Court Opinion

ID: 9418564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:32:18.301725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:05.953777
License: Public Domain

The separate opinion of
Mr. Justice McReynolds.
Our'primary 'concern is with the decree below — not with the reasons there advanced to support it. I suppose, if that court had simply approved the action of the Railroad Commission and had said nothing more, there woüld be little, if any, difficulty here in finding adequate ground for affirmance.
The questions involved relate solely to matters of intrastate commerce. No complication arises by reason of the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce; Having built and paid for the roads, California certainly has the general power of control. Plaintiffs in. error are without constitutional right to appropriate highways to their own private, business as carriers for hire. - And if, -in so *603many words, the Legislature had said that no intrastate carriers for hire except public ones shall be permitted to operate over the state roads it would have violated no federal law. So far as the rights of plaintiffs in error are affected, nothing more'serious than that has been done.
The States are now struggling with new. and enormously difficult problems incident to the growth of automotive traffic, and we should carefully refrain from interference. unless and until there is some real, direct and material infraction of rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution.
I think the decree of the court below should be affirmed.