Court Opinion

ID: 9739768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:20:36.717845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:13.819729
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(concurring specially).
Because I have concluded, albeit reluctantly, that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that any statute which bases different treatment on a fixed point residency requirement constitutes an unconstitutional implication of the right to travel and because I recognize that we are bound by the Supreme Court’s determination, I concur in the result reached by the majority. It does seem to me, however, that fixed point residency requirements can have any one of three effects upon the right to travel. The operation of the statute may burden the right to travel or it may provide an incentive to travel or it may simply be neutral with respect to the right to travel. I consider the Minnesota statute strictly neutral as it impinges upon the right to travel because a resident newly arrived in Minnesota will be eligible for general assistance in an amount not less than that person was receiving in the state from which he or she had emigrated up to the amount of general assistance to which the most senior Minnesota resident is entitled. At a time when most states are struggling to remain solvent, I can see no earthly reason for limiting a state’s option to the total discontinuance of general assistance or of risking financial ruin.