Cite as: 519 U. S. 102 (1996)
Syllabus
quirements ordinarily are examined only for rationality, the Court's cases solidly establish two exceptions to that rule. The basic right to participate in political processes as voters and candidates cannot be limited to those who can pay for a license. See, e. g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663. Nor may access to judicial processes in cases criminal or "quasi criminal" in nature, Mayer, 404 U. S., at 196, turn on ability to pay. The Court places decrees forever terminating parental rights in the category of cases in which the State may not "bolt the door to equal justice." Griffin, 351 U. S., at 24 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). Pp. 119-124. (e) Contrary to respondents' contention, cases in which the Court has held that government need not provide funds so that people can exercise even fundamental rights, see, e. g., Lyng v. Automobile Workers, 485 U. S. 360, 363, n. 2, 370-374, are inapposite here. Complainants in those cases sought state aid to subsidize their privately initiated action or to alleviate the consequences of differences in economic circumstances that existed apart from state action. M. L. B.'s complaint is of a different order. She is endeavoring to defend against the State's destruction of her family bonds, and to resist the brand associated with a parental unfitness adjudication. Like a defendant resisting criminal conviction, she seeks to be spared from the State's devastatingly adverse action. That is the very reason this Court has paired her case with Mayer, not with Ortwein or Kras. Also rejected is respondents' suggestion that Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 242, effectively overruled the Griffin line of cases in 1976 by rejecting the notion "that a law, neutral on its face and serving ends otherwise within the power of government to pursue, is invalid under the Equal Protection Clause simply because it may affect a greater proportion of one race than of another." That this Court has not so conceived the meaning and effect of Washington v. Davis is demonstrated by Bearden, 461 U. S., at 664-665, in which the Court adhered in 1983 to "Griffin's principle of 'equal justice.' " The Court recognized in Griffin that "a law nondiscriminatory on its face may be grossly discriminatory in operation," 351 U. S., at 17, n. 11, and explained in Williams v. Illinois, 399 U. S. 235, 242, that an Illinois statute it found unconstitutional in that case "in operative effect expose[d] only indigents to the risk of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum." Like the sanction in Williams, the Mississippi prescription here at issue is not merely disproportionate in impact, but wholly contingent on one's ability to pay, thereby "visit[ing] different consequences on two categories of persons." Ibid. A failure rigidly to restrict Griffin to cases typed "criminal" will not result in the opening of judicial floodgates, as respondents urge. This Court has repeatedly distinguished parental status termination decrees from mine run civil actions
105
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007