People ex rel. Heydenreich v. Lyons

• Decision Date: 10 December 1940
• Docket Number: No. 25779.,25779.
• Citation: 374 Ill. 557,30 N.E.2d 46
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. HEYDENREICH et al. v. LYONS.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

374 Ill. 557

30 N.E.2d 46

PEOPLE ex rel. HEYDENREICH et al.

v.LYONS.

No. 25779.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 15, 1940.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 10, 1940.

Original mandamus proceeding by the People, on the relation of Charles Heydenreich and others, against Leo M. Lyons.

Writ denied.Tolman & Megan, of Chicago (Charles P. Megan, of Chicago, of counsel), for petitioners.

Barnet Hodes, Corp. Counsel, of Chicago (Alexander J. Resa and J. Herzl Segal, both of Chicago, of counsel), for respondent.

WILSON, Justice.

The People of the State, on the relation of Charles Heydenreich, Henry Rynberk, Willard Ellett, Lafayette D. Jennings and Milton Huntoon, charge in a petition filed in this court that they are poor and indigent persons, citizens of Illinois and residents of the city of Chicago, and that they have applied to the respondent, Leo M. Lyons, as relief officer of the city, for the necessaries of life or the means to procure them, but that he has denied their applications, asserting he is forbidden to grant assistance by section 16 of ‘An Act to revise the law in relation to paupers.’ As amended by an act effective July 26, 1939 (Ill.Rev.Stat.1939, chap. 107, sec. 16, p. 2383) section 16 provides, in part: ‘No city, village, incorporated town, county or township required by this Act to provide relief and support to residents therein shall furnish such relief or support to any person who did not reside therein for a period of three years immediately preceding his application for relief and support.’ Section 17, as amended, declares: ‘The term ‘residence,’ for the purpose of this Act, shall be taken and considered to mean the city, village, incorporated town, county or town, charged with the duty of furnishing pauper relief, in which a person has made his permanent home for a continuous period of three years, preceding his becoming chargeable as a pauper.' It is alleged, further, that the respondent has predicated his refusal to furnish relief or support to them solely on the first quoted statutory provision, maintaining that no one of them has resided in Chicago for a period of three years immediately preceding his application for aid. The prayer of the petition is for a writ of mandamus commanding the respondent to place the names of the relators on the relief roll of the city and to relieve, support, or employ them, provided that he shall find they are otherwise eligible for relief, support or employment. The respondent interposed a motion in the nature of a demurrer to dismiss the petition and upon these pleadings the cause is submitted. While there are facts in the five particular cases which tend to indicate that the relators comply with the requirements of the statute in that they are residents of the State and the particular municipality, nevertheless, counsel asks us to base our opinion solely upon a proposition of law, namely, the constitutionality of the amendatory enactment which appears as section 16 of the statute.

Of the five relators, Heydenreich, fifty-seven years of age, was born in Chicago and has been domiciled there his entire life with the exception of seven months, commencing in the summer of 1937 and continuing until April, 1938, when he was employed in the city of Capac, Michigan. He went to Capac because of his inability to obtain employment in Chicago and, when his work terminated in Michigan and he was unable to find other employment, returned to his home where he has since resided. Rynberk was born in Chicago forty years ago and has been continuously domiciled in the city with the exception of eight months, from June, 1939, to February, 1940, when he went to Oak Forest, in Cook county, because of his wife's impaired health and in order to pursue his occupation of interior decorator. Neither Rynberk nor his wife have ever resided outside the State, and, so far as the record discloses, beyond the boundaries of Cook county. The third relator, Ellett, thirty years old, was born in McLeansboro, Illinois. Thereafter, he went to Potomac where he lived and worked as a tenantfarmer for thirteen years. He then came to Chicago where he obtained and for two years pursued employment promised him by a friend. He was next employed by a steel company in Chicago until March, 1940, when he was laid off. With the exception of one week in May, 1940, when he returned to Potomac endeavoring to find work, Ellett has not been away from Chicago subsequent to November, 1937. Jennings, a native of Missouri, now fifty-six years of age, came to Chicago approximately thirty years ago and since then has never resided outside of Cook county. He and his wife lived in Chicago until 1928 when they moved to Brookfield. Subsequently, in 1931, they moved to Cicero where they resided until August, 1938, when they returned to Chicago. It further appears that Ellett was at one time a property owner and paid real estate taxes in Cook county for approximately fifteen or sixteen years. The fifth relator, Huntoon, was born in Evanston, in Cook county, in 1890, and lived there until December, 1936, when he went to Portland, Oregon, in search of work. Failing in his efforts to obtain employment there, the Portland relief authorities returned him to Cook county in June, 1937. He has since lived in Chicago where he had resided for almost three years immediately prior to the filing of the petition.

The respondent maintains that the relators have not resided in Chicago, within the contemplation of the applicable statutory provision, for three years immediately preceding their applications for relief and support. Insisting that it was their duty to seek employment wherever there was a reasonable prospect of finding it, even if beyond the limits of the city, county or State of their residence, the relators contend that in leaving Chicago within the three-year period described as a condition of eligibility to relief and support, they were acting in the exercise of their constitutional guaranties. Accordingly, the relators assail section 16 on the grounds that it is discriminatory legislation not based upon any reasonable classification of the persons affected and, hence, transcends art. 2, sections 1 and 19, of the Illinois Constitution, Smith-Hurd Stats., the due process clauses of both the Federal and State Constitutions, the equal protection of the laws guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and also section 22 of article 4 of our own basic law. The respondent maintains, on the other hand, that section 16 is a valid exertion of the police power, and not vulnerable to the constitutional objections interposed.

It is settled that the police power may be exercised not only in the interest of the public health, morals, comfort and safety, but also for the promotion of the public convenience or the general welfare. Triner Corp. v. McNeil, 363 Ill. 559, 2 N.E.2d 929, 104 A.L.R. 1435;Fenske Bros., Inc. v. Upholsterers' Union, 358 Ill. 239, 193 N.E. 112, 97 A.L.R. 1318. The General Assembly is vested with a large discretion in determining what measures are necessary to promote the public welfare, and such statutes are upheld, if possible, being declared invalid only when the legislature exceeds its power. People v. City of Springfield, 370 Ill. 541, 19 N.E.2d 598. The support of paupers is, admittedly, an accepted exercise of valid authority under the police power in promotion of the general welfare. Town of Fox v. Town of Kendall, 97 Ill. 72;In re Opinion of the Justices, 85 N.H. 562, 154 A. 217. This court, long ago, in County of McLean v. Humphreys, 104 Ill. 378, observed: ‘It is the unquestioned right and imperative duty of every enlightened government, in its character of parens patriae, to protect and provide for the comfort and well-being of such of its citizens as, by reason of infancy, defective understanding, or other misfortune or infirmity, are unable to take care of themselves. The performance of this duty is justly regarded as one of the most important of governmental functions, and all constitutional limitations must be so understood and construed as not to interfere with its proper and legitimate exercise.’ There is, as respondent claims, and as the relators, in reply, concede, no constitutionally imposed obligation upon the State of Illinois or any local governmental unit to support poor persons. Nor is there a common-law obligation upon any governmental unit to support the poor and destitute. In short, no legal obligation, in the absence of a statute creating the duty, rests upon either the State government or local units to relieve those in necessitous circumstances. Cerro Gordo County v. Boone County, 152 Iowa 692, 133 N.W. 132, 39 L.R.A., N.S., 161, Ann.Cas.1913C, 79; Patrick v. Town of Baldwin, 109 Wis. 342, 85 N.W. 274,53 L.R.A. 613; Town of Morristown v. Town of Hardwick, 81 Vt. 31, 69 A. 152;State v. Burns, 132 Neb. 31, 270 N.W. 656;City of Auburn v. Inhabitants of Town of Farmington, 133 Me. 213, 175 A. 475. As was pointedly observed in Town of Holland v. Village of Cedar Grove, 230 Wis. 177, 282 N.W. 111, 117, 448: ‘The whole matter of poor relief is of statutory origin. * * * That was true at common law and is still true although relief has been furnished under statutory provisions so long that in the minds of the general public it is now regarded as a municipal duty.’ The State may, of course, voluntarily assume the humanitarian obligation of supporting its needy citizens or impose the duty upon local governmental units. Town of Fox v. Town of Kendall, supra; State v. Burns, supra. The issue thus presented is not whether the State is constitutionally bound to provide for the relief of the needy but is, instead, whether the challenged statute, based on the exercise of its police power to provide for the relief of the poor, satisfies constitutional tests.

The legislative determination as to what is a proper exercise of the police power is not necessarily conclusive....