Court Opinion

ID: 9583241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:36:22.094298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:53.946320
License: Public Domain

CARTER, J., and TRAYNOR, J.
We concur in the judgment.
As we view the present case it presents substantially the same issues of constitutionality as were involved in Takahashi v. Fish & Game Commission, 30 Cal.2d 719 [185 P.2d 805], reversed 333 U.S. 853 [68 S.Ct. 731, 92 L.Ed -]. In our opinion the unconstitutionality of the provisions of the California Alien Land Act involved in this case is clearly *67demonstrated by the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Carter in that case. If these constitutional questions had not previously been considered by this court it might be possible to construe these provisions in such a way as to avoid constitutional implications. In view of previous decisions of this court, however, such constitutional implications cannot be avoided. We wish to make it clear, therefore, that we still adhere to the views expressed in the dissenting opinion in the Takahashi case.
There can be no doubt that a state cannot deny “to lawful inhabitants, because of their race or nationality, the ordinary means of earning a livelihood.” (Traux v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 39 [36 S.Ct. 7, 60 L.Ed. 131, Ann.Cas. 1917B 283, L.R.A. 1916D 545].) Thus persons may not be barred because of their race or nationality from employment in the ordinary industry or business of another. It is common knowledge that it is necessary to the conduct of an ordinary industry or business enterprise to own or lease the property in which the industry or business is conducted. If the state could prohibit aliens ineligible to citizenship from owning or leasing real property it would thereby effectively prevent such persons from conducting ordinary industrial or business enterprises. Such a discrimination, if valid, would confine the alien’s right to engage in an ordinary means of earning a livelihood to serving as an employee or servant of a citizen or of a foreign national permitted to own or lease real property or of corporations owned by a majority of such citizens or nationals. The effect of such legislation is to impose upon the alien ineligible to citizenship an economic status inferior to all others earning a living in the state. Such a discrimination cannot be sustained under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Even in Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U.S. 197, 221 [44 S.Ct. 15, 68 L.Ed. 255], the United States Supreme Court recognized that a state could not discriminate against aliens ineligible to citizenship if that “discrimination was imposed upon the conduct of ordinary private enterprise covering the entire field of industry with the exception of enterprises that were relatively very small.”
In our view the statute here involved is clearly unconstitutional, and should, therefore, be stricken down.
Respondent’s petition for a rehearing was denied July 8, 1948.