Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/306/375.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 23:29:25+00:00

Document:
On Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of Florida. [306 U.S. 375, 376] Messrs. H. E. Carter, of Tallahassee, Fla., Pat Whitaker, of Tampa, Fla., and George C. Gibbs, of Tallahassee, Fla., for appellants.
The case is here on appeal, under Section 266 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. 380, 28 U.S.C.A. 380, to review the final decree of a three- judge District Court enjoining appellants, constituting the State Road Department of Florida, from enforcing against appellees relevant provisions of a Florida statute. Acts 1937, c. 18995, Fla.Comp.Gen.Laws Supp. c. cviii, 4151(512) to 4151(519). The statute provides for the inspection of all imported cement and the payment for such inspection of a fee of fifteen cents per hundred pounds. A motion to dismiss the bill having been overruled and appellants having elected to stand on the bill, a final decree was duly entered.
At the threshold, a challenge to the jurisdiction of the District Court must be met. It derives from Section 265 of the Judicial Code, 28 U. S.C. 379, 28 U.S.C.A. 379, for it is claimed that the injunction in effect stayed proceedings in the Supreme Court of Florida. Disposition of this claim entails a quick narrative of the course of litigation disclosed by the record.
On July 29, 1937, a petition for mandamus was filed in the Supreme Court of Florida by the State of Florida ex [306 U.S. 375, 377] rel. Florida Portland Cement Company to compel appellants, members of the State Road Department, to enforce the statute in question, and on the same day an alternative writ of mandamus was issued. Appellants' demurrer, raising the constitutionality of the statute, was overruled on October 12, 1937. State ex rel. v. Hale, 129 Fla. 588, 176 So. 577. A peremptory writ of mandamus on November 17, 1937, directed appellants to enforce the statute. Meanwhile, on November 4, 1937, appellee Bimco Trading, Inc. filed its bill of complaint in this suit to enjoin the enforcement of the statute as forbidden, inter alia, by Article 1, 8, cl. 3, and Article 1 , 10, cl. 2, of the Constitution, U.S.C.A. On November 27, 1937, the District Court granted an interlocutory injunction restraining appellants from enforcing the statute. Thereafter, appellants moved the Supreme Court of Florida to stay the mandamus proceedings pending an appeal to this Court from the order of the District Court, and on December 9, 1937, the Florida court ordered 'that all further proceedings and actions taken pursuant to the peremptory Writ of Mandamus heretofore issued in this cause, be and the same is hereby stayed until the final decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the constitutionality of the Act involved in this cause and until the further order of this Court.' This cause was then prosecuted with dispatch. On March 8, 1938, appellants' motion to dismiss, which had been filed on November 24, 1937, was overruled, and, appellants refusing to plead over, the District Court, on June 14, 1938, entered a final decree permanently enjoining the enforcement of the statute.
To invoke Section 265 in these circumstances is to assert that a successful mandamus proceeding in a state court against state officials to enforce a challenged statute, bars injunctive relief in a United States district court against enforcement of the statute by state officials at the suit of [306 U.S. 375, 378] strangers to the state court proceedings. This assumes that the mandamus proceeding bound the independent suitor in the federal court as though he were a party to the litigation in the state court. This, of course, is not so. Chase National Bank v. Norwalk, 291 U.S. 431, 441 , 54 S.Ct. 475, 479.
Appellants are in effect contending that no proceedings are here available to bring the constitutionality of the Florida statute before this Court, once the state court directed its enforcement. The Supreme Court of Florida itself manifested no such strangling conception of Section 265. It did not deem the proceedings initiated below as a denial of the right of way of a state court through an obstructive exercise of authority by a United States court. On the contrary, in staying 'all further proceedings and actions' until this Court had finally passed upon its constitutionality, the Supreme Court of Florida recognized the propriety of the present proceedings as an orderly mode for invoking the ultimate judicial voice on constitutional issues. Therefore, Section 265 has no relevance here. That provision is an historical mechanism (Act of March 2, 1793, 1 Stat. 334, 335) for achieving harmony in one phase of our complicated federalism by avoiding needless friction between two systems of courts having potential jurisdiction over the same subject-matter. Wells Fargo & Co. v. Taylor, 254 U.S. 175, 183 , 41 S.Ct. 93, 96. The present record presents no occasion for bringing this safeguard into play.
We turn, therefore, to the merits.
As grounds for this discrimination in the incidence of an obviously onerous exaction as between foreign and domestic cement, the preamble of the statute states that 'it is of paramount importance to the public safety that only cement measuring up to a minimum standard should be offered for sale, sold or used in the state of Florida,' [306 U.S. 375, 380] and that the importation 'amounts to unfair competition being forced on this great industry in Florida.' So far as public safety demands certain standards in the quality of cement, such safety is dependent on assurance of that quality by appropriate inspection no less of the 70% domestic cement than of the 30% obtained from abroad. That no Florida cement needs any inspection while all foreign cement requires inspection at a cost of fifteen cents per hundred weight is too violent an assumption to justify the discrimination here cisclosed. The other justification-the competitive effect of foreign cement in the Florida market-is rather a candid admission that the very purpose of the statute is to keep out foreign goods. The Supreme Court of Florida gives no reason resting in local conditions for what appears to be a transparent discrimination in the imposition of heavy inspection fees as between imported and domestic cement, and none has been offered by appellants. The context of a particular statute may justify distinctive treatment of phases of interstate or foreign commerce. The circumstances may negative apparent discrimination in the difference of treatment. Such was the situation in Territory of New Mexico ex rel. McLean & Co. v. Denver & Rio Grande R.R. Co., 203 U.S. 38 , 27 S.Ct. 1, referred to by the Florida Supreme Court. But this is not that kind of a case. According the statute every presumption of validity, no reasonable conjecture can here overcome the calculated discrimination against foreign commerce.
Such assumption of national powers by a state has, ever since March 12, 1827 (Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419), been found to be in collision with the Constitution. It can never be pleasant to invalidate the enactment of a state, particularly when it bears the imprimatur of constitutionality by the highest court of the state. But it would not be easy to imagine a statute more clearly designed than the present to circumvent what the Com- [306 U.S. 375, 381] merce Clause forbids. Cook v. Pennsylvania, 97 U.S. 566 , 567; Voight v. Wright, 141 U.S. 62 , 11 S.Ct. 855. This makes it unnecessary to consider the objections urged under Article 1, 10, cl. 2, U.S.C.A.Const.

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