Court Opinion

ID: 9425338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:25.602018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.845577
License: Public Domain

*456MR. Justice White,
concurring in the judgment.
In Starns v. Malkerson, 401 U. S. 985 (1971), a regulation issued by the Board of Regents provided that no student could qualify for the lower, in-state tuition to the University of Minnesota until he had been a bona fide domiciliary of the State for one year. The District Court upheld the law, 326 F. Supp. 234 (Minn. 1970), and we affirmed summarily, although the effect of the Regents’ regulation was to prevent an admitted Minnesota domiciliary from being treated as such for a period of one year. I thought the case warranted plenary treatment, but I did not then, nor do I now, disagree with the judgment. Because I have difficulty distinguishing, on due process grounds, whether deemed procedural or substantive or whether put in terms of conclusive presumptions, between the Minnesota one-year requirement and the Connecticut law that, for tuition purposes, does not permit Connecticut residence to be acquired while attending Connecticut schools, I cannot join the Court’s opinion.
I concur in the judgment, however, because Connecticut, although it may legally discriminate between its residents and nonresidents for purposes of tuition, here invidiously discriminates among at least three classes of bona fide Connecticut residents. First, there are those unmarried students who have resided in Connecticut one year prior to application or who later reside in Connecticut for a year without going to school. They pay the substantially lower in-state tuition. Second, there are the married students who have a legal address in Connecticut at the time of application. They also pay the lower tuition, whether or not they have resided in Connecticut for a year prior to application. Third, there are the unmarried students whose legal address has been outside Connecticut at some time during the year prior to application but who later become legal residents of *457Connecticut, before or after application or before or after matriculation, and remain such for at least one year. These students, although year-long residents, must continue to pay out-of-state tuition for as long as they are in school.
This discrimination between classes of bona fide residents of the State is sought to be justified, as I understand it, on the sole ground that too few students from out of State actually become Connecticut residents to require the State to sort out this small number by investigating the inevitably larger number of residency claims which would be submitted if the rule were otherwise but which for the most part would be bogus.
In Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535 (1971), under the applicable state law a driver’s license could not be revoked without proof of fault, but, upon the occurrence of an accident, the State automatically suspended the license without showing even probable fault and without an opportunity to prove nonfault. The State neither argued nor claimed that there was a more likely than not inference of fault from the mere event of an accident.
In Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89 (1965), the State refused those in active military service the opportunity to prove residence in the State and thus their eligibility to vote. The Court struck down this restriction. The State’s interest in avoiding the task of verifying claims of residency was insufficiently weighty to warrant interference with the right to vote of the military personnel who had actually become domiciled in the State.
In Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972), the state standard for separating child and parent was unfitness of parent. Accepting the State’s argument that most unwed fathers are unfit, we nevertheless required the State to give those fathers a hearing on their fitness prior to depriving them of the custody of their children. It was administratively convenient for the State to pre*458sume unfitness and so avoid hearings to identify the perhaps smaller number of fit, unwed fathers; but this justification was found insufficient in view of the strong interest of a natural parent in the custody of his child, an interest that we thought came to this Court “ 'with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements.’ ” Id., at 651, quoting from Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U. S. 77, 95 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). The unwed father’s interest was at least cognizable and substantial enough to prohibit the State, in the name of administrative convenience, from denying the unwed father a hearing on parental fitness prior to declaring his child a ward of the State. The same considerations led us to conclude that the unwed father was denied equal protection of the laws.
From these and other cases, such as Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973); and Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164 (1972), it is clear that we employ not just one, or two, but, as my Brother Marshall has so ably demonstrated, a “spectrum of standards in reviewing discrimination allegedly violative of the Equal Protection Clause.” San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 98-99 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Sometimes we just say the claim is “invidious” and let the matter rest there, as Mr. Justice Stewart did, for example, in concurring in the judgment in Fron-tiero. But at other times we sustain the discrimination, if it is justifiable on any conceivable rational basis, or strike it down, unless sustained by some compelling interest of the State, as, for example, when a State imposes a discrimination that burdens or penalizes the exercise of a constitutional right. See, e. g., Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969). I am uncomfortable with the dichot*459omy, for it must now be obvious, or has been all along, that, as the Court's assessment of the weight and value of the individual interest escalates, the less likely it is that mere administrative convenience and avoidance of hearings or investigations will be sufficient to justify what otherwise would appear to be irrational discriminations.
Here, it is enough for me that the interest involved is that of obtaining a higher education, that the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is substantial, and that the State, without sufficient justification, imposes a one-year residency requirement on some students but not on others, and also refuses, no matter what the circumstances, to permit the requirement to be satisfied through bona fide residence while in school. It is plain enough that the State has only the most attenuated interest in terms of administrative convenience in maintaining this bizarre pattern of discrimination among those who must or must not pay a substantial tuition to the University. The discrimination imposed by the State is invidious and violates the Equal Protection Clause.