Kilgore v. Magee

• Decision Date: 19 November 1877
• Citation: 85 Pa. 401
• Parties: Kilgore <I>versus</I> Magee <I>et al.</I> The Central Board of Education of Pittsburgh <I>versus</I> Phelps.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

85 Pa. 401

Kilgore versus Magee et al.

The Central Board of Education of Pittsburgh versus Phelps.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

November 8, 1877.

November 19, 1877.

November 8th 1877.

Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON, WOODWARD and STERRETT, JJ.

Appeals from the Court of Common Pleas, No. 2, of Allegheny county: Of October and November Term 1877, Nos. 253 and 254.

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Jeremiah S. Black, Slagle & Wiley, A. M. Brown and Thomas M. Marshall, for appellants.—If the act is put in operation it will diminish the rights and emoluments of Kilgore, who was elected to the office of city treasurer in February 1877, prior to the alleged passage of the act; it will impose an enormous burden upon the tax-payers of the city, to be levied and collected directly for the emolument of the collector appointed, or to be paid to him out of the city treasury in cases where he may fail to collect his royalty; it will also impose general taxation upon property within the city of Pittsburgh for the payment of the separate and local debts of the various sub-school districts of the respective wards of the city; which debts are numerous, large and unequal in amounts, and are, by existing laws, properly payable by said sub-school districts for whose benefit and by whose authority, respectively, they were created; it will deprive the county of Allegheny of costs upon proceedings on city tax liens, and thereby impose onerous burdens upon the treasury of the county; it will cause large expenditures from both the city and county treasuries for the maintenance of the system or scheme created by the act, and it will establish a new and important municipal office, non-elective by the people, and confer upon the incumbent important duties and excessive emoluments, to the injury and oppression of the citizens; and will further give said collector of delinquent taxes authority to collect money which belongs to the Central Board of Education and is necessary for the maintenance of the public schools and the payment of the obligations of the board.

A private citizen may maintain a bill such as that upon which this is founded to test the validity of the law: Sharpless v. Mayor, 9 Harris 147; Moers v. Reading, Id. 188; Page v. Allen, 8 P. F. Smith 338; Kerr v. Trego, 11 Wright 292; Mott v. Pennsylvania Railroad, 6 Casey 9; Robb v. Barlow, 8 P. F. Smith 338; Washington Avenue, 19 Id. 352; Wheeler v. Philadelphia, 27 Id. 338; Wells v. Bain, 25 Id. 39-56.

If a private citizen can invoke the power of a court of equity to restrain the action of a public officer, or of a public municipal corporation itself, certainly a public corporation can demand its aid to prevent an interference with the performance of the duties for which it was created. In many of the states and in most of the courts of last resort it has been decided that the courts have not only the power but it is their duty to inquire into and determine whether the proceedings of the legislature have been in conformity with the provisions of the constitution, where questions of public or private rights are the subjects of litigation: Cooley Const. Lim., 3d ed., 78, 139 and 159; Supervisors v. Heenan, 2 Min. 330; State v. Platt, 2 S. C. N. S. 150; State v. Johnson, 26 Ark. 281; Jones v. Hutchinson 43 Ala. 722; Solomon v. Cartersville, 41 Ga. 157; People v. Allen, 42 N. Y. 378; Opinion of Justices, 35 N. H. 579; Spangler v. Jacoby, 14 Ill. 297; Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Wren, 43 Id. 77; People v. DeWolfe, 62 Id. 253; Turley v. County of Logan, 17 Id. 151; Prescott v. I. & M. Canal Co., 19 Id. 324; Ryan v. Lynch, 68 Id. 160; Berry v. Railroad Co., 41 Md. 446; Gardner v. The Collector, 6 Wall. 511; Ottawa v. Perkins, S. C. of U. S., Pittsburgh, Leg. J. May 23d 1877; Steckert v. East Saginaw, 22 Mich. 104; Oliver v. Washington Mills, 11 Allen 268; Legg v. Mayor of Annapolis, 16 Am. Law Reg. 25.

A valid statute can only be passed in the manner prescribed by the constitution, and when the provisions of that instrument, in regard to the manner of enacting laws, are disregarded in respect to a particular act, it will be declared a nullity, though having the forms of authenticity. And whenever a question arises in a court of law as to the existence of a statute, or as to the time when it took effect, or as to its precise terms, the judges who are called upon to decide such questions, have a right to resort to any source of information which in its nature is capable of conveying to the judicial mind a clear and satisfactory answer to such question, the best and most satisfactory evidence in all cases being required: Gardner v. The Collector, 6 Wall. 499; Legg v. Mayor, &c., of Annapolis, supra. Parol evidence will be received to show that the legislature exceeded its powers and disregarded constitutional limitations: Jones v. Jones, 2 Jones 350; Cronise v. Cronise, 4 P. F. Smith 262; Miles v. Stevens, 3 Barr 41; Southwark Bank v. The Commonwealth, 2 Casey 446; DeChastellux v. Fairchild, 3 Harris 18; Dorsey's Appeal, 22 P. F. Smith 192.

By the Act of May 23d 1874, the cities of the state were divided into three classes: 1. Those containing more than three hundred thousand inhabitants; 2. Those containing less than three hundred thousand and more than one hundred thousand; and 3. Those containing less than one hundred thousand and more than ten thousand. In fact, Philadelphia is the only city with a population greater than three hundred thousand, and Pittsburgh the only one with less than three hundred thousand and over one hundred thousand. To separate these two cities from all others in the state and put them apart, each by itself, and to call that classification, is a curious use of language. When you separate persons or things, and deal with each by itself, you perform a process the very opposite to classifying, which consists in arranging a number of things together in accordance with some quality or accident which they all have in common. Class is a noun of multitude, and you cannot properly call a city a class of cities, for the same reason that you cannot speak of one ox as a drove, or one wolf as a pack. When the legislature says classification, it means segregation. It was intended to individualize these two cities — not to arrange them in classes or put them together with one another. In that same act, and other acts subsequently passed, the phrase "all cities of the first class" signifies precisely the same thing as Philadelphia, and the words "all cities of the second class" furnish a perfect synonym for Pittsburgh. This law, therefore, applies solely and especially to Pittsburgh, and operates upon Pittsburgh as exclusively as if the framers of it had said so without circumlocution. It is not in form a local law for one particular place; it professes on its face to be made for all cities of the second class; but all cities of the second class mean Pittsburgh. It might as well have been described by the words "all cities situated between the rivers Monongahela and Allegheny, at the point of their junction with the Ohio."

But this interpretation, which we think so clear, has been pronounced not sound, but specious, by this court, in Wheeler v. Philadelphia, 27 P. F. Smith 338. The opinion of the court seems to be predicated upon the case of Walker v. Cincinnati, 11 Ohio 14, and no other precedent or authority for the ruling is cited. The case cited is not at all like this, nor could the same question arise in an Ohio court upon an Ohio statute, for that state has not, and never had, any provision in her constitution similar to the one in ours, which is violated by the act under consideration. The question involved is of such importance, affecting, as it does, the interests of great communities who supposed they had the protection of those wise provisions of the constitution providing against special legislation, and to our minds the Act of Assembly is such a manifest attempt to evade the constitution and to pass a local law under the color and false appearance of a general enactment, that we feel justified in asking this court to reconsider their judgment, as given in Wheeler v. Philadelphia, supra, believing that more careful consideration will lead to a different conclusion as to the validity of the Act of 1874, and, consequently, as to the validity of the legislation now in question.

George P. Hamilton, George Shiras, Jr., M. W. Acheson, and D. T. Watson, for appellees.—We cannot try the constitutionality of a legislative act by the motives and designs of the law-makers, however plainly expressed. If the act itself is within the scope of their authority, it must stand; and we are bound to make it stand, if it will, upon any intendment. It is its effect, not its purpose, which must determine its validity. Nothing but a clear violation of the constitution, a clear usurpation of power prohibited, will justify the judicial department in pronouncing an act of the legislative department unconstitutional and void: Speer v. School Directors, &c., of Borough of Blairsville, 14 Wright 150; Sharpless v. The Mayor, 9 Harris 164; Hilbish et al. v. Catherman, 14 P. F. Smith 154; Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Riblet, 16 Id. 164-169.

The legislature, under constitutional limits, is the supreme lawmaker of the state. Within the constitution it is supreme, and when a law, confessedly within the power of the legislature to make, comes down to the people, authenticated by the presiding officers of the respective houses, approved by the governor, and certified and declared by the secretary of state to be the law of the state, no citizen, we contend, in a private...