Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: STEVENS
• Citation: Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U.S. 88, 96 S.Ct. 1895, 48 L.Ed.2d 495 (1975)
• Decision Date: 13 January 1975
• Docket Number: No. 73-1596,73-1596
• Parties: Robert E. HAMPTON, Chairman of the United States Civil Service Commission, et al., Petitioners, v. MOW SUN WONG et al

426 U.S. 88

96 S.Ct. 1895

48 L.Ed.2d 495

Robert E. HAMPTON, Chairman of the United States Civil Service Commission, et al., Petitioners,

v MOW SUN WONG et al.

No. 73-1596.

Argued Jan. 13, 1975.

Reargued Jan. 12, 1976.

Decided June 1, 1976.

Syllabus

The Civil Service Commission (CSC) regulation barring noncitizens, including lawfully admitted resident aliens, from employment in the federal competitive civil service Held unconstitutional as depriving such resident aliens of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Pp. 99-117.

(a) While overriding national interests may justify a citizenship requirement in the federal service even though an identical requirement may not be enforced by a State, the federal power over aliens is not so plenary that any agent of the Federal Government may arbitrarily subject all resident aliens to different substantive rules from those applied to citizens. When the Federal Government asserts an overriding national interest to justify a discriminatory rule that would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if adopted by a State, due process requires that there be a legitimate basis for presuming that the rule was actually intended to serve that interest. Pp. 99-105.

(b) While the CSC's policy of conditioning eligibility for employment in the federal civil service on citizenship has been considered by Congress in certain Appropriation Acts imposing various limitations on the classes of employees who may receive compensation from the Federal Government and by various Presidents in Executive Orders relating to the CSC's authority to establish standards for federal employment, those Appropriation Acts and Executive Orders cannot fairly be construed to evidence either approval or disapproval of the CSC regulation in question. Pp. 105-114.

(c) Assuming without deciding that an explicit determination by Congress or the President to exclude all noncitizens from the federal service would be adequately supported by the national interests of (1) providing the President with an expendable token for treaty negotiation purposes, (2) offering aliens an incentive to become naturalized, and (3) having, for the sake of administrative convenience, one simple rule excluding all noncitizens from employment when citizenship is clearly an appropriate and legitimate requirement for some important and sensitive positions, such interests cannot provide an acceptable rationalization for such a determination by the CSC. The first two are not matters that properly concern the CSC. The third interest is likewise unacceptable, where it does not appear that the CSC fully evaluated the relative desirability of a simple exclusionary rule on the one hand or the value to the service of enlarging the pool of eligible employees on the other, and where it cannot be reasonably inferred that the administrative burden of establishing the job classifications for which citizenship is an appropriate requirement would be particularly onerous. More significantly, in view of the quality of the interest at stake, any fair balancing of the public interest in avoiding the wholesale deprivation of employment opportunities caused by the CSC's indiscriminate policy, as opposed to what may be nothing more than a hypothetical justification, requires rejection of administrative convenience as justification for the regulation. Pp. 114-116.

(d) Since alien residents are admitted as a result of decisions made by Congress and the President, implemented by the Immigration and Naturalization Service acting under the Attorney General, due process requires that the decision to deprive such residents of an important liberty be made either at a comparable level of government or, if it is to be permitted to be made by the CSC, that it be justified by reasons that are the proper concern of that agency. P. 116.

500 F.2d 1031, affirmed.

Sol. Gen. Robert H. Bork, Washington, D. C., for petitioners.

Edward H. Steinman, Santa Clara, Cal., for respondents.

Mr. Justice STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

Five aliens, lawfully and permanently residing in the United States, brought this litigation to challenge the validity of a policy, adopted and enforced by the Civil Service Commission and certain other federal agencies, which excludes all persons except American citizens and natives of American Samoa from employment in most positions subject to their respective jurisdictions.¹ Because the policy, the law, and the identity of the parties have changed somewhat since the litigation commenced we state the facts in detail before addressing the important question which we granted certiorari to resolve. 417 U.S. 94 94 S.Ct. 3067, 41 L.Ed.2d 664.

I

Each of the five plaintiffs was denied federal employment solely because of his or her alienage. They were all Chinese residents of San Francisco and each was qualified for an available job.

After performing satisfactory work for the Post Office Department for 10 days, respondent Kae Cheong Lui was terminated because his personnel record disclosed that he was not a citizen.² Respondents Mow Sun Wong and Siu Hung Mok also demonstrated their ability to perform on the job; they both participated in the California Supplemental Training and Education Program (STEP) and were assigned to federal agencies until the STEP program ended. As a noncitizen, Mow Sun Wong, who had been an electrical engineer in China, was ineligible for employment as a janitor for the General Services Administration. Siu Hung Mok, who had 18 years' experience as a businessman in China, could not retain his job as a file clerk with the Federal Records Center of GSA.

Respondent Francene Lum was not permitted to take an examination for a position as evaluator of educational programs in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Her background included 15 years of teaching experience, a master's degree in education, and periods of graduate study at four universities. Anna Yu, the fifth plaintiff, who is not a respondent because she did not join in the appeal from the adverse decision of the District Court, sought a position as a clerk-typist, but could not take the typing test because she was not a citizen.

Two of the plaintiffs, Mow Sun Wong and Siu Hung Mok, had filed declarations of intent to become citizens; the other three had not. They were all lawfully admitted, Francene Lum in 1946, Anna Yu in 1965, Siu Hung Mok and Kae Cheong Lui in 1968, and Mow Sun Wong in 1969.

On December 22, 1970, they commenced this class action in the Northern District of California. As defendants they named the Chairman and the Commissioners of the Civil Service Commission and the heads of the three agencies which had denied them employment.³

The complaint alleged that there are about four million aliens living in the United States; they face special problems in seeking employment because our culture, language, and system of government are foreign to them; about 300,000 federal jobs become available each year, but noncitizens are not permitted to compete for those jobs except in rare situations when citizens are not available or when a few positions exempted from the competitive civil service are being filled. Plaintiffs further alleged that the advantage given to citizens seeking federal civil service positions is arbitrary and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution ⁴ and Executive Order No. 11,478, 3 CFR 803 (1966-1970 Comp.), which forbids discrimination in federal employment on the basis of "national origin." The complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief.

Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint and plaintiffs filed motions for summary judgment supported by affidavits setting forth the facts stated above. The District Court, 333 F.Supp. 527 rejected a challenge to its jurisdiction, ⁵ but ruled in favor of defendants on the merits. 333 F.Supp. 527. The District Court held that the reference to "national origin" in the Executive Order prohibited discrimination among citizens rather than discrimination between citizens and noncitizens. The court also rejected an argument that the Civil Service Commission regulation was inconsistent with § 502 of the Public Works for Water Pollution Control, and Power Development and Atomic Energy Commission Appropriation Act, 1970, which permitted payment to classes of persons who are made ineligible by the Civil Service regulation.⁶ On that point the court said:

"The Commission has acted permissibly in relation to the Appropriations Act in not opening up the civil service to all those whom Congress has indicated it would be willing to pay for their work." 333 F.Supp., at 531.

Finally, the District Court held that the Commission's discrimination against aliens was constitutional. The court noted that the federal power over aliens is "quite broad, almost plenary," and therefore the classification needed only a rational basis. Ibid. It identified two grounds upon which the President ⁷ could properly rely: First, that the formation of policy and its execution, at whatever level, should only be entrusted to United States citizens, or alternatively, that "the Executive may intend that the economic security of its citizens be served by the reservation of competitive civil service positions to them, rather than to aliens." Id., at 532.

Four of the plaintiffs appealed. During the period of over two years that the appeal was pending in the Ninth Circuit, we decided two cases that recognized the importance of protecting the employment opportunities of aliens.⁸ In Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U.S. 634, 93 S.Ct. 2842, 37 L.Ed.2d 853, we held that a section of the New York Civil Service Law which provided that only United States citizens could hold permanent positions in the competitive class of the State's civil service violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; that Clause...