Court Opinion

ID: 9418019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:46:49.589074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:54.179706
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Fuller,
after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
The Supreme Court of North Carolina stated the contentions of the Armour Packing Company thus:
“1. That it is not engaged in doing a packing-house business in this State; ... 2. That the tax is an interference with interstate commerce;' 3. That the tax contravenes section three of article V of the constitution of North Carolina, which requires that taxation be 'by uniform rules;’ 4. That the tax is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; 5. That -singling out ‘meat packing houses ’ is arbitrary or class legislation, and prohibited by both State and Federal Constitutions.”'
The court said:
“If the business of the defendant was solely that of shipping food products into this State, consigned directly to purchasers on Orders previously obtained, it is clear that this would be interstaté commerce and a tax laid by the State upon such business would be illegal. But the defendant does a large business within the State, the selling of products already stored here on orders received after these products are thus stored. The tax is.laid upon every meat packing house ‘doing business in this State.’ The evident meaning of the legislature is to *234tax the. agency 'doing business within this State’, and not to lay any tax upon the interstate commerce of shipping products into the State, to ,be' directly or indirectly delivered to purchasers. whose orders were obtained before the goods were shipped/’
' And, after recapitulating from the. agreed statement the particulars of the business transacted in North Carolina, the court applied the rule that the legislature could prescribe such conditions as it saw fit on the transaction of business by a foreign corporation within, the State,'and held that the license tax was the condition upon which defendant was permitted to do the business so described; and cited Osborne v. Florida, 164 U. S. 650, as decisive on the question that the license tax applied only to business within the State and not to that which was interstate in its character; and added: "The defendant doings business in this State and the license tax being exacted only by virtue'of its intrastate business, the first two grounds , of objection are overruled/’
As was said in Osborne v. Florida, this construction of a state statute by iis.highest court is not open to review; and accepting it the case plainly comes within Kehrer v. Stewart, 197 U. S. 60. That was a writ, of errpr to the Supreme Court of Georgia (117 Georgia, 969; 115 Georgia, 184), involving the constitutionality of a statute imposing a tax upon packing house agents and thfe liability of an agent of Nelson Morris & Company, a meat packing firm of Chicago, to pay it. It was contended that Morris & Company did not slaughter,- dress, cure, pack or manufacture the products of. animals for food anywhere in- the. State of Georgia, and that therefore- the firm Was not' doing a packing-house business within the State; that the statute violated the commerce clause of the Constitution, - and that it was invalid in that it denied the equal protection of the laws. .These contentions were overruled by the Supreme Court of Georgia and. this court affirmed the judgment. And •among other .things it wfcs there said:
‘■The.act in-question'does not deny to the petitioner the *235equal protection of the laws, as the tax is imposed alike upon the managing agent both of domestic and of foreign houses.. . . . There is no discrimination in favor of the agents of domestic houses, and, while we may suspect that the act was primarily intended to apply to agents of ultra state houses, there is no discrimination upon the face of the act, and none, so'far as the record shows, upon its practical, administration. As we have frequently held, the State has the right to classify occupations and to impose different taxes upon different occupations. Such has been constantly the practice of Congress under the internal revenue laws. Cook v. Marshall County, 196 U. S. 261, 275. What the necessity is for such tax,' and upon what occupations it shall be imposed, as well as the amount of the imposition, are exclusively within the control of the state legislature. So long as there is no discrimination against citizens of other States, the' amount and necessity of the tax are not open to criticism here. ” 197 U. S. 69.
This practically, disposes of the fourth and fifth contentions, since the classification of meat packing houses cannot be said • to be an arbitrary selection or not to rest on reasonable grounds, and the Fourteenth Amendment was hot intended to prevent a State from adjusting its system of taxation in all proper and reasonable ways, or through the undoubted power of classification to impose different taxes upon different' trades and professions.
“A tax may be imposed only upon certain callings and trades, for when the State'éxerts its power to tax, it is not bound to tax all pursuits or all property that may be legitimately taxed for governmental purposes. It would be’an intolerable burden if a State could not tax'any property of calling unless, at the same time, it taxed all property of all callings. ” Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Company, 184 U. S. 540, 562.
And see Cargill Company v. Minnesota, 180 U. S. 452; Kidd v. Alabama, 188 U. S. 730; Savannah, Thunderbolt &c. Ry. Co. v. Savannah, 198 U. S. 392; Minnesota Iron Company v. Kline, *236199 U. S. 593; Cable v. United States Life Insurance Company, 191 U. S. 288, 307.
By the act under consideration the tax is levied upon every packing house doing business 'in the State, which includes by its terms both domestic and foreign meat packing-houses. It is true that it appears that where'the Armour Packing Company does business certain persons sell both by wholesale and retail packing-house products, and yet are not subjected to this tax, but also that those parties are not doing either in North Carolina or elsewhere a packing house business. And so it appears that in North Carolina, at the points where the Armour Packing Company is,engaged in business, and at other, places in the State, there are establishments engaged in business, which pack articles of food other than meats, such as peas, beans,' pumpkins, etc., and offer' them for sale; but we-cannot accept the suggestion that the statute is void as. denying the equal protection of the laws to meat packinghouses bécause houses packing vegetables and the like are. not .included in the same classification and subject to the same • tax.
As to the contention that the. act is in violation of section 3 of article Y of the state constitution, the state Supreme' Court held that this tax, although not a property or ad valorem tax,, was controlled, even if the • requirement of uniformity were applicable, by* the rule that “a tax is uniform when it is equal upon all persons belonging to the described class upon which it is imposed. ” And with that conclusion it is not our province, nor are we disposed, to interfere.

Judgment affirmed.