Court Opinion

ID: 9418670
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:34:58.647567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:49:48.453581
License: Public Domain

Dissenting opinion of
Mr. Justice Stone.
I agree with what Mr. Justice Brandéis has said. But there is one aspect of the decision now rendered to which I would especially direct attention. To me it would seem that there are such differences in organization, management, financial structure and practicál operation between the business conducted by appellant, a single individual, and that conducted by a corporation organ*551ized as is appellee, as to justify the classification and discrimination made by the statute. But, assuming there were no such differences, I fail to perceive any constitutional ground on which appellant- can complaim of a discrimination from which he has not suffered. His real and only complaint is not that he' has been discriminated against either in the- grant or enjoyment of his license, but that in the exercise of his non-exclusive privilege of carrying on the cotton ginning business he will suffer from competition by the corporate appellee which, under local law, may secure a like' privilege with possibly less difficulty than did appellant.
The proviso of the 1925 Act is held unconstitutional solely on the ground fhat’“ an onerous restriction upon the right to engage in a public business ” was “ imposed by the statute upon appellant ” and others similarly situated, which was not imposed on appellee. Appellant, if he had been denied a license, or if his exercise of the privilege, when granted, were more limited by the statute than that of appellee, might invoke the equal protection clause. But he now requires no such protection for he has received his license and is in full and unrestricted enjoyment of the same privilege as that which the appellee seeks. This is not less the case even if the statute be assumed to have made it more difficult for him than for appellee to secure a license.
Whether the grant appellant has received be called a franchise or a license would seem to be unimportant, for in any case it is not an exclusive privilege. Under the Constitution and laws of Oklahoma the legislature has powbr to amend or repeal the franchise, Constitution of Oklahoma, Art. IX, § 47; Choctaw Cotton Oil Co. v. Corporation Comm., 121 Okla. 51, and injury suffered through an indefinite increase in the number of appellant’s competitors by non-discriminatory legislation, would clearly be damnum absque injuria. A similar in*552crease under the present alleged discriminatory statute would seem likewise to afford appellant no legal cause for complaint, for, a license not having been withheld from him, his position is precisely the same as though the statute authorized the grant of a license to him and to appellee on equal terms. He is suffering, not from any application of the discriminatory feature of the statute, with which alone the Constitution is concerned, see Jeffrey Mfg. Co. v. Blagg, 235 U. S. 571, 576; Arkadelphia Co. v. St. Louis Southwestern Ry. Co., 249 U. S. 134, 149, but merely from the increase in the number of his competitors, an injury which would similarly have resulted from a non-discriminatory statute granting the privilege to all on terms more lenient than those formerly accorded appellant. Of such a statute, appellant could not complain and I can find no more basis for saying that constitutional rights are impaired where the discrimination which the statute authorizes has no effect, than where the statute itself does not discriminate.
Nor would appellant seem to be placed in any better position to challenge, the constitutionality of the statute by recourse to the rule that the possessor of a nonexclusive franchise may enjoin competition unauthorized by the state. Appellee’s business is not unauthorized. It is carried on under the sanction of a statute to which appellant himself can offer no constitutional objection, for even unconstitutional statutes may not be treated as though they had never been written. They are not void for all purposes and as to all persons. See Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U. S. 152, 160. For appellant to say that appelle'e’s permit is void, and that its business may .be enjoined, because conceivably someone else may challenge the constitutionality of .the Act, would seem .to be a departure from the salutary rule consistently applied that only those who suffer from the unconstitutional application of a statute may challenge its validity. See Roberts & Schaefer Co. v. Emmerson, 271 U. S. 50, 55; *553Plymouth Coal Co. v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 531, 544; Tyler v. Judges of Court of Registration, 179 U. S. 405, 410; Cusack Co. v. Chicago, 242 U. S. 526, 530; Standard Stock Food Co. v. Wright, 225 U. S. 540, 550; Mallinckrodt Chemical Works v. Missouri, 238 U. S. 41, 54; Darnell v. Indiana, 226 U. S. 390, 398.
It seems.to me that a fallacy, productive of unfortunate consequences, lurks in the suggestion that one may maintain a suit to enjoin competition of a business solely because hereafter someone else might suffer from an unconstitutional discrimination and enjoin it. But, more than that, even if the license had been withheld from appellant because he could not support the burden placed upon him by the statute, I should have thought it doubtful whether he would have been entitled to have had appellee’s permit cancelled — :the relief, now granted. He certainly could not have asked more than the very privilege which he now enjoys.
Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandéis concur in this opinion.