# United States v. Kras

> Supreme Court of the United States · January 10, 1973 · 409 U.S. 434

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425083

## Case

- **Full name:** United States v. Kras
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** January 10, 1973
- **Citations:** 409 U.S. 434; 93 S. Ct. 631; 34 L. Ed. 2d 626; 1973 U.S. LEXIS 162
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Brennan
- **Judges:** Blackmun, Burger, White, Powell, Rehnquist, Stewart, Douglas, Brennan, Marshall, Bhennan
- **Cited by:** 751 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425083

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that “bankruptcy is not the only method available to a debtor for the adjustment of his legal relationship with his creditors” because “[h]owever unrealistic the remedy may be in a particular situation, a debtor, in theory, and often in actuality, may adjust his deb…
- holding that plaintiffs seeking an increase in welfare payments did not have an interest that rose to the constitutional significance as that of the plaintiffs in Bod-die v. Connecticut; therefore, the filing fee did not violate the plaintiffs’ right to court access
- holding that filing fees in bankruptcy proceedings did not deprive indigents of due process or equal protection because elimination of debt was not a fundamental interest and court pro­ceedings were not the only means of adjust­ing relationships with creditors
- concluding that bankruptcy filing fee had a rational basis because Congress “sought to make the system self-sustaining and paid for by those who use it rather than by tax revenues drawn from the public at large”
- holding that indigent parties have no fundamental right to access in a bankruptcy proceeding because there are other means to negotiate and settle their debts besides filing for bankruptcy

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
While we join Mr. Justice Stewart’s dissenting opinion we do so with this explicit statement of reasons. We said in Bolling v. Share, 347 U. S. 497, 499 , when holding *458 that segregation of students in the District of Columbia violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment:
“The Fifth Amendment, which is applicable in the District of Columbia, does not contain an equal protection clause as does the Fourteenth Amendment which applies only to the states. But the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive. The 'equal protection of the laws’ is a more explicit safeguard of prohibited unfairness than 'due process of law,’ and, therefore, we do not imply that the two are always interchangeable phrases. But, as this Court has recognized, discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.”
The invidious discrimination in the present case is a denial of due process because it denies equal protection within our decisions which make particularly “invidious” discrimination based on wealth or race.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425083. Public record. Not legal advice.