[DOWNLOAD] "Barbier v. Connolly" by United States Supreme Court * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Barbier v. Connolly
- Author : United States Supreme Court
- Release Date : January 01, 1884
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 53 KB
Description
A. C. Searle, for plaintiff in error. H. G. Sieberst, for defendant in error In this case we can only consider whether the fourth section of the ordinance of the city and county of San Francisco is in conflict with the constitution or laws of the United States. We cannot pass upon the conformity of that section with the requirements of the constitution of the state. Our jurisdiction is confined to a consideration of the federal question involved, which arises upon an alleged conflict of the fourth section in question with the first section of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States. No other part of the amendment has any possible application. That fourth section, so far as it is involved in the case before the police judge, was simply a prohibition to carry on the washing and ironing of clothes in public laundries and wash-houses, within certain prescribed limits of the city and county, from 10 o'clock at night until 6 o'clock in the morning of the following day. The prohibition against labor on Sunday is not involved. The provision is purely a police regulation within the competency of any municipality possessed of the ordinary powers belonging to such bodies. And it would be an extraordinary usurpation of the authority of a municipality, if a federal tribunal should undertake to supervise such regulations. It may be a necessary measure of precaution in a city composed largely of wooden buildings like San Francisco, that occupations, in which fires are constantly required, should cease after certain hours at night until the following morning; and of the necessity of such regulations the municipal bodies are the exclusive judges; at least, any correction of their action in such matters can come only from state legislation or state tribunals. The same municipal authority which directs the cessation of labor must necessarily prescribe the limits within which it shall be enforced, as it does the limits in a city within which wooden buildings cannot be constructed. There is no invidious discrimination against any one within the prescribed limits by such regulations. There is none in the regulation under consideration. The specification of the limits within which the business cannot be carried on without the certificates of the health officer and board of fire-wardens is merely a designation of the portion of the city in which the precautionary measures against fire and to secure proper drainage must be taken for the public health and safety. It is not legislation discriminating against any one. All persons engaged in the same business within it are treated alike; are subject to the same restrictions, and are entitled to the same privileges under similar conditions.