Wealth Discrimination

• Author: Barbara Brudno
• Pages: 2869-2870

Page 2869

Wealth discrimination?the state's allocation of resources on the basis of ability to pay?has received the attention of the courts only recently. Sensitivity to the plight of the poor was an outgrowth of the CIVIL RIGHTS movement of the 1960s. Thus, the first constitutional issue raised by EQUAL PROTECTION claims of the poor was whether poverty-based discrimination is analogous to RACIAL DISCRIMINATION for purposes of the applicable STANDARD OF REVIEW.

Advocates of this analogy stress the poor's lack of political power and the public's antipathy to the poor and to programs, such as welfare, enacted to ameliorate poverty. They argue that the Supreme Court should give less deference to legislative judgments when reviewing poverty discrimination claims than it does when reviewing ECONOMIC REGULATIONS challenged by those able to pursue nonjudicial means of redress. However, at no time during the more than quarter of a century since the Court's first decision in this area, GRIFFIN V. ILLINOIS (1956), has a majority of the Court ever embraced the analogy to race for purposes of equal protection review.

The Griffin decision held unconstitutional a state's refusal to provide an INDIGENT convicted criminal defendant with a free transcript necessary to obtain meaningful appellate review. In so holding, Griffin enunciated a potentially expansive principle of "equal justice": "[A] state can no more discriminate on account of poverty than on account of religion, race, or color.? There can be no equal justice when the kind of trial [or APPEAL ] a man gets depends on the amount of money he has."

Since Griffin, the Supreme Court has struck down poverty-based discrimination in only a few other cases, most notably DOUGLAS V. CALIFORNIA (1963) and BODDIE V. CONNECTICUT (1971). Douglas held unconstitutional a state's refusal to appoint counsel for an indigent seeking appellate review of a criminal conviction; and Boddie held unconstitutional a state's refusal to waive court access fees which deprived an indigent plaintiff of access to the only available forum for obtaining a divorce.

In the vast majority of poverty-based discrimination cases, however, the Supreme Court has treated the poor's claims, whether they involve access to the judicial process itself, equal educational opportunity, or the very means of survival, the same as any other challenged "social and economic" regulation. Thus, the Court has applied the RATIONAL BASIS...