Court Opinion

ID: 9425653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:20.633825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.746469
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
While I join the Court’s opinion I wish to add a few words, since in my view this case is clearly controlled by prior decisions applying the Equal Protection Clause to wealth discriminations. Since classifications based on wealth are “traditionally disfavored,” Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663, 668 (1966), the State’s inability to show a compelling interest in conditioning the right to run for office on payment of fees cannot stand. Bullock v. Carter, 405 U. S. 134 (1972).
The Court first began looking closely at discrimination against the poor in the criminal area. In Griffin *720v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12 (1956), we found that de facto denial of appeal rights by an Illinois statute requiring purchase of a transcript denied equal protection to indigent defendants since there “can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” Id., at 19. In Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353 (1963), we found that the State had drawn “an unconstitutional line . . . between rich and poor” when it allowed an appellate court to decide an indigent's case on the merits although no counsel had been appointed to argue his case before the appellate court. Just recently we found that the State could not extend the prison term of an indigent for his failure to pay an assessed fine, since the length of confinement could not under the Equal Protection Clause be made to turn on one’s ability to pay. Williams v. Illinois, 399 U. S. 235 (1970); see Tate v. Short, 401 U. S. 395 (1971). But criminal procedure has not defined the boundaries within which wealth dis-criminations have been struck down. In Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371 (1971), the majority found that the filing fee which denied the poor access to the courts for divorce was a denial of due process; Mr. Justice Brennan and I in concurrence preferred to rest the result on equal protection. And it was the Equal Protection Clause the majority relied on in Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56, 79 (1972), in finding that Oregon’s double-bond requirement for appealing forcible entry and detainer actions discriminated against the poor: “For them, as a practical matter, appeal is foreclosed, no matter how meritorious their case may be.”
Indeed, the Court has scrutinized wealth discrimination in a wide variety of areas. In Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 633 (1969), we found that deterring indigents from migrating into the State was not a constitu*721tionally permissible state objective. Closer to the case before us here was Turner v. Fouche, 396 U. S. 346, 362— 364 (1970), in which the Court found that Georgia could not constitutionally require ownership of land as a qualification for membership on.a county board of education. See Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U. S. 621 (1969); Cipriano v. Houma, 395 U. S. 701 (1969). In Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, supra, we found a state poll tax violative of equal protection because of the burden it placed on the poor’s exercise of the franchise. And in Bullock v. Carter, supra, we invalidated a Texas filing fee system virtually indistinguishable from that presented here.
What we do today thus involves no new principle, nor any novel application. “ [A] man’s mere property status, without more, cannot be used by a state to test, qualify, or limit his rights as a citizen of the United States.” Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 184 (1941) (Jackson, J., concurring). Voting is clearly a fundamental right.* Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, supra, at 667 ; Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 561-562 (1964). But the *722right to vote would be empty if the State could arbitrarily deny the right to stand for election. California does not satisfy the Equal Protection Clause when it allows the poor to vote but effectively prevents them from voting for one of their own economic class. Such an election would be a sham, and we have held that the State must show a compelling interest before it can keep political minorities off the ballot. Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23, 31 (1968). The poor may be treated no differently.
Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins, concurring in part.
For me, the difficulty with the California election system is the absence of a realistic alternative access to the ballot for the candidate whose indigency renders it impossible for him to pay the prescribed filing fee.
In addition to a proper petitioning process suggested by the Court in its opinion, ante, at 718, I would regard a write-in procedure, free of fee, as an acceptable alternative. Prior to 1968, California allowed this, and write-in votes were counted, although no prior fee had been paid. But the prior fee requirement for the write-in candidate was incorporated into the State’s Elections Code in that year, Laws 1968, c. 79, § 3, and is now § 18603 (b) of the Code. It is that addition, by amendment, that serves to deny the petitioner the equal protection guaranteed to him by the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 18603 (b) appears to be severable. See Frost v. Corporation Comm’n, 278 U. S. 515, 525-526 (1929); Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U. S. 312, 341-342 (1921). The Code itself provides for severability. Cal. Elections Code § 48. That, however, is an issue for the California courts to decide.
*723I would hold that the California election statutes are unconstitutional insofar as they presently deny access to the ballot. If § 18603 (b) were to be stricken, the Code, as before, would permit write-in access with no prior fee. The presence of that alternative, although not perfect, surely provides the indigent would-be candidate with as much ease of access to the ballot as the alternative of obtaining a large number of petition signatures in a relatively short time. See Storer v. Brown, post, at 738-746. The Court seemingly would reject a write-in alternative while accepting many petition alternatives. In my view, a write-in procedure, such as California's before 1968, satisfies the demands of the Equal Protection Clause as well as most petitioning procedures. I, therefore, join the Court in reversing the order of the Supreme Court of California denying petitioner’s petition for writ of mandate and in remanding the case for further proceedings.

“No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.” Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1, 17 (1964).
Wesberry involved a federal election. Article I, § 2, of the Federal Constitution declares that Members of the House should be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”; and the Seventeenth Amendment says that Senators shall be “elected by the people.” But the right to vote in state elections is one of the rights historically “retained by the people” by virtue of the Ninth Amendment as well as included in the penumbra of First Amendment rights. As Mr. Justice Brennan stated in Storer v. Brown, post, at 756, “The right to vote derives from the right of association that is at the core of the First Amendment, protected from state infringement by the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Dissenting opinion.)