con law: march 30 2010 class notes

us railroad v. fritz.
1. current and 25 years
2. 25+ years
3. less than 25 years

analysis:
if this is to be something other than just "no review" then it should matter what congress is up to when they did the review/ enacted the act. the reasoning is of a pattern in sorts: rational basis review is pretty low and generalized in this case. when congress enacted this

plyer v. doe
there are immigrant kids who are denied funding for public education in TX.
the classes status is that they're illegal immigrants.
seems morally troubling for the state to hammer these kids for the sins of the father. to allow the gov't to do something cruel for rational basis doesn't seem right. additionally, education, though not a fundamental right, is mentioned in the 14th amd't and it is historically and traditionally a factor of our ideas of equality.... education is an american sorting system.

is this in furtherance of the federal gov't policies? absolutely not - in fact, the gov't gives special statuses to kids brought over as illegal immigrants

TX says "we're saving money". US says "keeping the kids out of the classroom does cost less to educate but eventually will cost more to have adults who are illiterate."


romer v. evans

washington v. davis

all of this is about rational basis review. at the end you can point to certain "blips" but until there is a new kind of review created, that is not as severe as strict scrutiny.

con law: march 29 2010 class notes

in UT, a man and woman can gain a marriage license but a man and man cannot. 
advocate for these clients, through DPC. 

property interest?
liberty interest? strict scrutiny. the state interest to prevent this would be

(1) naked
(2) bedroom
(3) justice of the peace

criminalizing is the same issue as not allowing marriage license. advocate for this.

1. there is no right to homosexual marriage or explicit right to privacy to this right under the 14th amendment.... don't forget to say the basic, obvious things to a trial judge: there is no doctrine at this point, and so why should we stretch the doctrine now? 
2. arguments on the gov't side: rational relationships (lawrence v. texas); historical basis (glucksberg); traditional values; interests in procreation of future citizens (increase the taxpayer base);

$$ to race: a step row of classifications... which are subject to strict scrutiny?

step 1. rational basis (economics)
step 2. intermediate scrutiny ("quasi-suspect" classes, mainly gender)
step 3. strict scrutiny ("suspect" classes, like race and alienage - FRs)

what's rational basis for the demise of econ claims (lochner)?

usda v. moreno
company wants to sell advertising on the side of the truck. nyc says that they don't want that for safety reasons, etc.
court has a self-restraint assumption on the truck owners.
justice black in his opinion is writing in the quality of a dissent: the court won't read in an economic right in regards to post-lochner. but this law is under-inclusive.
justice jackson says that EPC is all or nothing: the EPC does not have a problem of disabling/precluding the gov't the way that DPC does.
what does the EPC do? for a successful EPC claim, the court will just ensure that the gov't is regulating in the correct way.... in this case, don't under-include, just reform the statute so that it regulates more fairly.

usrr v. fritz
union self-protection scam that congress is not aware of until the legislation is passed.
the plaintiff's say that the inbalance denies them equal protection.
moving from actual to theoretical motivation: congress may have wanted to ensure that people who really applied themselves to the railroad profession are compensated, as opposed to people whose lives brought them through some railroad employment at some time.