Court Opinion

ID: 9419137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:46:33.369575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:41:54.401775
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone,
dissenting:
I think the judgment below should be reversed.
Undoubtedly Congress, in the exercise of its power to legislate in aid of powers granted by the Constitution to the national government may greatly enlarge the exercise of federal authority and to an extent which need not now be defined, it may, if such is its will, thus subtract from the powers which might otherwise be exercised by *75the states. Assuming, as the Court holds, that Congress could constitutionally set up an exclusive registration system for aliens, I think it has not done so and that it is not the province of the courts to do that which Congress has failed to do.
At a time when the exercise of the federal power is being rapidly expanded through Congressional action, it is difficult to overstate the importance of safeguarding against such diminution of state power by vague inferences as to what Congress might have intended if it had considered the matter or by reference to our own conceptions of a policy which Congress has not expressed and which is not plainly to be inferred from the legislation which it has enacted. Cf. Graves v. O’Keefe, 306 U. S. 466, 479, 480, 487. The Judiciary of the United States should not assume to strike down a state law which is immediately concerned with the social order and safety of its people unless the statute plainly and palpably violates some right granted or secured to the national government by the Constitution or similarly encroaches upon the exercise of some authority delegated to the United States for the attainment of objects of national concern.
The opinion of the Court does not deny, and I see no reason to doubt that the Pennsylvania registration statute, when passed, was a lawful exercise of the constitutional power of the state. With exceptions not now material it requires aliens resident in the state, who have not declared their intention to become citizens, to register annually, to pay a registration fee of $1.00, and to carry a registration identification card. It affords to the state a convenient method of ascertaining the number and whereabouts of aliens within the state, which it is entitled to know, and a means of their identification. It is an available aid in the enforcement of a number of statutes of the state applicable to aliens whose constitu*76tional validity has not been questioned, one of which has been held by this Court not to infringe the Fourteenth Amendment. Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138.1
The national government has exclusive control over the admission of aliens into the United States but, after entry, an alien resident within a state, like a citizen, is subject to the police powers of the state and, in the exercise of that power, state legislatures may pass laws applicable exclusively to aliens so long as the distinction taken between aliens and citizens is not shown to be without rational basis. Patsone v. Pennsylvania, supra; Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U. S. 197; Cockrill v. California, 268 U. S. 258; Ohio v. Deckebach, 274 U. S. 392, 396, and cases cited. The federal government has no general police power over aliens and, so far as it can exercise any control over them, it must be in the pursuance of a power granted to it by the Constitution.
The opinion of the Court does not support its conclusion upon the ground that in the absence of federal legislation on the subject there is any want of power in the state to pass the present statute. It does not suggest, nor could it well do so, that in the absence of Congressional action the Pennsylvania statute either by its own terms or in its operation interferes with or obstructs the author*77ity conferred by the Constitution on the national government over the national defense, the conduct of foreign relations, its powers over immigration and deportation of aliens or their naturalization. The existence of the national power to conduct foreign relations and negotiate treaties does not foreclose state legislation dealing exclusively with aliens as such. This. Court has consistently held that treaties of the United States for the protection of resident aliens do not supersede such legislation unless they conflict with it. See Ohio v. Deckebach, supra, 395 and cases cited; Todok v. Union State Bank, 281 U. S. 449, 454 et seq.; cf. Nielsen v. Johnson, 279 U. S. 47. It is not contended that the Pennsylvania statute conflicts with any term of any treaty.
The question presented here is a different one from that considered in Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U. S. 259, 273, where the state taxation and registration of all persons entering the United States through a port of the state was held to be a regulation of foreign commerce forbidden to the states by the Constitution, even though Congress had passed no similar legislation. The registration of aliens resident in a state is not a regulation of interstate or foreign commerce or of the entry or deportation of aliens and would seem to be no more an exercise of any power granted to the national government, or an encroachment upon it, than is a state census for local purposes an infringement of the national authority to take a national census for national purposes. It is the federal act alone which is pointed to as curtailing or withdrawing the reserved power of the state over its alien population.
Title I of the federal statute penalizes certain acts of any persons intended to interfere with, impair or influence the loyalty, morale or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States. Title II, among other things, provides for the deportation of aliens after con*78viction and service of sentence for violations of the provisions of Title I. And the evident purpose of the registration provisions of Title III is to aid in the enforcement of the other provisions of the Act and in the prevention of subversive activities! of aliens resident within the United States. It requires the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens over fourteen years of age, with exceptions not now material, who are not registered and fingerprinted upon entering the country. Registered aliens resident in the United States are required to notify the Commissioner of Immigration of any change of residence and penalties are imposed for wilful non-compliance. As construed and applied by the opinion of the Court the federal act denies to the states the practicable means of identifying their alien residents and of recording their whereabouts and it withholds from the states the benefit of the information secured under the federal act except insofar as it may be made available to them on application to the Attorney General.
It is conceded that the federal act in operation does not at any point conflict with the state statute, and it does not by its terms purport to control or restrict state authority in any particular. But the government says that Congress by passing the federal act, has “occupied the field” so as to preclude the enforcement of the state statute and that the administration of the latter might well conflict with Congressional policy to protect the civil liberty of aliens against the harassments of intrusive police surveillance.
Little aid can be derived from the vague and illusory but often repeated formula that Congress “by occupying the field” has excluded from it all state legislation. Every Act of Congress occupies some field, but we must know the boundaries of that field before we can say that it has precluded a state from the exercise of any power reserved to it by the Constitution. To discover *79the boundaries we look to the federal statute itself, read in the light of its constitutional setting and its legislative history.
Federal statutes passed in aid of a granted power obviously supersede state statutes with which they conflict. Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Illinois Brick Co., 297 U. S. 447, 459. See Kelly v. Washington, 302 U. S. 1, 10. But we are pointed to no such conflict here. In the exercise of such powers Congress also has wide scope for prohibiting state regulation of matters which Congress may, but has not undertaken to regulate itself. But no words of the statute or of any comihittee report, or any Congressional debate indicate that Congress intended to withdraw from the states any part of their constitutional power over aliens within their borders. We must take it that Congress was not unaware that some nineteen states have statutes or ordinances requiring some form of registration for aliens, seven of them dating from the last war. The repeal of this legislation is not to be inferred from the silence of Congress in enacting a law which at no point conflicts with the state legislation and is harmonious with it.
The exercise of the federal legislative power is certainly not more potent to curtail the exercise of state power over aliens than is the exercise of the treaty making power. Yet as we have seen no treaty has that effect unless it conflicts with a state statute. The passage of the National Pure Food & Drug Act did not preclude the states from supplementing it by like additional requirements not conflicting with those of the Congressional act. Savage v. Jones, 225 U. S. 501. The enactment of federal laws for the inspection, as a safety measure, of vessels plying navigable waters of the United States does not foreclose the states from like inspection of the hull and machinery of such vessels within the state, to insure safety and determine seaworthiness, demands *80which lie outside the federal requirements. Kelly v. Washington, supra. The passage of the National Draft and the National Espionage Acts with their penalties for violation, did not preclude a state from making it a misdemeanor for any person to advocate that citizens of the state refuse to aid or assist the United States in carrying on a war. Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U. S. 325; cf. Halter v. Nebraska, 204 U. S. 34; see also Reid v. Colorado, 187 U. S. 137; Carey v. South Dakota, 250 U. S. 118; Dickson v. Uhlmann Grain Co., 288 U. S. 188; Mintz v. Baldwin, 289 U. S. 346; Maurer v. Hamilton, 309 U. S. 598, 614. These are but a few of the many examples of the long established principle of constitutional interpretation that an exercise by the state of its police power, which would be valid if not superseded by federal action, is superseded only where the repugnance or conflict is so “direct and positive” that the two acts cannot “be fairly reconciled or consistently stand together.” Sinnot v. Davenport, 22 How. 227, 243; Kelly v. Washington, supra, 10. A federal registration act designed to aid in enforcing federal statutes and to prevent subversive activities against the national government can stand consistently with a like statute applicable to residents passed in aid of state laws-and as a safeguard to property and persons within the state, as readily as the federal and state laws which annually demand two separate income tax returns of the citizen.
The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the civil liberties of aliens as well as of citizens against infringement by state action in the enactment of laws and their administration as well. Again we are pointed to nothing in the Federal Alien Registration Act or in the records of its passage through Congress to indicate that Congress thought those guarantees inadequate or that in requiring registration of all aliens it undertook to prevent the states from passing any registration measure otherwise constitutional. True, it was careful to bring the new *81legislation into harmony with existing federal statutes and to avoid, so far as consistent with its purposes, any harsh or oppressive requirements, but in all this there is to be found no warrant for saying that there was. a Congressional purpose to curtail the exercise of any constitutional power of the state over its alien residents or to protect the alien from state action which the Constitution prohibits and which the federal courts stand ready to prevent. See Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496, 518, 525 et seq.
Here compliance with the state law does not preclude or even interfere with compliance with the act of Congress. The enforcement of both acts involves no more inconsistency, no more inconvenience to the individual, and no more embarrassment to either government than do any of the laws, state and national, such as revenue laws, licensing laws, or police regulations, where interstate commerce is involved, which are equally applied to the citizen because he is subject, as are aliens, to a dual sovereignty.
The Chief Justice and Me. Justice McReynolds concur in this opinion.

 Tit. 34 § 1311.1001, Purdon’s Penn. Stat. Ann., prohibiting hunting by aliens, was sustained in the Patsone case, 232 U. S. 138. Cf. Tit. 30 §240. Other Pennsylvania statutes whose validity has not been passed upon regulate the activities of aliens: Tit. 63, setting forth license requirements for the practice of certain professions and occupations, makes special requirements for aliens seeking to practice as certified public accountants (§ 1), architects (§ 22), engineers (§ 137), nurses (§ 202), physicians and surgeons (§ 406), and undertakers (§ 478c). The real property holdings of aliens are limited to 5000 acres of land or land producing net income of $20,000 or less (Title 68, §§ 28, 32). Taxes are to be deducted from the wages of aliens by their employers when the tax collector requests (Tit. 72, § 5681),