their general application. Appellees did not even attempt to rebut Frazier by the first route; and their showing on the second theory is patently insufficient as well.
A general defense of the residency-or-office rules challenged here would have to take something like the following form: Members of the Louisiana bar who do not reside or maintain an office in Louisiana cause, on the average, more “problems” in the Eastern District of Louisiana than those who do.7 Appellees have not made a *1059legally probative showing on any such theory. Instead, the evidence introduced at trial was limited almost exclusively to experiences with pro hac vice practitioners— i.e., attorneys practicing in Louisiana who are not members of the Louisiana bar but who have retained local (Louisiana) counsel. At trial the distinction between members and non-members of the Louisiana bar was simply not observed:
A. Our office deals with attorneys primarily in the filing of papers, and we have found, not universally, certainly, but generally, and on the average, that attorneys located out-of-state submit papers for filing which do not comply with the local rules more frequently than do local attorneys.
Q. Would that apply to out-of-state lawyers who may or may not have been admitted generally or specifically for one case to practice before this court?
A. That would apply to out-of-state attorneys generally.
Q. Across the board, as it were?
A. Yes.
Tr. at 153 (testimony of Clerk Whyte). On the one occasion that this distinction was brought up (by the court), it emerged that the witness could report on only two nonresident members of the Louisiana bar:
Q. ... Now, do attorneys in that category, who have been admitted to the bar of Louisiana, but who have neither a residence nor a law office in Louisiana, present any problems, if you have had experience with any people like that from out-of-state?
A. Well ... they weren’t all that familiar, or they didn’t care about our local rules, or they would confuse our local rules and our way of practice and pleading with other jurisdictions. I find that. I find just out-of-state lawyers in general—
THE COURT: Do you understand what Mr. Sessions is limiting his question to is attorneys who have passed the Louisiana Bar Exams, and been admitted to the bar, but didn’t live in Louisiana?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. I’m thinking of one in particular that practices in Biloxi, Mississippi, not Mr. Frazier.
THE COURT: I wonder how many lawyers, ma’am, you would know in that category?
THE WITNESS: Two.
THE COURT: Two?
THE WITNESS: Two to my recollection. One practicing in Mississippi, and one is in Texas____
Id. at 214-15 (testimony of Magistrate Wynne). Appellees have advanced no reasons to suppose that out-of-state lawyers in general are a relevant comparison group for purposes of this case. And, indeed, there is every reason to think that they are not: Lawyers who seek general admission to the Eastern District bar thereby indicate an interest in developing an ongoing and regular practice in the District; they will have passed the Louisiana State bar examination — which is no mean feat, given the unique nature of Louisiana law; and they will have to pay annual dues of $40 for the first three years and $100 per year thereafter. See Appellant’s Brief at 19-21; Appellant’s Reply Brief at 3-4, 9-10. In short, they will have invested considerably more time and money to practice in the Eastern District on a continuing basis than those admitted on a pro hac vice basis. It *1060is thus unreasonable and unfair to assume — without argument, evidence, or justification — that the experience with occasional pro hoc vice practitioners is relevant to Mr. Frazier’s application for general admission to the Eastern District bar.8
Even if appellees had limited their testimony to the proper comparison group, that testimony would still have to be dismissed as essentially worthless. Appellees have wholly failed to put forward any objective, systematic evidence in their defense:
Q. Now, you testified earlier about, as I understood that you got filings, various documents for filing that were deficient more often from out-of-state lawyers than from in-state lawyers; is that correct?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Now, you conducted a personal study of that, have you?
A. If you mean by a study did we count them, no____
Tr. at 161 (testimony of Clerk Whyte).
Q. You said ninety-eight percent of the out-of-state lawyers cause you those types of problems?
A. That’s right.
Q. Now, what studies have you done to that end?
A. Well, basically I just know what my docket is, and I know what lawyers I have, and what the problems I’ve had with them, and out-of-state lawyers just constantly give me the problems.
Q. Is the answer that you haven’t done any studies? Have you got any empirical evidence or data?
A. Statistics?
Q. Yes.
A. No, I don’t have any basic statistics.
Id. at 192 (testimony of Magistrate Johan-nesen).
Q. Even Louisiana lawyers who do that, has it been your experience that they’ve been members of the bar of this court, or are just trying to practice without qualifying?
A. I don’t know, sir. I don’t know.
Q. You didn’t keep any diary, keep any statistics of those kinds of cases, did you?
A. No.
Id. at 205 (testimony of Magistrate Wynne).
Q. You didn’t keep a diary or any compilation of statistics or day-by-day recordation of problems you had with non-resident attorneys while you were a magistrate, did you?
A. No.
Id. at 232 (testimony of Judge Wicker).
I do not make a fetish of statistics. But generalized, visceral reactions and vague, anecdotal reminiscences of this sort do not rise to the level of legally probative evidence; they cannot supplant the need for hard, empirical data when the Constitution’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws is at stake.9 Thus, even if appel-lees’ evidence had been relevant — which, as I have explained above, it is not — I would hold that it is insufficient as a matter of law.

. See Matter of Frazier, 594 F.Supp. 1173, 1180 (E.D.La.1984):
The basic issue before the Court is whether this disparate treatment between resident and nonresident members of the Louisiana bar is supported by a sufficiently weighty governmental purpose and whether the means chosen in Rule 21.2 are sufficiently related to that end.
Cf. Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 239, 77 S.Ct. 752, 756, 1 L.Ed.2d 796 (1957) ("A State can require high standards of qualification, such as good moral character or proficiency in its law, before it admits an applicant to the bar, but any qualification must have a rational connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity to practice law.”).

. Cf. id. at 186 (testimony of Magistrate Johan-nesen): “I think there would be chaos if we didn’t have the [residency-or-office] rule."

. Cf. id. at 213 (testimony of Magistrate Wynne): "I find out-of-state counsel ... are primarily interested in the development of the law of the state in which they reside. And they become deficient in Louisiana law."

. See, e.g., T.W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D. Levinson & R.N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (1964); G. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (1954); G. Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944); R.S. Lynd & H.M. Lynd, Middle-town (1929).

. See Oxford English Dictionary 2023 (Compact ed. 1971).

. See P. Brest & S. Levinson, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking 553-54 (2d ed. 1983):
Let X and Y be two individuals or things similarly situated in all respects except as *1059described below. The purpose and effect of the regulation are to reduce or eliminate a "mischief.” It is not irrational to impose the regulation on X but not on Y if:
1. Application of the regulation to X reduces the total amount of mischief more than would its application to Y; or
2. X causes a greater amount of mischief than Y causes; or
3. Y’s cost of complying with the regula- ' tion is greater than X’s; or
4. exempting Y from the burden of the regulation will serve an ancillary objective; or
5. a. X possesses trait T, and
b. on the average, persons or objects possessing T are situated with respect to persons not possessing T as X (in 1 through 4) is situated with respect to Y; and
c. employing T as a classifying trait is more efficient than employing a narrower, more individualized trait.

. It may be possible to make such a connection; but it is up to the appellees — not this court — to ■ make it. See Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 442, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 1161, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982) (Blackmun, J., separate opinion) (“The State’s rationale must be something more than the exercise of a strained imagination; while the connection between means and ends need not be precise, it, at the least, must have some objective basis."); cf. Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1272, 1278-80, 84 L.Ed.2d 205 (1985) (considering and rejecting arguments that nonresident State bar members would be less likely: 1) to become, and remain, familiar with local rules and procedures; 2) to behave ethically; 3) to be available for court proceedings; and 4) to do pro bono and other volunteer work in the State).

. Cf. Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977) (establishing standards of statistical proof); Hazelwood School Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299, 97 S.Ct. 2736, 53 L.Ed.2d 768 (1977) (same).