Court Opinion

ID: 3591606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 23:40:08.249266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:10.745390
License: Public Domain

This case in no way involves the right of private citizens to employ aliens in private work. It presents only the question of the right of the state to exclude aliens from employment upon its public works. The distinction is vital and must be kept in mind throughout the discussion of this case.
I concur in the opinion that the statute is constitutional. I agree that, because of the public character of the work to which the statute relates, the discrimination against aliens is not an arbitrary discrimination. I agree also that the law cannot be upheld upon the ground that it is designed to promote efficiency upon the public works of the state. The present case, as I view it, does not involve merely the right of the state to prescribe the manner in which its public money may be distributed. The money expended for public works would necessarily be expended whether citizens or aliens were engaged in constructing them. The money paid by the state for this purpose is not a gratuity, but is paid as compensation for services rendered and the rendering of these services creates a public value at least equal to the money expended. The distribution of public money for this purpose is only an incident of the state's exercise of its right as proprietor and owner of its public works. This case involves the right of the state as owner or proprietor to exclude aliens from working upon its public works and to accord to its own citizens a preference in being employed upon such public works, over other citizens of the United States. No citizen, as an incident of citizenship, has any right to be employed upon public works. If to be employed upon public works is in any sense a right or privilege under the State Constitution (Art. 1, sec. 1), it is equally so under the provisions of the Fourteenth *Page 178 
Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Thus if the right to be employed on public works is a right or privilege incident to citizenship the state might discriminate against aliens, but it could not, under the provisions of the Federal Constitution, discriminate in favor of its own citizens against citizens of another state. Yet the state may discriminate as between its own citizens and citizens of a sister state, and even in favor of some of its citizens and against others as to the use that shall be made of its own property. (People v. Lowndes, 130 N.Y. 455;Haney  Scattergood v. Compton, 36 N.J.L. 507; Geer v.Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519; Corfield v. Coryell, 6 Fed. Cas. 546; Commonwealth v. Hilton, 174 Mass. 29; McCready v.Virginia, 94 U.S. 391.) No citizen has any constitutional right or privilege to be employed upon public work, or any immunity against discrimination in this respect, either under article 1, section 1, of the Constitution of the state or under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The legislature has the right to prescribe who shall work upon its public works. Public works are public property. As such they belong wholly to the sovereign power of the state. The manner in which they shall be built is within the function of the sovereign power to prescribe. This regulation and control is a part of the police power of the state. The police power of the state is not limited to exerting control over private property to promote the general welfare. It is by virtue of this power that the state possesses the exclusive right to construct and control its public property. I am aware that objection has been made to the use of the term "police power" to include the regulation by the state of its internal affairs, on the ground that it uses the terminology that has often been associated with the regulation of private affairs external to the state. Notwithstanding this objection, the nature of the power exerted is the same, whether it is exercised over the public property of the state itself or over the private *Page 179 
property of the citizen. The highest judicial authority exists for applying the term "police power" to both public and private property. (New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co.,115 U.S. 650; People v. Kerr, 27 N.Y. 188, 213; Haney Scattergood v. Compton, 36 N.J.L. 507.) In New Orleans GasCo. v. Louisiana Light Co. (115 U.S. 650, 661) the Supreme Court of the United States, speaking of the police power, said: "We may, not improperly, refer to that power the authority of the state to create educational and charitable institutions, and provide for the establishment, maintenance, and control of public highways, turnpike roads, canals, wharves, ferries, and telegraph lines, and the draining of swamps." Questions of great difficulty may present themselves as to how far the state may impose restraints or limitations upon the exercise of individual rights over private property but no such questions are presented as to public property. Public property is in its very nature subject to social control. The authority of the state over all public works and public undertakings is supreme and this is so whether the public works are undertaken directly by the state or by a municipality or any other agency of the state. Just as the individual may, generally speaking, do what he will with his own, so the state, may exercise a like control over public property. In the same way that private property is subject toindividual control, so public property is subject togovernmental control. The provisions of the State and Federal Constitutions guaranteeing liberty and property, refer to individual liberty and private property. They do not confer upon the individual, be he citizen or alien, the right to interfere with the use that the state may make of its public property or any regulation which it may prescribe as to the manner in which its public works shall be built. The constitutional safeguards which surround the liberty of the individual confer upon him no right or liberty to engage in public *Page 180 
work. The statute under consideration does not involve governmental interference with individual liberty. The attempt of the contractors engaged in public work to deprive the state of the right to prescribe the conditions upon which the work shall be done, is the assertion of the right of individual interference with the government. The manner in which public works shall be built is a matter wholly within the sphere of social as distinguished from individual control. We cannot lose sight of the fact that there are these separate and distinct spheres of action. It may not be possible to draw with precision the line of demarcation between them, but we all nevertheless recognize that there is a line of demarcation to be drawn. As we deny to the state the right to intrude into the individual sphere of action and to prescribe what we shall believe, and except where the public welfare is involved, what we shall publish, or to supervise private morals, so the state denies to the individual the right to intrude within its social sphere of action and insist that he has a right to be employed upon its public works. The right of state control springs from the public or social character of the work. Owing to the narrow sphere to which the state's activities have, in the past, been limited, the assertion of the state's right of public property seems to have been confined principally to unappropriated lands, waters, wild beasts, fishes and birds, but over those things to which the state's right of property attached the old books recognized the proprietary right of the sovereign power which carried with it the right to discriminate either against subjects or foreigners. (Grotius "Rights of War and Peace," book II, chapter II, § 5.) In recent times the state's proprietary interests have been greatly extended. Over those interests it enjoys the right of a proprietor or owner. The public property of the modern state is not inconsiderable. It owns its highways, harbors, canals, aqueducts, bridges, markets, libraries, art galleries and *Page 181 
many other valuable possessions. Over all these things and others of a like nature the state is now proprietor and owner. Its sphere of ownership is being constantly extended. Formerly the functions represented by the public properties enumerated above were left entirely to individual initiative as indeed were also such functions as the army, navy, police and courts of justice now perform. The performance of these services are necessary to the enjoyment of modern social life and the welfare of the citizenship of the state depends upon their proper administration. The uses to which these public properties shall be put are to be determined by the legislature subject only to the Constitution. There are, generally speaking, no provisions of the Constitution that impose limitations upon the exercise of the legislative power over these properties, except such as are inherently attached to the exercise of the police power. Nor is it apparent that this extension of the state's activity has in any way violated the liberty of the citizen. The exercise by the state of these activities may in a negative sense have restricted the liberty of some, but in a positive sense the freedom of all has been increased on account of them. In the building of the state's public work we have an example through the exercise of the powers of government of the organized co-operation of our citizenship. In its capacity of owner and proprietor, the state is not hampered by restrictions as to the manner in which it shall cause its public works to be constructed. There are many uses to which an owner or proprietor may put his property which do not violate the rights of others. The state in its capacity of proprietor or owner may make such use of its own public property as it deems conducive to the social well-being. In the use that it makes of such property it is not required to refrain from discrimination. The largest measure of benefit may sometimes result from discrimination. Whether or not discriminations made in regard to public *Page 182 
property sustain a relation to the public welfare is for the legislature and not the courts to determine. The modern state, through the ownership of its public property, affords opportunities for public co-operation. The motive which actuates it is service, not profit. Its service, to be effective, must be rendered where it is needed and in rendering it it is not obliged, in the use of its public property, to secure immediate equality of benefits to all; it is sufficient if the ultimate result be to promote the general welfare. The public property or commonwealth should of course be used to promote the general welfare, but the restraints or checks to which government is by constitutional provisions subjected, when it acts in reference to private property, have no application where it acts in relation to public property. Within this sphere and in regard to this public property, government is free to prescribe such regulations as will best promote the general welfare. Where the state has, in a particular sphere, replaced private enterprise, as it has replaced it in the control and building of its public works, it cannot effectively accomplish its purpose if it is to be hampered by the same restraints which are imposed upon it when it exercises its authority over private property. Where it acts in its capacity of proprietor or owner in reference to its own public property, these restraints can only serve to hamper and embarrass the state in the exercise of its rights of ownership. If, in the exercise of the police power, the state may regulateprivate property to promote the general welfare of its citizens, a fortiori it may, by virtue of that power, exercise control over its own public property.
Public works, like other public property, are within the police power of the state. The character of the work to which the statute under consideration applies being public, the statute itself is an exercise by the sovereign of its police power. The statute being an exercise of the police power of the state it necessarily follows that the provisions *Page 183 
of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution and article 1, section 1, of the Constitution of this state, so far as they guarantee the right of individual liberty and property, are without application. As Mr. Justice FIELD said: "No one has ever pretended, that I am aware of, that the Fourteenth Amendment interferes in any respect with the police power of the state." (Bartemeyer v. Iowa, 18 Wall. 129, 138.) In Olsen v.Smith (195 U.S. 332) it was held that although state laws concerning pilotage are a regulation of commerce, they fall within that class of powers which may be exercised by the states until Congress has seen fit to act upon the subject. In that case the argument was made that the right of a person who is competent to perform pilotage services to render them, is an inherent right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and that, therefore, all state regulations providing for the appointing of pilots and restricting the right to pilot to those duly appointed was repugnant to the 14th Amendment. In reply to this contention, Mr. Justice WHITE said: "But this proposition in its essence simply denies that pilotage is subject to governmental control, and therefore is foreclosed by the adjudications to which we have previously referred." (p. 344.) The state has generally speaking, the right to employ upon public work whom it will and to prescribe such conditions as it sees fit to prescribe. It has the right to employ certain citizens to the exclusion of others and the citizens not so employed are not in any legal sense unlawfully discriminated against. As was said by Mr. Justice HARLAN in Atkin v. Kansas (191 U.S. 207, 222): "It cannot be deemed a part of the liberty of any contractor that he be allowed to do public work in any mode he may choose to adopt, without regard to the wishes of the state. On the contrary, it belongs to the state, as the guardian and trustee for its people, and having control of its affairs, to prescribe the conditions upon which it will permit public work to be done on its behalf, or on *Page 184 
behalf of its municipalities. No court has authority to review its action in that respect. Regulations on this subject suggest only considerations of public policy. And with such considerations the courts have no concern." In replying to the contention that a state regulation as to the manner in which public work should be performed was a violation of the liberty of the employee and employer, Mr. Justice HARLAN said: "It is sufficient to answer that no employé is entitled, of absolute right and as a part of his liberty, to perform labor for the state; and no contractor for public work can excuse a violation of his agreement with the state by doing that which the statute under which he proceeds distinctly and lawfully forbids him to do." (p. 223.) If the legislature can lawfully discriminate between citizens as to whom it will employ upon its public works, it follows that it can also discriminate as between citizens and aliens. The whole matter as to how public works shall be built rests entirely within the police power of the state. The recognition of this principle seems to me to solve many of the difficulties that otherwise attach to this case. It is manifest that aliens as well as citizens are subject to the exercise of the police power. Nor can it be correctly contended that any treaty that exists between the United States and any foreign government excludes the citizens of that government who reside here from the operation of the police power of the state. If the police power includes, as has been said, "the power to govern men and things" (Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 125), that power does not become less potent when it is applied exclusively to public property being used for public purposes. So far as those trades or callings which are subject to governmental regulations are concerned, it is settled that the state may refuse to grant to aliens because of the fact of alienage, a license to engage in them. (Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U.S. 138; Commonwealth
v. Patsone, 231 Penn. St. 46; McCready v. Virginia,94 U.S. 391; State v. Travelers *Page 185 Insurance Co., 70 Conn. 590; Matter of O'Neill, 90 N.Y. 584;Opinion of Justices, 122 Mass. 594; Bloomfield v. State,86 Ohio St. 253.) If the state may debar aliens from participating in those private occupations or trades which are subject to governmental regulation, as has been held in the cases cited, there is no room for the argument that it cannot debar aliens from working upon its own public works which are wholly subject to its control. In the assertion by the state of its right to control the manner in which public work shall be constructed, it is immaterial whether the public work is done directly by the state or by a municipality or independent contractor. (Atkin v.Kansas, 191 U.S. 207; Ellis v. U.S., 206 U.S. 246; Peopleex rel. Cossey v. Grout, 179 N.Y. 417.) If the work was private and the public welfare in no way involved, it is clear that the legislature could not deny to the individual employer the right to employ aliens. (Yick Wo v. Hopkins,118 U.S. 356, 369.) If the work was private, and the exclusion of aliens was in fact necessary to the protection of the public welfare, such exclusion would be within the police power. (Yick Wo v.Hopkins, supra.) Where the work, as in the case under consideration, is public and, therefore, wholly subject to the police power, the exclusion of aliens need not be shown to sustain any relation to the public welfare in order to be valid. In such case, the exclusion is merely an incident of that social control to which such public works are, in all respects, subject. The fact that the state may exercise complete control over its public works or other public property does not carry with it the right to use its public property so as to violate the rights of either its citizens or aliens to life, liberty or property. The state, no less than the individual, is obligated to so use its public property, except when it acts to promote the general welfare, as not to impair the rights of others. For this reason it cannot lawfully exclude either citizens or aliens from its public highways or deny to either the right to participate *Page 186 
in the benefits of those public utilities which it may own and operate and upon the equal administration of which the welfare and happiness of others depend. The limitations to which the state is subject in the construction and use of its public works are only those to which the police power is subject. These restraints it is not now necessary to consider, as they have no application to the exclusion of aliens from working upon public work. It is sufficient, I think, to point out that discriminations on account of race or religion, that sustain no relation to the general welfare are not within the police power.
In my opinion the judgment of the Appellate Division reversing the judgment of conviction should be reversed and the judgment of conviction affirmed.