Court Opinion

ID: 9732472
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:22:30.892649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:41.014320
License: Public Domain

KELLEHER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with all of the conclusions reached by my colleagues, but I see no necessity for reaching the question of institutional privilege. A decision based upon a constitutional determination should be avoided whenever it is possible to determine the issue on other grounds. Chartier Real Estate Co. v. Chafee, 101 R.I. 544, 556, 225 A.2d 766, 773 (1967). The trial justice, in refusing to allow Senator Sapins-ley to testify about her experience as a member of the Reapportionment Commission and in rejecting the plaintiffs’ effort to have the Speaker of the House and two members of the commission give similar testimony, rested his decision on two grounds: relevancy and the institutional privilege. I am of the firm belief that, for the reasons that follow, the testimony sought from the senator, the speaker, and the two commission members was totally irrelevant. Consequently, I affirm the trial justice’s evidentiary rulings on that ground and leave the institutional-privilege question to another day.
There can be little doubt that a valid exercise of legislative power, whether on the federal or the state level, will not be *989invalidated because certain legislators may have had invalid motives when the legislation in question was enacted. Legislators with evil motives can be part of a group that passes sound legislation, whereas legislators who have been motivated by the purest of intentions have been known to adopt legislation that has failed to pass constitutional muster.
As long ago as 1810, the United States Supreme Court in Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 3 L.Ed. 162 (1810), had this to say about inquiry into legislative motivation:
“If the title be plainly deduced from a legislative act, which the legislature might constitutionally pass, if the act be clothed with all the requisite forms of a law, a court, sitting as a court of law, cannot sustain a suit brought by one individual against another founded on the allegation that the act is a nullity, in consequence of the impure motives which influenced certain members of the legislature which passed the law.” Id. at 131.
During the ensuing years the Supreme Court has had several opportunities to reconsider this doctrine, but it has been forceful in upholding it. As the Supreme Court stated in United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968), reh. denied, 393 U.S. 900, 89 S.Ct. 63, 21 L.Ed.2d 188 (1968), “What motivates one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it, and the stakes are sufficiently high for us to eschew guesswork.” Id. 391 U.S. at 384, 88 S.Ct. at 1683, 20 L.Ed.2d at 684. Later, in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 508, 95 S.Ct. 1813, 1824, 44 L.Ed.2d 324, 339 (1975), the Court once again emphasized that in determining the legitimacy of a congressional act, it would not look at the motives alleged to have prompted it. Similar sentiments were expressed by our predecessors in Gorham v. Robinson, 57 R.I. 1, 8, 186 A. 832, 838 (1936).
Indeed, the guesswork alluded to in O’Brien would, in all probability, be futile. If the law is struck down because of what less than a handful of legislators said about it, “it would presumably be valid as soon as the legislature or relevant governing body repassed it for different reasons.” Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, 225, 91 S.Ct. 1940, 1945, 29 L.Ed.2d 438, 445 (1970).
Consequently, since it is beyond the power of the judiciary to hypothesize about legislators’ motivations, the judiciary is obligated to evaluate the legislative work product in the light of settled legal principles. The question is, What has the Legislature actually done? and not, Why has it done so? Daniel v. Family Security Life Insurance Co., 336 U.S. 220, 224, 69 S.Ct. 550, 552, 93 L.Ed. 632, 636 (1949); United States v. Des Moines Navigation and Railway Co., 142 U.S. 510, 544, 12 S.Ct. 308, 318, 35 L.Ed. 1099, 1109 (1892); Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506, 19 L.Ed. 264 (1869). Thus, if what the Legislature has done is constitutional, the reasons why it has done so are irrelevant, Bullock v. Washington, 468 F.2d 1096, 1102 (D.C.Cir.1972), and as noted earlier by my Brother Shea, the House reapportionment plan satisfies all relevant constitutional mandates, whether federal or state.