Stark v. Wickard/Opinion of the Court

This class action was instituted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, to procure an injunction prohibiting the respondent Secretary of Agriculture from carrying out certain provisions of his Order No. 4, effective August 1, 1941, dealing with the marketing of milk in the Greater Boston, Massachusetts, area. See Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, 50 Stat. 246, 7 U.S.C. § 601 et seq., 7 U.S.C.A. § 601 et seq., and Order 4, United States Department of Agriculture, Surplus Marketing Administration, Title 7, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 904. The district court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and its judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, 136 F.2d 786. The respondent War Food Administrator was joined in this court upon a showing that he had been given powers concurrent with those of the Secretary. See Executive Order No. 9334, 50 U.S.C.A. Appendix, § 601 note, filed April 23, 1943, 8 F.R. 5423, 5425. We granted certiorari because of the importance of the question to the administration of this Act. 320 U.S. 723, 64 S.Ct. 58.

The petitioners are producers of milk, who assert that by §§ 904.7(b)(5) and 904.9 of his Order, the Secretary is unlawfully diverting funds that belong to them. The courts below dismissed the action on the ground that the Act vests no legal cause of action in milk producers, and since the decision below and the argument here were limited to that point, we shall confine our consideration to it.

The district court for the District of Columbia has a general equity jurisdiction authorizing it to hear the suit; but in order to recover, the petitioners must go further and show that the act of the Secretary amounts to an interference with some legal right of theirs. If so, the familiar principle that executive officers may be restrained from threatened wrongs in the ordinary courts in the absence of some exclusive alternative remedy will enable the petitioners to maintain their suit; but if the complaint does not rest upon a claim of which courts take cognizance, then it was properly dismissed. The petitioners place their reliance upon such rights as may be expressly or impliedly created by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 and the Order issued thereunder.

Although this Court has previously reviewed the provisions of that statute at length and upheld its constitutionality, some further reference to it is necessary to an understanding of the producer's interest in the funds dealt with by the Order.

The immediate object of the Act is to fix minimum prices for the sale of milk by producers to handlers. It does not forbid sales at prices above the minimum. It contains