Also known as: rational basis standards · rational basis test · rational basis review · rational basis scrutiny
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A standard of judicial review under which a law is upheld if it is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. The challenger bears the burden of showing that the classification is arbitrary or irrational. Courts defer heavily to legislative judgments and uphold laws even when they are underinclusive or overinclusive.
Ronald Reed, a physically fit 51-year-old officer, challenges a state law requiring retirement at age 50. The statute survives review because the age limit need only bear a rational connection to the state's interest in maintaining a capable force. The court upholds the law despite Reed's individual fitness.
Rosa Ruiz, a national from a majority-Muslim country, sues over an executive order limiting visas on national security grounds. The order survives Establishment Clause review because it recites a security purpose rationally connected to the restrictions. Deference to the political branches in foreign affairs supports upholding the measure.
Raphael Rivera and his partner face prosecution under a statute criminalizing private same-sex conduct. The law fails rational basis review because moral disapproval alone supplies no legitimate governmental objective. The court strikes down the statute as lacking any rational connection to a valid state interest.
In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace. The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Texas Penal Code Ann. § 21.06(a) (2003) provides that a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defines deviate sexual intercourse as any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person, or the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object. The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider three questions. The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.
View caseRenee Rogers, a parent in a low-property-wealth district, challenges a state school financing system that produces unequal per-pupil spending. The financing scheme survives equal protection review because it is rationally related to the state's interest in local control of education. The court upholds the system despite the resulting disparities.
In the summer of 1968 Mexican-American parents whose children attended elementary and secondary schools in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio Texas brought a class action. They sued on behalf of schoolchildren throughout the state who were members of minority groups or who were poor and resided in school districts having a low property tax base. Named as defendants were the State Board of Education the Commissioner of Education the State Attorney General and the Bexar County Board of Trustees. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. A three-judge court was impaneled in January 1969. The Texas system of financing public education originated with the state's first constitution in 1845. It evolved through constitutional amendments permitting local school districts to levy ad valorem taxes for school buildings and maintenance. These local revenues were supplemented by distributions from the state's Permanent School Fund established in 1854 and the Available School Fund. In the late 1940s the legislature enacted the Minimum Foundation School Program. Under the program the state supplies approximately 80 percent of the cost of teacher salaries operating expenses and transportation. Each district contributes the remaining 20 percent through a Local Fund Assignment. The assignment is calculated by an economic index reflecting relative taxpaying ability. Every district also levies additional local property taxes beyond the assignment to supplement its foundation grant. For the 1967-1968 school year the Edgewood Independent School District had an average assessed property value of $5960 per pupil and a median family income of $4686. It raised $26 per pupil through local taxation at a rate of $1.05 per $100 of assessed valuation. It received $222 per pupil from the Foundation Program and obtained $108 in federal funds for a total of $356 per pupil. By comparison the Alamo Heights Independent School District had an assessed property value exceeding $49000 per pupil and a median family income of $8001. It raised $333 per pupil locally at a rate of $0.85 per $100 received $225 from the Foundation Program and $36 in federal funds for a total of $594 per pupil. Similar disparities in per-pupil expenditures existed throughout the state. They were largely attributable to differences in the amount of taxable property within each district. In December 1971 the three-judge District Court rendered judgment holding the Texas school finance system unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State appealed. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in 1972 to consider the constitutional questions presented.
View caseRhea Reynolds, a 70-year-old state judge, challenges a constitutional provision mandating retirement at that age. The provision survives review because age classifications receive rational basis scrutiny and the rule is rationally related to the state's interest in judicial competence. The court upholds the mandatory retirement rule.
Missouri state judges Ellis Gregory, Jr., and Anthony P. Nugent, Jr., were appointed to their positions by the Governor under the state's Non-Partisan Court Plan. Gregory served as an associate circuit judge for the Twenty-first Judicial Circuit, while Nugent sat on the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District. Both judges, along with two others, became subject to a mandatory retirement requirement upon reaching age seventy under Article V, Section 26 of the Missouri Constitution. They had each been retained in office through retention elections in which they ran unopposed. In 1990, the judges filed a lawsuit against Governor John D. Ashcroft in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The complaint alleged that the mandatory retirement provision violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Governor responded with a motion to dismiss the action. The district court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision in a 1990 ruling reported at 898 F. 2d 598. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in the case later that year. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act had been amended in 1974 to include states and their political subdivisions as employers. The Act's definition of employee contained exclusions for elected officials, their personal staff, appointees on the policymaking level, and immediate advisers.
View caseRiverstone Manufacturing, an out-of-state insurer, challenges a state tax statute that favors domestic companies. The classification fails rational basis review because the state's asserted interest in promoting local business does not supply a legitimate purpose under the Equal Protection Clause. The court invalidates the discriminatory tax.
Since 1955 Alabama has maintained a domestic preference tax statute that taxes the gross premiums received by insurance companies on policies issued in the State. Foreign life insurance companies pay a tax at a rate of three percent, and foreign companies selling other types of insurance pay at a rate of four percent. All domestic insurance companies pay at a rate of only one percent. The statute permits domestic insurers to exclude from taxable premium income all premiums received from policies issued in other States in which they are not licensed. Foreign insurers may reduce but never eliminate the tax differential by investing prescribed percentages of their worldwide assets in specified Alabama assets and securities. Appellants are a group of insurance companies incorporated outside Alabama. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. represents the life insurance claimants, and Prudential Property and Casualty Co. represents the nonlife claimants. In 1981 appellants filed claims with the Alabama Department of Insurance seeking refunds of taxes paid for the tax years 1977 through 1980. They contended that the domestic preference tax statute as applied to them violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Commissioner of Insurance denied all claims on July 8, 1981. Appellants appealed to the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. The court consolidated the appeals and selected two lead cases. On cross-motions for summary judgment the court ruled on May 17, 1982 that the statute was constitutional. After the Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the finding of legitimate state purposes but remanded for an evidentiary hearing on rational relationship, appellants waived their right to an evidentiary hearing. The Alabama Supreme Court ultimately entered judgment for the State and intervenors. The Supreme Court of the United States noted probable jurisdiction in 1984. It consolidated the cases and heard argument on October 31, 1984.
View caseThe challenger must demonstrate that the law is arbitrary or irrational. Laws are presumed valid and receive heavy deference from courts.
A classification fails when it rests on no legitimate governmental interest or when the means bear no rational relation to any conceivable legitimate purpose. Moral disapproval alone is insufficient.
Yes. Age is not a suspect or quasi-suspect class, so mandatory retirement rules and similar classifications receive rational basis review and are routinely upheld.
Courts apply at most rational basis review and accord substantial deference to the political branches. An order rationally related to national security will be upheld even when extrinsic statements suggest improper motive.
…v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. , 473 U. S. 432, 439 (1985); see also Plyler v. Doe , 457 U. S. 202, 216 (1982). Under our rational basis standard of review, "legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest." Cleburne v. Cleburne…