Court Opinion

ID: 9658157
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:48:30.735145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:52.129092
License: Public Domain

SUMMERS, Justice
(dissenting).
In my view the provisions of the legislative act in contest (R.S. 26:80(D)) are unreasonable, arbitrary and discriminatory. The enactment bears no real and substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals or any other phase of the general welfare. The act is, therefore, unconstitutional, and it is this court’s province and duty to decree its invalidity. City of Lafayette v. Justus, 245 La. 867, 161 So.2d 747 (1964).
The arbitrary and unnecessary requirements and onerous burdens of the act are aimed at the plaintiffs in this case and no others among the many wholesale liquor dealers of the State. Literal application of the act, particularly the requirement that the holder thereof maintain sales to at least 20% of the retailers in his area, would foreclose the issuance of any further wholesale liquor licenses, because no applicant for a license can be selling to 20% of the retail trade when he applies. The net effect of this and the other requirements concerning warehouse space and delivery equipment is to virtually set aside the wholesale alcoholic beverage distribution business for those who presently hold licenses other than plaintiffs. Such a regulation is not in the public interest, but, rather, it is an attempt to give an economic advantage to those now engaged in this particular business as against all those who attempt to enter that business hereafter. The result will be to deprive the public generally of the beneficial effects of competition. Mayflower Farms v. Ten Eyck, 297 U.S. 266, 56 S.Ct. 457, 80 L.Ed. 675 (1936).
Hence, a proper legislative purpose for which the police power of the State can be invoked does not exist here. To the contrary, police power has been utilized to accomplish an unwholesome objective by means of discriminatory and arbitrary regulations.
In an attempt to devise legislation which would discriminate solely against the plaintiffs in this case, the drafters of this act *659have imposed regulatory measures which hear no rational relation to the interest of the public at large. By reason thereof the police power of the State has been abused and misused, and the act is unconstitutional.
I respectfully dissent.