Ex parte Jentzsch (1896) · DecisionDepot

Ex parte Jentzsch

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Supreme Court Apr 17, 1896 No. Crim. No. 97Published

Before: Henshaw

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Holding. The court held that the statute prohibiting barbers from working on Sundays and holidays after 12:00 p.m. is unconstitutional because it constitutes an arbitrary, special law that violates the right to labor and lacks a rational basis for its classification.

Issues

Whether a statute prohibiting barbers from working on Sundays and holidays after 12:00 p.m. violates constitutional protections regarding individual liberty and special legislation.

Disposition. Petitioner discharged

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“It is a curious law for the protection of labor which punishes the laborer for working.”

“The prisoner is discharged.”

Synopsis

Writ op Habeas Corpus from the Supreme Court to the sheriff of the City and County of San Francisco, holding the petitioner under commitment from the Police Court of said city and county, upon a judgment of conviction, for keeping open a barber-shop on Sunday afternoon, June 16, 1895.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Henshaw, J. Petitioner was convicted under section 310-J of the Penal Code, which is a new section, enacted in 1895, and "which provides as follows: “Every person who as proprietor, manager, lessee, employee or agent keeps open or conducts, or causes to be kept open or conducted, any barber-shop, bath-house and barber-shop, barber-shop of a bathing establishment or hair-dressing establishment, or any place for shaving or hair-dressing used and conducted in connection with any other place of business or resort, or who engages at work or labor as a barber in any such shop or establishment on Sun [471]day, or on a legal holiday, after the hour of 12 o’clock m. of said day, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

It is contended that the section is in violation of the following constitutional provisions:

“All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.” (Const., art. I, sec. 1.)

“No special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted which may not be altered, revoked, or repealed by the legislature; nor shall any citizen, or class of citizens, be granted privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not be granted to all citizens.” (Const., art,, I, sec. 21.)

“The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is to say: ... 2. For the punishment of crimes and misdemeanors. .... In all cases where a general law can be made applicable.” (Const., art. IV, sec. 25, subds. 2, 33.)

In construing so-called Sunday laws, courts have variously regarded them, some from a religious view, others from a secular, and still others from an anomalous commingling of both. In this state they have never been upheld from a religious standpoint. Under a constitution which guarantees to all equal liberty of religion and conscience, any law which forbids an act not in itself contra bonos mores, because that act is repugnant to the beliefs of one religious sect, of necessity interferes with the liberty of those who hold to other beliefs or to none at all.

Liberty of conscience and belief is preserved alike to the followers of Christ, to Buddhist and Mohammedan, to all who think that their tenets alone are illumined by the light of divine truth; but it is equally preserved to the skeptic, agnostic, atheist, and infidel, who says in his heart, “ There is no God.”

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In brief, whether or not a general law to promote rest from labor in all business vocations may be upheld as within the due exercise of the police power as imposing for its welfare a needed period of repose upon the whole community, a law such as this certainly cannot. A law is not always general because it operates upon all within a class. There must be back of that a substantial reason why it is made to operate only upon a class, and not generally upon all. As was said in Pasadena v. Stimson 91 Cal. 238: “The conclusion is that, although a law is general and constitutional when it applies equally to all persons embraced in a class founded upon some natural or intrinsic or constitutional distinction, it is not general or constitutional if it confers particular privileges or imposes peculiar disabilities or burdensome conditions in the exercise of a common right upon a class of persons arbitrarily selected from the general body of those who stand in precisely the same relation to the subject of the law.” And in Darcy v. Mayor etc. of San Jose, 104 Cal. 642: “ The classification, however, must be founded upon differences which are either defined by the constitution or natural, and which will suggest a reason which might rationally be held to justify the diversity of legislation.” In the case of our cities the constitution itself decrees a classification by population, and the differing exigencies of municipal government require that laws operating upon any class should be [475]held general. Otherwise the constitutional scheme itself is overthrown. But in a law such as this, no reason has been or can be shown why the followers of one useful and unobjectionable employment slioúldbe debarred from the right to labor upon certain days, and others in like classes of employment be not so debarred. If it be constitutional to single out one such class and deny its members the right to labor on one day in the week, it ■would be constitutional to prohibit them from following their vocation upon six days of the week. When any one such class is singled out and put under the criminal ban of a law such as this, the law not only is special, unjust, and unreasonable in its operation, but it works an invasion of individual liberty, the liberty of free labor which it pretends to protect.

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