Bright v. Baesler

• Decision Date: 30 December 1971
• Docket Number: No. 2249.,2249.
• Citation: Bright v. Baesler, 336 F.Supp. 527 (E.D. Ky. 1971)
• Parties: Stephen Brooks BRIGHT et al., Plaintiffs, v. Charles E. BAESLER, Jr., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky

336 F. Supp. 527

Stephen Brooks BRIGHT et al., Plaintiffs, v. Charles E. BAESLER, Jr., et al., Defendants.

No. 2249.

United States District Court, E. D. Kentucky, Lexington Division.

December 30, 1971.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Kenneth J. Guido, Lexington, Ky., William A. Dobrovir, Washington, D. C., Richard G. Singer, Cincinnati, Ohio, James Blumstein, Nashville, Tenn., for plaintiffs.

E. Lawson King, Fayette County Atty., Lexington, Ky., for Baesler.

Michael R. Moloney, Asst. County Atty., Lexington, Ky., for Registration & Purgation Bd.

Walter Herdman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frankfort, Ky., for Bd. of Elections.

MEMORANDUM

SWINFORD, District Judge.

The court has been asked to determine whether the defendants have denied students at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, Kentucky, equal protection of the law by conditioning their right to register to vote upon overcoming a presumption that they are domiliciaries of their parents' home. It appears from the evidence presented that each of the five named student plaintiffs have met the State registration durational requirements, but that the defendants have presumed, in accordance with an opinion by the Attorney General, that the plaintiffs do not possess or have not established legal residence in the community of the University which they are attending. Section 145 of the Kentucky Constitution requires that:

"Every citizen of the United States of the age of eighteen years who has resided in the state one year, and in the county six months, and the precinct in which he offers to vote sixty days next preceeding the election, shall be a voter in said precinct and not elsewhere . . ."

Kentucky Revised Statute 117.615 states that:

"Any person, male or female, may register as a voter during the period the registration books are open if he possesses or will possess on the day of the next regular election, the qualifications set forth in Constitution 145."

In addition to the durational requirements as set forth above, Kentucky Revised Statute 117.610 defines residency for voting purposes to be the equivalent of the legal term domicil:¹

"The following rules, so far as applicable, shall be observed in determining the residence of a person offering to vote:

(1) A voter's residence shall be deemed to be at the place where his habitation is, and to which, when absent he has the intention or returning."

The ability to register to vote in Kentucky is dependent upon the applicant satisfying the durational requirements of Section 145 of the State Constitution, as well as being able to manifest an intention of making his present habitation his permanent domicil. The plaintiffs do not contend that the statutory requirements for voter registration are unconstitutional. Moreover, it is admitted, tacitly if not expressly, that the State may require its voters to be domiciliaries of their voting precincts. It is the plaintiffs' contention that the defendants have, for impermissible reasons amounting to invidious discrimination, placed a greater burden of proof of domicil upon students than it has on other citizens.

The plaintiffs contend that the presumption against domicil at the university community which attaches to students is violative of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution; is violative of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution; and is violative of the spirit and letter of 42 United States Code § 1971 et seq. (Voting Rights Act).

The defendants contend that this court should abstain from accepting jurisdiction in this case as it involves a constitutional question relating to state statutory provisions which the State courts should be allowed to first determine, or, it is asserted, that this court should refuse to rule upon the merits because the plaintiffs have failed to exhaust administrative remedies. The defendants contend in the alternative that none of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights have been deprived as there is ample reason to believe that students are not domiciliaries of the university community thereby justifying the rebuttable presumption to that effect recommended by the Attorney General.

JURISDICTION

It is the opinion of the court that it must accept jurisdiction over the subject matter of this suit and decide the case upon the merits. The defendants, in buttressing their argument for abstention, rely primarily on the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Harris v. Samuels, 440 F.2d 748 (1970), a student voting rights case of similar factual circumstance. Although the Harris case is seemingly authority for the defendants' argument, this court believes that the posture of the plaintiffs' complaint and the recent and widespread interest in the voting rights of students and the young militate against the cogency of the abstention argument.

The Supreme Court has always sought to guard against the denial or dilution of the people's right to vote. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1965); Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 775, 13 L.Ed.2d 675 (1965); and Evans v. Cornman, 398 U.S. 419, 90 S.Ct. 1752, 26 L.Ed.2d 370 (1970). Inasmuch as the right to vote is fundamental to the philosophy and fabric of this country's system of government, any State supported encroachment or infringement upon it must pass constitutional scrutiny. Because this case involves a federal question of substantial significance which could not be avoided by any adjudication in the State courts—whether students have been denied their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the law by the imposition of more rigorous domiciliary requirements upon them than on other qualified voters—it is this court's considered opinion that it must not abstain from rendering judgment. Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965). Furthermore the court is satisfied that the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies is not applicable. The defendants assert that chapter 117 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes provides for the formation of a Purgation Board to which the plaintiffs must first submit their grievances. Notwithstanding the normal requirement of exhaustion of administrative remedies in voter registration disputes, where there is a constitutional challenge which is substantial and where there is a need to resolve the controversy quickly so as to prevent continued abridgment of constitutional rights exhaustion of administrative remedies is not a condition precedent to a court action.

In supplementing this court's probable jurisdiction under 28 United States Code §§ 1331, 1343(3), (4) the plaintiffs have attempted to invoke jurisdiction under sections 1971 and 1973 of Title 42, United States Code, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution. There is some doubt whether the plaintiffs have stated a claim upon which relief could be granted within the purview of either of these sections of the statute or the Twenty-sixth Amendment.

Sections 1971 et seq. seem to be directed toward the elimination of discriminatory voting practices imposed upon racial groups. The plaintiffs persuasively urge that the language of these sections could be construed to apply to any person or group whose voting rights have been abridged, however, the court believes that it is not necessary to decide that question at this time as the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition against unequal protection of the law provides an adequate remedy.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment requires that no State shall abridge the right of citizens of the United States who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age. Whether the plaintiffs have stated a claim under the Twenty-sixth Amendment is in doubt. The fact that students may be minors is incidental to the major thrust of this suit. This is a student voting rights case, rather than a minor voting rights case. If the students have been denied the right to exercise their franchise, it is not, in a technical or legal sense, because of age, but because allegedly discriminatory requirements of proof of domicil have been imposed upon them. There are students attending the University of all ages, and presumably the domiciliary requirement is applied equally to each of them. There is no law or statute in Kentucky, as far as this court has been able to ascertain, which states that a minor cannot, for voting purposes, establish a domicil other than that of his parents. It may be argued, as the plaintiffs vigorously assert, that the rebuttable presumption against student domicil is simply a sophisticated mechanism for abridging the voting rights of the young, but the court feels that from the claims stated in the complaint, and the evidence adduced at the hearing and submitted in the record, an inference of State discrimination against minors in their capacity as qualified voters is wholly improper.² There is little or no persuasive evidence that the presumption against student domicil at the university community was contrived to disenfranchise the young; on the contrary, it seems to have been adopted on the belief that most, if not all, students would retain a desire to return to their former homes upon graduation or the termination of their college careers. For these reasons the court, as stated above, feels that the Fourteenth Amendment protection against discriminatory enforcement of the law must be the basis upon which this case is decided.

MERITS

The defendants in this case have refused to register the plaintiffs, despite the fact that the plaintiffs have satisfied the durational residency requirements set out in section 145 of the Kentucky Constitution. The plaintiffs are only able to register if they successfully complete a series of questions ostensively designed to overcome the presumption that they are domiciliaries of their parents' or their own previous homes.³ The evidence shows that no other group of...