Glossip v. Mo. Dep't of Transp. & Highway Patrol Employees' Ret. Sys.

• Decision Date: 29 October 2013
• Docket Number: No. SC 92583.,SC 92583.
• Citation: 411 S.W.3d 796
• Parties: Kelly D. GLOSSIP, Appellant, v. MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND HIGHWAY PATROL EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

411 S.W.3d 796

Kelly D. GLOSSIP, Appellant,

v.MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND HIGHWAY PATROL EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM, Respondent.

No. SC 92583.

Supreme Court of Missouri,

En Banc.

Oct. 29, 2013.

Maurice B. Graham, Gray, Ritter & Graham PC, St. Louis; Anthony E. Rothert and Grant R. Doty, ACLU of Eastern Missouri, St. Louis; Stephen Douglas Bonney, ACLU Foundation of Kansas and Western Missouri, Kansas City; Roger K. Heidenreich, SNR Denton US LLP, St. Louis; John A. Knight, LGBT & AIDS Project of the ACLU Foundation, Chicago, IL; and Joshua A. Block, LGBT & AIDS Project of the ACLU Foundation, New York, NY, for Glossip.

James R. Ward and Emily A. Dodge, Attorney General's Office, Jefferson City, for the State.

Michael J.F. Byrne, Law Firm of Haden & Byrne, Columbia, and Stephen Sanders, University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Mich., for group of Missouri law professors as friends of the Court.

Harold L. Lowenstein, Richard B. Scherrer, Thomas B. Weaver and Winston E. Calvert, Armstrong Teasdale LLP, St. Louis, for certain current and former elected officials as friends of the Court.

Juliet A. Cox and M. Courtney Koger, Kutak Rock, Kansas City; Christopher R. Cox, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., Chicago, IL, for Law Enforcement Gays and Lesbians (LEGAL) International and its affiliated chapters as friends of the Court.

Denise D. Lieberman, St. Louis, for PROMO as friends of the Court.

PER CURIAM.

This case does not involve a challenge to the Missouri Constitution's ban on same-sex marriage. That is an issue for another day. Instead, Kelly Glossip, the same-sex partner of a deceased highway patrolman, presents a challenge to two statutes. The first provides benefits to a surviving spouse of a state highway patrolman who is killed in the line of duty. The second statute provides that the word “spouse” in the first statute shall refer only to a marriage between a man and a woman.

Glossip was denied survivor benefits and appeals the circuit court judgment affirming the administrative decision. He asserts that the survivor benefits statute violates his equal protection rights under the Missouri Constitution by denying him benefits due to his sexual orientation. He also claims it is an unconstitutional special law. This Court rejects these claims.

Glossip was denied benefits because he and the patrolman were not married, not because of his sexual orientation. The survivor benefits statute provides benefits only to the patrolman's surviving spouse or surviving minor children. Glossip acknowledges that this provision denies benefits to all unmarried couples regardless of whether the patrolman and the survivor seeking benefits were of the same or opposite sex. If Glossip and the patrolman had been of different sexes, Glossip would have still been denied benefits no matter how long or close their relationship had been. The result cannot be any different here simply because Glossip and the patrolman were of the same sex. The statute discriminates solely on the basis of marital status, not sexual orientation.

Glossip maintains that he and his partner did not marry because Missouri law prohibits same-sex marriage. This is true, but the benefits statutes that Glossip challenges do not prohibit same-sex marriage. That ban is in Missouri's constitution, and Glossip expressly does not challenge it. Accordingly, he cannot use that ban as support for his challenge to the benefits statutes, which discriminate on the basis of marital status.

For these reasons, this case is decided on very narrow grounds. Glossip is not eligible for survivor benefits because he was not married to the patrolman. If Glossip and the deceased patrolman had been married in another state (or country), Glossip could have challenged the statute that prohibits recognizing same-sex marriages for purposes of Missouri benefits. But they were not. Glossip could have challenged Missouri's constitutional provision that precluded him and the patrolman from marrying here. But he did not. Therefore, these questions must go unanswered. The only decision the Court makes here has nothing to do with the rights of same-sex partners. Instead, the Court merely upholds the General Assembly's right to award and deny survivor benefits based on whether the claimant was married to the patrolman at the time of death.

Neither the United States Supreme Court nor this Court has applied heightened scrutiny to laws requiring persons to be married to obtain benefits (as opposed to laws affecting the right to marry), so the survivor benefits statute is subject to rational basis review. Under this standard, the statute is constitutional because it is reasonably related to a legitimate state interest in efficiently assisting some of the people who are financially dependent on deceased patrolmen. Finally, this Court holds that because the survivor benefits statute is open-ended, it is not a special law. The circuit court's judgment is affirmed.¹

I. Factual and Procedural Background

On December 25, 2009, Corporal Dennis Engelhard, a nine-year veteran of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, was killed in the line of duty. At the time of his death, Glossip was Engelhard's same-sex domestic partner. Engelhard had no children.

Following Engelhard's death, Glossip applied to the Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees' Retirement System (“MPERS”) for survivor benefits under section 104.140.3, RSMo Supp.2002, which provides survivor benefits to the surviving spouse of a highway patrol employee who is killed in the line of duty. The application for survivor benefits asked Glossip to submit a copy of a valid driver's license, a death certificate, and a marriage license. Glossip submitted his driver's license, Engelhard's death certificate, and an affidavit describing his relationship with Engelhard. Glossip's affidavit acknowledged that he and Engelhard were never married, but stated that they had cohabitated in a same-sex relationship since 1995. He further stated that they “held [themselves] out to [their] families and [their] community as a couple in a committed, marital relationship” and “would have entered into a civil marriage if it were legal to do so in Missouri.”

MPERS denied Glossip's application for survivor benefits. The denial letter stated that the denial was “based upon the lack of a valid marriage certificate and based upon Sections 104.012 and 451.022.” Section 104.012, RSMo Supp.2001, provides that “for the purposes of public retirement systems administered pursuant to this chapter, any reference to the term ‘spouse’ only recognizes marriage between a man and a woman.” Section 451.022, RSMo Supp.2001, provides in relevant part that “[i]t is the public policy of this state to recognize marriage only between a man and a woman.” Glossip appealed the denial to MPERS's Board of Trustees, but the appeal was also denied.

Glossip subsequently filed a petition requesting declaratory and injunctive relief in the circuit court. He argued that the survivor benefits statute and section 104.012 violate the Missouri Constitution's equal protection clause, Mo. Const. art. I, sec. 2, by excluding him from survivor benefits because of his sexual orientation. He further contended that these sections violate the constitutional proscription against special laws, Mo. Const. art. III, sec. 40. Glossip does not challenge the Missouri Constitution's ban on same-sex marriage, Mo. Const. art. I, sec. 33, or its statutory counterpart, section 451.022.

MPERS moved to dismiss Glossip's amended petition on the ground that it failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted, and Glossip moved for summary judgment. The trial court granted MPERS's motion to dismiss, dismissed Glossip's motion for summary judgment as moot, and dismissed his amended petition with prejudice. Glossip timely appealed. This Court has jurisdiction. Mo. Const. art. V, sec. 3.

II. Standard of Review

This case comes to the Court on the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The standard of review in such a case is de novo. Lynch v. Lynch, 260 S.W.3d 834, 836 (Mo. banc 2008). Glossip's petition raises two pure questions of law that are relevant to his appeal: (1) do the survivor benefits statute and section 104.012 unconstitutionally discriminate against Glossip based on his sexual orientation; and (2) are these sections unconstitutional special laws?

III. Equal Protection

Glossip contends that section 104.140.3, the survivor benefits statute, and section 104.012 violate the Missouri Constitution's equal protection clause in that they discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and are not sufficiently related to an adequate government purpose to survive the appropriate level of equal protection scrutiny. Significantly, he does not challenge Missouri's constitutional and statutory provisions banning same-sex marriage. Instead, Glossip argues that the survivor benefits statute and section 104.012 unconstitutionally exclude him from eligibility for benefits.

Statutes are presumed constitutional. Beard v. Mo. State Employees' Ret. Sys., 379 S.W.3d 167, 170 (Mo. banc 2012). This Court will construe a statute in favor of its constitutional validity, and a statute will not be invalidated on constitutional grounds unless it clearly and undoubtedly violates a constitutional provision. Id. The party challenging a statute's validity bears the burden of proving the statute clearly and undoubtedly violates the constitution. Id.

The equal protection clause of the Missouri Constitution provides “that all persons are created equal and are entitled to equal rights and opportunity under the law.” Mo. Const. art. I, sec. 2. Determining whether a statute violates equal protection involves a two-part analysis. First, the Court determines whether the statute contains a classification that “operates to the disadvantage of some suspect class or impinges...