Court Opinion

ID: 9421494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:58:30.595166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:30.662057
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
dissenting.
The Illinois statute involved here provides a state-wide regulatory plan to protect the public from irresponsible and insolvent sellers of money orders. The Act specifically exempts the American Express Company’s money orders from its regulatory provisions because, as the Court recognizes, that company “is a world-wide enter*471prise of unquestioned solvency and high financial standing.” I cannot agree with the Court that this exemption denies actual and potential competitors of the American Express Company equal protection of the laws within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only recently this Court held that “[t]he prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than the invidious discrimination.” Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 489. And here, whatever one may think of the merits of this legislation, its exemption of a company of known solvency from a solvency test applied to others of unknown financial responsibility can hardly be called “invidious.” Unless state legislatures have, power to make distinctions that are not plainly unreasonable, then the ability of the States to protect their citizens by regulating business within their boundaries can be seriously impaired. I feel it necessary to express once again my objection to the use of general provisions of the Constitution to restrict narrowly state power over state domestic economic affairs.1
I think state regulation should be viewed quite differently where it touches or involves freedom of speech, press, religion, petition, assembly, or other specific safeguards of the Bill of Rights. It is the duty of this Court to be alert to see that these constitutionally preferred rights are not abridged.2 But the Illinois statute here *472does not involve any of these basic liberties. And since I believe that it is not “invidiously discriminatory,” I would not hold it invalid.

 See, e. g., my dissents in H. P. Hood & Sons v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525, 562-564; Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 462; Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46, 79-84. Cf. Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141; American Sugar Refining Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S. 89, 92; Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 81-82.

 Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147, 161. And see my dissenting opinions in Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U. S. 250, 267, and Feldman v. United States, 322 U. S. 487, 494. Cf. Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552, 556; and my concurring opinion in Oyama v. California, 332 U. S. 633, 647.