Baccus v. Louisiana , 34 S. Ct. 439 ( 1914 )

232 U.S. 334 (1914)

BACCUS
v.
STATE OF LOUISIANA.

No. 170.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued January 19, 1914. Decided February 24, 1914. ERROR TO THE THIRD JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF CLAIBORNE, STATE OF LOUISIANA.

Mr. Thomas D. O'Brien, with whom Mr. John A. Barnes was on the brief, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. R.G. Pleasant, Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, and Mr. G.A. Gondran for defendant in error, submitted.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.

We accept the construction affixed by the court below to the statute and upon which alone it could in reason have held that the acts charged were embraced by its provisions. We hence disregard an intimation made in the argument of the defendant in error, that the statute is susceptible of a different interpretation and therefore that the claim of Federal right which was made below and which was necessarily passed upon need not be here considered. It is inconceivable that the statute should mean one thing for the purpose of determining whether the acts charged were within its terms and should then be held to mean another, for the purpose of escaping the Federal question. Thus considering the case in its true aspect, the single issue to be decided is, Did the State have power, without violating the equal protection or due process of law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to forbid the sale by itinerant vendors of "any drug, nostrum, ointment or application of any kind intended for the treatment of disease or injury," although allowing the sale of such articles by other persons? That it did have such authority is so clearly the result of a previous ruling of this court (Emert v. Missouri, 156 U.S. 296), or at all events is so persuasively made manifest by the authorities cited and the reasoning which sustained the ruling of the court in the case just stated, as to leave no room for controversy on the subject (pp. 306-307). Moreover, the power which the state Government possessed to classify and regulate itinerant vendors or peddlers exerted in the statute under consideration is cumulatively sustained and made if possible more obviously lawful by the fact that the regulation in question deals with the selling by itinerant vendors or peddlers of drugs or medicinal compounds, objects plainly within the power of government to regulate.

Affirmed.