United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

I. M. Darnell & Son Co. v. Memphis, 208 U.S. 113 (1908)

I. M. Darnell & Son Co. v. City of Memphis

No. 75

Argued December 16, 1907

Decided January 20, 1908

208 U.S. 113

Syllabus

While a state may tax property which has moved in the channels of interstate commerce after it is at rest within the state and has become commingled with the mass of property therein, it may not discriminate against such property by imposing upon it a burden of taxation greater than that imposed upon similar domestic property.

The exemption from taxation in ch. 258 of the acts of Tennessee of 1903 of growing crops and manufactured articles from the produce of the state in the hands of the manufacturer is a discrimination against similar property, the product of the soil of other states, brought into that state, and is therefore a direct burden upon interstate commerce and repugnant to the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States.

Quaere, and not decided, whether such provision of exemption is valid under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

116 Tenn. 424 reversed.

The facts are stated in the opinion.

Page 208 U. S. 115