Court Opinion

ID: 9589810
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:48:59.429257+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:51.150465
License: Public Domain

Undercofler, Presiding Justice,
concurring specially.
Under recent U. S. Supreme Court decisions Goldberg v. Mulherin is no longer valid. ". . . [T]he court has fully and finally rejected the wooden distinction between 'rights’ and 'privileges’ that once seemed to govern the application of procedural due process rights.” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 571 (1972). Nevertheless the constitutional rights of alcoholic beverage licensees and license applicants must be balanced against a state’s prerogatives under the Twenty-first Amendment. California v. LaRue, 409 U. S. 109 (1972). These constitutional rights appear to be limited to what may be described as "protected rights.” As stated in Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, at 569, "The requirements of procedural due process apply only to the deprivation of interests encompassed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of liberty and property. When protected interests are implicated, the right to some kind of prior hearing is paramount. But the range of interests protected by procedural due process is not infinite... And a weighing process has long been a part of any determination of the form of hearing required in particular situations by procedural due process. But, to determine whether due process requirements apply in the first place, we must look not to the 'weight’ but to the nature of the interest at stake... We must look to see if the interest is within the Fourteenth Amendment’s *416protection of liberty and property.”
Undoubtedly there will be further exposition of these principles in the future by the U. S. Supreme Court. See Kenosha v. Bruno, 412 U. S. 507 (1973).
Hornsby v. Allen, cited by the majority opinion, has been limited. "Invoking Hornsby, a case mistakenly thought by too many to be a pledge that if local authorities would not, a Federal Court would, grant a liquor license...” Atlanta Bowling Center, Inc. v. Allen, 389 F2d 713 (5th Cir., 1968). "We have explicitly refused to read Hornsby as 'holding that the Federal Courts sit as a super liquor board.’ ” Sandbach v. City of Valdosta, 526 F2d 1259, 1260 (5th Cir., 1976).