Carter v. Carter Coal Co. 298 U.S. 238 (1936)

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 321

Page 321

This was the NEW DEAL'S strongest case yet to come before the Supreme Court, and it lost. At issue was the constitutionality of the BITUMINOUS COAL ACT, which regulated the trade practices, prices, and labor relations of the nation's single most important source of energy, the bituminous industry in twenty-seven states. No industry was the subject of greater federal concern or of as many federal investigations. After the Court killed the NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT (NIRA) and with it the bituminous code, Congress enacted a "Little NIRA" for bituminous coal. Although the statute contained no provision limiting the amount of bituminous that could be mined, the Court held it unconstitutional as a regulation of PRODUCTION.

The statute had two basic provisions, wholly separable and administered separately by independent administrative agencies. One agency supervised the price and trade-practices section of the statute; the other the labor section, dealing with MAXIMUM HOURS AND MINIMUM WAGES, and COLLECTIVE BARGAINING. In NEBBIA V. NEW YORK (1934) the Court had sustained against a due process attack the principle of price-fixing in the broadest language. The labor sections seemed constitutional, because strikes had crippled INTERSTATE COMMERCE and the national economy on numerous occasions and four times required federal troops to quell disorders. The federal courts had often enjoined the activities of the United Mine Workers as restraining interstate commerce.

The Court voted 6?3 to invalidate the labor provisions and then voted 5?4 to invalidate the entire statute. Justice GEORGE SUTHERLAND for the majority did not decide on the merits of the price-fixing provisions. Had he attacked them, he might have lost Justice OWEN J. ROBERTS, who had written the Nebbia opinion. The strategy was to hold the price provisions inseparable from the labor provisions, which were unconstitutional, thereby bringing down the whole act, despite the fact that its two sections were separable.

Sutherland relied mainly on the stunted version of the COMMERCE CLAUSE that had dominated the Court's opinions in UNITED STATES V. E. C. KNIGHT CO. (1895) and more recently in the NIRA and AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT cases: production is local; labor is part of production; therefore the TENTH AMENDMENT reserves all labor matters to the states. That the major coal-producing states, disavowing STATES ' RIGHTS, had supported the congressional...