Court Opinion

ID: 9422176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:33.047417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:34.685251
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting.
According to my brother Stewart, the Supreme Court of Delaware has held that one of its statutes, 24 Del. Code, § 1501, sanctions a restaurateur denying service to a person solely because of his color. If my brother is correct in so reading the decision of the Delaware Supreme Court, his conclusion inevitably follows. For a State to place its authority behind discriminatory treatment based solely on color is indubitably a denial by á State of the equal protection of the laws, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. My brother Harlan also would find the claim of invalidity of the statute decisive if he could read the state court's construction of it as our brother Stewart reads it. But for him the state court’s view of its statute is so ambiguous that he deems it necessary to secure a clarification from the state court of how in fact it did construe the statute.
I certainly do not find the clarity that my brother Stewart finds in the views expressed by the Supreme Court of Delaware regarding 24 Del. Code, § 1501. If I were forced to construe that court’s construction, I should find the balance of considerations leading to the opposite conclusion from his, namely, that it was merely declaratory of the common law and did not give state sanction to refusing service to a person merely because he .is colored. The Court takes no position regarding the statutory meaning which divides my brothers Harlan and Stewart. Clearly it does not take Mr. Justice Stewart’s view of what the Supreme Court of Delaware decided. *728If it did, it would undoubtedly take his easy route to decision and not reach the same result by its much more circuitous route.
Since the pronouncement of the Supreme Court of Delaware thus lends itself to three views, none of which is patently irrational, why is not my brother Harlan’s suggestion for solving this conflict the most appropriate solution? Were we to be duly advised by the Supreme Court of Delaware that Mr. Justice Stewart is correct in his reading of what it said, there would be an easy end to our problem. There would be no need for resolving the problems in state-federal relations with which the Court’s opinion deals. If, on the other hand, the Delaware court did not mean to give such an invalidating construction to its statute, we would be confronted with the problems which the Court now entertains for decision, unembarrassed by disregard of a simpler issue. This would involve some delay in adjudication. But the time would be well spent, because the Court would not be deciding serious questions of constitutional law any earlier than due regard for the appropriate process of constitutional adjudication requires.
Accordingly, I join in Mr. Justice Harlan’s proposed disposition of the case without intimating any view regarding the question, prematurely considered by the Court, as to what constitutes state action.