Court Opinion

ID: 9427382
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:33.240883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:06.700962
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell joins, concurring in the result.
I agree with the Court when it concludes (a) that the District Court rightly refused to abstain under the rule of Railroad Comm’n v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941); (b) that the appellees’ delegation-of-power argument is un-meritorious; and (c) that the appellees’ antitrust claims are also without merit.
We are concerned here, basically, only with the issue of the facial constitutionality of certain provisions of the California Automobile Franchise Act, Cal. Veh. Code Ann. §§ 3062, 3063 (West Supp. 1978); we are not confronted with any issue of constitutionality of the Act as applied.
It seems to me that we should recognize forthrightly the fact that California, under its Act, accords the manufacturer and the would-be franchisee no process at all prior to telling them not to franchise at will. This utter absence of process would indicate that the State’s action is free from attack on procedural due process grounds only if the manufacturer and the franchisee possess no liberty or property interest protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, that is the way I would analyze the case.
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923), of course, defined “liberty” to include “the right... to engage in any of the common occupations of life.” The California statute, however, does not deprive anyone of any realistic freedom to become an automobile dealer or to grant a franchise; it simply regulates the location of franchises to sell certain makes of cars in certain geographical areas. The absence of regulation by California prior to the Act’s adoption in 1973 surely in itself created no liberty interest susceptible of later deprivation. And the abstract expectation of a new franchise does not qualify as a property interest.
*114I regard this litigation as not focusing on procedural due process at all. Instead, it centers essentially on a claim of substantive due process. Appellees have conceded that California may legitimately regulate automobile franchises and that the State may legitimately provide a hearing as part of its regulatory scheme. The only issue, then, is whether California may declare that the status quo is to be maintained pending a hearing. In my view, California’s declaration to this effect is no more than a necessary incident of its power to regulate at all. Maintenance of the status quo pending final agency action is common in many regulatory contexts. The situation here, for example, is not dissimilar to the widely adopted routine of withholding the effectiveness of announced increases in utility rates until specified conditions have been fulfilled. In asserting a right to franchise at will and a right to franchise without delay, appellees are essentially asserting a right to be free from state economic regulation. But any claim the appellees may have to be free from state economic regulation is foreclosed by the substantive due process cases, such as Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726 (1963), which the Court cites.
To summarize: For me, the appellees have demonstrated the presence of no liberty or property interest; having none, they have no claim to procedural safeguards; and their claim to be free from state economic regulation is foreclosed by the substantive due process cases. Perhaps this is what the Court is saying in its opinion. I am, however, somewhat unsure of that. I prefer to recognize the facts head on; when one does, the answer, it seems to me, is inevitable and immediately forthcoming.