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
- 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.
- 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.