Saenz v. Roe (1999)

526 U.S. 489 (1999)

Vote: 7-2
Opinion: Stevens
Decision: Affirmed
Majority: Stevens, joined by O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent: Rehnquist, joined by Thomas

JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1992, California enacted a statute limiting the maximum welfare benefits available to newly arrived residents. The scheme limits the amount payable to a family that has resided in the State for less than 12 months to the amount payable by the State of the family’s prior residence. The questions presented by this case are whether the 1992 statute was constitutional when it was enacted and, if not, whether an amendment to the Social Security Act enacted by Congress in 1996 affects that determination.

…

On December 21, 1992, three California residents who were eligible for AFDC benefits filed an action in the Eastern District of California challenging the constitutionality of the durational residency requirement in § 11450.03. Each plaintiff alleged that she had recently moved to California to live with relatives in order to escape abusive family circumstances. One returned to California after living in Louisiana for seven years, the second had been living in Oklahoma for six weeks and the third came from Colorado. Each alleged that her monthly AFDC grant for the ensuing 12 months would be substantially lower under § 11450.03 than if the statute were not in effect. Thus, the former residents of Louisiana and Oklahoma would receive $190 and $341 respectively for a family of three even though the full California grant was $641; the former resident of Colorado, who had just one child, was limited to $280 a month as opposed to the full California grant of $504 for a family of two.

The District Court issued a temporary restraining order and, after a hearing, preliminarily enjoined implementation of the statute. District Judge Levi found that the statute “produces substantial disparities in benefit levels and makes no accommodation for the different costs of living that exist in different states.”‘ … In his view, if the purpose of the measure was to deter migration by poor people into the State, it would be unconstitutional for that reason. And even if the purpose was only to conserve limited funds, the State had failed to explain why the entire burden of the saving should be imposed on new residents …

The word “travel” is not found in the text of the Constitution. Yet the “constitutional right to travel from one State to another” is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence. Indeed, as Justice Stewart reminded us in Shapiro v. Thompson, (1969), the right is so important that it is “assertable against private interference as well as governmental action … a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all.” …

In Shapiro, we reviewed the constitutionality of three statutory provisions that denied welfare assistance to residents of Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Pennsylvania, who had resided within those respective jurisdictions less than one year immediately preceding their applications for assistance. Without pausing to identify the specific source of the right, we began by noting that the Court had long “recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.” … We squarely held that it was “constitutionally impermissible” for a State to enact durational residency requirements for the purpose of inhibiting the migration by needy persons into the State. We further held that a classification that had the effect of imposing a penalty on the exercise of the right to travel violated the Equal Protection Clause “unless shown to be necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest,” … and that no such showing had been made.

… California submits that, instead of being subjected to the strictest scrutiny, the statute should be upheld if it is supported by a rational basis and that the State’s legitimate interest in saving over $10 million a year satisfies that test. Although the United States did not elect to participate in the proceedings in the District Court or the Court of Appeals, it has participated as amicus curiae in this Court. It has advanced the novel argument that the enactment of PRWORA allows the States to adopt a “specialized choice-of-law-type provision” that “should be subject to an intermediate level of constitutional review,” merely requiring that durational residency requirements be “substantially related to an important governmental objective.”‘ The debate about the appropriate standard of review, together with the potential relevance of the federal statute, persuades us that it will be useful to focus on the source of the constitutional right on which respondents rely.

The “right to travel” discussed in our cases embraces at least three different components. It protects the right of a citizen of one State to enter and to leave another State, the right to be treated as a welcome visitor rather than an unfriendly alien when temporarily present in the second State, and, for those travelers who elect to become permanent residents, the right to be treated like other citizens of that State …

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The second component of the right to travel is, however, expressly protected by the text of the Constitution. The first sentence of Article IV, § 2, provides:

“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”

Thus, by virtue of a person’s state citizenship, a citizen of one State who travels in other States, intending to return home at the end of his journey, is entitled to enjoy the “Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” that he visits. This provision removes “from the citizens of each State the disabilities of alienage in the other States.” Paul v. Virginia  (1869). Permissible justifications for discrimination between residents and nonresidents are simply inapplicable to a nonresident’s exercise of the right to move into another State and become a resident of that State. It provides important protections for nonresidents who enter a State … Those protections are not “absolute,” but the Clause “does bar discrimination against citizens of other States where there is no substantial reason for the discrimination beyond the mere fact that they are citizens of other States.” … Permissible justifications for discrimination between residents and nonresidents are simply inapplicable to a nonresident’s exercise of the right to move into another State and become a resident of that State.

What is at issue in this case, then, is this third aspect of the right to travel-the right of the newly arrived citizen to the same privileges and immunities enjoyed by other citizens of the same State. That right is protected not only by the new arrival’s status as a state citizen, but also by her status as a citizen of the United States. That additional source of protection is plainly identified in the opening words of the Fourteenth Amendment …

Despite fundamentally differing views concerning the coverage of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, most notably expressed in the majority and dissenting opinions in the Slaughter-House Cases, (1873), it has always been common ground that this Clause protects the third component of the right to travel. Writing for the majority in the Slaughter-House Cases, Justice Miller explained that one of the privileges conferred by this Clause “is that a citizen of the United States can, of his own volition, become a citizen of any State of the Union by a bond fide residence therein, with the same rights as other citizens of that State.” …

That newly arrived citizens “have two political capacities, one state and one federal,” adds special force to their claim that they have the same rights as others who share their citizenship. Neither mere rationality nor some intermediate standard of review should be used to judge the constitutionality of a state rule that discriminates against some of its citizens because they have been domiciled in the State for less than a year. The appropriate standard may be more categorical than that articulated in Shapiro … but it is surely no less strict.

Because this case involves discrimination against citizens who have completed their interstate travel, the State’s argument that its welfare scheme affects the right to travel only “incidentally” is beside the point. Were we concerned solely with actual deterrence to migration, we might be persuaded that a partial withholding of benefits constitutes a lesser incursion on the right to travel than an outright denial of all benefits. Dunn v. Blumstein (1972).

It is undisputed that respondents and the members of the class that they represent are citizens of California and that their need for welfare benefits is unrelated to the length of time that they have resided in California. We thus have no occasion to consider what weight might be given to a citizen’s length of residence if the bona fides of her claim to state citizenship were questioned. Moreover, because whatever benefits they receive will be consumed while they remain in California, there is no danger that recognition of their claim will encourage citizens of other States to establish residency for just long enough to acquire some readily portable benefit, such as a divorce or a college education, that will be enjoyed after they return to their original domicile …

… First, although it is reasonable to assume that some persons may be motivated to move for the purpose of obtaining higher benefits, the empirical evidence reviewed by the District Judge, which takes into account the high cost of living in California, indicates that the number of such persons is quite small-surely not large enough to justify a burden on those who had no such motive. Second, California has represented to the Court that the legislation was not enacted for any such reason. Third, even if it were, as we squarely held in Shapiro v. Thompson, (1969), such a purpose would be unequivocally impermissible …

The question that remains is whether congressional approval of durational residency requirements in the 1996 amendment to the Social Security Act somehow resuscitates the constitutionality of § 11450.03. That question is readily answered, for we have consistently held that Congress may not authorize the States to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, the protection afforded to the citizen by the Citizenship Clause of that Amendment is a limitation on the powers of the National Government as well as the States.

Article I of the Constitution grants Congress broad power to legislate in certain areas. Those legislative powers are, however, limited not only by the scope of the Framers’ affirmative delegation, but also by the principle “that they may not be exercised in a way that violates other specific provisions of the Constitution. For example, Congress is granted broad power to ‘lay and collect Taxes,’ but the taxing power, broad as it is, may not be invoked in such a way as to violate the privilege against self-incrimination.” Williams v. Rhodes, (1968). Congress has no affirmative power to authorize the States to violate the Fourteenth Amendment and is implicitly prohibited from passing legislation that purports to validate any such violation …

Citizens of the United States, whether rich or poor, have the right to choose to be citizens “of the State wherein they reside.” … The States, however, do not have any right to select their citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment, like the Constitution itself, was, as Justice Cardozo put it, “framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.” Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., (1935).

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.

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In my view, the majority attributes a meaning to the Privileges or Immunities Clause that likely was unintended when the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted and ratified.

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Unlike the majority, I would look to history to ascertain the original meaning of the Clause. At least in American law, the phrase (or its close approximation) appears to stem from the 1606 Charter of Virginia, which provided that “all and every the Persons being our Subjects, which shall dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said several Colonies … shall HAVE and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises, and Immunities … as if they had been abiding and born, within this our Realme of England.” … Other colonial charters contained similar guarantees. Years later, as tensions between England and the American Colonies increased, the colonists adopted resolutions reasserting their entitlement to the privileges or immunities of English citizenship …

The colonists’ repeated assertions that they maintained the rights, privileges, and immunities of persons “born within the realm of England” and “natural born” persons suggests that, at the time of the founding, the terms “privileges” and “immunities” (and their counterparts) were understood to refer to those fundamental rights and liberties specifically enjoyed by English citizens and, more broadly, by all persons. Presumably members of the Second Continental Congress so understood these terms when they employed them in the Articles of Confederation, which guaranteed that “the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.” …

Accordingly, the majority’s conclusion-that a State violates the Privileges or Immunities Clause when it “discriminates” against citizens who have been domiciled in the State for less than a year in the distribution of welfare benefits-appears contrary to the original understanding and is dubious at best.

As THE CHIEF JUSTICE points out … it comes as quite a surprise that the majority relies on the Privileges or Immunities Clause at all in this case … Although the majority appears to breathe new life into the Clause today, it fails to address its historical underpinnings or its place in our constitutional jurisprudence. Because I believe that the demise of the Privileges or Immunities Clause has contributed in no small part to the current disarray of our Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, I would be open to reevaluating its meaning in an appropriate case. Before invoking the Clause, however, we should endeavor to understand what the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thought that it meant. We should also consider whether the Clause should displace, rather than augment, portions of our equal protection and substantive due process jurisprudence. The majority’s failure to consider these important questions raises the specter that the Privileges or Immunities Clause will become yet another convenient tool for inventing new rights, limited solely by the “predilections of those who happen at the time to be Members of this Court.” …

I respectfully dissent.

Excerpted by Kimberly Clairmont