Opinion ID: 3015328
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Interstate Transportation in Other Contexts

Text: In the 1940s the Supreme Court twice addressed the question whether Capital Transit, a company that provided public transit almost entirely within the District of Columbia, was subject to the regulatory authority of the ICC. The Court’s approach, in upholding the ICC’s authority, focused heavily on the massive interstate movement of Capital Transit’s passengers; the facts of the two Capital Transit cases offer an instructive counterpoint to the facts of the case at bar. Thousands of Capital Transit’s passengers were commuting government employees who rode the company’s streetcars or buses within the District to transfer points where they boarded interstate transportation to Virginia. In its first opinion on the matter, 32 United States v. Capital Transit Co., 325 U.S. 357 (1945) (“Capital Transit I”), the Court found that Capital Transit was subject to ICC regulation in part because it provided interstate service on one particular route that ran from the District of Columbia into Virginia. However, on a rehearing of the same case after Capital Transit had discontinued its sole interstate route, the Court again found that the ICC had regulatory authority. The Court stood by its earlier holding that Capital Transit’s transportation service - now provided exclusively within the District - was “part of a continuous stream of interstate transportation,” and “an integral part of an interstate movement.” United States v. Capital Transit Co., 338 U.S. 286,