Summary
In Lindsay v. City of Miami (Fla.), 52 So.2d 111, the Florida Supreme Court considered a statute empowering municipalities within a county of 315,000 population or more to enact ordinances to the effect that "no female person shall mix or dispense any intoxicating liquids from any bar * * * except and unless such female is the licensee."
Summary of this case from McDowell v. Columbia Pictures Corp.Opinion
April 17, 1951.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Dade County, Marshall C. Wiseheart, J.
Franklin Parson, Miami, for appellants.
Gramling Gramling, Miami, for appellee.
The question here is the constitutionality of Chapter 25536, Laws of Florida, Acts of 1949, and, incidentally, the validity of Ordinance No. 3811 of the City of Miami, which was passed, according to its express language, pursuant to that act
By the law, the legislature undertook to empower municipalities within counties having a population in excess of 315,000 to ordain that "* * * no female person shall mix or dispense any intoxicating liquors at or from any bar * * * except and unless such female is the licensee * * *." This quotation coincides with the wording in the ordinance.
In view of the recital in the ordinance, the identicalness of the language in it and in the act, and the fact that the power to enact the ordinance derives from the act, we think the ordinance must fail if the act is found void.
In the beginning it should be remarked that in enacting Chapter 25536, supra, there was no attempt to comply with the requirements of Section 21 of Article III of the Constitution, F.S.A. that notice of intention to apply for the passage of local or special laws be published or that such laws contain provisions for referendums.
The test, therefore, of the validity of this so-called "population act" is the reasonableness of the basis for the classification or the relationship between the classification and the object sought to be accomplished. If such an act as the one under attack cannot meet this test, if this relationship is devoid of reasonableness, the act will be declared local. Waybright v. Duval County, 142 Fla. 875, 196 So. 430. As applied in the instant case, Chapter 25536 will topple if the classification is unreasonable because it is not even argued that it can stand as a local law.
We have often spoken on enactments of this kind, dealing with varied subjects, and there is no need now to elaborate on the rule so thoroughly established and so easily accessible in our decisions.
The law being assailed applies to the one county, Dade. We shall not pause to discuss the merits of the act, or the consistency or inconsistency of a woman's being allowed to work in a liquor establishment as a proprietress, but not as an employee, for that is not necessary to the decision. We shall assume for the purpose of this case that the law was passed from the loftiest of motives for the purpose of guarding the morals of those affected.
But the higher the plane on which we place these unchallenged intentions, the more puzzled we become over the importance of such safeguards in a county of 315,000 inhabitants but not in one having fewer. In passing, it seems to us that if the morals of the citizens generally and of women particularly are to be protected, that denominator should be common to the smallest hamlet and the most populous county.
But the present situation presents an even more glaring disparity than a regulation pertaining to counties of the stated population, or counties eventually attaining that size, but not to counties of fewer inhabitants, as will be seen from a more careful examination of the law. It provides that any municipality in the big county may impose the restriction. This means, of course, that a city of any given number of inhabitants situated within the large county would benefit by the act, while all other cities of like population in the whole State of Florida would not, simply because the counties where they were located had not entered the higher bracket. Thus there is not only an absence of reasonable relationship between the arbitrary population figure and the object of the legislation, but of any relationship at all, for in case the city is the unit governed, as is the situation here, one of them could never, grow as it might, have the benefit of the act unless it was located in Dade County or unless the county of which it was a part acquired a population of 315,000. On the face of it, such a classification is, in our opinion, a nullity; so we conclude that the law empowering the city so to legislate must fall and carry the ordinance with it.
Reversed.
SEBRING, C.J., and CHAPMAN, HOBSON and ROBERTS, JJ., concur.
TERRELL and ADAMS, JJ., dissent.