City of Shreveport v. Schulsinger

Citations

• 113 La. 9
• 36 So. 870
• 1904 La. LEXIS 606

Syllabus

<p>POOLROOM — REGULATION — EVIDENCE—CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.</p> <p>1. The business of conducting a poolroom and turf exchange falls within a class that may be regulated, discriminated against, or suppressed by the state, in the exercise of its police power, and the power to “regulate,” conferred by Act No. 206, p. 397, of 1902, on municipalities having less than 50,000 inhabitants, authorizes^uch municipalities to confine that business within prescribed territorial limits, where it will tempt only those who are seeking temptation.</p> <p>2; Testimony, of a person who has never tried the experiment, to the effect that a poolroom and turf exchange cannot, be successfully conducted a few squares away from the heart of a city, amounts, at best, to an opinion, and not the opinion of an expert, and does not prove the fact.</p> <p>3. The power to regulate does not include the power intentionally to suppress, and one may not with intention do indirectly that which he is unauthorized to do directly; but, where the police power is exercised with the bona fide intention of regulating a business which is subject to its dominion, it is lawfully exercised, notwithstanding the fact that the business may thereby be made unprofitable and perish for lack of support.</p> <p>4. The legitimate exercise by a state of its police power is not controlled or affected by the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.</p> <p>(Syllabus by the Court.)</p>