The license tax imposed upon express companies doing business in
Florida by § 9 of the statute of that state, approved June 2, 1893,
c. 4115, as construed by the Supreme Court of that state, applies
solely to business of the company within the state, and does not
apply to or affect its business which is interstate in its
character, and, being so construed, the statute does not, in any
manner, violate the federal Constitution.
The construction of the state statute below is not open to
review.
F. R. Osborne, the plaintiff in error, was arrested in the State
of Florida for an alleged violation of a statute of that state in
knowingly acting as the agent at Jacksonville, for the Southern
Express Company, a corporation created under the laws of the
Georgia and doing business in Florida, without having paid the
license provided for by statute. He was required to give a bond for
his appearance before the criminal court of record of Duval County,
in the Florida, to answer the charge, and upon his refusal to give
the same, he was committed to the common jail of the county there
to await trial. He then applied to the judge of the state circuit
court for a writ of habeas corpus, and upon the hearing, his arrest
was adjudged to be legal, and he was remanded to the custody of the
sheriff. The case was submitted to the circuit court upon an agreed
statement of facts as follows:
"That the said F. R. Osborne is the agent of the Southern
Express Company, and that said company is a corporation created,
existing and being under the laws of the Georgia; that said
Southern Express Company is doing a business in the Florida
ordinarily done by express companies in the United States of
carrying goods and freight for hire from points within the State of
Florida to points in said state, and also of carrying goods and
freights for hire from points within the State of Florida to points
without the State of Florida in other states in divers
Page 164 U. S. 651
parts of the United States, and in carrying goods and freights
for hire from points in other States of the United States to points
within the State of Florida, and that it has been engaged in such
business for more than twenty years, and was so engaged on the 3d
day of October, 1893; that of the business done by the Southern
Express Company, 95 per cent thereof consists of traffic carrying
of goods and freights from the State of Florida into other States,
and bringing and carrying from other States of the United States to
points within the State of Florida, and 5 per cent thereof consists
of carrying goods and freights between points wholly within the
State of Florida; that F. R. Osborne did knowingly act as the agent
of said express company on the 3d day of October, 1893, in the City
of Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida, a city having more than
15,000 inhabitants, the said Southern Express Company having then
and there failed and refused to pay the license tax as required by
article 12, section 9, of an act entitled 'An act for the
assessment and collection of revenue' of the laws of Florida,
approved June 2, 1893; that the Southern Express Company does
business in and has agents in more than one town in nearly every
county in the state, and that said towns differ in population, and
that it has an office and agent and does business in Polk County,
Florida, in the following incorporated towns, with a population as
follows: Bartow, 1500 inhabitants, Ft. Meade, 600 inhabitants,
Columbia, 600 inhabitants, Lakeland, 800 inhabitants, and Winter
Haven, 200 inhabitants. In Orange County, Apopka, 500 inhabitants,
Orlando, 10,000 inhabitants, Sanford, 5,000 inhabitants, Umatilla,
3,000 inhabitants, Winter Park, 600 inhabitants, and Zellwood, 300
inhabitants. In Alachua County: Campville, 400 inhabitants, Archer,
150 inhabitants, Grove Park, 110 inhabitants, Gainesville, 5,000
inhabitants, Hawthorne, 300 inhabitants, High Springs, 500
inhabitants, and Island Grove, 200 inhabitants. In Duval County:
Jacksonville, with a population of over 15,000, Baldwin, 125
inhabitants."
From the order committing plaintiff in error to the custody of
the sheriff, an appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of
Page 164 U. S. 652
the State of Florida, and that court affirmed the order.
Osborne v. State, 33 Fla. 162. The plaintiff in error then
sued out a writ of error from this Court.
MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM, after stating the facts in the foregoing
language, delivered the opinion of the Court.
The criminal proceedings against the plaintiff in error were
taken by virtue of a statute of Florida, known as "Chapter 4115,"
approved June 2, 1893. The ninth section of that chapter provides
that:
"No person shall engage in or manage the business, profession or
occupation mentioned in this section unless a state license shall
have been procured from the tax collector, which license shall be
issued to each person on receipt of the amount hereinafter
provided, together with the county judge's fee of twenty-five cents
for each license, and shall be signed by the tax collector and the
county judge, and have the county judge's seal upon it. Counties
and incorporated cities and towns may impose such further taxes of
the same kind upon the same subjects as they may deem proper when
the business, profession, or occupation shall be engaged in within
such county, city, or town. The tax imposed by such city, town, or
county shall not exceed fifty percent of the state tax. But such
city, town, or county may impose taxes on any business, profession,
or occupation not mentioned in this section when engaged in or
managed within such city, town, or county. No license shall be
issued for more than one year, and all licenses shall expire on the
first day of October of each year, but fractional licenses, except
as hereinafter provided, may be issued to expire on that day at a
proportionate rate, estimating from the first day of the month in
which the license is so issued, and all licenses may be
transferred, with the approval of the Comptroller, with the
business for which they were taken out, when there is a
bona
fide sale and transfer
Page 164 U. S. 653
of the property used and employed in the business as stock in
trade, but such transferred license shall not be held good for any
longer time, or for any other place, than that for which it was
originally issued."
There are various subdivisions to this section not herein set
forth, and they enumerate divers occupations and professions, the
members of which are required to procure a license and to pay
annually therefor the amounts stated in those subdivisions.
The twelfth subdivision provides, among other things, that
"all express companies doing business in this state shall pay in
cities of fifteen thousand inhabitants or more a license tax of two
hundred dollars; in cities of ten thousand to fifteen thousand
inhabitants, one hundred dollars; in cities of five thousand to ten
thousand inhabitants, seventy-five dollars; in cities of three to
five thousand inhabitants, fifty dollars; in cities of one to three
thousand inhabitants, twenty-five dollars; in towns and villages of
less than one thousand and more than fifty inhabitants, ten
dollars. Any express company violating this provision, and any
person that knowingly acts as agent for any express company before
it has paid the above tax, payable by such company, shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be
punished by a fine of not less than fifty dollars, or confined in
the county jail not less than six months."
In addition to the criminal penalty above set forth, section 10
provides that the payment of all licenses taxed may be enforced by
the seizure and sale of property by the collector.
The plaintiff in error assigns two grounds upon which he seeks
for a reversal of the judgment of the state court. One is based
upon the allegation that the statute, so far as regards the
Southern Express Company or himself as its agent, violates the
commerce clause of the federal Constitution in that it assumes to
regulate interstate commerce. The second ground is that the statute
is not sufficiently determinate, definite, and certain in its
character upon which to ascertain the amount to be paid for
licenses.
It may be here assumed that if the statute applied to the
Page 164 U. S. 654
express company in relation to its interstate business, it would
be void as an attempted interference with, or regulation of,
interstate commerce.
The particular construction to be given to this state statute is
a question for the state court to deal with, and in such a case as
this, we follow the construction given by the state court to the
statutes of its own state.
Leffingwell v.
Warren, 2 Black 599;
People v. Weaver,
100 U. S. 539,
100 U. S. 541;
Noble v. Mitchell, 164 U. S. 367,
164 U. S. 372,
and cases there cited.
The Supreme Court of Florida has construed the ninth section of
this act, and has held in express terms that it does not apply to,
or affect in any manner, the business of this company which is
interstate in its character; that it applies to and affects only
its business which is done within the state, or is, as it is
termed, "local" in its character, and it has held that, under that
statute, so long as the express company confines its operations to
express business that consists of interstate or foreign commerce,
it is wholly exempt from the legislation in question. It has added,
however, that under the provisions of the statute, if the company
engage in business within the state of a local nature, as
distinguished from an interstate or foreign kind of commerce, it
becomes subject to the statute so far only as concerns its local
business, notwithstanding it may at the same time engage in
interstate or foreign commerce. In other words, this statute, as
construed by the Supreme Court of Florida, does not exempt the
express company from taxation upon its business which is solely
within the state, even though at the same time the same company may
do a business which is interstate in its character, and that as to
the latter kind of business the statute does not apply to or affect
it. As thus construed, we have no doubt as to the correctness of
the decision that the act does not in any manner violate the
federal Constitution.
The case of
Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S.
47, is not in the slightest degree opposed to this view.
The act which was held to be in violation of the federal
Constitution in that case prohibited the agent of a foreign express
company from carrying on business at all in that state without
first obtaining
Page 164 U. S. 655
a license from the state. The company was thus prevented from
doing any business, even of an interstate character, without
obtaining the license in question. The act was held to be a
regulation of interstate commerce in its application to
corporations or associations engaged in that business, and that
subject was held to belong exclusively to national, and not state,
legislation.
It has never been held, however, that when the business of the
company which is wholly within the state is but a mere incident to
its interstate business, such fact would furnish any obstacle to
the valid taxation by the state of the business of the company
which is entirely local. So long as the regulation as to the
license or taxation does not refer to and is not imposed upon the
business of the company which is interstate, there is no
interference with that commerce by the state statute. It was stated
by Mr. Justice Bradley, in the course of his opinion in the
Crutcher case, that "taxes or license fees, in good faith
imposed exclusively on express business carried on wholly within
the state, would be open to no such objection,"
viz., an
objection that the tax or license was a regulation of or that it
improperly affected interstate commerce. We have no doubt that this
is a correct statement of the law in that regard. The statute
herein differs from the cases where statutes upon this subject have
been held void because, in those cases, the statutes prohibited the
doing of any business in the state whatever unless upon the payment
of the fee or tax. It was said as to those cases that as the law
made the payment of the fee, or the obtaining of the license, a
condition to the right to do any business whatever, whether
interstate or purely local, it was on that account a regulation of
interstate commerce, and therefore void. Here, however, under the
construction as given by the state court, the company suffers no
harm from the provisions of the statute. It can conduct its
interstate business without paying the slightest heed to the act,
because it does not apply to, or in any degree affect, the company
in regard to that portion of its business which it has the right to
conduct without regulation from the state.
The company in this case need take out no license, and pay
Page 164 U. S. 656
no tax, for doing interstate business, and the statute is
therefore valid.
The second ground for holding the statute void is that it is not
sufficiently determinate, definite, and certain in its character
upon which to ascertain the amount to be paid for licenses. This
ground furnishes no reason for interference by this Court. Whether
the statute be sufficiently determinate or certain in its character
upon which to ascertain the amount to be paid for a license is a
question of the construction of the state statute, which does not
necessarily involve a federal question, and the determination of
the state court as to the proper construction and sufficiency of
such a statute is conclusive upon us. The learned counsel for
plaintiff in error is mistaken in assuming that this Court has any
more power than formerly to review, upon a writ of error from a
state court, the determination of that court in regard to the
particular construction to be given to the statutes of its own
state. The cases of
Horner v. United States, 143
U. S. 571, and
Carey v. Houston & Texas Central
Railway, 150 U. S. 171,
have no bearing upon this question. They both refer to the
jurisdiction of this Court under the fifth section of the Act of
March 3, 1891, upon appeals or writs of error taken direct from the
circuit or district courts of the United States to this Court. By
the last subdivision of section 5 of that act it is provided
that
"nothing in this act shall affect the jurisdiction of the
Supreme Court in cases appealed from the highest court of a state
nor the construction of the statute providing for the review of
such cases."
The cases above cited originated in the circuit courts of the
United States, and were brought direct by appeal or writ of error
to this Court. This case comes here by writ of error to the supreme
court of a state, and our jurisdiction to review that judgment is
embraced in section 709 of the Revised Statutes. In exercising
jurisdiction under that section, we do not review such a question
as is here presented by plaintiff in error.
Upon the construction given it by the state court, the statute
does not violate any provision of the federal Constitution, and the
judgment of that court is therefore
Affirmed.
