72 SALMON GEAR LIMITATION 



there will be no effective review by the United States Supreme Court, 

 for that court will say that the decision is adequately sustained upon 

 the provisions of the state constitution, even though the court in 

 Washington considered that the federal constitution would also pro- 

 duce the same result. An example of this was seen in the handling of 

 the recent challenge to the Anti-discrimination Act as it applied to 

 the sale of housing to a Negro in the 1961 case of O'Meara v. 

 Board.^^ In that case the Washington State Supreme Court decided 

 that both the Equal Protection Clause of the federal constitution and 

 the corresponding clause of the state constitution had been violated. 

 The United States Supreme Court declined review apparently upon 

 the ground that the decision rested upon an adequate independent 

 state ground. ^^ In other words, if Washington wanted to invalidate 

 its own law on the basis of its own constitution, the federal constitu- 

 tional clause was not necessary to that determination, and the United 

 States Supreme Court was not an appropriate agency to tell the 

 Washington State Supreme Court that it had misinterpreted its own 

 state constitution. 



Because of this possibility, it is essential that an adequate analysis 

 of the Washington State Supreme Court's attitude toward the equal 

 protection concept be delineated and applied to the particular prob- 

 lem at hand. 



The general principle is considered to be the same as pertains 

 to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: (a) 

 find first a valid purpose or valid purposes for the legislation; then 

 (b) find that the classification of persons effected by the legislation 

 can rationally be conceived as furthering that purpose or those pur- 

 poses. 



Though instances are numerous where the court has recited the 

 formula, two recent cases will be sufficient to illustrate its application. 

 The first of these is the 1960 case of Clark v. Dwyer,^^ where the 



50. 58 Wn. 2d 793, 365 P. 2d 1 { 1961 ). 



51. 82 Sup. Ct. 866 and 867 ( 1962); the word "apparently" is used in the text because, 

 in the absence of an opinion in elaboration (a rare occurrence), the court does 

 not reveal its reason for denying review upon a petition in the circumstances of 

 this case. Except for the fact that the state ground appeared adequate to sustain 

 the Washington court's decision, the case seemed otherwise qualified for review by 

 the Supreme Court. Another indication is that Chief Justice Warren and Mr. 

 Justice Stewart are recorded as being of the opinion that the case be remanded to 

 the Washington court to ascertain whether the judgment was based upon a non- 

 federal ground adequate to support it. 



52. 56 Wn. 2d 425, 353 P. 2d 941 (1960), cert. den. 364 U. S. 932 (1961). 



