Court Opinion

ID: 9431239
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:44.629137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.614235
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom
Justice Brennan and Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
The Court today declares that it has “little trouble” in concluding that Congress’ denial of food stamps to the households of striking workers is rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective. Ante, at 371. The ease with which the Court reaches this conclusion is reflected in the brevity of its Fifth Amendment analysis: the Court gives short shrift to appellees’ equal protection challenge to the striker amendment even though this argument was the centerpiece of appellees’ case in their briefs and at oral argument. I believe that the Court’s dismissive approach has caused it to fail to register the full force of appellees’ claim. After canvassing the many absurdities that afflict the striker amendment, I conclude that it fails to pass constitutional muster under even the most deferential scrutiny. I therefore would affirm the judgment below.
I
The thrust of appellees’ equal protection challenge is that the striker amendment to the Food Stamp Act — § 109 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, codified at 7 U. S. C. § 2015(d)(3) — singles them out for special punitive *375treatment without reasonable justification. As the Court observes, this Fifth Amendment challenge to an allegedly arbitrary legislative classification implicates our least intrusive standard of review — the so-called “rational basis” test, which requires that legislative classifications be “ ‘rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest.’ ”1 Ante, at 370, quoting Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 533 (1973). The Court fails to note, however, that this standard of, review, although deferential, “‘is not a toothless one.’” Mathews v. De Castro, 429 U. S. 181, 185 (1976), quoting Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S. 495, 510 (1976). The rational-basis test contains two substantive limitations on legislative choice: legislative enactments must implicate legitimate goals, and the means chosen by the legislature must bear a rational relationship to those goals. In an alternative formulation, the Court has explained that these limitations amount to a prescription that “all persons similarly situated should be treated alike.” Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 439 (1985); see Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 216 (1982); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 76 (1971).
In recent years, the Court has struck down a variety of legislative enactments using the rational-basis test. In some cases, the Court found that the legislature’s goal was not legitimate. See, e. g., Hooper v. Bernalillo County Assessor, 472 U. S. 612 (1985); Zobel v. Williams, 457 U. S. 55 (1982). In other cases, the Court found that the classification employed by the legislature did not rationally further the legislature’s goal. See, e. g., Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56 (1972); Reed v. Reed, supra, at 76-77. In addition, the Court on occasion has combined these two approaches, in essence concluding that the lack of a rational relationship be*376tween the legislative classification and the purported legislative goal suggests that the true goal is illegitimate. See, e. g., Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra, at 450; Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, supra, at 534. The Court’s failure today to take seriously appellees’ challenge or to address systematically the irrationalities they identify in the striker amendment is difficult to reconcile with these precedents.
The Secretary asserts that the striker amendment is rationally related to three legitimate governmental goals. First, the Secretary points out that denying food stamps to households containing a striker will reduce federal expenditures. Second, the Secretary contends that the striker amendment channels limited public funds to the most needy. Finally, the Secretary maintains that the striker amendment fosters governmental neutrality in private labor disputes. Although the asserted goals are legitimate, it is difficult to discern a rational relationship between them and the striker amendment. The arguments of the Secretary and the Court seeking to establish such a relationship are fraught with pervasive inconsistencies.
A
The Secretary’s argument that the striker amendment will save money proves far too much. According to the Secretary’s reasoning, the exclusion of any unpopular group from a public benefit program would survive rational-basis scrutiny, because exclusion always would result in a decrease in governmental expenditures. Although it is true, as the Court observes, that preserving the fiscal integrity of the Government “‘is a legitimate concern of the State,’” ante, at 373, quoting Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory, 431 U. S. 471, 493 (1977), this Court expressly has noted that “a concern for the preservation of resources standing alone can hardly.justify the classification used in allocating those resources.” Plyler v. Doe, supra, at 227. We have insisted that such classifications themselves be rational rather than *377arbitrary. See Reed v. Reed, supra, at 76; Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 633 (1968). Our cases thus make clear that something more than an invocation of the public fisc is necessary to demonstrate the rationality of selecting strikers, rather than some other group, to suffer the burden of cost-cutting legislation.2
B
Perhaps recognizing this necessity, the Secretary defends the singling out of strikers and their households as rationally related to the goal of channeling resources to those persons most “‘genuinely in need.’” Brief for Appellant 17, quoting 119 Cong. Rec. 24929 (1973) (remarks of Rep. Young). As a threshold matter, however, households denied food stamps because of the presence of a striker are as “needy” in terms of financial resources as households that qualify for food stamps: the former are denied food stamps despite the fact that they meet the financial eligibility requirements of 7 U. S. C. § 2014 (1982 ed. and Supp. IV), even after strike-fund payments are counted as household income. This point has particular poignancy for the infants and children of a striking worker. Their need for nourishment is in no logical way diminished by the striker’s action. The denial to these chil*378dren of what is often the only buffer between them and malnourishment and disease cannot be justified as a targeting of the most needy: they are the most needy. The record below bears witness to this point in a heartbreaking fashion.3
The Secretary argues, however, that the striker amendment is related to need at least in the sense of willingness to work, if not in the strict sense of financial eligibility. Because the Food Stamp Act generally excludes persons unwilling to work — and their households — the Secretary argues that it is consistent to exclude strikers and their households as well, on the ground that strikers remain “unwilling to work,” at least at the struck business, for the duration of the strike. In the Secretary’s eyes, a striker is akin to an unemployed worker who day after day refuses to accept available work. One flaw in this argument is its false factual premise. It is simply not true, as the Secretary argues, that a striker always has a job that “remains available to him.” Reply Memorandum for Appellant 4. Many strikes result in the complete cessation of a business’ operations, so that the decision of an individual striker to return to work would be unavailing. Moreover, many of the businesses that continue to operate during a strike hire permanent replacements for the striking workers. In this situation as well, a striker no longer has the option of returning to work. In fact, the record in this case reveals that a number of appellees were *379denied food stamps even though they had been permanently replaced by their employers.4
But even if it were true that strikers always can return to their jobs, the Secretary’s “willingness to work” rationale falls apart in light of the glaring disparity between the treatment of strikers and the treatment of those who are unwilling to work for other reasons. People who voluntarily quit their jobs are not disqualified from receiving food stamps if, after notice and a hearing, they can demonstrate that they quit with “good cause.” 7 CFR §§273.7(n)(1)(i), (vi) (1987).5 Moreover, even if the state agency determines that the quit was without good cause, the voluntary quitter is disqualified only for a period of 90 days, and the quitter’s household is disqualified only if the quitter was the “head of household.” §273.7(n)(1)(v). In contrast, a striker is given no opportunity to demonstrate that the strike was for “good cause,” even though strikers frequently allege that unfair labor practices by their employer precipitated the strike.6 In addition, strikers and their entire households, no matter how minimal the striker’s contribution to the household’s income may have been, are disqualified for the duration of the strike, even if the striker is permanently replaced or business operations temporarily cease.
*380In a similar vein, the striker amendment expressly distinguishes between strikers and nonstrikers in conditioning eligibility for food stamps on willingness to accept struck work. Unemployed workers may refuse to accept otherwise appropriate employment at a business involved in a strike or a lockout and still remain eligible to receive food stamps — as long as they are not themselves on strike. Only strikers, though they may be as “willing to work” in every salient respect, must give up their eligibility for food stamps if they refuse to cross a picket line.7 The Secretary’s “willingness to work” argument provides no justification for this especially harsh treatment of strikers and their households.
C
Unable to explain completely the striker amendment by the “willingness to work” rationale, the Secretary relies most heavily on yet a third rationale: the promotion of governmental neutrality in labor disputes. Indeed, the Court relies solely on this explanation in rejecting appellees’ equal protection challenge to the amendment. According to the Secretary and the Court, this last goal rationalizes the discrepancies in the treatment of strikers and voluntary quitters, and of strikers and nonstrikers unwilling to cross a picket line. As the Court explains it, excluding strikers from participation in the food stamp program avoids “undue favoritism to one side or the other in private labor disputes” by preventing *381governmental “‘subsidization’” of strikes. Ante, at 371, quoting S. Rep. No. 97-139, p. 62 (1981). The Court notes that we accepted a version of this governmental neutrality argument “in a related context” in Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory, 431 U. S. 471 (1977). See ante, at 372.
As a threshold matter, the Court’s reliance on Hodory to support the Secretary’s argument is misplaced. In Hodory, we upheld a statute that denied unemployment compensation benefits to workers who became unemployed as a result of a labor dispute other than a lockout. The Court reasoned that the denial was rationally related to the goal of maintaining governmental neutrality in labor disputes because the unemployment compensation at issue was partially funded by employer contributions. We recognized that “[t]he employer’s costs go up with every laid-off worker who is qualified to collect unemployment. The only way for the employer to stop these rising costs is to settle the strike so as to return the employees to work. Qualification for unemployment compensation thus acts as a lever increasing the pressures on an employer to settle a strike.” 431 U. S., at 492. The reasoning of Hodory is completely inapplicable to the food stamp context. Employer contributions form no part of food stamp benefits, which are funded instead by general public revenues; receipt of food stamps by strikers therefore places no special or coercive burden on the strikers’ employer.
More important, the “neutrality” argument on its merits is both deceptive and deeply flawed. Even on the most superficial level, the striker amendment does not treat the parties to a labor dispute evenhandedly: forepersons and other management employees who may become temporarily unemployed when a business ceases to operate during a strike remain eligible for food stamps. Management’s burden during the course of the dispute is thus lessened by the receipt of public funds, whereas labor must struggle unaided. This disparity cannot be justified by the argument that the strike is labor’s “fault,” because strikes are often a direct response *382to illegal practices by management, such as failure to abide by the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement or refusal to bargain in good faith.
On a deeper level, the “neutrality” argument reflects a profoundly inaccurate view of the relationship of the modern Federal Government to the various parties to a labor dispute. Both individuals and businesses are connected to the Government by a complex web of supports and incentives. On the one hand, individuals may be eligible to receive a wide variety of health, education, and welfare-related benefits. On the other hand, businesses may be eligible to receive a myriad of tax subsidies through deductions, depreciation, and credits, or direct subsidies in the form of Government loans through the Small Business Administration (SBA). Businesses also may receive lucrative Government contracts and invoke the protections of the Bankruptcy Act against their creditors. None of these governmental subsidies to businesses is made contingent on the businesses’ abstention from labor disputes, even if a labor dispute is the direct cause of the claim to a subsidy. For example, a small business in need of financial support because of labor troubles may seek a loan from the SBA. See 15 U. S. C. § 661 et seq. And a business that claims a net operating loss as a result of a strike or a lockout presumably may carry the loss back three years and forward five years in order to maximize its tax advantage. See 26 U. S. C. §§ 172, 381, 382. In addition, it appears that businesses may be eligible for special tax credits for hiring replacement workers during a strike under the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit program. See BNA Daily Labor Report No. 68, p. A-6 (April 10, 1987). When viewed against the network of governmental support of both labor and management, the withdrawal of the single support of food stamps — a support critical to the continued life and health of an individual worker and his or her family — cannot be seen as a “neutral” act. Altering the backdrop of gov*383ernmental support in this one-sided and devastating way-amounts to a penalty on strikers, riot neutrality.
D
In Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432 (1985), we concluded that the insubstantiality of each of the city’s asserted justifications for the ordinance at issue suggested that the ordinance in fact rested “on an irrational prejudice against the mentally retarded.” Id., at 450. The successive failure of each of the Secretary’s purported rationales for the striker amendment likewise suggests that the enactment at issue here rests on public animus toward strikers. This conclusion draws substantial support from the legislative history of the precursors of the 1981 amendment. Beginning in 1968, four years after the enactment of the Food Stamp Act, Congress considered at regular intervals proposals similar or identical to the striker amendment eventually passed in 198.1. Such proposals were considered and rejected in 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1977. Each time a proposal was discussed on the floor of the House, Representatives decried the “antiunion” and “antistrike” animus that motivated it.8 In 1977, the House *384Committee on Agriculture reviewed the history of such proposals and rejected the most recent one, explaining its decision as follows:
“The real purpose of the amendment . . . was not to restore some government neutrality allegedly lost because strikers are eligible for food stamps but, on the contrary, to use a denial of food stamps as a pressure on the worker — or more accurately on his family — to help break a strike.....
“The amendment was an effort to increase the power of management over workers, using food as a weapon in collective bargaining.” H. R. Rep. No. 95-464, p. 129 (1977).
I am mindful that the views expressed on the floor of the House and in the 1977 Committee Report were from those opposed to the striker amendment. But the evidence of animus is not limited to statements by the amendment’s opponents. Rather, supporters of the striker amendment likened strikers to “hippies” and “commune residents” — groups whose exclusion from the food stamp program this Court struck down 15 years ago in Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528 (1973).9 The exhortation by the sponsor of the 1971 version of the striker amendment to his colleagues to “say to strikers what we have said ... to hippies,” 117 Cong. Rec. 21673 (1971) (remarks of Rep. Michel), strongly suggests that the same sort of hostility informed the two amendments, although the striker amendment was not *385enácted into law until 1981.10 Our warning in Moreno that “a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest'’ 413 U. S., at 534, would seem directly applicable to the instant case. I find the Court’s refusal to heed that warning both inexplicable and ill considered.
II
I agree with the Court that “[i]t was no part of the purposes of the Food Stamp Act to establish a program that would serve as a weapon in labor disputes.” Ante, at 371. The striker amendment under consideration today, however, seems to have precisely that pur posé — one admittedly irreconcilable with the legitimate goals of the food stamp program. No other purpose can adequately explain the especially harsh treatment reserved for strikers and their families by the 1981 enactment. Because I conclude that the striker amendment cannot survive even rational-basis scrutiny, I would affirm the District Court’s invalidation of the amendment. I dissent.

 Because I conclude that the striker amendment fails the deferential rational-basis test, I see no need to address whether stricter scrutiny should apply to protect the First Amendment interests asserted by appellees, although I am unconvinced by the Court’s treatment of that issue as well.

 In addition, there is substantial reason to question the invocation of the public fisc in this case. Statistics available to Congress at the time of the enactment of the striker amendment indicated that strikers rarely met the financial eligibility requirements of the food stamp program and thus rarely participated in the program. A Government Accounting Office study found that in four out of five periods studied, 89 to 96 percent of strikers did not participate in the food stamp program. In the fifth period, which included the 1978 coal strike, 64 percent of strikers did not participate. 127 Cong. Rec. 12157 (1981) (remarks of Sen. Levin). The strikers who do participate in the food stamp program apparently account for only a very small percentage of total program outlays. Statistical information collected by the House Committee on Agriculture in 1975 indicated that households containing strikers accounted for only 0.2 to 0.3 percent of non-public-assistance households participating in the food stamp program. H. R. Rep. No. 95-464, p. 128 (1977).

 See Declaration of Donald A. Bivens, App. 8 (“My two younger children were sick a great deal during the period of the strike and I believe it was, in part, due to a lack of nourishment”); Declaration of Johnie B. Blake, id., at 11 (finding it “nearly impossible to get adequate food for [household of] seven people” during strike); Affidavit of Barm Combs, id., at 20 (“My daughter Jennifer Ann, who has serious kidney problems, was missing needed medical treatment and medication”); Declaration of Robert J. Shorb, Jr., id., at 47 (“[0]ur children were in danger of not having enough to eat. Therefore, we had to send them to live with their grandparents in New York State so that they would get enough nourishment”).

 See Declaration of Ray Westfall, id., at 51; Supplemental Declaration of Johnie B. Blake, id., at 14-15; Affidavit of Donald Gibson, id., at 34; Affidavit of Zola Higgins, id., at 37.

 “Good cause” as defined in the applicable regulations includes, inter alia, “[discrimination by an employer based on age, race, sex, color, handicap, religious beliefs, national origin or political beliefs,” 7 CFR § 273.7(n)(3)(i) (1987), “[w]ork demands or conditions that render continued employment unreasonable, such as working without being paid on schedule,” §273.7(n)(3)(ii), or work conditions under which “[t]he degree of risk to health and safety is unreasonable,” § 273.7(i)(2)(i), incorporated by reference in §273.7(n)(3)(vi).

 See, e. g., Affidavit of Zola Higgins, App. 36-37; Affidavit of Paul David Michel, id., at 39-40; Declaration of Ray Westfall, id., at 51-52.

 In addition, strikers may not become eligible for food stamps even if they demonstrate their “willingness to work” by registering for and accepting alternative interim employment. Indeed, the fact that strikers had been subject to the same work registration and acceptance requirements as all other food stamp applicants prior to the enactment of the striker amendment easts considerable doubt on the Secretary’s argument that the amendment’s purpose was to ensure that food stamp recipients are “willing to work.” Cf. Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 537 (1973) (existence of fraud provisions prior to the amendment denying food stamps to households containing unrelated persons “necessarily casts considerable doubt upon the proposition that the 1971 amendment could rationally have been intended to prevent those very same abuses”).

 See, e. g., 116 Cong. Rec. 42019 (1970) (decrying “the apparent anti-strike aspect” of the proposed amendment) (remarks of Rep. Conyers); 117 Cong. Rec. 21675 (1971) (“This amendment cannot be justified by any public good that could come of it; none can. It is at its base mean-spirited, vindictive and vengeful”) (remarks of Rep. Foley); 118 Cong. Rec. 23376 (1972) (“Those seeking to pass this amendment are simply opposed to strikes . . . and hope to assist the employer in breaking a strike with this cruel amendment”) (remarks of Rep. Koch); 119 Cong. Rec. 24931 (1973) (“This amendment is punitive, antilabor, antiunion, unfair, and discriminatory”) (remarks of Rep. Foley); id., at 24934 (“I think it would be unconstitutional ... for us to say that we can cut out a segment of our society just because they are doing something that some other segment of our society does not like”) (remarks of Rep. Casey); 120 Cong. Rec. 20614 (1974) (noting that voluntary quitters, convicted felons, and alcoholics may receive food stamps and that the striker amendment “only draws the line against one small group of people”) (remarks of Rep. O’Hara).

 See 117 Cong. Rec. 21673 (1971) (We should “say to strikers what we have said to students, to hippies, and others— ‘. . . if you are one of the voluntarily poor, you must look to your own resources for help’ ”) (remarks of Rep. Michel); 119 Cong. Rec. 24931 (1973) (“[I]n the early history of the program, food stamps for strikers, college students, hippies, and commune residents never entered into the minds of food stamp proponents”) (remarks of Rep. Goodling).

 The remarks of Representatives over the years admittedly express the views of different Congresses from the one that eventually passed the 1981 striker amendment. Nonetheless, the length of time over which the same proposal was considered and the frequent references over the years by Representatives to former colloquies on the matter, see, e. g., 117 Cong. Rec. 21672 (1971) (remarks of Rep. Michel) (referring to 1970 debate); 119 Cong. Rec. 24933 (1973) (remarks of Rep. Casey) (referring to 1971 debate); H. R. Rep. No. 95-464, pp. 122-127 (1977) (canvassing the amendment’s legislative history from 1968 to 1977), strongly suggest that these earlier discussions informed the 1981 decision.