Also known as: rationally related · legitimate state interest · rational basis test · rational basis review
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A standard of judicial review under which a law or classification survives constitutional challenge if it bears a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental objective. The standard applies when no fundamental right or suspect classification is involved. Courts defer to legislative judgments and uphold measures even when they are underinclusive or overinclusive.
The President issues an order barring entry by nationals from several majority-Muslim countries. Officials cite national security risks from sanctions evasion. A foreign lawyer from one such country challenges the order on Establishment Clause grounds. The court sustains the order because its stated security purpose is legitimate and the entry bar is rationally connected to that purpose.
A state enacts a statute requiring physicians to obtain informed consent and a twenty-four-hour waiting period before performing an abortion. A clinic sues claiming the requirements impose an undue burden. The court applies rational basis review and upholds the statute because the informed-consent and waiting-period rules are rationally related to the state's legitimate interest in protecting potential life and maternal health.
The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982, as amended in 1988 and 1989, established several requirements governing the performance of abortions within the Commonwealth. The Act required a woman seeking an abortion to provide informed consent after receiving specific information from a physician or counselor at least twenty-four hours before the procedure. It mandated that a minor obtain the informed consent of one parent, subject to a judicial bypass option. It further required a married woman to sign a statement confirming that she had notified her husband of her planned abortion, unless certain exceptions applied. The Act also imposed reporting obligations on facilities providing abortion services and defined a medical emergency exception to the various requirements. Before any of these provisions took effect, the petitioners brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petitioners were five abortion clinics and one physician representing himself as well as a class of physicians who provide abortion services. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief and challenged each provision as unconstitutional on its face. The District Court entered a preliminary injunction. After conducting a three-day bench trial, the District Court held all the provisions unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against their enforcement by Pennsylvania. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. It adopted the District Court's factual findings and legal analysis except with respect to the spousal notification requirement. The Court of Appeals upheld the spousal notification requirement as constitutional and applied the undue burden standard in evaluating the provisions. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutionality of the challenged provisions of the Pennsylvania statute.
View caseA city ordinance limits occupancy of single-family dwellings to members of the nuclear family. A grandmother who lives with her grandson challenges the ordinance after she is cited for a violation. The court holds that the ordinance fails rational basis review because it bears no rational relationship to the city's asserted interests in controlling density and traffic.
In early 1973, Mrs. Inez Moore received a notice of violation from the city of East Cleveland. The notice stated that her grandson John Moore, Jr., was an illegal occupant of her home. It directed her to comply with the housing ordinance. Mrs. Moore lived in her East Cleveland home together with her son Dale Moore, Sr., and her two grandsons Dale Moore, Jr., and John Moore, Jr. John came to live with her after his mother's death when he was less than one year old. When she failed to remove John from the home, the city filed a criminal charge against her. Mrs. Moore moved to dismiss the charge. She claimed that the ordinance was constitutionally invalid on its face. Her motion was overruled. Upon conviction she was sentenced to five days in jail and a $25 fine. The East Cleveland ordinance limited occupancy of a dwelling unit to members of a single family. The ordinance defined family to include only a husband or wife of the nominal head of the household, unmarried children of the head or spouse provided they have no children residing with them, a parent of the head or spouse, or not more than one dependent child of the head or spouse along with that child's spouse and dependent children. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction after giving full consideration to her constitutional claims. The Ohio Supreme Court denied review of the case. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction of her appeal.
A state prohibits abortions after the first trimester except when necessary to preserve the woman's life or health. A physician challenges the statute on behalf of patients seeking later procedures. The court upholds the ban under rational basis review because the restriction is rationally related to the state's legitimate interest in maternal health and the potentiality of life.
In March 1970, Jane Roe, a single woman residing in Dallas County, Texas, instituted a federal action against the District Attorney of the county. She sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face. She also sought an injunction restraining enforcement of the statutes. Roe alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant. She wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion performed by a competent licensed physician under safe clinical conditions. She was unable to obtain a legal abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by continuation of the pregnancy. She could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction to secure a legal abortion. James Hubert Hallford, a licensed physician, sought and was granted leave to intervene in Roe's action. In his complaint he alleged that he had been arrested previously for violations of the Texas abortion statutes. Two such prosecutions were pending against him in the Criminal District Court of Dallas County. He described conditions of patients who came to him seeking abortions. He claimed that for many cases he was unable to determine whether they fell within or outside the exception recognized by Article 1196 of the Texas Penal Code. John and Mary Doe, a married couple, filed a companion complaint also naming the District Attorney as defendant. The Does alleged that they were a childless couple. Mrs. Doe was suffering from a neural-chemical disorder. Her physician had advised her to avoid pregnancy until her condition materially improved. She had discontinued use of birth control pills pursuant to medical advice. If she should become pregnant she would want to terminate the pregnancy by an abortion performed by a competent licensed physician under safe clinical conditions. The two actions were consolidated and heard together by a duly convened three-judge district court for the Northern District of Texas. Upon the filing of affidavits, motions were made for dismissal and for summary judgment. The court held that Roe and members of her class and Dr. Hallford had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. The Does had failed to allege facts sufficient to state a present controversy and did not have standing. It concluded that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were void on their face. The court dismissed the Does' complaint while denying injunctive relief. The plaintiffs Roe and Doe and the intervenor Hallford appealed to the Supreme Court from that part of the District Court's judgment denying the injunction. The defendant District Attorney cross-appealed from the grant of declaratory relief. Both sides also took protective appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. That court ordered the appeals held in abeyance pending decision by the Supreme Court.
A state finances public schools primarily through local property taxes, resulting in large disparities between wealthy and poor districts. Parents in a low-wealth district sue claiming the system violates equal protection. The court applies rational basis review and sustains the funding scheme because reliance on local taxes is rationally related to the legitimate state interest in preserving local control over education.
In the summer of 1968 Mexican-American parents whose children attended elementary and secondary schools in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio Texas brought a class action. They sued on behalf of schoolchildren throughout the state who were members of minority groups or who were poor and resided in school districts having a low property tax base. Named as defendants were the State Board of Education the Commissioner of Education the State Attorney General and the Bexar County Board of Trustees. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. A three-judge court was impaneled in January 1969. The Texas system of financing public education originated with the state's first constitution in 1845. It evolved through constitutional amendments permitting local school districts to levy ad valorem taxes for school buildings and maintenance. These local revenues were supplemented by distributions from the state's Permanent School Fund established in 1854 and the Available School Fund. In the late 1940s the legislature enacted the Minimum Foundation School Program. Under the program the state supplies approximately 80 percent of the cost of teacher salaries operating expenses and transportation. Each district contributes the remaining 20 percent through a Local Fund Assignment. The assignment is calculated by an economic index reflecting relative taxpaying ability. Every district also levies additional local property taxes beyond the assignment to supplement its foundation grant. For the 1967-1968 school year the Edgewood Independent School District had an average assessed property value of $5960 per pupil and a median family income of $4686. It raised $26 per pupil through local taxation at a rate of $1.05 per $100 of assessed valuation. It received $222 per pupil from the Foundation Program and obtained $108 in federal funds for a total of $356 per pupil. By comparison the Alamo Heights Independent School District had an assessed property value exceeding $49000 per pupil and a median family income of $8001. It raised $333 per pupil locally at a rate of $0.85 per $100 received $225 from the Foundation Program and $36 in federal funds for a total of $594 per pupil. Similar disparities in per-pupil expenditures existed throughout the state. They were largely attributable to differences in the amount of taxable property within each district. In December 1971 the three-judge District Court rendered judgment holding the Texas school finance system unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State appealed. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in 1972 to consider the constitutional questions presented.
A state criminalizes private consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex. Two men arrested under the statute move to dismiss on due process grounds. The court holds that moral disapproval alone does not constitute a legitimate state interest, so the statute fails even rational basis review.
In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody overnight, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace. The complaints described their crime as "deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man)." Texas Penal Code Ann. § 21.06(a) (2003) provides that a person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. The statute defines deviate sexual intercourse as any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person, or the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object. The petitioners exercised their right to a trial de novo in Harris County Criminal Court. They challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and of a like provision of the Texas Constitution. Those contentions were rejected. The petitioners, having entered a plea of nolo contendere, were each fined $200 and assessed court costs of $141.25. The Court of Appeals for the Texas Fourteenth District considered the petitioners' federal constitutional arguments under both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. After hearing the case en banc the court, in a divided opinion, rejected the constitutional arguments and affirmed the convictions. The majority opinion indicates that the Court of Appeals considered our decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), to be controlling on the federal due process aspect of the case. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider three questions. The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.
Rational basis review applies when a law neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect or quasi-suspect class. Courts then ask only whether the classification is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Gender and race classifications, by contrast, trigger intermediate or strict scrutiny.
…against the life she carries within her, should the interest of the embryo or fetus not prevail. Logically, of course, a legitimate state interest in this area need not stand or fall on acceptance of the belief that life begins at conception or at some other point prior to live birth. In assessing the State's interest, recognition may…
…interest which is compelling," Bates v. Little Rock , 361 U. S. 516, 524. The law must be shown "necessary, and not merely rationally related, to the accomplishment of a permissible
…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
…and traffic congestion. The ordinance distinguishes between different types of family relationships in a manner that is not rationally related to any legitimate
…to propose the same standard of review proposed by the plurality in Webster . "States may regulate abortion procedures in ways
No. Moral disapproval of private consensual adult conduct is not a legitimate governmental interest under rational basis review. A statute criminalizing such conduct therefore fails even this deferential standard.
No. Under rational basis review a law may be underinclusive or overinclusive and still survive. The classification need only bear a rational relationship to a legitimate purpose. Perfect fit is not required.
When Congress seeks to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment under Section 5, its remedies must be congruent and proportional to a pattern of unconstitutional state conduct. Because age and disability classifications receive only rational basis review, Congress must identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination before it may abrogate state sovereign immunity.