Court Opinion

ID: 9426063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:39.418197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.854692
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
dissenting.
All agree that the appellant is engaged exclusively in interstate commerce. Yet the Court says that Louisiana can nonetheless impose this franchise tax upon the appellant because it is for the privilege of engaging in interstate commerce “in [the] corporate form.”* Under this reasoning, the State could impose a like franchise tax for the privilege of carrying on an exclusively interstate business “in the partnership form” — or, for that matter, in the form of an individual proprietorship. For, whatever its form, the exclusively interstate business would still be “owning or using [a] part of its capital, plant or other property in Louisiana,” ante, at 109, and would still be “furnished” equivalent “protection and benefits” by the State, ante, at 114.
The fact is that Louisiana has imposed a franchise tax upon the appellant for the privilege of carrying on an exclusively interstate business. Under our established precedents, such a tax is constitutionally impermissible. Spector Motor Service v. O’Connor, 340 U. S. 602; Railway Express Agency v. Virginia, 347 U. S. 359. I could understand if the Court today were forthrightly to overrule these precedents and hold that a state franchise tax upon interstate commerce is constitutionally valid, so long as it is not discriminatory. But I cannot understand how the Court can embrace the wholly specious reasoning of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in this case.

 The appellant is not, of course, incorporated in Louisiana.