Legislative Cutbacks to Earned-Time Credits Are Not Subject to Procedural Due Process; Victim-Expectation Carveouts Survive Common Benefits Review

I. Introduction

In Chavis Murphy v. Nicholas Deml and Michael Lyon (2026 VT 41), the Vermont Supreme Court considered a constitutional challenge to Vermont’s earned-time sentence-reduction statute, 28 V.S.A. § 818, as amended in 2021.

Petitioner Chavis Murphy is serving twenty years to life for a second-degree murder conviction. When earned-time credits became effective on January 1, 2021, Murphy earned credits for January through April 2021. But in April 2021 the Legislature amended § 818 to bar continued earning of credits for individuals who (1) were serving sentences for certain “disqualifying offenses” (including murder) and (2) were already serving those sentences on January 1, 2021.

Murphy asserted that this legislative change violated: (1) due process under the Vermont and U.S. Constitutions, and (2) the Common Benefits Clause (Vt. Const. ch. I, art. 7), primarily because similarly situated people sentenced for the same crimes after January 1, 2021 remained eligible for earned-time reductions.

The core issues were whether the 2021 amendment triggered procedural due process, whether it failed substantive due process (as irrational or as burdening a fundamental right), and whether its temporal classification violated Vermont’s distinctive equality guarantee in the Common Benefits Clause.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Court affirmed summary judgment for the Department of Corrections (DOC).

  • Procedural due process: The Court held that procedural due process requirements do not apply to legislative actions like the 2021 amendment to § 818; the legislative process itself supplies the “process that is due.”
  • Substantive due process: The amendment does not burden a fundamental right (good-time/earned-time credits are not fundamental) and has a rational relation to a legitimate purpose—protecting victims’ and the public’s retributive expectations about sentence length for especially serious offenses.
  • Common Benefits Clause: The temporal carveout (disqualifying those serving sentences for certain violent crimes as of January 1, 2021) bears a reasonable and just relation to the statute’s stated purpose and is not significantly underinclusive or overinclusive.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1. The Court’s “Legislative vs. Adjudicative” Due Process Line

The opinion’s most consequential doctrinal move is its explicit reliance on the settled distinction that procedural due process constraints attach to adjudicative deprivations, not to generally applicable legislation.

  • Gould v. Town of Monkton — cited for the proposition that procedural due process “apply only with respect to governmental adjudicative decisions rather than legislative decisions.” The Court uses Gould to frame why Murphy cannot demand individualized notice/hearing before a statute of general application changes his eligibility for future credits.
  • In re Stratton Corp. — supports the same distinction in the administrative context: due process procedures are required only for adjudicative determinations, not for rulemaking/legislative actions.
  • Bi-Metallic Inv. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization — the canonical U.S. Supreme Court statement that it is “impracticable” to provide individualized process for rules affecting many; the remedy is political accountability rather than courtroom procedure.
  • Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. — invoked for the maxim that when a deprivation results from legislative determination, the “legislative determination provides all the process that is due.”
  • Richardson v. Town of Eastover and L C & S, Inc. v. Warren Cnty. Area Plan Comm'n — used to explain why legislative “generality” and “prospectivity” function as structural substitutes for individualized hearings, and why those who disagree must seek change through democratic channels.
  • Thomas v. City of New York and Parker v. Town of Milton — provide alternative lenses for identifying legislative action (generality/prospectivity vs. function of the decisionmaker; policy/general facts vs. past/particular facts). The Court uses these to confirm that § 818’s amendment is paradigmatically legislative.

2. Vermont and Federal Due Process Equivalence (and Method)

  • Parker v. Gorczyk — cited for the equivalence of Vermont “laws of the land” (Vt. Const. ch. I, art. 10) with Fourteenth Amendment due process, and for Vermont’s practice of relying heavily on U.S. Supreme Court due process jurisprudence.
  • Quesnel v. Town of Middlebury and A.B. v. S.U. — used to situate Article 4 and confirm the Court’s approach of applying federal standards to Vermont due process claims.
  • Mellin v. Flood Brook Union Sch. Dist. — supplies the conceptual separation between procedural due process (process used) and substantive due process (arbitrary government action regardless of process), a distinction the Court applies because Murphy’s arguments had “procedural and substantive overtones.”

3. Substantive Due Process: Fundamental Rights, Rational Basis, and Corrections Credits

  • Washington v. Glucksberg — provides the fundamental-rights framework and the strict scrutiny trigger.
  • Reno v. Flores — cited for the rule that narrow tailoring is required only when fundamental rights are involved.
  • Venman v. Patrissi and Trivento v. Comm'r of Corr. — Vermont authority that computation/eligibility for good-time credit does not implicate fundamental rights; therefore rational basis applies.
  • Wolff v. McDonnell — clarifies that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee good-time credits; they are a statutory creation that the state may grant or withhold.
  • Thornton v. Hunt — supports the idea that excluding serious offenders from good-time credit eligibility can be rationally related to preventing early release of serious offenders.
  • Parker v. Gorczyk (again) — supports the legitimacy of policy goals tied to “public expectations that offenders will serve their sentences,” which the Court analogizes to the victim-expectation rationale behind the § 818 amendment.

4. Common Benefits Clause Framework and Deference

  • Vitale v. Bellows Falls Union High Sch. — for the presumption of constitutionality, legislative deference, and the “reasonable and just relation” burden placed on challengers.
  • In re Hodgdon and Badgley v. Walton — provide the three-step Common Benefits test: identify disadvantaged group, identify governmental purpose, and ask whether omission bears a reasonable and just relation to that purpose.
  • Baker v. State — supplies the detailed “reasonable and just relation” factors: (1) significance of benefits; (2) whether omission promotes goals; (3) under-/over-inclusiveness.
  • State v. Saari — used to reinforce legislative prerogative to make incremental changes to criminal justice statutes.
  • State v. Turner and State v. Rooney — caution that committee hearing testimony is generally of limited weight in discerning legislative intent, a point the Court uses to discount Murphy’s overinclusiveness argument grounded in selective hearing testimony.

5. The Federal District Court Comparator

  • Baird v. Deml — although not binding on Vermont courts, it served as persuasive authority below; the Vermont Supreme Court largely agreed with its outcomes but explicitly differed in the procedural due process rationale. Baird analyzed the issue through the “liberty interest” doorway, while Vermont’s Court held procedural due process is inapplicable because the challenged action is legislative.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. Procedural Due Process: The Opinion’s Key Clarification

Rather than asking whether Murphy had a protected liberty interest in the “opportunity” to earn future credits (the approach in Baird v. Deml), the Court treated the dispositive question as categorical: the challenged change is legislation, and therefore procedural due process does not require individualized notice or hearing.

The Court emphasized features showing legislative character:

  • Generality: it applies to all inmates serving sentences for enumerated disqualifying offenses as of January 1, 2021;
  • Prospectivity: it removes the ability to earn credits after April 26, 2021 while preserving credits already earned.

With those features present, the Court held “the legislative process” itself is constitutionally sufficient process. Murphy did not claim any defect in the Legislature’s enactment procedures, so his procedural due process theory could not succeed.

2. Substantive Due Process: No Fundamental Right; Rational Relation to Victim Expectations

The Court applied rational basis review because eligibility for sentence-reduction credits is not a fundamental constitutional right (Venman v. Patrissi; Trivento v. Comm'r of Corr.; Wolff v. McDonnell).

It then accepted as legitimate the government interest of protecting victims’ and the public’s expectations about the punishment for severe crimes—an interest consonant with Vermont’s statutory victim-rights policy (e.g., 13 V.S.A. § 5303 and § 5305(a), discussed in the opinion).

The temporal line drawn by the Legislature (disqualifying those already serving sentences on January 1, 2021 for certain crimes, while leaving future sentencing cohorts eligible) was deemed rational because:

  • victims at earlier sentencings would not have anticipated earned-time reductions;
  • future defendants and victims will be “on notice” of the program at sentencing going forward;
  • the amendment does not increase the judicially imposed sentence; it limits a statutory mechanism for potential reduction after enactment.

3. Common Benefits Clause: A “Reasonable and Just Relation” to Protecting Retributive Expectations

Applying the Hodgdon/Badgley framework, the Court identified:

  • Disadvantaged group: inmates who were eligible under the 2020 version of § 818 but became ineligible due to the 2021 amendment because they were serving sentences for disqualifying offenses on or before January 1, 2021.
  • Governmental purpose: protecting victims’ retributive expectations and providing certainty about punishment for the most serious crimes.

Using Baker v. State, the Court acknowledged the benefit’s significance to inmates but concluded the classification nevertheless promotes the stated goal and is not significantly over- or underinclusive:

  • Not overinclusive: Murphy argued the impetus involved plea agreements, but the Legislature’s purpose reasonably extends to victims of trials as well as pleas. The Court also refused to cabin legislative intent to particular snippets of committee testimony (State v. Turner; State v. Rooney).
  • Not underinclusive: the statute focuses on a defined list of serious crimes and a clear temporal marker tied to the date victims reasonably could have been aware of earned-time as part of the sentencing landscape.
  • Prospective and non-confiscatory: the amendment preserved credits already earned and did not alter the original sentence.

The Court’s approach reflects strong deference to legislative policy balancing under Article 7, as emphasized in Vitale v. Bellows Falls Union High Sch. and Badgley v. Walton.

C. Impact

1. A Clear Vermont Rule on Procedural Due Process and Statutory Sentencing Benefits

The opinion’s most practical precedent is its explicit holding that procedural due process does not apply to legislative changes that broadly alter statutory eligibility for future sentence reductions. Future litigants challenging legislative modifications to correctional “benefit” statutes (earned time, credits, eligibility rules) will face a threshold barrier: courts may treat such challenges as non-starters under procedural due process unless the claimant can plausibly recharacterize the government action as adjudicative.

2. Strengthened Rational-Basis Shelter for Victim-Expectation Classifications

On substantive due process and Common Benefits grounds, the Court validated “victim retributive expectations” as a legitimate and weighty objective supporting temporal lines in sentencing-related statutes, especially where the statute is prospective and preserves previously earned benefits. Legislatures may find in this reasoning a template for transitional provisions that protect reliance interests at the time of sentencing.

3. Litigation Channeling: Toward Article 7 and Substantive Challenges (Not Process Claims)

By taking procedural due process off the table for legislative enactments, the Court effectively channels future disputes into: (1) substantive due process rationality review, (2) Common Benefits Clause reasonable-and-just-relation review, and (3) where applicable, ex post facto or contract/reliance theories—though the Court noted Murphy did not bring an ex post facto claim (and referenced that Baird v. Deml rejected such a federal challenge in that case).

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Earned-time credits: A statutory program allowing eligible incarcerated people to reduce time-to-serve by staying discipline-free (and meeting other statutory conditions). It is a creature of statute, not a constitutional guarantee.
  • Procedural due process vs. substantive due process:
    • Procedural asks: “What process (notice/hearing) was required before the government acted?”
    • Substantive asks: “Is the government’s rule itself too arbitrary or unjustified, regardless of the process used?”
  • Legislative vs. adjudicative action:
    • Legislative action sets general rules for many people going forward (like amending a statute). No individualized hearing is required; the political process is the safeguard.
    • Adjudicative action applies rules to a specific person based on specific facts (like a disciplinary hearing). Due process protections generally attach here.
  • Rational basis review: The most deferential constitutional test. A law stands if it is reasonably related to any legitimate government purpose; challengers must show no conceivable rational connection.
  • Common Benefits Clause (Vt. Const. ch. I, art. 7): Vermont’s distinct equality guarantee requiring that statutory classifications relate in a “reasonable and just” way to governmental purposes, assessed through the Vermont-specific three-step framework and the Baker factors.

V. Conclusion

Chavis Murphy v. Nicholas Deml and Michael Lyon establishes and reinforces three connected principles in Vermont constitutional law:

  1. Procedural due process does not constrain the Legislature when it enacts general, prospective rules—even when those rules reduce or eliminate an individual’s future opportunity to earn statutory sentence reductions.
  2. Eligibility for earned-time/good-time type credits is not a fundamental right; substantive due process challenges therefore face rational basis, a highly deferential standard.
  3. Under the Common Benefits Clause, Vermont will uphold a temporal eligibility cutoff for earned-time credits for serious offenses where the cutoff reasonably advances victim retributive expectations, is prospective, preserves previously earned credits, and is not significantly under- or overinclusive.

The decision provides a durable framework for evaluating future legislative adjustments to correctional credit schemes and confirms that Vermont’s constitutional review—while meaningful—will generally defer to legislative policy judgments in this domain when supported by rational, victim-centered justifications and implemented prospectively.