Court Opinion

ID: 9615519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:38:00.428978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:39.220230
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the court’s holding that former AS 23.30.175(d) violates the equal protection clause of the Alaska Constitution.
First, I object to the court’s conclusion “that section 175(d) imposes a substantial penalty upon the exercise by Brown and the plaintiff class of the right to travel out of Alaska.” 687 P.2d at 273 (Alaska 1984). I acknowledge that a reduction in workers’ compensation may influence an injured worker’s decision on whether to convalesce outside of Alaska; however, I do not believe that section 175(d) actually penalizes a person’s right to travel.
The interest of an injured worker convalescing outside of Alaska in receiving the same benefits as he would receive were he convalescing in Alaska is placed in its prop*277er perspective by comparing this statute with statutes that have been found to penalize the right to travel. The United States Supreme Court has invalidated statutes challenged under the federal equal protection clause because they penalized the right to travel in only three cases, Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. 250, 94 S.Ct. 1076, 39 L.Ed.2d 306 (1974), Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972), and Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969). The classifications in these cases differ from section 175(d) in several respects.
First, in all three cases, the classifications denied either a “basic necessity of life” (Maricopa County (nonemergency health care) and Shapiro (welfare benefits)) or a “fundamental political right” (Dunn (voting)). In this case, the classification denies neither a basic necessity of life nor a fundamental political right. Furthermore, the statute does not deny workers’ compensation benefits, but at most only reduces the amount received. Even with the reduction, Brown received about $11,000 per year, which is $3,000 more than the maximum amount available under the California workers’ compensation system.
The second distinction is that Maricopa County, Dunn, and Shapiro all involved durational residency requirements, i.e., whether a state may deny certain benefits or privileges to new residents which are enjoyed by its “old” residents, until they have been residents for a specified period. Section 175(d) does not impose any dura-tional requirement, nor is it even a “residency requirement” in the usual sense of the phrase.1 Even if it were, a state generally is much more able to distinguish between residents and non-residents than between long and short term residents. Williams v. Zobel, 619 P.2d 448, 451 n. 7 (1980), rev’d on other grounds, 457 U.S. 55, 102 S.Ct. 2309, 72 L.Ed.2d 672 (1982), citing Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441, 93 S.Ct. 2230, 37 L.Ed.2d 63; Fisher v. Reiser, 610 F.2d 629 (9th Cir.1979).
The Nevada statute challenged in Fisher v. Reiser is similar to section 175(d). The statute granted cost of living increases to workers’ compensation recipients who resided in Nevada, but not to those who were no longer Nevada residents. The court noted that “[i]n Shapiro, Dunn, and Mari-copa County, the issue involved the obligation and responsibility of the claimant’s new state of residence; here the claimants seek to enforce an obligation against the state of former residence. The distinction is critical.” 610 F.2d at 633. In support of its conclusion that the obligation to new residents imposed under Shapiro and Maricopa County does not automatically extend to former residents, the court in Fisher cited to Califano v. Torres, 435 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 906, 55 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978). In that case, the Supplemental Security Income Act provided SSI benefits only while the claimant resided in a state or the District of Columbia. Torres lost his benefits upon moving to Puerto Rico. The Court stated:
As the Court said in Memorial Hospital, “the right of interstate travel must be seen as insuring new residents the same right to vital governmental benefits and privileges in the States to which they migrate as are enjoyed by other residents.” [Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U.S. at 261 [94 S.Ct. at 1084], 39 L.Ed.2d at 317.]
In the present cases the District Court altogether transposed that proposition. It held that the Constitution requires that a person who travels to Puerto Rico must be given benefits superior to those enjoyed by other residents of Puerto *278Rico if the newcomer enjoyed those benefits in the State from which he came. This Court has never held that the constitutional right to travel embraces any such doctrine, and we decline to do so now.
435 U.S. at 4, 98 S.Ct. at 908, 55 L.Ed.2d at 68-69 (footnote omitted).
Although the courts in Fisher and Torres applied the federal equal protection test, I believe they are persuasive in pointing out that there is no constitutional right for benefits received in one state to continue after the person has left that state. As the State notes in its brief, “a state certainly need not encourage injured workers to leave the state for destinations where they can live more inexpensively and continue to collect Alaska compensation benefits that are higher than the wages they would earn if working. Nor should Alaskan consumers, who ultimately bear the cost of the premiums, be burdened with financing these excesses.” In my opinion, the statute does not penalize Brown’s right to travel. Rather, it attempts to prevent him from receiving an economic windfall when he moves to a state with a lower cost of living.
Second, I object to the court’s rejection of the state’s objective of fostering rehabilitation by adjusting benefits when convalescence occurs outside of Alaska. It cannot be disputed that a major goal of the workers’ compensation system in general is the rapid rehabilitation of an injured worker so that he or she can return to work. See 1 A. Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 2.50, at 11-12 (1982). One reason most states award an injured worker only a percentage of his wages is because excessive benefits may hamper the incentive to return to work, and encourage him to malinger. Given that Alaska benefits are based on Alaskan wages, which are higher than wages in most states, receiving these benefits in other states would frustrate the rehabilitation goal because it would be more profitable to receive benefits than to work. Adjusting the wages so that they are closer to the wages in the state of residence removes or lessens the incentive to malinger.
It is true, as the court’s opinion notes, that just because an injured worker convalesces in a certain state does not mean he will work in that state after recovery. 687 P.2d at 273, n. 14. It is equally presumptuous, however, to assume that the worker will return to Alaska and find another high-paying job after he is rehabilitated. If an injured worker were allowed to receive the full two-thirds of his pre-injury salary (up to $49,000 per year) while living in a state with a much lower cost of living, I suspect that his incentive to work in any state, including Alaska, would be greatly diminished. By adjusting the benefit levels to more accurately reflect the economic conditions of the state of convalescence, the injured worker’s incentive to return to work, no matter where that is, will be enhanced. Thus, section 175(d) substantially furthers the legitimate goal of rehabilitation, and on this ground, the statute should be upheld.
The superior court agreed that section 175(d) furthers this objective, but invalidated the statute on the ground that the objective could have been accomplished by using a less restrictive alternative to the chosen means. Rather than adjusting benefits based on average weekly wage data, the superior court believed that using the cost of living data would have accomplished the same objective more accurately. The court stated:
In the Fall of 1973, the average annual cost of living for a four member family in Anchorage with an intermediate budget was $16,520, compared to a national urban average for such a family of $12,-626. Thus, the national urban average cost of living was 76% of the Anchorage cost, a reduction of 24%. In 1974, the published average weekly wage for Alaska was $248.00, compared to an average weekly wage outside Alaska of $162.93. Thus, the average weekly wage outside Alaska was only 66% of the Alaskan average, a reduction of 34%.
*279The court concluded that this ten percent difference between the two formulas causes a “severe reduction in the purchasing power, in real terms, of the monetary benefits paid to disabled non-residents,” but not to Alaska residents, and therefore injured workers are deterred from residing in another state.
In my opinion, it was error for the superior court to invalidate section 175(d) on this ground. First, cost of living statistics do not provide a workable alternative to average weekly wage statistics. Cost of living statistics are based on hypothetical family budgets for only twenty-eight urban areas and thus cannot accurately determine the actual cost of living in the area in which the injured worker convalesces. A more practical problem with using cost of living statistics is that they have been discontinued.2
Second, although using average weekly wage data is an imperfect measure of cost of living differentials, a perfect fit between means and ends is not required. Requiring compulsively neat logical correlations between classification and objective would ignore legitimate demands for legislative flexibility. Gunther, Forward: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection, 86 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 21 (1972). See also Rose v. Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, 647 P.2d 154, 159-60 (Alaska 1982); Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission v. Apokedak, 606 P.2d 1255, 1267 (Alaska 1980).
Although the adjustment is not perfect, I believe that section 175(d) is an acceptable attempt to meet acknowledged differences in the economic conditions of Alaska and other states. The equal protection clause requires that all individuals, similarly situated, be treated alike. As the State asserts:
Rather than taking identically-situated individuals, and treating them dissimilarly, AS 23.30.175(d) has the opposite effect; that is, the benefits of individuals who should receive comparable compensation, but absent the statute, would not, because of the disparate wage levels and living costs of their places of residence, are adjusted to account for those circumstances.
If there were no statutory adjustment, recipients who remain in Alaska would be placed at a disadvantage when compared to those recipients because the cost of living is twenty four percent higher in Alaska than the national urban average.
In sum, the distinction between residence and non-residence is really a distinction between the economic conditions with which benefit recipients must contend, and is a rough attempt by the state to be neutral to recipients living in and outside of Alaska. This attempt seems to be the most fair and workable alternative. One could imagine a harsher alternative. For example, a statute that requires all benefits to be allocated only on the basis of the state of continued residence, rather than on the state of injury; under section 175(d)’s formula, Alaska’s higher wages are always factored into the ratio and therefore an injured worker would always receive more under section 175(d) than under this hypothetical statute.3 In this sense, he is always “rewarded” for his initiative to migrate to Alaska. When viewed from this angle, and considering how dissimilar this classification is from other classifications that have been invalidated under the Alaska and federal *280equal protection clauses, I would hold that this statute is constitutional.

. 8 AAC 45.900(b) provides:
In AS 23.30.175, "resides" means abides, dwells, inhabits, or lives. In applying the term to the facts of a specific case, the inquiry will be directed largely toward determining with what jurisdiction’s economy the employee must contend.
Therefore, "residence” does not mean "domicile" (presence plus intent to remain); the benefits of recipients domiciled outside of Alaska but living in Alaska are not reduced, whereas the benefits of recipients who are domiciled in Alaska but living outside of Alaska are reduced.

. The Autumn 1981 Urban Family Budget, released April 16, 1982, by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, states:
This is the last release of four-person family budget data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics eliminated the program as part of the recent budget reduction. The expenditure data on which the budgets are based are now 20 years old. Continuation of the program would have required revision of concepts and expenditure data and extensive price collection, for which funding was not available.

. For example, under the hypothetical statute, the maximum amount Brown would receive is 1154.00 per week (using the California rates); the amount he received under section 175(d) was $211.91 per week.