Court Opinion

ID: 9635969
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:11:14.983572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:39.597213
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Chief Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Although I agree substantially with what Judge Decker has succinctly written and concur in the result, I would like to emphasize my view that the right to candidacy is subject to the same constitutional protections as is the right to vote. As Chief Judge Coffin has recently explained in Mancuso v. Taft, 476 F.2d 187 (1st Cir., 1973), whenever a state regulates the right of a person to become a candidate for public office, it also regulates the citizen’s right to vote. Consequently, any state action that substantially restricts the right to candidacy must be given strict scrutiny and meet the test that the restriction is justified by a compelling state interest.
The difficulty with the present case is that until the adoption of the Twenty-sixth Amendment the right to be a candidate for school board membership coincided with the age qualification to vote, namely, twenty-one years. Because of the adoption of the Amendment the question arises: Does the Constitution require that the statutory qualification for school board candidacy coincide with the voting age qualification incorporated in the Amendment? I do not think that it does.
It is quite conceivable that the Illinois legislature, in enacting Ill.Rev.Stat., ch. 122, § 10-10, expressed a desire that qualifications for school board members should be open to all voters since at the time of the enactment all those aged twenty-one and over were qualified voters. It does not follow, however, that the Illinois legislature through nonaction has not, since the enactment of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, determined, *9at least inferentially, that the twenty-one year old requirement for school board candidacy should stand. Accordingly, we must defer to this inference, and, as Judge Decker states, not substitute our judgment for the legislative body. My only stricture with his opinion is his observation that the “twenty-one year old age minimum ... [is not] unreasonable or irrational in terms of the purpose it [the statute] is designed to serve” and that it is “patently reasonable for the state legislature, in fulfilling its responsibility, to insist that a person at least reach the age of twenty-one before assuming the important and heavy responsibility of school board membership.” These observations, in my mind, supply a needless imprimatur for the Illinois legislature to continue a passive nonreappraisal of the statute in the light of the Twenty-sixth Amendment.