Court Opinion

ID: 9424811
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:12:48.583866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:50.882299
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Blackmun concurs, dissenting.
The only constitutional issue raised and decided in the courts of Illinois in this case was whether the Illinois statute that omits unwed fathers from the definition of “parents” violates the Equal Protection Clause. We granted certiorari to consider whether the Illinois Supreme Court properly resolved that equal protection issue when it unanimously upheld the statute against petitioner Stanley’s attack.
No due process issue was raised in the state courts; and no due process issue was decided by any state court. As Mr. Justice Douglas said for this Court in State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U. S. 154, 160 (1945), “Since the [state] Supreme Court did not pass on the question, we may not do so.” We had occasion more recently to deal with this aspect of the jurisdictional limits placed upon this Court by 28 U. S. C. § 1257 when we decided Hill v. California, 401 U. S. 797 (1971). Having rejected the claim that Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), should be retroactively applied to invalidate petitioner Hill’s conviction on the ground that a search incident to arrest was overly extensive in scope, the Court noted Hill’s additional contention that his personal diary, which was one of the items *660of evidence seized in that search, should have been excluded on Fifth Amendment grounds as well. Mr. Justice White, in his opinion for the Court, concluded that we lacked jurisdiction to consider the Fifth Amendment contention:
“Counsel for [the petitioner] conceded at oral argument that the Fifth Amendment issue was not raised at trial. Nor was the issue raised, briefed, or argued in the California appellate courts. [Footnote omitted.] The petition for certiorari likewise ignored it. In this posture of the case, the question, although briefed and argued here, is not properly before us.” 401 U. S., at 805.
In the case now before us, it simply does not suffice to say, as the Court in a footnote does say, that “we dispose of the case on the constitutional premise raised below, reaching the result by a method of analysis readily available to the state court.” Ante, at 658 n. 10. The Court’s method of analysis seems to ignore the strictures of Justices Douglas and White, but the analysis is clear: the Court holds sua sponte that the Due Process Clause requires that Stanley, the unwed biological father, be accorded a hearing as to his fitness as a parent before his children are declared wards of the state court; the Court then reasons that since Illinois recognizes such rights to due process in married fathers, it is required by the Equal Protection Clause to give such protection to unmarried fathers. This “method of analysis” is, of course, no more or less than the use of the Equal Protection Clause as a shorthand condensation of the entire Constitution: a State may not deny any constitutional right to some of its citizens without violating the Equal Protection Clause through its failure to deny such rights to all of its citizens. The limits on this Court’s jurisdiction are not properly expandable by the use of such semantic devices as that.
*661Not only does the Court today use dubious reasoning in dealing with limitations upon its jurisdiction, it proceeds as well to strike down the Illinois statute here involved by “answering” arguments that are nowhere to be found in the record or in the State’s brief — or indeed in the oral argument. I have been unable, for example, to discover where or when the State has advanced any argument that “it is unnecessary to hold individualized hearings to determine whether particular fathers are in fact unfit parents before they are separated from their children.” Ante, at 647. Nor can I discover where the State has “argu[ed] that Stanley and all other unmarried fathers can reasonably be presumed to be unqualified to raise their children.” Ante, at 653. Or where anyone has even remotely suggested the “argu[ment] that unmarried fathers are so seldom fit that Illinois need not undergo the administrative inconvenience of inquiry in any case, including Stanley’s.” Ante, at 656. On the other hand, the arguments actually advanced by the State are largely ignored by the Court.1
*662All of those persons in Illinois who may have followed the progress of this case will, I expect, experience no little surprise at the Court’s opinion handed down today. Stanley will undoubtedly be surprised to find that he has prevailed on an issue never advanced by him. The judges who dealt with this case in the state courts will be surprised to find their decisions overturned on a ground they never considered. And the legislators and other officials of the State of Illinois, as well as those attorneys of the State who are familiar with the statutory provisions here at issue, will be surprised to learn for the first time that the Illinois Juvenile Court Act establishes a presumption that unwed fathers are unfit. I must confess my own inability to find any such presumption in the Illinois Act. Furthermore, from the record of the proceedings in the Juvenile Court of Cook County in this case, I can only conclude that the judge of that court was unaware of any such presumption, for he clearly indicated that Stanley’s asserted fatherhood of the children would stand him in good stead, rather than prejudice him, in any adoption or guardianship proceeding. In short, far from any inti*663mations of hostility toward unwed fathers, that court gave Stanley “merit points” for his acknowledgment of paternity and his past assumption of at least marginal responsibility for the children.2
In regard to the only issue that I consider properly before the Court, I agree with the State’s argument that the Equal Protection Clause is not violated when Illinois gives full recognition only to those father-child relationships that arise in the context of family units bound together by legal obligations arising from marriage or from adoption proceedings. Quite apart from the religious or quasi-religious connotations that marriage has — and has historically enjoyed — for a large proportion of this Nation’s citizens, it is in law an essentially contractual relationship, the parties to which have legally enforceable rights and duties, with respect both to each other and to any children born to them. Stanley and the mother' of these children never entered such a relationship. The record is silent as to whether they ever privately exchanged such promises as would have bound them in marriage under the common law. See Cartwright v. McGown, 121 Ill. 388, 398, 12 N. E. 737, 739 (1887). In *664any event, Illinois has not recognized common-law marriages since 1905. Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 89, § 4. Stanley did not seek the burdens when he could have freely assumed them.
Where there is a valid contract of marriage, the law of Illinois presumes that the husband is the father of any child born to the wife during the marriage; as the father, he has legally enforceable rights and duties with respect to that child. When a child is born to an unmarried woman, Illinois recognizes the readily identifiable mother, but makes no presumption as to the identity of the biological father. It does, however, provide two ways, one voluntary and one involuntary, in which that father may be identified. First, he may marry the mother and acknowledge the child as his own; this has the legal effect of legitimating the child and gaining for the father full recognition as a parent. Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 3, § 12-8. Second, a man may be found to be the biological father of the child pursuant to a paternity suit initiated by the mother; in this case, the child remains illegitimate, but the adjudicated father is made liable for the support of the child until the latter attains age 18 or is legally adopted by another. Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 106%, § 52.
Stanley argued before the Supreme Court of Illinois that the definition of “parents,” set out in Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 37, § 701-14, as including “the father and mother of a legitimate child, or the survivor of them, or the natural mother of an illegitimate child, [or] . . . any adoptive parent,” 3 violates the Equal Protection Clause in that it *665treats unwed mothers and unwed fathers differently. Stanley then enlarged upon his equal protection argument when he brought the case here; he argued before this Court that Illinois is not permitted by the Equal Protection Clause to distinguish between unwed fathers and any of the other biological parents included in the statutory definition of legal “parents.”
The Illinois Supreme Court correctly held that the State may constitutionally distinguish between unwed fathers and unwed mothers. Here, Illinois’ different treatment of the two is part of that State’s statutory scheme for protecting the welfare of illegitimate children. In almost all cases, the unwed mother is readily identifiable, generally from hospital records, and alternatively by physicians or others attending the child’s birth. Unwed fathers, as a class, are not traditionally quite so easy to identify and locate. Many of them either deny all responsibility or exhibit no interest in the child or its welfare; and, of course, many unwed fathers are simply not aware of their parenthood.
Furthermore, I believe that a State is fully justified in concluding, on the basis of common human experience, that the biological role of the mother in carrying and nursing an infant creates stronger bonds between her and the child than the bonds resulting from the male’s often casual encounter. This view is reinforced by the observable fact that most unwed mothers exhibit a concern for their offspring either permanently or at least until *666they are safely placed for adoption, while unwed fathers rarely burden either the mother or the child with their attentions or loyalties. Centuries of human experience buttress this view of the realities of human conditions and suggest that unwed mothers of illegitimate children are generally more dependable protectors of their children than are unwed fathers. While these, like most generalizations, are not without exceptions, they nevertheless provide a sufficient basis to sustain a statutory classification whose objective is not to penalize unwed parents but to further the welfare of illegitimate children in fulfillment of the State’s obligations as parens patriae.4
Stanley depicts himself as a somewhat unusual unwed father, namely, as one who has always acknowledged and never doubted his fatherhood of these children. He alleges that he loved, cared for, and supported these children from the time of their birth until the death of their mother. He contends that he consequently must be treated the same as a married father of legitimate children. Even assuming the truth of Stanley’s allegations, I am unable to construe the Equal Protection Clause as requiring Illinois to tailor its statutory definition of “parents” so meticulously as to include such unusual unwed fathers, while at the same time excluding those unwed, and generally unidentified, biological fathers who in no way share Stanley’s professed desires.
*667Indeed, the nature of Stanley’s own desires is less than absolutely clear from the record in this case. Shortly after the death of the mother, Stanley turned these two children over to the care of a Mr. and Mrs. Ness; he took no action to gain recognition of himself as a father, through adoption, or as a legal custodian, through a guardianship proceeding. Eventually it came to the attention of the State that there was no living adult who had any legally enforceable obligation for the care and support of the children; it was only then that the dependency proceeding here under review took place and that Stanley made himself known to the juvenile court in connection with these two children.5 Even then, however, Stanley did not ask to be charged with the legal responsibility for the children. He asked only that such legal responsibility be given to no one else. He seemed, in particular, to be concerned with the loss of the welfare payments he would suffer as a result of the designation of others as guardians of the children.
Not only, then, do I see no ground for holding that Illinois’ statutory definition of “parents” on its face violates the Equal Protection Clause; I see no ground for holding that any constitutional right of Stanley has been denied in the application of that statutory definition in the case at bar.
As Mr. Justice Frankfurter once observed, “Invalidating legislation is serious business . . . .” Morey v. Doud, 354 U. S. 457, 474 (1957) (dissenting opinion). The *668Court today pursues that serious business by expanding its legitimate jurisdiction beyond what I read in 28 U. S. C. § 1257 as the permissible limits contemplated by Congress. In doing so, it invalidates a provision of critical importance to Illinois’ carefully drawn statutory system governing family relationships and the welfare of the minor children of the State. And in so invalidating that provision, it ascribes to that statutory system a presumption that is simply not there and embarks on a novel concept of the natural law for unwed fathers that could well have strange boundaries as yet undiscernible.

 In reaching out to find a due process issue in this case, the Court seems to have misapprehended the entire thrust of the State’s argument. When explaining at oral argument why Illinois does not recognize the unwed father, counsel for the State presented two basic justifications for the statutory definition of “parents” here at issue. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 25-26. First, counsel noted that in the case of a married couple to whom a legitimate child is born, the two biological parents have already “signified their willingness to work together” in caring for the child by entering into the marriage contract; it is manifestly reasonable, therefore, that both of them be recognized as legal parents with rights and responsibilities in connection with the child. There has been no legally cognizable signification of such willingness on the part of unwed parents, however, and “the male and female . . . may or may not be willing to work together towards the common end of child rearing.” To provide legal recognition to both of them as “parents” would often be “to create two conflicting parties competing for legal control of the child.”
The second basic justification urged upon us by counsel for the State was that, in order to provide for the child’s welfare, “it is *662necessary to impose upon at least one of the parties legal responsibility for the welfare of [the child], and since necessarily the female is present at the birth of the child and identifiable as the mother,” the State has selected the unwed mother, rather than the unwed father, as the biological parent with that legal responsibility.
It was suggested to counsel during an ensuing colloquy with the bench that identification seemed to present no insuperable problem in Stanley’s case and that, although Stanley had expressed an interest in participating in the rearing of the children, “Illinois won’t let him.” Counsel replied that, on the contrary, “Illinois encourages him to do so if he will accept the legal responsibility for those children by a formal proceeding comparable to the marriage ceremony, in which he is evidencing through a judicial proceeding his desire to accept legal responsibility for the children,” Stanley, however, “did not ask for custody. He did not ask for legal responsibility. He only objected to someone [else] having legal control over the children.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 38, 39-40.

 The position that Stanley took at the dependency proceeding was not without ambiguity. Shortly after the mother’s death, he placed the children in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Ness, who took the children into their home. The record is silent as to whether the Ness household was an approved foster home. Through Stanley’s act, then, the Nesses were already the actual custodians of the children. At the dependency proceeding, he resisted only the court’s designation of the Nesses as the legal custodians; he did not challenge their suitability for that role, nor did he seek for himself either that role or any other role that would have imposed legal responsibility upon him. Had he prevailed, of course, the status quo would have obtained: the Nesses would have continued to play the role of actual custodians until either they or Stanley acted to alter the informal arrangement, and there would still have been no living adult with any legally enforceable obligation for the care and support of the infant children.

 The Court seems at times to ignore this statutory definition of “parents,” even though it is precisely that definition itself whose constitutionality has been brought into issue by Stanley. In preparation for finding a purported similarity between this case and Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535 (1971), the Court quotes the legislatively declared aims of the Juvenile Court Act to “strengthen the minor’s family ties whenever possible, removing him from the custody of *665his parents only when his welfare or safety or the protection of the public cannot be adequately safeguarded without removal.” (Emphasis added.) The Court then goes on to find a “self-contradiction” between that stated aim and the Act’s nonrecognition of unwed fathers. Ante, at 653. There is, of course, no such contradiction, The word “parent” in the statement of legislative purpose obviously has the meaning given to it by the definitional provision of the Act.

 When the marriage between the parents of a legitimate child is dissolved by divorce or separation, the State, of course, normally awards custody of the child to one parent or the other. This is considered necessary for the child’s welfare, since the parents are no longer legally bound together. The unmarried parents of an illegitimate child are likewise not legally bound together. Thus, even if Illinois did recognize the parenthood of both the mother and father of an illegitimate child, it would, for consistency with its practice in divorce proceedings, be called upon to award custody to one or the other of them, at least once it had by some means ascertained the identity of the father.

 As the majority notes, ante, at 646, Joan Stanley gave birth to three children during the 18 years Peter Stanley was living “intermittently” with her. At oral argument, we were told by Stanley’s counsel that the oldest of these three children had previously been declared a ward of the court pursuant to a neglect proceeding that was “proven against” Stanley at a time, apparently, when the juvenile court officials were under the erroneous impression that Peter and Joan Stanley had been married. Tr. of Oral Arg. 19.