Court Opinion

ID: 9425432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:40.226531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.504248
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.*
The Court in these two cases holds that an alien is not really different from a citizen, and that any legislative classification on the basis of alienage is “inherently suspect”. The Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of which the Court interprets as invalidating the state legislation here involved, contains no language concerning “inherently suspect classifications,” or, for that matter, merely “suspect classifications.” The principal purpose of those who drafted and adopted the Amendment was to prohibit the States from invidiously discriminating by reason of race, Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36 (1873), and, because of this plainly manifested intent, classifications based on race have rightly been held “suspect” under the Amendment. But there is no language used in the Amendment, or any *650historical evidence as to the intent of the Framers, which would suggest to the slightest degree that it was intended to render alienage a “suspect” classification, that it was designed in any way to protect “discrete and insular minorities” other than racial minorities, or that it would in any way justify the result reached by the Court in these two cases.
Two factual considerations deserve more emphasis than accorded by the Court’s opinions. First, the records in Nos. 71-1222 and 71-1336 contain no indication that the aliens suffered any disability that precluded them, either as a group or individually, from applying for and being granted the status of naturalized citizens. The appellees in No. 71-1222, as far as the record discloses, took no steps to obtain citizenship or indicate any affirmative desire to become citizens. In No. 71-1336, appellant was eligible for naturalization but “elected to remain a citizen of the Netherlands,” 162 Conn. 249, 260, 294 A. 2d 281, 282, and deliberately chose not to file a declaration of intent under 8 U. S. C. §§ 1427 (f), 1430 (a). The “status” of these individuals was not, therefore, one with which they were forever encumbered; they could take steps to alter it when and if they chose.1
Second, the appellees in No. 71-1222 all sought to be employees of administrative agencies of the New York City government. Of the 20 members of the class repre*651sented by the named appellees, three were typists, one a “senior clerk,” two “human resources technicians,” three “senior human resources technicians,” six “human resource specialists,” three “senior human resources specialists,” and two “supervising human resource specialists.” The record does not reveal what functions are performed by these civil servants, although appellee Dougall apparently was the chief administrator of a program; the remaining appellees were all employees of the New York City Human Resources Administration, the governmental body with numerous employees which administers many types of social welfare programs, spending a great deal of money and dealing constantly with the public and other arms of the federal, state, and local governments.
I
The Court, by holding in these cases and in Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971), that a citizen-alien classification is “suspect” in the eyes of our Constitution, fails to mention, let alone rationalize, the fact that the Constitution itself recognizes a basic difference between citizens and aliens. That distinction is constitutionally important in no less than 11 instances in a political document noted for its brevity. Representatives, U. S. Const. Art. I, § 2, cl. 2, and Senators, Art. I, § 3, cl. 3, must be citizens. Congress has the authority “[t]o establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” by which aliens can become citizen members of our society, Art. I, § 8, cl. 4; the judicial authority of the federal courts extends to suits involving citizens of the United States “and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects,” Art. Ill, § 2, cl. 1, because somehow the parties are “different,” a distinction further made by the Eleventh Amendment; the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments are relevant only to “citizens.” The President must not only be a citizen but “a natural born *652Citizen,” Art. II, § 1, cl. 5. One might speculate what meaning Art. IV, § 2, cl. 1, has today.
Not only do the numerous classifications on the basis of citizenship that are set forth in the Constitution cut against both the analysis used and the results reached by the Court in these cases; the very Amendment which the Court reads to prohibit classifications based on citizenship establishes the very distinction which the Court now condemns as “suspect.” The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In constitutionally defining who is a citizen of the United States, Congress obviously thought it was doing something, and something important. Citizenship meant something, a status in and relationship with a society which is continuing and more basic than mere presence or residence. The language of that Amendment carefully distinguishes between “persons” who, whether by birth or naturalization, had achieved a certain status, and “persons” in general. That a “citizen” was considered by Congress to be a rationally distinct subclass of all “persons” is obvious from the language of the Amendment.
It is unnecessary to venture into a detailed discussion of what Congress intended by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The paramount reason was to amend the Constitution so as to overrule explicitly the Dred Scott decision. Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857). Our decisions construing “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” are not irrelevant to the question now before the Court, insofar as they recognize that there are attributes peculiar to *653the status of federal citizenship. See, e. g., Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall., at 79; United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542 (1876); Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651 (1884); Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S. 47 (1891); Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263 (1892); In re Quarles, 158 U. S. 532 (1895). Cf. Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35 (1868). Decisions of this Court holding that an alien is a “person” within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment are simply irrelevant to the question of whether that Amendment prohibits legislative classifications based upon this particular status. Since that Amendment by its own terms first defined those who had the status as a lesser included class of all “persons,” the Court's failure to articulate why such classifications under the same Amendment are now forbidden serves only to illuminate the absence of any constitutional foundation for these instant decisions.
This Court has held time and again that legislative classifications on the basis of citizenship were subject to the rational-basis test of equal protection, and that the justifications then advanced for the legislation were rational. See Clarke v. Deckebach, 274 U. S. 392 (1927); Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U. S. 197 (1923); Porterfield v. Webb, 263 U. S. 225 (1923); Webb v. O’Brien, 263 U. S. 313 (1923); Frick v. Webb, 263 U. S. 326 (1923); Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138 (1914); Blythe v. Hinckley, 180 U. S. 333 (1901); Hauenstein v. Lynham, 100 U. S. 483 (1880).
This Court explicitly held that it was not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause for a State by statute to limit employment on public projects to citizens. Heim v. McCall, 239 U. S. 175 (1915); Crane v. New York, 239 U. S. 195 (1915). Even if the Court now considers that the justifications for those enactments are *654“not controlling,” those decisions clearly hold that the rational-basis test applies.
To reject the methodological approach of these decisions, the Court now relies in part on the decisions in Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33 (1915), and Takahashi v. Fish Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410 (1948). In Truax, supra, the Court invalidated a state statute which prohibited employers of more than five persons from employing more than 20% noncitizens. The law was applicable to all businesses. In holding that the law was invalid under the Equal Protection Clause, the Court took pains to explain that the decision was not meant to disturb prior holdings, 239 U. S., at 39, and specifically noted that “it should be added that the act is not limited to persons who are engaged on public work or receive the benefit of public moneys.” Id., at 40. Indeed, Heim and Crane were decided after Truax, as was Clarke, which held that a State could constitutionally prohibit aliens from engaging in certain types of businesses. If anything, Truax was limited by these later decisions.
Takahashi, supra, involved a statute which prohibited aliens “ineligible for citizenship” under federal law from receiving commercial fishing licenses. A State whose classification on the basis of race would have been legitimately “suspect” under the Fourteenth Amendment was in effect using Congress' power to classify in granting or withholding citizenship. The Court did not countenance this attempt at discrimination on the basis of race “by incorporation.” Two features of that law should be noted. First, the statutory classification was not one involving citizens and aliens; it classified citizens and those resident aliens eligible for citizenship into one group, and resident aliens ineligible for citizenship into another. No reason for discriminating among resident aliens is apparent. Second, and most impor*655tant, is the fact that, although the Court properly refused to inquire into the legislative motive, the overwhelming effect of the law was to bar resident aliens of Japanese ancestry from procuring fishing licenses. The Court was not blind to this fact, or to history. See 334 U. S., at 412 n. 1, 413. The state statute that classifies aliens on the basis of country of origin is much more likely to classify on the basis of race, and thus conflict with the core purpose of the Equal Protection Clause, than a statute that, as here, merely distinguishes between alienage as such and citizenship as such. Takahashi did not, however, overrule previous decisions, and certainly announced no “suspect classification” rule with regard to citizen-alien classifications. To say that it did evades rather than confronts precedent.
The third, and apparently paramount, “decision” upon which the Court relied in Graham, and which is merely quoted in the instant decisions, is a footnote from United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144 (1938), a case involving a federal statute prohibiting the interstate shipment of filled milk. That footnote discussed the presumption of constitutionality of statutes and stated:
“Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statutes directed at particular religious, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, or national, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390; Bartels v. Iowa, 262 U. S. 404; Farrington v. Tokushige, 273 U. S. 284, or racial minorities, Nixon v. Herndon, [273 U. S. 536]; Nixon v. Condon, [286 U. S. 73]; whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a *656correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry.” Id., at 152-153, n. 4.
On the “authority” of this footnote, which only four Members of the Court in Carolene Products joined, the Court in Graham merely stated that “classifications based on alienage . . . are inherently suspect” because “[a]liens as a class are a prime example of a ‘discrete and insular’ minority ... for whom such heightened judicial solicitude is appropriate.” 403 U. S., at 372.
As Mr. Justice Frankfurter so aptly observed:
“A footnote hardly seems to be an appropriate way of announcing a new constitutional doctrine, and the Carolene footnote did not purport to announce any new doctrine . . . .” Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U. S. 77, 90-91 (1949) (concurring opinion).
Even if that judicial approach were accepted, however, the Court is conspicuously silent as to why that “doctrine” should apply to these cases.
The footnote itself did not refer to “searching judicial inquiry” when a classification is based on alienage, perhaps because there was a long line of authority holding such classifications entirely consonant with the Fourteenth Amendment. The “national” category mentioned involved legislative attempts to prohibit education in languages other than English, which attempts were held unconstitutional as a deprivation of “liberty” within the meaning of the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments. These cases do not mention a “citizen-alien” distinction, nor do they support a reasoning that “nationality" is the same as “alienage.”
The mere recitation of the words “insular and discrete minority” is hardly a constitutional reason for prohibiting state legislative classifications such as are involved here, and is not necessarily consistent with the theory *657propounded in that footnote. The approach taken in Graham and these cases appears to be that whenever the Court feels that a societal group is “discrete and insular,” it has the constitutional mandate to prohibit legislation that somehow treats the group differently from some other group.
Our society, consisting of over 200 million individuals of multitudinous origins, customs, tongues, beliefs, and cultures is, to say the least, diverse. It would hardly take extraordinary ingenuity for a lawyer to find “insular and discrete” minorities at every turn in the road. Yet, unless the Court can precisely define and constitutionally justify both the terms and analysis it uses, these decisions today stand for the proposition that the Court can choose a “minority” it “feels” deserves “solicitude” and thereafter prohibit the States from classifying that “minority” differently from the “majority.” I cannot find, and the Court does not cite, any- constitutional authority for such a “ward of the Court” approach to equal protection.
The only other apparent rationale for the invocation of the “suspect classification” approach in these cases is that alienage is a “status,” and the Court does not feel it “appropriate” to classify on that basis.’ This rationale would appear to be similar to that utilized in Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164 (1972), in which the Court cited, without discussion, Graham. Id., at 176 n. 14. But there is a marked difference between a status or condition such as illegitimacy, national origin, or race, which cannot be altered by an individual and the “status” of the appellant in No. 71-1336 or of the appellees in No. 71-1222. There is nothing in the record indicating that their status as aliens cannot be changed by their affirmative acts.
*658II
In my view, the proper judicial inquiry is whether any rational justification exists for prohibiting aliens from employment in the competitive civil service and from admission to a state bar.
“State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality. A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.” McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 425-426 (1961).
Before discussing this question, a preliminary reflection on the Court’s opinions is warranted. Perhaps the portions of the opinions that would most disturb native-born citizens and especially naturalized citizens who have worked diligently to learn about our history, mores, and political institutions and who have successfully completed the rigorous process of naturalization, is the intimation, if not statement, that they are really not any different from aliens. The Court concludes that, because aliens residing in our country must pay taxes and some of them (but not appellant in No. 71-1336) might at one time have been subject to service in the Armed Forces, the two “groups” are indistinguishable for purposes of equal protection analysis. Compulsory military service has been ended by Congress.2 Given the ubiquity *659of taxes in our present society, it is, in my opinion, totally unconvincing to attribute to their payment the leveling significance indicated by the Court. Is an alien who, after arriving from abroad in New York City, immediately purchases a pack of cigarettes, thereby paying federal, state, and city taxes, really no different from a citizen?
The opinion of the Court in No. 71-1222 would appear to answer this question in the negative, but it then proceeds to state that there is a difference between aliens and citizens for purposes of participation and service in the political arenas. Unless the Court means that citizenship only has meaning in a political context, the analytical approach of the Court is less than clear, hardly convincing, and curiously conflicts with the high nonpolitical value that the Court has heretofore ascribed to citizenship. If citizenship is not “special,” the Court has wasted a great deal of effort in the past. Cf. Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U. S. 253 (1967); Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86 (1958).
These statutes do not classify on the basis of country of origin; the distinctions are not between native Americans and “foreigners,” but between citizens and aliens. The process of naturalization was specifically designed by Congress to require a foreign national to demonstrate that he or she is familiar with the history, traditions, and institutions of our society in a way that a native-born citizen would learn from formal education and basic social contact. Congress specifically provided that an alien seeking citizenship status must demonstrate “an understanding of the English language” and “a knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the history, and of the principles and form of government, of the United *660States.” 8 U. S. C. § 1423. The purpose was to make the alien establish that he or she understood, and could be integrated into, our social system.
“Through the system of citizenship classes sponsored by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the local school system, the alien is aided in preparing himself for citizenship, and every effort is made to give him fundamental and uniform knowledge of our political and social structure. In order that he may intelligently use this fundamental and uniform knowledge and so that he may be a complete and thoroughly integrated member of our American society, the committee [House Judiciary Committee] feels that he should have a basic knowledge of the common language of the country and be able to read, write, and speak it with reasonable facility.” H. R. Rep. No. 1365, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 78 (1952) (emphasis added).
See also 8 U. S. C. § 1424, which precludes aliens who manifest certain opposition to our society or form of government from being naturalized. An alien must demonstrate “good moral character,” 8 U. S. C. § 1427 (a)(3), which was intended by Congress to mean a broad “attach [ment] to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and [disposition] to the good order and happiness of the United States.” H. R. Rep. No. 1365, supra, at 80. See also 8 CFR § 332b (1973), detailing the cooperation between the Immigration and Naturalization Service and local schools conducting citizenship education for applicants for naturalization. The above is sufficient to demonstrate, I believe, that Congress provided that aliens seeking citizenship status prove what citizens by birth are, as a class, presumed to understand: a basic familiarity with our social and political mores and institutions. The naturalized citizen has dem*661onstrated both the willingness and ability to integrate into our social system as a whole, not just into our “political community,” as the Court apparently uses the term. He proved that he has become “like” a native-born citizen in ways that aliens, as a class, could be presumed not to be. The Court simply ignores the purpose of the process of assimilation into and dedication to our society that Congress prescribed to make aliens “like” citizens.
In No. 71-1222,1 do not believe' that it is irrational for New York to require this class of civil servants to be citizens, either natural born or naturalized. The proliferation of public administration that our society has witnessed in recent years, as a result of the regulation of conduct and the dispensation of services and funds, has vested a great deal of de facto decisionmaking or policy-making authority in the hands of employees who would not be considered the textbook equivalent of policymakers of the legislative or “top” administrative variety. Nevertheless, as far as the private individual who must seek approval or services is concerned, many of these “low level” civil servants are in fact policymakers. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254 (1970), implicitly recognized that those who apply facts to individual cases are as much “governors” as those who write the laws or regulations the “low-level” administrator must “apply.” Since policymaking for a political community is not necessarily the exclusive preserve of the legislators, judges, and “top” administrators, it is not irrational for New York to provide that only citizens should be admitted to the competitive civil service.
But the justification of efficient government is an even more convincing rationale. Native-born citizens can be expected to be familiar with the social and political institutions of our society; with the society and political mores that affect how we react and interact *662with other citizens. Naturalized citizens have also demonstrated their willingness to adjust to our patterns of living and attitudes, and have demonstrated a basic understanding of our institutions, system of government, history, and traditions. It is not irrational to assume that aliens as a class are not familiar with how we as individuals treat others and how we expect “government” to treat us. An alien who grew up in a country in which political mores do not reject bribery or self-dealing to the same extent that our culture does; in which an imperious bureaucracy historically adopted a complacent or contemptuous attitude toward those it was supposed to serve ; in which fewer if any checks existed on administrative abuses; in which “low-level” civil servants serve at the will of their superiors — could rationally be thought not to be able to deal with the public and with citizen civil servants with the same rapport that one familiar with our political and social mores would, or to approach his duties with the attitude that such positions exist for service, not personal sinecures of either the civil servant or his or her superior. These considerations could rationally be expected to influence how an administrator in charge of a program, such as appellee Dougall, made decisions in allocating funds, hiring or dealing with personnel, or decisionmaking, or how a lower level civil servant, such as appellee Jorge, was able to perform with and for fellow workers and superiors, even if she had no direct contact with the public. All these factors could materially affect the efficient functioning of the city government, and possibly as well the very integrity of that government. Such a legislative purpose is clearly not irrational.
In No. 71-1336 the answer is not as clearcut. The States traditionally have had great latitude in prescribing rules and regulations concerning technical competence and character fitness, governing those who seek to be ad*663mitted to practice law. See, e. g., Konigsberg v. State Bar of California, 366 U. S. 36 (1961). The importance of lawyers and the judiciary in our system of government and justice needs no extended comment. An attorney is an "officer of the court” in Connecticut, a status this Court has also recognized. See, e. g., Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 73 (1932); Ex parte Garland, 4 Wall. 333, 370 (1867). He represents his client, but also, in Connecticut, may “sign writs and subpoenas, take recognizances, [and] administer oaths.” Conn. Gen. Stat. Rev. § 51-85.
More important than these emoluments of their position, though, is the tremendous responsibility and trust that our society places in the hands of lawyers. The liberty and property of the client may depend upon the competence and fidelity of the representation afforded by the lawyer in any number of particular lawsuits. But by virtue of their office lawyers are also given, and have increasingly undertaken to exercise, authority to seek to alter some of the social relationships and institutions of our society by use of the judicial process. No doubt an alien even under today’s decision may be required to be learned in the law and familiar with the language spoken in the courts of the particular State involved. But Connecticut’s requirement of citizenship reflects its judgment that something more than technical skills are needed to be a lawyer under our system. I do not believe it is irrational for a State that makes that judgment to require that lawyers have an understanding of the American political and social experience, whether gained from growing up in this country, as in the case of a native-born citizen, or from the naturalization process, as in the case of a foreign-born citizen. I suppose the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee could itself administer tests in American history, government, and so*664ciology, but the State did not choose to go this route. Instead, it chose to operate on the assumption that citizens as a class might reasonably be thought to have a significantly greater degree of understanding of our experience than would aliens. Particularly in the case of one such as appellant, who candidly admits that she wants to live and work in the United States but does not want to sever her fundamental social and political relationship with the country of her birth, I do not believe the State's judgment is irrational.
I would therefore reverse the judgment in No. 71-1222 and affirm that in No. 71-1336.

This opinion applies also to No. 71-1336, In re Griffiths, post, p. 717.

 Although some of the members of the class had not been residents of the United States for five years at the time the complaint was filed, and therefore were ineligible to apply immediately for citizenship, 8 U. S. C. § 1427, there is no indication that these members, assuming that they are in the same “class” as the named ap-pellees, would be prohibited from seeking citizenship status after they had resided in this country for the required period. In any event, this circumstance only underscores the fact that it is not unreasonable to assume that they have not learned about and adapted to our mores and institutions to the same extent as one who had lived here for five years would have through social contact.

 Although stated in Graham and the instant eases that aliens are “like” citizens because they were subject to service in the Armed Services, none of the opinions considered in fact that Congress provided that aliens who in fact served honorably could expeditiously become citizens. 8 U. S. C. § 1440. The Court's reliance on the fact that some male aliens had to register for the draft and serve if called to suggest that aliens and citizens are “the same” neglects to consider this statute: aliens who served honorably were “like” citi*659zens in that they demonstrated, like citizens, a commitment to our society that Congress believed warranted, other considerations aside, their immediate, formal acceptance into our society.