Hankins v. State of Hawaii

• Decision Date: 01 August 1986
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 86-0508.
• Parties: John HANKINS, Plaintiff, v. STATE OF HAWAII, and John W. Waihee, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Hawaii in his capacity as Chief Election Officer of the State of Hawaii, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Hawaii

639 F. Supp. 1552

John HANKINS, Plaintiff, v. STATE OF HAWAII, and John W. Waihee, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Hawaii in his capacity as Chief Election Officer of the State of Hawaii, Defendants.

Civ. No. 86-0508.

United States District Court, D. Hawaii.

August 1, 1986.

Randolph R. Slaton, Honolulu, Hawaii, for plaintiff.

Charleen M. Aina, Deputy Atty. Gen., Honolulu, Hawaii, for defendants.

AMENDED ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

FONG, Chief Judge.

Plaintiff's Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order came on for hearing before this court on July 22, 1986. Randolph Slaton appeared on behalf of plaintiff. Charleen Aina appeared on behalf of the defendants. The court, having considered the motion and the memoranda submitted in support thereof and in opposition thereto, having heard the arguments of counsel, and being fully advised as to the premises herein, finds as follows:

FACTS

Plaintiff, who has resided in Hawaii for 17 years, but for only three years immediately preceding this date, filed his nomination papers as a candidate for Governor of Hawaii in the Republican party primary scheduled for September 20, 1986. Defendant Waihee, in his capacity as the Chief Election Officer of the State, objected to the papers pursuant to Hawaii Rev.Stat. § 12-8(a), on the basis that plaintiff did not meet the durational residence requirement of the Hawaii Constitution.

Article V, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of Hawaii provides:

No person shall be eligible for the office of governor unless the person shall be a qualified voter, have attained the age of thirty years and have been a resident of this State for five years immediately preceding the person's election.

After an administrative hearing was held on July 16, 1986, defendant Waihee's objections were upheld. Plaintiff, having thereby exhausted his administrative remedies, filed this lawsuit, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.

In the instant motion, plaintiff asks the court to compel defendants to include his name as a candidate for governor on the list of candidates seeking nomination in the Republican primary. Because plaintiff requests mandatory injunctive relief, the court will treat the motion as seeking a preliminary injunction.

DISCUSSION

A. The test for injunctive relief

The Ninth Circuit has developed a multi-pronged test for the propriety of preliminary injunctive relief. A movant must establish either (1) probable success on the merits and possible irreparable injury or (2) sufficiently serious questions going to the merits to make them fair ground for litigation and a balance of hardships tipping decidedly toward the party requesting the preliminary relief. Aguirre v. Chula Vista Sanitary Service, 542 F.2d 779, 781 (9th Cir.1976) (emphasis in original). As the court later noted, "These are not really two entirely separate tests, but they are merely extremes of a single continuum." Benda v. Grand Lodge of Int'l Assoc. of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, 584 F.2d 308, 315 (9th Cir.1978), cert. dismissed, 441 U.S. 937, 99 S.Ct. 2065, 60 L.Ed.2d 667 (1979).

Because July 22, 1986, the date set for hearing of the instant motion, is the deadline for filing nomination papers to run in the 1986 gubernatorial primary election, it is clear that plaintiff has demonstrated the possibility of irreparable harm. The timely placing of his name on the primary election ballot will depend entirely on the outcome of this hearing.

Moreover, the court finds that the balance of hardships tips decidedly in plaintiff's favor. Although defendants claim that "delay or confusion" arising out of the instant lawsuit "could irreparably harm the voters' right to `cast their votes effectively,'" the court believes that any harm to the State, in the event that the motion is granted, would amount to no more than administrative inconvenience. Of the parties before the court, plaintiff stands to lose considerably more than do defendants.

Convinced, therefore, that the plaintiff has satisfied half of the test for injunctive relief at either end of the continuum, this court turns to an analysis of the merits of plaintiff's claims. It is self-evident that, in order to obtain the injunctive relief sought, plaintiff must demonstrate at least the existence of sufficiently serious questions to make them fair ground for litigation.

B. Merits of the Complaint

Despite the various labels affixed to it by the parties, at bottom this dispute is one arising under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Reduced to its simplest terms, the controversy at hand involves whether a state may discriminate against recently-arrived residents who wish to enter an upcoming gubernatorial election. Resolution of this issue will depend upon the reason for the rule; that explanation, in turn, will be given more or less weight according to the rights of the would-be candidates that are allegedly infringed by the regulation.

1. The appropriate standard of review

In examining an equal protection claim, the court considers three elements: the character of the classification in question; the individual interests affected by the classification; and the governmental interests asserted in support of the classification. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 999, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972).

With respect to an "ordinary" equal protection case, a court will uphold the challenged law as long as it has some rational basis, or as long as it is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental concern. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). However, if the challenged law creates a suspect classification or impinges upon a fundamental constitutional right, the legislative act is subject to heightened scrutiny. In such cases, the law must be shown to be necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 1331, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969). Accordingly, the first question for this court is whether the heightened standard of scrutiny should be applied in the instant case.

The United States Supreme Court has not yet ruled directly on the validity of durational residency requirements for candidacy for public office. Annot., 65 A.L. R.3d 1048, 1053 (1975 and Supp.). Most of the state and federal courts that have addressed the issue have held that strict scrutiny should be applied to such requirements, ostensibly because such restrictions affect the right to travel, the right to vote, and/or the right of political expression and association. Joseph v. City of Birmingham, 510 F.Supp. 1319, 1322 (E.D.Mich. 1981) (thorough discussion of methods of analyzing durational residence requirements). Indeed, the Ninth Circuit has embraced such a test. Howlett v. Salish and Kootenai Tribes, 529 F.2d 233, 242 (9th Cir.1976).

Nevertheless, a number of recent developments counsel against facile acceptance of the proposition that durational residence requirements are unquestionably entitled to stricter scrutiny. First, as plaintiff acknowledges, it is far from settled that the right to hold public office is itself a fundamental constitutional right.

The Court has not heretofore attached such fundamental status to candidacy as to invoke a rigorous standard of review.... Of course, not every limitation or incidental burden on the exercise of voting rights is subject to a stringent standard of review.

Bullock v. Carter, 405 U.S. 134, 92 S.Ct. 849, 855-56, 31 L.Ed.2d 92 (1972). Restrictions on candidates, as opposed to voters, do not always demand compelling state interest analysis. Beil v. City of Akron, 660 F.2d 166, 169 (6th Cir.1981). Hawaii has upheld a similar residency requirement for legislators on mere rationality review. Hayes v. Gill, 52 Haw. 251, 473 P.2d 872 (1970), app. dismissed as moot, 401 U.S. 968, 91 S.Ct. 1200, 28 L.Ed.2d 319 (1971).

Second, although durational residence requirements for voters clearly infringe the personal right to travel, Dunn v. Blumstein, supra, the mere fact that an individual cannot immediately become governor when he moves to a new state does not automatically trigger a higher standard of review. A burden on interstate travel in cases such as this is impermissible only when it imposes a "penalty" on the new arrival. Attorney General of New York v. Soto-Lopez, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 106 S.Ct. 2317, 2321, 90 L.Ed.2d 899 (1986). Moreover, courts must examine the nature of the penalty in passing on the validity of the regulation at issue. Walker v. Yucht, 352 F.Supp. 85, 97 (D.Del.1972).

Unlike the situation in Dunn, the requirement at issue here does not force a person to "choose between travel and the basic right to vote," because there is no analogous basic right to candidacy. Id. Although a new resident is "penalized" in the sense that he is precluded from running for governor for five years, the activity in which he seeks to engage is not itself a fundamental right. Accordingly, because the law hinders the exercise of no fundamental right, the durational residence requirement does not truly penalize the right to travel.

Finally, although the Supreme Court has summarily affirmed two cases which purported to apply the "compelling interest" test, see Chimento v. Stark, 353 F.Supp. 1211 (D.N.H.) (three judge court), aff'd, 414 U.S. 802, 94 S.Ct. 125, 38 L.Ed.2d 39 (1973); Sununu v. Stark, 383 F.Supp. 1287 (D.N. H.1974) (three judge court), aff'd, 420 U.S. 958, 95 S.Ct. 1346, 43 L.Ed.2d 435 (1975), recent comments from the Court have indicated that heightened scrutiny in such cases may be unnecessary. Durational residence requirements have apparently been referred to as one of the rare "instances in which length of residence could provide a legitimate basis for distinguishing one citizen from another" under rationality review. Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55, 102 S.Ct. 2309, 2318, 72 L.Ed.2d 672 (1982) (Brennan, J., concurring). In discussing the related...