Woods v. Cloyd W. Miller Company/Opinion of the Court

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The case is here on a direct appeal, Act of August 24, 1937, 50 Stat. 752, 28 U.S.C. § 349a, 28 U.S.C.A. § 349a, from a judgment of the District Court holding unconstitutional Title II of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947, Pub. L. 129, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 1891 et seq.

The Act became effective on July 1, 1947, and the following day the appellee demanded of its tenants increases of 40% and 60% for rental accommodations in the Cleveland Defense-Rental Area, and admitted violation of the Act and regulations adopted pursuant thereto. Appellant thereupon instituted this proceeding under § 206(b) of the Act to enjoin the violations. A preliminary injunction issued. After a hearing it was dissolved and a permanent injunction denied.

The District Court, Creedon v. Cloyd W. Miller Co., D.C., 74 F.Supp. 546, was of the view that the authority of Congress to regulate rents by virtue of the war power (see Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U.S. 503, 64 S.Ct. 641, 88 L.Ed. 892) ended with the Presidential Proclamation terminating hostilities on December 31, 1946, since that proclamation inaugurated 'peace-in-fact' though it did not mark termination of the war. It also concluded that even if the war power continues, Congress did not act under it because it did not say so, and only if Congress says so, or enacts provisions so implying, can it be held that Congress intended to exercise such power. That Congress did not so intend, said the District Court, follows from the provision that the Housing Expediter can end controls in any area without regard to the official termination of the war, and from the fact that the preceding federal rent control laws (which were concededly exercises of the war power) were neither amended nor extended. The District Court expressed the further view that rent control is not within the war power because 'the emergency created by housing shortage came into existence long before the war.' It held that the Act 'lacks in uniformity of application and distinctly constitutes a delegation of legislative power not within the grant of Congress' because of the authorization to the Housing Expediter to lift controls in any area before the Act's expiration. It also held that the Act in effect provides 'low rentals for certain groups without taking the property or compensating the owner in any way.' See D.C., 74 F.Supp. 546, 548.

We conclude, in the first place, that the war power sustains this legislation. The Court said in Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., 251 U.S. 146, 161, 40 S.Ct. 106, 110, 64 L.Ed. 194, that the war power includes the power 'to remedy the evils which have arisen from its rise and progress' and continues for the duration of that emergency. Whatever may be the consequences when war is officially terminated, the war power does not necessarily end with the cessation of hostilities. We recently held that it is adequate to support the proservation of rights created by wartime legislation, Fleming v. Mohawk Wrecking and Lumber Co., 331 U.S. 111, 67 S.Ct. 1129. But it has a broader sweep. In Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., supra, and Ruppert v. Caffey, 251 U.S. 264, 40 S.Ct. 141, 64 L.Ed. 260, prohibition laws which were enacted after the Armistice in World War I were sustained as exercises of the war power because they conserved manpower and increased efficiency of production in the critical days during the period of demobilization, and helped to husband the supply of grains and cereals depleted by the war effort. Those cases followed the reasoning of Stewart v. Kahn, 11 Wall. 493, 20 L.Ed. 176, which held that Congress had the power to toll the statute of limitations of the States during the period when the process of their courts was not available to litigants due to the conditions obtaining in the Civil War.

The constitutional validity of the present legislation follows a fortiori from those cases. The legislative history of the present Act makes abundantly clear that there has not yet been eliminated the deficit in housing which in considerable measure was caused by the heavy demobilization of veterans and by the cessation or reduction in residential construction during the period of hostilities due to the allocation of building materials to military projects. Since the war effort contributed heavily to that deficit, Congress has the power even after the cessation of hostilities to act to control the forces that a short supply of the needed article created. If that were not true, the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, § 8, cl. 18, would be drastically limited in its application to the several war powers. The Court has declined to follow that course in the past. Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., supra, 251 U.S. pages 155, 156, 40 S.Ct. pages 107, 108, 64 L.Ed. 194; Ruppert v. Caffey, supra, 251 U.S. pages 299, 300, 40 S.Ct. page 149, 64 L.Ed. 260. We decline to take it today. The result would be paralyzing. It would render Congress powerless to remedy conditions the creation of which necessarily followed from the mobilization of men and materials for successful prosecution of the war. So to read the Constitution would be to make it self-defeating.

We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well. There are no such implications in today's decision. We deal here with the consequences of a housing deficit greatly intensified during the period of hostilities by the war effort. Any power, of course, can be abused. But we cannot assume that Congress is not alert to its constitutional responsibilities. And the question whether the war power has been properly employed in cases such as this is open to judicial inquiry. Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., supra; Ruppert v. Caffey, supra.

The question of the constitutionality of action taken by Congress does not depend on recitals of the power which it undertakes to exercise. Here it is plain from the legislative history that Congress was invoking its war power to cope with a current condition of which the war was a direct and immediate cause. Its judgment on that score is entitled to the respect granted like legislation enacted pursuant to the police power. See Block v. Hirsh, 256 U.S. 135, 41 S.Ct. 458, 65 L.Ed. 865, 16 A.L.R. 165; Marcus Brown Holding Co. v. Feldman, 256 U.S. 170, 41 S.Ct. 465, 65 L.Ed. 877; Chastleton Corporation v. Sinclair, 264 U.S. 543, 44 S.Ct. 405, 68 L.Ed. 841.

Under the present Act the Housing Expediter is authorized to remove the rent controls in any defense-rental area if in his judgment the need no longer exists by reason of new construction or satisfaction of demand in other ways. The powers thus delegated are far less extensive than those sustained in Bowles v. Willingham, supra, 321 U.S. pages 512-515, 64 S.Ct. page 647, 88 L.Ed. 892. Nor is there here a grant of unbridled administrative discretion. The standards prescribed pass muster under our decisions. See Bowles v. Willingham, supra, 321 U.S. pages 514 516, 64 S.Ct. pages 647, 648, 88 L.Ed. 892, and cases cited.

Objection is made that the Act by its exemption of certainc lasses of housing accommodations violates the Fifth Amendment. A similar argument was rejected under the Fourteenth Amendment when New York made like exemptions under the rent-control statute which was here for review in Marcus Brown Holding Co. v. Feldman, supra, 256 U.S. pages 195, 198, 199, 41 S.Ct. pages 465, 466, 65 L.Ed. 877. Certainly Congress is not under greater limitations. It need not control all rents or none. It can select those areas or those classes of property where the need seems the greatest. See Barclay and Co. v. Edwards, 267 U.S. 442, 450, 45 S.Ct. 135, 348, 349, 69, L.Ed. 703. This alone is adequate answer to the objection, equally applicable to the original Act sustained in Bowles v. Willingham, supra, that the present Act lacks uniformity in application.

The fact that the property regulated suffers a decrease in value is no more fatal to the exercise of the war power (Bowles v. Willingham, supra, 321 U.S. pages 517, 518, 64 S.Ct. pages 648, 649, 88 L.Ed. 892) than it is where the police power is invoked to the same end. See Block v. Hirsh, supra.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER concurs in this opinion because it decides no more than was decided in Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., 251 U.S. 146, 40 S.Ct. 106, 64 L.Ed. 194, and Jocob Ruppert v. Caffey, 251 U.S. 264, 40 S.Ct. 151, 64 L.Ed. 260, and merely applies those decisions to the situation now before the Court.