Court Opinion

ID: 9424546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:11:55.477638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:50.918548
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
By its very terms, the mandatory prior referendum provision of Art. XXXIV applies solely to
“any development composed of urban or rural dwellings, apartments or other living accommodations for *144persons of low income, financed in whole or in part by the Federal Government or a state public body or to which the Federal Government or a state public body extends assistance by supplying all or part of the labor, by guaranteeing the payment of liens, or otherwise.”
Persons of low income are defined as
“persons or families who lack the amount of income which is necessary ... to enable them, without financial assistance, to live in decent, safe and sanitary dwellings, without overcrowding.”
The article explicitly singles out low-income persons to bear its burden. Publicly assisted housing developments designed to accommodate the aged, veterans, state employees, persons of moderate income, or any class of citizens other than the poor, need not be approved by prior referenda.*
In my view, Art. XXXIV on its face constitutes invidious discrimination which the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment plainly prohibits. “The States, of course, are prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause from discriminating between 'rich' and 'poor’ as such in the formulation and application of their laws.” Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, 361 (1963) (Harlan, J., dissenting). Article XXXIV is neither “a law of general applicability that may affect the poor more harshly than it does the rich,” ibid., nor an “effort to redress economic imbalances,” ibid. It is rather an explicit *145classification on the basis of poverty — a suspect classification which demands exacting judicial scrutiny, see McDonald v. Board of Election, 394 U. S. 802, 807 (1969); Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U. S. 663 (1966); Douglas v. California, supra.
The Court, however, chooses to subject the article to no scrutiny whatsoever and treats the provision as if it contained a totally benign, technical economic classification. Both the appellees and the Solicitor General of the United States as amicus curiae have strenuously argued, and the court below found, that Art. XXXIV, by imposing a substantial burden solely on the poor, violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet after observing that the article does not discriminate on the basis of race, the Court’s only response to the real question in these cases is the unresponsive assertion that “referendums demonstrate devotion to democracy, not to bias, discrimination, or prejudice.” It is far too late in the day to contend that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits only racial discrimination ; and to me, singling out the poor to bear a burden not placed on any other class of citizens tramples the values that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to protect.
I respectfully dissent.

 California law authorizes the formation of Renewal Area Agencies whose purposes include the construction of “low-income, middle-income and normal-market housing,” Cal. Health & Safety Code § 33701 et seq. Only low-income housing programs are subject to the mandatory referendum provision of Art. XXXIV even though all of the agencies’ programs may receive substantial governmental assistance.