Opinion letter to Mr. Edwin Pruitt , Jr.

JOHN C. DANFORTH ATTOf'.tNEl" GCNERAl. OFFICES Oi>~ Tlllll ATT@JRNEY GENEll.~AL OlF' .MJ:®®OUR! JEFFER§OX Cl'i'Y September 3 , 1974 OPINION LETTER NO . 36 Mr . Edwin Pruitt, Jr . , Chairman Commission on Human Rights 314 East High Street Jefferson City , Missouri 65101 Dear Mr . Pruitt : Thi s letter is in response to your request for an opinion on the constitutionality of Section 288 . 040(6) , RSMo Supp . 1973 . We cite to you the recent United States Supreme Court deci- sion in Geduldig v . Aiello , 414 u . s . 897 I 94 s .ct . 2485 , 41 L. Ed. ~~ ~ SG (1~ 7 4) . 7L~ GvurL · ~~vcL~eJ b d i ~LLiCL ~uur~ ~ecision anci up held the constitutionality of a section of the California Dis- ability Insurance System ~hich parallels Section 288 . 040(6 ), RSMo Supp . 1973. That section reads: " ' "Disability" or "disabled" includes both ment al or physical illness and mental or physical injury . An individual shall be deemed disabled in any day in which , because of mental or physical c ondition , he is unable t o perform his regular or customary work. In no case shall the term "disability" or "dis=- abled" include any injury or illness caused by or arising i n connection with pregnancy up to the termination .of such pregnancy and for a period of 28 d ays thereafter' (Emphasis added. )" West's Ann.Cal. Un . I ns. Code, §2626 . The court concluded that the exclusion of pregnancy disabil- ity from coverage does not amount to invidious discrimination un- der the Equal Protection Clause . The court remarked that t he clas- sification challenged r elates to the asser ted under- inclusiveness of the set of risks that the state has selected to insure . Al- though Missouri, like California, has created a program to insure most risks of employment disability , it has not chosen to insure all such risks . Mr. Edwin Pruitt, Jr. The United States Supreme Court has held that, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause, a state: " ••. may take one step at a time, address- ing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind. . The legislature may select one phase of one field and apply a remedy there, neglecting the others .... " Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, 348 U.S. 483, at 489, 75 S.Ct. 461, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955). In Geduldig, supra, at 94 S.Ct. 2491, the court remarked: " ..• Particularly with respect to social wel- fare programs, so long as the line drawn by the State is rationally supportable, the courts will not interpose their judgment as to the appro- priate stopping point. '[T]he Equal Protection Clause does not require that a State must choose between attacking every aspect of a problem or not attacking the problem at all.' Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 486-487 (1970). "It is evident that a totally comprehensiVe program would be substantially more costly than the present program and would inevitably require state subsidy, a higher rate of employee con- tribution, a lower scale of benefits for those suffering insured disabilities, or some combin- ation of these measures. There is nothing in the Constitution, however, that requires the State to subordinate or compromise its legiti- mate interests solely to create a more compre- hensive social insurance program than it already has." We concur with the opinion of the court. Therefore, applying the reasoning of Geduldig v. Aiello, supra, to the statute in point, it is our view that there is no constitu- tional infirmity in Section 288.040(6), RSMo Supp. 1973. Yours very truly, ~ c o__ .r-(__-re JOHN C. DANFORTH Attorney General -2-