Court Opinion

ID: 9765035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:48:34.975434+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:04.032721
License: Public Domain

Daley and Hill, JJ.,
concurring. While we join in the result reached in this case, we feel that further comments are necessary. As the majority opinion states, the avowed purpose of the law is a mere sham, masking the actual objective of accomplishing numerous unspecified types of economic regulation, devoid of any permissible rational pattern. “However, legislative leeway should never be permitted to extend to the promulgating of statutes which are utterly lacking in cohesive scheme. When the classifications are not only arbitrary but also irrational they transgress the broad prerogatives of the Legislature.” People v. Abrahams, 40 N.Y.2d 277, 285, 353 N.E.2d 574, 578, 386 N.Y.S.2d 661, 665 (1976). The whole direction of this act is irrationally and arbitrarily to prefer certain groups over other groups. Such preferences run squarely afoul of our constitution’s mandate: “That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community, and not for the particular emolument or advantage of any single man, family, or set of men, who are a part only of that community . . . .” Vt. Const, ch. I, art. 7. Therefore, although this act does not violate the undemanding test of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, State v. Giant of St. Albans, Inc., 128 Vt. 539, 268 A.2d 739 (1970); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 425-28 (1961), we concur in the majority’s subtle holding that our state constitution imposes a more rigorous test, which this act cannot meet.
Upon a different record, we might well find further fault with this act. Although we have not had the benefit of evidentiary proceedings to illustrate the operation of the many exemptions to the act, it seems clear to even the most cursory appraisal that their operation will reproduce the prohibited discrimination and burdening of interstate commerce condemned in State v. Rockdale Associates, 125 Vt. 495, 218 A.2d 718 (1966). By exempting precisely those stores which are *344most likely to be owned by Vermonters, the act probably constitutes impermissible protectionism in derogation of the “Commerce Clause’s overriding requirement of a national ‘common market.’ ” Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission, 432 U.S. 333, 350 (1977); Dean Milk Co. v. City of Madison, 340 U.S. 349, 354 (1951); U.S. Const, art. I, § 8, cl. 3.
It also seems apparent that the portion of the statutory design found wanting in this case was central to the intentions of the Legislature in enacting the law. The majority’s excision, by allowing all food stores to be open on Sunday, converts the statute into something foreign to the legislative purpose. The truly appropriate remedy, therefore, would be for the majority to strike the entire act, not to transform it into something that the Legislature did not want.