Court Opinion

ID: 9532518
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:22:00.007488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:46.393135
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Moore
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent'. That the issues involved here are not as free from doubt as might be assumed by reading the court’s opinion, I direct attention to the fact that prior to the granting of a rehearing in this cause, the views expressed in the majority opinion were rejected by a majority of this court as then constituted. That which I originally wrote as the majority opinion must now in somewhat different form appear as a dissent. The opinion written for the court as now constituted completely ignores basic constitutional guarantees, sweeps aside without mention solemn pronouncements of this court which heretofore have given some comfort to those who recoil at the imposition of unreasonable and arbitrary restraints upon the freedom- of the citizen, and takes a long step toward destruction of whatever remains of freedom of the individual- to carry on a perfectly harmless business under such circumstances and at such times as meets his own convenience.
In many ways the majority opinion destroys individual freedom in defiance of the guarantees of state and *195national constitutional provisions. In order to make my position clear a few basic principles of constitutional law are to be brought to mind. While they are scarcely mentioned in the majority opinion, they bear directly upon the controversy and are in fact more pertinent to the issues than some principles discussed at length therein.
The first principle universally recognized by all appellate courts, is that every citizen has the inherent right to work or not to work when and if he desires so to do; that every citizen has an inherent right to use his real and personal property whenever and wherever he sees fit to do so; and that every citizen has an inherent right to sell and dispose of any property owned by him at any time and for any consideration, unless restrained by the legislature in a proper exercise of the police power. “The legislature has no power, under the guise of police regulations, to arbitrarily invade the personal rights and personal liberty of the individual citizen.” Chenoweth v. State Board of Medical Examiners, 57 Colo. 74, 141 Pac. 132. See also Platte, etc. C.&M. Co. v. Dowell, 17 Colo. 376, 30 Pac. 68.
In Denver v. Thrailkill, 125 Colo. 488, 244 P. (2d) 1074, this court stated that the unreasonable act of the.legislative body, which was there held to impose an unjustified restraint, was completely “out of harmony with the American constitutional concept of fundamental freedoms and liberties, under which the individual has the right to engage in a lawful business which is harmless in itself and useful to the community, unhampered by unreasonable and arbitrary governmental interference or regulation.”
In Chenoweth v. State Board of Medical Examiners, supra, we stated: -
“The power of the legislature however, is not such as may unreasonably interfere with the undoubted right of every citizen to follow any lawful calling, business, or profession he may choose, subject only to reasonable regulation * * *.”
*196In Denver v. Thrailkill, supra, we recognized that every citizen has a “basic right to demand that governmental regulation of business or restraints upon freedoms must be reasonably essential and necessary in the public interest.”
In People v. Norvell, 13 N.E. (2d) 960, we find this pertinent statement of the principle:
“The privilege of a citizen to use his property according to his will is not only a liberty but a property right, subject only to such restraints as the common welfare may require, and while new burdens may be placed on the property when the public welfare demands it, this power is. limited to enactments having direct reference to the public health, comfort, safety, morals and welfare(Emphasis supplied.)
I am firm in my conviction that no reasonable justification for the restraints of the statute in question can be found when tested by considerations of public health, safety, morals or welfare. Matters occurring in the long period of time devoted by this court to consideration of this cause, establish beyond question that the litigants who urge upon us the legality of this statute are interested in serving a private rather than a public purpose; to force acceptance of the business practices of one group of automobile dealers upon all persons engaged in the business of buying and selling motor vehicles. The restraints. imposed by this act do not in any degree whatever concern the public health, morals or welfare, and no attempt is made in the majority opinion to reconcile them to the limitations of the constitution or to point out any reasonable connection therewith in the statute. Among those who appeared as amici curiae none was to be found even remotely pretending to represent the public interest. On the contrary, it was apparent from the briefs submitted by them that the “friends of court” were in fact capable lawyers admittedly representing the private interests which actually are served *197by this arbitrary and unreasonable statute, the enforcement of which is sought “under the guise of police regulation.”
The term “property” as used in the due process clause of our constitution, includes the right of the citizen to make any legitimate use or disposition of the thing owned, and he cannot be deprived of any of these essential attributes of property unless the restraint is reasonably necessary in the promotion of a public interest. Delaware et al. v. Mayor, etc., 14 Fed. (2d) 257. No public interest is promoted by this statute; on the contrary the freedom of half a million adult citizens of this state to buy property when they please is denied, and the freedom of a substantial number of dealers who have declined to permit others to dictate to them as to when they should do business, likewise is denied. I protest against it.
In Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 38 Supreme Court Reporter 16, the Supreme Court of the United States stated:
“Property is more than the mere thing which a person owns. It is elemental that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property.”
It is well established in the law that whether an act of a legislative body adopted as a police regulation has any reasonable connection with public health, morals, safety or welfare, is a question for the determination of the judiciary. This court has stated that any such regulation “must bear a fair relation” to those objectives and must “tend to promote or protect the same.” Sapero v. State Board of Medical Examiners, 90 Colo. 568, 11 P. (2d) 555. To hold otherwise would be to examine an act without reference to the constitutional validity thus surrendering the jurisdiction of the courts to legislative findings in constitutional matters.
Actually there is but one question to be determined *198in this case, and that is, whether the prohibition of the sale of an automobile on Sunday has any reasonable connection with the public health, safety, morals or welfare. It will not be disputed that the act involved, if sustained at all, must find justification under the police powers. It requires a far more fertile imagination than I possess after thirty-five years experience at the bar and on the bench, to find in this statute any “fair relation” to the public health, safety, morals or welfare, or how the Act can reasonably be said to “tend to promote or protect the same.”
On the 4th day of March, 1939, the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Honorable Charles Evans Hughes, in a ceremony conducted in the House of Representatives of the United States of America, commemorating the establishment of a government of free people said, among other things:
“We protect the fundamental right of minorities, in order to save democratic government from destroying itself by the excesses of its own power. The firmest ground for confidence in the future is that more than ever we realize that, while democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty” (Emphasis supplied.)
It is a high duty and responsibility of the judicial branch of government, through the decisions of controversies which come before it, to safeguard and maintain the constitutional provisions which guarantee the maximum freedom of the individual. I view with apprehension and regret the trend of recent times to emasculate these guarantees, to ignore the rights of minorities and to surrender a virtual dictatorship into the hands of those who have power. I respectfully submit that appellate courts should not hesitate to nullify legislation, the only purpose of which is to place yet another unreasonable and unconstitutional restraint upon individual freedom.
*199The “vital breath” of democracy referred to by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, is being frittered away; the strength and vitality of the Constitutions of the state and nation in the protection of individual rights is being slowly but surely “nibbled to death.” Every opinion of this kind becomes a rung upon the ladder of precedent upholding new and additional restraints upon the freedom of the individual. Our people are now told that activities, which for generations have been considered harmless, suddenly bear a great and “fair relation” to the public health, safety and welfare and must be prohibited. It is time that courts assert their responsibility to reactivate the Constitution while there is sufficient “vital breath” remaining therein to sustain life. The framers of our system of government knew full well that there would be occasions when powerful forces seeking more power would ignore the “fundamental rights of minorities” and, even with the best of intentions from their own point of view, exercise that power in such manner as to destroy freedom. For that reason the judicial branch of government was charged with the responsibility of safeguarding those fundamental rights and of passing upon the reasonableness of such legislative acts as the one before us. Thus under our system, it is the highest honor as well as the solemn duty of the court to protect the citizen in his right to “observe the Sabbath” if he desires to do so, or to decline to “observe the Sabbath” or to assert that the “Sabbath” shall be some day other than Sunday; to “protect the fundamental rights of minorities in order to save democratic government from destroying itself by the excesses of its own power.” This is a sacred and weighty responsibility. Its fulfillment cannot be met if we “shirk the duty or fear the peril” involved in protecting the unorganized masses of our citizens from the unreasonable restraints imposed for the benefit of those few who possessing influence and power would, in furtherance of their own interests, impose their will upon the least of us.