Court Opinion

ID: 9720201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:20:06.52731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:03:13.279920
License: Public Domain

McCown, Spencer, and Boslaugh, JJ.,
dissenting.
The fundamental assumption upon which the majority builds its conclusion here is apparent in the following language of the supplemental opinion: “If our Legislature has the power to' remove the sale of intoxicating liquors from private enterprise, as it did in Iowa by putting all sales in the hands of the state, it surely has the power to do anything less than that.” That assumption is legally unsupportable.
It is fundamental that even though the Legislature can wholly prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors; and even though the business; if legally permitted, may be strictly regulated; the Legislature still cannot resort to classifications for licensing regulations which are arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. Neither does the state’s right to regulate the legal liquor business wipe out all constitutional rights of licensed liquor dealers. The Supreme Court of Minnesota, as far back as 1948, phrased it well. It said: “Equal protection of the laws. *279applies to regulation of occupations which may be entirely prohibited as well as to those which are inherently lawful. As between the selling of intoxicating liquor and other less harmful callings, there may be discrimination against the former, but there can be none as between persons engaged in the business.” Anderson v. City of St. Paul, 226 Minn. 186, 32 N. W. 2d 538. See, also, 45 Am. Jur. 2d., Intoxicating Liquors, §§ 30 and 31, pp. 507 and 508.
The critical issue in this case is not whether there should or should not be a policy of strict regulation of the legal liquor industry. Instead, the issue is whether the statute here was a reasonable exercise of the police power for the benefit of the public, or was ¡an arbitrary attempt to discriminate economically between liquor retailers. More than 35 years of experience in the legal liquor industry in this state without prohibition of quantity discounts by wholesalers has not resulted in the devastating evils referred to so graphically in the original majority opinion. The factual evidence is quite clear on that point. Yet such illusory evils furnish the only basis upon which the legislative action here can be called a reasonable exercise of the police power. The answer of the supplemental opinion to this evidence now is that: “* * * this is a legislative policy question.” By the same token, every legislative decision involving the regulation of the legal liquor industry is also a policy question. That fact should not preclude this court from determining whether the exercise of legislative discretion was for the benefit of the public under the police power or was instead an arbitrary effort to discriminate between licensed retailers by destroying the normal economic advantages of quantity purchases in a free economy. It is quite clear that the statute here was intended to benefit the retail liquor dealer who cannot or will not buy in sufficient quantities to obtain the economic saving resulting from quantity purchases. The majority of this court now approve legislative action'the *280purpose of which admittedly is “to insure that each licensee can operate at a profit and eliminate the evils that usually are inherent in a failing liquor outlet.” The incompetent, the inefficient, or the marginal liquor retailer is apparently to be covered by the economic blanket of the. state’s police power.
The Legislature was not at all concerned about the supposed evils of quantity discounts at the retail level. The evidence is clear, however, that the retail purchaser will bear the financial burden of the legislative ban on quantity discounts at the wholesale level. The real beneficiaries of the legislative attempt to interfere with “the ordinary rules of the market place” will actually be the extremely small group of licensed wholesalers^ in the State of Nebraska. The statute here ought not to be supported as a reasonable exercise of the police power for the benefit of the public, when the evidence establishes that its real purpose is to discriminate economically between licensed liquor licensees at the expense of the purchasing public.
We remain convinced that the statute here was designed for the private welfare of one class of licensed liquor dealers. It bears no real or substantial relationship to the general health, morals, or welfare of the public. The statute constitutes an arbitrary and unreasonable discrimination which disregards the realities of fair competition in a free enterprise system.