Also known as: rational relation to a legitimate government interest · rationally related to a legitimate government interest · rational basis test · rational basis review
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A constitutional standard of review under which a classification or regulation survives challenge if it bears a rational relationship to a legitimate government interest. Courts applying the standard defer to legislative judgments and uphold laws that are underinclusive or overinclusive so long as some plausible connection to a permissible objective exists.
The city council enacts an ordinance requiring all police officers to retire at age 50. Roberto Reyes, a 51-year-old officer who passes every physical fitness test, sues claiming the rule violates equal protection. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the ordinance because the age limit is rationally related to the legitimate interest in maintaining a physically capable force.
The President issues an order barring entry of construction workers from several majority-Muslim countries after intelligence reports flag sabotage risks to military projects. Raymond Ramos, a denied applicant, challenges the order on Establishment Clause grounds. The court applies rational basis review in the immigration context and sustains the order because it states a national-security purpose rationally connected to the entry restrictions.
A state funds public schools primarily through local property taxes, producing large spending gaps between wealthy and poor districts. Rowan Russell, a student in a low-wealth district, sues alleging that the system denies equal educational opportunity. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the funding scheme because local control of education is a legitimate interest and the tax-based method is rationally related to that interest.
A city ordinance prohibits only those fighting words that insult others on the basis of race or religion. Rhea Reynolds is prosecuted for displaying a symbol that falls within the narrow ban. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the ordinance because the classification is rationally related to the legitimate interest in protecting community peace.
In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, petitioner R.A.V., then a juvenile, and several other teenagers assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs and burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where R.A.V. was staying. Although this conduct could have been punished under several Minnesota statutes carrying significant penalties, the City of St. Paul chose to charge R.A.V. under the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. The ordinance provides that whoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including but not limited to a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. R.A.V. moved to dismiss the charge on the ground that the ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly content-based and therefore facially invalid under the First Amendment, and the trial court granted the motion. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, construing the ordinance to reach only fighting words and concluding that it was not impermissibly content-based. This Court granted certiorari.
View caseA state requires abortion clinics to meet ambulatory-surgical-center standards and to obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Rajesh Rao, a clinic operator, challenges the rules as imposing an undue burden. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the rules because they are rationally related to the legitimate interest in protecting patient health.
In July 2013 the Texas Legislature enacted House Bill 2. The bill contained an admitting-privileges requirement for physicians performing abortions and a surgical-center requirement for abortion facilities. Before the law took effect a group of Texas abortion providers filed the Abbott case seeking facial invalidation of the admitting-privileges provision. The district court initially enjoined the provision but the Fifth Circuit vacated the injunction and later upheld the requirement on the basis of evidence presented before enforcement. On April 6 2014 petitioners a group of abortion providers that included some Abbott plaintiffs filed this suit in federal district court. They sought as-applied relief against the admitting-privileges requirement for facilities in McAllen and El Paso and a statewide injunction against the surgical-center requirement claiming violations of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court held a four-day bench trial and received stipulations expert depositions and testimony. It found that the number of facilities providing abortions dropped in half from about 40 to about 20 after the admitting-privileges requirement began to be enforced. It found that the number of women of reproductive age living more than 50 miles from a clinic doubled. The number living more than 100 miles away increased by 150 percent. The number living more than 150 miles away increased by more than 350 percent. The number living more than 200 miles away increased by about 2,800 percent. It found that the number of facilities would drop to seven or eight if the surgical-center provision took effect. It found that before H. B. 2's passage abortion was an extremely safe procedure with very low rates of complications and virtually no deaths. It found that abortion was safer than many more common procedures not subject to the same level of regulation. It found that the cost of compliance with the surgical-center requirement would most likely exceed 1.5 million dollars to 3 million dollars per clinic. On the basis of these findings the district court enjoined enforcement of both provisions. The Fifth Circuit reversed in significant part holding that res judicata barred the challenges and that both requirements were constitutional. The case reached the Supreme Court.
View caseA state constitution requires judges to retire at age 70. Rebecca Ross, a 71-year-old judge still performing her duties, sues claiming age discrimination. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the provision because the age limit is rationally related to the legitimate interest in ensuring judicial competence and vigor.
Missouri state judges Ellis Gregory, Jr., and Anthony P. Nugent, Jr., were appointed to their positions by the Governor under the state's Non-Partisan Court Plan. Gregory served as an associate circuit judge for the Twenty-first Judicial Circuit, while Nugent sat on the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District. Both judges, along with two others, became subject to a mandatory retirement requirement upon reaching age seventy under Article V, Section 26 of the Missouri Constitution. They had each been retained in office through retention elections in which they ran unopposed. In 1990, the judges filed a lawsuit against Governor John D. Ashcroft in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The complaint alleged that the mandatory retirement provision violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Governor responded with a motion to dismiss the action. The district court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision in a 1990 ruling reported at 898 F. 2d 598. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in the case later that year. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act had been amended in 1974 to include states and their political subdivisions as employers. The Act's definition of employee contained exclusions for elected officials, their personal staff, appointees on the policymaking level, and immediate advisers.
View caseA law fails rational basis review when the classification is not rationally related to the asserted interest or when the interest itself is illegitimate. Courts have struck down measures that rest on mere moral disapproval or that irrationally burden fundamental choices such as marriage or procreation.
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No. Rational basis review tolerates substantial underinclusion and overinclusion. A law survives so long as the classification is rationally related to a legitimate purpose, even if a more precise rule would better advance that purpose.
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When a law significantly burdens a fundamental right such as marriage or parental control of education, courts apply heightened scrutiny rather than rational basis review. The state must then show an important interest and close tailoring rather than mere rationality.
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…Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States , 379 U. S., at 258-259. Thus, under commerce, as under due process, adoption of rational basis review expressed the recognition that the Court had no sustainable basis for subjecting economic regulation as such to judicial policy judgments, and for the past half century the Court has no…