Court Opinion

ID: 9478042
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:38:37.049068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:12.268145
License: Public Domain

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge,
with whom E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge, joins specially concurring:
I concur in the result and in all of Judge Goldberg’s eloquent opinion save part IIB and so much thereof as implies criticism of the challenged provision of the Texas Constitution. Any age requirement for an office or position is necessarily arbitrary and will inevitably exclude some number of those who are more qualified than some not so excluded, of which, as applied here, Judge Goldberg would be anyone’s “Exhibit A.” But this does not mean that such requirements are unreasonable: the generality of legislative or constitutional provisions is the norm; and the United States Constitution contains numerous age requirements. Neither such provisions nor those here challenged are intended to deprive of representation that portion of the population not meeting their requirements; they are rather intended to enhance the average of the abilities of the officeholders in question, and are rationally related to that goal. Age is not a suspect or quasi-suspect classification, and in my view is not comparable to race or gender or economic status. That Texas judges are elected rather than chosen in some other manner should not be decisive on the issue of required qualifications. As Judge Goldberg says, judges are not representatives. Judge Hatten has had, as others have had and will have, ample opportunity to serve his state in a judicial capacity, and he has availed himself of it, to his credit and the benefit of his state. But, like any other citizen of Texas, he is properly subject to Article V § 1-a of the Texas Constitution, which the people of Texas adopted in 1965.