Court Opinion

ID: 9715183
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:56:55.951974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:32.266899
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE KLUCZYNSKI, dissenting: By virtue of its decision in this case, the majority upholds a statutory amendment which confers a special legislative benefit on a particular group of citizens to the exclusion of others of like circumstance. While an equal protection analysis may not suffice to expose the invidious nature of this legislative action, the special legislation clause found in our constitution nonetheless provides a means by which more meaningful judicial review can be undertaken and the fallacy of this legislation can be shown. I therefore dissent. As the majority acknowledges, the purpose of the Illinois Housing Development Act is “to remedy what the legislature found to be a serious shortage of decent, safe and sanitary housing available to persons and families of low and moderate income.” (82 Ill. 2d at 118.) Given this purpose, the amendment, limiting participation in the mortgage program to those who have “never previously owned a single-family home or condominium,” simply cannot withstand scrutiny under the special legislation prohibition of the Illinois Constitution. The purpose of the statute can be fulfilled by an amendment drafted in more general terms consonant with that purpose, and the special legislative benefit conferred only upon first-time buyers therefore cannot stand. The benefit must be afforded equally among those with low and moderate income, regardless of whether they have previously owned a home. The need for decent, safe and sanitary housing, and for assistance in obtaining that housing, can be as great for one who has previously owned a home as it is for one who is a first-time buyer. The fact of previous ownership at some point in the individual’s lifetime does not ipso facto establish a preferred financial status. An individual, for example, may have been forced to sell his home without profit or at a loss, and the fact of prior ownership will not help him one iota in mustering funds for a downpayment on another home. This is recognized even by the Congressional Budget Office report relied upon so heavily by the majority. That report states that one who has previously owned a home will have “no difficulty meeting the down-payment for a different home,” but it acknowledges that this general assertion is true only “if their original house had shared in even a small part of the general increase in sales prices.” Horneownership: The Changing Relationship Of Costs And Incomes And Possible Federal Roles, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., January 1977, at xv. The majority’s failure to recognize that the amendment before us is special legislation can only be attributed to its faulty perception of the court’s role in addressing attacks made under the special legislation provisions of our constitution and its erroneous belief that a special legislation challenge is foreclosed by an unsuccessful equal protection attack. The constitutional provisions prohibiting special legislation provide: “The General Assembly shall pass no special or local law when a general law is or can be made applicable. Whether a general law is or can be made applicable shall be a matter for judicial determination.” (Ill. Const. 1970, art. IV, sec. 13.) In Grace v. Howlett (1972), 51 Ill. 2d 478, 487, the court held that these provisions do not cover the same ground as the equal protection clause and that “the new section 13 of article IV has increased judicial responsibility for determining whether a general law ‘is or can be made applicable.’ ” In invalidating an imprecisely drawn statute, the court held that it cannot withhold a determination that a statute is special legislation simply because that statute withstands analysis under the highly deferential rational-relationship standard of equal protection review. The court’s language on this point is of equal relevance here: “Unless this court is to abdicate its constitutional responsibility to determine whether a general law can be made applicable, the available scope for legislative experimentation with special legislation is limited, and this court cannot rule that the legislature is free to enact special legislation simply because ‘reform may take one step at a time.’ (See, Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. (1955), 348 U.S. 483, 99 L. Ed. 563, 75 S. Ct. 461.) The constitutional test under section 13 of article IV is whether a general law can be made applicable, and in this case that question must receive an affirmative answer.” (51 Ill. 2d 478, 487.) (See also Skinner v. Anderson (1967), 38 Ill. 2d 455; Harvey v. Clyde Park District (1964), 32 Ill. 2d 60.) The court’s most recent pronouncements on the subject of special legislation, and its recent treatment of the Grace, Skinner and Harvey cases above cited, are indefensible. (See, e.g., Anderson v. Wagner (1979), 79 Ill. 2d 295, 316 (equating special legislation analysis with equal protection analysis), appeal dismissed (1980), 449 U.S.— , 66 L. Ed. 2d 11, 101 S. Ct. 54; Friedman & Rochester v. Walsh (1977), 67 Ill. 2d 413, 421-23 (same).) The majority today continues on that ill-advised course. In summary, it is clear to me that a general law would solve the problem perceived by the legislature. I therefore cannot join the majority.