holding that South Carolina statutes effectively prohibiting nonresidents from fishing in South Carolina waters violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause because the state offered insufficient evidence of a “reasonable relationship between the danger represented by non-citizens, as a class, and the severe discrimination practiced upon them”
How later courts described this case
- holding that South Carolina statutes effectively prohibiting nonresidents from fishing in South Carolina waters violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause because the state offered insufficient evidence of a “reasonable relationship between the danger represented by non-citizens, as a class, and the severe discrimination practiced upon them”
- holding that South Carolina law requiring boats to dock at a South Carolina port discriminated against interstate commerce even though it applied evenhandedly to boats with in-state and out-of-state owners, because it used the threat of fines “to divert to South Carolina employment and business which might otherwise go to” another state
- holding that the Commerce Clause was violated where a state required that shrimp boats fishing off of its coast pack their shrimp and pay state taxes before transporting their catch interstate
- holding that the Privileges and Immunities clause "bars discrimination against citizens of other States where there is no substantial reason for the dis- crimination beyond the mere fact that they are citizens of other States."
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Rutledge,
concurring.
I agree with the result and the Court's opinion, subject to one interpretation or qualification of the opinion’s Fifth part.
The requirement that owners of boats fishing in the maritime belt dock at a South Carolina port, unload, pack, and stamp their catch (for tax purposes), before “shipping or transporting it to another state,” is not merely a regu *410 lation of commerce burdening it in the sense of materially increasing the shipper’s costs. Many valid regulations of commerce do this. The regulation in question goes farther. It is aimed in terms directly at interstate commerce alone, and thus would seem to be discriminatory in intent and effect upon that commerce. Moreover, in my opinion, it is of such a character that, if applied, for all practical purposes it would block the commerce.
Since it was exactly that sort of state regulation the commerce clause was designed to strike down, I agree that this one cannot stand. The same considerations I also think would be applicable to nullify the license fees levied against nonresidents, since upon the record their transportation of catches would seem to be exclusively in interstate commerce, or practically so.