Collins v. Day, No. 93S02-9411-EX-1120

• Docket Nº: No. 93S02-9411-EX-1120
• Citation: 644 N.E.2d 72
• Case Date: November 28, 1994
• Court: Supreme Court of Indiana

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644 N.E.2d 72 Eugene COLLINS, Appellant (Plaintiff Below),
v.
Glen DAY, Appellee (Defendant Below). No. 93S02-9411-EX-1120. Supreme Court of Indiana. Nov. 28, 1994.

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J. Alexander Tanford, Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, Richard A. Waples, Indiana Civil Liberties Union, Indianapolis, for appellant.

Pamela K. Thompson, Sandra L. Heeke, Smith Bartlett, Heeke & Carpenter, Jeffersonville, for appellee.

Nancy E. Hale, Indianapolis, for amicus curiae Legal Services Organization of Indiana, Inc.

ON PETITION TO TRANSFER

DICKSON, Justice.

This case presents a state constitutional challenge to the exclusion of agricultural workers from the coverage of the Indiana Worker's Compensation Statute. The foundational question is whether the requirements of the Privileges and Immunities Clause, Article 1, § 23, of the Constitution of Indiana, are independent of and distinguishable from those imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. To address this and related questions, we grant transfer.

The parties have stipulated to the facts. On February 11, 1989, plaintiff-appellant Eugene Collins sustained a broken right leg in an accident in the course of his employment as an agricultural employee of defendant-appellee Glen Day. The defendant denies that any compensable accident occurred under the provisions of the Act and has not paid the plaintiff any worker's compensation benefits. The defendant had not exercised the statutory election to waive the agricultural exemption and thus had not agreed to provide worker's compensation coverage. In the plaintiff's application for such benefits, he claims medical expenses of $12,000.00 and average weekly earnings at the time of the accident of $140.00 per week, in addition to the value of the use of a residence.

The full Worker's Compensation Board affirmed the single Hearing Judge's order granting the defendant's Motion to Dismiss, which generally raised the statutory agricultural exemption to the Indiana Worker's Compensation Act, which provides in part that the Act "shall not apply to casual labor ... nor to farm or to agricultural employees, nor to domestic servants, nor to the employers

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of such persons." Ind.Code § 22-3-2-9(a). The plaintiff appealed, contending that the agricultural exemption violated Article I, Section 23 of the Indiana Constitution (hereafter "Section 23"), which provides:

The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.

The Court of Appeals concluded that questions under Indiana's Privileges and Immunities Clause should be treated the same as claims under the federal Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, ¹ applied the federal "rational basis" test to find that the agricultural exemption was rationally related to legitimate state interests, and affirmed the Worker's Compensation Board. Collins v. Day (1992), Ind.App., 604 N.E.2d 647.

In this appeal, the plaintiff argues that the worker's compensation agricultural exemption violates Section 23 because it extends to a special class of employers an immunity denied to the general class of employers. He further contends that the statutory grant to agricultural employers of the option to elect either to be covered by or to be exempt from the Indiana Worker's Compensation Act is a privilege both denied to a comparable class of agricultural employees and denied to the general class of Indiana employers. Noting varying approaches taken in prior cases as to the relationship between Indiana's Section 23 and the federal Fourteenth Amendment, the plaintiff urges that Section 23 may be applicable separately from and in addition to the federal equal protection guarantee. He asserts that, although Fourteenth Amendment principles may be equally appropriate to equal protection issues under Section 23, a different analysis should be applied to address a grant of special privileges or immunities to a favored class. The plaintiff proposes that such analysis requires that any discriminatory grant of special privilege or immunity between similarly situated people: (1) rest upon some rational and substantial basis, (2) further a legitimate state interest, (3) be justified by facts appearing in the record or judicially noticed, and (4) be reasonably narrowly tailored to its purpose. Applying his proposed analysis, the plaintiff concludes that the Indiana worker's compensation agricultural exclusion violates Section 23.

In response, the defendant contends that the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution and the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Indiana Constitution are identical and call for application of the "rational basis" standard unless fundamental rights or suspect classifications are involved. The defendant asserts that the agricultural exemption classification and its underlying reasons are rationally related to furthering legitimate state interests.

1. Applicability of the Federal Standard to Section 23

Initially, we must determine whether settled Indiana law forecloses consideration of plaintiff's contention that federal Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence does not necessarily apply to a claim brought under Section 23 of the Indiana Constitution.

During the 143 years since the ratification of Section 23, this Court has assumed various postures with respect to the applicability of federal Fourteenth Amendment standards to Section 23 questions. One such approach suggests that a distinction ought to be drawn between Section 23 and the Fourteenth Amendment. There are striking textual differences between the two provisions. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits laws which "abridge" privileges or immunities, whereas Section 23 prohibits laws which "grant" unequal privileges or immunities. Many Indiana cases have considered and applied Section 23 separately from the Fourteenth Amendment. For example, in Graffty v. City of Rushville, we noted that Section 23 considerations were to be analyzed independently from the "provisions of the National Constitution." Graffty v. City of Rushville (1886),

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107 Ind. 502, 509, 8 N.E. 609, 612. In at least one case, a statute was found to comply with the federal Privileges and Immunities Clause but nevertheless to violate the parallel provision in Indiana's Section 23. Sperry & Hutchinson Co. v. State (1919), 188 Ind. 173, 122 N.E. 584. Several decisions of this Court have expressly acknowledged that Section 23 "is the antithesis of the 14th amendment to the federal Constitution." Hammer v. State (1909), 173 Ind. 199, 206, 89 N.E. 850, 852. See also Midwestern Petroleum Corp. v. State Bd. of Tax Comm'rs (1933), 206 Ind. 688, 187 N.E. 882, reh'g denied; Fountain Park Co. v. Hensler (1927), 199 Ind. 95, 155 N.E. 465; Cincinnati, H. & D. Ry. Co. v. McCullom (1915), 183 Ind. 556, 109 N.E. 206, aff'd (1917), 245 U.S. 632, 38 S.Ct. 64, 62 L.Ed. 521. Similarly suggesting the distinction between Section 23 and the Fourteenth Amendment, numerous other cases have undertaken the analysis of constitutional claims under first one of the provisions and then the other. Reilly v. Robertson (1977), 266 Ind. 29, 360 N.E.2d 171, cert. denied, (1977), 434 U.S. 825, 98 S.Ct. 73, 54 L.Ed.2d 83; Phillips v. Officials of Valparaiso (1954), 233 Ind. 414, 120 N.E.2d 398; Shedd v. Automobile Ins. Co. (1935), 208 Ind. 621, 196 N.E. 227; Davis Constr. Co. v. Board of Comm'rs (1921), 192 Ind. 144, 132 N.E. 629; Inland Steel Co. v. Yedinak (1909), 172 Ind. 423, 87 N.E. 229; Levy v. State (1903), 161 Ind. 251, 68 N.E. 172; Street v. Varney Elec. Supply Co. (1903), 160 Ind. 338, 66 N.E. 895; Pennsylvania Co. v. State (1895), 142 Ind. 428, 41 N.E. 937; Warren v. Sohn (1887), 112 Ind. 213, 13 N.E. 863; Cory v. Carter (1874), 48 Ind. 327.

A contrasting line of cases has maintained that Section 23 and the Fourteenth Amendment share substantially the same considerations. In Dortch v. Lugar (1971), 255 Ind. 545, 567, 266 N.E.2d 25, 39, our opinion noted that Section 23 and the Fourteenth Amendment "concerning the abridging of privileges and immunities of citizens protect substantially identical rights." Id. Other cases have considered the two provisions essentially synonymous. See, e.g., Johnson v. St. Vincent Hosp. (1980), 273 Ind. 374, 397, 404 N.E.2d 585, 600; Sidle v. Majors (1976), 264 Ind. 206, 210, 341 N.E.2d 763, 767; State ex rel. Miller v. McDonald (1973), 260 Ind. 565, 569, 297 N.E.2d 826, 829, cert. denied, (1974), 414 U.S. 1158, 94 S.Ct. 917, 39 L.Ed.2d 111; Haas v. South Bend Community Sch. Corp. (1972), 259 Ind. 515, 526, 289 N.E.2d 495, 501. Numerous cases have treated the two provisions simultaneously, without any explicit statement as to equivalence or separateness. See, eg., Murphy v. Schilling (1979), 271 Ind. 44, 389 N.E.2d 314; State v. Hi-Jinks, Inc. (1962), 242 Ind. 621, 181 N.E.2d 526; W.A. Barber Grocery Co. v. Fleming (1951), 229 Ind. 140, 96 N.E.2d 108; Vandalia R.R. v. Stillwell (1914), 181 Ind. 267, 104 N.E. 289, aff'd (1916), 239 U.S. 637, 36 S.Ct. 445, 60 L.Ed. 480; Indianapolis Union Ry. Co. v. Houlihan (1901), 157 Ind. 494, 60 N.E. 943; State v. Hogreiver (1899), 152 Ind. 652, 53 N.E. 921.

Notwithstanding that the privileges and immunities cases brought under Section 23 have often assimilated federal equal protection analysis, we are under no obligation to follow Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence in resolving a Section 23 issue. An analogous issue was encountered in Miller v. State (1987), Ind., 517 N.E.2d 64, where we observed that Indiana courts had often relied upon federal case law addressing the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution in reviewing claims invoking the right of confrontation arising from Article 1, Section 13, of the Indiana Constitution. Id. at 68. Nevertheless, we there declared that such precedents do not preclude us...