Court Opinion

ID: 9634045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:18:40.682181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:28:33.971469
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, District Judge
(dissenting):
Since the majority depicts this case as it does, the conclusion it reaches is not only easy, it is foregone. However, I am in basic disagreement with the majority’s characterization of this litigation and the judicial approach which is thus required.
As an initial point, I take issue with the majority’s conclusion that the classification under attack here is not based solely on sex. The majority says that one cannot look merely to the challenged provisions; rather the entire statutory scheme must be examined. Since in some other areas of the statutory scheme men and women are treated equally, the majority argues that the scheme as a whole is acceptable. But simply because a series of related statutes is sexually nondiscriminatory does not necessarily mean that the part of the statutes here being challenged is nondiscriminatory. The fact that the dependency of minor children for purposes of medical and dental care, for example, is determined equally for men and women has nothing to do *210with whether the distinction made between men and women with regard to the dependency of their spouses is constitutional.
This Court recognizes that the challenged statutes and regulations are part of a comprehensive statutory matrix. This is so whether the provisions were passed simultaneously or were enacted intermittently over a long period of time. Yet the fact that those provisions which differentiate between men and women are part of such a statutory framework does not ipso facto rid those distinctions of constitutional infirmity. To emphasize, because a statute is constitutional in one respect does not preclude an examination into whether some other facet is constitutional. In other words, the majority’s excursion into other aspects of these statutes is irrelevant to the issue in this case.
The plaintiffs’ case deals solely with the precise question of whether Congress may legitimately distinguish between men and women in the manner in which their spouses’ dependency is established. Rather than taking the traditional judicial approach of narrowing the issue, the majority expands the context of this case all out of proportion to the plaintiffs’ complaint. Consequently, the majority’s approach is not only illogical but is contrary to established notions of judicial perspective.
The majority further concludes that even within the narrow confines of plaintiffs’ actual case, the challenged differentiation between men and women is constitutionally permissible. This determination is premised on a finding of “administrative convenience.” Without consideration of the propriety of disposing of an important constitutional issue on a basis which no party has advanced and with regard to which we have no proof, I am forced to conclude that this second argument is as faulty as the first.
The majority argues that the reason for providing a conclusive presumption of dependency for males was a desire by Congress to avoid the administrative imbroglio of requiring actual proof from some 200,000 officers and over 1,000,000 enlisted men that their wives were actually dependent upon them. Yet plaintiffs in this case do not attack nor do they seek to end the presumption in favor of males. Rather, they take issue with the statutes’ requirement that they and members of their class demonstrate actual dependency. Plaintiffs would probably concede that there is some administrative convenience in granting all married servicemen the conclusive presumption that their spouses are dependent. But except to the extent that it is necessary to illustrate the disparity of treatment between men and women, plaintiffs have demonstrated no concern whatever for the statutes’ treatment of males. It is the discriminatory application of the statutes to females that is the crux of this action.
If it is administratively convenient to provide a conclusive presumption for men, it is inconsistent to require a demonstration of dependency in fact for women. The administrative convenience, supposed or real, in providing men with a conclusive presumption of dependency is simply irrelevant to this case. The question is whether it is administratively convenient to require women to demonstrate dependency in fact. From the majority’s reasoning, the answer must be clearly in the negative because it is easier just to grant the presumption. Thus, on the strength of the majority’s logic, there can be no rational basis.
It may be that the majority attaches a broader meaning to administrative convenience than simply the ease or cost of distribution of benefits. It appears that the majority would include the denial of benefits to women whose husbands are not dependent in fact in the determination of costs to the Government. Yet it seems incongruous to say that the justification for denying the benefits is that it is cheaper not to give them. That reasoning begs the question of whether there is a rational basis for distinguishing between men and women. If all that is required to uphold a con*211gressional enactment is the conclusion that it is more economical to deny benefits than to extend them, then any statutory scheme can be established and no disqualified group can complain.
Even assuming the correctness of the majority view that administrative convenience may properly include the denial of potential benefits, the recent case of Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 92 S.Ct. 251, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971), clearly states that such a basis is constitutionally insufficient.1 In Reed the statute gave a mandatory preference to men over women when persons of the same entitlement class applied for appointment as administrator of a decedent’s estate. The clear objective of the provision was to avoid hearings on the merits when persons of different sex, but otherwise equal entitlement, sought to be administrator of an estate. In rejecting the sufficiency of the argument of administrative convenience the Court replied:
Clearly the objective of reducing the workload on probate courts by eliminating one class of contests is not without some legitimacy. The crucial question, however, is whether § 15-314 advances that objective in a manner consistent with the command of the Equal Protection Clause. We hold that it does not. To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; ... Id. at 76, 92 S.Ct. at 25.
The basic message which comes from this case is that administrative convenience is not a shibboleth, the mere recitation of which dictates constitutionality. Rather, whatever governmental benefit that can be supposed should be balanced with the impact upon the subject class and the arbitrariness of the classification.
The majority contends that to grant plaintiffs the relief they seek, that is to end the requirement that women demonstrate their spouses’ dependency in fact, would dictate the complete abandonment of the congressional scheme for the extension of benefits.
This conclusion is simply incorrect since plaintiffs wish to change only a part of the scheme. Those provisions relating to the dependency of children, parents and others would remain intact. This result is far short of a complete abandonment of the statutory scheme. The severability clauses included when Titles 10 and 37 were enacted relieve this Court of the necessity of destroying the entire legislative framework in excoriating the discriminatory provisions. See Savings and Severability Provisions, Section 49 of Act August 10, 1956, c. 1041, 70A Stat. 640, and Savings and Severability Provisions, Section 12 of Pub.L. 87-649, September 7, 1962, 76 Stat. 497.
The majority seeks to minimize the impact and arbitrariness of the classification by characterizing the benefits which plaintiffs seek as a “windfall.” This argument smacks of the long-discredited right-privilege dichotomy. When the Government determines to extend benefits, it must do so in a reasonable manner. Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 518, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958). The attachment of a moral connotation to the benefits which plaintiffs ask adds nothing to the analysis and again begs the question.
Accordingly, I conclude that the statutes and regulations here in issue are unconstitutional and I therefore dissent.

. Although Reed involved a state statute and was decided on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, there is no doubt that the analysis used in that case is applicable here. See Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 642, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163, 168, 84 S.Ct. 1187, 12 L.Ed.2d 218 (1964); Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 499, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954).