## Facts

- New Orleans enacted a 1972 ordinance banning pushcart food sales in the Vieux Carré (French Quarter).
- The ordinance included a grandfather clause allowing continued operation only for pushcart vendors who had operated in the Quarter for eight or more years.
- The grandfather clause effectively allowed only two long-established vendors (each operating for more than 20 years) to continue selling.
- Dukes operated a pushcart food business in the French Quarter for about two years and was excluded from the grandfather clause.
- Dukes challenged the ordinance under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, arguing the eight-year cutoff irrationally favored older vendors over newer entrants.

## Issues

1. Whether an ordinance banning most pushcart food sales in the French Quarter, while exempting vendors operating there for eight or more years, violates the Equal Protection Clause.
2. What level of judicial review applies to an economic regulation and grandfather clause that do not involve suspect classifications or fundamental rights.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and remanded.
- The Court held the grandfather provision did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
- Applying rational-basis review, the Court concluded the City could rationally eliminate newer vendors while permitting two longstanding vendors to remain.
- The Court overruled *Morey v. Doud*, rejecting it as an outlier in equal-protection review of economic regulation.
- Justice Marshall concurred in the judgment; Justice Stevens did not participate.

## Legal Principles

- Economic regulations that neither burden fundamental rights nor employ suspect classifications are reviewed under a highly deferential rational-basis standard.
- A classification survives equal protection review if it is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest; only invidious discrimination is unconstitutional in this setting.
- Legislatures may address economic concerns incrementally and are not required to eliminate all perceived harms at once.
- A grandfather clause may be rational when tied to legitimate goals such as protecting reliance interests or preserving the character of a historic district.
- Courts may not act as a super-legislature to second-guess the wisdom or desirability of economic policy choices under rational-basis review.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld New Orleans’s French Quarter pushcart restriction and its grandfather clause, ruling that the distinction favoring long-established vendors was rationally related to legitimate local objectives and therefore consistent with equal protection.


City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297 (1976)