Takahashi v. Fish & Game Commission

Delivered the opinion of the Couri.

The respondent, Torao Takahashi, born in Japan, came to this country and became a resident of California in 1907. Federal laws, based on distinctions of “color and race,” Toyota v. United States, 268 U. S. 402, 411-412, have permitted Japanese and certain other non-white racial groups to enter and reside in the country, but have made them ineligible for United States citizenship. The question presented is whether California can, consistently with the Federal Constitution and laws passed pursuant to it, use this federally created racial ineligibility for citizenship as a basis for barring Taka-hashi from earning his living as a commercial fisherman in the ocean waters off the coast of California.

Prior to 1943 California issued commercial fishing licenses to all qualified persons without regard to alienage or ineligibility to citizenship. From 1915 to 1942 Taka-hashi, under annual commercial fishing licenses issued by the State, fished in ocean waters off the California coast, apparently both within and without the three-mile coastal belt, and brought his fresh fish ashore for sale. In 1942, while this country was at war with Japan, Takahashi and other California residents of Japanese ancestry were evacuated from the State under military orders. See Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214. In 1943, during the period of war and evacuation, an amendment to the California Fish and Game Code was adopted prohibiting issuance of a license to any “alien Japanese.” Cal. Stats. 1943, ch. 1100. In 1945, the state code was again amended by striking the 1943 provision for fear that it might be “declared unconstitutional” because directed only “against alien Japanese”; the new amendment banned issuance of licenses to any “person ineligible to citizenship,” which classification included Japanese. Cal. Stats. 1945, ch. 181. Because of this state provision barring issuance of commercial fishing licenses to persons ineligible for citizenship under federal law, Takahashi, who met all other state requirements, was denied a license by the California Fish and Game Commission upon his return to California in 1945.

Takahashi brought this action for mandamus in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California, to compel the Commission to issue a license to him. That court granted the petition for mandamus. It held that lawful alien inhabitants of California, despite their ineligibility to citizenship, were entitled to engage in the vocation of commercial fishing on the high seas beyond the three-mile belt on the same terms as other lawful state inhabitants, and that the California code provision denying them this right violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State Supreme Court, three judges dissenting, reversed, holding that California had a proprietary interest in fish in the ocean waters within three miles of the shore, and that this interest justified the State in barring all aliens in general and aliens ineligible to citizenship in particular from catching fish within or without the three-mile coastal belt and bringing them to California for commercial purposes. 30 Cal. 2d 719, 185 P. 2d 805. To review this question of importance in the fields of federal-state relationships and of constitutionally protected individual equality and liberty, we granted certiorari.

We may well begin our consideration of the principles to be applied in this case by a summary of this Court’s holding in Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, not deemed controlling by the majority of the California Supreme Court, but regarded by the dissenters as requiring the invalidation of the California law. That case involved an attack upon an Arizona law which required all Arizona employers of more than five workers to hire not less than eighty (80) per cent qualified electors or native-born citizens of the United States. Raich, an alien who worked as a cook in a restaurant which had more than five employees, was about to lose his job solely because of the state law’s coercive effect on the restaurant owner. This Court, in upholding Raich’s contention that the Arizona law was invalid, declared that Raich, having been lawfully admitted into the country under federal law, had a federal privilege to enter and abide in “any State in the Union” and thereafter under the Fourteenth Amendment to enjoy the equal protection of the laws of the state in which he abided; that this privilege to enter in and abide in any state carried with it the “right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community,” a denial of which right would make of the Amendment “a barren form of words.” In answer to a contention that Arizona’s restriction upon the employment of aliens was “reasonable” and therefore permissible, this Court declared:

“It must also be said that reasonable classification implies action consistent with the legitimate interests of the State, and it will not be disputed that these cannot be so broadly conceived as to bring them into hostility to exclusive Federal power. The authority to control immigration — to admit or exclude aliens- — -is vested solely in the Federal Government. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, 713. The assertion of .an authority to deny to aliens the opportunity of earning a livelihood when lawfully admitted to the State would be tantamount to the assertion of the right to deny them entrance and abode, for in ordinary cases they cannot live where they cannot work. And, if such a policy were permissible, the practical result would be that those lawfully admitted to the country under the authority of the acts of Congress, instead of enjoying in a substantial sense and in their full scope the privileges conferred by the admission, would be segregated in such of the States as chose to offer hospitality.” Truax v. Raich, supra at 42.

Had the Truax decision said nothing further than what is quoted above, its reasoning, if followed, would seem to require invalidation of this California code provision barring aliens from the occupation of fishing as inconsistent with federal law, which is constitutionally declared to be “the supreme Law of the Land.” However, the Court there went on to note that it had on occasion sustained state legislation that did not apply alike to citizens and non-citizens, the ground for the distinction being that such laws were necessary to protect special interests either of the state or of its citizens as such. The Truax opinion pointed out that the Arizona law, aimed as it was against employment of aliens in all vocations, failed to show a “special public interest with respect to any particular business . . . that could possibly be deemed to support the enactment.” The Court noted that it had previously upheld various state laws which restricted the privilege of planting oysters in the tidewater rivers of a state to citizens of that state, and which denied to aliens within a state the privilege of possessing a rifle and of shooting game within that state; it also referred to decisions recognizing a state’s broad powers, in the absence of overriding treaties, to restrict the devolution of real property to non-aliens.

California now urges, and the-State Supreme Court held, that the California fishing provision here challenged falls within the rationale of the “special public interest” cases distinguished in the Truax opinion, and thus that the state’s ban upon commercial fishing by aliens ineligible to citizenship is valid. The contention is this: California owns the fish within three miles of its coast as a trustee for all California citizens as distinguished from its non-citizen inhabitants; as such trustee-owner, it has complete power to bar any or all aliens from fishing in the three-mile belt as a means of conserving the supply of fish; since migratory fish caught while swimming in the three-mile belt are indistinguishable from those caught while swimming in the adjacent high seas, the State, in order to enforce its three-mile control, can also regulate the catching and delivery to its coast of fish caught beyond the three-mile belt under this Court’s decision in Bayside Fish Co. v. Gentry, 297 U. S. 422. Its law denying fishing licenses to aliens ineligible for citizenship, so the state’s contention goes, tends to reduce the number of commercial fishermen and therefore is a proper fish conservation measure; in the exercise of its power to decide what groups will be denied licenses, the State has a right, if not a duty, to bar first of all aliens, who have no community interest in the fish owned by the State. Finally, the legislature’s denial of licenses to those aliens who are “ineligible to citizenship” is defended as a reasonable classification, on the ground that California has simply followed the Federal Government’s lead in adopting that classification from the naturalization laws.

First. The state’s contention that its law was passed solely as a fish conservation measure is vigorously denied. The petitioner argues that it was the outgrowth of racial antagonism directed solely against the Japanese, and that for this reason alone it cannot stand. See Korematsu v. United States, supra at 216; Kotch v. Board of River Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552, 556; Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356; In re Ah Chong, 2 F. 733, 737. We find it unnecessary to resolve this controversy concerning the motives that prompted enactment of the legislation. Accordingly, for purposes of our decision we may assume that the code provision was passed to conserve fish in the California coastal waters, or to protect California citizens engaged in commercial fishing from competition by Japanese aliens, or for both reasons.

Second. It does not follow, as California seems to argue, that because the United States regulates immigration and naturalization in part on the basis of race and color classifications, a state can adopt one or more of the same classifications to prevent lawfully admitted aliens within its borders from earning a living in the same way that other state inhabitants earn their living. The Federal Government has broad constitutional powers in determining what aliens shall be admitted to the United States, the period they may remain, regulation of their conduct before naturalization, and the terms and conditions of their naturalization. See Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 66. Under the Constitution the states are granted no such powers; they can neither add to nor take from the conditions lawfully imposed by Congress upon admission, naturalization and residence of aliens in the United States or the several states. State laws which impose discriminatory burdens upon the entrance or residence of aliens lawfully within the United States conflict with this constitutionally derived federal power to regulate immigration, and have accordingly been held invalid. Moreover, Congress, in the enactment of a comprehensive legislative plan for the nation-wide control and regulation of immigration and naturalization, has broadly provided:

“All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.” 16 Stat. 140, 144, 8 U. S. C. § 41.

The protection of this section has been held to extend to aliens as well as to citizens. Consequently the section and the Fourteenth Amendment on which it rests in part protect “all persons” against state legislation bearing unequally upon them either because of alienage or color. See Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U. S. 24. The Fourteenth Amendment and the laws adopted under its authority thus embody a general policy that all persons lawfully in this country shall abide “in any state” on an equality of legal privileges with all citizens under non-discriminatory laws.

All of the foregoing emphasizes the tenuousness of the state’s claim that it has power to single out and ban its lawful alien inhabitants, and particularly certain racial and color groups within this class of inhabitants, • from following a vocation simply because Congress has put some such groups in special classifications in exercise of its broad and wholly distinguishable powers over immigration and naturalization. The state’s law here cannot be supported in the employment of this legislative authority because of policies adopted by Congress in the exercise of its power to treat separately and differently with aliens from countries composed of peoples of many diverse cul-. tures, races, and colors. For these reasons the power of a state to apply its laws exclusively to its alien inhabitants as a class is confined within narrow limits.

Third. We are unable to find that the “special public interest” on which California relies provides support for this state ban on Takahashi’s commercial fishing. As before pointed out, California’s claim of “special public interest” is that its citizens are the collective owners of fish swimming in the three-mile belt. It is true that this Court did long ago say that the citizens of a state collectively own “the tide-waters . . . and the fish in them, so •far as they are capable of ownership while running.” McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391, 394. Cf. United States v. California, 332 U. S. 19, 38; Toomer v. Witsell, ante, p. 385. The McCready case upheld a Virginia law which prohibited citizens of other states from planting oysters in a Virginia tidewater river. Though the Mc-Cready case has been often distinguished, its rationale has been relied on in other cases, including Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U. S. 519. That decision, where only the commerce clause was involved, sustained a state law that, in order to restrict the use of game to the people of the state, prohibited the out-of-state transportation of game killed within the state. On the other hand, where Louisiana laws declared that the state owned all shrimp within the waters of the state, but permitted ultimate sale and shipment of shrimp for consumption outside that state’s boundaries, Louisiana was denied power under the commerce clause to require the local processing of shrimp taken from Louisiana marshes as a prerequisite to out-of-state transportation. Foster Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 1. In the absence of overriding federal treaties, this Court sustained a state law barring aliens from hunting wild game in the interest of conserving game for citizens of the state against due process and equal protection challenges. Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138. Later, however, the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, 40 Stat. 755, was sustained as within federal power despite the claim of Missouri of ownership of birds within its boundaries based on prior statements as to state ownership of game and fish in the Geer case. Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416. The Court was of opinion that “To put the claim of the State upon title is to lean upon a slender reed.” P. 434. We think that same statement is equally applicable here. To whatever extent the fish in the three-mile belt off California may be “capable of ownership” by California, we think that “ownership” is inadequate to justify California in excluding any or all aliens who are lawful residents of the State from making a living by fishing in the ocean off its shores while permitting all others to do so.

This leaves for consideration the argument that this law should be upheld on authority of those cases which have sustained state laws barring aliens ineligible to citizenship from land ownership. Assuming the continued validity of those cases, we think they could not in any event be controlling here. They rested solely upon the power of states to control the devolution and ownership of land within their borders, a power long exercised and supported on reasons peculiar to real property. They cannot be extended to cover this case.

The judgment is reversed and remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Reversed.

The comprehensive laws adopted by Congress regulating the immigration and naturalization of aliens are included in Title 8 of the U. S. Code; for codification of laws governing racial and color prerequisites of aliens to citizenship see 8 U. S. C. § 703. An act adopted by the first Congress in 1790 made “free white persons” only eligible for citizenship. 1 Stat. 103. Later acts have extended eligibility of aliens to citizenship to the following groups: in 1870, “aliens of African nativity and . . . persons of African descent,” 16 Stat. 254, 256; in 1940, “descendants of races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere,” 54 Stat. 1137, 1140; in 1943, “Chinese persons or persons of Chinese descent,” 57 Stat. 600, 601; and in 1946, Filipinos and “persons of races indigenous to India,” 60 Stat. 416. While it is not wholly clear what racial groups other than Japanese are now ineligible to citizenship, it is clear that Japanese are among the few groups still not eligible, see Oyama v. California, 332 U. S. 633, 635, n. 3, and that, according to the 1940 census, Japanese aliens constituted the great majority of aliens living in the United States then ineligible for citizenship. See concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Murphy in Oyama v. California, supra at 650, 665, 666, nn. 20 and 22.

Report of the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Japanese Resettlement, May 1, 1945, pp. 5-6.

As amended the code section now reads: “Persons required to procure license: To whom issuable. Every person who uses or operates or assists in using or operating any boat, net, trap, line, or other appliance to take fish, mollusks or crustaceans for profit, or who brings or causes fish, mollusks or crustaceans to be brought ashore at any point in the State for the purpose of selling the same in a fresh state, shall procure a commercial fishing license.

“A commercial fishing license may be issued to any person other than a person ineligible to citizenship. A commercial fishing license may be issued to a corporation only if said corporation is authorized to do business in this State, if none of the officers or directors thereof are persons ineligible to citizenship, and if less than the majority of each class of stockholders thereof are persons ineligible to citizenship.” Cal. Fish and Game Code § 990. In 1947 the code was amended to permit “any person, not a citizen of the United States,” to obtain hunting and sport fishing licenses, both of which had been denied to “alien Japanese” and to persons “ineligible to citizenship” under the 1943 and 1945 amendments. Cal. Stats. 1947, c. 1329; Cal. Fish and Game" Code §§427, 428.

The Superior Court first ordered issuance of a commercial fishing license authorizing Takahashi to bring ashore “catches of fish from the waters of the high seas beyond the State’s territorial jurisdiction.” After appeal to the State Supreme Court by the State Commission the Superior Court amended its judgment so as to order a commercial license authorizing Takahashi to bring in catches of fish taken from the three-mile ocean belt adjacent to the California coast as well as from, the high seas. The State Supreme Court held that the Superior Court was without jurisdiction to amend its judgment after appeal and accordingly treated the amended judgment as void. California argues here that its State Fish and Game Commission is authorized by statute to issue only one type of commercial fishing license, namely, one permitting ocean fish to be brought ashore whether caught within or without the three-mile belt, that the Superior Court’s first judgment ordering issuance of a license limited to catches of high seas fish directed the Commission to do something it was without authority to do, and that on this ground we should affirm the state court’s denial of the requested license. The State Supreme Court did not, however, decide the case on that ground, but ruled against petitioner on the ground that the challenged code provision was valid under the Federal Constitution and that the Commission’s refusal to grant a license was required by its terms. Since the state court of last resort relied solely upon federal grounds for its decision, we may properly review its action here.

The opinion cited the following cases: McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391; Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138; Hauenstein v. Lynham, 100 U. S. 483; and Blythe v. Hinckley, 180 U. S. 333.

Truax v. Raich, supra; Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U. S. 275, 280; see Hines v. Davidowitz, supra at 65-68.

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, supra at 369; United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 696; In re Tiburcio Parrott, 1 F. 481, 508-509; Fraser v. McConway & Torley Co., 82 F. 257.

Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U. S. 197; Porterfield v. Webb, 263 U. S. 225; Webb v. O’Brien, 263 U. S. 313; Frick v. Webb, 263 U. S. 326.

See Oyama v. California, 332 U. S. 633, 646, 649, 672.