State, Dept. of Health and Rehabilitative Services, on Behalf of Gillespie v. West, 53123

• Decision Date: 20 December 1979
• Docket Number: No. 53123,53123
• Citation: 378 So.2d 1220
• Parties: STATE of Florida, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES, on Behalf of Lucinda GILLESPIE, Appellant, v. Ronald Jerome WEST, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 1220

378 So.2d 1220

STATE of Florida, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES, on Behalf of Lucinda GILLESPIE, Appellant, v. Ronald Jerome WEST, Appellee.

No. 53123.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Dec. 20, 1979.

Joseph W. Howard, Asst. Court Commissioner, Jacksonville, and Joseph R. Boyd, Law Firm of Joseph R. Boyd, Tallahassee, for appellant.

Daniel A. Japour, Jacksonville, for appellee.

Stanley Jay Bartel of Bartel & Shuford, Miami, for Roberto Romero, amicus curiae.

ON REHEARING

ALDERMAN, Justice.

The Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services appeals from a final judgment of the Circuit Court of Duval County upholding the constitutionality of section 95.11(3)(b), Florida Statutes (1975), ¹ and holding that a paternity action against Ronald West was barred by this four-year statute of limitations. We have jurisdiction pursuant to article V, section 3(b)(1), Florida Constitution. We find that this statute violates the equal protection clause of the Florida and federal constitutions, and we therefore reverse. ²

On June 8, 1977, the Department filed a paternity action against Ronald West, alleging that he was the father of Andrea Gillespie, an illegitimate child who was born March 7, 1973. In response, West alleged that he had never paid any support to, for, or on behalf of this child and that the four-year limitation established by section 95.11(3)(b) bars this action. After hearing the evidence, the trial judge found that West is the father of Andrea, that the child was born more than four years prior to the filing of the paternity complaint, and that West has never made any payments of money to the mother for the support of the child. The trial judge entered final judgment for West and dismissed the action with prejudice on the basis that it was barred by the statute of limitations.

An illegitimate child has a right to support from his father. Shinall v. Pergeorelis, 325 So.2d 431 (Fla. 1st DCA 1975). His mother merely serves as a conduit for the support benefits due and owing the illegitimate child, and she cannot contract away the child's right or release the putative father's obligation. Gammon v. Cobb, 335 So.2d 261 (Fla.1976). An illegitimate's right to obtain support is established by section 742.041, Florida Statutes (1975), and is a continuing right until the child reaches eighteen years of age. This right may be enforced by a paternity suit under section 742.10, Florida Statutes (1975), which is both an action to determine paternity and an action for child support. Estanislao v. State Department of HRS, 368 So.2d 677 (Fla. 1st DCA 1979). Section 95.11(3)(b) imposes a four-year limitation within which an illegitimate's right to paternal support must be asserted, but no such limitation is imposed on the support rights of legitimate children who have a court-enforceable right to support in Florida until they reach eighteen. By enacting this statutory limitation on the time in which paternity actions may be brought, the legislature is treating legitimate children differently from illegitimate children. Because of this statute, the rights of the illegitimate child to support may be foreclosed forever by failure of his mother to file suit through her ignorance, neglect, or sympathy with the father and through no fault of the child.

To evaluate the equal protection challenge directed to section 95.11(3)(b) and to determine what test to apply, we will review the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States which have developed the test to apply in cases involving classifications based on illegitimacy.

For the first time, in 1968 the Supreme Court applied the equal protection clause on behalf of illegitimate children. Holding that it was a violation of equal protection to deny five illegitimate children the right to maintain an action for their mother's death, the Court, in Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68, 88 S.Ct. 1509, 20 L.Ed.2d 436 (1968), explained:

We start from the premise that illegitimate children are not "nonpersons." They are humans, live, and have their being. They are clearly "persons" within the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

While a State has broad power when it comes to making classifications (Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 732, 83 S.Ct. 1028, 1032, 10 L.Ed.2d 93), it may not draw a line which constitutes an invidious discrimination against a particular class. . . . Though the test has been variously stated, the end result is whether the line drawn is a rational one. . . .

In applying the Equal Protection Clause to social and economic legislation, we give great latitude to the legislature in making classifications. . . . However that might be, we have been extremely sensitive when it comes to basic civil rights (Skinner v. Oklahoma, supra, 316 U.S., at 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655; Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 669-670, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 1082-83, 16 L.Ed.2d 169) and have not hesitated to strike down an invidious classification even though it had history and tradition on its side.

391 U.S. at 70-71, 88 S.Ct. at 1510-11. The Court concluded that it was invidious to discriminate against these illegitimate children when no action, conduct, or demeanor of theirs was possibly relevant to the harm done to their mother. In Glona v. American Guarantee and Liability Insurance Co., 391 U.S. 73, 88 S.Ct. 1515, 20 L.Ed.2d 441 (1968), decided the same day as Levy, the Supreme Court held a wrongful death statute, which authorized actions by mothers of legitimate children but which did not authorize actions by mothers of illegitimate children, unconstitutionally violative of the equal protection clause.

In Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 92 S.Ct. 1400, 31 L.Ed.2d 768 (1972), the Supreme Court held that Louisiana's Workmen's Compensation Law, which denied equal recovery rights to dependent, unacknowledged, illegitimate children, was invalid as denying equal protection of the law because the statutory classification bore no reasonable relationship to any legitimate state interest, compelling or otherwise, and bore no significant relationship to the recognized purposes of recovery that workmen's compensation statutes were designed to serve. The Court explained that in determining the validity of state statutes under the equal protection clause, its inquiry is twofold: "What legitimate state interest does the classification promote? What fundamental personal rights might the classification endanger?" 406 U.S. at 173, 92 S.Ct. at 1405. Reciting that to visit society's condemnation of irresponsible liaisons beyond the bonds of marriage on the head of the illegitimate infant is unjust and illogical, the Court said:

Moreover, imposing disabilities on the illegitimate child is contrary to the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing. Obviously, no child is responsible for his birth and penalizing the illegitimate child is an ineffectual as well as an unjust way of deterring the parent. Courts are powerless to prevent the social opprobrium suffered by these hapless children, but the Equal Protection Clause does enable us to strike down discriminatory laws relating to status of birth where as in this case the classification is justified by no legitimate state interest, compelling or otherwise.

406 U.S. at 175-76, 92 S.Ct. at 1407 (footnote omitted).

The Supreme Court, in Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S. 535, 93 S.Ct. 872, 35 L.Ed.2d 56 (1973), considered whether Texas could constitutionally grant legitimate children a judicially enforceable right to support from their natural father and at the same time deny that right to illegitimate children. The mother sought support for her illegitimate child from the natural father but was denied such relief on the ground that under Texas law a natural father has no legal obligation to support an illegitimate child. The Court held that Texas law invidiously discriminated against illegitimate children by denying them substantial benefits accorded children generally and stated:

We therefore hold that once a State posits a judicially enforceable right on behalf of children to needed support from their natural fathers there is no constitutionally sufficient justification for denying such an essential right to a child simply because its natural father has not married its mother. For a State to do so is "illogical and unjust." (Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164, 175, 92 S.Ct. 1400, 31 L.Ed.2d 768 (1972).)

409 U.S. at 538, 93 S.Ct. at 875. Although acknowledging that there are problems relative to proof of paternity which cannot be lightly brushed aside, the Court recognized that these problems cannot be employed as an impenetrable barrier to shield otherwise invidious discrimination. See also New Jersey Welfare Rights Organization v. Cahill, 411 U.S. 619, 93 S.Ct. 1700, 36 L.Ed.2d 543 (1973).

In Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U.S. 628, 94 S.Ct. 2496, 41 L.Ed.2d 363 (1974), the Supreme Court held that a part of the statutory scheme of the Social Security Act violated the equal protection clause because it discriminated against certain illegitimate children. Recognizing that the prevention of spurious claims is a legitimate governmental interest, the Court held that the blanket and conclusive exclusion of a certain class of illegitimates was not reasonably related to the prevention of spurious claims.

The Supreme Court, in Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495, 96 S.Ct. 2755, 49 L.Ed.2d 651 (1976), held that illegitimacy was not a "suspect" classification so as to require application of a strict scrutiny test in determining a statute's constitutional validity against an equal protection challenge and explained:

(P)erhaps in part because the roots of the discrimination rest in the conduct of the parents rather than the child, and perhaps in part because illegitimacy does not...