Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1976

Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong

426 U.S. 88 | 96 S. Ct. 1895 | 48 L. Ed. 2d 495 | 1976 U.S. LEXIS 153

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a federal agency cannot broadly exclude resident aliens from federal employment based on national-policy rationales that Congress or the President—but not the agency itself—has chosen to pursue.

Background

Five lawfully admitted permanent resident aliens, all of whom lived in San Francisco, were denied federal jobs or examinations solely because they were not citizens. The Civil Service Commission regulation generally allowed admission to competitive examinations and appointment only for citizens or persons owing permanent allegiance to the United States—a category the Commission effectively limited to American Samoan nationals. The plaintiffs included qualified applicants for jobs such as janitor, file clerk, and educational-program evaluator; one plaintiff was fired by the Post Office after 10 days of satisfactory work when it learned he was not a citizen.

The plaintiffs brought a class action alleging that the blanket exclusion violated the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and an executive order barring national-origin discrimination. The District Court upheld the regulation, reasoning that the federal political branches possess broad power over aliens and that the rule could rationally protect loyalty in government service or reserve jobs for citizens. The Ninth Circuit reversed on Fifth Amendment grounds, concluding that the Commission's indiscriminate exclusion of aliens from the competitive civil service was far broader than the asserted concerns about sensitive or policymaking jobs. The Supreme Court affirmed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Fifth Amendment permits the Federal Government to subject lawfully admitted resident aliens to a blanket employment exclusion without any judicial scrutiny because immigration and naturalization are federal political matters.

Holding

No. The Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process requires some judicial scrutiny of a nationwide federal rule that broadly deprives resident aliens of employment opportunities, although federal classifications may be justified by national interests that would not justify identical state classifications.

Reasoning

The Fifth Amendment contains no Equal Protection Clause, but its Due Process Clause requires the Federal Government, like the States, to govern impartially. The Court recognized that equal-protection principles inform Fifth Amendment review, while also acknowledging that the federal government's special constitutional authority over immigration, naturalization, and foreign affairs may supply national justifications unavailable to a State.

The Court rejected the Government's position that any federal officer may discriminate against resident aliens without constitutional justification. Resident aliens are a discrete class already burdened by political and practical disadvantages, and a rule that bars them from a major sector of employment imposes a significant deprivation of liberty. That deprivation triggers due-process scrutiny.

The Court did not decide whether an express congressional statute or presidential directive excluding all noncitizens from federal employment would survive substantive equal-protection review. Instead, it adopted the narrower principle that, when the Government invokes an overriding national interest to support a classification that a State could not impose, there must be a legitimate basis to conclude that the official or institution adopting the rule actually acted to serve that interest.

Issue #2

Whether Congress or the President expressly required, or sufficiently adopted through acquiescence, the Civil Service Commission's blanket citizenship requirement.

Holding

No. Neither Congress nor the President expressly directed the Commission to exclude all resident aliens from the competitive civil service, and historical acquiescence did not convert the Commission's policy into a political-branch decision.

Reasoning

The relevant civil-service statute authorized the President to prescribe regulations promoting the efficiency of the service, and President Eisenhower's executive order authorized the Commission to establish standards concerning citizenship. But authorization to establish citizenship standards was not a command to make citizenship an across-the-board condition for every competitive civil-service position.

Congress had long been aware of citizenship restrictions and had enacted appropriations provisions restricting payment to certain noncitizens. Yet those provisions permitted payment to categories broader than citizens alone, including persons owing allegiance to the United States. The appropriations history therefore did not fairly establish either congressional approval or disapproval of the Commission's specific blanket rule.

The Postal Service's later decision to abandon a comparable general citizenship requirement, without new action by Congress or the President, reinforced the conclusion that the executive agencies retained discretion. The Commission's exclusionary rule was thus its own personnel policy, not an express policy choice of Congress or the President.

Issue #3

Whether the Civil Service Commission could, consistently with the Fifth Amendment, impose a blanket exclusion of resident aliens from almost all competitive civil-service positions.

Holding

No. The Commission's blanket rule deprived resident aliens of liberty without due process because the national interests offered to justify it were not interests the Commission was responsible for advancing, and the agency did not adequately justify its sweeping policy on grounds related to efficient civil-service administration.

Reasoning

The Government offered several possible national justifications: preserving bargaining leverage in treaty negotiations, encouraging naturalization, following longstanding domestic and international practice, protecting loyalty in sensitive positions, and avoiding the administrative burden of identifying the jobs for which citizenship is appropriate. The Court assumed that some of these considerations might support a decision expressly made by Congress or the President.

Those broad national interests did not, however, reasonably explain a policy adopted by the Civil Service Commission. The Commission's statutory function was to promote an efficient federal service, not to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate treaties, set immigration policy, or manage the national labor market. An agency may not justify a constitutionally consequential classification by relying on interests outside its assigned sphere of responsibility.

Administrative convenience was the only asserted rationale arguably related to the Commission's own mission, but it was insufficient. Nothing showed that the Commission had actually weighed the convenience of a simple exclusionary rule against the benefits of enlarging the pool of qualified applicants. Nor was there reason to think that classifying sensitive or policymaking positions would be unduly difficult for a personnel agency; the Postal Service had successfully adopted a more tailored approach.

Because the rule wholesale denied millions of lawfully admitted resident aliens substantial federal employment opportunities, due process required that the decision come from Congress or the President, or that the Commission support it with reasons properly connected to its own function. The Commission did neither, so the regulation was invalid.

Concurrences

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, agreed with the judgment and the Court's narrower rationale. He emphasized that the decision left open the distinct equal-protection question whether Congress or the President could constitutionally enact a blanket federal bar on employment of resident aliens.

Dissents

Justice Rehnquist

Reasoning

Justice Rehnquist, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justices White and Blackmun, argued that the majority improperly transformed an equal-protection challenge into a novel form of procedural due process. In his view, no alien or citizen has a general constitutional liberty interest in obtaining federal employment, and the plaintiffs did not seek a hearing or dispute any fact relevant to their exclusion; they conceded that they were aliens.

The dissent maintained that immigration and alienage policy lie principally with the political branches. Because the Court accepted that Congress itself could exclude aliens from the civil service, Justice Rehnquist reasoned that the judiciary should not examine the wisdom or actual motivation behind the same policy merely because Congress delegated its implementation to an executive agency.

Congress authorized the President to prescribe rules promoting civil-service efficiency, and the President authorized the Commission to establish citizenship standards. Justice Rehnquist regarded that as a valid, ordinary delegation of administrative authority. Requiring an agency to furnish judicially satisfactory reasons whenever a delegated policy raises constitutional concerns, he warned, would destabilize ordinary executive administration and improperly intrude on the political branches' organization of the federal government.

Justice Rehnquist also believed Congress had substantially addressed the matter through appropriations restrictions on compensation for noncitizen federal employees. Given the long history of the regulation and the federal government's broad authority over aliens, he would have upheld the Commission's rule and reversed the Ninth Circuit.