Coloradocommission v. Continental Air Lines, Inc Green v. Continental Air Lines, Inc

• Decision Date: 22 April 1963
• Docket Number: Nos. 146 and 492,ANTI-DISCRIMINATION,s. 146 and 492
• Citation: 83 S.Ct. 1022,372 U.S. 714,10 L.Ed.2d 84
• Parties: The COLORADOCOMMISSION et al., Petitioners, v. CONTINENTAL AIR LINES, INC. Marlon D. GREEN, Petitioner, v. CONTINENTAL AIR LINES, INC
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

372 U.S. 714

83 S.Ct. 1022

10 L.Ed.2d 84

The COLORADO ANTI-DISCRIMINATION COMMISSION et al., Petitioners,

v CONTINENTAL AIR LINES, INC.

Marlon D. GREEN, Petitioner,

v. CONTINENTAL AIR LINES, INC.

Nos. 146 and 492.

Argued March 28, 1963.

Decided April 22, 1963.

[Syllabus intentionally omitted] T. Raber Taylor and Floyd B. Engeman, Denver, Colo., for petitioners.

Howard H. Jewel, Asst. Atty. Gen., for State of California, as amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.

Shirley A. Siegel, New York City, for State of New York, as amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.

Patrick M. Westfeldt, Denver, Colo., for respondent.

[Amicus Curiae from pages 715-716 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner Marlon D. Green, a Negro, applied for a job as a pilot with respondent Continental Air Lines, Inc., an interstate air carrier. His application was submitted at Continental's headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and was later considered and rejected there. Green then made complaint to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission that Continental had refused to hire him because he was a Negro. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act of 1957 provides that it is an unfair employment practice for an employer 'to refuse to hire, to discharge, to promote or demote, or to discriminate in matters of compensation against, any person otherwise qualified, because of race, creed, color, national origin or ancestry.'¹ After investigation and efforts at conciliation, the Commission held extensive hearings and found as a fact 'that the only reason that the Complainant was not selected for the training school was because of his race.'² The Commission ordered Continental to cease and desist from such discriminatory practices and to 'give to the Complainant the first opportunity to enroll in its training school in its next course * * *.' On review the District Court in and for the City and County of Executive Orders. The Supreme Court Denver set aside the Commission's findings and dismissed Green's complaint. It held that the Anti-Discrimination Act could not 'constitutionally be extended to cover the hiring of flight crew personnel of an interstate air carrier' because it would impose an undue burden upon commerce in violation of Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, of the United States Constitution, which gives Congress power 'To regulate Commerce * * * among the several States * * *,' and because the field of law concerning racial discrimination in the interstate operation of carriers is preempted by the Railway Labor Act,³ the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938,⁴ and Federal Executive Orders. The Supreme Court of Colorado affirmed the judgment of dismissal but discussed only the question of whether the Act as applied placed an undue burden on commerce, concluding that it did. 149 Colo. 259, 368 P.2d 970 (1962). The obvious importance of even partial invalidation of a state law designed to prevent the discriminatory denial of job opportunities prompted us to grant certiorari. 371 U.S. 809, 83 S.Ct. 26, 9 L.Ed.2d 52 (1962).

First. Continental argues that the State Supreme Court decision rested on an independent and adequate nonfederal ground. For that argument, it relies on the trial court's statement 'that the Colorado legislature was not attempting to legislate concerning problems involving interstate commerce' and the statement of the Supreme Court of Colorado that:

'The only question resolved was that of jurisdiction. The trial court determined that the act was inapplicable to employees of those engaged in interstate commerce, and the judgment was based exclusively on that ground.' 149 Colo., at 265, 368 P.2d, at 973.

We reject this contention. The trial court itself did not rest on this ground. Instead, it clearly and unequivocally stated that the case presented a constitutional question of whether the Act could legally be applied to interstate operations. Nor did the Supreme Court of Colorado rely on this ground. It interpreted the trial court's opinion as having held that the Act was invalid insofar as it regulated interstate air carriers. The Court further stated that the question was whether the Act could be applied to interstate carriers, which it answered by concluding that under the Federal Constitution the State Legislature had no power to deal with such matters. We are satisfied that the courts below rested their judgments on their interpretation of the United States Constitution and the preemptive effect of federal statutes and Executive Orders.

Second. In holding that the Colorado statute imposed an undue burden on commerce, the State Supreme Court relied on the principle, first stated in Cooley v. Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia, 12 How. 299, 13 L.Ed. 996, that States have no power to act in those areas of interstate commerce which by their nature require uniformity of regulation, even though Congress has not legislated on the subject.⁵ The State Court read two prior decisions of this Court, Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U.S. 485, 24 L.Ed. 547 (1878), and Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373, 66 S.Ct. 1050, 90 L.Ed. 1317 (1946), as having established that the field of racial discrimination by an interstate carrier must be free from diverse state regulation and governed uniformly, if at all, by Congress. We do not believe those cases stated so encompassing a rule. The line separating the powers of a State from the exclusive power of Congress is not always distinctly marked; courts must examine closely the facts of each case to determine whether the dangers and hardships of diverse regulation justify foreclosing a State from the exercise of its traditional powers. This was emphatically pointed out in Hall v. DeCuir, supra, the very case upon which Continental chiefly relies:

'Judges not unfrequently differ in their reasons for a decision in which they concur. Under such circumstances it would be a useless task to undertake to fix an arbitrary rule by which the line must in all cases be located. It is far better to leave a matter of such delicacy to be settled in each case upon a view of the particular rights involved.' 95 U.S., at 488, 24 L.Ed. 547.

The circumstances in Hall v. DeCuir were that a Louisiana law forbidding carriers to discriminate on account of race or color had been applied so as to hold a steamboat owner liable for damages for assigning a colored passenger to one cabin rather than another. This was held to violate the Commerce Clause, but only after a careful analysis of the effects of the law on that carrier and its passengers. Among other things, the Court pointed out that if each of the 10 States bordering the Mississippi River were free to regulate the carrier and to provide for its own passengers and freight, the resulting confusion would produce great inconvenience and unnecessary hardships. The Court concluded that:

'Commerce cannot flourish in the midst of such embarrassments. No carrier of passengers can conduct his business with satisfaction to himself or comfort to those employing him, if on one side of a State line his passengers, both white and colored, must be permitted to occupy the same cabin, and on the other be kept separate. Uniformity in the regulations by which he is to be governed from one end to the other of his route is a necessity in his business * * *.' 95 U.S., at 489, 24 L.Ed. 547.

After the same kind of analysis, the Court in Morgan v. Virginia, supra, held that a Virginia law requiring segregation of motor carrier passengers, including those on interstate journeys, infringed the Commerce Clause because uniform regulation was essential. The Court emphasized the restriction on the passengers' freedom to choose accommodations and the inconvenience of constantly requiring passengers to shift seats. As in Hall v. DeCuir, the Court explicitly recognized the absence of any one, sure test for deciding these burden-on-commerce cases. It concluded, however, that the circumstances before it showed that there would be a practical interference with carrier transportation if diverse state laws were permitted to stand. The importance of a particularized inquiry into the existence of a burden on commerce is again illustrated by Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan, 333 U.S. 28, 68 S.Ct. 358, 92 L.Ed. 455 (1948), where the Court had before it a state statute requiring common carriers to serve all people alike regardless of color. The Court upheld the law as applied to steamships transporting patrons between Michigan and Canada. Following the rule that each case must be adjudged on its particular facts, the Court concluded that neither Hall nor Morgan was 'comparable in its facts, whether in the degree of localization of the commerce involved; in the attenuating effects, if any, upon the commerce * * *; or in any actual probability of conflicting regulations by different sovereignties.' 333 U.S., at 39, 68 S.Ct. at 364.

We are not convinced that commerce will be unduly burdened if Continental is required by Colorado to refrain from racial discrimination in its hiring of pilots in that State. Not only is the hiring within a State of an employee, even for an interstate job, a much more localized matter than the transporting of passengers from State to State⁶ but more significantly the threat of diverse and conflicting regulation of hiring practices is virtually nonexistent. In Hall and in Morgan the Court assumed the validity both of state laws requiring segregation and of state laws forbidding segregation. Were there a possibility that a pilot hired in Colorado could be barred solely because of his color from serving a carrier in another State, then this case might well be controlled by our prior holdings. But under our more recent decisions⁷ any state or federal law requiring applicants for any job to be turned away because of their color would be invalid under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the ...