Donna M. Murillo v. W. Lewis Bambrick, Clerk of the Superior Court of New Jersey

I would affirm the judgment of the district court that the fees held in escrow by defendant be refunded with interest to the individuals who had deposited them because I believe that the statute pursuant to which they were collected violates the Equal Protection Clause.

The district court concluded that New Jersey’s matrimonial fee system neither employed any suspect classification nor impinged on any fundamental right, and therefore it used the rational basis standard in its constitutional analysis. Murillo v. Bambrick, 508 F.Supp. 830, 833 (D.N.J.1981). The district court correctly held that…