Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Steward_Machine_Company_v._Davis/Dissent_Sutherland
Timestamp: 2019-10-14 13:39:56
Document Index: 501911402

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 903', '§ 1103', '§ 1103', '§ 1103', '§ 1103', '§ 1103', '§ 1104']

Steward Machine Company v. Davis/Dissent Sutherland - Wikisource, the free online library
Steward Machine Company v. Davis/Dissent Sutherland
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891712Steward Machine Company v. Davis/Opinion of the Court — Sutherland's Dissentby George Sutherland
But this is not the situation with which we are called upon to deal in the present case. For here, the state must deposit the proceeds of its taxation in the federal treasury, upon terms which make the deposit suspiciously like a forced loan to be repaid only in accordance with restrictions imposed by federal law. Title IX, §§ 903(a)(3), 904(a), (b), (e), 42 U.S.C.A. §§ 1103(a) (3), 1104(a, b, e). All moneys withdrawn from this fund must be used exclusively for the payment of compensation. Section 903(a)(4), 42 U.S.C.A. § 1103(a)(4). And this compensation is to be paid through public employment offices in the state or such other agencies as a federal board may approve. Section 903(a)(1), 42 U.S.C.A. § 1103(a)(1). The act, it is true, recognizes section 903(a)(6), 42 U.S.C.A. § 1103(a)(6) the power of the Legislature to amend or repeal its compensation law at any time. But there is nothing in the act, as I read it, which justifies the conclusion that the state may, in that event, unconditionally withdraw its funds from the federal treasury. Section 903(b), 42 U.S.C.A. § 1103(b), provides that the board shall certify in each taxable year to the Secretary of the Treasury each state whose law has been approved. But the board is forbidden to certify any state which the board finds has so changed its law that it no longer contains the provisions specified in subsection (a), 'or has with respect to such taxable year failed to comply substantially with any such provision.' The federal government, therefore, in the person of its agent, the board, sits not only as a perpetual overseer, interpreter and censor of state legislation on the subject, but, as lord paramount, to determine whether the state is faithfully executing its own law-as though the state were a dependency under pupilage [1] and not to be trusted. The foregoing, taken in connection with the provisions that money withdrawn can be used only in payment of compensation and that it must be paid through an agency approved by the federal board, leaves it, to say the least, highly uncertain whether the right of the state to withdraw any part of its own funds exists, under the act, otherwise than upon these various statutory conditions. It is true also that subsection (f) of section 904, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1104(f), authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to pay to any state agency 'such amount as it may duly requisition, not exceeding the amount standing to the account of such State agency at the time of such payment.' But it is to be observed that the payment is to be made to the state agency, and only such amount as that agency may duly requisition. It is hard to find in this provision any extension of the right of the state to withdraw its funds except in the manner and for the specific purpose prescribed by the act.
By these various provisions of the act, the federal agencies are authorized to supervise and hamper the administrative powers of the state to a degree which not only does not comport with the dignity of a quasi sovereign state-a matter with which we are not judicially concerned but which deny to it that supremacy and freedom from external interference in respect of its affairs which the Constitution contemplates-a matter of very definite judicial concern. I refer to some, though by no means all, of the cases in point.
^1 Compare Snow v. United States, 18 Wall. 317, 319, 320, 21 L.Ed. 784.
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