Court Opinion

ID: 9458713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:00:02.599724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:52.289973
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur in Judge Hays’ opinion but in reference to Part III thereof do so only on the first ground advanced, viz., that under no construction of the facts can it be claimed that General Foods’ conduct damaged Ender or deprived it of any fourteenth amendment rights under color of state law. Parenthetically it may be remarked that Ender would have had no standing to raise fourteenth amendment questions under the long-rejected views expressed in Mr. Justice Black’s famous dissent in Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. v. Johnson, 303 U.S. 77, 87, 58 S.Ct. 436, 82 L.Ed. 673 (1938), and later in Mr. Justice Douglas’s dissent in Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Glander, 337 U.S. 562, 576, 69 S.Ct. 1291, 93 L.Ed. 1544 (1949) (Black, J., joining). But cf. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 428, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963) (corporation “directly engaged in” protected activities can raise constitutional claims). I know of nothing in the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act that compels us to hold that a corporation is a “person” entitled to protection thereunder irrespective of the activity engaged in by it. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(3) (1970). See Mickey v. Kansas City, 43 F.Supp. 739, 741 (W.D.Mo.1942) (religious organization challenging municipal ordinances claimed to interfere with first amendment rights can assert § 1343 jurisdiction). But see Northwestern Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park, 18 Fed.Cas.P. 393 (No.10,336) (C.C.N.D.Ill.1873). In any event it does not seem to me that in a case involving two corporations engaged in ordinary business activity and litigation resulting therefrom we should lean over backward to find conduct by one against the other to constitute “deprivation, under color of any State law . . . .”28 U.S.C. § 1343(3). I find none here.