Hicklin v. Orbeck

Appellants
Tommy Ray Woodruff, Frederick A. Mathers, Emmett Ray, Betty Cloud, Joseph G.O'Brien, et al.
Appellee
Edmund Orbeck, Alaska Commissioner of Labor
Appellants' Claim
That the "Alaska Hire" statute, giving Alaska residents preference in all hiring for jobs created by the state's oil and gas industry was unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Appellants
Robert H. Wagstaff
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Ronald W. Lorensen, Assistant Attorney General of Alaska
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), Warren E.Burger, Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, JohnPaul Stevens, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
22 June 1978
Decision
That the "Alaska Hire" statute was unconstitutional and should be struck down.
Significance
The decision limited the kind of preferential treatment that a state can giveits own residents when it comes to employment.
The question that was asked in Hicklin v. Orbeck concerned whether a state can require that some kinds of jobs go to state residents before peoplefrom other states. It was Alaska's intention to do just that which led several people who were not Alaska residents to file suit against the State Department of Labor in search of an equal chance at jobs working on the Trans-AlaskaPipeline.
In 1972, the Alaska Hire statute was passed. The statute basically required that work in Alaska's oil and gas industry go to "qualified Alaska residents"in preference to nonresidents, and that nonresidents be laid off before any resident "working in the same trade or craft" was terminated.
Work for Residents Only
Three years later, construction on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was at its peak,and Alaska Hire began to be seriously enforced. At the same time, some Alaska residents complained that the law was not being enforced well enough. So on1 March 1976, Alaska Commissioner of Labor Edmund Orbeck issued an order toall unions supplying pipeline workers, commanding them to send all qualifiedAlaska residents out to be hired before they sent any nonresidents.
Tommy Ray Woodruff, Frederick A. Mathers, Emmett Ray, Betty Cloud, Joseph G.O'Brien, and a group of other pipeline workers were furious. None of them were Alaska residents. (To be a state resident, you must show that you are committed to living there, by registering to vote in that state, having a permanent home there, and not claiming residency in any other state. Thus, even if Woodruff, Mathers, and the rest had spent several months in Alaska, they were not technically residents.)
All but one of the nonresident group had worked on the pipeline before. On 28April, they filed a complaint in superior court, objecting to the Alaska Hire statute.
At that time, the law also required eligible workers to have been residents for one year. The group of workers objected to that requirement as well. Eventually, Alaska's supreme court struck down the one-year requirement. However,according to a 3-2 vote of the state supreme court, the law's general preference for Alaska residents was permitted by the Constitution.
Many States, One Nation
When the Supreme Court decided to hear this case, they began by looking at aclause from Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution: "The citizens ofeach state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens inthe several states." To explain this clause further, Justice Brennan quotedan 1869 Supreme Court case. The purpose of the clause, he wrote, is:

. . . to place the citizens of each State upon the same footing with citizens of other States . . . It has been justly said that no provision in theconstitution has tended so strongly to constitute the citizens of the UnitedStates one people as this.

Therefore, Justice Brennan explained, the Supreme Court had unanimously decided to strike down Alaska Hire. Even without the one-year residency requirement, giving this kind of preferential treatment to Alaska residents was unconstitutional.
Brennan went on to explain the Court's reasoning in more detail. He acknowledged that a state might be justified in restricting employment to residents ifnonresidents were the reason for the employment problem. Everyone agreed that Alaska had a "uniquely high" unemployment rate. Certainly the state was entitled to address it.
However, Brennan continued, the reason for Alaska's unemployment had nothingto do with nonresidents coming in and taking jobs away from local people. Rather, according to a report by the Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska, the state's unemployment problem came from very different sources:

Those who need the jobs the most tend to be undereducated,untrained, or living in areas of the state remote from job opportunities. Unless unemployed residents--most of whom are Eskimos and Indians--have access to job markets and receive the education and training required to fit them into Alaska's increasingly technological economy . . . new jobs will continue tobe filled by persons from other states who have the necessary qualifications.

Whose Resources Are They?
Alaska had argued that it owned the oil and gas on its territory, so it had aright to ensure that its own citizens benefited from those resources. The Court did not agree. First, it pointed out, the law was written in such a way as to extend to employers who:

. . . have no connection whatsoeverwith the State's oil and gas, perform no work on state land, have no contractual relationship with the State, and receive no payment from the State . . .The only limit of any consequence on the Act's reach is the requirement that"the activity which generates the employment must take place inside the state."

To refute this way of thinking about state resources, Justice Brennan again quoted from an earlier decision. Citing a 1911 case called West v. Kansas Natural Gas, he portrayed the absurd consequences that might result from each state jealously guarding its resources for the sole benefit of its own citizens:

The Court reasoned that if a State could so prefer its owneconomic well-being to that of the Nation as a whole, "Pennsylvania might keep its coal, the Northwest its timber, [and] the mining States their minerals," so that "embargo may be retaliated by embargo" with the result that "commerce [would] be halted at state lines."

Finally, although the people suing had not challenged the Alaska law under the Commerce Clause--also from Article IV of the Constitution--the Court held that this clause, too, made the Alaska law invalid:

. . . the Commerce Clause circumscribes a State's ability to prefer its own citizens in theutilization of natural resources found within its borders, but destined forinterstate commerce . . . Here, the oil and gas upon which Alaska hinges itsdiscrimination against nonresidents are of profound national importance . . .As Mr. Justice Cardozo observed, the Constitution "was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several States must sink or swim together, and thatin the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division."

Related Cases

• McCready v. Virginia, 94 U.S. 391 (1877).
  
• West v. Kansas Natural Gas, 221 U.S. 229 (1911).
  
• Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U.S. 553 (1923).
  
• Foster Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U.S. 1 (1928).
  
• Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., 294 U.S. 511 (1935).
  
• Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 358 (1948).
  
• Mullaney v. Anderson, 342 U.S. 415 (1952).
  
• Austin v. New Hampshire, 420 U.S. 656 (1975).
  
• Baldwin v. Montana Fish and Game Commission, 436 U.S. 371 (1978).