Lochner, Lawrence, and Liberty
| Citation | Vol. 27 No. 3 |
| Publication year | 2010 |
Georgia State University Law Review
3-1-2011
Lochner, Lawrence, and Liberty
Joseph F. Morrissey
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Recommended Citation
Morrissey, Joseph F. (2010) "Lochner, Lawrence, and Liberty," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 27: Iss. 3, Article 4. Available at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol27/iss3/4
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LOCHNER, LAWRENCE, AND LIBERTY Joseph F. Morrissey*
"It is impossible for us to shut our eyes to the fact that many of the laws of this [regulatory] character, while passed under what is claimed to be the police power for the purpose of protecting the public health or welfare, are, in reality, passed [for] other motives."1
Introduction
Many of the states of the United States have statutes, constitutional provisions, and court decisions that deny individuals the right to have a family, specifically a spouse and children, based on sexual orientation. Advocates have made a wide variety of arguments attacking such restrictions. Scholars and litigants frequently argue that such acts violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection or invade a constitutional right to privacy. However, such arguments are often defeated by counter arguments presented with religious, moral, and even emotional fervor.
This article presents and defends a new analytical framework based on liberty of contract to advance gay4 rights. While the
* Associate Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law. B.A., Princeton University, 1989; J.D., Columbia University School of Law, 1993. For their thoughtful feedback and support, thanks are due to many colleagues and friends, including Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Professor David Mayer (both of whose work, in part, inspired this piece and both of whom were thoughtful enough to give me feedback on this work), Deans Darby Dickerson and Jamie Fox of Stetson University College of Law for their support, and my friends and colleagues Professors Mike Allen, Brannon Denning, Christopher Leslie, and Robert Wintemute for their support and comments on earlier drafts. In addition, thanks are due to the organizers of the Fourth Annual Critical Race Studies Symposium at UCLA for inviting me to present this article at their symposium in March 2010.
1. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 64 (1905).
2. See infra Part I.A-C.
3. one trial court has even reasoned that one such piece of legislation is an impermissible bill of attainder and that it violates the separation of powers doctrine. See In re Adoption of Doe, 2008 WL 5070056, at *22-25 (Fla. Cir. Ct. Aug. 29, 2008) (finding a legislative ban on gay adoption violative of the separation of powers doctrine).
4. The term "gay" is used throughout this article expansively to include all people who are in, are pursuing, or are inclined toward same gender intimate relationships, thus including gay men, lesbian women, and people who might otherwise be referred to as bisexual. The term is used expansively
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framework is applied here contextually to the area of gay rights, the framework should also be applicable to a panoply of regulations that affect private orderings—from regulations directly affecting economic relations to those affecting marijuana, gambling, or prostitution, just to name a few examples.5
This alternative analytical framework is more neutral and less emotional than either the pleas for equal protection or privacy that advocates of gay rights advance or the religious fervor with which some opponents respond to those pleas. The framework is based on the neutral economic principles embodied in historic notions of liberty of contract.
Those principles were prevalent during what has become known as the Lochner era, an era named for the infamous case of Lochner v. New York, quoted at the beginning of this article. The Lochner case and the era named for it were dominated by a simple presumption that people should be allowed the liberty to order their own affairs through contract and that regulatory encroachments on that liberty interest should be evaluated critically. This article will argue that it is with just such a presumption that restrictions denying individuals the liberty to pursue and have a family should be evaluated and, most likely, found to be unconstitutional.
The framework presented and defended here acknowledges that the Lochnerian analysis of legislation is overly simplistic. Therefore, a modified version of that analysis is advanced. Under this modified Lochnerian analysis, based on the presumption that people should be allowed the liberty to order their own affairs, three questions must be asked when evaluating whether a court should uphold a regulation. The first question is whether a liberty of contract interest is implicated. If not, this framework will not apply. In most situations involving economic arrangements, it is clear that private contractual orderings are involved. Lochner itself addressed regulations on
because of the difficulty of exactly categorizing people as specifically or only homosexual in their inclination. See generally Kenji Yoshino, The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure, 52 Stan. L. Rev. 353 (2000) (discussing the paradox of gay nomenclature and the difficulties presented by attempts to categorize people as definitely or only of one sexual orientation).
5. Application of the framework to other contexts, however, will be left for subsequent articles.
2011] LOCHNER, LAWRENCE, AND LIBERTY 611
employment arrangements. In that context, there are contracts between employer and employee. Moreover, even in situations that are not clearly or primarily economic in nature, if there is a private ordering, the answer to this foundational question will typically be yes. In the areas of marriage, adoption, and surrogacy (probed in more depth in this article), contracts dictate each arrangement, even if the government is involved. Thus, liberty of contract is implicated even in those social orderings.
The second question then is whether the regulation in question goes too far in trumping the liberty of contract interest of the parties involved. This involves a balancing test. Is the interest advanced by the government sufficient to outweigh the liberty of contract interest implicated? With the presumption running in favor of the liberty interest, the government must have strong reasons why the liberty interest can be burdened. This analysis will not foreclose the ability of the government to regulate in areas that impinge on the liberty of contract but will simply ensure that the burden on that liberty interest is warranted by a legitimate and compelling government interest. As this article will explore, morality alone should not be a sufficient reason.6 Typical areas deemed to be within the police powers of the state, namely the health and welfare of individuals, could provide sufficient reasons to legitimately regulate even if a liberty of contract interest is burdened.
The final question that the framework presented here asks is whether the regulation is designed to counter a significant structural or procedural defect in the contracts subject to the regulation in question. If so, the presumption in favor of the liberty of contract interest should shift in favor of the regulation. In these cases, the regulation is more likely than not to be warranted and appropriate, allowing the parties involved to better achieve outcomes that would be achieved if the defects to contracting in that context did not exist.
6. The Supreme Court made this principle clear in Lawrence v. Texas when Justice Kennedy cited to Justice Stevens's dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick: "[T]he fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice . . . ." Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 577 (2003) (quoting Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 216 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting)).
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Further, where there are structural or procedural defects in the contracts that are the subject of regulation, the very notion of a liberty interest in protecting those contracts is illusory and indeed oxymoronic. There is no genuine liberty interest involved in entering into a contract when the structure or procedure involved with that contract is flawed, one where either party is subject to duress, for example, or where one of the parties is likely to be fraudulently induced into the bargain. Thus, in areas where there seems to be a risk of inherent unfairness in bargaining, ex ante regulations that impinge on the liberty of contract should be acceptable.
As this article further develops below, the Lochner case itself provides a good example of this type of situation. If a court were to determine that the employees of bakeries in 1905 had little or no bargaining ability with their employers, then government intervention to set fair employment conditions between those parties—conditions that might be achieved if the bargaining process was fair—likely would be warranted and appropriate. In such a case under this new framework, the presumption should be in favor of the regulation.
The context explored in this article for this new paradigm is the area of gay rights to family. Thus, this article will begin in Part I by presenting a survey of the primary encroachments on the liberty of gay people to enter into formal arrangements to create a family.
Part II of this article will discuss the Lochner decision and develop its potential...
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