Hill v. Rae

• Decision Date: 02 June 1916
• Docket Number: No. 3870.,3870.
• Citation: 52 Mont. 378
• Parties: HILL v. RAE, STATE TREASURER.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

52 Mont. 378

HILL
v.
RAE, STATE TREASURER.

No. 3870.

Supreme Court of Montana.

June 2, 1916.

Appeal from District Court, Lewis and Clark County; R. Lee Word, Judge.

Suit by George H. Hill to enjoin William C. Rae, as State Treasurer of the State of Montana, from issuing, negotiating, or selling bonds pursuant to the Farm Loan Act. Judgment for defendant sustaining his demurrer and dismissing the suit, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Wight & Pew, of Helena, for appellant.

J. B. Poindexter, Atty. Gen., and W. H. Poorman and C. S. Wagner, Asst. Attys. Gen., for respondent.

SANNER, J.

The plaintiff, alleging his status as citizen and taxpayer of Lewis and Clark county, Mont., brought this suit to enjoin the defendant, as state treasurer, from issuing, negotiating, or selling certain bonds pursuant to the provisions of chapter 28, Laws of 1915, commonly called the Farm Loan Act. Claim to the relief sought is based upon the contention that the act is unconstitutional, and that, in connection with the proposed issue, negotiation, and sale of bonds thereunder, the defendant has expended, and, unless restrained, will expend, large sums of money belonging to the state. The defendant demurred, questioning the plaintiff's main contention, his right to maintain the suit, and the power of the court to hear it. The demurrer was sustained, not, however, on either of the technical grounds assigned, and the plaintiff, refusing to plead further, suffered judgment of dismissal to be entered. This appeal is from that judgment.

1. The defendant again insists that the court had no jurisdiction to hear this suit, and the plaintiff none to maintain it––the former because “an injunction cannot be granted * * * to prevent the execution of a public statute, by officers of the law, for the public benefit” (Rev. Codes, § 6121); the latter because it does not appear that the plaintiff will suffer any other or different injury than the taxpayers of the state in general. The assumption that the Farm Loan Act or its execution is for the public benefit begs the whole question; while the plaintiff's right as citizen and taxpayer to maintain such a suit as this is settled by a long line of decisions in this state, extending from Chumasero v. Potts, 2 Mont. 242, to Poe v. Sheridan County, 52 Mont. 666, 157 Pac. 185.

2. In its general scope and purpose the Farm Loan Act is assailed as obnoxious class legislation or a denial of the equal protection of the laws, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the national Constitution. Whether this is so or not depends on what the act designs to do, how it designs to do it, and what may be its effect upon those without as well as those within its scope. It may be analyzed as: (1) Creating a department of farm loans, for which the state treasurer is the commissioner or head, the several county treasurers are local representatives, the Attorney General is the legal adviser, the state examiner is the auditor, and the several county attorneys are, as such, required to render legal service; (2) imposing upon that department the duty to formulate and receive applications for loans on nonurban property, to require and pass upon proof of title, productive value, and other facts pertinent to the security offered, to formulate all mortgages given to secure such loans and be named as mortgagee therein, to formulate, issue, and offer for sale the bonds intended as evidence of such loans, to collect all payments as they become due, and to pay the bonds as they mature according to the scheme set forth; (3) prescribing the character of property which shall be accepted as security and how it shall be held as such, the general nature of the bonds, the rate of interest they shall bear, how they shall mature, where they shall be payable, the manner in which payments shall be taken up, and the means to be employed in caring for cases of default; (4) appropriating $25,000 out of the state treasury, of which $5,000 is to be used for administrative purposes, but to be recouped, so far as may be, by taking one–eighth of each payment required of the mortgagors, and $20,000 to serve as a guaranty fund to assure the prompt payment of maturing bonds, with interest, and to be recouped by the proceeds of foreclosures against defaulting debtors, or, if necessary, by assessments upon nondefaulting owners whose mortgages are security for the same series of bonds; and (5) exempting from recording fees and from taxation the mortgages given to secure such loans. In short, for reasons not declared in the act itself, it designs to assist agriculturists in securing loans on their real estate by and through the activities of a public department, aided to greater or less extent by public funds, and thus to confer upon that particular class certain privileges not as yet enjoyed by any other.

In the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States no distinction is to be observed between the effect of privileges conferred and the effect of burdens imposed. A privilege conferred upon one class is a discrimination in favor of that class and against all others not similarly endowed, as a burden upon one class is a discrimination against it and in favor of all others not similarily afflicted. But a discrimination is not necessarily unlawful merely because it is a discrimination. Indeed, the greater part of all legislation is discriminatory either in the extent to which it operates, the manner in which it applies, or the objects sought to be attained by it; and we are commanded by the highest judicial authority of the land “to be cautious about pressing the broad words of the Fourteenth Amendment to a drily logical extreme. Many laws which it would be vain to ask the court to overthrow could be shown, easily enough, to transgress a scholastic interpretation of one or another of the great guaranties in the Bill of Rights.” Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 31 Sup. Ct. 186, 55 L. Ed. 112, 32 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1062, Ann. Cas. 1912A, 487. A privilege, or a burden, is or is not a denial of the equal protection of the laws, according to whether the discrimination relates to a matter upon which classification is legally permissible, and, if so, whether the classification is a reasonable one.

That classification is permissible, because in the essential nature of things and in any due appreciation of equality in the operation of the law it is necessary in legislation for purposes of revenue, or in the application of the police power strictly socalled, or in legislation designed to increase the industries of the state, develop its resources, or add to its wealth and prosperity, is abundantly settled by judicial decision as well as by the course of legislation. To cover the entire field of this subject is impossible within any reasonable limits. Suffice it to say that by the Supreme Court of the United States, construing this very amendment, classifications have been sustained based upon differences in the amount of legacies, differences between corporations, differences between land dependent on its use for agricultural and other purposes, differences between fire insurance and other insurance, differences in the character of work, differences between hiring persons to labor in the state and hiring persons to labor out of the state, differences between sugar refineries based entirely on whether the sugar refined was purchased or produced by the refiner, as well as various other differences too numerous to mention. Magoun v. Illinois T. & S. Bank, 170 U. S. 283, 18 Sup. Ct. 594, 42 L. Ed. 1037;Clark v. Kansas City, 176 U. S. 114, 20 Sup. Ct. 284, 44 L. Ed. 392;Gundling v. Chicago, 177 U. S. 183, 20 Sup. Ct. 633, 44 L. Ed. 725;Petit v. Minnesota, 177 U. S. 164, 20 Sup. Ct. 666, 44 L. Ed. 716;Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270, 21 Sup. Ct. 128, 45 L. Ed. 186;American Sugar Refining Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S. 89, 21 Sup. Ct. 43, 45 L. Ed. 102; and cases cited in these decisions.

In Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27, 5 Sup. Ct. 357, 28 L. Ed. 923, Mr. Justice Field, speaking for the court, said:

“Neither the amendment, broad and comprehensive as...