Opinion ID: 663072
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Heading: The Right to Interstate Travel

Text: 16 That Americans enjoy a constitutional right to interstate travel was first recognized in Crandall v. State of Nevada, 73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 35, 18 L.Ed. 745 (1867). Nevada had imposed a tax on stagecoaches and railroads of $1.00 for all passengers transported out of Nevada--in effect treating the whole state as a toll road for through traffic. The majority of the Supreme Court, believing the tax not violative of the dormant commerce clause under existing precedent (two dissenters believed it was), thought the right of American citizens to travel interstate--for example, to petition their government in Washington--was inherent in our union. The court, relying on a prior dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Taney in The Passenger Cases, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 283, 492, 12 L.Ed. 702 (1849), observed that Americans had a right to travel. Once the court determined that the right existed, Nevada's tax, by analogy to M'Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 431, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819) (the power to tax involves the power to destroy), was held unconstitutional. The Court observed: 17 [I]t may be said that a tax of one dollar for passing through the State of Nevada, by stage coach or by railroad, cannot sensibly affect any function of the government, or deprive a citizen of any valuable right. But if the State can tax a railroad passenger one dollar, it can tax him one thousand dollars. If one State can do this, so can every other State. And thus one or more States ... may totally prevent or seriously burden all transportation of passengers.... 18 73 U.S. at 46. The federal courts have seldom again encountered either federal or state laws which directly burden interstate travel, but the right has been relied upon in recent years to condemn state laws that prefer long-time residents or penalize new residents thus indirectly implicating the right to travel. See, e.g., Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 92 S.Ct. 995, 31 L.Ed.2d 274 (1972) (deprivation of voting rights); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 629-31, 641-42, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 1328-30, 1335, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969) (state imposed one year waiting period for new residents seeking welfare is unconstitutional, even with congressional authorization). When dealing with residency requirements, the Court has asked whether legislation involves a classification which serves to penalize the exercise of that right. Attorney General of New York v. Soto-Lopez, 476 U.S. 898, 903, 106 S.Ct. 2317, 2321, 90 L.Ed.2d 899 (1986) (plurality opinion) (internal quotation omitted). 19 This case does not involve such a classification. If the right to travel is implicated, it can only be because impeding travel is its primary objective or it actually deters ... travel. Id. at 903, 106 S.Ct. at 2321. The first proposition is easily rejected. The Wright Amendment is hardly designed to impede interstate travel; the whole purpose of the Amendment was to encourage interstate air travel to and from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, by channelling it through the newly built DFW airport. See Cramer, 931 F.2d at 1031. If the airport faced unrestricted competition from Love Field, it was thought such competition would undermine DFW's economic vitality and decrease total travel to and from the Dallas region. 20 There remains the question, does the Amendment actually deter interstate travel? We suppose that all forms of economic regulation or taxation that are imposed on modes of interstate travel, whether airlines, railroads, or buses, including even gasoline taxes can be thought--at least in pure economic terms--to raise the cost and therefore deter interstate travel. Most of such burdens are placed on travel generally whether intrastate or interstate, but some are particularized to interstate travel. For instance, many toll roads, such as the Delaware Memorial Bridge, are designed primarily for interstate use. But, as Justice O'Connor observed in her dissenting opinion in Soto-Lopez, the plurality implicitly recognize[d] ... [that] something more than a negligible or minimal impact on the right to travel is required before strict scrutiny is applied. 476 U.S. at 921, 106 S.Ct. at 2330-31. We think in this case that appellants' claim does not reach that threshold, and the impact of the Wright Amendment on interstate travel--even air travel to and from the Dallas-Fort Worth area--is negligible. 21 The parties with the greatest economic interest in encouraging interstate air travel are, of course, the airline carriers. None have joined appellants, and one of the largest carriers, American Airlines, intervened on the government's side. Admittedly, the larger carriers may well be motivated primarily to restrict Southwest's competition because of its lower price structure, but, as we have already observed, Southwest's lower fares are not to be attributed to the Wright Amendment. For that same reason, we must ignore the potential availability of lower Southwest fares for travelers who might wish to fly from Dallas to points outside the Service Area. The only relevant question is whether the Wright Amendment can be thought to deter interstate air travel to or from Dallas merely because Love Field is somewhat closer to Dallas than is DFW. We suppose that, at least theoretically, there exist some putative Dallas passengers who forego interstate air travel to or from points outside the Service Area because the Wright Amendment makes it burdensome to fly into Love Field and the alternative, DFW, is a longer drive, but we doubt very much if such a person could actually be found. In short, we think the Amendment's interference with interstate travel to and from Texas or, to and from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, or even air travel to or from Dallas alone is trivial. 5 22