401 U.S. 371 (1971)
Appellants, welfare recipients residing in the State of Connecticut, brought this action in the Federal District Court for the District of Connecticut on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated.1 The action concerned state procedures for the commencement of litigation, including requirements for payment of court fees and costs for service of process, in connection with efforts to bring divorce actions.2
The average cost to a litigant for bringing an action for divorce is sixty dollars. Section 52-259 of the Connecticut General Statutes provides that there shall be paid to the clerks of the supreme court or the superior court, for entering each civil cause, forty-five dollars. An additional fifteen dollars is usually required for the service of process by the sheriff.3
There is no dispute as to the inability of the named appellants to pay either the court fees required by statute or the cost incurred for the service of process.4 The affidavits in the record establish that appellants' welfare income in each instance barely suffices to meet the costs of the daily essentials of life. It includes no allotment that could be budgeted for the expense to gain access to the courts.5 The clerk of the Superior Court returned their papers on the ground that he could not accept them until an entry fee had been paid. Subsequent efforts to obtain a judicial waiver of the fee requirement and to have the court effect service of process were to no avail.6
Appellants sought a judgment declaring that the fee requirements were unconstitutional as applied to them and an injunction ordering the appropriate officials to permit them to proceed with their divorce actions without payment of fees and costs.7 A three-judge court was convened pursuant to twenty-eight United States Code section 2281. On July sixteen, nineteen sixty-eight, that court issued its decision.8 The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in nineteen sixty-nine. The case was heard at the nineteen sixty-nine term and thereafter was set for reargument at the present term.9
Whether Connecticut's requirements for payment of court fees and costs for service of process deny indigent welfare recipients access to the courts for divorce actions?10
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from denying access to its courts, the sole means for obtaining a divorce, to individuals solely because of their inability to pay required fees, absent a sufficient countervailing justification.11 Marriage holds a basic position in society's values and the state monopolizes the means for its dissolution.12 Due process requires at a minimum that persons forced to settle claims through the judicial process receive a meaningful opportunity to be heard.13 A generally valid cost requirement may offend due process when it operates to foreclose a particular party's opportunity to be heard.14
Yes. The appellants, identified in the record as welfare recipients whose income barely sufficed for daily essentials with no allotment for court costs, faced direct foreclosure when the clerk returned their papers on the ground that the entry fee had not been paid.15 This denial occurred despite undisputed good faith and repeated unsuccessful efforts to obtain waivers or court-assisted service, leaving them without any avenue to adjudicate dissolution of their marriages.16 The state's interests in deterring frivolous litigation and allocating judicial resources do not supply a countervailing justification of overriding significance.17 The appellants' indigency is established by affidavit.18 Alternative mechanisms such as penalties for false pleadings exist.19 The monopoly over divorce proceedings renders access indispensable rather than voluntary.20
Application of the rule to these facts confirms that the fee and service requirements function as an unconstitutional barrier precisely because they condition the opportunity to be heard on payment that the appellants cannot make.21 The absence of any effective private alternative for ending the marital relationship elevates the denial to the level of a due process violation.22 The judicial process constitutes the only forum empowered to adjust this fundamental legal status.23
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Douglas concurs in the result but would rest the decision on equal protection principles drawn from Griffin v. Illinois and its progeny rather than due process.26 He views the fee requirement as creating an invidious discrimination based on poverty that permits the affluent to obtain divorces while locking the indigent out of court.27 Poverty has emerged as a guideline triggering heightened scrutiny alongside race, alienage, and religion.28
Douglas cautions that reliance on the elastic Due Process Clause risks reviving discredited substantive due process review.29 He prefers the more definite contours of equal protection to invalidate wealth-based barriers to judicial access.30
Justice Brennan joins the due process holding but stresses that the fee requirement also implicates equal protection because the state denies hearings only to those unable to pay while making the same processes available to others.31 He argues there is no constitutional distinction between divorce actions and other proceedings.32 Closing courts to indigents on account of fees violates equal protection in any context where money determines entry.33
Brennan emphasizes that courts must do equal justice to rich and poor alike.34 The rationale of Griffin extends directly to civil filings that condition access on ability to pay.35
Justice Black dissents on the ground that marriage and divorce remain under complete state control absent a specific constitutional limitation.36 He distinguishes civil litigation from the criminal proceedings addressed in Griffin.37 He contends that the majority's approach revives an unbounded substantive due process test.38
This test allows judges to invalidate laws they deem unreasonable or shocking to the conscience.39 Such an approach is contrary to the text of the Constitution and the proper allocation of amendment power to the people.40 Black maintains that the case is controlled by Cohen v. Beneficial Loan Corp. That decision upheld cost requirements that could close courts to stockholder plaintiffs in derivative actions.41
He would affirm the judgment below.42