Home Depot, Inc. v. Guste

• Decision Date: 10 October 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-3532,84-3532
• Citation: 773 F.2d 616
• Parties: HOME DEPOT, INC., and Gaylord's National Corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, Defendant- Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 616

773 F.2d 616

HOME DEPOT, INC., and Gaylord's National Corporation Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, Defendant- Appellant.

No. 84-3532.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Oct. 10, 1985.

Rehearing En Banc Denied Dec. 10, 1985.

William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Louis M. Jones, Kenneth C. Fonte, Asst. Atty. Gen., New Orleans, La., for defendant-appellant.

Sessions, Fishman, Rosenson, Boisfontaine & Nathan, Robert E. Barkley, Jr., Francis R. White, III, New Orleans, La., Smith, Cohen, Ringel, Kohler & Martin, John L. Latham, Robert W. Beynart, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Harvey C. Koch, New Orleans, La., for amicus-K-Mart.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Before POLITZ, GARWOOD, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs-appellees, Home Depot, Inc., and Gaylord's National Corp., are national chain corporations which own and operate retail stores in the State of Louisiana. In this suit, they sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the Attorney General of Louisiana. Plaintiffs alleged that La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 51:194 ¹ of the State's Sunday Closing Laws violates the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Louisiana. They requested an injunction preventing the Attorney General from enforcing section 51:194, and La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 51:1405 (a part of the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act) in conjunction therewith, against them in the future. ² Following oral argument, the district court found that there was a substantial likelihood that plaintiffs would prevail on the merits of their constitutional claim and granted them preliminary injunctive relief. ³

Home Depot, Inc. v. Louisiana, 589 F.Supp. 1258, 1263, 1267 (E.D.La.1984). The court subsequently held section 51:194 unconstitutional and granted a permanent injunction preventing the Attorney General from enforcing or attempting to enforce the provisions of section 51:194 and section 51:1405 in conjunction therewith. A motions panel of this Court, on request of the Attorney General, stayed the district court's order pending this appeal. We find that the district court erred in granting declaratory and injunctive relief, and reverse. ⁴

RATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Appellees challenged section 51:194 of the Sunday Closing Laws, and the district court granted relief, in part on the ground that the statute does not bear a rational relationship to a legitimate State interest, in violation of the equal protection and due process clauses of the fourteenth amendment. We agree with appellant that section 51:194 passes constitutional muster under the applicable rational relationship test.

The stated purpose of section 51:194, set out in the statute itself, is "to promote the health, recreation and welfare of the people of [Louisiana] ... and to prevent unfair competition among persons, firms or business establishments" by establishing a uniform forced day of rest. See also Harry's Hardware, Inc. v. Parsons, 410 So.2d 735, 736, 738 (La.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 881, 103 S.Ct. 178, 74 L.Ed.2d 145 (1982) (discussing the objectives of the Sunday closing law and quoting section 51:194 C); Louisiana v. Scallon, 374 So.2d 1232, 1233 (La.1979) (Tate, J.) (noting that section 51:194 was "legislatively enacted in the interest of the health, recreation, and welfare of the working population"). Appellees have not challenged the State's legitimate interest in promoting these concerns either before the district court or on appeal. Instead, they argue that there is no rational relationship between the classifications created by the statute and the admittedly proper legislative objective. We disagree.

In McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961), the Supreme Court addressed a similar argument, raised by seven department store employees who had been convicted of selling proscribed merchandise, that Maryland's Sunday closing laws were "without rational and substantial relation to the object of the legislation." The Court rejected the constitutional challenge and affirmed the employees' criminal convictions. 81 S.Ct. at 1104-05, 1119. In rejecting the appellants' rational relationship argument, the Court wrote:

"Although no precise formula has been developed, the Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the States a wide scope of discretion in enacting laws which affect some groups of citizens differently than others. The constitutional safeguard is offended only if the classification rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the State's objective. State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality. A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it." 81 S.Ct. at 1105 (emphasis added).

See also Irby v. Sullivan, 737 F.2d 1418, 1423 (5th Cir.1984) (per curiam) (quoting McGowan ). We have emphasized that in suits involving a challenge to the rational basis of a statute, the burden is not upon the state to establish the rationality of its statute, but is upon the challenger to show that the restriction is wholly arbitrary. Irby, 737 F.2d at 1423; Kite v. Marshall, 661 F.2d 1027, 1030 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1120, 102 S.Ct. 2934, 73 L.Ed.2d 1333 (1982).

In City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1976) (per curiam), the Court similarly upheld the validity of a City of New Orleans municipal ordinance that prohibited the sale of food items from pushcart vendors in the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, of the city, but which permitted vendors who had operated for eight or more years prior to January 1, 1972 to continue their operations in that district. The Court stated:

"Unless a classification trammels fundamental personal rights or is drawn upon inherently suspect distinctions such as race, religion, or alienage, our decisions presume the constitutionality of the statutory discriminations and require only that the classification challenged be rationally related to a legitimate state interest. States are accorded wide latitude in the regulation of their local economies under their police powers, and rational distinctions may be made with substantially less than mathematical exactitude. Legislatures may implement their program step by step, ... in such economic areas, adopting regulations that only partially ameliorate a perceived evil and deferring complete elimination of the evil to future regulations.... In short, the judiciary may not sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines ...; in the local economic sphere, it is only the invidious discrimination, the wholly arbitrary act, which cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment." 96 S.Ct. at 2516-17 (citations omitted and emphasis added).

See also American Real Estate Inst., Inc. v. Alabama Real Estate Comm'n, 605 F.2d 931, 933 (5th Cir.1979) (quoting Dukes ). The Dukes Court echoed language contained in Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley, 366 U.S. 582, 81 S.Ct. 1135, 6 L.Ed.2d 551 (1961), in which the Court, inter alia, rejected a constitutional challenge to a Pennsylvania Sunday closing law provision that imposed heavier penalties for the sale of selected commodities than were imposed for the sale of other proscribed items. The Court explained,

" 'Evils in the same field may be of different dimensions and proportions, requiring different remedies.... Or the reform may take one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind.... The legislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others.' " 81 S.Ct. at 1140 (emphasis added; quoting Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., 348 U.S. 461, 75 S.Ct. 461, 465, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955)).

Under the standards of review set out in McGowan and Dukes, we find that the classifications established by the Legislature are neither "wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the State's objective" nor "wholly arbitrary." McGowan, 81 S.Ct. at 1105; Dukes, 96 S.Ct. at 2517. The district court found that the statute falls "woefully short of accomplishing its purpose of establishing a 'forced day of rest' " since the statute applies to less than fifteen percent of Louisiana's working population and, of this segment, does not specifically prohibit work on Sunday but only the sale of enumerated categories of goods. ⁵ 589 F.Supp. at 1264-65. The court also found that "the myriad of exemptions set forth in the statute detract from the stated purpose of promoting the citizens' well-being, and instead of preventing unfair competition, ... promote such an undesirable result." 589 F.Supp. at 1265-66. ⁶ Home Depot and Gaylord's raise these same arguments on appeal.

The Louisiana Legislature, however, could reasonably believe that the wholesale and retail businesses affected by the statute are those that feel the most pressure to remain open for sales on Sunday, and that therefore the fifteen percent of the work force employed in such businesses generally constitute the workers who most need protection; and, likewise, that since the economic pressure is to be open for sales, as opposed to pressure for taking inventory or the like, prohibition of selling generally affords sufficient employee protection without the necessity of prohibiting all work in the affected establishments. As the Louisiana Supreme Court stated in Parsons, supra, "[T]he purpose of the Sunday Closing Law is not the prevention of all unfair competition among businesses. By enacting a general prohibition against the conduct of business on...