ANSWERS TO MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

A statute does not violate the Free Exercise Clause unless it interferes with a practice required by a religious belief. Since there is no indication that the religious beliefs of the American Buddhist League require the broadcasting of their program, A is incorrect. Although the statute’s discrimination against pay television stations might violate the Equal Protection Clause, C is incorrect because only a victim of that discrimination (i.e., a pay television station) would have standing to assert that challenge. D is incorrect for two reasons: first, the power to regulate use of the airwaves is, to some extent, shared by the federal and state governments; and second, the Supremacy Clause makes a state law invalid only when it is inconsistent with some valid federal statute affecting the same subject matter. Since there is no indication that there is a federal statute which differs from the state law in question, D cannot be the correct answer.

8. B    By the process of “reverse incorporation,” the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment has been held to require equal protection from the federal government similar to what the Fourteenth Amendment requires of state governments. Parsons may argue that since the statute applies only to employees of the Census Bureau and not to other federal employees who deal with the public, it arbitrarily discriminates against him. Parsons will probably lose on the merits: no suspect class or fundamental right is at issue, so the court will require only a rational relation between the ban and the achievement of a legitimate governmental objective, an easy-to-satisfy standard. But of the four choices, this is the only one that has even a theoretical chance of success, because it’s the only one that relies on a constitutional provision that might possibly apply to the situation at hand.

A is incorrect because the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from abridging the privileges or immunities of national citizenship, but does not prohibit the federal government from doing so; also, the right to wear a mustache is probably not protected by the Art. IV Privileges and Immunities Clause because it is not “fundamental to national unity.” C is incorrect because the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits invidious discrimination by the states, but not by the federal government. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation, but is inapplicable since no property has been taken from Parsons for a public purpose. (Even if Parson had had some sort of “property” interest in his job — which he didn’t, since he was an at-will employee — that interest was merely made subject to minor regulation, and was not “taken” for government use, which is the only thing that the Takings Clause protects against.) D is therefore, incorrect.