48. Which of the following provides the best ground for challenging the constitutionality of this statute?

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which applies to the federal government, states: «No person shall be. .. deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. . .» This is binding on the federal government. Court decisions have interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments identically. When the federal government makes a classification which, if it were by a state, would violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, the Court has treated this as a violation of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. See Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954).

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that «no state shall make or enforce any law which shall. .. deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.» This Clause imposes a general restraint on the governmental use of classifications, including race. The Clause in essence guarantees that people who are similarly situated will be treated similarly.

The highest level of review is strict scrutiny, which is applied to any statute based on a «suspect classification» or that impairs a «fundamental right.» Where strict scrutiny is invoked, the classification will be upheld only if it is necessary to promote a compelling governmental interest. Race is a suspect classification. When a regulation involves a suspect class, such as race, courts will first determine whether the differential treatment of the class is intentional by the government. The application of strict scrutiny is almost always fatal to the statute or regulation.

Nearly every classification that would burden a person because of his or her status as a member of a racial minority will be invalidated. The only explicit race discrimination upheld despite strict scrutiny was the wartime incarceration of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).

The Commerce Clause under Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress to «regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.» Commerce is defined as «every species of commercial intercourse. .. which concerns more states than one» and including virtually every form of activity involving or affecting two or more states. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824).

Article IV, Section 2, the Interstate Privileges and Immunities Clause, provides that «[t]he Citizens of each state shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of citizens in the several states.» Thus, it prohibits discrimination by a state against non-residents.

The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from denying their citizens the privileges and immunities of national citizenship.

B is correct. The new security measures presumptively violate equal protection because they contain an explicit racial classification: the new security measures apply only to individuals of one race. A court would likely uphold these new security measures only if the government could prove that they are necessary to serve a compelling public interest, a standard that the government cannot meet here.

A is incorrect. The Commerce Clause is not the strongest basis for challenging the constitutionality of the statute because it authorizes Congress to broadly regulate «every species of commercial intercourse» involving more than one state, and airline travel falls within those regulatory powers.

C is incorrect. The Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV is also not the strongest basis for challenging the statute's constitutionality because it prohibits actions by states that improperly discriminate against the citizens of other states. The Clause does not apply to the actions of the federal government.

D is incorrect. The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is also inapplicable to actions by the federal government, as it prohibits states from depriving individuals of the privileges or immunities of United States citizenship.