Hall v. Decuir

• Citation: 95 U.S. 485,24 L.Ed. 547
• Parties: HALL v. DECUIR
• Decision Date: 01 October 1877
• Court: United States Supreme Court

95 U.S. 485

24 L.Ed. 547

HALL v. DECUIR.

October Term, 1877.

ERROR to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana.

By the thirteenth article of the Constitution of Louisiana it is provided that 'all persons shall enjoy equal rights and privileges upon any conveyance of a public character.' By an act of the General Assembly, entitled 'An Act to enforce the thirteenth article of the Constitution of this State, and to regulate the licenses mentioned in said thirteenth article,' approved Feb. 23, 1869, it was enacted as follows:——

'SECTION 1. All persons engaged within this State, in the business of common carriers of passengers, shall have the right to refuse to admit any person to their railroad cars, street cars, steamboats, or other water-crafts, stage-coaches, omnibuses, or other vehicles, or to expel any person therefrom after admission, when such person shall, on demand, refuse or neglect to pay the customary fare, or when such person shall be of infamous character, or shall be guilty, after admission to the conveyance of the carrier, of gross, vulgar, or disorderly conduct, or who shall commit any act tending to injure the business of the carrier, prescribed for the management of his business, after such rules and regulations shall have been made known: Provided, said rules and regulations make no discrimination on account of race or color; and shall have the right to refuse any person admission to such conveyance where there is not room or suitable accommodations; and, except in cases above enumerated, all persons engaged in the business of common carriers of passengers are forbidden to refuse admission to their conveyance, or to expel therefrom any person whomsoever.'

'SECT. 4. For a violation of any of the provisions of the first and second sections of this act, the party injured shall have a right of action to recover any damage, exemplary as well as actual, which he may sustain, before any court of competent jurisdiction.' Acts of 1869, p. 37; Rev. Stat. 1870, p. 93.

Benson, the defendant below, was the master and owner of the 'Governor Allen,' a steamboat enrolled and licensed under the laws of the United States for the coasting trade, and plying as a regular packet for the transportation of freight and passengers between New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana, and Vicksburg, in the State of Mississippi, touching at the intermediate landings both within and without Louisiana, as occasion required. The defendant in error, plaintiff below, a person of color, took passage upon the boat, on her trip up the river from New Orleans, for Hermitage, a landing-place within Louisiana, and being refused accommodations, on account of her color, in the cabin specially set apart for white persons, brought this action in the Eighth District Court for the Parish of New Orleans, under the provisions of the act above recited, to recover damages for her mental and physical suffering on that account. Benson, by way of defence, insisted, among other things, that the statute was inoperative and void as to him, in respect to the matter complained of, because, as to his business, it was an attempt to 'regulate commerce among the States,' and, therefore, in conflict with art. 1, sect. 8, par. 3, of the Constitution of the United States. The District Court of the parish held that the statute made it imperative upon Benson to admit Mrs. DeCuir to the privileges of the cabin for white persons, and that it was not a regulation of commerce among the States, and, therefore, not void. After trial, judgment was given against Benson for $1,000; from which he appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, where the rulings of the District Court were sustained.

This decision of the Supreme Court is here for re-examination under sect. 709 of the Revised Statutes.

Benson having died, Hall, his administratrix, was substituted in this court.

Mr. R.H. Marr for the plaintiff in error.

Mr. E.K. Washington, contra.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the court.

For the purposes of this case, we must treat the act of Louisiana of Feb. 23, 1869, as requiring those engaged in inter-state commerce to give all persons travelling in that State, upon the public conveyances employed in such business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the conveyance, without distinction or discrimination on account of race or color. Such was the construction given to that act in the courts below, and it is conclusive upon us as the construction of a State law by the State courts. It is with this provision of the statute alone that we have to deal. We have nothing whatever to do with it as a regulation of internal commerce, or as affecting any thing else than commerce among the States.

There can be no doubt but that exclusive power has been conferred upon Congress in respect to the regulation of commerce among the several States. The difficulty has never been as to the existence of this power, but as to what is to be deemed an encroachment upon it; for, as has been often said, 'legislation may in a great variety of ways affect commerce and persons engaged in it without constituting a regulation of it within the meaning of the Constitution.' Sherlock v. Alling, 93 U. S. 103; State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, 15 Wall. 284. Thus, in Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, it was decided that a State might regulate the charges of public warehouses and in Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Co. v. Iowa, id. 155, of railroads situate entirely within the State, even though those engaged in commerce among the States might sometimes use the warehouses or the railroads in the prosecution of their business. So, too, it has been held that States may authorize the construction of dams and bridges across navigable streams situate entirely within their respective jurisdictions. Willson v. Blackbird Creek Marsh Co., 2 Pet. 245; Pound v. Turck, supra, p. 459; Gilman v. Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713. The same is true of turnpikes and ferries. By such statutes the States regulate, as a matter of domestic concern, the instruments of commerce situated wholly within their own jurisdictions, and over which they have exclusive governmental control, except when employed in foreign or inter-state commerce. As they can only be used in the State, their regulation for all purposes may properly be assumed by the State, until Congress acts in reference to their foreign or inter-state relations. When Congress does act, the State laws are superseded only to the extent that they affect commerce outside the State as it comes within the State. It has also been held that health and inspection laws may be passed by the States, Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; and that Congress may permit the States to regulate pilots and pilotage until it shall itself legislate upon the subject, Cooley v. Board of Wardens, &c., 12 How. 299. The line which separates the powers of the States from this exclusive power of Congress is not always distinctly marked, and oftentimes it is not easy to determine on which side a particular case belongs. 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.

But we think it may safely be said that State legislation which seeks to impose a direct burden upon inter-state commerce, or to interfere directly with its freedom, does encroach upon the exclusive power of Congress. The statute now under consideration, in our opinion, occupies that position. It does not act upon the business through the local instruments to be employed after coming within the State, but directly upon the business as it comes into the State from without or goes out from within. While it purports only to control the carrier when engaged within the State, it must necessarily influence his conduct to some extent in the management of his business throughout his entire voyage. His disposition of passengers taken up and put down within the State, or taken up within to be carried without, cannot but affect in a greater or less degree those taken up without and brought within, and sometimes those taken up and put down without. A passenger in the cabin set apart for the use of whites without the State must, when the boat comes within, share the accommodations of that cabin with such colored persons as may come on board afterwards, if the law is enforced.

It was to meet just such a case that the commercial clause in the Constitution was adopted. The river Mississippi passes through or along the borders of ten different States, and its tributaries reach many more. The commerce upon these waters is immense, and its regulation clearly a matter of annational concern. If each State was at liberty to regulate the conduct of carriers while within its jurisdiction, the confusion likely to follow could not but be productive of great inconvenience and unnecessary hardship. Each State could provide for its own passengers and regulate the transportation of its own freight, regardless of the interests of others. Nay more, it could prescribe rules by which the carrier must be governed within the State in respect to passengers and property brought from without. On one side of the river or its tributaries he might be required to observe one set of rules, and on the other another. 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...