Bob-Lo Excursion Company v. Michigan/Opinion of the Court

Bois Blanc Island is part of the Province of Ontario, Canada. It lies just above the mouth of the Detroit River, some fifteen miles from Michigan's metropolis upstream. The island, known in Detroit by the corruption 'Bob-Lo,' has been characterized as that city's Coney Island.

Appellant owns almost all of Bois Blanc in fee. For many years it has operated the island, during the summer seasons, as a place of diverse amusements for Detroit's varied population. Appellant also owns and operates two steamships for transporting its patrons of the island's attractions from Detroit to Bois Blanc and return. The vessels engage in no other business on these trips. No freight, mail or express is carried; the only passengers are the patrons bent on pleasure, who board ship at Detroit; they go on round-trip one-day limit tickets which include the privilege of landing at Bois Blanc and going back by a later boat. No intermediate stops are made on these excursions.

In conducting this business of amusement and transportation, appellant long has followed the policy, by advertisement and otherwise, to invite and encourage all comers, except two classes. One is the disorderly; the other, colored people. From the latter exclusion this case arises.

In June of 1945 Sarah Elizabeth Ray, the complaining witness, was employed by the Detroit Ordnance District. She and some forty other girls were also members of a class conducted at the Commerce High School under the auspices of the ordnance district. The class planned an excursion to Bois Blanc for June 21 under the district's sponsorship.

On that morning thirteen girls with their teacher appeared at appellant's dock in Detroit to go on the outing. All were white except Miss Ray. Each girl paid eighty-five cents to one of the group, who purchased round-trip tickets and distributed them. The party then passed through the gate, each member giving in her ticket without question from the ticket taker. They then checked their coats, went to the upper decks and took chairs.

Shortly afterward Devereaux, appellant's assistant general manager, and a steward named Fox appeared and stated that Miss Ray could not go along because she was colored. At first she remonstrated against the discrimination and refused to leave. But when it appeared she would be ejected forcibly, she said she would go. Devereaux and Fox then escorted her ashore, saying the company was a private concern and could exclude her if it wished. They took her to the ticket office and offered to return her fare. She refused to accept it, took their names, and left the company's premises. There is no suggestion that she or any member of her party was guilty of unbecoming conduct. Nor is there any dispute concerning the facts.

This criminal prosecution followed in the Recorder's Court for Detroit, for violation of the Michigan civil rights act in the discrimination practiced against Miss Ray. Jury trial being formally waived, the court after hearing evidence and argument found appellant guilty as charged and sentenced it to pay a fine of $25. On appeal the Supreme Court of Michigan affirmed the judgment, holding the statute applicable to the circumstances presented by the case and valid in that application, as against the constitutional and other objections put forward. 317 Mich. 686, 27 N.W.2d 139. In due course probable jurisdiction was noted here. Judicial Code, § 237(a), 28 U.S.C.A. § 344(a).

The Michigan civil rights Act, § 146, enacts:

'All persons within the jurisdiction of this state shall be entitled to full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, hotels, restaurants, eating houses, barber shops, billiard parlors, stores, public conveyances on land and water, theatres, motion picture houses, public educational institutions, in elevators, on escalators, in all methods of air transportation and all other places of public accommodation, amusement, and recreation, where refreshments are or may hereafter be served, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to all citizens and to all citizens alike, with uniform prices.'

By § 147, any owner, lessee, proprietor, agent or employee of any such place who directly or indirectly withholds any accommodation secured by § 146, on account of race, creed or color, becomes guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable as the section states, and liable to a civil action for treble damages.

The Michigan statute is one of the familiar type enacted by many states before and after this Court's invalidation of Congress' similar legislation in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835. The Michigan Supreme Court held the statute applicable to appellant's business over its objection that as a matter of local law it is not a 'public conveyance' within the meaning of § 146. We accept this conclusion of the state court as a matter of course. That court also impliedly rejected appellant's constitutional objections based upon alleged denial of due process of law and equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, issues now eliminated from the case.

We have therefore only to consider the single and narrow question whether the state courts correctly held that the commerce clause, Art. I, § 8, of the Federal Constitution does not forbid applying the Michigan civil rights act to sustain appellant's conviction. We agree with their determination.

There can be no doubt that appellant's transportation of its patrons is foreign commerce within the scope of Art. I, § 8. Lord v. Goodall Steamship Co., 102 U.S. 541, 26 L.Ed. 224; cf. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 62 S.Ct. 164, 86 L.Ed. 119. Appellant's vessels sail to and from a port or place in foreign territory wholly under another nation's sovereignty. They cross the international boundary, which is the thread of the Detroit River, several times in the course of each short trip. Appellant necessarily complies with federal regulations applicable to foreign commerce, including those governing customs, immigration and navigation matters. It likewise satisfies similar regulations of the Canadian authorities.

Of course we must be watchful of state intrusion into intercourse between this country and one of its neighbors. But if any segment of foreign commerce can be said to have a special local interest, apart from the necessity of safeguarding the federal interest in such matters as immigration, customs and navigation, the transportation of appellant's patrons falls in that characterization. It would be hard to find a substantial business touching foreign soil of more highly local concern. Except for the small fenced-off portion reserved for the lighthouse and three cottage sites, the island is economically and socially, though not politically, an amusement adjunct of the city of Detroit. Not only customs and immigrations regulations of both countries, but physical barriers prevent intercourse, both commercial and social, between Canadians and appellant's patrons, except as the former may come first by other means to Detroit, then go to the island from American soil on appellant's vessels, and return from the holiday by the same roundabout route.

The record indicates there are no established means of access from the Canadian shore to the island. There is no evidence of even surreptitious entry trom the Canadian mainland. Appellant's vessels not only are the sole meas of transportation to and from the island, but carry only its own patrons of Bois Blanc's recreational facilities. These travel exclusively on round-trip tickets for passage beginning and ending on American soil. They are principally residents of Detroit and vicinity. All go aboard there and return the same day. None go from the island to the Canadian bank of the river. The only business conducted at the island is the operation of appellant's recreational and accessory facilities, which apparently do not include provision for overnight guests. No other persons than appellant's patrons come to the island, or have a right to come, from Canada's mainland or elsewhere, or go from the island to Detroit.

The sum of these facts makes Bois Blanc an island in more than the geographic sense. They insulate it and appellant's business done in connection with it from all commercial or social intercourse and traffic with the people of another country usually characteristic of foreign commerce, in short from the normal flow and incidents of such commerce. Since the enterprise is conducted in this highly closed and localized manner with Canada's full consent, no detraction whatever from that friendly neighbor's sovereignty is implied by saying that the business itself is economically and socially an island of local Detroit business, although so largely carried on in Canadian waters. As now conducted, apart from presently applicable Canadian and federal regulations and until Canada or Congress or both countries by treaty see fit to add others, the business is of greater concern to Detroit and the State of Michigan than to Dominion or Ontario interests or to those of the United States in regulating our foreign commerce.

The regulation in this application contains nothing out of harmony, much less inconsistent with our federal policy in the regulation of commerce between the two countries nor, so far as we are advised, with Canadian law and policy. Appellant urges, however, that Canada might adopt regulations in conflict with Michigan's civil rights act, thus placing it in an inescapable dilemma if that act may be applied to its operations. Conceding the possibility, we think the state is right in viewing it as so remote that it is hardly more than conceivable. The same thing, we think, is true of the possibility that Congress might take conflicting action.

If therefore in any case a state may regulate foreign commerce, the facts here would seem clearly to justify Michigan's application of her civil rights act. It is far too late to maintain that the states possess no regulatory powers over such commerce. From the first meeting of Congress they have regulated important phases of both foreign and intes tate commerce, particularly in relation to transportation by water, with Congress' express consent. And without such consent for nearly a hundred years they have exercised like power under the local diversity branch of the formula announced in Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 12 How. 299, 13 L.Ed. 996. See Union Brokerage Co. v. Jensen, 322 U.S. 202, 64 S.Ct. 967, 88 L.Ed. 1227, 152 A.L.R. 1072; Kelly v. Washington, 302 U.S. 1, 58 S.Ct. 87, 82 L.Ed. 3, and authorities cited in both cases. Indeed the Cooley criterion has been applied so frequently in cases concerning only commerce among the several states that it is often forgotten that that historic decision dealt indiscriminately with such commerce and foreign commerce.

Appellant hardly suggests that the power of Congress over foreign commerce excludes all regulation by the states. But it verges on that view in regarding Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U.S. 485, 24 L.Ed. 547, supplemented by Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 33, 66 S.Ct. 1050, 90 L.Ed. 1317, 165 A.L.R. 574, and Pryce v. Swedish-American Lines, D.C., 30 F.Supp. 371, as flatly controlling this case. We need only say that no one of those decisions is comparable in its facts, whether in the degree of localization of the commerce involved; in the attenuating effects, if any, upon the commerce with foreign nations and among the several states likely to be produced by applying the state regulation; or in any actual probability of conflicting regulations by different sovereignties. None involved so completely and locally insulated a segment of foreign or interstate commerce. In none was the business affected merely an adjunct of a single locality or community as is the business here so largely. And in none was a complete exclusion from passage made. The Pryce case, of course, is not authority in this Court, and we express no opinion on the problem it presented. The regulation of traffic along the Mississippi River, such as the Hall case comprehended and of interstate motor carriage of passengers by common carriers like that in the Morgan case, are not factually comparable to this regulation of appellant's highly localized business, and those decisions are not relevant here.

It is difficult to imagine what national interest or policy, whether of securing uniformity in regulating commerce, affecting relations with foreign nations, or otherwise, could reasonably be found to be adversely affected by applying Michigan's statute to these facts or to outweigh her interest in doing so. Certainly there is no national interest which overrides the interest of Michigan to forbid the type of discrimination practiced here. And, in view of these facts, the ruling would be strange indeed, to come from this Court, that Michigan could not apply her long-settled policy against racial and creedal discrimination to this segment of foreign commerce, so peculiarly and almost exclusively affecting her people and institutions.

The Supreme Court of Michigan concluded 'that holding the provisions of the Michigan statute effective and applicable in the instant case results only in this, defendant will be required in operating its ships as 'public conveyances' to accept as passengers persons of the negro race indiscriminately with others. Our review of this record does not disclose that such a requirement will impose any undue burden on defendant in its business in foreign commerce.' 317 Mich. 686, 694, 27 N.W.2d 139, 142. Those conclusions were right.

The judgment is affirmed.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, concurring.

The case is, I think, controlled by a principle which cuts deeper than that announced by the Court and which is so important that it deserves to be stated separately.

Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U.S. 485, 24 L.Ed. 547, and Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U.S. 373, 66 S.Ct. 1050, 90 L.Ed. 1317, 165 A.L.R. 574, presented phases of the problem of segregation. The former held unconstitutional a Louisiana law forbidding steamboats (which plied the Mississippi) from segregating passengers according to race. The latter held unconstitutional a Virginia law requiring segregation of passengers on interstate motor buses. It was held that diverse regulations of that character by the severalStates through which the traffic moved would be an undue or unreasonable burden on interstate commerce. But the question here is a simpler one. It is whether a State can prevent a carrier in foreign commerce from denying passage to a person because of his race or color. For this is a case of a discrimination against a Negro by a carrier's complete denial of passage to her because of her race.

It is unthinkable to me that we would strike down a state law which required all carriers-local and interstate-to transport all persons regardless of their race or color. The common-law duty ofc arriers was to provide equal service to all, a duty which the Court has held a State may require of interstate carriers in the absence of a conflicting federal law. Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Larabee Flour Mills Co., 211 U.S. 612, 619, 623, 624, 29 S.Ct. 214, 216, 218, 53 L.Ed. 352. And the police power of a State under our constitutional system is adequate for the protection of the civil rights of its citizens against discrimination by reason of race or color. Railway Mail Ass'n v. Corsi, 326 U.S. 88, 65 S.Ct. 1483, 89 L.Ed. 2072. Moreover, in this situation there is no basis for saying that the Commerce Clause itself defeats such a law. This regulation would not place a burden on interstate commerce within the meaning of our cases. It does not impose a regulation which discriminates against interstate commerce or which, by specifying the mode in which it shall be conducted, disturbs and uniformity essential to its proper functioning. See Southern Pacific R. Co. v. Arizona, 325 U.S. 761, 65 S.Ct. 1515, 89 L.Ed. 1915; Morgan v. Virginia, supra. I see nothing in the Commerce Clause which places foreign commerce on a more protected level.

There is in every case, of course, a possibility that Congress may pass laws regulating foreign or interstate commerce in conflict with regulations prescribed by a State. Or in the case of foreign commerce the national government might act through a treaty. Inconsistent State law would then give way to any exercise of federal power within the scope of constitutional authority. But I am aware of no power which Congress has to create different classes of citizenship according to color so as to grant freedom of movement in the channels of commerce to certain classes only. Cf. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 177-181, 62 S.Ct. 164, 168-170, 86 L.Ed. 119. The federal policy reflected in Acts of Congress indeed bars any such discrimination (see Mitchell v. United States, 313 U.S. 80, 61 S.Ct. 873, 85 L.Ed. 1201) and so is wholly in harmony with Michigan's law. And no treaty reveals a different attitude.

Moreover, there is no danger of burden and confusion from diverse state laws if Michigan's regulation is sustained. If a sister State undertook to bar Negroes from passage on public carriers, that law would not only contravene the federal rule but also invade a 'fundamental individual right which is guaranteed against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment.' Mitchell v. United States, supra, 313 U.S. at page 94, 61 S.Ct. at page 877. Nothing short of at least 'equality of legal right' (Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337, 350, 59 S.Ct. 232, 236, 83 L.Ed. 208) in obtaining transportation can satisfy the Equal Protection Clause. Hence I do not see how approval of Michigan's law in any way interferes with the uniformity essential for the movement of vehicles in commerce. The only constitutional uniformity is uniformity in the Michigan pattern.

If a State's law made a head-on collision with the policy of a foreign power whose shores were reached by our vessels, a different problem might be presented. But no such conflict is present here.

Mr. Justice BLACK, who joins in the opinion of the Court, concurs also in this opinion.

Mr. Justice JACKSON, with whom The CHIEF JUSTICE agrees, dissenting.