United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Tucker v. Texas, 326 U.S. 517 (1946)

Tucker v. Texas

No. 87

Argued December 6, 1945

Decided January 7, 1946

326 U.S. 517

Syllabus

1. A State can not, consistently with the freedom of religion and the press guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, impose criminal punishment upon a person engaged in religious activities and distributing religious literature in a village owned by the United States under a Congressional program designed to provide housing for workers engaged in national defense activities, where the village is freely accessible and open to the public and has all the characteristics of a typical American town, even though the punishment is attempted under a state statute making it unlawful for any "peddler or hawker of goods or merchandise" willfully to refuse to leave the premises after having been notified to do so by the owner or possessor thereof. P. 326 U. S. 519.

2. Neither the Federal Housing Act nor the Housing Authority Regulations indicate a purpose to restrict freedom of religion and of the press within villages such as the one here involved. P. 326 U. S. 520.

3. A judgment of an intermediate state court sustaining a state statute challenged as repugnant to the Federal Constitution is reviewable here under § 237(a) of the Judicial Code, where such intermediate court is the highest court of the State in which a decision in the case could be had. P. 326 U. S. 518.

Reversed.

Appeal from a judgment sustaining a conviction for violation of a state statute challenged as invalid under the Federal Constitution.

Page 326 U. S. 518