Allen B. Dumont Laboratories v. Carroll, Civ. A. No. 9359.

• Decision Date: 26 October 1949
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 9359.
• Parties: ALLEN B. DUMONT LABORATORIES, Inc. et al. v. CARROLL et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

86 F. Supp. 813

ALLEN B. DUMONT LABORATORIES, Inc. et al. v. CARROLL et al.

Civ. A. No. 9359.

United States District Court E. D. Pennsylvania.

October 26, 1949.

William A. Schnader, Earl G. Harrison, Philadelphia, Pa., attorneys for plaintiffs.

T. McKeen Chidsey, Atty. General of Pa., Abraham J. Levy, Special Deputy Atty. General of Pa., Harry F. Stambaugh, Special Counsel, Pa. Dept. of Justice, Harrisburgh, Pa., attorneys for defendants.

KIRKPATRICK, Chief Judge.

This is a civil action for a declaratory judgment brought by five corporations owned by or affiliated with national television networks and operating federally licensed television stations in Pennsylvania. The Court is asked to determine the validity of a regulation of the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors which requires that all motion picture film intended to be broadcast by television in Pennsylvania be submitted to the Board for censorship purposes.

The plaintiffs contend that the Regulation is invalid because it is in conflict with federal legislation in a field which Congress has fully occupied, thus excluding all regulation by the States. Alternatively, they assert that, even if Congress had not fully occupied the field, the Regulation imposes an undue burden upon interstate commerce and consequently is invalidated by the Commerce Clause itself, Const. art. 1, § 8, cl. 3.

The Commerce Clause effects, by its own force, an apportionment of the power to regulate interstate commerce, taking from the states the power to enact laws which unduly burden commerce and leaving in them a residuum of power to make laws which may affect but not unduly burden commerce. In the absence of congressional action, the courts determine whether a law of the state affecting commerce transgresses the limitations imposed by the Commerce Clause, and in a long series of decisions the Supreme Court has evolved principles which determine the boundaries of state power and has modified and recast them as changing conditions presented new problems.

However, the Commerce Clause confers upon Congress full power to regulate commerce, and the extent to which Congress will exercise the power so conferred is a matter lying entirely within its discretion. Thus, in any case in which Congress has acted there is superimposed upon the basic principles declared by the courts in cases arising directly under the Commerce Clause the question of how far Congress in taking the subject in hand intended to exclude regulation by the states. "Congress has undoubted power to redefine the distribution of power over interstate commerce. It may either permit the states to regulate the commerce in a manner which would otherwise not be permissible * * * or exclude state regulation even of matters of peculiarly local concern which nevertheless affect interstate commerce." Southern Pacific Co. v. State of Arizona ex rel. Sullivan, 325 U.S. 761, 769, 65 S.Ct. 1515, 1520, 89 L.Ed. 1915. There is no room to argue that this statement means less than it says. Congress may, therefore, expressly prohibit all state legislation which affects interstate commerce in any given field even though such legislation would not unduly burden commerce and would have been entirely within the residuum of power left to the state by the Commerce Clause. It may also impliedly prohibit all state legislation in a field of interstate commerce, and it does so when it completely occupies any given field.

In the field of communication by television, Congress has acted. The Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., establishes a comprehensive scheme for the regulation on a national scale of virtually all communication facilities, and television is unquestionably within its scope. We are, therefore, not immediately concerned with the question whether censorship of film used in television is a power which the Commerce Clause itself, unaided by federal legislation, left the state free to exercise.

There are, of course, many instances of congressional regulation which Congress, in the exercise of its discretion, intended to be less than complete. "* * * it often happens that there is only a partial exercise of that power by the federal government. In such cases the state may legislate freely upon those phases of the commerce...