Court Opinion

ID: 9444039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:39:03.981133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:41.390283
License: Public Domain

SWAIM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I think that the interpretation by the Supreme Court of Illinois of the Revised Cities and Villages Act of 1941 in Aliotta v. City of Chicago, 389 Ill. 418, 59 N.E.2d 829, 830, must be followed by this court and that if followed we must hold that the power granted to cities in the 1941 Act to regulate the speed of trains within their municipal boundaries must be construed either “ * * * as an alternative or additional power granted to or possessed by municipalities.”
I agree, of course, that the municipalities are created by the state legislature and have only such powers as the legislature may see fit to give. But we must also agree that this is likewise true of the Commerce Commission, also created by the state legislature. Powers of municipalities and of the Commerce Commission may be given, may be taken away and may be again given at any time the legislature sees fit to do so. I am in complete agreement that prior to the enactment of the Revised Cities and Villages Act the power of' municipalities to regulate the speed of trains within their borders had been withdrawn by the legislature having given this power to the Commerce Commission.
But in the Aliotta case the Supreme Court of Illinois held that a statute giving to cities the power to regulate and license barbers and a later statute giving like power to a department of the state must be read in the light of the Revised Cities and Villages Act which again granted to cities the power to regulate barbers, and provided in Section 87-1:
“The provisions of this Act shall be cumulative in effect and if any provision is inconsistent with another provision of this Act or with any other Act not expressly repealed by Section 87-4 it shall be considered as an alternative or additional power and not as a limitation upon any other power granted to or possessed by municipalities. But the provisions of this Act shall not be considered as impairing, altering, modifying, or repealing any of the jurisdiction or powers possessed by any department, board, commission, or officer of the State Government immediately prior to the effective date of this Act.”
The court said, 389 111. at page 421, 59 N.E;2d at page 831, that “these statutory provisions” negative the theory that the power of the city to regulate barbers had been repealed and held that this provision of the Act, together with the; provisions copied from the earlier Cities' and Villages Act giving cities the regulatory power over barbers, should “be considered either as an alternative or additional power.” After noting that the regulation of barber shops came under the general police power, the court said that it had many times held that a municipality might exercise police powers concurrently with the State and concluded that the city ordinance in the exercise of such concurrent police power was valid.
It is true that the Aliotta case involves a different statute (the Barbers Act) which the Illinois Supreme Court had never held to have taken away from the cities their power to regulate barbers, a power which had been granted by an earlier act. There, as here, however, we have the alleged conflict between a broad state statute, giving to a state, department certain police powers, and a city ordinance purporting to exercise police powers in the same field by virtue *773of a statute enacted before the statute giving these powers to the state department.
The reasoning of the cases decided prior to the Revised Cities and Villages Act on the subject of repeal by such a conflict makes it perfectly clear, I think, that had the Barbers Act and the prior conflicting city ordinance been presented to it prior to the Revised Cities and Villages Act, the Supreme Court of Illinois would have held that the prior grant to the cities had been repealed and that the ordinance was invalid. In the Aliotta case the ordinance was saved only by the interpretation by the court of Section 87-1 of the Revised Cities and Villages Act, by the fact that the court, 389 Ill. at page 421, 59 N.E.2d at page 830, “attached and read into it a part thereof that, in case of conflict, the provision in the later act shall be considered either as an alternative or additional power.”
The defendant has pointed out that when the Barbers Act was amended in 1947, and again in 1949, the legislature provided, by Section 62, Ch. 16%, Sec. 14.96, Ill.Rev.Stat. (1951), that nothing in the Act should limit or repeal any power of municipalities over barbers and that there is no such provision as this in the Public Utilities Act. But the amendment of the Barbers Act in 1947 and 1949 could not have influenced the Supreme Court of Illinois in the Aliotta case which was decided in 1945.
We must assume that the second sentence of Section 87-1 of the Revised Cities and Villages Act was also considered by the Supreme Court of Illinois in the Aliotta case, and that the court held that the grant by the state to the municipalities of police power over barbers, to be exercised concurrently with the Department of Registration and Education, did not impair, alter, modify or repeal any of the jurisdiction or powers possessed by that Department.
I think that since the Supreme Court of Illinois has construed the Revised Cities and Villages Act we are bound by that construction regardless of how we might have construed the Act had there been no such prior construction.
We should, therefore, reverse the judgment of the District Court.