Court Opinion

ID: 9614843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:29:03.841891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:18.575568
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice
(dissenting):
Under a properly drawn ordinance, there is no doubt that the City of Blackfoot could do exactly what the majority opinion has permitted in this case. However, there is nothing in the Blackfoot City Code which authorizes the city to deny the hotel license to the appellant for the reasons that were given in this case. The only requirement in the ordinance for obtaining the license is the payment of a $10.00 license *347fee. While the City of Blackfoot, and the majority of this Court, ought to be commended in their efforts to protect human life from the structural and fire hazards which it is believed that the appellant’s hotel presented, that concern should have been directed toward enactment of an ordinance which authorizes city officials to refuse a license upon those grounds. To say the city code “impliedly” authorizes such action in effect gives the city officials, through their ability to withhold the license on grounds not set forth in the ordinance, complete, undefined and unlimited power over the operation of hotels in the city. When the majority say that to deny the city this power “would strip the city council of Blackfoot of discretion in the protection of human life,” they do not address themselves to the issue before us — ■ whether the conditions for granting or denying a hotel license must be set out in the ordinance so that there can be some yardstick by which the hotel’s obligation can be measured. These conditions must be set forth in the ordinance before a license can be denied. McQuillan, Municipal Corporations, 3d Ed., § 26.05; State v. Dade County, 120 So.2d 625 (Fla.App.1960). As stated in Anders v. Town of Danville, 45 Ill.App.2d 104, 195 N.E.2d 412 (1964), in a case in which a resolution of the town’s electors had authorized the supervisor to “license, regulate and direct the locations” of all junkyards in the town, the supervisor had no authority to refuse a license to a junkyard because “[t]he [resolution] fails in all respects to set the necessary standards and under the same the Supervisor was powerless to refuse a license.” (At 416).
“The right to use one’s property in a lawful manner is within the protection of subdivision (1) of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Sec. 13 of the Idaho Constitution providing that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” O’Connor v. City of Moscow, 69 Idaho 37, 42-43, 202 P.2d 401, 404 (1949).
Placing such unfettered discretion in the hands of an executive branch of government is a denial of due process. Smith v. Ladner, 288 F.Supp. 66 (D.C.S.C.Miss. 1968). To hold otherwise is to retreat from the rule of law to the rule of men, something which our constitutional system of justice has abhorred from its inception.