City of St. Louis v. McCoy

• Decision Date: 31 March 1853
• Parties: CITY OF ST. LOUIS, Respondent, v. MCCOY, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

18 Mo. 238

CITY OF ST. LOUIS, Respondent,

v.MCCOY, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1853.

1. The ordinance of the city of St. Louis prescribing that boats coming from below Memphis, having had on board, at any time during the voyage, more than a specified number of passengers, should remain in quarantine not less than forty-eight hours nor more than twenty days, is not repugnant to that clause in the constitution of the United States which reserves to congress the exclusive right to regulate commerce.

Appeal from St. Louis Criminal Court.

McCoy was taken before the recorder of the city of St. Louis and fined five hundred dollars, for a violation of a city ordinance establishing quarantine regulations. He appealed to the Criminal Court, where the action of the recorder was affirmed, and he appealed to this court. The violation of the ordinance was admitted, but the defendant, denied the power of the city to make such an ordinance, contending that it was repugnant to the constitution of the United States and void. The ordinance is as follows:

[No. 2775.]

An ordinance amendatory of ordinance number twenty-six hundred and seventy-one, entitled “An ordinance amendatory of ordinance number twenty-four hundred and seventeen, entitled ‘An ordinance establishing a permanent quarantine for the city of St. Louis, and the rules and regulations for conducting and enforcing the same.”

Be it ordained by the city council of the city of St. Louis: Section 1. The first section of the ordinance to which this is amendatory is hereby repealed, and the following shall stand as the first section of said ordinance. “Sec. 1. Any steamboat coming from New Orleans, or any point below the city of Memphis, having on board, on her arrival within the quarantine limits, or having had on board at any time during her voyage, a greater number of deck or steerage passengers than twenty for each hundred tons register of such steamboat, between the first of April and first of November, or a greater number than thirty per hundred tons register at any other season of the year, shall be detained at the quarantine station, for the purpose of cleansing and purification, not less than forty-eight hours, nor more than twenty days, at the discretion of the quarantine officer and the board of health: provided, however, it shall be in the power of the quarantine officer to discriminate in favor of those boats which are constructed without cabins or with only a few rooms on the upper deck, with a special view to the accommodation of a large number of steerage passengers: and in such cases, if the room thus intended for deck passengers is not occupied with freight, but is reserved for their use exclusive, fifty per cent. more passengers may be allowed than is permitted to boats not thus constructed.”

Sec. 2. A third section shall be added to said ordinance, as follows: “Sec. 3. The master of any boat landing part of his deck passengers within the quarantine limits, or at any point below, to bring his number within the regulation, and thus getting his boat by the quarantine without detention, shall, on proof of the fact before the recorder, be fined in a sum not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars, and the boat may, on the order of the board of health be ford to return to the quarantine station and remain any length of time, not exceeding twenty days. And when a boat coming from the Ohio river or elsewhere shall take passengers from a New Orleans boat for the purpose of enabling such boat to pass the quarantine, or where cholera, ship fever, small-pox or any contagious or communicable disease may prevail amongst the passengers so taken from a southern boat, such Ohio river boat or other boat bringing said passengers, shall be detained at the quarantine station any number of days not exceeding twenty, at the pleasure of the board of health, and the master shall be liable to a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars.”

Approved January 14, 1852.

The eighth section of an ordinance establishing a permanent quarantine for the city, provided that “the master or person in charge of any steamboat or vessel coming from the south, who shall disregard quarantine regulations, or disobey the orders of the quarantine officer, shall be ected to a penalty of five hundred dollars.”

Blennerhassett & Shreve, for appellant.

There is no doubt that a state, in the exercise of sovereignty, possesses the power to pass quarantine laws and may delegate this power to a municipal corporation within its limits. But that is not the question here. Here is the assertion of a right to...