Van Der Linde Housing, Inc. v. Rivanna Solid Waste Authority

Filed: November 8, 2007

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 06-1654
(3:05-cv-00076-nkm)

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING, INCORPORATED,
d/b/a Container Rentals,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

versus

RIVANNA SOLID WASTE AUTHORITY,

Defendant - Appellee.

O R D E R

The court amends its opinion filed November 7, 2007, as

follows:

On page 2, section I, lines 7 and 14 – the word “Albermarle”

is corrected to read “Albemarle.”

For the Court

/s/ Patricia S. Connor

Clerk
 PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

VAN DER LINDE HOUSING, 
INCORPORATED, d/b/a Container
Rentals,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
 No. 06-1654
v.
RIVANNA SOLID WASTE AUTHORITY,
Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Virginia, at Charlottesville.
Norman K. Moon, District Judge.
(3:05-cv-00076-nkm)

Argued: May 23, 2007

Decided: November 7, 2007

Before WILKINSON and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and
Frank D. WHITNEY, United States District Judge for the
Western District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Whitney wrote the opinion, in
which Judge Wilkinson and Judge Shedd joined.

COUNSEL

Kevin M. Rose, BOTKIN & ROSE, P.C., Harrisonburg, Virginia, for
Appellant. Jim Harold Guynn, Jr., GUYNN, MEMMER & DILLON,
P.C., Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellee.
2 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE
OPINION

WHITNEY, District Judge:

Van der Linde Housing, Inc. ("Van der Linde") appeals the dis-
missal of its complaint against the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority
("the Authority"), alleging, inter alia, that it was denied equal protec-
tion of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. We
review the district court’s order of dismissal de novo, Baird v. Rose,
192 F.3d 462, 467 (4th Cir. 1999), and now affirm.

I.

Van der Linde is a Virginia corporation with its principal place of
business in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a municipal waste disposer, Van
der Linde owns fourteen roll-off container trucks that it uses to collect,
transport, and dispose of municipal solid waste pursuant to contracts
with various third parties. Van der Linde collects municipal solid waste
primarily from construction sites in several municipalities, including the
City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia. Van der Linde
uses a variety of locations for waste disposal, including (at the time
this action was instituted) a transfer station ("Zion Crossroads Transfer
Station") near Zion Crossroads, Virginia.

The Authority is a governmental entity that is vested under Va. Code
§ 15.2-5136 with the authority to fix disposal fees or "tipping fees" on
waste originating within its service area. The Rivanna Service Area is
defined as the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County,
Virginia. In 1997, the Authority entered into an agreement with BFI
Waste Systems of North America, Inc. ("BFI"), which then owned the
Zion Crossroads Transfer Station, to allow waste haulers within the Ri-
vanna Service Area to deposit their waste at the transfer station. The Zion
Crossroads Transfer Station is presently owned and operated by Allied
Waste Systems ("AWS"), BFI’s successor. In addition to operating the
transfer station, AWS also collects, transports, and disposes of municipal
solid waste originating in the Rivanna Service Area, competing directly
against Van der Linde and other waste haulers.
 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 3
Under the agreement, the Authority is responsible for collecting
disposal fees from all Rivanna Service Area haulers which deliver
municipal solid waste to the Zion Crossroads Transfer Station. The
fee has two components: (1) a base disposal fee of $46 per ton that
the Authority collects and pays to AWS for the use of the transfer sta-
tion; and (2) a "service contribution fee" of $16 per ton, which the
Authority retains in return for providing "comprehensive waste man-
agement services." "Comprehensive waste management services" is
not defined in the agreement, but the Authority maintains that it is a
service charge for billing and operational costs.

Prior to 2005, Van der Linde paid the $46 per ton base disposal fee
directly to AWS and therefore paid nothing to the Authority, since the
Authority was not involved in the billing process. Beginning in 2005,
however, the Authority began asserting its rights under the agreement
to invoice area waste haulers (except AWS) for their use of the trans-
fer station and tack on the $16 per ton service contribution fee. Van
der Linde does not challenge the rationality of exempting AWS from
the $46 per ton base fee, which, if assessed against AWS, would sim-
ply be remitted back to itself. However, Van der Linde does argue
that all area waste haulers, including AWS, should share equally in
the responsibility for paying the Authority’s billing and operational
costs through the $16 per ton service contribution fee.

Van der Linde, through the institution of this lawsuit in late 2005,
had not passed the $16 per ton "service contribution fee" onto its cus-
tomers, and alleges that because of this it has incurred approximately
$31,882.35 in damages by absorbing the cost of the fee. Additionally,
Van der Linde alleges that it will suffer lost business because AWS
has been contacting customers of Van der Linde and informing them
that they can save $16 per ton by switching to AWS for municipal
waste disposal. Since AWS does not have to pay the $16 fee, it does
not have to pass this cost on to its customers, and thus AWS has a
$16 per ton price advantage over all of its competitors. These activi-
ties form the basis of Van der Linde’s equal protection claim.

II.

A.

The Equal Protection Clause to the Fourteenth Amendment pro-
vides that "[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdic-
4 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE
tion the equal protection of the laws." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
The Clause does not proscribe most forms of unequal treatment,
because "[l]awmaking by its nature requires that legislatures classify,
and classifications by their nature advantage some and disadvantage
others." Helton v. Hunt, 330 F.3d 242, 245 (4th Cir. 2003). Rather,
the guarantee of equal protection was intended merely "as a restric-
tion on state legislative action inconsistent with elemental constitu-
tional premises." Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216 (1982). Thus, the
Constitution only forbids arbitrary differentiations among groups of
persons who are similar in all aspects relevant to attaining the legiti-
mate objectives of legislation. F.S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia,
253 U.S. 412, 415 (1920).

Some classifications, like those based on race and gender, are
deemed inherently "suspect" because they are rarely relevant to attain-
ing a permissible legislative goal, and thus are subjected to varying
degrees of heightened scrutiny by the courts. Plyler, 457 U.S. at 216
& n.14. Other classifications will likewise be treated as suspect where
they have the purpose or effect of burdening a group in the exercise
of a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. Id. at 217 &
n.15. But the vast majority of governmental action — especially in
matters of local economics and social welfare, where state govern-
ments exercise a plenary police power — enjoys a "strong presump-
tion of validity" and must be sustained against a constitutional
challenge "so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate
end." Helton, 330 F.3d at 246 (emphasis added).

The Supreme Court has described the rational basis standard of
review as "a paradigm of judicial restraint." F.C.C. v. Beach Commu-
nications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 314 (1993). It is emphatically not the
function of the judiciary to sit as a "super-legislature to judge the wis-
dom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas
that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect
lines." Smith Setzer & Sons, Inc. v. S.C. Procurement Review Panel,
20 F.3d 1311, 1323 (4th Cir. 1994). Van der Linde bears the heavy
burden of negating every conceivable basis which might reasonably
support the challenged classification. Beach Communications, 508
U.S. at 315. Moreover, the Authority’s policy decisions are "not sub-
ject to courtroom fact-finding and may be based on rational specula-
tion unsupported by evidence or empirical data." Id. Neither may a
 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 5
policy’s rationality be judged on the basis of its wisdom, fairness, or
logic (or lack thereof). Id. at 313. "[A]bsent some reason to infer
antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by
the democratic process and . . . judicial intervention is generally
unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch
has acted." Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97 (1979). Thus, to be irra-
tional in the Constitutional sense, "the relationship of the classifica-
tion to its goal" must be "so attenuated as to render the distinction
arbitrary." Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 11 (1992).

B.

Van der Linde cannot satisfy its heavy burden of negating every
conceivable basis supportive of the Authority because there is an
unassailable rational basis supporting the economic classification here
at issue. Van der Linde’s lawsuit seeks nothing more than to chal-
lenge the Authority’s assessment of a service fee against waste haul-
ers who utilize disposal services that the Authority makes available
to them. The Authority has negotiated for the right of Van der Linde
and other area waste haulers to dispose of their waste at a type of
facility that they do not own but to which they must have access. The
Authority then charges a service contribution fee for serving in this
capacity as a market intermediary.1

To recite Van der Linde’s argument in these terms is to refute it.
The fundamental difference between Van der Linde and AWS, by
which the Authority legitimately differentiates between them, is own-
ership versus non-ownership of a waste disposal site. In this one
1
Although each waste hauler must have access to some outlet for waste
disposal, no policy of the Authority forces Van der Linde to utilize the
Zion Crossroads Transfer Station and thereby incur the service fee. For
example, nothing in the record suggests that Van der Linde cannot avoid
the fee altogether by (1) opening and operating its own transfer station
or landfill or (2) hauling the municipal solid waste that it collects to an
alternative disposal facility, such as another transfer station or directly to
the landfill. Indeed, at oral argument counsel for Van der Linde repre-
sented that his client has begun recycling most of the waste it collects so
as to avoid paying the fees associated with use of the Zion Crossroads
Transfer Station.
6 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE
important respect the economic relationship between the Authority
and AWS is exactly the opposite of the relationship between the
Authority and Van der Linde. AWS, which owns and controls the
Zion Crossroads Transfer Station, obtains no benefit from the Author-
ity’s negotiation of a right of access to local disposal sites. In fact,
AWS helps facilitate the supply of outlets for waste by making its
own transfer station available to all other waste haulers through the
Authority as intermediary. In other words, AWS is a supplier of the
type of public services that the Authority provides, while Van der
Linde is a consumer.

As far as government programs go, it is hard to conceive of a clas-
sification much more rational than the one at issue here. The Authori-
ty’s classification places the financial burden upon those entities (like
Van der Linde) that utilize the public services provided by the
Authority, while exempting those entities (like AWS) that the Author-
ity relies upon to ensure public access to those services. Thus, the
classification here at issue is nearly perfectly tailored to effectuate the
purpose for which the Authority exists: making available the means
to dispose of municipal solid waste by negotiating with suppliers for
landfill access and taxing consumers for the Authority’s intermediary
services. This tight fit between the Authority’s classification and a
legitimate public purpose is unassailable from a rational basis stand-
point, which would support even a very loose fit. Cf. Vance v. Brad-
ley, 440 U.S. 93, 108 (1979).

C.

Van der Linde nevertheless argues that the Authority’s classifica-
tion is irrational because in practice it could produce an unintended,
irrational result. The irrational result that Van der Linde fears is the
monopolization of waste collection services in the hands of AWS,
since the Authority’s classification effectively gives AWS a $16 per
ton cost advantage over other waste haulers.

Van der Linde’s argument demonstrates its fundamental misunder-
standing of the rational basis standard of review. The "rational" aspect
of rational basis review refers to a constitutionally minimal level of
rationality; it is not an invitation to scrutinize either the instrumental
rationality of the chosen means (i.e., whether the classification is the
 VAN DER LINDE HOUSING v. RIVANNA SOLID WASTE 7
best one suited to accomplish the desired result), or the normative
rationality of the chosen governmental purpose (i.e., whether the pub-
lic policy sought to be achieved is preferable to other possible public
ends). In other words, the Equal Protection Clause does not require
the government to pursue a sound economic policy, only one that
does not offend entrenched constitutional principles. Nor does it
require that the methods by which the government pursues those poli-
cies be particularly palatable to us, so long as they are not completely
arbitrary.2 Thus, from a constitutional standpoint, our analysis is unaf-
fected by the fact that the Authority has chosen to implement a waste
management plan — clearly a legitimate governmental purpose —
that incidentally might result in the monopolization of the waste col-
lection market. Despite this potentially undesirable result, our inquiry
ends with a determination of minimal rationality. Van der Linde’s
proper mode of redress for this kind of grievance is to challenge the
Authority’s policy by engaging the political process or using state
channels for review of municipal governance, not by filing an equal
protection lawsuit in federal court.

For these reasons, the district court’s judgment of dismissal is

AFFIRMED.

2
As Justice Holmes wrote in dissent in the now-overruled case of
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 75-76 (1905):
[A] Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic
theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the cit-
izen to the state or of laissez faire. It is made for people of funda-
mentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain
opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought
not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes
embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United
States.