Court Opinion

ID: 9653766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:53:52.306076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:01.407797
License: Public Domain

On Petition to Rehear
The insurance company, appellant, has filed herein a courteous, dignified and rather caustic petition to rehear. They have likewise filed a supplemental petition herein and have answered the reply brief of the State. We have *559read eacli of these documents several times, and after doing so have reached onr conclusion hereinafter to be stated.
In the first place these various documents filed praying a petition to rehear make no new argument and cite no new or additional authorities. The argument made is one to be made to the Legislature that enacted the legislation complained of and not to the Court. Apparently it has been forgotten that this is an attack upon existing legislation. We have again re-read our opinion as heretofore prepared and handed down in this case and feel that the conclusions therein stated are inescapable under the authorities and opinions heretofore decided by this Court and which are cited in this opinion as a basis for our conclusion.
The petition to rehear states that the primary question is:
“Are acts of the Legislature constitutional where they constitute unnecessary and unreasonable regulations or prohibitions upon a lawful business with no real tendency to protect the public health, safety or morals ? ’ ’
It was our purpose in the original opinion to answer this question. We think that we did and think that the Legislature had the right and it was their duty to determine the matter for the reasons we expressed in our original opinion. In other words it did not seem to us that this Act was an unnecessary and an unreasonable regulation or prohibition upon the business which it attempted to regulate.
Our purpose in stating what we did as to what the Legislature could have found was done arguendo to *560show what they could have had in mind in enacting this legislation and if they did have these things before them and did it then the legislation was perfectly reasonable. We respectfully disagree with statements of the petitioner that there was no reas.on why a court should speculate as to why the Legislature might have enacted an act. Clearly under the various constitutional attacks made on this legislation it was our duty to so consider the matter. When, we look at an act of the Legislature under the attack made on this act under Article 1, Section 8, it is our duty to hold the act constitutional if it is not purely arbitrary. If the classification has some reasonable basis merely because it is not made with mathematical nicety, or because in practice it results in some inequality it is not unconstitutional. Motlow v. State, 125 Tenn. 547, 145 S.W. 177, L.R.A., 1916F, 177.
With the Legislature rests determination of the reasonableness of regulations under the police power and a court will not examine the question de novo and overrule such judgment by substituting its own, unless it clearly appears that those regulations are so “beyond all reasonable relation to the subject to which they are applied as to amount to merely arbitrary usurpation of power ’ ’, or they are unmistakably and palpably in excess of legislative power or they are arbitrary “beyond possible justice” and if they are so of course the court declares them void, otherwise it is the duty of the court to declare the act constitutional. State v. McKay, 137 Tenn. 280, 193 S.W. 99.
Any state of facts that can be reasonably conceived that would sustain the Legislature in enacting an act will be assumed to have existed when the law was enacted; and one .assailing this classification, and such a *561law must bear the burden of showing that it does not rest upon any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary. Motlow v. State, sufra.
In conclusion we must again repeat one paragraph from our original opinion which is absolutely sound, as we see it, and the basis for our conclusion herein. We said:
“Our only purpose under such matters is to determine whether or not there is plausible reason for the enactment of such legislation. It is true the court at all times reserves the right to pass on the constitutionality of the statutes but in doing so we do not inquire into the policy of the Legislature, that is, the factual background of why they did it if there is a plausible reason back of such legislation. ’ ’■ Citing authorities.
After having fully considered the petition to rehear herein we must overrule and deny it. A decree may be entered accordingly.