Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/262/447/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 16:30:22+00:00

Document:
1. This Court has no jurisdiction of an original proceeding by a State if the matter is not of justiciable character. P. 262 U. S. 480.
without their consent -- an abstract question of political power, not a matter of judicial cognizance. P. 262 U. S. 482.
3. A State may not, as parens patriae, institute judicial proceeding to protect her citizen (who are no less citizens of the United States), from the operation of a federal statute upon the ground that, as applied to them, it is unconstitutional. P. 262 U. S. 485.
4. A suit by an individual, as a past and future federal taxpayer, to restrain the enforcement of an act of Congress authorizing appropriations of public money, upon the ground that the act is invalid, cannot be entertained in equity. P. 262 U. S. 486.
5. To invoke the judicial power to disregard a statute as unconstitutional, the party who assails it must show not only that the statute is invalid, but that he has sustained, or is immediately in danger of sustaining, some direct injury as a result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally. P. 262 U. S. 488.
No. 962. 288 Fed. 252, affirmed.
The first of these cases was an original suit, brought in this Court by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for herself and as representative of her citizens, against the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chief of the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, and the United States Commissioner of Education, all of whom were citizens of States other than Massachusetts, and the last three of whom constituted the Board of Maternity and Infant Hygiene created by the above-mentioned act of Congress. The purpose was to enjoin the enforcement of the act. The second case is an appeal from a decree of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, affirming a decree of the Supreme Court of the District, which dismissed a bill brought by the appellant, for the same purpose, against the same defendants.
These cases were argued, and will be considered and disposed of, together. The first is an original suit in this Court. The other was brought in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. That court dismissed the bill, and its decree was affirmed by the District Court of Appeals. Thereupon the case was brought here by appeal.
Both cases challenge the constitutionality of the Act of November 23, 1921, c. 135, 42 Stat 224, commonly called the Maternity Act. Briefly, it provides for an initial appropriation and thereafter annual appropriations for a period of five years, to be apportioned among such of the several States as shall accept and comply with its provisions, for the purpose of cooperating with them to reduce maternal and infant mortality and protect the health of mothers and infants. It creates a bureau to administer the act in cooperation with state agencies, which are required to make such reports concerning their operations and expenditures as may be prescribed by the federal bureau. Whenever that bureau shall determine that funds have not been properly expended in respect of any State, payments may be withheld.
lose the share which it would otherwise be entitled to receive of the moneys appropriated. In the Frothingham case, plaintiff alleges that the effect of the statute will be to take her property, under the guise of taxation, without due process of law.
We have reached the conclusion that the cases must be disposed of for want of jurisdiction without considering the merits of the constitutional questions.
In the first case, the State of Massachusetts presents no justiciable controversy either in its own behalf or as the representative of its citizens. The appellant in the second suit has no such interest in the subject matter, nor is any such injury inflicted or threatened, as will enable her to sue.
First. The State of Massachusetts in its own behalf, in effect complains that the act in question invades the local concerns of the State, and is a usurpation of power, viz: the power of local self-government reserved to the States.
the United States jurisdiction of suits by one State against the citizens of another was to enable such controversies to be determined by a national tribunal, and thereby to avoid the partiality, or suspicion of partiality, which might exist if the plaintiff State were compelled to resort to the courts of the State of which the defendants were citizens. Federalist No. 80; Chief Justice Jay, in Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, 2 U. S. 475; Story on the Constitution, §§ 1638, 1682. The grant is of 'judicial power,' and was not intended to confer upon the courts of the United States jurisdiction of a suit or prosecution by the one State, of such a nature that it could not, on the settled principles of public and international law, be entertained by the judiciary of the other State at all."
Wall. 700; Florida v. Anderson, 91 U. S. 667, and Alabama v. Burr, 115 U. S. 413, because proprietary rights were involved; in Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 206 U. S. 230, 206 U. S. 237, because the right of dominion of the State over the air and soil within its domain was affected; in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416, because, as asserted, there was an invasion by acts done and threatened, of the quasi-sovereign right of the State to regulate the taking of wild game within its borders; and in other cases, because boundaries were in dispute. It is not necessary to cite additional cases. The foregoing, for present purposes, sufficiently indicate the jurisdictional line of demarcation.
What, then, is the nature of the right of the State here asserted, and how is it affected by this statute? Reduced to its simplest terms, it is alleged that the statute constitutes an attempt to legislate outside the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution and within the field of local powers exclusively reserved to the States. Nothing is added to the force or effect of this assertion by the further incidental allegations that the ulterior purpose of Congress thereby was to induce the States to yield a portion of their sovereign rights; that the burden of the appropriations falls unequally upon the several States, and that there is imposed upon the States an illegal and unconstitutional option either to yield to the Federal Government a part of their reserved rights or lose their share of the moneys appropriated. But what burden is imposed upon the States, unequally or otherwise? Certainly there is none, unless it be the burden of taxation, and that falls upon their inhabitants, who are within the taxing power of Congress as well as that of the States where they reside. Nor does the statute require the States to do or to yield anything. If Congress enacted it with the ulterior purpose of tempting them to yield, that purpose may be effectively frustrated by the simple expedient of not yielding.
In the last analysis, the complaint of the plaintiff State is brought to the naked contention that Congress has usurped the reserved powers of the several States by the mere enactment of the statute, though nothing has been done and nothing is to be done without their consent, and it is plain that that question, as it is thus presented, is political, and not judicial, in character, and therefore is not a matter which admits of the exercise of the judicial power.
"That these matters, both as stated in the body of the bill and in the prayers for relief, call for the judgment of the court upon political questions and upon rights not of persons or property, but of a political character, will hardly be denied. For the rights for the protection of which our authority is invoked are the rights of sovereignty, of political jurisdiction, of government, of corporate existence as a State, with all its constitutional powers and privileges. No case of private rights or private property infringed, or in danger of actual or threatened infringement, is presented by the bill in a judicial form for the judgment of the court."
"That part of the bill which respects the land occupied by the Indians, and prays the aid of the court to protect their possession, may be more doubtful. The mere question of right might, perhaps, be decided by this court, in a proper case with proper parties. But the court is asked to do more than decide on the title. The bill requires us to control the legislature of Georgia, and to restrain the exertion of its physical force. The propriety of such an interposition by the court may be well questioned; it savors too much of the exercise of political power to be within the proper province of the judicial department."
"It is only where the rights of persons or property are involved, and when such rights can be presented under some judicial form of proceedings, that courts of justice can interpose relief. This court can have no right to pronounce an abstract opinion upon the constitutionality of a state law. Such law must be brought into actual or threatened operation, upon rights properly falling under judicial cognizance, or a remedy is not to be had here."
See also Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1; Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wall. 475, 71 U. S. 500; Pacific Telephone Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118; Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. 1, 176 U. S. 23; Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126.
person or property, not rights of dominion over physical domain, not quasi-sovereign rights actually invaded or threatened, but abstract questions of political power, of sovereignty, of government. No rights of the State falling within the scope of the judicial power have been brought within the actual or threatened operation of the statute, and this Court is as much without authority to pass abstract opinions upon the constitutionality of acts of Congress as it was held to be, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, supra, of state statutes. If an alleged attempt by congressional action to annul and abolish an existing state government, "with all its constitutional powers and privileges," presents no justiciable issue, as was ruled in Georgia v. Stanton, supra, no reason can be suggested why it should be otherwise where the attempt goes no farther, as it is here alleged, than to propose to share with the State the field of state power.
part of its duty or power to enforce their rights in respect of their relations with the Federal Government. In that field, it is the United States, and not the State, which represents them as parens patriae when such representation becomes appropriate, and to the former, and not to the latter, they must look for such protective measures as flow from that status.
for example, Miller v. Grandy, 13 Mich. 540, 550. The reasons which support the extension of the equitable remedy to a single taxpayer in such cases are based upon the peculiar relation of the corporate taxpayer to the corporation, which is not without some resemblance to that subsisting between stockholder and private corporation. IV Dillon Municipal Corporations, 5th ed., § 1580, et seq. But the relation of a taxpayer of the United States to the Federal Government is very different. His interest in the moneys of the Treasury -- partly realized from taxation and partly from other sources -- is shared with millions of others; is comparatively minute and indeterminable, and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court of equity.
of moneys for nonfederal purposes have been enacted and carried into effect.
do so would be not to decide a judicial controversy, but to assume a position of authority over the governmental acts of another and co-equal department, an authority which plainly we do not possess.

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