Murillo v. Bambrick
| Decision Date | 17 June 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-1786,81-1786 |
| Citation | 681 F.2d 898 |
| Parties | Donna M. MURILLO v. W. Lewis BAMBRICK, Clerk of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
James R. Zazzali, Atty. Gen. of N. J., Bertram P. Goltz, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen. (argued), Erminie L. Conley, Asst. Atty. Gen., Trenton, N. J., for appellant.
Arthur Uscher (argued), Joseph Russo, Hackensack, N. J., for appellee.
Before ADAMS, ROSENN and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges.
In this appeal, we are asked to review an order of the district court holding unconstitutional a New Jersey statute and court rule, both now repealed, that assessed higher filing fees in matrimonial actions than in other civil cases. Unlike the district court, we conclude that the Constitution of the United States was not violated by the State's imposition of a "trial fee" upon individuals seeking divorces, but not upon other civil litigants. Whatever the wisdom of New Jersey's legislation, in our view the classification at issue here neither contravened a fundamental interest, so as to trigger heightened scrutiny, nor constituted an act devoid of rationality, so as to fall short of the minimal requirements for orderly government. Accordingly, we reverse.
On June 18, 1979, plaintiff Donna Murillo, a resident of New Jersey, filed for a divorce in New Jersey Superior Court and paid the sixty-dollar filing fee required of all complainants in that court. Because hers was a matrimonial action, N.J.S.A. 2A:34-16 and N.J. Court Rule 4:79-2 applied. 1 According to these provisions, divorce actions commenced by litigants such as Murillo, even if uncontested, were not listed for trial until an additional fifty-dollar fee, applicable only to matrimonial actions, had been paid. If such an action were contested, an additional ten-dollar payment, designed to cover the cost of stenographic services, was necessary. Murillo, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, filed this suit in the district court, seeking a declaration that the special matrimonial litigation fee imposed by New Jersey violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment.
After certifying the case as a class action, the district court, at the suggestion of the State, stayed further proceedings in order to provide the New Jersey Legislature with an opportunity to review the matrimonial fee arrangement. So that the resulting delay would not prejudice the plaintiffs, however, the court ordered defendant W. Lewis Bambrick, Clerk of the Superior Court of New Jersey, to deposit all such fees collected after September 6, 1979, in a separate interest-bearing account. On August 1, 1980, the Legislature repealed N.J.S.A. 2A:34-16, effective September 1, 1980, 2 and shortly thereafter, the State's Supreme Court deleted N.J. Court Rule 4:79-2. The Legislature's repeal of the matrimonial fee was prospective only, however: no provision was made for the return of the fees held in escrow pursuant to the district court's order. It is this fund, consisting of fees collected after the institution of this action and currently amounting to approximately $1.5 million, that is the subject of the present dispute.
Following the Legislature's action, the district court reopened the case and, after a two-day trial, concluded that the divorce trial-fee arrangement violated the equal protection clause. Murillo v. Bambrick, 508 F.Supp. 830 (D.N.J.1981). After determining that the applicable standard for evaluating the legislation was the rational basis test, the district judge held that the statute was "not a rational means to further any articulated state interest." Id. at 833. Specifically, the court found that the first justification urged by the State, that "the additional fees helped pay for the additional court resources required for matrimonial cases," was empirically incorrect. Id. at 835-36. As to the State's second proffered justification, that the divorce fees "served the State's legitimate interest in 'not encouraging' divorces," the court found that, at least since New Jersey's adoption of a "no-fault" divorce system in 1971, "the purpose to discourage divorces has not existed." Id. at 835, 838. The district court therefore ordered that the fees held in escrow by defendant Bambrick be refunded with interest to the appropriate individuals, but stayed that directive pending the State's appeal.
Although the underlying dispute in this appeal may appear to involve a narrow and relatively unimportant statute, since repealed, we believe that the district court's decision raises important questions about the nature of judicial review under the equal protection clause. It is appropriate, therefore, to commence our analysis with a consideration of general principles.
In large part, legislative acts classify; by their very nature, they draw distinctions between groups of individuals and among various forms of human endeavor. 3 A legislative act, therefore, cannot be deemed invalid merely because it treats different persons or different activities differently. Instead, some general standard as to the permissibility of legislative distinctions must be identified and applied, lest a considerable portion of our laws be disapproved in a relentlessly logical, but ultimately self-defeating, pursuit of abstract equality.
The fourteenth amendment, in providing that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," has been construed to set out such a standard. This "equal protection clause" has never been interpreted so as to strike down all legislative efforts that do not apply "to all persons at all times and in all places," Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762, 785, 97 S.Ct. 1459, 1472, 52 L.Ed.2d 31 (1977) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Rather, "recognition of the inevitability and indeed the justice of some line-drawing (has made) the central task of equal protection theory one of determining which lines or distinctions are permissible." Fiss, Groups and the Equal Protection Clause, 5 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 107, 109 (1976). Toward this end, in the course of several decades of constitutional litigation, the equal protection standard has come to be thought of as primarily two-tiered: enactments that discriminate against suspect classes or trench upon fundamental rights are disfavored, and will be tolerated only if necessary to achieve a compelling governmental interest, while statutes in the economic, social welfare, or regulatory fields are subjected to far lesser scrutiny, and will be upheld unless not rationally related to legitimate public ends. 4 With respect to a statute challenged on equal protection grounds, therefore, a reviewing court is obligated initially to determine the appropriate level of judicial review, and then carefully to consider whether a sufficient showing has been made under that test so as to override the presumption of constitutionality ordinarily accorded to legislative pronouncements. The purpose of such an analysis is not to replace legislative judgments with judicial views of effective or salutary public policy; rather, it is to ensure that a legislative majority adheres to its constitutional obligation to govern its citizens fairly.
Given this backdrop, we first consider the matter of the appropriate standard of equal protection review applicable to the controversy before us today. The district court concluded that, "in this case, no suspect class or fundamental interest is present," and that therefore the rational basis test was applicable. 508 F.Supp. at 833. 5 Inasmuch as the Supreme Court thus far has declined to deem classifications based on factors other than race and national origin-and, arguably, sex, alienage, and illegitimacy, see note 4 supra-as inherently "suspect," we agree with the holding of the district court that the interests of no suspect class are involved here. Whether or not New Jersey's legislation trespasses upon a "fundamental right" is a more difficult question, however, and requires a more extended discussion.
The fundamental rights component of the equal protection clause can be traced to Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942), in which the Supreme Court invalidated a statute providing for compulsory sterilization of "habitual" criminals, on the ground that such a rule impermissibly interfered with "one of the basic civil rights of man," id. at 541, 62 S.Ct. at 1113. Over the years, the Court has applied the fundamental interests doctrine to strike down various legislative "infringements" involving a number of "rights," such as voting, interstate travel, and access to the criminal appellate process. 6 Most recently, in Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 98 S.Ct. 673, 54 L.Ed.2d 618 (1978), a majority of the Justices, relying on a line of cases dating back to the landmark anti-miscegenation case, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), declared that "the right to marry is of fundamental importance," and held that any "statutory classification (that) significantly interferes with the exercise of (this) right ... cannot be upheld unless it is supported by sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored to effectuate only those interests." 434 U.S. at 383, 388, 98 S.Ct. at 679, 682.
No decision of the Supreme Court stands squarely for the proposition that state restrictions on divorce must be evaluated under the same exacting standards as restrictions on, for example, the right to travel, the right to vote, or the right to marry. 7 Drawing upon Zablocki and its predecessors, it might be argued that the relevant Supreme Court cases recognize that, for purposes of equal protection analysis, some sort of heightened scrutiny is appropriate with respect to legislation impinging on the availability of divorce. 8
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