Court Opinion

ID: 9425340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:25.606805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.850257
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Douglas join, dissenting.
The Court's opinion relegates to the limbo of unconstitutionality a Connecticut law that requires higher tuition from those who come from out of State to attend its state universities than from those who come from within the State. The opinion accomplishes this result by a highly theoretical analysis that relies heavily on notions of substantive due process that have been authoritatively repudiated by subsequent decisions of the Court. *464Believing as I do that the Connecticut statutory scheme is a constitutionally permissible means of dealing with an increasingly acute problem facing state systems of higher education, I dissent.
This country's system of higher education presently faces a serious crisis, produced in part by escalating costs of furnishing educational services and in part by sharply increased demands for those services. Because state systems have available to them state financial resources that are not available to private institutions, they may find it relatively easier to grapple with the financial aspect of this crisis. But for this very reason, States have generally felt that state resources should be devoted, at least in large part, to the education of children of the State’s own residents, and that those who come from elsewhere to attend a state university should have to make a more substantial contribution toward the full costs of the education they would receive than the all but nominal tuition required of those who come from within the State.
One way to accomplish such a differentiation would be to make the tuition differential turn on whether or not the student was a “resident” or “nonresident” of the State at the time tuition is paid. The Court, at least by implication, concedes that such a differentiation would violate no command of the Constitution, but even a casual examination of how such a plan would operate indicates why it did not commend itself to the Connecticut Legislature. The very act of enrolling in a Connecticut university with the intention of completing a program of studies leading to a degree necessitates the physical presence of the student in the State of Connecticut. Additional indicia of residency, by which the Court apparently sets great store — obtaining a Connecticut motor vehicle registration or driver’s license, registering to vote in Connecticut — impose no significant burden *465on the out-of-state student in comparison with the thousands of dollars he will save in tuition and fees during the pursuit of a four-year course in undergraduate studies. Thus, what the Court concedes to the States in the way of distinguishing between resident and nonresident students, while perhaps a valuable bit of authority in issuing fishing and hunting licenses, is all but useless in making students who come from out of State pay even a portion of their fair share of the cost of the education that they seek to receive in Connecticut state universities.
The system to which Connecticut has turned is one that limits the virtually complete subsidy that is afforded to those who pay in-state tuition to those who resided in Connecticut at the time of applying for admission, and whose residence in Connecticut did not result from their desire to attend the state universities. Some such plan must be devised by any State that wishes to differentiate between those who have paid taxes to the State over a period of years in order to support the university, and those who have simply come to the State in order to attend the university. Since institutions of higher learning are not built in a year or in a decade, such a distinction strikes me as entirely rational, and I do not understand the Court to hold otherwise.
Understandably, any such general principle will have a number of specific applications, and just as understandably a capable lawyer will be able to focus on one or more of these specific applications that appear to diverge from the principle that the State is attempting to enforce. The Court’s opinion deals with the situation of the particular litigants here involved, doubtless chosen with an eye to illustrating the Connecticut system at its worst, and with still other hypothetical examples upon which it expatiates during the course of its opinion. But the fact that a generally valid rule may *466have rough edges around its perimeter does not make it unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
“[T]he law need’ not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it.” Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 487-488 (1955).
Throughout the Court's opinion are found references to the “irrebuttable” presumption as to residency created by the Connecticut statutes. But a fair reading of these laws indicates that Connecticut has not chosen to define eligibility for a state-subsidized education in terms of “residency” at the moment that the applicant seeks admission to the university system, but instead has insisted that the applicant have some prior connection with the State of Connecticut independent of the desire to attend a state-supported university. Thus, it would not satisfy Connecticut's goals in seeking to subsidize the education of Connecticut’s young people in Connecticut state universities to impose a classic residency test as of the moment of entry into the system of higher education. All students, and not only those with substantial Connecticut connections, will be present in Connecticut on this date, and those who have been astute enough to consult counsel will have obtained Connecticut drivers’ licenses, registered their cars in Connecticut, and registered to vote in Connecticut.
Meaningful differentiation between children of families who have supported the state educational system by payment of taxes to the State of Connecticut, and children from families who have not done this, would be impossible if the test were residency as of the date of *467admission, or the date on which tuition is due, at least as the Court enunciates such a test. But this is not what Connecticut tried to do, and, as I read the Court’s opinion, Connecticut is not limited to the imposition of such an easily circumvented test. For the Court reaffirms Starns v. Malkerson, 326 F. Supp. 234 (Minn. 1970), aff’d, 401 U. S. 986 (1971), in which the State of Minnesota had by regulation provided that no student could qualify as a resident for tuition purposes unless he had been a bona fide domiciliary of the State for at least a year immediately prior thereto. A regulation such as Minnesota’s enables the State partially to maintain the distinction that Connecticut has sought to protect here. The Court indicates that the critical distinction between the Minnesota regulation and the Connecticut statute is that the Minnesota regulation operated to fix nonresidency only for the first year of attendance at the university. But this supposed distinction merely highlights the error in the Court’s approach to this entire problem. Minnesota was no more concerned during the first year than is Connecticut with “residency” as that term is used in other legal contexts. One who had his vehicle licensed in Minnesota, obtained a Minnesota driver’s license, and registered to vote in Minnesota could make the same attack on the “irrebutta-ble” presumption of residency involved in Starns as these appellees do on the Connecticut statute. The Court’s response is that while Minnesota’s fixing of residency as of a date prior to application endured for only one year, Connecticut’s endures for four years. This is admittedly a factual difference, but one may read the Court’s opinion in vain to ascertain why it is a difference of constitutional significance.
The majority’s reliance on cases such as Heiner v. Donnan, 285 U. S. 312 (1932), harks back to a day when the principles of substantive due process had reached *468their zenith in this Court. Later and sounder cases thoroughly repudiated these principles in large part. Ten years ago, the Court reviewed these doctrines in Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 730 (1963), and made the following observation:
“The doctrine that prevailed in Lochner, Goppage, Adkins, Burns, and like cases — that due process authorizes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe the legislature has acted unwisely — has long since been discarded. We have returned to the original constitutional proposition that courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws. As this Court stated in a unanimous opinion in 1941, ‘We are not concerned . . . with the wisdom, need, or appropriateness of the legislation/ ”
The Court’s highly abstract and theoretical analysis of this practical problem leads to a conclusion that is contrary to the teaching of Ferguson, supra.
The typical 18-year-old entering college as a freshman, doubtless typifying the largest group of entering students in Connecticut as elsewhere, has in most cases made little or no contribution by way of tax payment to the cost of his public higher education whether it be in Connecticut or elsewhere. More likely it is his parents, themselves long past college age, who have supported the state universities over a period of years with the thought that they would eventually realize some return from this involuntary investment in the form of in-state tuition for their own children who sought to attend a state university. The State of Connecticut has sought to allow this hope to be realized through the distinction that it has made between those who are to pay nominal tuition and those who are to pay the more substantial *469out-of-state tuition. To the extent that today’s decision requires students with no previous connection with the State of Connecticut to be admitted to that State’s university system as in-state students, upon obtaining a driver’s license and registering to vote, it means that longtime Connecticut residents will not only continue to support the state university system, but that they will be required to support it in increased measure in order to help subsidize the education of nonresidents. The Court’s invalidation of the Connecticut plan is quite inconsistent with doctrines of substantive due process that have obtained in this Court for at least a decade, and to which I would continue to adhere.