262 F. 582 | E.D. Mo. | 1919
The above entitled and numbered suit arose out of the consolidation, for the purpose of hearing and decision, of five like suits, brought, respectively, by the Independent Breweries Company, St. Louis Brewing Association, Griesedieck Bros. Brewery Company, Schorr-Kolk-Schneider Brewing Company, and Louis Obert Brewing Company, against defendants, the collector of internal revenue for the First district of the state of Missouri, and the United States attorney for the Eastern district of the state of Missouri, to restrain and enjoin said defendants from enforcing or attempting to enforce against complainants certain provisions of an act of Congress entitled the National Prohibition Act, approved October 28, 1919 (chapter 85). The specific ground on which such injunctive relief is demanded is the alleged want of constitutional power in Congress to enact said legislation; therefore the act, in so far as challenged by complainants, affords defendants no warrant of law to> do the injurious acts by them threatened to be done unto complainants in their persons and property rights, as set forth in the bills of complaint.
To the several complaints so filed defendants have appeared, and interpose separate motions to dismiss for want of jurisdiction in the court to entertain them, and, further, for want of equity. The several complainants have applied for a temporary injunction to protect the status of the parties until the constitutional validity of the act may
From the pleadings and proofs certain facts are deducible beyond all controversy. Complainants, each and all, were on the day said act by its terms became effective engaged in brewing, manufacturing, selling, and distributing within the jurisdiction of this court certain beverages containing not to exceed 2% per cent, alcohol, in pursuance of and in strict conformity with the provisions of the acts of Congress of August 10, 1917 (40 Stat. c. 53), and of November 21, 1918 (40 Stat. c. 212), and all other acts of the Congress, and in strict compliance with and conformity to all the laws of the state of Missouri, and under permission or license received from the lawfully constituted authorities of the state of Missouri. In the conduct of said lawful business under the laws of the state complainants engaged many workmen, employés, and laborers at vast expense, employed vast amounts of capital invested in buildings, machinery, materials, and products specially devoted to the conduct and carrying on of said business, and for the purpose of obtaining the permission of and a license from the state of Missouri to engage in and conduct said business. Complainants for years had been, and were at the time said act became operative according to its terms, compelled to and did pay to the state large amounts of money by way of revenues collected and used by the state. Such beverages so being manufactured by the complainants are not in truth and fact intoxicating liquors or drinks, as the word “intoxicating” is defined or employed in its common acceptation among men, or as defined or employed in scientific language or treatise on the subject. That the enforcement by defendants against complainants and their properties, plants, and apparatus so employed of the provisions of said act of October 28, 1919, in so far as applicable to the period of one year after ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution by the states, will operate to confiscate the property of complainants, will deprive complainants of the use, benefit, and value of the same without just compensation and without due process of law, etc. Therefore complainants pray injunctive relief against the threatened acts of irreparable injury, loss, and damage provided for in said portion of the act.
It is perfectly obvious this court has jurisdiction to hear and determine the question raised as to the constitutional validity of the provisions of the act of Congress challenged, for such issue is a judicial, and not a legislative, question, and on the decision of this one issue depend all others in this case; for, if the act in so far as challenged be within the constitutional power of the Congress to enact into law, the complainants, and all others, including the defendants, must obey and enforce its terms. On the contrary, if the provisions of the act challenged by complainants are found and decreed as a mat
The court has jurisdiction to consider and determine the constitutional validity of the act in question. If valid the court must so declare, and being valid the law must be obeyed. If void for want of constitutional power, the courts to which that question is lawfully submitted must so declare; and, if such result be decreed, neither the government, the defendants herein nor any right-minded citizen will desire its enforcement, and the courts to which this question is lawfully submitted can neither decline nor escape decision of the question raised.
That the right of complainants to manufacture, barter, sell, dispose of, or use the beverages by them produced, whether in their nature intoxicating or nonintoxicating, within the territorial limits
Indeed, the state of Missouri, in the lawful exercise of its undoubted reserve police power, has ordained complainants in this case may do, and has legalized complainants in the doing of, the precise acts which Congress by its act in controversy condemns and makes criminal. As all legislative power conferred upon or which may be exercised by the Congress was first vested in the sovereign states, and was by the states through the medium of the national Constitution delegated to the national Congress, then, if, as in this instance, the Congress assumes in the enactment of any law to invade the realm of the sovereign police power of the states expressly reserved by the creators of the nation to the sovereign states, of necessity, it must and does follow, he who would contend for the constitutional validity of such enactment must point out some, specific provision of the national Constitution which in express terms, or by necessary implication, justifies and authorizes the Congress in making such invasion, or the act so done must fail of constitutional power.
These contentions of the respective parties to the suit bring the controlling question for decision before the court in this form: On the one hand, in support of the constitutional validity of the act, we have reference to the war powers of the government and such legislative authority thereunder as the Congress was warranted in exercising at the date of the act. In opposition to this, we have: (1) Prior to the date of the passage of the act all police power employed in times of peace to prohibit, regulate, or control the manufacture, ■ sale, transportation, or use of intoxicating beverages under the national Constitution expressly reserved to be exercised by the several states. (2) The Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution, proposed by the Congress and ratified by the states during a period of actual warfare, places the exercise of the police power employed to prohibit, regulate, or control the manufacture, barter, sale, and use of intoxicating beverages under the concurrent control of the sovereign nation and the sovereign states, to be thereafter exercised,, however, only on the part of the nation at the expiration of one year from the date said amendment was ratified by the states. In this condition of our organic law the Congress acted in the passage of the law in question. Does such condition of the organic law authorize the act done?
Complainants contend the states created this nation because they could not continue to endure as a single state or nation without a central power authorized to employ in certain matters and contingencies powers above and beyond that possessed by the state or any .other power. That the states made for the nation they so created a written Constitution. This Constitution was made to contain the provisions and conditions on which it might thereafter be modified or amended. That under this provision, and in pursuance thereof, the Eighteenth Amendment to the national Constitution became a part of the organic law. That the national Constitution is a written instrument. Its true intent and construction must be gained by considering all within its four corners as a completed whole. As no provision may be excluded therefrom, so, provisions apparently conflicting, if any be found therein, must be reconciled and harmonized in construction. That the war powers therein granted to the nation were irrevocably delegated for the express purpose of empowering the nation, independent of all other source of power, to preserve and perpetuate its national existence in times of national peril arising from or out of war. That the war powers of the nation as employed in the Constitution are emergency powers. When the emergency arises, the peril comes, then sui sponte the war powers of the nation spring into use to be exercised by the Congress. When such emergency ceases to exist, and the peril to the nation ends, the war power of the nation relapse into disuse. Whether the exigency calling for the exercise of the power has arisen is a question of fact for the determination of the
If this argument made by complainants in the end prevails it is entirely clear there was not, as shown by the proofs in this case, and" as determined by those governmental and historical acts of which the court will take judicial notice, any such emergency existing on October 28, 1919, as to authorize the Congress in resorting to the war powers of the nation as embodied in the Constitution to invade the reserve police powers of the state in the passage of the act in question so far as challenged in this suit, and, further, that the prohibition found in the act against the manufacture, barter, sale or use of beverages by complainants containing not to exceed 2% per cent, of alcohol bears no just or substantial relation to either the conduct of any war then in fact prevailing between this country and any other nation of this earth, or on the process of disbanding any troops theretofore engaged in the prosecution of any such war. However this question of grave doubt may ultimately be determined, there is another aspect of this case, which, in my mind, gives rise to serious concern. The national Constitution considered as a whole, inclusive of the recent Eighteenth Amendment thereto, takes away from the several states the theretofore exclusive exercise of the police power in dealing with the subject of the manufacture, sale, transportation, and use of intoxicating beverages, and places the right to exercise such power under the concurrent control of the nation and the several states, only, however, after the expiration of a period of one year'from the date said amendment was ratified'by the states. This one-year period had not as yet expired at the date the act in question was passed by the Congress. The act in question, so far as it relates to a time prior to the expiration of said one-year period does not pretend to concur with the legislation of the state of Missouri on the subject-matter thereof, but, on the contrary, as has been seen and stated, is in direct conflict with the lawful legislation of the staté now in force, enacted under its reserve police power.
This amendment was made to the Constitution at a time when the war in fact was raging in Europe. Theretofore the Congress had, in the exercise of the war powers of the government, passed the acts of August 10, 1917, and of November 21, 1918, which said acts were in full force at the date the Eighteenth Amendment was by the Congress proposed to the' states. This proposal, as made and accepted by the states, provides such powers of legislation as are therein conferred
Beyond all cavil the purpose sought to be subserved in postponing the exercise of the power conferred on Congress by the Eighteenth Amendment for the period of one year therein found was to protect the property and property rights of citizens similarly situated with complainants, located in states whose then laws permitted the manufacture, sale, and use of beverages such as are produced by complainants from spoliation or confiscation under legislative enactment by the Congress, such as is contained in that portion of the act of October 28, 1919, herein sought to be enjoined, to the end that during said period of one year the owners might change, convert, and devote said properties to other lawful and beneficial uses consistent with the exercise of the power so conferred upon the Congress at the end of the period. From the very fact the amendment so provides, it must be thought those states, such as the state of Missouri, in which such properties were lawfully owned, employed, and enjoyed at the date the amendment was ratified, would not, through their legislative bodies, have ratified the same, in the absence of the one-year provision found in the amendment; or, had it been thought by the legislative bodies of such states, during said one-year period, and on October 28, 1919, the Congress would have enacted the drastic provisions found in that part of the act here challenged, unless impelled thereto by positive, pressing exigencies of war itself.
Without declaring or attempting to declare the act to be either constitutional or unconstitutional, but having in view the grave doubts
It is so ordered.