Opinion ID: 663072
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Port Preference Clause

Text: 9 This provision of the Constitution has never been relied on by the federal judiciary to hold an act of Congress unconstitutional. The district court, accordingly, thought the clause almost a historical nullity. 797 F.Supp. at 1049. We would prefer to say that it simply has not yet been seriously impinged upon. The Clause has two parts, both of which appellants assert have been transgressed by the Amendment. It states that: No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another. U.S. CONST. art. I, Sec. 9, cl. 6. 10 Appellants claim that an airport is a port for purposes of the Clause and that the Wright Amendment, by permitting flights between Love Field and airports in service area states, discriminates against airports in non-service area states and thereby provides a preference to airports in service area states. Furthermore, to require passengers from, let us say, Wichita, bound for Love Field, to disembark in Oklahoma and change planes is to require those passengers and planes to enter or clear in Oklahoma before going on to Texas. The government does not dispute appellants' contentions that the Port Preference Clause covers airports and planes, so for purposes of the case, we assume that airports are ports and that airplanes are vessels within the meaning of the Clause. 11 The Port Preference Clause, as reflected in the records of the Philadelphia Convention, was designed to prevent the federal government from providing any regulatory benefits to ports in one state over another. The paradigm evil the Clause was explicitly designed to prevent is a federal law requiring ships sailing to Baltimore to first enter and clear at Norfolk. 2 RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION 417 (Max Farrand ed. 1966) (comments of Maryland delegates Daniel Carroll and Luther Martin). The Framers obviously assumed that forcing entry or clearance in Norfolk would be a kind of tax imposed on vessels bound for the Chesapeake Bay; vessels would thereby have an incentive to reduce total expenses by delivering their cargo at Norfolk, thus reducing the volume of shipping traffic to ports in the Chesapeake. 12 Taking the second part of the Clause first, we consider appellants' argument that the Wright Amendment obliges planes from states outside the Service Area to enter or clear in service area states. The Government contends that the words enter and clear are technical terms that refer to imported goods. Thus, one meaning of enter is to make report of (a ship or her cargo) at the customhouse. WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INT'L DICTIONARY at 756. See also United States v. Sullivan, 26 F.2d 606, 608 (5th Cir.1928) (A vessel does not make entry by arriving at a port.). And clear refers to free[ing] (a ship or shipment) for passage by payment of custom duties or harbor fees. WEBSTER'S at 420; see also Harrison v. Vose, 50 U.S. (9 How.) 372, 380-81, 13 L.Ed. 179 (1850) (a clearance cannot be produced unless the vessel has first entered at the custom-house). We think the government is probably correct; the terms appear to have been used in the traditional commercial sense of clearing customs. Certainly that reading fits the purpose for which the Clause was designed. 13 In any event, whatever the precise meaning of the terms enter and clear, we do not see how the Clause applies to the Wright Amendment because it cannot possibly be said that planes bound for Texas are obliged to enter an airport in another state when they take off from outside the Service Area. That is so because nothing in the Amendment prevents a plane leaving a non-service area state from traveling directly to anywhere else in Texas before continuing on to Love Field. As such, the language of the second part of the Clause literally does not apply to the Wright Amendment because it cannot be said that a vessel bound to or from one state [is] obliged to enter ... in another. 14 Returning now to the Clause's first sub-clause, [n]o preference shall be given by any regulation of Commerce or Revenue to ports of one state over those of another, we cannot quite conclude, as we did regarding the second part, that the words do not literally cover this situation. Still, the Wright Amendment is clearly not designed to provide a preference to ports of one state over another; it was drafted to protect DFW, one Texas airport, from competition from Love Field, another Texas airport (and to airline carriers who fly into DFW from competition from Southwest Airlines). Such a preference is of no concern to the Port Preference Clause which is designed to protect states, not individual ports. See Pennsylvania v. The Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.) 421, 435, 15 L.Ed. 435 (1856). 3 Appellants argue, however, that airports in the service area states benefit because those airports can afford passengers the option of flying into Love Field directly while that advantage is not available to airports in states outside the Service Area and therefore the former are given a preference. 15 That advantage is of moment largely because of Southwest's lower fares, a factor quite independent of the Wright Amendment. Nevertheless, for travelers bound to Dallas, Love Field is somewhat closer than DFW, so we cannot say there is no benefit afforded those airports that can offer direct service to and from Love Field. The preference, such as it is, however, is rather insignificant--certainly as compared to the very substantial and undeniably legal preference bestowed on DFW as against Love Field. The Supreme Court, long ago, recognized that the Clause does not bar incidental advantages that might possibly result from the legislation of Congress upon other subjects connected with commerce, and confessedly within its powers. Wheeling, 59 U.S. at 439. See Alabama Great Southern Ry. v. United States, 340 U.S. 216, 229, 71 S.Ct. 264, 272, 95 L.Ed. 225 (1951), quoting Louisiana Public Service Comm'n v. Texas & New Orleans R.R., 284 U.S. 125, 131, 52 S.Ct. 74, 76, 76 L.Ed. 201 (1931) (Congress may enact laws which  'greatly benefit particular ports and which incidentally result to the disadvantage of other ports in the same or neighboring states' ). To be sure, in this case the legislation does not involve other subjects; the Wright Amendment speaks directly to a port preference, but it is certainly true that Congress' obvious purpose and the primary impact of the Amendment is to favor DFW over Love Field, not to favor airports in the Service Area over those in the non-Service Area. Under these circumstances, we do not believe the Port Preference Clause is offended. 4