Court Opinion

ID: 9632747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:24:04.917666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:22.357966
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, Justice,
dissenting, in part.
In State v. Erickson, 574 P.2d 1 (Alaska 1978), we adopted a single flexible test to *998review legal challenges to governmental action based upon the Alaska Constitution’s equal protection clause.1 This test, which has come to be known as the sliding scale test, provides for varying levels of scrutiny depending on the importance of the right involved.
In applying the Alaska Constitution ... there is no reason why we cannot use a single test. Such a test will be flexible and dependent upon the importance of the rights involved. Based on the nature of the right, a greater or lesser burden will be placed on the state to show that the classification has a fair and substantial relation to a legitimate governmental objective.
Id. at 11-12.
Our adoption of this single test reflected our discontent with the United States Supreme Court’s rigid two-tier equal protection analysis.2 In Isakson v. Rickey, 550 P.2d 359 (Alaska 1976), we had begun to move toward a less deferential approach at the lower end of the equal protection spectrum “by raising the level [of scrutiny] of the lower tier from virtual [judicial] abdication to genuine judicial scrutiny.” Id. at 363. There we held that
“[u]nder the rational basis test, in order for a classification to survive judicial scrutiny, the classification ‘must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some difference having a fair and substantial relationship to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.’ ”
It is this more flexible and more demanding standard which will be applied in future cases if the compelling state interest test is found inappropriate.
Id. at 362 (quoting State v. Wylie, 516 P.2d 142, 145 (Alaska 1973) (footnote omitted)).
I dissent from the court’s resolution of the reread/regrade challenge because the court disregards the scrutiny required by Erickson and Isakson. The court reaches its conclusion without ever examining the importance of Mr. Bettine's legal interest in professional licensure, the ABA’s interest in setting the one-point reread threshold, or the nexus between the ABA’s interest and its means of achieving that interest. In fact, the court does not appear to apply any test at all.
Bettine falls within the class of applicants for whom a reread/regrade could mathematically produce a passing score— those scoring within 5.5 points of passing.3 In granting rereads only to applicants scoring within one point of passing, the ABA discriminates against applicants within Bet-tine’s class whose score is lower than the one-point reread threshold. Regardless of whether the ABA is constitutionally compelled to reread any examination, the ABA must treat all persons within that class similarly unless it can articulate a rational basis for discriminating among them. Neither the ABA nor the court has identified any bases for the discrimination.
Applying the sliding scale test to a case involving the right to employment, this court must “closely scrutinize enactments which interfere with that right.” Matson v. Commercial Fisheries Entry Comm’n, 785 P.2d 1200, 1205 (Alaska 1990). In Matson we noted that “[e]qual protection requires that an enactment impairing this important right be closely related to an important state interest.” Id. For all practical purposes, failure to obtain profes*999sional licensure forecloses employment opportunity as a lawyer. Examination procedures should be closely scrutinized. However, even if licensure procedures deserve less scrutiny than employment practices, they deserve some scrutiny. The court does not scrutinize the ABA’s procedures at all.
The distinction in score between those examinations within Bettine’s class which are reread and those which are not is not statistically significant. As noted, no other bases for this distinction have been advanced. The ABA’s one-point reread threshold is arbitrary and does not withstand scrutiny under the sliding scale test. Therefore, the procedure denies Bettine equal protection of the law.

. This clause provides "that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the Iaw[.]" Alaska Const. art. I, § 1.

. The two-tier analysis requires strict scrutiny of governmental action under the "compelling state interest” standard in cases involving fundamental rights or suspect categories, and "minimal scrutiny" under the rational basis test in all other cases. See, e.g., Kramer v. Union Free School Dist. No. 15, 395 U.S. 621, 626-27, 89 S.Ct. 1886, 1889, 23 L.Ed.2d 583 (1969); Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 324, 100 S.Ct. 2671, 2692, 65 L.Ed.2d 784 (1980). For a brief history of this court's dissatisfaction with the two-tier approach, see Isakson v. Rickey, 550 P.2d 359, 361-63 (Alaska 1976).

. Bettine’s circumstance is not like Mr. Obermeyer’s, since a reread/regrade of Obermeyer’s bar examination could not have mathematically produced a passing score. See Application of Obermeyer, 717 P.2d 382, 388 (Alaska 1986).