ZOBEL ET UX. v. WILLIAMS, COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE OF ALASKA
 
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
 
457 U.S. 55
June 14, 1982, Decided

CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented on this appeal is whether a statutory scheme by which a State distributes income derived from its natural resources to the adult citizens of the State in varying amounts, based on the length of each citizen's residence, violates the equal protection rights of newer state citizens. The Alaska Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the statute. We stayed the distribution of dividend funds and noted probable jurisdiction.  We reverse.

The 1967 discovery of large oil reserves on state-owned land in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska resulted in a windfall to the State. The State, which had a total budget of $ 124 million in 1969, before the oil revenues began to flow into the state coffers, received $ 3.7 billion in petroleum revenues during the 1981 fiscal year.  This income will continue, and  most likely grow for some years in the future. Recognizing that its mineral reserves, although large, are finite and that the resulting income will not continue in perpetuity, the State took steps to assure that its current good fortune will bring long-range benefits. To accomplish this, Alaska in 1976 adopted a constitutional amendment establishing the Permanent Fund into which the State must deposit at least 25% of its mineral income each year.  The amendment prohibits the legislature from appropriating any of the principal of the Fund but permits use of the Fund's earnings for general governmental purposes.
 
In 1980, the legislature enacted a dividend program to distribute annually a portion of the Fund's earnings directly to the State's adult  residents. Under the plan, each citizen 18 years of age or older receives one dividend unit for each year of residency subsequent to 1959, the first year of statehood. The statute fixed the value of each dividend unit at $ 50 for the 1979 fiscal year; a one-year resident thus would receive one unit, or $ 50, while a resident of Alaska since it became a State in 1959 would receive 21 units, or $ 1,050. The value of a dividend unit will vary each year depending on the income of the Permanent Fund and the amount of that income the State allocates for other purposes. The State now estimates that the 1985 fiscal year dividend will be nearly four times as large as that for 1979.

Appellants, residents of Alaska since 1978, brought this suit in 1980 challenging the dividend distribution plan as violative of their right to equal protection guarantees and their constitutional right to migrate to Alaska, to establish residency there and thereafter to enjoy the full rights of Alaska citizenship on the same terms as all other citizens of the State.

The Alaska dividend distribution law is quite unlike the durational residency requirements we examined in Sosna v. Iowa (1975); Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County (1974); Dunn v. Blumstein (1972); and Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969). Those cases involved laws which required new residents to reside in the State a fixed minimum period to be eligible for certain benefits available on an equal basis to all other residents.  The asserted purpose of the durational residency requirements was to assure that only persons who had established bona fide residence received rights and benefits provided for residents.
 
The Alaska statute does not impose any threshold waiting period on those seeking dividend  benefits; persons with less than a full year of residency are entitled to share in the distribution.  Nor does the statute purport to establish a test of the bona fides of state residence. Instead, the dividend statute creates fixed, permanent distinctions between an ever-increasing number of perpetual classes of concededly bona fide residents, based on how long they have been in the State.
 
Appellants established residence in Alaska two years before the dividend law was passed. The distinction they complain of is not one which the State makes between those who arrived in Alaska after the enactment of the dividend distribution law and those who were residents prior to its enactment. Appellants instead challenge the distinctions made within the class of persons who were residents when the dividend scheme was enacted in 1980. The distinctions appellants attack include the preference given to persons who were residents when Alaska became a State in 1959 over all those who have arrived since then, as well as the distinctions made between all bona fide residents who settled in Alaska at different times during the 1959 to 1980 period.

The Alaska statute does not simply make distinctions between native-born Alaskans and those who migrate to Alaska from other states; it does not discriminate only against those who have recently exercised the right to travel, as did the statute involved in Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969). The Alaska statute also discriminates among long-time residents and even native-born residents. For example, a person born in Alaska in 1962 would have received $ 100 less than someone who was born in the State in 1960. Of course the native Alaskan born in 1962 would also receive $ 100 less than the person who moved to the State in 1960. The statute does not involve the kind of discrimination which the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV was designed to prevent. That Clause "was designed to insure to a citizen of State A who ventures into State B the same privileges which the citizens of State B enjoy."  The Clause is thus not applicable to this case.
 
When a state distributes benefits unequally, the distinctions it makes are subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Generally, a law will survive that scrutiny if the distinction it makes rationally furthers a legitimate state purpose. Some particularly invidious distinctions are subject to more rigorous scrutiny. Appellants claim that the distinctions made by the Alaska law should be subjected to the higher level of scrutiny applied to the durational residency requirements in Shapiro v. Thompson and Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County. The State, on the other hand, asserts that the law need only meet the minimum rationality test. In any event, if the statutory scheme cannot pass even the minimal test proposed by the State, we need not decide whether any enhanced scrutiny is called for.

The State advanced and the Alaska Supreme Court accepted three purposes justifying the distinctions made by the dividend program: (a) creation of a financial incentive for individuals to establish and maintain residence in Alaska; (b) encouragement of prudent management of the Permanent Fund; and (c) apportionment of benefits in recognition of undefined "contributions of various kinds, both tangible and intangible, which residents have made during their years of residency."

As the Alaska Supreme Court apparently realized, the first two state objectives -- creating a financial incentive for individuals to establish and maintain Alaska residence, and assuring prudent management of the Permanent Fund and the State's natural and mineral resources -- are not rationally related to the distinctions Alaska seeks to make between newer residents and those who have been in the State since 1959.   Assuming, arguendo, that granting increased dividend benefits for each year of continued Alaska residence might give some residents an incentive to stay in the State in order to reap increased dividend benefits in the future, the State's interest is not in any way served by granting greater dividends to persons for their residency during the 21 years prior to the enactment.  In fact, newcomers seem more likely to become dissatisfied and to leave the State than well-established residents; it would thus seem that the State would give a larger, rather than a smaller, dividend to new residents if it wanted to discourage emigration. The separation of residents into classes hardly seems a likely way to persuade new Alaskans that the State welcomes them and wants them to stay.

Nor does the State's purpose of furthering the prudent management of the Permanent Fund and the State's resources support retrospective application of its plan to the date of statehood. On this score the State's contention is straightforward: "[As] population increases, each individual share in the income stream is diluted. The income must be divided equally among increasingly large numbers of people. If residents believed that twenty years from now they would be required to share permanent fund income on a per capita basis with the large population that Alaska will no doubt have by then, the temptation would be great to urge the legislature to provide immediately for the highest possible percentage return on the investments of the permanent fund principal, which would require investments in riskier ventures."

The State similarly argues that equal per capita distribution would encourage rapacious development of natural resources.  Even if we assume that the state interest is served by increasing the dividend for each year of residency beginning with the date of enactment, it is rationally served by granting greater dividends in varying amounts to those who resided in Alaska during the 21 years prior to enactment? We think not.

The last of the State's objectives -- to reward citizens for past contributions -- alone was relied upon by the Alaska Supreme Court to support the retrospective application of the law to 1959. However, that objective is not a legitimate state purpose. A similar "past contributions" argument was made and rejected in Shapiro v. Thompson:

"Appellants argue further that the challenged classification may be sustained as an attempt to distinguish between new and old residents on the basis of the contributions they have made to the community through the payment of taxes. . . . Appellants' reasoning would . . . permit the State to apportion all benefits and services according to the past tax [or intangible] contributions of its citizens. The Equal Protection Clause prohibits such an apportionment of state services." Similarly, in Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441 (1973), we noted that "[apportionment of] tuition rates on the basis of old and new residency . . . would give rise to grave problems under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

Even if the objective of rewarding past contributions were valid, it would be ironic to apply that rationale here. As Representative Randolph noted during debate in the state legislature on the dividend statute: "The pipeline is the entity that has allowed us all this latitude to do all the things we're considering doing, not only today but throughout the session. And without . . . newcomers, we couldn't have built that pipeline. Without their skill, without their ability, without their money, the pipeline wouldn't be there. So I get a little bit tired of -- and I've got a hunch an awful lot of people who have been here five or six or seven or ten years, whatever we knock off as newcomers, get a little bit tired of being chastized and penalized and discriminated against for having not been born here or not have been here 30 or 40 or 50 years."
 
If the states can make the amount of a cash dividend depend on length of residence, what would preclude varying university tuition on a sliding scale based on years of residence -- or even limiting access to finite public facilities, eligibility for student loans, for civil service jobs, or for government contracts by length of domicile? Could states impose different taxes based on length of residence? Alaska's reasoning could open the door to state apportionment of other rights, benefits, and services according to length of residency.  It would permit the states to divide citizens into expanding numbers of permanent classes.  Such a result would be clearly impermissible.

We hold that the Alaska dividend distribution plan violates the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the judgment of the Alaska Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
 

JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL, JUSTICE BLACKMUN, and JUSTICE POWELL join, concurring.

I join the opinion of the Court, and agree with its conclusion that the retrospective aspects of Alaska's dividend-distribution law are not rationally related to a legitimate state purpose. I write separately only to emphasize that the pervasive discrimination embodied in the Alaska distribution scheme gives rise to constitutional concerns of somewhat larger proportions than may be evident on a cursory reading of the Court's opinion. In my view, these concerns might well preclude even the prospective operation of Alaska's  scheme.

I agree with JUSTICE O'CONNOR that these more fundamental defects in the Alaska dividend-distribution law are, in part, reflected in what has come to be called the "right to travel."  That right -- or, more precisely, the federal interest in free interstate migration -- is clearly, though indirectly, affected by the Alaska dividend-distribution law, and this threat to free interstate migration provides an independent rationale for holding that law unconstitutional. At the outset, however, I note that the frequent attempts to assign the right to travel some textual source in the Constitution seem to me to have proved both inconclusive and unnecessary. JUSTICE O'CONNOR plausibly argues that the right predates the Constitution and was carried forward in the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV. But equally plausible, I think, is the argument that the right resides in the Commerce Clause or in the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In any event, in light of the unquestioned historic recognition of the principle of free interstate migration, and of its role in the development of the Nation, we need not feel impelled to "ascribe the source of this right to travel interstate to a particular constitutional provision."

As is clear from our cases, the right to travel achieves its most forceful expression in the context of equal protection analysis. But if, finding no citable passage in the Constitution to assign as its source, some might be led to question the independent vitality of the principle of free interstate migration, I find its unmistakable essence in that document that transformed a loose confederation of States into one Nation. A scheme of the sort adopted by Alaska is inconsistent with the federal structure even in its prospective operation.

A State clearly may undertake to enhance the advantages of industry, economy, and resources that make it a desirable place in which to live. In addition, a State may make residence within its boundaries more attractive by offering direct benefits to its citizens in the form of public services, lower taxes than other States offer, or direct distributions of its munificence. Through these means, one State may attract citizens of other States to join the numbers of its citizenry. That is a healthy form of rivalry: It inheres in the very idea of maintaining the States as independent sovereigns within a larger framework, and it is fully -- indeed, necessarily -- consistent with the Framers' further idea of joining these independent sovereigns into a single Nation. But a State cannot compound its offer of direct benefits in the inventive manner exemplified by the Alaska distribution scheme: For if each State were free to reward its citizens incrementally for their years of residence, so that a citizen leaving one State would thereby forfeit his accrued seniority, only to have to begin building such seniority again in his new State of residence, then the mobility so essential to the economic progress of our Nation, and so commonly accepted as a fundamental aspect of our social order, would not long survive.

The Constitution places the recently naturalized immigrant from a foreign land on an equal footing with those citizens of a State who are able to trace their lineage back for many generations within the State's borders. The 18-year-old native resident of a State is as much a citizen as the 55-year-old native resident. But the Alaska plan discriminates against the recently naturalized citizen, in favor of the Alaska citizen of longer duration; it discriminates against the 18-year-old native resident, in favor of all residents of longer duration. If the Alaska plan were limited to discriminations such as these, and did not purport to apply to migrants from sister States, interstate travel would not be noticeably burdened -- yet those discriminations would surely be constitutionally suspect.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the equal protection of the law to anyone who may be within the territorial jurisdiction of a State. That Amendment does not suggest by its terms that equal treatment might be denied a person depending upon how long that person has been within the jurisdiction of the State. The Fourteenth Amendment does, however, expressly recognize one elementary basis for distinguishing between persons who may be within a State's jurisdiction at any particular time -- by setting forth the requirements for state citizenship. But it is significant that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment expressly equates citizenship only with simple residence.  Clause does not provide for, and does not allow for, degrees of citizenship based on length of residence.  And the Equal Protection Clause would not tolerate such distinctions. In short, as much as the right to travel, equality of citizenship is of the essence in our Republic. As the Court notes, States may not "divide citizens into expanding numbers of permanent classes."

JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring in the judgment.

The Court strikes Alaska's distribution scheme, purporting to rely solely upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth   Amendment. The phrase "right to travel" appears only fleetingly in the Court's analysis, dismissed with an observation that "right to travel analysis refers to little more than a particular application of equal protection analysis."  The Court's reluctance to rely explicitly on a right to travel is odd, because its holding depends on the assumption that Alaska's desire "to reward citizens for past contributions . . . is not a legitimate state purpose."  Nothing in the Equal Protection Clause itself, however, declares this objective illegitimate. Instead, as a full reading of Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), and Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U.S. 441 (1973), reveals, the Court has rejected this objective only when its implementation would abridge an interest in interstate travel or migration.

I respectfully suggest, therefore, that the Court misdirects its criticism when it labels Alaska's objective illegitimate. A desire to compensate citizens for their prior contributions is neither inherently invidious nor irrational. Under some circumstances, the objective may be wholly reasonable.  Even a generalized desire to reward citizens for past endurance, particularly in a State where years of hardship only recently have produced prosperity, is not innately improper. The difficulty is that plans enacted to further this objective necessarily treat new residents of a State less favorably than the longer term residents who have past contributions to "reward." This inequality, as the Court repeatedly has recognized, conflicts with the constitutional purpose of maintaining a Union rather than a mere "league of States."  The Court's task, therefore, should be (1) to articulate this constitutional principle, explaining its textual sources, and (2) to test the strength of Alaska's objective against the constitutional imperative. By choosing instead to declare Alaska's purpose wholly illegitimate, the Court establishes an uncertain jurisprudence. What makes Alaska's purpose illegitimate? Is the purpose illegitimate under all circumstances? What other state interests are wholly illegitimate? Will an "illegitimate" purpose survive review if it becomes "important" or "compelling"?  These ambiguities in the Court's analysis prompt me to develop my own approach to Alaska's scheme. 

Alaska's distribution plan distinguishes between long-term residents and recent arrivals. Stripped to its essentials, the plan denies non-Alaskans settling in the State the same privileges afforded longer term residents. The Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV, which guarantees "[the] Citizens of each State . . . all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States," addresses just this type of discrimination.  Accordingly, I would measure Alaska's scheme against the principles implementing the Privileges and Immunities Clause. In addition to resolving the particular problems raised by Alaska's scheme, this analysis supplies a needed foundation for many of the "right to travel" claims discussed in the Court's prior opinions.
 
Our opinions teach that Art. IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause "was designed to insure to a citizen of State A who ventures into State B the same privileges which the citizens of State B enjoy."  The Clause protects a nonresident who enters a State to work,  to hunt commercial game,  or to procure medical services.  A fortiori, the Privileges and Immunities Clause should protect the "citizen of State A who ventures into State B" to settle there and establish a home.

In this case, Alaska forces nonresidents settling in the State to accept a status inferior to that of oldtimers. In its first year of operation, the distribution scheme would have given $ 1,050 to an Alaskan who had lived in the State since statehood. A resident of 10 years would have received $ 500, while a one-year resident would have received only $ 50. In effect, therefore, the State told its citizens: "Your status depends upon the date on which you established residence here. Those of you who migrated to the State cannot share its bounty on the same basis as those who were here before you." Surely this scheme imposes one of the "disabilities of alienage" prohibited by Art. IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause.

It could be argued that Alaska's scheme does not trigger the Privileges and Immunities Clause because it discriminates among classes of residents, rather than between residents and nonresidents. This argument, however, misinterprets the force of Alaska's distribution system. Alaska's scheme classifies citizens on the basis of their former residential status, imposing a relative burden on those who migrated to the State after 1959. Residents who arrived in Alaska after that date have a less valuable citizenship right than do the oldtimers who preceded them. Citizens who arrive in the State tomorrow will receive an even smaller claim on Alaska's resources. The fact that this discrimination unfolds after the nonresident establishes residency does not insulate Alaska's scheme from scrutiny under the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Each group of citizens who migrated to Alaska in the past, or chooses to move there in the future, lives in the State on less favorable terms than those who arrived earlier. The circumstance that some of the disfavored citizens already live in Alaska does not negate the fact that "the citizen of State A who ventures into [Alaska]" to establish a home labors under a continuous disability.

If the Privileges and Immunities Clause applies to Alaska's distribution system, then our prior opinions describe the proper standard of review. In Baldwin v. Montana Fish and Game Comm'n, 436 U.S. 371 (1978), we held that States must treat residents and nonresidents "without unnecessary distinctions" when the nonresident seeks to "engage in an essential activity or exercise a basic right."  On the other hand, if the nonresident engages in conduct that is not "fundamental" because it does not "[bear] upon the vitality of the Nation as a single entity," the Privileges and Immunities Clause affords no protection.

Once the Court ascertains that discrimination burdens an "essential activity," it will test the constitutionality of the discrimination under a two-part test. First, there must be "'something to indicate that non-citizens constitute a peculiar source of the evil at which the statute is aimed.'"  Second, the Court must find a "substantial relationship" between the evil and the discrimination practiced against the noncitizens.

Certainly the right infringed in this case is "fundamental." Alaska's statute burdens those nonresidents who choose to settle in the State.  It is difficult to imagine a right more essential to the Nation as a whole than the right to establish residence in a new State. Just as our federal system permits the States to experiment with different social and economic programs,  it allows the individual to settle in the State offering those programs best tailored to his or her tastes.  Alaska's encumbrance on the right of nonresidents to settle in that State, therefore, must satisfy the dual standard identified in Hicklin.
 
Alaska has not shown that its new residents are the "peculiar source" of any evil addressed by its disbursement scheme. The State does not argue that recent arrivals constitute a particular source of its population turnover problem. Indeed, the State urges that it has a special interest in persuading young adults, who have grown to maturity in the State, to remain there.  Nor is there any evidence that new residents, rather than old, will foolishly deplete the State's mineral and financial resources. Finally, although Alaska argues that its scheme compensates residents for their prior tangible and intangible contributions to the State, nonresidents are hardly a peculiar source of the "evil" of partaking in current largesse without having made prior contributions. A multitude of native Alaskans -- including children and paupers -- may have failed to contribute to the State in the past. Yet the State does not dock paupers for their prior failures to contribute, and it awards every person over the age of 18 dividends equal to the number of years that person has lived in the State.

Even if new residents were the peculiar source of these evils, Alaska has not chosen a cure that bears a "substantial relationship" to the malady. As the dissenting judges below observed, Alaska's scheme gives the largest dividends to residents who have lived longest in the State. The dividends awarded to new residents may be too small to encourage them to stay in Alaska. The size of these dividends appears to give new residents only a weak interest in prudent management of the State's resources. As a reward for prior contributions, finally, Alaska's scheme is quite ill-suited. While the phrase "substantial relationship" does not require mathematical precision, it demands at least some recognition of the fact that persons who have migrated to Alaska may have contributed significantly more to the State, both before and after their arrival, than have some natives.

For these reasons, I conclude that Alaska's disbursement scheme violates Art. IV's Privileges and Immunities Clause. I thus reach the same destination as the Court, but along a course that more precisely identifies the evils of the challenged statute.

JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.

Alaska's dividend distribution scheme represents one State's effort to apportion unique economic benefits among its citizens. Although the wealth received from the oil deposits of Prudhoe Bay may be quite unlike the economic resources enjoyed by most States, Alaska's distribution of that wealth is in substance no different from any other State's allocation of economic benefits. The distribution scheme being in the nature of economic regulation, I am at a loss to see the rationality behind the Court's invalidation  of it as a denial of equal protection. This Court has long held that state economic regulations are presumptively valid, and violate the Fourteenth Amendment only in the rarest of circumstances:...