The Stockton Laundry Case

• Decision Date: 16 February 1886
• Citation: 26 F. 611
• Court: United States Circuit Court, District of California
• Parties: THE STOCKTON LAUNDRY CASE. In re TIE LOY.

26 F. 611

THE STOCKTON LAUNDRY CASE. In re TIE LOY.

United States Circuit Court, D. California.

February 16, 1886

R. W Bennett, for petitioner.

F. H Smith, City Atty. of the City of Stockton, and Alfred Clarke for respondent.

SAWYER J.

The petitioner is in custody upon a charge of violating the provisions of an ordinance of the city of Stockton, which reads as follows:

'Section 1. The establishment of public laundries and public wash-houses, where clothes and other articles are cleansed for hire, within those portions of said city, other than the portions hereinafter especially mentioned, being injurious and dangerous to public health and public safety, and prejudicial to the well-being and comfort of the community, it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to establish, maintain, carry on, or conduct, or cause to be established, maintained, carried on, or conducted, any public laundry or public wash-house, within any portion of the city of Stockton other than that portion of said city lying west of Tule street and south of Mormon channel.'

'Sec. 7. Any person violating any of the provisions of this ordinance shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding three months, or by both such fine and imprisonment.'

This ordinance is much broader in its scope than any heretofore considered by this court. It absolutely and unconditionally forbids the keeping of a laundry for washing clothes for hire, at any point within the inhabited, and even within the habitable, part of the city of Stockton; the remainder of the city being in the uninhabitable marshes and sloughs. The isolated position of the laundry, the character of the structure, and the perfection or imperfection of the appliances for rendering the operation safe and free from unwholesomeness and offensiveness to the senses are not factors to be considered under the ordinance. All must go, safe or unsafe, unhealthy or unhealthy, offensive or not offensive. It makes no difference what the character of the work is. No decision of any court in this state or elsewhere has been brought to the notice of the court holding an ordinance so sweeping and exclusive in its provisions to be valid, since or even before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the national constitution. In my judgment, the Case of Yick Wo, 9 P. 139, recently decided by the supreme court of California, cited the other day in Wo Lee's Case, ante, 471, does not reach it, either in its facts or the principles involved. This ordinance does not regulate,-- it extinguishes. It absolutely destroys, at its chosen location, an established ordinary business, harmless in itself, and indispensable to the comfort of civilized communities, and which cannot be so conveniently, advantageously, or profitably carried on elsewhere. On the other hand, it appears to the court that it is fully covered by the case of Yates v. Milwaukee, decided by the supreme court of the United States, 10 Wall. 505, which is authoritative. In that case the court says:

'The mere declaration by the city council of Milwaukee that a certain structure (a wharf) was an encroachment or obstruction did not make it so; nor could such declaration make it a nuisance unless it in fact had that character. It is a doctrine not to be tolerated in this country that a municipal corporation, without any general laws, either of the city or of the state, within which a given structure can be shown to be a nuisance, can, by its mere declaration that it is one, subject it to removal by any person supposed to be aggrieved, or even by the city itself. This would place every house, every business, and all the property of the city at the uncontrolled will of the temporary local authorities.'

If the rural city of Stockton, which, as usual in such cities, is in the greater part, not compactly built up, has authority to prohibit, within its inhabited limits, the washing of clothes for hire,-- not only a useful but an absolutely necessary occupation in any civilized community,-- it is because it has the power to declare that occupation and every other that may be followed by civilized man to be a public nuisance, without regard to the question whether it is in fact a nuisance or not. That is just what the supreme court of the United States says it cannot do. If the city of Stockton can prohibit the washing of clothes for hire within its inhabited and habitable limits, it can prohibit the washing of clothes by any citizen, for him or herself, anywhere within the city of Stockton. Washing for hire cannot make the operation a nuisance if it be not otherwise a nuisance. One may cook his dinner in such manner and under such conditions as to render the operation extremely dangerous, and constitute it a nuisance. Unfortunately, this necessary and ordinarily harmless act has sometimes been so performed as to be dangerous. Does it follow from this fact that all the inhabitants of the city of Stockton may, under the police power of the state, be lawfully prohibited from cooking their meals within the habitable limits of that city? It is not apparent why they may not be thus prohibited if this ordinance be valid under the power invoked, or any other power. Indeed, if this ordinance be valid, it is difficult to perceive what rights the people of California have which a municipal corporation is bound to respect. Of course, no one can in fact doubt the purpose of this ordinance. It means, 'The Chinese must go;' and, in order that they shall go, it is made to encroach upon one of the most sacred rights of citizens of the state of California,-- of the Caucasian race as well as upon the rights of the Mongolian. It should be remembered that the same clause in our constitution which protects the rights of every native citizen of the United States, born of Caucasian parents, equally protects the rights of the Chinese inhabitant who is lawfully in the country. When this barrier is broken down as to the Chinese, it is equally swept away as to every American citizen; and in this instance the ordinance reaches American citizens as well as Chinese residents.

This occupation is not a nuisance per se, nor one that is prima facie a nuisance,-- like a slaughter-house, a house for the manufacture or storage of gunpowder or dynamite, or many others that might be mentioned. It can only become a nuisance upon gross negligence or carelessness, or gross imperfections in the arrangements and appliances by means of which it is carried on. It is one of the most common, ordinary, and necessary employments, in which every one may engage, as of common right, upon terms of equality, not only as to this employment, but upon terms of equality with those who engage in any other ordinary, necessary, or useful occupation. Cleanliness is...