Source: https://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/354/457/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-04-08 22:54:45
Document Index: 253426766

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 32', '§ 34', '§ 34', '§ 38', '§ 34', '§ 56']

(e) The exemption of its money orders gives the American Express Co. important economic and competitive advantages over appellees. Pp. 354 U. S. 468-469. chanrobles.com-red
The appellees in this case are Doud, McDonald and Carlson, partners doing business as Bondified Systems, chanrobles.com-red
On remand, the District Court considered on the merits the evidence previously heard, and unanimously held that chanrobles.com-red
This Act and its amendments provide a comprehensive scheme for the licensing and regulation of currency exchanges. The operation of a community currency exchange without a license is made a crime. § 32. An applicant for a license must submit specified information and pay an investigation fee of $25. § 34. A license cannot be issued unless the State Auditor determines that its issuance will "promote the convenience and advantage of the community in which the business of the applicant is proposed to be conducted. . . ." § 34.1. [Footnote 4] A surety bond of between $3,000 and $25,000, and an insurance policy of between $2,500 and $35,000 must be chanrobles.com-red
As the activities of appellees concededly come within this definition of a "community currency exchange," the partnership and its druggist agent are subject to the licensing and regulatory provisions of the Act. Consequently, since the Act bars the sale of money orders as a part of another business, the partnership is precluded from establishing outlets for the sale of "Bondified" money orders in drug and grocery stores, and Derrick is unable to secure a license for the sale of those money orders in his store. § 38. Even if the partnership establishes outlets which are not a part of other businesses, those outlets will be licensed to sell "Bondified" money orders only if they show that the "convenience and advantage of the community" in which they propose to do business will be promoted by the issuance of licenses to them. § 34.1. Finally, any "Bondified" outlets will each have to pay the specified licensing and inspection fees, and each will have to secure the required surety bond and insurance policy. chanrobles.com-red
The purpose of the Act's licensing and regulatory provisions clearly is to protect the public when dealing with currency exchanges. [Footnote 6] Because the American Express Company is a worldwide enterprise of unquestioned solvency and high financial standing, the State argues that the legislative classification is reasonable. It contends that the special characteristics of the American Express Company justify excepting its money orders from the requirements of an Act aimed at local companies doing chanrobles.com-red
That the Equal Protection Clause does not require that every state regulatory statute apply to all in the same business is a truism. For example, where size is an index to the evil at which the law is directed, discriminations between the large and the small are permissible. [Footnote 8] Moreover, we have repeatedly recognized that "reform may take one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind." Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 348 U. S. 489. On the other hand, a statutory discrimination must be based on differences that are reasonably related to the purposes of the Act in which it is found. [Footnote 9] Smith v. Cahoon, 283 U. S. 553, involved a state statute which required motor vehicles, operating on local highways as carriers for hire, to furnish bonds or insurance policies for the protection of the public against injuries received through negligence in these operations. Acts Fla. 1929 c. 13700. The Act excepted motor vehicles carrying specified products. This Court held that chanrobles.com-red
The principles controlling in the Smith and Hartford Co. cases, supra, are applicable here. The provisions in the Illinois Act, such as those requiring an annual inspection of licensed community currency exchanges by the State Auditor, make it clear that the statute was intended to afford the public continuing protection. The discrimination in favor of the American Express Company does not conform to this purpose. The exception of its money chanrobles.com-red
The effect of the discrimination is to create a closed class by singling out American Express money orders. The singling out of the money orders of one company is, in a sense, the converse of a case like Cotting v. Kansas City Stock-Yards Co., 183 U. S. 79, 183 U. S. 114-115. See also, McFarland v. American Sugar Refining Co., 241 U. S. 79. In the Cotting case this Court held that a regulatory statute that in fact applied to only one stockyard in a State violated the Equal Protection Clause. Although statutory discriminators creating a closed class have been upheld, [Footnote 12] chanrobles.com-red
Unlike the American Express Company, appellees and others are barred from selling money orders in retail establishments. Even if competing outlets can successfully be established as separate businesses, their ability to secure licenses depends upon a showing of "convenience and advantage." Perhaps such a showing could not be made because the unregulated American Express Company had already established outlets in the community. And even if licenses were secured, the licensees would be required to pay licensing and investigatory fees and purchase surety bonds and insurance policies -- costs that the American Express Company and its agents are not required to bear. [Footnote 13] The fact that the activities of the American Express Company are far-flung does not minimize the impact on local affairs and on competitors of its sale of money orders in Illinois. This is not a case in which the Fourteenth Amendment is being invoked to protect a business from the general hazards of competition. chanrobles.com-red
The State urges that, if the exception of American Express money orders is unconstitutional, the case should be remitted to the Illinois courts for a determination whether the exception can be severed from the Act under its severability clause. § 56.3. However, even if such chanrobles.com-red
The Illinois statute involved here provides a statewide regulatory plan to protect the public from irresponsible and insolvent sellers of money orders. The Act specifically exempts the American Express Company's money orders from its regulatory provisions because, as the Court recognizes, that company "is a worldwide enterprise chanrobles.com-red
I think state regulation should be viewed quite differently where it touches or involves freedom of speech, press, religion, petition, assembly, or other specific safeguards of the Bill of Rights. It is the duty of this Court to be alert to see that these constitutionally preferred rights are not abridged. [Footnote 2/2] But the Illinois statute here chanrobles.com-red
See, e.g., my dissents in H. P. Hood & Sons v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525, 336 U. S. 562-564; Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 320 U. S. 462; Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46, 332 U. S. 79-84. Cf. Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141; American Sugar Refining Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S. 89, 179 U. S. 92; @ 83 U. S. 81-82.
The more complicated society becomes, the greater the diversity of its problems and the more does legislation direct itself to the diversities. Statutes, that is, are directed to less than universal situations. Law reflects distinctions that exist in fact or at least appear to exist in the judgment of legislators -- those who have the responsibility for making law fit fact. Legislation is essentially empiric. It addresses itself to the more or less crude outside world, and not to the neat, logical models of the mind. Classification is inherent in legislation; the Equal Protection Clause has not forbidden it. To recognize marked differences that exist in fact is living law; to disregard practical differences and concentrate on some abstract identities is lifeless logic. chanrobles.com-red
In regulating its banking facilities, Illinois was drawing on one of the oldest and most far-reaching of legislative powers. The public needs to be protected in the issuing and selling of money orders, and people with limited means are especially to be safeguarded. If Illinois chose, the State itself could take over the money order business. See Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 219 U. S. 113. Just as it was found that there was nothing in the Constitution of the United States to bar a State from engaging in the businesses of manufacturing and marketing farm products and of providing homes for its people, Green v. Frazier, 253 U. S. 233, so, surely, there is nothing to prevent Illinois from engaging in this business directly, or through a money dispensary similar to the mode by which some States engage in the liquor business. I know of nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that would bar the State from discharging its responsibility to chanrobles.com-red
But it is suggested that the American Express Co. may not continue to retain "its present characteristics," while sellers of competing money orders may continue to be subject to the Act, even though their characteristics become "substantially identical with those the American Express Co. now has." What is this but to deny a State the right to legislate on the basis of circumstances that exist because a State may not, in speculatively different circumstances that may never come to pass, have such right? Surely there is time enough to strike down legislation when its constitutional justification is gone. Invalidating legislation is serious business, and it ought not to be indulged in because, in a situation not now before the Court nor even remotely probable, a valid statute may lose its foundation. The Court has had occasion to deal with such contingency more than once. Regulatory measures have been sustained that later, in changed circumstances, were found to be unconstitutional. Compare Willcox v. Consolidated Gas Co., 212 U. S. 19, chanrobles.com-red