Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1868

Crandall v. Nevada

73 U.S. 35 | 18 L. Ed. 745 | 6 Wall. 35 | 1867 U.S. LEXIS 936

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a State cannot charge citizens for the privilege of leaving or traveling through it, because free interstate movement is essential to citizens' access to—and the effective operation of—the national government.

Background

Nevada imposed a one-dollar capitation tax on every person leaving the State by railroad or stagecoach. Although the statute made railroad officers, agents, and stagecoach proprietors responsible for collecting and remitting the charge, its terms expressly levied the tax on each departing traveler.

Crandall was held in custody under the Nevada law. The Supreme Court of Nevada sustained the statute. The United States Supreme Court reversed and directed the state court to discharge Crandall.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Nevada's charge was a tax on transportation carriers or a tax on individual passengers for leaving or passing through the State.

Holding

It was a tax on passengers and on their exercise of the right to leave or travel through Nevada.

Reasoning

The statutory language was direct: it imposed a capitation tax on every person leaving Nevada by railroad or stagecoach. The carriers and their agents were assigned collection duties, but that collection mechanism did not change the person or activity being taxed.

The Court drew support from The Passenger Cases, where charges nominally imposed on vessel masters according to the number of passengers were understood to burden the passengers themselves. A State cannot avoid constitutional scrutiny merely by collecting a passenger tax through the carrier who transports the passenger.

Issue #2

Whether the validity of Nevada's passenger tax had to be decided solely under the Import-Export Clause or the Commerce Clause.

Holding

No. The tax was unconstitutional because it burdened rights of national citizenship and obstructed the operations of the federal government, even apart from those clauses.

Reasoning

The Court found the Import-Export Clause an unsatisfactory basis for resolving the case. Treating a United States citizen traveling from one State to another as an export was especially unpersuasive, and the earlier debates over whether persons could be imports did not supply a controlling answer.

The Court also declined to rest its judgment on the Commerce Clause. Under Cooley v. Board of Wardens, some subjects within the broad field of commerce may be regulated by States unless Congress acts, and no federal statute directly displaced Nevada's law. More fundamentally, the Court concluded that the constitutional problem extended beyond the question whether this charge was a state regulation of interstate commerce.

Issue #3

Whether a State may impose a tax on a citizen's travel out of, into, or through the State when that travel is necessary to reach the federal government and exercise rights under it.

Holding

No. A State may not tax or burden citizens' free movement through the Nation in a way that can obstruct access to the federal government or impair its constitutional operations.

Reasoning

The United States is one nation with a national government whose essential institutions are located throughout the country. Citizens must be able to reach Congress, the President, executive departments, federal courts, ports of entry, land offices, revenue offices, and other federal facilities in order to make claims, seek protection, hold office, and participate in the administration of the government.

The federal government likewise must be able to summon and transport citizens who serve it, including legislators, judges, officials, and troops. A State through which they must travel cannot condition that movement on payment of a state tax, because that would make federal authority dependent on the State's pleasure.

The Court relied on the principle of McCulloch v. Maryland: States may not use their taxing power to impede or destroy constitutional means and functions of the national government. The constitutional defect did not depend on the modest size of Nevada's one-dollar charge. If Nevada could tax a traveler one dollar, it could tax one thousand dollars, and multiple States could collectively make interstate movement prohibitively expensive.

A state passenger tax also burdens a citizen's correlative right to pass and repass through the country. As Chief Justice Taney had recognized in The Passenger Cases, citizens of the United States must be able to travel throughout the Union without a State charging for entry into its territory or harbors. Such state power would invite interstate friction and defeat purposes for which the Union was formed.

Concurrences

Justice Clifford

Reasoning

Justice Clifford agreed that the Nevada statute was unconstitutional and that Crandall should be discharged, but he rejected the majority's principal rationale. In his view, the case should be decided exclusively under Congress's power to regulate commerce among the several States.

Interstate travel by railroad and stagecoach was commerce among the States, and Nevada's per-passenger charge imposed an impermissible burden on that commerce. Clifford maintained that the Constitution itself protects interstate commerce from this kind of state legislation, whether or not Congress has enacted a statute addressing the subject.

He also expressed serious doubt that Congress itself possessed authority to impose such a tax on interstate passengers. But, regardless of the scope of congressional power, he regarded Nevada's power as plainly excluded by the Commerce Clause.

Chief Justice Chase

Reasoning

Chief Justice Chase joined Justice Clifford's separate view. Although described in the report as dissenting from the majority's reasoning, he agreed with the judgment invalidating the Nevada law and with the conclusion that the Commerce Clause supplied the proper and exclusive ground for decision.