## Facts

- Louisiana law required seagoing vessels traveling between New Orleans and foreign ports to be navigated in the river approaches and port exclusively by state-commissioned river port pilots.
- New pilots were appointed by the Governor only after certification by the Board of River Port Pilot Commissioners, whose members were incumbent pilots.
- Certification required completion of a six-month apprenticeship under incumbent state pilots; incumbents effectively controlled apprenticeship selection.
- Kotch and other experienced non-appointed pilots alleged that incumbents used their discretion to select apprentices almost exclusively from relatives and friends, aided by a closed pilots’ association.
- Plaintiffs challenged the law as administered, arguing the apprenticeship-selection practice excluded otherwise qualified applicants from entry into a state-created, monopolized occupation.

## Issues

1. Whether administering Louisiana’s pilotage system so that apprenticeships (and thus appointments) were largely limited to relatives and friends of incumbent pilots denied equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to use competitive examinations or another merit-based method to select state officers for a regulated occupation.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Louisiana Supreme Court and upheld the pilotage law as administered.
- The Court held that the challenged selection practice did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
- The Court concluded the Constitution does not require a state to select public servants through competitive tests or any particular selection method.
- The dissent would have found the kinship-based, self-perpetuating selection practice arbitrary and unconstitutional.

## Legal Principles

- Differential treatment in economic or occupational regulation does not violate equal protection unless it rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the regulation’s legitimate objectives.
- Under deferential review, a state may maintain a selection system for state officers in a specialized safety-related occupation if the state could rationally view it as supporting safe and efficient operation.
- The Federal Constitution does not mandate merit examinations, open competition, or a specific hiring method for state public employment decisions made by officials accountable to the state executive.
- Absent a statutory ban, favoritism or nepotistic patterns in selecting entrants to a regulated occupation are generally addressed through legislative change rather than constitutional invalidation.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Louisiana’s pilotage apprenticeship-and-certification regime against an equal protection challenge, reasoning that the state could rationally prefer a closely associated pilot group in the interest of safety and efficiency and that the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose a required merit-selection procedure for state appointments.


Kotch v. Bd. of River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U.S. 552 (1947)