Court Opinion

ID: 9634183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:54:34.325272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:56.546871
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in Judge Tenney’s opinion. The city and state have offered no justification for New York Civil Service Law § 53 that can stand in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971). I think that the “special public interest” doctrine and the Court’s earlier decisions in Heim v. McCall, 239 U.S. 175, 36 S.Ct. 78, 60 L.Ed. 206 (1915), and Crane v. New York, 239 U.S. 195, 36 S.Ct. 85, 60 L.Ed.2d 218 (1915), can no longer be viewed as controlling in light of the Court’s language in Graham v. Richardson, supra, and Takahashi v. Fish & Game Commission, 334 U.S. 410, 68 S.Ct. 1138, 92 L.Ed. 1478 (1948). Not only does Section 53 run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause, but it conflicts both with 42 U. S.C. § 1981 (1970) and the federal government’s general power over the immigration and naturalization of aliens. See Graham v. Richardson, supra, 403 U.S. at 376-380, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed. 2d 534.
While the question we decide today is an important one, it is equally important to recognize those areas into which the Court’s holding does not extend. Nothing in our decision should be construed to mean that a state may not lawfully maintain a citizenship requirement for those positions where citizenship bears some rational relationship to the special demands of the particular position. There are some positions in the civil service, as in elective office, where broad policy decisions are made as a matter of course, and in such positions the state and the city, and their citizens, may properly require the officeholder to be a United States citizen.