Specifically, the lottery in my state, Oregon. And unconstitutional according to our constitution, which says
So what does this have to do with the state lottery? Well, some people are not allowed to play the lottery. Well, they could buy tickets, but they couldn’t win the jackpot or for that matter, even a few dollars on the scratchoff. These people are those who are employed by the lottery commission plus their immediate family: parents, siblings, spouse, and children.
I don’t happen to know if there’s a specific Oregon law denying the privilege of playing the lottery to these people or if it’s just a regulation of the lottery commission. In either case, it looks to me like the state is violating the constitution.
Any lawyers out there agree? And if so, would a member of this class of people actually have to win the lottery and have the state refuse to pay the award in order to have standing to sue? Or would just the existence of the prohibition be enough?
This is not unconstitutional. WRT the federal constitution, the SCOTUS has held P&I to refer to important rights only. One thing that doesn’t count, off the top of my head, is hunting license fees. I’m sure the Oregon SC would find that the lottery would fall into the same category.
It sounds like the clause you quote is Oregon’s analogue to the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause (The 14th’s Privileges & Immunities clause is sort of an odd duck, having been rendered almost a “practical nullity”, and almost completely superseded by the E.P. Clause where the great bulk of the case law lies). So let’s look at the 14th’s E.P. clause.
The Equal Protection clause doesn’t mean you literally have to treat everyone exactly equally. All laws treat people differently; laws against murder treat people who like to murder people differently than everyone else. The Equal Protection clause just requires that laws can’t treat classes of people differently in a completely arbitrary fashion.
For example, if you want to treat somebody differently because of their race, you’d better be ready to meet a very high standard (called “strict scrutiny”) as to why you need to. If you want to treat people differently based on their gender, you have to meet another standard (“intermediate scrutiny”) that’s not quite so high. Most other classifications just have to meet a “rational basis” standard, meaning the state has to show some reason why it is treating people differently. This is a pretty easy standard to meet.
So, the wives, husbands, children, and other relatives of the lottery folk could be discriminated against (without violating the U.S. Constitution) in cashing in lottery tickets if Oregon can come up with some good reason for doing so, and they can: to prevent fraud. However, the U.S. Constitution only offers a minimum: state constitutions can offer more protection to its citizens. For example, if Oregon wants to make homosexuals a protected class in ways that they wouldn’t be under the 14th Amendment, it can do so through the equal protection clause of its own state constitution. Even still, it’s unlikely that it would find the relatives of lottery workers to be a protected class.