| Litigants: | Henderson v. Mayor of New York |
| Arguedate: | January 13 |
| Argueyear: | 1876 |
| Decidedate: | March 20 |
| Decideyear: | 1876 |
| Fullname: | Henderson et al. v. Mayor of the City of New York et al. |
| Usvol: | 92 |
| Uspage: | 259 |
| Holding: | New York's imposition of a tax per passenger arriving by ship was an invalid state regulation of foreign commerce |
| Majority: | Miller |
| Joinmajority: | unanimous |
| Lawsapplied: | Dormant Commerce Clause |
Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U.S. 259 (1876), was decision of the United States Supreme Court delivered by Justice Samuel Freeman Miller.
The steamship companies that brought passengers to the United States were taxed for every healthy passenger that made it into the country. They included this fee in the ticket price but considered it a burden on their business. Without the tax, they reasoned they could sell more tickets.
The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York by two British brothers whose steamship company the Henderson Brothers ran a vessel between Glasgow and New York. The Circuit Court upheld the New York laws. The brothers brought the case to the Supreme Court alleging that the state law infringed upon an exclusive Congressional power over foreign commerce.
Since 1824 the New York law required that every vessel arriving in the port of New York provide a sworn report to the mayor of any passengers from other countries and states. The law further required the payment of a bond for expenses that could arise resulting from accident, sickness or poverty of the passenger.
The report of passenger information was upheld by the Supreme Court in Mayor of New York v. Miln (1837) as a legitimate exercise of the state police power. Justice Joseph Story dissented from that decision.[1] The tax on arriving passengers was struck down by a divided court in the Passenger Cases. The permissible exercise of state police power in the context of health quarantine and public charge laws were recognized in Gibbons and Miln however a sharply divided Court in the Passenger Cases decided that all federal immigration regulations were within the exclusive powers of the federal government.
Quoting Chief Justice John Marshall's decision in Gibbons v. Ogden the Court asserts the supremacy of the Constitution: "In every such case the act of Congress or the treaty is supreme; and the laws of the State, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it." Chief Justice Roger Taney preferred a narrower commerce clause than Gibbons. The Taney Court's decision in Cooley v. Board of Wardens authored by Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis was a compromise position articulating a doctrine of partial federal exclusivity. In Cooley Justice Curtis said the power to regulate commerce was exclusive to Congress when "subjects of this power are in their nature national, or admit only of one uniform system, or plan of regulation". States could exercise their police powers when the subject matter was local but not when it was national.[2] [3]
Despite the similarity of the tax provisions in the Passenger Cases there was no majority opinion for that case and Justice Miller based the decision on the more persuasive reasoning of Cooley.