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Tindley v. Salt Lake City School District5/17/2005
milarly, under the due process clause, a statute that does not infringe upon a fundamental right is subject only to rational basis review and will be upheld if it has "'a reasonable relation to a proper legislative purpose, and neither arbitrary nor discriminatory.'" Condemarin, 775 P.2d at 356 (quoting Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502, 537 (1934)). Fundamental rights are "those rights which form an implicit part of the life of a free citizen in a free society." Utah Pub. Employees' Ass'n v. State, 610 P.2d 1272, 1273 (Utah 1980). "The catalog of fundamental interests is relatively small to date, and includes such things as the right to vote, to procreate and to travel interstate." Id. The right to sue in tort a school district or any other governmental entity engaging in a governmental function does not qualify as such a fundamental right. See Bingham, 223 P.2d at 438 (holding that because "the acts complained of were committed in the performance of a governmental function, the rule of immunity applies"); see also McCorvey, 868 P.2d at 48 ("There is no fundamental right to recover unlimited damages from government entities performing governmental functions." (internal quotations omitted)).
Because the Act implicates neither a fundamental right nor a right protected by the open courts clause, the lower, or rational basis, level of scrutiny governs our analysis of plaintiffs' equal protection and due process claims. In prior cases, we applied that level of scrutiny to the Act's limitation on individual damages and concluded that the limitation violates neither the equal protection provision nor the due process provision of the Utah Constitution. See Parks v. Utah Transit Auth., 2002 UT 55, 18, 53 P.3d 473 (noting that we have "addressed the constitutionality of section 63-30-34 under each of these provisions [article I, section 7 and article I, section 24] in previous cases and have repeatedly upheld the statute"); McCorvey, 868 P.2d at 48 (concluding that the Act was not "unconstitutional as applied" because it did not "infringe on a fundamental right"). As we stated in Parks, " e eschew the invitation to revisit these decisions, and we uphold the constitutionality of the [individual cap] under these constitutional provisions." 2002 UT 55 at 18.
Anticipating our decision to uphold the cap on individual damages based on our prior decisions, plaintiffs nonetheless urge us to hold that the aggregate cap of $500,000 "for two or more persons in any one occurrence" violates the equal protection and due process provisions of the Utah Constitution. Because both the due process and uniform operation of the laws provisions require that we evaluate the governmental purpose of the legislation, see Condemarin, 775 P.2d at 356, we first examine the objective of the aggregate cap before determining its constitutionality under those provisions.
The District maintains, and we have acknowledged, that the damage cap was intended to preserve the treasuries of the state and its political subdivisions. See id. at 361. By limiting the damages payable by governmental entities, the Act protects an entity's operating budget from the possibility of substantial damage awards and the financial havoc they may wreak. We find this to be a legitimate governmental purpose. Although we recognize that the aggregate cap may impose significant financial and emotional burdens on those injured by a governmental entity, it is not our province to rule on the wisdom of the Act or to determine whether the Act is the optimal method for achieving the desired result. Rather, our inquiry is limited to the Act's constitutionality. See Judd, 2004 UT 91 at 15 ("Our job as this state's court of last resort is to determine
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