Court Opinion

ID: 9699954
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:00:44.074333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:01.316768
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.
(dissenting). Respectfully, I must dissent, In 1927 the state of Minnesota had a statute which, in every essential, is the Wisconsin statute now before us. The Minne*153sota statute came before the United States supreme court and that court held the statute to be unconstitutional as a violation of the Fourteenth amendment of the United States constitution. Fairmont Creamery Co. v. Minnesota (1927), 274 U. S. 1, 47 Sup. Ct. 506, 71 L. Ed. 893. That decision has not been reversed or overruled. The learned trial judge, in the opinion which he filed in the case at bar, stated that the Fairmont Case controls the instant one, determining that the Wisconsin statute violates the same provisions of the United States constitution for the reasons given in Fairmont, supra.
To this, appellant replies only that present-day thinking-on constitutional questions has changed and at present the United States supreme court would sustain the constitutionality of the statute and Fairmont is no longer the law.
The justices of that court may be permitted to speak for themselves. Neither in Nebbia v. New York (1934), 291 U. S. 502, 54 Sup. Ct. 505, 78 L. Ed. 940, nor in United States v. Rock Royal Co-op. (1939), 307 U. S. 533, 59 Sup. Ct. 993, 83 L. Ed. 1446, nor in any other case have they reversed or overruled Fairmont Co. v. Minnesota, supra. Their last word (in the Fairmont Case) declared a statute such as ours violates the constitution. While that case is neither reversed nor overruled, Fairmont Co. v. Minnesota is the law and this court should be governed by it.
Mr. Justice Hallows respectfully joins in this dissent.