200 P. 957 | Cal. | 1921
The petitioner, an alien male inhabitant of the state of California of the age of about forty-eight years, and a citizen of the United States of Mexico, is held in custody by the chief of police of the city and county of San Francisco under a complaint charging him with failure to register as required by the terms of the act known as the alien poll tax law of 1921, discussed in the *29
opinion filed in the Matter of Terui, on Habeas Corpus, ante,
p. 20, [17 A. L. R. 630,
It is upon the portion of this section that we have italicized that the claim of petitioner is based.
All that we have said with relation to this legislation (the Alien Poll Tax Act of 1921) in our opinion in the Terui case is applicable in this case and need not be repeated here, further than to say that the law was enacted solely in the exercise of the power of taxation for the purpose of raising revenue for state purposes, containing no provision whatever attributable to the exercise of the police power of regulation, and that it imposes on alien inhabitants of the state between certain ages, solely because of their alien character, a tax different in kind from and additional to the taxes required to be paid by all inhabitants, citizens, and aliens alike. No such tax or its equivalent is imposed by our laws on any except alien inhabitants. The law thus imposes an additional burden in the matter of taxation upon such aliens solely because of their alien character, and in this way discriminates against them.
[1] This being the situation, in view of the decisions of the supreme court of the United States, there is no escape *30 from the conclusion that the alien poll tax law cannot be enforced, for the reason that by its enforcement the state of California would deny to persons within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws, in violation of the provision of section 1 of the fourteenth amendment that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
[2] It is settled that the word "person" as used in this amendment includes aliens. It was said in Yick Wo v. Hopkins,
The meaning of "the equal protection of the laws" thus guaranteed by the federal constitution to every person within the jurisdiction of a state is not left in doubt by the decisions in so fat as such an act as the one here involved is concerned. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, supra, it is said that "the equal protection of the laws is a pledge to the protection of equal laws." This was approvingly quoted in Truax v. Raich,supra. In Barbier v. Connolly,
That the act does this very thing is clear. The sole distinction between the male inhabitants of California so burdened with the poll tax and those not so burdened, in so far as all matters material to imposition of the tax is concerned, is that the former are aliens and the latter citizens. This is the sole basis of the attempted classification. As was said inGulf etc. Ry. Co. v. Ellis, supra, (
It follows from what we have said that the alien poll tax law must be held to be in violation of the terms of section 1 of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States, which by the express terms of section 2 of article VI thereof is declared to be "the supreme law of the land," binding on the judges in every state, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." It is therefore ineffective for any purpose.
The petitioner is discharged from custody.
Shaw, J., Lennon, J., Wilbur, J., Shurtleff, J., Sloane, J., and Lawlor, J., concurred. *34