Court Opinion

ID: 9466168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:07:12.746461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:34.927142
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I join in upholding the Maine statute because, although it is much like the New Hampshire statute invalidated in Meloon v. Helgemoe, 564 F.2d 602 (1st Cir. 1977), this court carefully limited the reach of its opinion in Meloon, leaving room for upholding a similar statute if faced with a different record presenting more plausible or better substantiated legislative purposes that could meet the requisite degree of heightened scrutiny for sex-based classifications. See 564 F.2d at 607, 608. Unlike our dissenting colleague, I feel that the gaps noted in Meloon have been adequately filled in.
This is not to say that I rest easy with the kind of inquiry into legislative purposes that Meloon initiated.1 While there are cases where it is necessary to look into the motives of legislators, e. g., Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, - U.S. -, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979), and while this is an area that has generated much recent comment, see the collection of articles in 15 San Diego L.Rev. 925 (1978), this is a path that presents great difficulties. As Chief Justice Warren pointed out,
“Inquiries into congressional motives or purposes are a hazardous matter. When the issue is simply the interpretation of legislation, the Court will look to statements by legislators for guidance as to the purpose of the legislature, because the benefit to sound decision-making in this circumstance is thought sufficient to risk the possibility of misreading Congress’ purpose. It is entirely a different *504matter when we are asked to void a statute that is, under well-settled criteria, constitutional on its face, on the basis of what fewer than a handful of Congressmen said about it. What motivates one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it, and the stakes are sufficiently high for us to eschew guesswork. We decline to void essentially on the ground that it is unwise legislation which Congress had the undoubted power to enact and which could be reenacted in its exact form if the same or another legislator made a ‘wiser’ speech about it.”
United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 383-84, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 1683, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1978) (footnote omitted). That two identical statutes could be held unconstitutional in one instance and constitutional in another simply because of the “purposes” attributed to those who supported them is troubling. Results are likely to depend, as we now see, simply on the extent of documentation — if any — compiled by the enacting body and on the adequacy of the record compiled for us by counsel. (A third factor, as our dissenting colleague suggests, may be the scholarship of the writing judge.) Constitutional adjudication should be less fickle.2
When legislative purposes behind sex-based classifications are not explicitly stated and endorsed, I would prefer to infer them when possible from the effects of the statute itself. Here, I think it fair to say that the statutory rape law has the effect of protecting women from sexual intercourse at an age when sexual activity or pregnancy can be psychically and physically damaging, and I think it can properly be inferred that this was at least one of the legislative “purposes” at work.3 It is reasonable to take judicial notice of the fact that only women can become pregnant and that they cannot escape the consequences of their sexual activity as readily as can men. This, as well as the possibility of more serious physical harm to pre-pubescent women relied on by Judge Devine, for me legitimates the purposes of protecting young women. I think that achieving this purpose by holding men criminally liable for engaging in sexual activity with women under age is sufficiently related to this purpose to pass constitutional muster under the heightened degree of scrutiny accorded sex-based statutory classifications.

. It is the following paragraph from Meloon which I especially question:
“We examine the pregnancy prevention rationale with special wariness. Certainly the fact that women and not men bear children is a fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the two sexes and as such it can be the basis for some gender based legislation; but there is a danger that the very uniqueness of this characteristic makes it an available hindsight catchall rationalization for laws that were promulgated with totally different purposes in mind. New Hampshire presents us with not an iota of testimony or evidence that the prevention of pregnancy was a purpose of its statutory rape law. Indeed, all the inferences that may be drawn from the materials presented to us are to the contrary.” [Footnote omitted.]
Meloon v. Helgemoe, 564 F.2d at 607. The passage suggests that it is not sufficient to identify important governmental objectives that are achieved substantially by a challenged statute. More is required — namely, “testimony or evidence” that the asserted objectives were the “purposes in mind.” Thus, while our opinion in the instant case rests on the prevention of injury rationale and avoids the question of pregnancy prevention, the above passage has affected the focus of our analysis of the issue. To supply the requisite “testimony or evidence” and to divine the “purposes in mind,” both the Maine Supreme Court and we are carried back to a 1669 statutory antecedent to the challenged statute which provides that, “carnal copulation . . . is . . . perrilous to the life and well-being of the childe . .” State v. Rundlett, 391 A.2d 815, 819 (Me.1978), ante at 501. I do not know what was prominent in the minds of the legislators of a day when people may not have drawn the fine distinctions between religious and health concerns of our era, and I cannot, in all candor, say that I believe such an inquiry to be especially illuminating. See note 3, infra.

. Motivation analysis can also be criticized because it “enables judges to read their ideas of good social policy into the law . . . A. Miller, “If The Devil Himself Knows Not the Mind of Man,’ How Possibly Can Judges Know the Motivation of Legislators?” 15 San Diego L.Rev. 1167, 1171 (1978).

. I am especially unwilling to condemn statutes, as Judge Bownes would do, by inferring that, because they were passed in earlier times, they must be tainted by now outmoded moral-isms. Religious or moral precepts have been known to have sound — albeit unarticulated— biological, genetic, or social underpinnings. The question for us should be whether the legislation bears scrutiny under presently accepted modes of thought, not whether its supporters may have endorsed it for reasons we can no longer accept. The proper question in my view is whether in today’s world we can discern a substantial relationship between the statutory classification and a governmental objective important enough to sustain such a gender-based classification. In making such a judgment, history is perhaps relevant, but far more important is a court’s perception of the world around it, and the current interests reasonably to be served.