Colgate v. Harvey 296 U.S. 404 (1935)

• Author: Leonard W. Levy
• Pages: 441

Page 441

This case is a historical curiosity. Vermont taxed the income from money loaned out of state but exempted from taxation any income from money loaned in the state at not more than five percent interest. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice GEORGE SUTHERLAND, held the act unconstitutional as a violation of the EQUAL PROTECTION and PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES clauses of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. Justices HARLAN F. STONE, LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, and BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO, in dissent, found difficulty in perceiving a privilege of national CITIZENSHIP which the state had violated, especially because the Court had decided forty-four cases since 1868 in which state acts had been attacked as violating the privileges and immunities clause and until this case had held none of them unconstitutional. MADDEN V. KENTUCKY (1940) overruled...