noting limited application of general standard of intermediate scrutiny—subject legislative discrimination must be “substantially related to an important government interest”—applicable to Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claims not subject to strict scrutiny and variants of that standard applied to “limitations on the right to vote”—internal punctuation and citations omitted, emphasis added
How later courts described this case
- noting limited application of general standard of intermediate scrutiny—subject legislative discrimination must be “substantially related to an important government interest”—applicable to Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claims not subject to strict scrutiny and variants of that standard applied to “limitations on the right to vote”—internal punctuation and citations omitted, emphasis added
- requiring that subject legislative discrimination be “reasonable” and “more important than” the non-fundamental Montana constitutional right at issue
- holding that Montana's constitution does not create a right to welfare
- denying a right status as a “fundamental right” due to its omission from Article II
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Superseded on other grounds by Zempel v. Uninsured Employers' Fund, 282 Mont. 424 (1997)
219 Mont. 426, 712 P.2d 1309 (1986), superseded on other grounds as recognized in Zempel v. Uninsured Employers’ Fund, 282 Mont. 424, 938 P.2d 658 (1997), and
The opinion
MR. JUSTICE GULBRANDSON,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result and in the decision that the right to welfare is not a fundamental right but I do not concur in the adoption of a middle-tier standard of review in this case.
In my view, the legislation under attack does not meet the existing rational basis test and should therefore be declared unconstitu *436 tional. Thus, I do not perceive a need to adopt an additional test requiring a higher standard of review for legislation that may be enacted in the future. It appears that the newly adopted test, described as a middle-tier standard of review, actually replaces the rational basis test, even though no party to the action argued for its adoption.
In my opinion, the majority, by requiring the legislature to establish a factual record in its classification procedure, may have limited possible future legislative alternatives, because of time constraints existing in this matter, to the point where adequate welfare benefits may not be available to the needy.