Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/297/266/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:29:26+00:00

Document:
1. The New York Milk Control Act, as amended effective April 1, 1934, discriminates between milk dealers without well advertised trade names who were in the business before April 10, 1933, and those in that class who entered it later, by granting to the former and denying to the latter the privilege of selling milk in New York City at a price one cent below the minimum binding on competitors with well advertised trade names. Held, that the discrimination is arbitrary and unreasonable, and violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 297 U. S. 271.
2. This provision, on its face, is not a regulation of a business in the interest of, or for the protection of, the public, but an attempt to give an economic advantage to those engaged in a given business at an arbitrary date as against all those who entered the business after that date. No reasons for the discrimination are disclosed by the record, and, in the absence of such showing, the Court has no right to conjure up possible situations which might justify the discrimination. Pp. 297 U. S. 272, 297 U. S. 274.
3. The question whether the time limitation found unconstitutional is severable from the provision for the price differential is left for adjudication by the state courts upon remand of the case. P. 297 U. S. 274.
Appeal from a judgment upholding an order denying the appellant a license to sell milk. For reports of the case in the New York courts, see 267 N.Y. 9, 195 N.E. 532; 242 App. Div. 881, 275 N.Y.S. 669. Compare the case next preceding in this volume.
a license under the Milk Control Act of March 31, 1933. The statute having been reenacted for the year commencing April 1, 1934, the company, on April 16, 1934, sought a license under the new act. After a hearing, the application was denied. The Supreme Court granted a certiorari order, and, upon that order and the return the Appellate Division, confirmed the order of the Department of Agriculture and Markets refusing a license, and this action was affirmed by the Court of Appeals.
a well advertised tradename, and such lower price shall also apply on sales from stores to consumers, provided that in no event shall the price of such milk not having a well advertised tradename, be more than one cent per quart below the minimum price fixed [by the board] for such sales to stores in such a city. [Footnote 4]"
The appellant had not a well advertised tradename. The reason for refusing it a license was that, though it had not been continuously in the business of dealing in milk since April 10, 1933, it had sold, and was selling to stores milk at a price a cent below the established minimum price. The question is whether the provision denying the benefit of the differential to all who embark in the business after April 10, 1933, works a discrimination which has no foundation in the circumstances of those engaging in the milk business in New York City, and is therefore so unreasonable as to deny appellant the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
out of the field, with consequent injury to the farmers who sell them milk. This view ignores the fact that the purchase price to the farmer is fixed, and that the introduction of new unadvertised brands of bottled milk would not reduce the total demand for fluid milk in the metropolitan area. The appellees do not attempt now to support the provision on this ground.
Another suggested reason for the discrimination is that the Legislature believed an equal price basis for all dealers would cause most of the business of selling milk through stores to pass into the hands of the large and well known dealers; the differential provision was designed to prevent this result, and save existing businesses of the independent dealers, but was limited in its scope by the reason for it; the Legislature did not wish to increase the lower price competition against well advertised dealers by permitting new independent dealers to go into the business, and so required persons or corporations desiring to make investments in the milk business after April 10, 1933, to attach themselves to the higher price group. This is but another way of saying the Legislature determined that, during the life of the law, no person or corporation might enter the business of a milk dealer in New York City. The very reason for the differential was the belief that no one could successfully market an unadvertised brand on an even price basis with the seller of a well advertised brand. One coming fresh into the field would not possess such a brand, and clearly could not meet the competition of those having an established tradename and good will unless he were allowed the same differential as others in his class. By denying him this advantage, the law effectually barred him from the business.
licensing physicians and dentists which apply only to those entering the profession subsequent to the passage of the act and exempt those then in practice, or zoning laws which exempt existing buildings, or laws forbidding slaughterhouses within certain areas but excepting existing establishments. The challenged provision is unlike such laws, since, on its face, it is not a regulation of a business or an activity in the interest of, or for the protection of, the public, but an attempt to give an economic advantage to those engaged in a given business at an arbitrary date as against all those who enter the industry after that date. The appellees do not intimate that the classification bears any relation to the public health or welfare generally, that the provision will discourage monopoly, or that it was aimed at any abuse, cognizable by law, in the milk business. In the absence of any such showing, we have no right to conjure up possible situations which might justify the discrimination. The classification is arbitrary and unreasonable, and denies the appellant the equal protection of the law.
At the argument, we were asked to hold that, if the time limitation be bad, it is severable, and the provision for the differential, shorn of it, remains in force, and we were referred to a section of the act claimed to show the Legislature so intended. While we have jurisdiction to decide the question, it is one which may appropriately be left for adjudication by the courts of New York, Dorchy v. Kansas, 264 U. S. 286, 264 U. S. 290-291; Fox Film Corp. v. Muller, 296 U. S. 207, 296 U. S. 209-210.
Laws 1933 (N.Y.) c. 158. See Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502.
Laws N.Y.1933, chap. 158, § 317(c); Article 21-A, § 258(q) of the Agriculture and Markets Law of the State of New York; Laws 1934 (N.Y.) 580.
The judgment just announced is irreconcilable in principle with the judgment in Borden's case, 297 U. S. 251, announced a minute or so earlier.
A minimum price for fluid milk was fixed by law in April, 1933. At that time, "independents" were underselling their competitors, the dealers in well advertised brands, by approximately a cent a quart. There was reason to believe that, unless that differential was preserved, they would be driven out of business. To give them an opportunity to survive, the lawmakers maintained the differential in the City of New York, the field of keenest competition. We have learned from the opinion in Borden's case that this might lawfully be done.
The problem was then forced upon the lawmakers, what were to be the privileges of independents who came upon the scene thereafter? Were they to have the benefit of a differential though they had not invested a dollar in the milk business at the passage of the act, or were they to take the chances of defeat by rivals stronger than themselves, as they would have to do in other callings? "The Fourteenth Amendment does not protect a business against the hazards of competition." Hegeman Farms Corp. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 163, 293 U. S. 170; Public Service Comm'n v. Great Northern Utilities Co., 289 U. S. 130, 289 U. S. 135. To concede the differential to newcomers might mean an indefinite extension of an artificial preference, thereby aggravating the handicap, the factitious barrier to expansion, for owners of established brands. There was danger that the preference would become so general as to occupy an unfair proportion of the field, the statutory norm being thus disrupted altogether. On the other hand, to refuse the differential might mean that newcomers would be deterred from putting capital and labor at the risk of such a business, and, even if they chose to do so, would wage a losing fight.
"there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, the decision of the Legislature must be accepted unless we can say that it is very wide of any reasonable mark."
Holmes, J., in Louisville Gas & Electric Co. v. Coleman, 277 U. S. 32, 277 U. S. 41. Cf. Dominion Hotel v. Arizona, 249 U. S. 265, 249 U. S. 268-269. The judgment of the court commits us to a larger role. In declaring the equities of newcomers to be not inferior to those of others, the judgment makes a choice between competing considerations of policy and fairness, however emphatic its professions that it applies a rule of law.
already ventured; they would lose experience already bought; they would suffer the pains incidental to the sudden and enforced abandonment of an accustomed way of life. A newcomer could not pretend that he was exposed to those afflictions. Then too, the ephemeral character of the project counted heavily in favor of the older dealers, and little in favor of a newcomer -- or rather, indeed, against him. The system of regulation had been set up as a temporary one, to tide producers over the rigors of the great depression. If independents already in the field could have their business saved from ruin, it might come back to them intact when the statute was no longer needed. Those who went into the system later would have to count the cost.
be division and subdivision unless separation can be found to be so void of rationality as to be the expression of a whim, rather than an exercise of judgment. "We have no right," it is now said, "to conjure up possible situations which might justify the discrimination." The court has taught a different doctrine in its earlier decisions.
Metropolitan Casualty Insurance Co. v. Brownell, 294 U. S. 580, 294 U. S. 584; Rast v. Van Deman & Lewis Co., 240 U. S. 342, 240 U. S. 357; O'Gorman & Young v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co., 282 U. S. 251, 282 U. S. 257; Williams v. Mayor, 289 U. S. 36, 289 U. S. 42. On this occasion, happily, the facts are not obscure. Big dealers and little ones, newcomers in the trade and veterans, were clamorously asserting to the Legislature their title to its favor. I have not seen the judicial scales so delicately poised and so accurately graduated as to balance and record the subtleties of all these rival equities, and make them ponderable and legible beyond a reasonable doubt.

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