Court Opinion

ID: 9545849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:20:35.444487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:38.622499
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice.
I dissent.
Addressing myself first to the contention that the statute in question is so vague and indefinite as to render it unconstitutional, I think the statute is definite enough to enable a person about to commence work during a strike to determine whether he should register. Approaching the problem practically, it is clear that a “national recognized union” means nothing more nor less than a “national known union”. The troublesome word evidently is “recognized”. I think this word was used by the drafters as synonomous with “known”. Strictly speaking, “recognized” contains the element of acknowledgment; yet, without doing homage to the niceties of its meaning, it is used synonymously with “known”. A nationally known product — a nationally recognized product. At least we can, as has been done countless times, so interpret the law to eliminate the problem of semantics. It is not necessary to hold the word under the microscope and ask “recognized by whom? the public gen*382erally? by labor organization? by industrial leaders? by the N. L. R. B. ? by the average citizen ? We on this bench have a knowledge of what are national unions. We know that they are the large unions (to get away from the comparative degree which seems to give Mr. Justice Crockett considerable trouble) which are organized over an industry without regard to state lines, and in many cases in Canada without regard to that border. I do not see that anything is gained by analyzing the language of the Attorney General as if that language used in argument to convey the practical and reasonable meaning were itself under surveillance as is the statute. Certainly national unions to be such do not need to be organized or operating in every state of the union. It seems to me we are borrowing difficulties born of a desire to hold the statute unconstitutional rather than to hold it constitutional. This word “recognized” does not introduce the punzzlement which comes from words like “narrow” or “wide”, “hot” or “cold”, “short” or “tall”, etc. nor the great uncertainty arising out of a complex and vague description of “oranges frosted to the extent of endangering the reputation of the citrus industry”. There is a slight distinction between “national known” and “nationally known” in that one is an adjective limiting the noun “union” and the other an adverbial adjective modifying the adjective “known”, but I do not think the distinction of sufficient import to merit further attention because brushing aside niceties they come to the same thing. The very illustrations given by Mr. Justice Crockett give an excellent clue to where the line between legally differentiable and non-differentiable distinctions come. Likewise, his illustrations of vagueness beyond the allowable line give a clue to what is and is not so vague as to not permit of reasonable application of the statute in question.
Turning now to a consideration of the contention that the statute is unreasonably discriminatory, it must be kept in mind that neither the constitutionality nor the interpretation of a statute can be determined in a vacuum. The de*383termination must be made in a proper frame of reference. In statutes dealing with management-labor relations the frame of reference usually must include an examination of the socio-economic problems and conditions extant at the time of the passage of the act, and the industrial mores of the time. Clearly, such approach gives us an understanding of the evils toward whcih the statute in question was directed and the evils which were deemed in need of remedying.
On February 8, 1937, evidently before the Act in question became effective (effective date of Act February 16, 1937) the Senate of the United States was in the course of making its investigation pursuant to S. Res. 266, 74 Congress through the LaFollette Sub-Committee of the Committee of Education and Labor as to the resistance encountered by labor in unionizing an industry and the means employed in breaking up unions and rendering abortive their efforts to organize and grow. The Sub-Committee’s interim report was replete with specific instances of strike breaking and intimidation of laboring men which followed the era in which the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U. S. C. A. § 101 et seq., prevented resort to court injunction on the side of management in a contest between owners and workers for advancement of the interests of the latter. See S. Report 76, 75 Congress, 1st Sess. Vol. 81, Part I Congressional Record, pp. 952 to 956. Those were still part of or close on the heels of the era when labor was compelled to fight for every step of its advancement; when strikes were outlawed by injunction on the theory, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, that the right to carry on business was viewed by the courts as property like real estate. The struggle went on in several fields — on the industrial front in shop and factory; in the legislatures; and in the courts. And that this industrial-labor struggle was over a long period of time bitter and implacable, no one can doubt who has a reading acquaintanceship with Haymarket riots in Chicago, the Pullman strike where men on a free labor market *384were, through want, compelled to accept wages of a dollar a day or less. Resort was had to the legislatures to restrict the preponderating advantage possessed by ownership under the laissez-faire system in this struggle, thus hoping to increase the potential for the success of collective bargaining under that system.
As a court we are not concerned with the wisdom of this legislation; we are not to determine whether the pendulum has swung too far; whether labor has now become the preponderating party. These are questions belonging to the political domain.
With the frame of reference as above supplied, it seems very probable that the evil aimed at was to prevent the importation into this state of the type of men who were not ordihary industrial workers, but professional strike breakers, ofttimes recruited from thugs, “goons”, gangster and vigilante types of men, and even ex-convicts. The legislature thought apparently that the practice of importing into a community such types of men to prey upon it could be discouraged by the requirement to register. Perhaps the day has passed when this protection for the community and for the right to strike, now unquestioned, is needed; but at the time the statute in question was enacted, 15 years ago, the legislature apparently deemed the practice which the law was aimed at called for the implementation of that law by the concrete means of registration with the Industrial Commission. If the law is no longer needed, it should be repealed. But it should not be erased from the books on the theory that it is unconstitutional if it can in reason be held constitutional.
The Legislature did not set up an arbitrary or unreasonable classification when it required persons
“commencing employment with any person, firm or corporation whose employees are out on labor strike called by a national recognized union to register with the industrial commission of Utah”,
*385but imposed no such requirement when a strike is called-by unions which are not “national recognized”. Presumably the evil at which the legislation was aimed did not occur when strikes were called by smaller or local unions which are ofttimes company unions, or the evil existed in a lesser degree. To argue, as does the main opinion, that
“smaller unions and smaller businesses would probably be more vulnerable to the ills attendant upon violence or strike and would therefore be more in need of protection than the larger and presumably more powerful ones”
is beside the point. It is for the Legislature and not for the courts to determine how far the beneficent protection of legislation should extend. In 12 Am. Jur. § 484 it is stated:
“There is no constitutional requirement that regulation must reach every class to which it might be applied — that the legislature must regulate all or none. It is not unconstitutional merely because it is not all-embracing, and does not include all the evils within its reach.
“In the field of constitutional law relating to the extent to which corrective legislation may pick out the objects to which it is addressed, the rule is fundamental that the state may direct its law against what it deems the evil as it actually exists without covering the whole field of possible abuses. * * * In dealing with practical exigencies, the'legislature may be guided by experience. If the law presumably hits the evil where it is most felt, it is not to be overthrown because there are other instances to which it might have been applied.”
Illustrative of the above principles is the case of Radice v. New York, 264 U. S. 292, 44 S. Ct. 325, 327, 68 L. Ed. 690, in which the court considered a statute of New York prohibiting the employment of women in restaurants in cities of the first and second class between the hours of 10 o’clock at night and 6 o’clock in the morning. It was there contended that the statute contravened the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by (1) discriminating ■ between cities of the first and second class and other cities *386and communities and (2) in excluding from its operation women employed in restaurants as singers and performers, attendants in ladies’ cloak rooms and parlors, as well as those employed in dining rooms and kitchens of hotels and in lunch rooms or restaurants conducted by employers solely for the benefit of their employees. Said the court in holding the classification constitutional:
“The limitation of the legislative prohibition to cities of the first and second class does not bring about an unreasonable and arbitrary-classification. Packard v. Banton, 264 U. S. 140, 44 S. Ct. 257, 68 L. Ed. [596], decided February 18, 1924; Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68, 7 S. Ct. 350, 30 L. Ed 578. Nor is there substance in the contention that the exclusion of restaurant employees of a special kind, and of hotels and employees’ lunchrooms, renders the statute obnoxious to the Constitution. The statute does not present a case where some persons of a class are selected for special restraint, from which others of the same class are left free (Connolly v. Unior Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U. S. 540, 564, 22 S. Ct. 431, 46 L. Ed. 679); but a case where all in the same class of work are included in the restraint.”
The court cited numerous examples of classifications which it has upheld in prior decisions, and quoted with approval the following language from Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 373, 35 S. Ct. 342, 344, 59 L. Ed. 628:
“It [the Legislature] is free to recognize degrees of harm, and it may confine its restrictions to those classes of cases where the need is deemed to be clearest. As has been said, it may ‘proceed cautiously, step by step,’ and ‘if an evil is specially experienced in a particular branch of business’ it is not necessary that the prohibition ‘should be couched in all-embracing terms.’ Carroll v. Greenwich Insurance Co., 199 U. S. 401, 411, 26 S. Ct. 66, 50 L. Ed. 246, 250. If the law presumably hits the evil where it is most felt, it is not to be overthrown because there are other instances to which it might have been applied. Keokee Consol. Coke Co. v. Taylor, 234 U. S. 224, 227, 34 S. Ct. 856, 58 L. Ed. 1288, 1289.”
In Keokee Consol. Coke Co. v. Taylor, 234 U. S. 224, 34 S. Ct. 856, 857, 58 L. Ed. 1288, it was contended that a statute which prohibited any person, firm or corporation engaged in mining coal or ore, or manufacturing iron or *387steel or any other kind of manufacturing to issue for the payment of labor any order unless the same purported to be redeemable for its face value in lawful money of the United States, created an unreasonable discrimination. Said the court:
«* * * y- js established by repeated decisions that a statute aimed at what is deemed an evil, and hitting it presumably where experience shows it to be most felt, is not to be upset by thinking up and enumerating other instances to which it might have been applied equally well, so fwr as the court can see. That is for the legislature to judge unless the case is very clear. Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 81, 31 S. Ct. 337, 55 L. Ed. 369, 378; Central Lumber Co. v. South Dakota, 226 U. S. 157, 160, 33 S. Ct. 66, 57 L. Ed. 164, 169; Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138, 144, 34 S. Ct. 281, 58 L. Ed. [539]. The suggestion that other besides mining and manufacturing companies may keep shops and pay their workmen with orders on themselves for merchandise is not enough to overthrow a law that must be presumed to be deemed by the legislature co-extensive with the practical need.” (Italics added.)
Viewing the classification contained in the statute in question in light of the above pronouncements from the Supreme Court of the United States, it is clear that the Legislature in requiring registration of new employees only in cases where a “national recognized union” was on strike did not deny equal protection of the laws to other unions. The statute having been enacted fifteen years ago when management-labor problems were very different from those existing today, we will presume, in accordance with the authorities above discussed, that the need to protect against the importation of undesirable persons into this state to break up strikes existed only in cases in which “national recognized union [s]” were on strike, or at least that the need therefor was much greater. It is not for the members of this court to say that the Legislature should have imposed the same requirement when unions which are not “national recognized union [s]” are on strike.
It should be borne in mind that there is a strong presumption in favor of a legislative classification and of *388legitimate grounds of distinction on which the legislature acted.
“Hence, when the classification in a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed.” 12 Am. Jur. § 521.
The assailant of a classification in a statute must carry the burden of showing that it does not rest on any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary. Invalid discrimination must be proved or admitted; it is not presumed. Courts need not be ingenious in searching for grounds of distinction to sustain a classification. Middleton v. Texas Power & Light Co., 249 U. S. 152, 39 S. Ct. 227, 63 L. Ed. 527. So strong is the presumption that a classification made by the Legislature is based on reasonable grounds that the court in Arkansas Natural Gas Co. v. Arkansas R. Comm., 261 U. S. 379, 43 S. Ct. 387, 389, 67 L. Ed. 705, said:
“The reasons which influenced the classification are not disclosed on the face of the act, but the mere absence of such disclosure will not justify the court in assuming that appropriate reasons did not in fact exist. The presumption is that the action of the Legislature —which applies to all alike falling within the class — was with full knowledge of the conditions and that no arbitrary selection of persons for subjection to the prescribed rule was intended.”
All of us have in our work on the courts encountered problems similar to those presented in this case. Had they been treated as problems of semantics instead of those of a practical socio-economic content and out of their proper frame of reference, many healthy and worthwhile laws might have been construed as vague and ambiguous and/or unreasonably discriminatory.