Dunahoo v. Huber
| Decision Date | 17 March 1919 |
| Docket Number | No. 31536.,31536. |
| Citation | 185 Iowa 753,171 N.W. 123 |
| Parties | DUNAHOO v. HUBER. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Woodbury County; George Jepson, Judge.
A warrant was duly issued and placed in the hands of the defendant as constable, who placed Dunahoo under arrest. Thereupon he sued out a writ of habeas corpus, and on hearing was discharged. Defendant appeals. Affirmed.
L. H. Salinger, of Carroll, for appellee.
The plaintiff, who was arrested for receiving a tip while engaged as an employé in a barber shop, was discharged on hearing in habeas corpus proceeding. The prosecution was for violation of section 5028u of the Supplemental Supplement of 1915:
“Every employé of any hotel, restaurant, barber shop, or other public place, and every employé of any person, firm, partnership, or corporation, or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers in this state, who shall accept or solicit any gratuity, tip, or other thing of value or of valuable consideration, from any guest or patron, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than five dollars, or more than twenty-five dollars, or be imprisoned in the county jail for a period not exceeding thirty days.”
The constitutionality of this statute is challenged on several grounds, among them that it invades rights to property and its protection and is inimical to section 6 of article 1 of the Constitution of Iowa, which declares that “all laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens,” and that portion of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which prohibits a state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws.” Only these need be considered.
[1][2] It will be observed from an analysis of the statute “that only the employé of a hotel, restaurant, or barber shop is prohibited from accepting a tip or gratuity. The proprietor of the hotel, restaurant, or barber shop is not interfered with or prohibited from accepting such gift. While an employé of a person engaged in the transportation of passengers may not receive any gratuity or gift, such person may under like circumstances accept favors of this kind. An employé is defined by Webster as “one employed by another; a clerk or workman in the service of an employer, usually distinguished from an official or officer or one employed in a position of some authority;” and a like definition is found in the Century Dictionary. See Johnston v. Barrills, 27 Or. 251, 41 Pac. 656, 50 Am. St. Rep. 717. Under this act the proprietor of a hotel, restaurant, or barber shop, even though engaged in the same employment, would be perfectly free to accept tips or gratuities or anything of value while the employé working at his side and engaged in the same occupation might be prosecuted for having committed a crime should he do the same thing. That the proprietor would not be likely to be made the recipient of such a so-called courtesy does not answer the criticism. The present case illustrates the vice of this statute. There were two chairs in the barber shop. The employer, one Murphy, worked at one of these, and defendant at the other. Murphy undertook to pay the defendant $15 per week and 60 per cent. of what he received for his work above said sum, and defendant was to have, according to the custom of the trade, such tips and gratuities as might be handed him. A customer gave him 25 cents in excess of the charges, and he was prosecuted. Had the same amount been handed to Murphy, his employer, no offense could have been charged. Manifestly there is no reason for such discrimination. For the purpose of efficient and beneficial legislation, it is often necessary to divide the subjects upon which it operates into classes. Indeed, the greater part of all legislation is of this character, but the authorities agree that the distinction in dividing must not be arbitrary, and must be based on differences which are apparent and reasonable. The classification should be based upon some apparent natural reason, some reason suggested by necessity, such as difference in situation and circumstances of the subjects, placed in the one class or the other as suggest the necessity or propriety of discrimination with respect to them.
Classifying the difference beween the situations of the persons of the respective classes as employers and employés is not alone sufficient. Reference must also be had to the subject-matter of the legislation affecting the respective classes created. There can be no controversy but that employers and employés may be divided into separate classes for the purpose of legislation on many subjects, but where the evil to be remedied relates to members of one class quite as well as to another and is quite as obnoxious to good morals, such a classification would be unwarranted. The section of the Constitution quoted exacts that the General Assembly shall not grant to any class of citizens, privileges and immunities which upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens, and this necessarily includes any class in which the citizens may be divided. That the difference between employers and employés is such as to warrant their separate classification for some purposes would not justify this legislation if in fact privileges and immunities are accorded to the one class, which on the same terms do not equally belong to the other class. We are unable to discover any reasonable ground for saying that employers as a class may accept tips or gratuities, and employés may not, especially in those vocations where they are engaged in the same identical work.
Tipping may be an evil, but this does not justify discrimination between classes in order to put it down. In so far as the public is concerned, the...
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State v. Mitchell
......, 214 (1963) ("It is often said a reasonable classification is one which includes all who are similarly situated, and none who are not."); Dunahooen said a reasonable classification is one which includes all who are similarly situated, and none who are not."); Dunahoo v. Huber......
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Becker v. Board of Ed. of Benton County
......Rash, 380 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 775, 13 L.Ed.2d 675. This court has adopted and consistently applied the same general rule. Dunahoo v. Huber, 185 Iowa 753, 171 N.W. 123; State ex rel. Welsh v. Darling, 216 Iowa 553, 246 N.W. 390, 88 A.L.R. 218; Dickinson v. Porter, 240 Iowa 393, ......