Opinion

JUSTICE O'CONNOR, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.

Today, the Court holds that the Constitution prefers the use of the Postal Service to posted notice. The Court reaches this conclusion despite the total absence of any evidence in the record regarding the speed and reliability of the mails. The sole ground for the Court's result is the scant and conflicting testimony of a handful of process servers in Kentucky. On this flimsy basis, the Court confidently overturns the work of the Kentucky Legislature and, by implication, that of at least 10 other States. I must respectfully dissent.

At a minimum, the Fourteenth Amendment requires "notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action." Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 339 U. S. 314 (1950). The question before the Court is whether the notice provided by Kentucky's statute meets this standard. In answering that question, the first "circumstances" to be considered are the nature and purpose of the action for which notice is required.

Kentucky's forcible entry and detainer action is a summary proceeding for quickly determining whether or not a landlord has the right to immediate possession of leased premises and, if so, for enabling the landlord speedily to obtain the property from the person in wrongful possession. Ky.Rev.Stat. §§ 383.200, 383.210 (1972). As this Court has recognized, such circumstances call for special procedures:

There are unique factual and legal characteristics of the landlord-tenant relationship that justify special statutory treatment inapplicable to other litigants. The tenant is, by definition, in possession of the property of the landlord; unless a judicially supervised mechanism is provided for what would otherwise be swift repossession by the landlord himself, the tenant would be able to deny the landlord the rights of income incident to ownership by refusing to pay rent and by preventing sale or rental to someone else. Many expenses of the landlord continue to accrue whether a tenant pays his rent or not. Speedy adjudication is desirable to prevent subjecting the landlord to undeserved economic loss and the tenant to unmerited harassment and dispossession when his lease or rental agreement gives him the right to peaceful and undisturbed possession of the property.

Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56, 405 U. S. 72 -73 (1972). The means chosen for making service of process, therefore, must be prompt and certain, for otherwise the principal purpose of a forcible entry and detainer action could be thwarted before the judicial proceedings even began.

The Kentucky statute meets this need. It directs the process server to attempt personal service on the tenant at his residence. Ky.Rev.Stat. § 454.030 (1975). If the process server cannot find the tenant on the premises, the statute directs the server to explain and leave a copy of the notice with a family member over the age of 16. Ibid. If both of these attempts fail, Kentucky authorizes the server, as a last resort, to post a copy of the notice in a conspicuous place on the premises. Ibid.

As the Court recognizes, notice procedures like Kentucky's, though "less rigorous" than mandatory personal service, nonetheless "have enjoyed substantial acceptance throughout our legal history." Ante at 456 U. S. 449. The weight of historical precedent is reinforced by the collective wisdom of the legislatures of the at least 11 States authorizing notice in summary eviction proceedings solely by posting or by leaving the notice at the tenant's residence. [ Footnote 2/1 ] The Court itself acknowledges that

posting notice on the door of a person's home would, in many or perhaps most instances, constitute... a singularly appropriate and effective way of ensuring that a person who cannot conveniently be served personally is actually apprised of proceedings against him.

Ante at 456 U. S. 452 -453.

The Court nonetheless rejects these established procedures as unconstitutional, though it does not cite a single case, other than the decision below, supporting its position that notice by posting is constitutionally inadequate in summary eviction proceedings. Instead, the Court relies solely on the deposition testimony of a few Kentucky process servers.

The testimony is hardly compelling. For example, one process server, Mr. S. Carter Bacon, reported having seen children in the Village West housing development pull down posted writs "probably a couple of times." App. 80; App. in No. 73477 (CA6), p. 103. The Court neglects to mention, however, that another process server, Mr. Gilbert Brutscher, cast doubt on Mr. Bacon's testimony by stating:

I had been warned beforehand that, by Mr. Bacon, Carter Bacon, that he suspected -he wasn't certain, but he suspected that, on some occasions, the Writs had been torn off the doors by kids. This is what he told me. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. And I don't think that he observed that, and the six months I was working at it, there was no occasion where I saw anyone tear the Writs off of the door.

Id. at 112-113.

The Court also neglects to mention that another process server testified that, in order to avoid problems with children, the process servers "always put [the writs] up high. So we never had any problems with that." App. 74. Corroborating this testimony, moreover, is the testimony of yet another process server, who asserted: "we always try to put the paper up above where, a, say a small child can't reach it." App. in No. 73477 (CA6), p. 74. This server, asked whether he had "had complaints about small children ripping them off," answered that he had never had a complaint, and had never seen a child try to rip a notice off. Ibid.

Plainly, such conflicting testimony falls well short of what this Court should require before rushing to scrap Kentucky's considered legislative judgment that, as a last resort, posted notice is an appropriate form of service of process for forcible entry and detainer actions.

The Court, however, holds that notice via the mails is so far superior to posted notice that the difference is of constitutional dimension. [ Footnote 2/2 ] How the Court reaches this judgment remains a mystery, especially since the Court is unable, on the present record, to evaluate the risks that notice mailed to public housing projects might fail due to loss, misdelivery, lengthy delay, or theft. Furthermore, the advantages of the mails over posting, if any, are far from obvious. It is no secret, after all, that unattended mailboxes are subject to plunder by thieves. Moreover, unlike the use of the mails, posting notice at least gives assurance that the notice has gotten as far as the tenant's door.

In sum, the Court has chosen to overturn Kentucky's procedures on the basis of a wholly inadequate record. In so doing, the Court apparently indulges a presumption that the state legislation challenged here is unconstitutional until proven otherwise. Regrettably, the Court seems to forget that we have long since discarded the concept that "due process authorizes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe the legislature has acted unwisely." Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 372 U. S. 730 (1963). I respectfully dissent.

Notes

[ Footnote 2/1 ]

See Ala.Code §§ 6332, 35-9-82 (1975); Colo.Rev.Stat. § 130-112 (1973); Fla.Stat. § 48.183 (1979); Kan.Stat.Ann. § 61-1805 (1976); Ky. Rev.Stat. § 454.030 (1975); La.Code Civ.Proc.Ann., Art. 4703 (West 1961); Miss.Code Ann. § 89-7-33 (1972); Neb.Rev.Stat. § 25-508 (1979); N.H.Rev.Stat.Ann. §§ 510:2, 540:5 (Supp.1979); N.C.Gen.Stat. § 42-29 (1976); W.Va.Code § 56-2-1 (1966), W Va.Rule Civ.Proc. 4(d)(1) (1982).

[ Footnote 2/2 ]

The Court gives lipservice to the principle that "[i]t is not our responsibility to prescribe the form of service that [Kentucky] should adopt," ante at 456 U. S. 455, n. 9, but then goes on to do just that, first by explaining to the state legislature that, unlike notice by posting, notice by mail "would surely go a long way toward" satisfying the Court, ante at 456 U. S. 455, and then by remarking that, in the Court's view, the combination of posted service and mail service would be "constitutionally preferable" to posted service alone, ante at 456 U. S. 455, n. 9.