Lambert v. Wentworth

• Decision Date: 11 December 1980
• Parties: George LAMBERT v. James W. WENTWORTH et al., Assessors of the Town of Wells.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 527

423 A.2d 527

George LAMBERT v. James W. WENTWORTH et al., Assessors of the Town of Wells.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued June 5, 1980.

Decided Dec. 11, 1980.

Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Inc., Martha E. Geores (orally), Augusta, for plaintiff.

Verrill & Dana, William S. Harwood (orally), Robert A. Moore, Portland, for defendants.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., WERNICK, GLASSMAN and ROBERTS, JJ., and DUFRESNE, A. R. J.

DUFRESNE, Active Retired Justice.

George Lambert, the plaintiff-appellant, filed his complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in the Superior Court, York County, following the denial by the Assessors of the Town of Wells of a property tax exemption to which he claims he is entitled under 36 M.R.S.A. § 653. Summary judgment in favor of the assessors-appellees was granted on their motion. The plaintiff has timely appealed. We affirm the Superior Court judgment and deny the plaintiff's appeal.

The statutory enactment involved in these proceedings (36 M.R.S.A. § 653, (1) (C), (E), (F)(1) and (F)(3) does provide for a taxation exemption up to the just value of $4,000 respecting the estates of veterans as defined in the Act

"when they shall have reached the age of 62 years or when they are receiving any form of pension or compensation from the United States Government for total disability, service-connected or nonservice-connected, as a veteran,"

provided that,

"(t)o be eligible for exemption under this subsection:

(1) (a) veteran must have been a resident of this State at the time of his entry into service; or have been a resident of this State for at least 10 years prior to making the claim for exemption; and

(2) ...; and

(3) (n)o exemption shall be granted to any person under this subsection unless such person is a resident of this State. " (Emphasis added).

The facts are undisputed. The plaintiff purchased a house in Wells in November of 1976 and has been a resident of the Town of Wells since March 1977. He is totally disabled and a recipient of a Veterans Administration pension. He applied for a veteran's exemption respecting his property tax obligation to the Town of Wells in 1979. The assessors denied the request on the sole ground that, having enlisted in the United States Air Force in June 1964 while a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the plaintiff had not been a resident of the State of Maine for ten (10) years as provided by 36 M.R.S.A. § 653.

The plaintiff asserts that the ten-year durational residency requirement violates his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Article 1, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Maine, and, therefore, is void and ineffective. He further contends that, since the residency-at-time-of-entry requirement was inserted in the existing law respecting veterans' benefits by the same amendment which put in the ten-year durational residency requirement, both must fall for being so related in substance and object that it is impossible to suppose the amendment would have been enacted except as an entirety.

1. Ten-year durational residency

It is true that, prior to 1953, all honorably discharged veterans as defined in the Act who had reached the age of 62 years or were receiving a pension or compensation from the United States Veterans' Administration for total disability were entitled to a property tax exemption on the single requirement that they be legal residents of the State at the time of application for the exemption. See Revised Statutes, 1944, c. 81, s. 6, subs. X. The effect of the 1953 amendment (P.L. 1953, c. 291, s. 2) is to create three classes of veterans among those veterans residing in Maine at the time of application, otherwise eligible because of age or total disability: 1) those veterans who at the time of entry in the military service were then residents of the State; 2) those veterans who, although nonresidents of Maine at the time of entry, had accumulated a ten-year residency in Maine, whether consecutive or intermittently cumulative; ¹ and 3) those veterans who, although residents of the State at the time of application, were not residents of Maine at the time of induction and had not in the past resided in the State for the period of ten years.

Setting aside for the time being any consideration of the first stated class, we note that the sole differential criterion establishing entitlement to tax exemption benefits between equally qualified veterans of the other two classes is the ten-year durational residency of in-state oldtimers as it were, as compared to newcomers who claim residency in the State for lesser periods of time. The plaintiff contends that such classification impinges upon his constitutional right to travel without serving any compelling state interest, and is otherwise unrelated rationally to any legitimate governmental purpose in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and of Article I, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Maine.

It is obvious that the statutory classification disadvantages the plaintiff who claims that the legislative structure invidiously discriminates against him. But classifications are permissible under the equal protection provisions of our federal and state constitutions. Not all discrimination based on classification is a denial of equal protection. The Legislature, having been given full power to make and establish all reasonable laws and regulations for the benefit of the people of the State, not repugnant to the State constitution nor to that of the United States (Article IV, Part Third, Section 1, Constitution of Maine), is endowed with wide discretion in enacting legislation which treats some classes of people differently from others, on condition, however, that the classification be not arbitrary, unreasonable or irrational, in other words, that the dissimilar treatment be rationally related to the objectives of the statute. Shapiro Bros. Shoe Co., Inc. v. Lewiston-Auburn Shoeworkers Protective Association, Me., 320 A.2d 247, 255 (1974).

Legislation which provides governmental benefits, such as tax exemptions, to some but not to others is not necessarily violative of equal protection; but there must be some rational basis for the difference in treatment. It is not only the fact of discrimination but also the manner of discrimination between legislatively created classes that comes under the limitational curb imposed by the equal protection clause upon the legislative power to classify. See McNicholas v. York Beach Village Corporation, Me., 394 A.2d 264, 269 (1978).

The traditional standard by which we review an asserted violation of the Equal Protection Clause is the rational basis test, i. e., the existence of a rational relation between the classification challenged and the intended goal of the legislation. McNicholas supra, Id. at 268-269. See also Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 485, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 1161, 25 L.Ed.2d 491 (1970). But, if a fundamental personal right is involved or the categorization discriminates against a suspect class, then the difference is constitutionally defensible only if it furthers a compelling state interest. Massachusetts Board of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.S. 307, 312, 96 S.Ct. 2562, 2566, 49 L.Ed.2d 520 (1976). ²

The Supreme Court of the United States has clearly indicated that the right to travel is a fundamental personal right that can be "impinged" only if to do so is necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 634, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 1331, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969).

Although every durational residency requirement in itself places some burden on the exercise of the right to travel, not every such requirement constitutes that direct and substantial "impingement" on the right to travel necessary to bring the claimed violation within the scope of the constitutional prohibition so as to trigger the application of the strict scrutiny test. Where the individual interest affected does not involve a fundamental right and the residency requirement is not a real impediment to interstate travel, then the governmental purpose sought to be gained by the imposition of the residency requirement may be justified under the traditional rational-relation test and need not be so vindicated by the showing of a compelling state interest. See Town of Milton v. Civil Service Commission, 365 Mass. 368, 312 N.E.2d 188, 191 (1974).

We do recognize that the veteran's right to a tax exemption preference does not in and of itself involve a fundamental right, such as the right to the basic necessities of life, like food, shelter, health care, etc. It is obvious, however, that the reference statute, in making veterans' tax exemptions depend on a ten-year residency in the State, has a substantial penalizing effect on those veterans who have recently exercised their right to travel by denying them benefits while granting the same to others whose sole distinctive qualification for eligibility to take advantage of such state benefits is the longevity of their residence in the State. In Cole v. Housing Authority of City of Newport, 435 F.2d 807 (1970), the Circuit Court of Appeals, First Circuit, held the two-year residency requirement adopted by the defendant Housing Authority to establish eligibility for admission to public housing so penalized the right to travel that its justification could be successfully defended only by demonstrating that the requirement furthers a compelling state interest. Id. at 811.

The reason offered in support of the instant residency requirement is that a veteran's residence in Maine for a period of ten years establishes an equivalency standard for consideration of the veteran as a son or daughter of Maine, to the same degree as residency at the time of entry into the service is recognized for the purpose of rewarding the State's military personnel for their...