Court Opinion

ID: 9420090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:56.585225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:22.412664
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
The case is, I think, controlled by a principle which cuts deeper than that announced by the Court and which is so important that it deserves to be stated separately.
*41Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485, and Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U. S. 373, presented phases of the problem of segregation. The former held unconstitutional a Louisiana law forbidding steamboats (which plied the Mississippi) from segregating passengers according to race. The latter held unconstitutional a Virginia law requiring segregation of passengers on interstate motor buses. It was held that diverse regulations of that character by the several States through which the traffic moved would be an undue or unreasonable burden on interstate commerce. But the question here is a simpler one. It is whether a State can prevent a carrier in foreign commerce from denying passage to a person because of his race or color. For this is a case of a discrimination against a Negro by a carrier’s complete denial of passage to her because of her race.
It is unthinkable to me that we would strike down a state law which required all carriers — local and interstate — to transport all persons regardless of their race or color. The common-law duty of carriers was to provide equal service to all, a duty which the Court has held a State may require of interstate carriers in the absence of a conflicting federal law. Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Larabee Flour Mills Co., 211 U. S. 612, 619, 623-624. And the police power of a State under our constitutional system is adequate for the protection of the civil rights of its citizens against discrimination by reason of race or color. Railway Mail Assn. v. Corsi, 326 U. S. 88. Moreover, in this situation there is no basis for saying that the Commerce Clause itself defeats such a law. This regulation would not place a burden on interstate commerce within the meaning of our cases. It does not impose a regulation which discriminates against interstate commerce or which, by specifying the mode in which it shall be conducted, disturbs the uniformity essential to its proper functioning. See Southern *42Pacific Co. v. Arizona, 325 U. S. 761; Morgan v. Virginia, supra. I see nothing in the Commerce Clause which places foreign commerce on a more protected level.
There is in every case, of course, a possibility that Congress may pass laws regulating foreign or interstate commerce in conflict with regulations prescribed by a State. Or in the case of foreign commerce the national government might act through a treaty. Inconsistent State law would then give way to any exercise of federal power within the scope of constitutional authority. But I am aware of no power which Congress has to create different classes of citizenship according to color so as to grant freedom of movement in the channels of commerce to certain classes only. Cf. Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 177-181. The federal policy reflected in Acts of Congress indeed bars any such discrimination (see Mitchell v. United States, 313 U. S. 80) and so is wholly in harmony with Michigan’s law. And no treaty reveals a different attitude.
Moreover, there is no danger of burden and confusion from diverse state laws if Michigan’s regulation is sustained. If a sister State undertook to bar Negroes from passage on public carriers, that law would not only contravene the federal rule but also invade a “fundamental individual right which is guaranteed against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Mitchell v. United States, supra, p. 94. Nothing short of at least “equality of legal right” (Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U. S. 337, 350) in obtaining transportation can satisfy the Equal Protection Clause. Hence I do not see how approval of Michigan’s law in any way interferes with the uniformity essential for the movement of vehicles in commerce. The only constitutional uniformity is uniformity in the Michigan pattern.
*43If a State’s law made a head-on collision with the policy of a foreign power whose shores were reached by our vessels, a different problem might be presented. But no such conflict is present here.
Mb. Justice Black, who joins in the opinion of the Court, concurs also in this opinion.