Court Opinion

ID: 9769241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:41:17.298716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:25.921366
License: Public Domain

EAGER, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent for the reason that I do not think the City of Kansas City has the authority under its charter to enact this legislation. The authority must come from the state, either by a specific legislative delegation of power, or from express or fairly implied grants of power in the City’s charter. Tietjens v. City of St. Louis, 359 Mo. 439, 222 S.W.2d 70. We are not concerned here with the state’s authority to act in the premises. But it is interesting to note, from a practical standpoint, that the 1961 Missouri Legislature declined to enact an all-inclusive civil rights bill (HB 421), and that it was defeated on the floor of the House. The ■general welfare clause of the City’s charter “may not be construed so as to enlarge the powers of a city further than is necessary to carry into effect the specific grants of power.” Tietjens, supra, loe. cit. 73. Thus, the general welfare clause does not support the ordinance unless the power to enact is fairly comprehended in the powers -specifically granted. We note here that the plaintiffs are operators of private restaurants, none of which are in any way connected with any governmental facility or means of transportation. While the ordinance is applicable to hotels and motels, no such operations are involved in this case. The principal opinion here assumes that the “common-law obligation of innkeepers does not extend to restaurateurs,” and we shall do likewise. Consequently, there must be a valid and proper exercise of the City’s police power in order to justify an interference with plaintiffs’ private and basic rights of freedom of contract.
The authority to enact this ordinance is primarily claimed under the charter provisions permitting the City “ * * * to license, tax and regulate any and every person” engaged in various occupations and business, including restaurants (Art. 1, § 1, subd. § 57) ; and to “regulate all acts, * * businesses * * * trades * * * detrimental * * * to the health, morals, comfort, prosperity, safety, convenience or welfare of the inhabitants * * (Art. 1, § 1, subd. § 29.)
I do not believe that this ordinance constitutes a true and bona fide “regulation” of the restaurant business, within the meaning of and for the purposes announced in the above sections of the charter. It is actually an enactment of the type often described as “civil rights” legislation, though presented here in the guise of a regulation. As such, it is not a valid exercise of the City’s police power. It has nothing to do with matters of health, purity of food or drink, hours of operation, morals, or any of the ordinary things inherent in the normal operation of such a business. And, if this is truly a regulation, why should the regulatory function stop with the three categories named in the ordinance, when the same supposed necessity of regulation would apply just as well to many others ? Generally, a municipality has no power to enact “civil rights” ordinances. 7 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, 3rd Ed., § 24.430. While 6 Mc-Quillin, 3rd Ed., § 22 is quoted in the principal opinion as supposedly qualifying the principle somewhat, I do not so interpret *886it, for it seems merely to state a supplementary rule.
There has been little adjudicated authority on this question. The case of Nance v. Mayflower Tavern, 106 Utah 517, 150 P.2d 773, fully supports the views expressed in this opinion, as I understand it. The principal opinion here makes a distinction based upon the provisions of the Kansas City ordinance disclaiming the intent to create any right of action for damages. It would seem chat such an ordinance, with or without a right to damages, comes within the clearly announced rule of invalidity (from mere lack of authority) expressed by the Utah Court.
In District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc., 346 U.S. 100, 73 S.Ct. 1007, 97 L.Ed. 1480, the court upheld an Act of the Legislative Assembly of the District, which had been enacted as post Civil War legislation in 1872 and 1873, making it a crime to discriminate against or to refuse service in restaurants, hotels, ice-cream saloons, barber shops or bath houses, to any person on account of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.” Congress had much earlier granted legislative powers to the Legislative Assembly. In the course of the opinion the court stated that this grant of power was “substantially identical with the grant of legislative power to territorial governments * * The court noted also that legislation by states against discrimination was not violative of the federal constitution, and that the scope of the legislative powers so delegated to the District was “as broad as the police power of a state” (346 U.S. loc. cit. 110, 73 S.Ct. loe. cit. 1013). While the court later referred to the acts as “local in character,” we must remember just what the particular locality really was. In so far as the court may have implied that the act was a “regulation,” if so, it was construing federal law in the light of its own decisions. We construe for ourselves our own laws and the grants of power to our municipalities, so long as there is no infringement upon the federal functions.
Concluding, I would hold that this ordinance bears no reasonable and substantial relation to the powers granted to the city in its charter, and that it is therefore not a valid exercise of the police power. I would affirm the judgment, not for the reason that the ordinance is unconstitutional but because the City had no power to enact it.