Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/227/278/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 07:53:27+00:00

Document:
Actions based on violations by state officials of the Fourteenth Amendment can proceed in federal court, despite the absence of a determination by a state court on whether their actions also violated the state constitution.
An ordinance in the city of Los Angeles set the rates that Home Telephone & Telegraph Co. could charge to its customers. It sued the city and several city officials, seeking an injunction against the enforcement of the ordinance. It argued that the rates set by the city were so unreasonably low that enforcing them would result in a taking of property without due process. The City argued that the federal court should not hear the case until a state court had determined whether the ordinance was valid under the California Constitution. The lower court agreed and dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.
Previous decisions had required state courts to evaluate the validity of provisions under state constitutions before federal courts could determine whether they were constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. These cases were poorly decided, since the Fourteenth Amendment is intended to serve a prophylactic function. Taking this interpretation would close off a means of seeking recourse for the improper actions of state officials. A threat of substantial harm exists in this case, so the federal court should be able to hear the case without delay.
This is an example of federal question jurisdiction, which is an independent basis of authority for federal courts. It can be based on either the Constitution or a federal statute.
One whose rights protected by a provision of the federal Constitution which is identical with a provision of the state constitution are invaded by state officers claiming to act under a state statute is not debarred from seeking relief in the federal court under the federal Constitution until after the state court has declared that the acts were authorized by the statute.
The provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment are generic in terms, and are addressed not only to the states but to every person, whether natural or judicial, who is the repository of state power.
The reach of the Fourteenth Amendment is coextensive with any exercise by a power, in whatever form exerted.
Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal judicial power can redress the wrong done by a state officer misusing the authority of the state with which he is clothed; under such circumstances, inquiry whether the state has authorized the wrong is irrelevant. Ex Parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, followed. Barney v. New York, 193 U. S. 430, distinguished.
Acts done under the authority of a municipal ordinance passed in virtue of power conferred by the state are embraced by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The power which exists to enforce the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment is typified by the immediate and efficient federal right to enforce the contract clause of the Constitution as against those violating or attempting to violate its provision.
The facts, which involve the jurisdiction of the District Court of a suit arising under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the validity of an ordinance of Los Angeles, California, establishing telephone rates, are stated in the opinion.
The appellant, a California corporation furnishing telephone service in the City of Los Angeles, sued the city and certain of its officials to prevent the putting into effect of a city ordinance establishing telephone rates for the year commencing July 1, 1911.
state, the city was given a right to fix telephone rates, and had passed the assailed ordinance in the exercise of the general authority thus conferred. It was charged that the rates fixed were so unreasonably low that their enforcement would bring about the confiscation of the property of the corporation, and hence the ordinance was repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The averments as to the confiscatory character of the rates were as ample as they could possibly have been made. The charge of confiscation was supported by statements as to the value of the property, and the sum which might reasonably be expected from the business upon the application of the rates assailed. The confiscatory character of the rates, it was moreover alleged, had been demonstrated by the putting into effect during the previous year of rates of the same amount as those assailed, which it was charged the corporation at great sacrifice, had, after protest, submitted to in order to afford a practical illustration of the confiscation which would result.
Being of the opinion that no jurisdiction was disclosed by the bill, the court refused to grant a restraining order or allow a preliminary injunction, and thereafter, on the filing of a formal plea to the jurisdiction, the bill was dismissed for want of power as a federal court to consider it. This direct appeal was then taken.
nor has complainant appealed to the courts of said state, nor to any of them, to enforce the law of said state."
"It is true that the bill in the present case alleges that, if the ordinance complained of"
"is enforced, and your complainant thereby prevented from charging and receiving higher rates than the rates fixed by said ordinance, the State of California will thereby deprive your complainant of its property without due process of law,"
the state, which, in article 1, § 13, expressly provides, among other things, 'No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.'"
"Thus, the case at bar comes within the rulings of the circuit court of appeals in the Seattle and San Francisco cases, and is precisely covered by the conclusions of the court in the latter case as follows:"
"What we hold is that the averments of the bill itself exclude the case from the cognizance of the federal court as a case arising under the Constitution of the United States by alleging that the very ordinances which the appellees relied upon as constituting a violation of its contracts have been enacted in violation of the positive law of the state."
It is true that, in passages of the opinion subsequent to those just quoted, there are forms of expression which, when separated from their context, might tend to justify the inference that the court thought city ordinances of the character of the one assailed could not, in any event, be treated as state action. But when the passages referred to are considered in connection with the context of the opinion, it is certain that those expressions were but a reiteration in a changed form of statement of the previous ground -- that is to say, that state action could not be predicated upon the ordinance because, if it was treated as repugnant to the due process clause of the Constitution of the United States, it would also have to be considered as in conflict with the state constitution. Under this hypothesis, the decision was that it could not be assumed that the state had authorized its officers to do acts in violation of the state constitution until the court of last resort of the state had determined that such acts were authorized.
Court as to leave no doubt that plain error was committed in announcing and applying it. In view, however, of the fact that the proposition was sanctioned by the court below, and was by it deemed to be supported by the persuasive authority of two opinions of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, before coming to consider the decided cases, we analyze some of the conceptions upon which the proposition must rest in order to show its inherent unsoundness, to make its destructive character manifest, and to indicate its departure from the substantially unanimous view which has prevailed from the beginning.
this would be obviously true as to cases where there was a coincident constitutional guaranty, in reason it is clear that the principle, if sound, could not be confined to a case of coincident federal and state guaranty or prohibition, since, as the Constitution of the United States is the paramount law, as much applicable to states or their officers as to others, it would come to pass that in every case where action of a state officer was complained of as violating the Constitution of the United States, the federal courts, in any form of procedure, or in any stage of the controversy, would have to await the determination of a state court as to the operation of the Constitution of the United States. It is manifest that, in necessary operation, the doctrine which was sustained would, in substance, cause the state courts to become the primary source for applying and enforcing the constitution of the United States in all cases covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.
federal judicial power would not be in reason solely applicable to an exertion of such power as to the persons and subjects covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, but would equally govern controversies concerning the contract and possibly other clauses of the Constitution.
The vice which not only underlies but permeates the proposition is not far to seek. It consists first in causing by an artificial construction the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment not to reach those to whom they are addressed when reasonably construed, and second in wholly misconceiving the scope and operation of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby removing from the control of that Amendment the great body of rights which it was intended it should safeguard, and in taking out of reach of its prohibitions the wrongs which it was the purpose of the Amendment to condemn.
Before demonstrating the accuracy of the statement just made as to the essential result of the proposition relied upon by a reference to decided cases, in order that the appreciation of the cases may be made more salient, we contrast the meaning as above stated, which the Fourteenth Amendment would have if the proposition was maintained, with the undoubted significance of that Amendment as established by many decisions of this Court.
reach of the amendment is shown to be coextensive with any exercise by a state of power, in whatever form exerted.
2. As previously stated, the proposition relied upon presupposes that the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment reach only acts done by state officers which are within the scope of the power conferred by the state. The proposition hence applies to the prohibitions of the Amendment the law of principal and agent governing contracts between individuals, and consequently assumes that no act done by an officer of a state is within the reach of the amendment unless such act can be held to be the act of the state by the application of such law of agency. In other words, the proposition is that the amendment deals only with the acts of state officers within the strict scope of the public powers possessed by them, and does not include an abuse of power by an officer as the result of a wrong done in excess of the power delegated. Here again, the settled construction of the amendment is that it presupposes the possibility of an abuse by a state officer or representative of the powers possessed, and deals with such a contingency. It provides, therefore, for a case where one who is in possession of state power uses that power to the doing of the wrongs which the amendment forbids, even although the consummation of the wrong may not be within the powers possessed, if the commission of the wrong itself is rendered possible or is efficiently aided by the state authority lodged in the wrongdoer. That is to say, the theory of the amendment is that, where an officer or other representative of a state, in the exercise of the authority with which he is clothed, misuses the power possessed to do a wrong forbidden by the amendment, inquiry concerning whether the state has authorized the wrong is irrelevant, and the federal judicial power is competent to afford redress for the wrong by dealing with the officer and the result of his exertion of power.
tested by assuming that the officer possessed power if the act be one which there would not be opportunity to perform but for the possession of some state authority.
Let us consider the decided cases in order to demonstrate how plainly they refuse the contention here made by the court below, and how clearly they establish the converse doctrine which we have formulated in the two propositions previously stated. As to both the propositions, the cases are so numerous that we do not propose to review them all, but simply to select a few of the leading cases as types, concluding with a brief consideration of a few cases which are supposed to give support to a contrary view.
"The provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution we have quoted all have reference to state action exclusively, and not to any action of private individuals."
of the laws, whether it be action by one of these agencies or by another. Congress, by virtue of the fifth section of the Fourteenth Amendment, may enforce the prohibitions whenever they are disregarded by either the legislative, the executive, or the judicial department of the state. The mode of enforcement is left to its discretion. It may secure the right -- that is, enforce its recognition -- by removing the case from a state court in which it is denied, into a federal court, where it will be acknowledged."
Thus, holding that the enforcement by a state official of a statute in a discriminatory manner, although the statute might not be inherently discriminating, was within the amendment, the question of the right to remove was considered, and it was decided that the removal act of Congress was narrower than the constitutional amendment, and did not confer the right to remove.
of public position under a state government, deprives another of property, life, or liberty, without due process of law, or denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition, and as he acts in the name and for the state, and is clothed with the state's power, his act is that of the state. This must be so, or the constitutional prohibition has no meaning. Then the state has clothed one of its agents with power to annul or to evade it."
Answering the claim that there was no power to punish a state judge for judicial action, and therefore that the charge made was not within the Fourteenth Amendment, it was said that the duty concerning the summoning of jurors upon which the charge of discrimination was predicated was not a judicial, but merely a ministerial, one. It was, however, pointed out that, even if this was not the case, as the state statute gave no power to make the discrimination, it was therefore such an abuse of state power as to cause the act complained of to be not within the state judicial authority, but a mere abuse thereof, and that it was "idle" under such circumstances to say that the offense was not within the amendment (p. 100 U. S. 348).
In Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, a discriminating enforcement in practice of laws which were in their terms undiscriminating was again held to be within the amendment, the language which we have quoted from Ex Parte Virginia being reiterated.
In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, the enforcement of certain city ordinances was prohibited on the ground that they were within the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court, reiterating the doctrine of Virginia v. Rives and Ex Parte Virginia, held that this conclusion was sustained from a two-fold point of view -- first, the terms of the ordinances, and second, in any event, from the discriminatory manner in which the ordinances were applied by the officers.
"disobeyed the authentic command of the state by failing to make its valuations in such a way that every person shall pay a tax in proportion to the value of his property,"
state government, deprives another of any right protected by that amendment against deprivation by the state, violates the constitutional inhibition, and as he acts in the name of the state and for the state, and is clothed with the state's powers, his act is that of the state."
"Barney v. New York, 193 U. S. 430, holds that, where the act complained of was forbidden by the state legislature, it could not be said to be the act of the state. Such is not case here."
The reassessment complained of was held to be repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment.
urged to the contrary. 1. Much reliance is placed upon the decisions in Barney v. New York, supra, and Memphis v. Telephone Co., 218 U. S. 624. The latter we at once put out of view with the statement that, on its face, the question involved was one of pleading, and in no sense of substantive federal power. As to the other -- the Barney case -- it might suffice to say, as we have already pointed out, was considered in the Raymond case, and if it conflicted with the doctrine in that case and the doctrine of the subsequent and leading case of Ex Parte Young, is now so distinguished or qualified as not to be here authoritative or even persuasive. But, on the face of the Barney case, it is to be observed that however ever much room there may be for the contention that the facts in that case justified a different conclusion, as the doctrine which we have stated in this case was plainly recognized in the Barney case, and the decision there rendered proceeded upon the hypothesis that the facts presented took the case out of the established rule, there is no ground for saying that that case is authority for overruling the settled doctrine which, abstractly, at least, it recognized. If there were room for such conclusion, in view of what we have said, it would be our plain duty to qualify and restrict the Barney case insofar as it might be found to conflict with the rule here applied. 2. In the opinion of the court below, there is a suggestion that, even though the Fourteenth Amendment embraces acts of state officers to the extent and scope which we have stated, nevertheless the case here presented is not controlled by the amendment, since the case concerns not acts of officers done under state authority, but merely acts of city officials done under the authority of a municipal ordinance. But, as we have already pointed out, it was long since settled that acts done under the authority of a municipal ordinance passed in virtue of power conferred by a state are embraced by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Apart, however, from the controlling effect of the decisions rendered in cases concerning the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the unsoundness of the contention is plainly demonstrated by applying the established principle that the exercise of municipal legislative authority under the sanction of a state law is the exertion of state legislative power within the purview of the contract clause of the Constitution (Article I, § 10), declaring: "No state . . . shall pass any . . . law impairing the obligation of contracts." That this interpretation is here conclusive must be apparent, since it cannot be said that an act which is the exertion of state legislative power for the purpose of one provision of the Constitution is not the exertion of state legislative power under the operation of another constitutional provision, both being addressed to the same subject -- that is, state legislative power.
clause was restricted by limitations such as those which it is here insisted limit the power to enforce the guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment, affords the most conclusive demonstration of the unsoundness of the contentions here made. The immediate and efficient federal right to enforce the contract clause of the Constitution as against those who violate or attempt to violate its prohibition, which has always been exerted without question, is but typical of the power which exists to enforce the guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment. See authorities as to the contract clause referred to in the opinion in Ross v. Oregon, ante, p. 227 U. S. 150.

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