Court Opinion

ID: 9418584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:32:44.381322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:06.426952
License: Public Domain

*91Mr. Justice, Brandéis,
dissenting.
The business of the Narragansett Company is an intrastate one. The only electricity sold for use without the State is that agreed to be delivered to the Attleboro Company. That company takes less than 3 per cent, of the electricity produced and manufactured by the Narragansett, which has over 70,000 customers in Rhode Island. The problem, is essentially local in character. The Commission found as a fact that continuance of the service to the Attleboro Company at the existing rate would prevent the Narragansett from performing its full duty towards its other customers and would be detrimental to the general public welfare. It issued the order specifically to prevent unjust discrimination and to prevent unjust increase in the price to other customers. The Narragansett, a public service corporation of Rhode Island, is subject to regulation by that State. The order complained of is clearly valid as an exercise of the police power, unless it violates the Commerce Clause.
The power of the State to regulate the selling price of electricity produced and distributed by it within the State and to prevent discrimination is not affected by the fact that the supply is furnished under a long-term contract. Union Dry Goods Co. v. Georgia Public Service Corporation, 248 U. S. 372. If the Commission lacks the power exercised, it is solely because the electricity is delivered for use in another State. That fact makes the transaction interstate commerce, and Congress has power to legislate on the subject. It has not done so, nor has it legislated on any allied subject, so there can be no1 contention that it has occupied the field. Nor is this a case in which it can be said that the silence of Congress is a command that the Rhode! Island utility shall remain free from the public regulation — that it shall be free to discriminate against the citizens of the State by which it was incorporated and in which it does business. That *92State may not, of course, obstruct or directly burden interstate commerce. But to prevent discrimination in the price of electricity wherever used does not obstruct or place a direct burden upon interstate commerce. Such regulation or action is unlike the burden imposed where a transportation rate is fixed. Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific R. R. Co. v. Illinois, 118 U. S. 557, or where property moving in interstate commerce is taxed. Champlain Realty Co. v. Brattleboro, 260 U. S. 366. The burden resulting from the order here in question resembles more nearly that increase in the cost of an article produced and to be delivered which arises by reason of higher taxes laid upon plant, operations or profits, Old Dominion S. S. Co. v. Virginia, 198 U. S. 299, 305; American Mfg. Co. v. St. Louis, 250 U. S. 459, or which arises By reason of expenditures required under police regulations. Pittsburgh & Southern Coal Co. v. Louisiana, 156 U. S. 590; Sligh y. Kirkwood, 237 U. S. 52; Merchants Exchange v. Missouri, 248 U. S. 365, 368. It is like the. regulation sustained in Pennsylvania Gas Co. v. Public Service Commission, 252 U. S. 23, where an order of the New York Public Service Commission fixed the rates at which gas piped from without the State and delivered directly to the consumers might be sold.
The case at bar seems to me distinguishable from others in which the state regulation has been held precluded by the Commerce Clause. In Missouri v. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 265 U. S. 298, this Court held void a regulation which fixed the rates at which gas piped from without the State and delivered to distributing companies could be sold to the latter. The Pennsylvania Gas Co. case was distinguished in that there “the things done were local. ,. . . The business of supplying on demand, local consumers is a local business, even though the gas be brought from another State and drawn directly from interstate mains. . . . In such case the local interest.. *93is paramount. . . . But here the sale of gas is in wholesale quantities, not to consumers, but to distributing companies for resale to consumers in numerous'cities ... in different states. The paramount interest ■ is not local but national . . .” (p. 309). It was there emphasized that the “ business of the Supply Company, with an exception not important here, [was] wholly interstate.” (p. 306.) In Shafer v. Farmers Grain Co., 268 U. S. 189, 192, where a North Dakota regulation was held invalid, “ about 90 per cent, [of the wheat was] sold within the state to buyers who purchase for shipment, and ship, to terminal markets outside the.state” and the “ price paid at the country elevators rises and falls with the price at the terminal markets.” In these two cases the burden was deemed a direct one because the businesses were essentially interstate!” In Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, the state regulation was held void as discriminating against interstate commerce.
In my opinion the judgment below should be reversed.