Walker v. Yucht

• Decision Date: 06 December 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 4483.
• Citation: 352 F. Supp. 85
• Parties: Jesse H. WALKER, Plaintiff, v. Joseph S. YUCHT et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

352 F. Supp. 85

Jesse H. WALKER, Plaintiff, v. Joseph S. YUCHT et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 4483.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

December 6, 1972.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Charles F. Richards, Jr., and F. Franklin Balotti of Richards, Layton & Finger, Wilmington, Del., for plaintiff.

Kent F. Walker, State Sol. and Richard S. Gebelein, Deputy Atty. Gen., Wilmington, Del., for defendants.

Before ADAMS, Circuit Judge, and LATCHUM and STAPLETON, District Judges.

OPINION

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

This case places before us the constitutionality of Delaware's durational residency requirement for persons desiring to be candidates for the office of State Representative.¹

The facts are undisputed. Plaintiff is a candidate for the office of Representative to Delaware's General Assembly from the Third Representative District. The defendants are the Board of Elections and Department of Elections of New Castle County, Delaware.

The plaintiff resides in the City of Wilmington and in the Third Representative District, where he moved approximately 17 months ago from the State of Georgia. Having been selected by primary election on August 19, 1972 to be his party's candidate for State Representative, the plaintiff was placed on the ballot for the general election to be held November 7, 1972. On October 6, 1972, the Attorney General of Delaware ordered that the plaintiff's name be removed from the ballot for the upcoming election because of his failure to meet the state's durational residency requirement.²

Plaintiff then instituted this suit, seeking a declaratory judgment that Delaware's durational residency requirement is unconstitutional and an injunction against his removal from the ballot. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. After the defendants decided to comply with the Attorney General's order directing removal of plaintiff's name from the ballot, the court entered a temporary restraining order against such action. Because of the nature of this suit, a three-judge federal district court was convened, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2283. Hearing and argument on the cross-motions for summary judgment and on plaintiff's prayers for preliminary and final injunctive relief were held on October 20, 1972. In view of the impending election, this Court was impelled to decide the case the same day it heard argument. It denied plaintiff's motion and granted defendants' motion for summary judgment.³

The principal contention asserted by plaintiff is that Delaware's durational residency requirement violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution by creating distinct classes of old and new residents and by providing only for the former the opportunity to run for political office.

In addressing the constitutional question presented here, we must first ascertain the appropriate equal protection standard to apply in this case.⁴

The Supreme Court has developed two distinct tests for determining whether particular state action unconstitutionally classifies.⁵ Under the traditional test, state action will survive an equal protection attack if the classification has a "reasonable basis" for, or is "rationally related" to, the achievement of a legitimate state goal.⁶ When state action affects some "fundamental right,"⁷ however, or if the state's classification is based upon "suspect" criteria,⁸ a different, more stringent, constitutional standard is applied. Under this more rigorous test, in the absence of a "compelling interest," the state's classification is unconstitutional.⁹

Plaintiff asserts that Delaware's durational residency requirement hinders fundamental rights of voting, candidacy, and interstate travel and that the Court must, therefore, test the state classification under the compelling interest standard. For the reasons that follow, this Court disagrees. We hold instead that the durational residency requirement here need only be measured against the traditional equal protection test and that, under this calculus it is not unconstitutional.¹⁰

I. Identifying Protected Interests¹¹

A. Political Candidacy

Although it has never recognized the right to run for public office as fundamental, the Supreme Court has ruled that those aspiring to become candidates for public office are entitled to equal protection of the laws. In Turner v. Fouche,¹² the Court held that a Georgia statute restricting school board membership to freeholders (those owning real property) violates the fourteenth amendment:

"The appellants and the members of their class do have a federal constitutional right to be considered for public service without the burden of invidiously discriminatory disqualifications. The State may not deny to some the privilege of holding public office that it extends to others on the basis of distinctions that violate federal constitutional guarantees."¹³

Finding it unnecessary to determine whether the state must show a compelling interest to justify candidacy restrictions,¹⁴ the Court rejected the argument that a person "must . . . own real property if he is to participate responsibly in educational decisions."¹⁵ Although the Court asserted that "it seems impossible to discern any interest the qualification can serve,"¹⁶Turner's holding is obviously based upon a more severe standard than the traditional "rational relation" equal protection test.¹⁷ Whereas in earlier cases and in other contexts the Court has been willing to accept as constitutional classifications imperfectly drawn,¹⁸ in Turner the restriction on political candidacy was struck down because of its over-inclusive nature:

"Whatever objectives Georgia seeks to obtain by its `freeholder' requirement must be secured, in this instance at least, by means more finely tailored to achieve the desired goal."¹⁹

More recently, in Bullock v. Carter,²⁰ the Supreme Court again had occasion to consider the constitutionality of state restrictions upon the opportunity to run for public office, this time in the setting of a Texas arrangement imposing upon those desiring to run in a political primary the requirement of first paying a substantial filing fee.²¹ Noting that the "threshold question" was which equal protection standard to apply,²² the Court asserted that it had not "heretofore attached such fundamental status to candidacy as to invoke a rigorous standard of review."²³

The Court did recognize, however, that "the rights of voters and the rights of candidates do not lend themselves to neat separation; laws that affect candidates always have at least some theoretical, correlative effect on voters."²⁴ Holding that "the existence of barriers to candidate access to the primary ballot does not of itself compel close scrutiny,"²⁵ the Court, because of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections,²⁶ thought it "essential to examine in a realistic light the extent and nature of candidacy-restriction impact on voters."²⁷ On the basis of its examination, the Court concluded that the Texas filing fee arrangement was unconstitutional.

Neither Turner nor Bullock supports recognition of a right to run for political office sufficiently fundamental, in and of itself, so as to require, in any attempt to justify candidacy restrictions, the demonstration of a compelling state interest. Instead, we read Turner as establishing by square holding no more than the principle that a state may not distribute the opportunity to run for office on the basis of property ownership or wealth.²⁸ The classification's overinclusive nature, found to be determinative by the Court in striking down Georgia's statute, resulted from the nature of the criterion by which the state chose to classify—property ownership— not from the nature of the particular interest burdened—political candidacy. Our conclusion that the Turner rationale pivots upon the nature of the criterion by which the state chose to classify finds cogent support in the Supreme Court's later statements in Bullock that (1) "the Court has not heretofore attached such fundamental status to candidacy as to invoke a rigorous standard of review," with a "Cf." citation to Turner v. Fouche²⁹ and (2) that "the existence of candidacy barriers does not of itself compel close scrutiny."³⁰ Under these circumstances, and in light of the Supreme Court's apparent rejection of the argument in Bullock, we ought not assume that such a fundamental right of candidacy exists.

The Bullock case does, however, recognize that restrictions on candidacy may affect the right to vote, a right that has been accorded fundamental status. In order to determine which test to apply in assessing the constitutionality of durational residency requirements on candidacy, the analysis must now, in following the Supreme Court's lead, "examine in a realistic light the extent and nature of the impact on voters of such requirements."³¹

B. The Right to Vote: The Relationship Between Voting and Candidacy³²

In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections,³³ the Supreme Court held that the equal protection clause forbids states from placing a price tag on the right to vote. There, Virginia had employed a statutory plan under which voters had the choice of paying a $1.50 general poll tax or suffering disenfranchisement for failure to pay. Noting that by imposing a poll tax the state had created a classification whereby "the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee" became "an electoral standard,"³⁴ the Court held the requirement an "invidious discrimination" contravening the Fourteenth Amendment.

The effect of Virginia's poll tax upon the right to vote was, of course, direct. Those who refused or were unable to pay the tax were denied the opportunity to exercise the franchise. In Dunn v. Blumstein,³⁵ the Supreme Court confronted another "either-or" state system affecting the right to vote. Tennessee, in Dunn, provided that only those residents who had lived in the state for twelve months, and for three months in the...