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n the extremes of complete exclusion and case-by-case determination of paternity. For at least some significant categories of illegitimate children of intestate men, inheritance rights can be recognized without jeopardizing the orderly settlement of estates or the dependability of titles to property passing under intestacy laws.’’ 1756 Because the state law did not follow a reasonable middle ground, it was invalidated. VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00322 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1993 1757 439 U.S. 259 (1978). The four Trimble dissenters joined Justice Powell in the result, although only two joined his opinion. Justices Blackmun and Rehnquist concurred because they thought Trimble wrongly decided and ripe for overruling. Id. at 276. The four dissenters, who had joined the Trimble majority with Justice Powell, thought the two cases were indistinguishable. Id. at 277. 1758 Illustrating the difficulty are two cases in which the fathers of illegitimate children challenged statutes treating them differently than mothers of such children were treated. In Parham v. Hughes, 441 U.S. 347 (1979), the majority viewed the distinction as a gender-based one rather than as an illegitimacy classification and sustained a bar to a wrongful death action by the father of an illegitimate child who had not legitimated him; in Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U.S. 380 (1980), again viewing the distinction as a gender-based one, the majority voided a state law permitting the mother but not the father of an illegitimate child to block his adoption by refusing to consent. Both decisions were 5-to-4. A reasonable middle ground was discerned, at least by Justice Powell, in Lalli v. Lalli, 1757 concerning a statute which permitted legitimate children to inherit automatically from both their parents, while illegitmates could inherit automatically only from their mothers, and could inherit from their intestate fathers only if a court of competent jurisdiction had, during the father’s lifetime, entered an order declaring paternity. The child tendered evidence of paternity, including a notarized document in which the putative father, in consenting to his marriage, referred to him as ‘‘my son’’ and several affidavits by persons who stated that the elder Lalli had openly and frequently acknowledged that the younger Lalli was his child. In the prevailing view, the single requirement of entry of a court order during the father’s lifetime declaring the child as his met the ‘‘middle ground’’ requirement of Trimble; it was addressed closely and precisely to the substantial state interest of seeing to the orderly disposition of property at death by establishing proof of paternity of illegitimate children and avoiding spurious claims against intestate estates. To be sure, some illegitimates who were unquestionably established as children of the decreased would be disqualified because of failure of compliance, but individual fairness is not the test. The test rather is whether the requirement is closely enough related to the interests served to meet the standard of rationality imposed. Also, no doubt the State’s interest could have been served by permitting other kinds of proof, but that too is not the test of the statute’s validity. Hence, the balancing necessitated by the Court’s promulgation of standards in such cases caused it to come to different results on closely related fact patterns, making predictability quite difficult but perhaps manageable. 1758 The Court’s difficulty in arriving at predictable results has extended outside the area of descent of property. Thus, a Texas child support law affording legitimate children a right to judicial action to obtain support from their fathers while not affording the right VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00323 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 1994 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1759 Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S. 535, 538 (1978) (emphasis supplied). Following the decision, Texas authorized illegitimate children to obtain support from their fathers. But the legislature required as a first step that paternity must be judicially determined, and imposed a limitations period within which suit must be brought of one year from birth of the child. If suit is not brought within that period the child could never obtain support at any age from his father. No limitation was imposed on the opportunity of a natural child to seek support, up to age 18. In Mills v. Habluetzel, 456 U.S. 91 (1982), the Court invalidated the one-year limitation. While a State has an interest in avoiding stale or fraudulent claims, the limit must not be so brief as to deny such children a reasonable opportunity to show paternity. Similarly, a 2- year statute of limitations on paternity and support actions was held to deny equal protection to illegitimates in Pickett v. Brown, 462 U.S. 1 (1983), and a 6-year limit was struck down in Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S. 456 (1988). In both cases the Court pointed to the fact that increasingly sophisticated genetic tests are minimizing the ‘‘lurking problems with respect to proof of paternity’’ referred to in Gomez, 409 U.S. at 538. Also, the state’s interest in imposing the 2-year limit was undercut by exceptions (e.g., for illegitimates receiving public assistance), and by different treatment for minors generally; similarly, the importance of imposing a 6-year limit was belied by that state’s more recent enactment of a non-retroactive 18-year limit for paternity and support actions. 1760 Jiminez v. Weinberger, 417 U.S. 628 (1974). But cf. Califano v. Boles, 443 U.S. 282 (1979). See also New Jersey Welfare Rights Org. v. Cahill, 411 U.S. 619 (1973) (limiting welfare assistance to households in which parents are ceremonially married and the children are legitimate or adopted denied illegitimate children equal protection); Richardson v. Davis, 409 U.S. 1069 (1972), aff’g, 342 F. Supp. 588 (D. Conn.) (3-judge court), and Richardson v. Griffin, 409 U.S. 1069 (1972), aff’g, 346 F. Supp. 1226 (D. Md.) (3-judge court) (Social Security provision entitling illegitimate children to monthly benefit payments only to extent that payments to widow and legitimate children do not exhaust benefits allowed by law denies illegitimates equal protection). to illegitimate children denied the latter equal protection. ‘‘A State may not invidiously discriminate against illegitimate children by denying them substantial benefits accorded children generally. 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.’’ 1759 Similarly, a federal Social Security provision was held invalid which made eligible for benefits, because of an insured parent’s disability, all legitimate children as well as those illegitimate children capable of inheriting personal property under state intestacy law and those children who were illegitimate only because of a nonobvious defect in their parents’ marriage, regardless of whether they were born after the onset of the disability, but which made all other illegitimate children eligible only if they were born prior to the onset of disability and if they were dependent upon the parent prior to the onset of disability. The Court deemed the purpose of the benefits to be to aid all children and rejected the argument that the burden on illigitimates was necessary to avoid fraud. 1760 VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00324 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1995 1761 Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U.S. 495 (1976). It can be seen that the only difference between Jiminez and Lucas is that in the former the Court viewed the benefits as owing to all children and not just to dependents, while in the latter the benefits were viewed as owing only to dependents and not to all children. But it is not clear that in either case the purpose determined to underlie the provision of benefits was compelled by either statutory language or legislative history. For a particularly good illustration of the difference such a determination of purpose can make and the way the majority and dissent in a 5-to-4 decision read the purpose differently, see Califano v. Boles, 443 U.S. 282 (1979). 1762 Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 50–51 (1959). 1763 Article I, § 2, cl. 1 (House of Representatives); Seventeenth Amendment (Senators); Article II, § 1, cl. 2 (presidential electors); Article I, § 4, cl. 1 (times, places, and manner of holding elections). However, in a second case, an almost identical program, providing benefits to children of a deceased insured, was sustained because its purpose was found to be to give benefits to children who were dependent upon the deceased parent and the classifications served that purpose. Presumed dependent were all legitimate children as well as those illegitimate children who were able to inherit under state intestacy laws, who were illegitimate only because of the technical invalidity of the parent’s marriage, who had been acknowledged in writing by the father, who had been declared to be the father’s by a court decision, or who had been held entitled to the father’s support by a court. Illegitimate children not covered by these presumptions had to establish that they were living with the insured parent or were being supported by him when the parent died. According to the Court, all the presumptions constituted an administrative convenience which was a permissible device because those illegitimate children who were entitled to benefits because they were in fact dependent would receive benefits upon proof of the fact and it was irrelevant that other children not dependent in fact also received benefits. 1761 Fundamental Interests: The Political Process ‘‘The States have long been held to have broad powers to determine the conditions under which the right of suffrage may be exercised. . . , absent of course the discrimination which the Constitution condemns.’’ 1762 The Constitution provides that the qualifications of electors in congressional elections are to be determined by reference to the qualifications prescribed in the States for the electors of the most numerous branch of the legislature, and the States are authorized to determine the manner in which presidential electors are selected. 1763 The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment provides for a proportionate reduction in a State’s representation in the House when it denies the franchise to its qualified male VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00325 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 1996 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1764 Fourteenth Amendment, § 2. Justice Harlan argued that the inclusion of this provision impliedly permitted the States to discriminate with only the prescribed penalty in consequence and that therefore the equal protection clause was wholly inapplicable to state election laws. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 589 (1964) (dissenting); Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 97 (1965) (dissenting); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 152 (1970) (concurring and dissenting). Justice Brennan undertook a rebuttal of this position in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 229, 250 (concurring and dissenting). But see Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974), where § 2 was relevant in precluding an equal protection challenge. 1765 Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 51 (1959). 1766 Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 561–62 (1964). citizens 1764 and specific discriminations on the basis of race, sex, and age are addressed in other Amendments. ‘‘We do not suggest that any standards which a State desires to adopt may be required of voters. But there is wide scope for exercise of its jurisdiction. Residence requirements, age, previous criminal record . . . are obvious examples indicating factors which a State may take into consideration in determining the qualification of voters. The ability to read and write likewise has some relation to standards designed to promote intelligent use of the ballot.’’ 1765 The perspective of this 1959 opinion by Justice Douglas has now been revolutionized. ‘‘Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the rights of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.’’ 1766 ‘‘Any unjustified discrimination in determining who may participate in political affairs or in the selection of public officials undermines the legitimacy of representative government. . . . Statutes granting the franchise to residents on a selective basis always pose the danger of denying some citizens any effective voice in the governmental affairs which substantially affect their lives. Therefore, if a challenged state statute grants the right to vote to some bona fide residents of requisite age and citizenship and denies the franchise to others, the Court must determine whether the exclusions are necessary to promote a compelling state interest.’’ ‘‘And, for these reasons, the deference usually given to the judgment of legislators does not extend to decisions concerning which resident citizens may participate in the election of legislators and other public officials. . . . [W]hen we are reviewing statutes which deny some residents the right to vote, the general presumption of constitutionality afforded state statutes and the traditional approval given state classifications if the Court can conceive of a VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00326 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1997 1767 Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U.S. 621, 626–28 (1969). See also Hill v. Stone, 421 U.S. 289, 297 (1975). But cf. Holt Civic Club v. City of Tuscaloosa, 439 U.S. 60 (1978). 1768 Thus, in San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 34–35 nn.74 & 78 (1973), a major doctrinal effort to curb the ‘‘fundamental interest’’ side of the ‘‘new’’ equal protection, the Court acknowledged that the right to vote did not come within its prescription that rights to be deemed fundamental must be explicitly or implicitly guaranteed in the Constitution. Nontheless, citizens have a ‘‘constitutionally protected right to participate in elections’’ which is protected by the equal protection clause. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972). The franchise is the guardian of all other rights. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 562 (1964). 1769 Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972). Justice Blackmun concurred specially, id. at 360, Chief Justice Burger dissented, id. at 363, and Justices Powell and Rehnquist did not participate. The voided statute imposed a requirement of one year in the State and three months in the county. The Court did not indicate what duration less than ninety days would be permissible, although it should be noted that in the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat. 316, 42 U.S.C. § 1973aa– 1, Congress prescribed a thirty-day period for purposes of voting in presidential elections. Note also that it does not matter whether one travels interstate or intrastate. Hadnott v. Amos, 320 F. Supp. 107 (M.D. Ala. 1970), aff’d, 405 U.S. 1035 (1972). 1770 Marston v. Lewis, 410 U.S. 679 (1973). Registration was by volunteer workers who made statistically significant errors requiring corrections by county record- ‘rational basis’ for the distinctions made are not applicable.’’ 1767 Using this analytical approach, the Court has established a regime of close review of a vast range of state restrictions on the eligibility to vote, on access to the ballot by candidates and parties, and on the weighing of votes cast through the devices of apportionment and districting. Changes in Court membership over the years has led to some relaxation in the application of principles, but even as the Court has drawn back in other areas it has tended to preserve, both doctrinally and in fact, the election cases. 1768 Voter Qualifications.—A State may require residency as a qualification to vote but since durational residency requirements impermissibly restrict the right to vote and penalize the assertion of the constitutional right to travel they are invalid. 1769 The Court indicated that the States have a justified interest in preventing fraud and in facilitating determination of the eligibility of potential registrants and granted that durational residency requirements furthered these interests, but, it said, the State had not shown that the requirements were ‘‘necessary,’’ that is that the interests could not be furthered by means which imposed a lesser burden on the right to vote. Other asserted interests—knowledgeability of voters, common interests, intelligent voting—were said either not to be served by the requirements or to be impermissible interests. A 50-day durational residency requirement was sustained in the context of the closing of the registration process at 50 days prior to elections and of the mechanics of the State’s registration process. The period, the Court found, was necessary to achieve the State’s legitimate goals. 1770 VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00327 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 1998 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED ers before certification. Primary elections were held in the fall, thus occupying the time of the recorders, so that a backlog of registrations had to be processed before the election. A period of 50 days rather than 30, the Court thought, was justifiable. However, the same period was upheld for another State on the authority of Marston in the absence of such justification, but it appeared that plaintiffs had not controverted the State’s justifying evidence. Burns v. Fortson, 410 U.S. 686 (1973). Justices Brennan, Douglas, and Marshall dissented in both cases. Id. at 682, 688. 1771 Evans v. Cornman, 398 U.S. 419 (1970). 1772 Carrington v. Rash, 380 U.S. 89 (1965). 1773 Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966). Justices Black, Harlan, and Stewart dissented. Id. at 670, 680. Poll tax qualifications had previously been upheld in Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937); and Butler v. Thompson, 341 U.S. 937 (1951). 1774 Kramer v. Union Free School Dist., 395 U.S. 621 (1969). The Court assumed without deciding that the franchise in some circumstances could be limited to those ‘‘primarily interested’’ or ‘‘primarily affected’’ by the outcome, but found that the restriction permitted some persons with no interest to vote and disqualified others with an interest. Justices Stewart, Black, and Harlan dissented. Id. at 594. 1775 Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U.S. 701 (1969). Justices Black, Harlan, and Stewart concurred specially. Id. at 707. 1776 City of Phoenix v. Kolodziejski, 399 U.S. 204 (1970). Justice Stewart and Chief Justice Burger dissented. Id. at 215. In Hill v. Stone, 421 U.S. 289 (1975), the Court struck down a limitation on the right to vote on a general obligation bond issue to persons who have ‘‘rendered’’ or listed real, mixed, or personal property for taxation in the election district. It was not a ‘‘special interest’’ election since a general obligation bond issue is a matter of general interest. A State that exercised general criminal, taxing, and other jurisdiction over persons on certain federal enclaves within the State, the Court held, could not treat these persons as nonresidents for voting purposes. 1771 A statute which provided that anyone who entered military service outside the State could not establish voting residence in the State so long as he remained in the military was held to deny to such a person the opportunity such as all non-military persons enjoyed of showing that he had established residence. 1772 Restricting the suffrage to those persons who had paid a poll tax was an invidious discrimination because it introduced a ‘‘capricious or irrelevant factor’’ of wealth or ability to pay into an area in which it had no place. 1773 Extending this ruling, the Court held that the eligibility to vote in local school elections may not be limited to persons owning property in the district or who have children in school, 1774 and denied States the right to restrict the voteto property owners in elections on the issuance of revenue bonds 1775 or general obligation bonds. 1776 However, the Court held that because the activities of a water storage district fell so disproportionately on landowners as a group, a limitation of the franchise in elections for the district’s board of directors to landowners, whether resident or not and whether natural persons or not, excluding non-landowning residents and lessees of land, and weighing the votes granted according to assessed VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00328 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1999 1777 Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Water Storage Dist., 410 U.S. 719 (1973). See also Associated Enterprises v. Toltec Watershed Improv. Dist., 410 U.S. 743 (1973) (limitation of franchise to property owners in the creation and maintenance of district upheld). Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall dissented in both cases. Id. at 735, 745. 1778 410 U.S. at 727-28. 1779 410 U.S. at 730, 732. Thus, the Court posited reasons that might have moved the legislature to adopt the exclusions. 1780 451 U.S. 355 (1981). Joining the opinion of the Court were Justices Stewart, Powell, Rehnquist, Stevens, and Chief Justice Burger. Dissenting were Justices White, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun. Id. at 374. 1781 The water district cases were distinguished in Quinn v. Millsap, 491 U.S. 95. 109 (1989), the Court holding that a ‘‘board of freeholders’’ appointed to recommend a reorganization of local government had a mandate ‘‘far more encompassing’’ than land use issues, since its recommendations ‘‘affect[ ] all citizens . . . regardless of land ownership.’’ valuation of land, comported with equal protection standards. 1777 Adverting to the reservation in prior local governmental unit election cases 1778 that some functions of such units might be so specialized as to permit deviation from the usual rules, the Court then proceeded to assess the franchise restrictions according to the traditional standards of equal protection rather than by those of strict scrutiny. 1779 Also narrowly approached was the issue of the effect of the District’s activities, the Court focusing upon the assessments against landowners as the sole means of paying expenses rather than additionally noting the impact upon lessees and nonlandowning residents of such functions as flood control. The approach taken in this case seems different in great degree from that in prior cases and could in the future alter the results in other local government cases. These cases were extended somewhat in Ball v. James, 1780 in which the Court sustained a system in which voting eligibility was limited to landowners and votes were allocated to these voters on the basis of the number of acres they owned. The entity was a water reclamation district which stores and delivers water to 236,000 acres of land in the State and subsidizes its water operations by selling electricity to hundreds of thousands of consumers in a nearby metropolitan area. The entity’s board of directors was elected through a system in which the eligibility to vote was as described above. The Court thought the entity was a specialized and limited form to which its general franchise rulings did not apply. 1781 Finding that prevention of ‘‘raiding’’—the practice whereby voters in sympathy with one party vote in another’s primary election in order to distort that election’s results—is a legitimate and valid state goal, as one element in the preservation of the integrity of the electoral process, the Court sustained a state law requiring those voters eligible at that time to register to enroll in the party of their VerDate Jul<13>2004 05:44 Jul 13, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00329 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 \\GSDDPC41\YOURS-AND-MINE\CON046.SGM CON046 2000 AMENDMENT 14—RIGHTS GUARANTEED 1782 Rosario v. Rockefeller, 410 U.S. 752 (1973). Justices Powell, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall dissented. Id. at 763. 1783 Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51 (1973). Justices Blackmun and Rehnquist dissented. Id. at 61, 65. 1784 Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, 479 U.S. 208 (1986). Although independents were allowed to register in a party on the day before a primary, the state’s justifications for ‘‘protect[ing] the integrity of the Party against the Party itself’’ were deemed insubstantial. Id. at 224. 1785 457 U.S. 1 (1982). See also Fortson v. Morris, 385 U.S. 231 (1966) (legislature could select Governor from two candidates having highest number of votes cast when no candidate received majority); Sailors v. Board of Elections, 387 U.S. 105 (1967) (appointment rather than election of county school board); Valenti v. Rockefeller, 292 F. Supp. 851 (S.D.N.Y. 1968) (three-judge court), aff’d, 393 U.S. 405 (1969) (gubernatorial appointment to fill United States Senate vacancy). choice at least 30 days before the general election in order to be eligible to vote in the party’s next primary election, 8 to 11 months hence. The law did not impose a prohibition upon voting but merely imposed a time deadline for enrollment, the Court held, and it was because of the plaintiffs’ voluntary failure to register that they did not meet the deadline. 1782 But a law which prohibited a person from voting in the primary election of a political party if he has voted in the primary election of

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