Davis v. Davis, 43832

• Decision Date: 24 August 1973
• Docket Number: No. 43832,43832
• Citation: 297 Minn. 187,210 N.W.2d 221
• Parties: Rosalie DAVIS, Appellant, v. Albert DAVIS, Defendant, Warren Spannaus, Attorney General, Intervenor, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 221

210 N.W.2d 221

297 Minn. 187

Rosalie DAVIS, Appellant, v. Albert DAVIS, Defendant Warren Spannaus, Attorney General, Intervenor, Respondent.

No. 43832.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Aug. 24, 1973.

Syllabus by the Court

Minn.St. 518.07 provides that no divorce shall be granted unless the plaintiff has resided in this state for a period of 1 year immediately preceding the filing of the complaint.

1. The 1-year durational-residency requirement does not violate the equal protection clause because it is rationally related to the state's legitimate goal of ensuring the domicile of divorce applicants.

2. The temporary delay in access to divorce courts resulting from the 1-year durational-residency requirement does not constitute a denial of due process.

Marino Becker & Granquist, Bernard P. Becker, and Luther A. Granquist, Legal Aid Society, Inc., Minneapolis, for appellant.

Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Curtis D. Forslund, Sol. Gen., Byron E. Starns, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for respondent intervenor.

Heard and considered en banc.

MacLAUGHLIN, Justice.

The sole issue for our consideration in this case is the constitutionality of Minnesota's 1-year durational-residency requirement in a divorce action. The trial court found the requirement to be constitutional and so do we.

In May 1971, plaintiff, Rosalie Davis, separated from her husband, defendant Albert Davis. At that time plaintiff resided in Missouri. On June 19, 1971, she moved from Missouri to Minnesota with five minor children and established domicile in Minneapolis. Her husband did not accompany her to Minnesota. The summons and complaint in the divorce action were served on defendant in Missouri on August 30, 1971, and the Minnesota attorney general was notified that plaintiff was challenging the constitutionality of the 1-year durational-residency requirement contained in § 518.07. The complaint was filed with the district court on October 19, 1971, and a default hearing was held on January 21, 1972. On May 22, 1972, the trial court dismissed plaintiff's action because she had not met the 1-year durational-residency requirement. ¹

1. Minn.St. 518.07 provides:

'No divorce shall be granted unless the plaintiff has resided in this state one year immediately preceding the filing of the complaint, except for adultery committed while the plaintiff was a resident of this state.'

Plaintiff does not contest the state's power to restrict access to divorce courts to bona fide residents of the state. Nor does the state dispute that plaintiff was a bona fide resident when she filed for the divorce. The question is whether it is constitutional to require a plaintiff, in addition to Being a resident, to Have been a resident for 1 year.

Plaintiff contends that the enforcement of the 1-year durational-residency requirement penalizes her for the exercise of her right to travel and denies her equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Freedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution, and the freedom to travel includes the freedom to enter and abide in any state. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972).

Equal protection of the laws is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In testing whether state legislation violates equal protection, two tests have evolved. ² Where a statutory classification is either based on 'suspect criteria' (e.g., race) or unduly affects or interferes with 'fundamental rights' (e.g., voting), equal protection is denied unless the classification is necessary to a compelling state interest. See, e.g., McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 85 S.Ct. 283, 13 L.Ed.2d 222 (1964); Dunn v. Blumstein, Supra. If neither suspect criteria nor undue interference with a fundamental right is involved, the so-called 'traditional' standard is used. Under the traditional standard, equal protection is denied only if the statute's classification is not 'rationally related' to a legitimate governmental objective. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961); Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491.

Plaintiff argues that Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), and Dunn v. Blumstein, Supra, support her claim of unconstitutionality. In Shapiro, the court considered whether certain statutes of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, which granted welfare benefits to persons who had resided in the jurisdiction for 1 year or more but denied such benefits to persons who had not resided therein for at least 1 year, were in violation of the equal protection clause. The court held that fundamental rights were involved and that because the 1-year waiting period for welfare benefits penalized the constitutional right to travel, 'its constitutionality must be judged by the stricter standard of whether it promotes a Compelling state interest' rather than the traditional standard that equal protection is denied only if the classification is without any reasonable basis. 394 U.S. 638, 89 S.Ct. 1333, 22 L.Ed.2d 617. Since the court found that a 1-year durational-residency requirement for welfare benefits was not necessary to any compelling state interest, the statutes were held unconstitutional.

In Dunn, the court struck down the 1-year durational-residency requirement for voter registration in the State of Tennessee as violative of the equal protection clause. Again, applying the compelling-state-interest test, the court held that the durational-residency requirement unconstitutionally penalized bona fide residents who had recently moved to Tennessee from other jurisdictions by denying them the fundamental right to vote until they had lived in Tennessee for at least 1 year.

In Shapiro and Dunn, the court concluded that certain classifications which impose penalties on the constitutional right to travel, unless shown to be necessary to promote a compelling state interest, are unconstitutional and that the denial of welfare and the denial of the right to vote unconstitutionally penalized recent travel. The instant case also involves the right of interstate travel. Therefore, if Minnesota's durational-residency requirement for divorce penalizes recent travel, in the same sense that denying welfare benefits and denying the right to vote do, the 1-year requirement must be found necessary to a compelling state interest if it is to be found constitutional. If it does not so penalize interstate travel, we need only find that the durational-residency requirement is rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective.

Plaintiff argues that, under the Shapiro and Dunn decisions, all durational-residency laws must be measured by the strict equal protection test. That argument is not without merit. The court stated in Dunn (405 U.S. 340, 92 S.Ct. 1002, 31 L.Ed.2d 283) that 'the compelling-state interest test would be triggered by 'any classification which serves to Penalize the exercise of that right (to travel) * * *. " From this language, it could be concluded that any adverse effect resulting from interstate travel, no matter how insignificant, would constitute a penalty on travel and would therefore trigger the strict test.

We cannot believe, however, that this result was intended by the Supreme Court. Surely, the severity of the penalty is relevant in determining the constitutionality of the state's imposition of a durational-residency requirement. The court's recent decision in Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S 441, 93 S.Ct. 2230, 37 L.Ed.2d 63 (1973), supports this conclusion. Like many other states, Connecticut requires nonresidents of the state who are enrolled in the state university system to pay tuition and other fees at higher rates than residents of the state. The court held that Connecticut's statutory irrebuttable presumption of nonresidence based on residence status at the time of application was violative of the due process clause because it provided no opportunity for students who had been nonresidents at the time of their application to demonstrate that they later became bona fide Connecticut residents. It is important to the case before us, however, that the court states that its decision should not 'be construed to deny a State the right to impose on a student, as one element in demonstrating bona fide residence, a reasonable durational residency requirement' (412 U.S. 452, 93 S.Ct. 2236, 37 L.Ed.2d 72) and again approved Starns v. Malkerson, 326 F.Supp. 234 (D.Minn.1970), affirmed, 401 U.S. 985, 91 S.Ct. 1231, 28 L.Ed.2d 527 (1971). The Starns case upheld the constitutionality of a Minnesota regulation that no student could qualify as a resident for university tuition purposes unless he had been a bona fide domiciliary of Minnesota for at least 1 year immediately prior thereto. Since a durational-residency requirement for resident tuition can be said to constitute a penalty on interstate travel, and since it is difficult to find any compelling state interest in requiring a 1-year wait for resident tuition, it seems clear that the court is implying that not every penalty on interstate travel triggers the compelling-state-interest test. In other words, it appears that we may weigh the harshness of the penalty in determining whether there has been a denial of equal protection.

To decide whether a law violates the equal protection clause, we are to consider three factors: (1) The character of the classification in question; (2) the individual interests affected by the classification; and (3) the governmental interests asserted in support of the classification. Dunn v. Blumstein, Supra. Although the character of classification in this case is identical to that in Shapiro and Dunn, i.e., recent interstate travel, it seems clear that the individual interests affected by the statutory classification in this case are quite different...