Court Opinion

ID: 9791255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:08:13.733643+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:34.371547
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
I dissent from the opinion released by the majority today, entitled an “Addendum on Rehearing to this Court’s Original Opinion.” Before discussing the substantive aspects of the opinion, I would note that today’s opinion is somewhat unusual. Customarily, on rehearing, our practice has been to either affirm our original opinion or withdraw it and issue a new one in its stead. Today, the majority both affirms our initial opinion and offers a new opinion that seems to supplement, and perhaps, modify our original opinion. In light of today’s opinion, I too continue to adhere to the opinions expressed in my dissent to the original opinion in this matter, but would also supplement that dissent by responding to the majority opinion today.
The majority opinion quotes from Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 101 S.Ct. 715, 66 L.Ed.2d 659 (1981), and then states that:
In Clover Leaf, the Supreme Court held the evidence was conflicting and properly resolved the conflict in favor of upholding the constitutionality of the Minnesota statute. In the case before us, however, we find no conflicting evidence. In fact, as stated in this Court’s original opinion, we are cited to and find no legislative statement of policy or public purpose nor explanation or justification for such legislative distinction. (Emphasis added.)
This statement reveals the error in the Court’s reasoning and ultimate conclusion in today’s case.
First, as to the statement that “we find no conflicting evidence,” that is quite true. However, the reason there is no evidence, or record explaining the legislature’s actions, is because this case came to us on appeal from the Industrial Commission, which had no authority to hold unconstitutional an act of the Idaho legislature. Lynn v. Kootenai County Fire Protection Dist., 97 Idaho 623, 624, 550 P.2d 126, 127 (1976); Wanke v. Ziebarth Constr. Co., 69 Idaho 64, 75, 202 P.2d 384, 391 (1949). Accordingly, the constitutional issue was not raised before the Industrial Commission and, not having been raised, it was not tried and no evidence was put on by the State. As Justice Huntley noted in his dissent to the original opinion:
The Industrial Commission took no evidence on the issue because it has been of the belief that it did not have the power to pass upon constitutional matters. Therefore, had the Department offered testimony in support of a “rational basis,” the Commission would properly have excluded the evidence as being irrel*1008evant as to any issue before the Commission.
It is unfair for this Court to rule on a constitutional question on appeal, and condemn the State for not making a record of any legislative statement of policy or purpose, or explain and justify a legislative distinction, when no such record could or should have been made.
Second, as to the majority’s statement that “we are cited to and find no legislative statement of policy or public purpose nor explanation or justification for such legislative distinction,” the majority plainly indicates its belief — erroneously, I believe— that the State had the burden of “citing to” a “legislative statement of policy or public purpose” and explaining and justifying the “legislative distinction.” This was the cardinal error of the Court’s original opinion and it carries over into the opinion today. The burden of explaining and justifying the rationality of the legislative classification is not the burden of the State. There is no requirement that the State offer any evidence or explanation upholding the rationality of this statute. In the United States Supreme Court case of Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 99 S.Ct. 939, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979), the Court repeatedly stressed that, while there were facts that supported the government’s claims that the statute was rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, it was not the responsibility of the government to justify the classification and that the lower courts had erred when they refused to accept a hypothetical rational basis for sustaining the statute at issue. As the majority in Vance stated:
In an equal protection case of this type, however, those challenging the legislative judgment must convince the court that the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decision maker.
440 U.S. at 111, 99 S.Ct. at 949. The principle articulated in Vance has been reaffirmed on numerous occasions by the United States Supreme Court and been followed by this Court as well. See, e.g., Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 101 S.Ct. 715, 66 L.Ed.2d 659 (1981) (“States are not required to convince the courts of the correctness of their legislative judgments.”); Massachusetts Bd. of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 96 S.Ct. 2562, 49 L.Ed.2d 520 (1976) (governmental classifications presumed valid and party challenging statute must overcome that presumption); Tarbox v. Tax Comm’n, 107 Idaho 957, 695 P.2d 342 (1985); Standlee v. State, 96 Idaho 849, 538 P.2d 778 (1975) (party challenging the statute must overcome the presumption in favor of constitutionality and clearly show the invalidity of the statute); Leonardson v. Moon, 92 Idaho 796, 451 P.2d 542 (1969).
Under these and numerous other cases, it is clear that it was the respondent’s burden of demonstrating that there could have been no conceivable facts to justify the classification made by the legislature. Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 101 S.Ct. 715, 66 L.Ed.2d 659 (1981). This the appellant has failed to do, and the majority errs when it relieves appellant of that burden and requires the State to justify and explain the rationality of the classification.
The majority should have upheld this statute even in the absence of evidence or explanation in the record because we are required to uphold a statutory classification if any rational basis can be hypothesized for upholding the statute. As noted by the United States Supreme Court in Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970), “A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.” Of course one can certainly hypothesize facts and reasons that the legislature could have believed when enacting the present statute. As mentioned in my dissent to the original opinion, the legislature could have had before it testimony or other information that “there was a high degree of unemployment in the agent-driver or commission-driver business involving food or dry cleaning products. That would certainly be a rational basis for the legislature creating the exception from the general rule of non-liability for taxation for services performed *1009by independent contractors engaged in an independently established trade or business.” Consequently, the majority opinion errs when it declares the present statute to be unconstitutional.