author: Mr. Justice Douglas delivered Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice Harlan,

text:
    HARPER et al. v. VIRGINIA BOARD OF ELECTIONS et al.
    No. 48.
    Argued January 25-26, 1966.
    Decided March 24, 1966.

      Allison W. Brown, Jr., argued the cause for appellants in No. 48. With him on the brief were Lawrence Speiser and Philip Schwartz.

      Robert L. Segar and J. A. Jordan, Jr., argued the cause for appellant in No. 655. With them on the brief were Max Dean and Len W. Holt.

      George D. Gibson argued the cause for appellees in both cases. With him on the briefs were Robert Y. Button, Attorney General of Virginia, Richard N. Harris, Assistant Attorney General, and Joseph C. Garter, Jr.

      Solicitor General Marshall argued the cause for the United States, as amicus curiae in No. 48, by special leave of Court, urging reversal. With him on the brief were Attorney General Katzenbach, Assistant Attorney General Doar, Ralph S. Spritzer, David Rubin, James L. Kelley and Richard A. Posner.

      Together with No. 655, Butts v. Harrison, Governor of Virginia, et al., also on appeal from the same court.

   Mr. Justice Douglas delivered

the opinion of the Court.

These are suits by Virginia residents to have declared unconstitutional Virginia’s poll tax. The three-judge District Court, feeling bound by our decision in Breedlove v. Buttles, 302 U. S. 277, dismissed the complaint. See 240 F. Supp. 270. The cases came here on appeal and we noted probable jurisdiction. 380 U. S. 930, 382 U. S. 806.

While the right to vote in federal elections is conferred by Art. I, § 2, of the Constitution (United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 314-315), the right to vote in state elections is nowhere expressly mentioned. It is argued that the right to vote in state elections is implicit, particularly by reason of the First Amendment and that it may not constitutionally be conditioned upon the payment of a tax or fee. Cf. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105, 113. We do not stop to canvass the relation between voting and political expression. For it is enough to say that once the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That is to say, the right of suffrage “is subject to the imposition of state standards which are not discriminatory and which do not contravene any restriction that Congress, acting pursuant to its constitutional powers, has imposed.” Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, 360 U. S. 45, 51. We were speaking there of a state literacy test which we sustained, warning that the result would be different if a literacy test, fair on its face, were used to discriminate against a class. Id., at 53. But the Lassiter case does not govern the result here, because, unlike a poll tax, the “ability to read and write . . . has some relation to standards designed to promote intelligent use of the ballot.” Id., at 51.

We conclude that a State violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this or any other tax. Our cases demonstrate that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment restrains the States from fixing voter qualifications which invidiously discriminate. Thus without questioning the power of a State to impose reasonable residence restrictions on the availability of the ballot (see Pope v. Williams, 193 U. S. 621), we held in Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89, that a State may not deny the opportunity to vote to a bona fide resident merely because he is a member of the armed services. “By forbidding a soldier ever to controvert the presumption of non-residence, the Texas Constitution imposes an invidious discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id., at 96. And see Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145. Previously we had said that neither homesite nor occupation “affords a permissible basis for distinguishing between qualified voters within the State.” Gray v. Sanders, 372 U. S. 368, 380. We think the same must be true of requirements of wealth or affluence or payment of a fee.

Long ago in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 370, the Court referred to “the political franchise of voting” as a “fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights.” Recently in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 561-562, we said, “Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.” There we were considering charges that voters in one part of the State had greater representation per person in the State Legislature than voters in another part of the State. We concluded:

“A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more nor no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. This is an essential part of the concept of a government of laws and not men. This is at the heart of Lincoln’s vision of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.’ The Equal Protection Clause demands no less than substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens, of all places as well as of all races.” Id., at 568.

We say the same whether the citizen, otherwise qualified to vote, has $1.50 in his pocket or nothing at all, pays the fee or fails to pay it. The principle that denies the State the right to dilute a citizen’s vote on account of his economic status or other such factors by analogy bars a system which excludes those unable to pay a fee to vote or who fail to pay.

It is argued that a State may exact fees from citizens for many different kinds of licenses; that if it can demand from all an equal fee for a driver’s license, it can demand from all an equal poll tax for voting. But we must remember that the interest of the State, when it comes to voting, is limited to the power to fix qualifications. Wealth, like race, creed, or color, is not germane to one’s ability to participate intelligently in the electoral process. Lines drawn on the basis of wealth or property, like those of race (Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 216), are traditionally disfavored. See Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 184-185 (Jackson, J., concurring); Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12; Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353. To introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter’s qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor. The degree of the discrimina^ tion is irrelevant. In this context — that is, as a condition of obtaining a ballot — the requirement of fee paying causes an “invidious” discrimination (Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 541) that runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause. Levy “by the poll,” as stated in Breedlove v. Suttles, supra, at 281, is an old familiar form of taxation; and we say nothing to impair its validity so long as it is not made a condition to the exercise of the franchise. Breedlove v. Suttles sanctioned its use as “a prerequisite of voting.” Id., at 283. To that extent the Breedlove case is overruled.

We agree, of course, with Mr. Justice Holmes that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics” (Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75). Likewise, the Equal Protection Clause is not shackled to the political theory of a particular era. In determining what lines are unconstitutionally discriminatory, we have never been confined to historic notions of equality, any more than we have restricted due process to a fixed catalogue of what was at a given time deemed to be the limits of fundamental rights. See Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 5-6. Notions of what constitutes equal treatment for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause do change.^] This Court in 1896 held that laws providing for separate public facilities for white and Negro citizens did not deprive the latter of the equal protection and treatment that the Fourteenth Amendment commands. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537. Seven of the eight Justices then sitting subscribed to the Court’s opinion, thus joining in expressions of what constituted unequal and discriminatory treatment that sound strange to a contemporary ear. When, in 1954 — more than a half-century later — we repudiated the “separate-but-equal” doctrine of Plessy as respects public education we stated: “In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written.” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 492.

In a recent searching re-examination of the Equal Protection Clause, we held, as already noted, that “the opportunity for equal participation by all voters in the election of state legislators” is required. Reynolds v. Sims, supra, at 566. We decline to qualify that principle by sustaining this poll tax. Our conclusion, like that in Reynolds v. Sims, is founded not on what we think governmental policy should be, but on what the Equal Protection Clause requires. j

We have long been mindful that where fundamental rights and liberties are asserted under the Equal Protection Clause, classifications which might invade or restrain them must be closely scrutinized and carefully confined. See, e. g., Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 541; Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 561-562; Carrington v. Rash, supra; Baxstrom v. Herold, ante, p. 107; Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536, 580-581 (Black, J., concurring).

Those principles apply here. For to repeat, wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice Black,

dissenting.

In Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U. S. 277, decided December 6, 1937, a few weeks after I took my seat as a member of this Court, we unanimously upheld the right of the State of Georgia to make payment of its state poll tax a prerequisite to voting in state elections. We rejected at that time contentions that the state law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it put an unequal burden on different groups of people according to their age, sex, and ability to pay. In rejecting the contention that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause the Court noted at p. 281:

“While possible by statutory declaration to levy a poll tax upon every inhabitant of whatsoever sex, age or condition, collection from all would be impossible for always there are many too poor to pay.”

Believing at that time that the Court had properly respected the limitation of its power under the Equal Protection Clause and was right in rejecting the equal protection argument, I joined the Court’s judgment and opinion. Later, May 28, 1951, I joined the Court’s judgment in Butler v. Thompson, 341 U. S. 937, upholding, over the dissent of Mr. Justice Douglas, the Virginia state poll tax law challenged hpre against the same equal protection challenges. Since the Breedlove and Butler cases were decided the Federal Constitution has not been amended in the only way it could constitutionally have been, that is, as provided in Article V of the Constitution. I would adhere to the holding of those cases. The Court, however, overrules Breedlove in part, but its opinion reveals that it does so not by using its limited power to interpret the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, but by giving that clause a new meaning which it believes represents a better governmental policy. From this action I dissent.

It should be pointed out at once that the Court’s decision is to no extent based on a finding that the Virginia law as written or as applied is being used as a device or mechanism to deny Negro citizens of Virginia the right to vote on account of their color. Apparently the Court agrees with the District Court below and with my Brothers Hablan and Stewart that this record would not support any finding that the Virginia poll tax law the Court invalidates has any such effect. If the record could support a finding that the law as written or applied has such an effect, the law would of course be unconstitutional as a violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and also 42 U. S. C. § 1971 (a). This follows from our holding in Schnell v. Davis, 336 U. S. 933, affirming 81 F. Supp. 872 (D. C. S. D. Ala.); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339; United States v. Mississippi, 380 U. S. 128; Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145. What the Court does hold is that the Equal Protection Clause necessarily bars all States from making payment of a state tax, any tax, a prerequisite to voting.

(!) I think the interpretation that this Court gave the Equal Protection Clause in Breedlove was correct. The mere fact that a law results in treating some groups differently from others does not, of course, automatically amount to a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. To bar a State from drawing any distinctions in the application of its laws would practically paralyze the regulatory power of legislative bodies. Consequently “The constitutional command for a state to afford 'equal protection of the laws’ sets a goal not attainable by the invention and application of a precise formula.” Kotch v. River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552, 556. Voting laws are no exception to this principle. All voting laws treat some persons differently from others in some respects. Some bar a person from voting who is under 21 years of age; others bar those under 18. Some bar convicted felons or the insane, and some have attached a freehold or other property qualification for voting. The Breedlove case upheld a poll tax which was imposed on men but was not equally imposed on women and minors, and the Court today does not overrule that part of Breedlove which approved those discriminatory provisions. And in Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, 360 U. S. 45, this Court held that state laws which disqualified the illiterate from voting did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. From these cases and all the others decided by this Court interpreting the Equal Protection Clause it is clear that some discriminatory voting qualifications can be imposed without violating the Equal Protection Clause.

A study of our cases shows that this Court has refused to use the general language of the Equal Protection Clause as though it provided a handy instrument to strike down state laws which the Court feels are based on bad governmental policy. The equal protection cases carefully analyzed boil down to the principle that distinctions drawn and even discriminations imposed by state laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause so long as these distinctions and discriminations are not “irrational,” “irrelevant,” “unreasonable,” “arbitrary,” or “invidious.” These vague and indefinite terms do not, of course, provide a precise formula or an automatic mechanism for deciding cases arising under the Equal Protection Clause. The restrictive connotations of these terms, however (which in other contexts have been used to expand the Court’s power inordinately, see, e. g., cases cited at pp. 728-732 in Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726), are a plain recognition of the fact that under a proper interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause States are to have the broadest kind of leeway in areas where they have a general constitutional competence to act. In view of the purpose of the terms to restrain the courts from a wholesale invalidation of state laws under the Equal Protection Clause it would be difficult to say that the poll tax requirement is “irrational” or “arbitrary” or works “invidious discriminations.” State poll tax legislation can “reasonably,” “rationally” and without an “invidious” or evil purpose to injure anyone be found to rest on a number of state policies including (1) the State’s desire to collect its revenue, and (2) its belief that voters who pay a poll tax will be interested in furthering the State’s welfare when they vote. Certainly it is rational to believe that people may be more likely to pay taxes if payment is a prerequisite to voting. And if history can be a factor in determining the “rationality” of discrimination in a state law (which we held it could in Kotch v. River Port Pilot Comm’rs, supra), then whatever may be our personal opinion, history is on the side of “rationality” of the State’s poll tax policy. Property qualifications existed in the Colonies and were continued by many States after the Constitution was adopted. Although I join the Court in disliking the policy of the poll tax, this is not in my judgment a justifiable reason for holding this poll tax law unconstitutional. Such a holding on my part would, in my judgment, be an exercise of power which the Constitution does not confer upon me.

(2) Another reason for my dissent from the Court’s judgment and opinion is that it seems to be using the old “natural-law-due-process formula” to justify striking down state laws as violations of the Equal Protection Clause. I have heretofore had many occasions to express my strong belief that there is no constitutional support whatever for this Court to use the Due Process Clause as though it provided a blank check to alter the meaning of the Constitution as written so as to add to it substantive constitutional changes which a majority of the Court at any given time believes are needed to meet present-day problems. Nor is there in my opinion any more constitutional support for this Court to use the Equal Protection Clause, as it has today, to write into the Constitution its notions of what it thinks is good governmental policy. If basic changes as to the respective powers of the state and national governments are needed, I prefer to let those changes be made by amendment as Article V of the Constitution provides. For a majority of this Court to undertake that task, whether purporting to do so under the Due Process or the Equal Protection Clause amounts, in my judgment, to an exercise of power the Constitution makers with foresight and wisdom refused to give the Judicial Branch of the Government. I have in no way departed from the view I expressed in Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46, 90, decided June 23, 1947, that the “natural-law-due-process formula” under which courts make the Constitution mean what they think it should at a given time “has been used in the past, and can be used in the future, to license this Court, in considering regulatory legislation, to roam at large in the broad expanses of policy and morals and to trespass, all too freely, on the legislative domain of the States as well as the Federal Government.”

The Court denies that it is using the “natural-law-due-process formula.” It says that its invalidation of the Virginia law “is founded not on what we think governmental policy should be, but on what the Equal Protection Clause requires.” I find no statement in the Court’s opinion, however, which advances even a plausible argument as to why the alleged discriminations which might possibly be effected by Virginia’s poll tax law are “irrational,” “unreasonable,” “arbitrary,” or “invidious” or have no relevance to a legitimate policy which the State wrishes to adopt. The Court gives no reason at all to discredit the long-standing beliefs that making the payment of a tax a prerequisite to voting is an effective way of collecting revenue and that people who pay their taxes are likely to have a far greater interest in their government. The Court’s failure to give any reasons to show that these purposes of the poll tax are “irrational,” “unreasonable,” “arbitrary,” or “invidious” is a pretty clear indication to me that none exist. I can only conclude that the primary, controlling, predominant, if not the exclusive reason for declaring the Virginia law unconstitutional is the Court’s deep-seated hostility and antagonism, which I share, to making payment of a tax a prerequisite to voting.

The Court’s justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be “shackled to the political theory of a particular era,” and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court’s more enlightened theories of what is best for our society. It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided. Moreover, when a “political theory” embodied in our Constitution becomes outdated, it seems to me that a majority of the nine members of this Court are not only without constitutional power but are far less qualified to choose a new constitutional political theory than the people of this country proceeding in the manner provided by Article V.

The people have not found it impossible to amend their Constitution to meet new conditions. The Equal Protection Clause itself is the product of the people’s desire to use their constitutional power to amend the Constitution to meet new problems. Moreover, the people, in §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, designated the governmental tribunal they wanted to provide additional rules to enforce the guarantees of that Amendment. The branch of Government they chose was not the Judicial Branch but the Legislative. I have no doubt at all that Congress has the power under § 5 to pass legislation to abolish the poll tax in order to protect the citizens of this country if it believes that the poll tax is being used as a device to deny voters equal protection of the laws. See my concurring and dissenting opinion in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, ante, p. 355. But this legislative power which was granted to Congress by § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment is limited to Congress. This Court had occasion to discuss this very subject in Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 345-346. There this Court said, referring to the fifth section of the Amendment:

“All of the amendments derive much of their force from this latter provision. It is not said the judicial power of the general government shall extend to enforcing the prohibitions and to protecting the rights and immunities guaranteed. It is not said that branch of the government shall be authorized to declare void any action of a State in violation of the prohibitions. It is the power of Congress which has been enlarged. Congress is authorized to enforce the prohibitions by appropriate legislation. Some legislation is contemplated to make the amendments fully effective. Whatever legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted to carry out the objects the amendments have in view, whatever tends to enforce submission to the prohibitions they contain, and to secure to all persons the enjoyment of perfect equality of civil rights and the equal protection of the laws against State denial or invasion, if not prohibited, is brought within the domain of congressional power.” (Emphasis partially supplied.)

Thus § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in accordance with our constitutional structure of government authorizes the Congress to pass definitive legislation to protect Fourteenth Amendment rights which it has done many times, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 1971 (a). For Congress to do this fits in precisely with the division of powers originally entrusted to the three branches of government — Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. But for us to undertake in the guise of constitutional interpretation to decide the constitutional policy question of this case amounts, in my judgment, to a plain exercise of power which the Constitution has denied us but has specifically granted to Congress. I cannot join in holding that the Virginia state poll tax law violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Mr. Justice Harlan,

whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins, dissenting.

The final demise of state poll taxes, already totally proscribed by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment with respect to federal elections and abolished by the States themselves in all but four States with respect to state elections, is perhaps in itself not of great moment. But the fact that the coup de grace has been administered by this Court instead of being left to the affected States or to the federal political process should be a matter of continuing concern to all interested in maintaining the proper role of this tribunal under our scheme of government.

I do not propose to retread ground covered in my dissents in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 589, and Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89, 97, and will proceed on the premise that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment now reaches both state apportionment (Reynolds) and voter-qualification (Carring-ton) cases. My disagreement with the present decision is that in holding the Virginia poll tax violative of the Equal Protection Clause the Court has departed from long-established standards governing the application of that clause.

The Equal Protection Clause prevents States from arbitrarily treating people differently under their laws. Whether any such differing treatment is to be deemed arbitrary depends on whether or not it reflects an appropriate differentiating classification among those affected; the clause has never been thought to require equal treatment of all persons despite differing circumstances. The test evolved by this Court for determining whether an asserted justifying classification exists is whether such a classification can be deemed to be founded on some rational and otherwise constitutionally permissible state policy. See, e. g., Powell v. Pennsylvania, 127 U. S. 678; Barrett v. Indiana, 229 U. S. 26; Walters v. City of St. Louis, 347 U. S. 231; Baxstrom v. Herold, ante, p. 107. This standard reduces to a minimum the likelihood that the federal judiciary will judge state policies in terms of the individual notions and predilections of its own members, and until recently it has been followed in all kinds of “equal protection” cases.

Reynolds v. Sims, supra, among its other breaks with the past, also marked a departure from these traditional and wise principles. Unless its “one man, one vote” thesis of state legislative apportionment is to be attributed to the unsupportable proposition that “Equal Protection” simply means indiscriminate equality, it seems inescapable that what Reynolds really reflected was but this Court’s own views of how modern American representative government should be run. For it can hardly be thought that no other method of apportionment may be considered rational. See the dissenting opinion of Stewart, J., in Lucas v. Forty-Fourth General Assembly of Colorado, 377 U. S. 713, 744, and my own dissenting opinion in Reynolds v. Sims, supra, at pp. 615-624.

Following Reynolds the Court in Carrington v. Rash, 380 U. S. 89, applied the traditional equal protection standard in striking down a Texas statute disqualifying as voters in state elections certain members of the Armed Forces of the United States. But today in holding unconstitutional state poll taxes- and property qualifications for voting and pro tanto overruling Breedlove v. Buttles, 302 U. S. 277, and Butler v. Thompson, 341 U. S. 937, the Court reverts to the highly subjective judicial approach manifested by Reynolds. In substance the Court’s analysis of the equal protection issue goes no further than to say that the electoral franchise is “precious” and “fundamental,” ante, p. 670, and to conclude that “[t]o introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter’s qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor,” ante, p. 668. These are of course captivating phrases, but they are wholly inadequate to satisfy the standard governing adjudication of the equal protection issue: Is there a rational basis for Virginia’s poll tax as a voting qualification? I think the answer to that question is undoubtedly “yes.”

Property qualifications and poll taxes have been a traditional part of our political structure. In the Colonies the franchise was generally a restricted one. Over the years these and other restrictions were gradually lifted, primarily because popular theories of political representation had changed. Often restrictions were lifted only after wide public debate. The issue of woman suffrage, for example, raised questions of family relationships, of participation in public affairs, of the very nature of the type of society in which Americans wished to live; eventually a consensus was reached, which culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment no more than 45 years ago.

Similarly with property qualifications, it is only by fiat that it can be said, especially in the context of American history, that there can be no rational debate as to their advisability. Most of the early Colonies had them; many of the States have had them during much of their histories; and, whether one agrees or not, arguments have been and still can be made in favor of them. Eor example, it is certainly a rational argument that payment of some minimal poll tax promotes civic responsibility, weeding out those who do not care enough about public affairs to pay $1.50 or thereabouts a year for the exercise of the franchise. It is also arguable, indeed it was probably accepted as sound political theory by a large percentage of Americans through most of our history, that people with some property have a deeper stake in community affairs, and are consequently more responsible, more educated, more knowledgeable, more worthy of confidence, than those without means, and that the community and Nation would be better managed if the franchise were restricted to such citizens. Nondiscriminatory and fairly applied literacy tests, upheld by this Court in Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, 360 U. S. 45, find justification on very similar grounds.

These viewpoints, to be sure, ring hollow on most contemporary ears. Their lack of acceptance today is evidenced by the fact that nearly all of the States, left to their own devices, have eliminated property or poll-tax qualifications; by the cognate fact that Congress and three-quarters of the States quickly ratified the Twenty-Fourth Amendment; and by the fact that rules such as the “pauper exclusion” in Virginia law, Va. Const. § 23, Va. Code § 24-18, have never been enforced.

Property and poll-tax qualifications, very simply, are not in accord with current egalitarian notions of how a modern democracy should be organized. It is of course entirely fitting that legislatures should modify the law to reflect such changes in popular attitudes. However, it is all wrong, in my view, for the Court to adopt the political doctrines popularly accepted at a particular moment of our history and to declare all others to be irrational and invidious, barring them from the range of choice by reasonably minded people acting through the political process. It was not too long ago that Mr. Justice Holmes felt impelled to remind the Court that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not enact the laissez-faire theory of society, Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75-76. The times have changed, and perhaps it is appropriate to observe that neither does the Equal Protection Clause of that Amendment rigidly impose upon America an ideology of unrestrained egalitarianism.

I would affirm the decision of the District Court.

       Section 173 of Virginia’s Constitution directs the General Assembly to levy an annual poll tax not exceeding $1.50 on every resident of the State 21 years of age and over (with exceptions not relevant here). One dollar of the tax is to be used by state officials “exclusively in aid of the public free schools” and the remainder is to be returned to the counties for general purposes. Section 18 of the Constitution includes payment of poll taxes as a precondition for voting. Section 20 provides that a person must “personally” pay all state poll taxes for the three years preceding the year in which he applies for registration. By § 21 the poll tax must be paid at least six months prior to the election in which the voter seeks to vote. Since the time for election of state officials varies (Va. Code §§ 24-136, 24-160 — 24-168; id., at § 24-22), the six months’ deadline will vary, election from election. The poll tax is often assessed along with the personal property tax. Those who do not pay a personal property tax are not assessed for a poll tax, it being their responsibility to take the initiative and request to be assessed. Va. Code § 58-1163. Enforcement of poll taxes takes the form of disenfranchisement of those who do not pay, § 22 of the Virginia Constitution providing that collection of delinquent poll taxes for a particular year may not be enforced by legal proceedings until the tax for that year has become three years delinquent.

       Judge Thornberry, speaking for the three-judge court which recently declared the Texas poll tax unconstitutional, said: “If the State of Texas placed a tax on the right to speak at the rate of one dollar and seventy-five cents per year, no court would hesitate to strike it down as a blatant infringement of the freedom of speech. Yet the poll tax as enforced in Texas is a tax on the equally important right to vote.” 252 F. Supp. 234, 254 (decided February 9, 1966).

       We recently held in Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145, that a literacy test which gave voting registrars “a virtually uncontrolled discretion as to who should vote and who should not” (id., at 150) had been used to deter Negroes from voting and accordingly we struck it down. While the “Virginia poll tax was born of a desire to disenfranchise the Negro” (Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U. S. 528, 543), we do not stop to determine whether on this record the Virginia tax in its modern setting serves the same end.

       Only a handful of States today condition the franchise on the payment of a poll tax. Alabama (Ala. Const., §§ 178, 194, and Amendments 96 and 207; Ala. Code Tit. 17, § 12) and Texas (Tex. Const., Art. 6, § 2; Vernon’s Ann. Stat., Election Code, Arts. 5.02, 5.09) each impose a poll tax of $1.50. Mississippi (Miss. Const., §§241, 243; Miss. Code §§3130, 3160, 3235) has a poll tax of $2. Vermont has recently eliminated the requirement that poll taxes be paid in order to vote. Act of Feb. 23, 1966, amending Vt. Stat. Ann. Tit. 24, § 701.
      As already noted, note 2, supra, the Texas poll tax was recently declared unconstitutional by a three-judge United States District Court. United States v. Texas, 252 F. Supp. 234 (decided February 9, 1966). Likewise, the Alabama tax. United States v. Alabama, 252 F. Supp. 95 (decided March 3, 1966).

       Maine has a poll tax (Maine Rev. Stat. Ann. Tit. 36, §1381) which is not made a condition of voting; instead, its payment is a condition of obtaining a motor vehicle license (Maine Rev. Stat. Ann. Tit. 29, § 108) or a motor vehicle operator’s license. Id., § 584.

         E. g., “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” 163 U. S., at 651.

       Segregated public transportation, approved in Plessy v. Ferguson, supra, was held unconstitutional in Gayle v. Browder, 352 U. S. 903 (per curiam).

       Only Mr. Justice Harlan dissented, while Mr. Justice Clark and Mr. Justice Stewart each concurred on separate grounds.

       Article V of the Constitution provides:
      “The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the Ninth Section of the First Article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

       See, e. g., Allied Stores of Ohio v. Bowers, 358 U. S. 522; Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U. S. 464; Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535; Minnesota v. Probate Court, 309 U. S. 270; Smith v. Cahoon, 283 U. S. 553; Watson v. Maryland, 218 U. S. 173.

       “A statutory discrimination will not be set aside as the denial of equal protection of the laws if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.” Metropolitan Co. v. Brownell, 294 U. S. 580, 584 (Stone, J.).

       The opinion of the Court, in footnote two, quotes language from a federal district court’s opinion which implies that since a tax on speech would not be constitutionally allowed a tax which is a prerequisite to voting likewise cannot be allowed. But a tax or any other regulation which burdens and actually abridges the right to speak would, in my judgment, be a flagrant violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against abridgments of the freedom of speech which prohibition is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105. There is no comparable specific constitutional provision absolutely barring the States from abridging the right to vote. Consequently States have from the beginning and do now qualify the right to vote because of age, prior felony convictions, illiteracy, and various other reasons. Of course the First and Fourteenth Amendments forbid any State from abridging a person’s right to speak because he is under 21 years of age, has been convicted of a felony, or is illiterate.

       See my dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46, 90.

       See for illustration my dissenting opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 507, and cases cited therein.

       In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, the Court today purports to find precedent for using the Equal Protection Clause to keep the Constitution up to date. 1 did not vote to hold segregation in public schools unconstitutional on any such theory. I thought when Brown was written, and I think now, that Mr. Justice Harlan was correct in 1896 when he dissented from Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, which held that it was not a discrimination prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause for state law to segregate white and colored people in public facilities, there railroad cars. I did not join the opinion of the Court in Brown on any theory that segregation where practiced in the public schools denied equal protection in 1954 but did not similarly deny it in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. In my judgment the holding in Brown against racial discrimination was compelled by the purpose of the Framers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments completely to outlaw discrimination against people because of their race or color. See the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 71—72; Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536, 541.
      Nor does Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, stand as precedent for the amendatory power which the Court exercises today. The Court in Malloy did not read into the Constitution its own notions of wise criminal procedure, but instead followed the doctrine of Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, and made the Fifth Amendment’s unequivocal protection against self-incrimination applicable to the States. I joined the opinion of the Court in Malloy on the basis of my dissent in Adamson v. California, supra, in which I stated, at p. 89:
      “If the choice must be between the selective process of the Palko decision applying some of the Bill of Rights to the States, or the Twining rule applying none of them, I would choose the Palko selective ■ process.”

       But § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment itself outlaws any state law which either as written or as applied discriminates against voters on account of race. Such a law can never be rational. “States may do a good deal of classifying that it is difficult to believe rational, but there are limits, and it is too clear for extended argument that color cannot be made the basis of a statutory classification affecting the right [to vote] set up in this case.” Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536, 541 (Holmes, J.).

       Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.

       In the Senate hearings leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, some doubt was expressed whether state poll taxes could be validly abolished through the exercise of Congress’ legislative power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Hearings on S. 1564 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 194 — 197 (1965). I intimate no view on that question.

       1 think the somewhat different application of the Equal Protection Clause to racial discrimination cases finds justification in the fact that insofar as that clause may embody a particular value in addition to rationality, the historical origins of the Civil War Amendments might attribute to racial equality this special status. See, e. g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356; Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1; Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410; Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483; Evans v. Newton, 382 U. S. 296; cf. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 216. See Tussman & tenBroek, The Equal Protection of the Laws, 37 Calif. L. Rev. 341 (1949); Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 33 (1959).
      A similar characterization of indigency as a “neutral fact,” irrelevant or suspect for purposes of legislative classification, has never been accepted by this Court. See Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 184-185 (Jackson, J., concurring). Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, requiring free trial transcripts for indigent appellants, and Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, requiring the appointment of counsel for such appellants, cannot fairly be so interpreted for although reference was made indiscriminately to both equal protection and due process the analysis was cast primarily in terms of the latter.
      More explicit attempts to infuse “Equal Protection” with specific values have been unavailing. See, e. g., Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138 (alienage); West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (sex); Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552, 564 (Rutledge, J., dissenting) (consanguinity).

       So far as presently relevant, my dissent in that case rested not on disagreement with the equal protection standards employed by the Court but only on disagreement with their application in that instance. 380 U. S., at 99-101.

       1 have no doubt that poll taxes that deny the right to vote on the basis of race or color violate the Fifteenth Amendment and can be struck down by this Court. That question is presented to us in Butts v. Harrison, No. 655, the companion case decided today. The Virginia poll tax is on its face applicable to all citizens, and there was no allegation that it was discriminatorily enforced. The District Court explicitly found “no racial discrimination ... in its application as a condition to voting.” 240 F. Supp. 270, 271. Appellant in Butts, supra, argued first, that the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902, which framed the poll-tax provision, was guided by a desire to reduce Negro suffrage, and second, that because of the generally lower economic standard of Negroes as contrasted with whites in Virginia the tax does in fact operate as a significant obstacle to voting by Negroes. The Court does not deal with this Fifteenth Amendment argument, and it suffices for me to say that on the record here I do' not believe that the factors alluded to are sufficient to invalidate this $1.50 tax whether under the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment.

       See generally Ogden, The Poll Tax in the South 2 (1958); 1 Thorpe, A Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, at 92-98 (1898); Williamson, American Suffrage From Property to Democracy, 1760-1860, cc. 1-4 (1960).

       See Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States 77-111 (1918); Thorpe, op. cit. supra, at 97, 401; Williamson, op. cit. supra, at. 138-181.

       See generally Ogden, op. cit. supra; Porter, op. cit. supra.

       At the Constitutional Convention, for example, there was some sentiment to prescribe a freehold qualification for federal elections under Art. IV, § 1. The proposed amendment was defeated, in part because it was thought suffrage qualifications were best left to the States. See II Records of the Federal Convention 201-210 (Farrand ed. 1911). Madison’s views were expressed as follows: “Whether the Constitutional qualification ought to be a freehold, would with him depend much on the probable reception such a change would meet with in States where the right was now exercised by every description of people. In several of the States a freehold was now the qualification. Viewing the subject in its merits alone, the freeholders of the Country would be the safest depositories of Republican liberty.” Id., at 203. See also Aristotle, Politics, Bks. Ill, IV; I Tocqueville, Democracy in America, c. xiii, at 199-202 (Knopf ed. 1948).

       See Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 240 F. Supp. 270, 271.

       Justice Holmes’ admonition is particularly appropriate: “Some of these laws embody convictions or prejudices which judges are likely to share. Some may not. But a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.” 198 U. S., at 75-76.


source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Mr. Justice Stewart

license: Public Domain

text:
    COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE v. TELLIER et ux.
    No. 351.
    Argued January 27, 1966.
    Decided March 24, 1966.

      Jack S. Levin argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Acting Solicitor General Spritzer, Acting Assistant Attorney General Roberts and Robert A. Bernstein.

      Michael Kaminsky argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents.
   Mr. Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question presented in this case is whether expenses incurred by a taxpayer in the unsuccessful defense of a criminal prosecution may qualify for deduction from taxable income under § 162 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, which allows a deduction of “all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business . ...” The respondent Walter F. Tellier was engaged in the business of underwriting the public sale of stock offerings and purchasing securities for resale to customers. In 1956 he was brought to trial upon a 36-count indictment that charged him with violating the fraud section of the Securities Act of 1933 and the mail fraud statute, and with conspiring to violate those statutes. He was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to pay an $18,000 fine and to serve four and a half years in prison. The judgment of conviction was affirmed on appeal. In his unsuccessful defense of this criminal prosecution, the respondent incurred and paid $22,964.20 in legal expenses in 1956. He claimed a deduction for that amount on his federal income tax return for that year. The Commissioner disallowed the deduction and was sustained by the Tax Court. T. C. Memo. 1963-212, 22 CCH Tax Ct. Mem. 1062. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed in a unanimous en banc decision, 342 F. 2d 690, and we granted certiorari. 382 U. S. 808. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

There can be no serious question that the payments deducted by the respondent were expenses of his securities business under the decisions of this Court, and the Commissioner does not contend otherwise. In United States v. Gilmore, 372 U. S. 39, we held that “the origin and character of the claim with respect to which an expense was incurred, rather than its potential consequences upon the fortunes of the taxpayer, is the controlling basic test of whether the expense was ‘business’ or ‘personal’ ” within the meaning of § 162 (a). 372 U. S., at 49. Cf. Kornhauser v. United States, 276 U. S. 145, 153; Deputy v. du Pont, 308 U. S. 488, 494, 496. The criminal charges against the respondent found their source in his business activities as a securities dealer. The respondent’s legal fees, paid in defense against those charges, therefore clearly qualify under Gilmore as “expenses paid or incurred ... in carrying on any trade or business” within the meaning of § 162 (a).

The Commissioner also concedes that the respondent’s legal expenses were “ordinary” and “necessary” expenses within the meaning of § 162 (a). Our decisions have consistently construed the term “necessary” as imposing only the minimal requirement that the expense be “appropriate and helpful” for “the development of the [taxpayer’s] business.” Welch v. Helvering, 290 U. S. 111, 113. Cf. Kornhauser v. United States, supra, at 152; Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U. S. 90, 93-94; Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U. S. 467, 471; McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 413-415. The principal function of the term “ordinary” in § 162 (a) is to clarify the distinction, often difficult, between those expenses that are currently deductible and those that are in the nature of capital expenditures, which, if deductible at all, must be amortized over the useful life of the asset. Welch v. Helvering, supra, at 113-116. The legal expenses deducted by the respondent were not capital expenditures. They were incurred in his defense against charges of past criminal conduct, not in the acquisition of a capital asset. Our decisions establish that counsel fees comparable to those here involved are ordinary business expenses, even though a “lawsuit affecting the safety of a business may happen once in a lifetime.” Welch v. Helvering, supra, at 114. Kornhauser v. United States, supra, at 152-153; cf. Trust of Bingham v. Commissioner, 325 U. S. 365, 376.

It is therefore clear that the respondent’s legal fees were deductible under § 162 (a) if the provisions of that section are to be given their normal effect in this case. The Commissioner and the Tax Court determined, however, that even though the expenditures meet the literal requirements of § 162 (a), their deduction must nevertheless be disallowed on the ground of public policy. That view finds considerable support in other administrative and judicial decisions. It finds no support, however, in any regulation or statute or in any decision of this Court, and we believe no such “public policy” exception to the plain provisions of § 162 (a) is warranted in the circumstances presented by this case.

We start with the proposition that the federal income tax is a tax on net income, not a sanction against wrongdoing. That principle has been firmly imbedded in the tax statute from the beginning. One familiar facet of the principle is the truism that the statute does not concern itself with the lawfulness of the income that it taxes. Income from a criminal enterprise is taxed at a rate no higher and no lower than income from more conventional sources. “[T]he fact that a business is unlawful [does not] exempt it from paying the taxes that if lawful it would have to pay.” United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259, 263. See James v. United States, 366 U. S. 213.

With respect to deductions, the basic rule, with only a few limited and well-defined exceptions, is the same. During the Senate debate in 1913 on the bill that became the first modern income tax law, amendments were rejected that would have limited deductions for losses to those incurred in a “legitimate” or “lawful” trade or business. Senator Williams, who was in charge of the bill, stated on the floor of the Senate that

“[T]he object of this bill is to tax a man’s net income; that is to say, what he has at the end of the year after deducting from his receipts his expenditures or losses. It is not to reform men’s moral characters; that is not the object of the bill at all.
The tax is not levied for the purpose of restraining people from betting on horse races or upon 'futures/ but the tax is framed for the purpose of making a man pay upon his net income, his actual profit during the year. The law does not care where he got it from, so far as the tax is concerned, although the law may very properly care in another way.” 50 Cong. Rec. 3849.

The application of this principle is reflected in several decisions of this Court. As recently as Commissioner v. Sullivan, 356 U. S. 27, we sustained the allowance of a deduction for rent and wages paid by the operators of a gambling enterprise, even though both the business itself and the specific rent and wage payments there in question were illegal under state law. In rejecting the Commissioner’s contention that the illegality of the enterprise required disallowance of the deduction, we held that, were we to “enforce as federal policy the rule espoused by the Commissioner in this case, we would come close to making this type of business taxable on the basis of its gross receipts, while all other business would be taxable on the basis of net income. If that choice is to be made, Congress should do it.” Id., at 29. In Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U. S. 90, the Court upheld deductions claimed by opticians for amounts paid to doctors who prescribed the eyeglasses that the opticians sold, although the Court was careful to disavow “approval of the business ethics or public policy involved in the payments . . . .” 343 U. S., at 97. And in Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U. S. 467, a case akin to the one before us, the Court upheld deductions claimed by a dentist for lawyer’s fees and other expenses incurred in unsuccessfully defending against an administrative fraud order issued by the Postmaster General.

Deduction of expenses falling within the general definition of § 162 (a) may, to be sure, be disallowed by specific legislation, since deductions “are a matter of grace and Congress can, of course, disallow them as it chooses.” Commissioner v. Sullivan, 356 U. S., at 28. The Court has also given effect to a precise and longstanding Treasury Regulation prohibiting the deduction of a specified category of expenditures; an example is lobbying expenses, whose nondeductibility was supported by considerations not here present. Textile Mills Corp. v. Commissioner, 314 U. S. 326; Cammarano v. United States, 358 U. S. 498. But where Congress has been wholly silent, it is only in extremely limited circumstances that the Court has countenanced exceptions to the general principle reflected in the Sullivan, Lilly and Heininger decisions. Only where the allowance of a deduction would “frustrate sharply defined national or state policies proscribing particular types of conduct” have we upheld its disallowance. Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U. S., at 473. Further, the “policies frustrated must be national or state policies evidenced by some governmental declaration of them.” Lilly v. Commissioner, 343 U. S., at 97. (Emphasis added.) Finally, the “test of nondeductibility always is the severity and immediacy of the frustration resulting from allowance of the deduction.” Tank Truck Rentals v. Commissioner, 356 U. S. 30, 35. In that case, as in Hoover Express Co. v. United States, 356 U. S. 38, we upheld the disallowance of deductions claimed by taxpayers for fines and penalties imposed upon them for violating state penal statutes; to allow a deduction in those circumstances would have directly and substantially diluted the actual punishment imposed.

The present case falls far outside that sharply limited and carefully defined category. No public policy is offended when a man faced with serious criminal charges employs a lawyer to help in his defense. That is not “proscribed conduct.” It is his constitutional right. Chandler v. Fretag, 348 U. S. 3. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335. In an adversary system of criminal justice, it is a basic of our public policy that a defendant in a criminal case have counsel to represent him.

Congress has authorized the imposition of severe punishment upon those found guilty of the serious criminal offenses with which the respondent was charged and of which he was convicted. But we can find no warrant for attaching to that punishment an additional financial burden that Congress has neither expressly nor implicitly directed. To deny a deduction for expenses incurred in the unsuccessful defense of a criminal prosecution would impose such a burden in a measure dependent not on the seriousness of the offense or the actual sentence imposed by the court, but on the cost of the defense and the defendant’s particular tax bracket. We decline to distort the income tax laws to serve a purpose for which they were neither intended nor designed by Congress.

The judgment is

Affirmed.

        “ (a) In general. — There shall be allowed as a deduction all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in- carrying on any trade or business . . . .” 26 U. S. C. § 162.

       48 Stat. 84, §17, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 77q (a).

       18 U. S. C. § 1341.

       18 U. S. C. §371.

        United States v. Tellier, 255 F. 2d 441 (C. A. 2d Cir.).

       See Griswold, An Argument Against the Doctrine that Deductions Should Be Narrowly Construed as a Matter of Legislative Grace, 56 Harv. L. Rev. 1142, 1145; Wolfman, Professors and the “Ordinary and Necessary” Business Expense, 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1089, 1111-1112.

       See Brookes, Litigation Expenses and the Income Tax, 12 Tax L. Rev. 241.

       See Sarah Backer, 1 B. T. A. 214; Norvin R. Lindheim, 2 B. T. A. 229; Thomas A. Joseph, 26 T. C. 562; Burroughs Bldg. Material Co. v. Commissioner, 47 F. 2d 178 (C. A. 2d Cir.); Commissioner v. Schwartz, 232 F. 2d 94 (C. A. 5th Cir.); Acker v. Commissioner, 258 F. 2d 568 (C. A. 6th Cir.); Bell v. Commissioner, 320 F. 2d 953 (C. A. 8th Cir.); Peckham v. Commissioner, 327 F. 2d 855, 856 (C. A. 4th Cir.); Port v. United States, 143 Ct. Cl. 334, 163 F. Supp. 645. See also Note, Business Expenses, Dis-allowance, and Public Policy: Some Problems of Sanctioning with the Internal Revenue Code, 72 Yale L. J. 108; 4 Mertens, Law of Federal Income Taxation § 25.49 ff. Compare Longhorn Portland Cement Co., 3 T. C. 310; G. C. M. 24377, 1944 Cum. Bull. 93; Lamont, Controversial Aspects of Ordinary and Necessary Business Expense, 42 Taxes 808, 833-834.

       In challenging the amendments, Senator Williams also stated:
      “In other words, you are going to count the man as having money which he has not got, because he has lost it in a way that you do not approve of.” 50 Cong. Rec. 3850.

       Specific legislation denying deductions for payments that violate public policy is not unknown. E. g., Internal Revenue Code of 1954, § 162 (c) (disallowance of deduction for payments to officials and employees of foreign countries in circumstances where the payments would be illegal if federal laws were applicable; cf. Treas. Reg. §1.162-18); §165 (d) (deduction for wagering losses limited to extent of wagering gains). See also Stabilization Act of 1942, § 5 (a), 56 Stat. 767, 50 U. S. C. App. § 965 (a) (1946 ed.), Defense Production Act of 1950, §405 (a), 64 Stat. 807, as amended, c. 275, § 104 (i), 65 Stat. 136 (1951), 50 U. S. C. App. § 2105 (a) (1952 ed.), and Defense Production Act of 1950, §405 (b), 64 Stat. 807, 50 U. S. C. App. §2105 (b) (1952 ed.) (general authority in President to prescribe extent to which payments violating price and wage regulations should be disregarded by government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service; see'Rev. Rui. 56-180, 1956-1 Cum. Bull. 94). Cf. Treas. Reg. § 1.162-1 (a), which provides that “Penalty payments with respect to Federal taxes, whether on account of negligence, delinquency, or fraud, are not deductible from gross income”; Joint Committe on Internal Revenue Taxation, Staff Study of Income Tax Treatment of Treble Damage Payments under the Antitrust Laws, Nov. 1, 1965, p. 16 (proposal that § 162 be amended to deny deductions for certain fines, penalties, treble-damage payments, bribes, and kickbacks).

       Cf. Paul, The Use of Public Policy by the Commissioner in Disallowing Deductions, 1954 So. Calif. Tax Inst. 715, 730-731: “. . . Section 23 (a)(1)(A) [the predecessor of § 162 (a)] is not an essay in morality, designed to encourage virtue and discourage sin. It ‘was not contrived as an arm of the law to enforce State criminal statutes . . . .’ Nor was it contrived to implement the various regulatory statutes which Congress has from time to time enacted. The provision is more modestly concerned with ‘commercial net income’ — a businessman’s net accretion in wealth during the taxable year after due allowance for the operating costs of the business. . . . There is no evidence in the Section of an attempt to punish taxpayers . . . when the Commissioner feels that a state or federal statute has been flouted. The statute hardly operates ‘in a vacuum,’ if it serves its own vital function and leaves other problems to other statutes.”


author:
Mr. Justice Stewart
      Mb. Justice White,

text:
    INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AEROSPACE & AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA (UAW), AFL-CIO v. HOOSIER CARDINAL CORP.
    No. 387.
    Argued January 27, 1966.
    Decided March 24, 1966.

      Stephen I. Schlossberg argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., and John Silard.

      Harry P. Dees argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.
   Mr. Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, confers jurisdiction upon the federal district courts over suits upon collective bargaining contracts. Nowhere in the Act, however, is there a provision for any time limitation upon the bringing of an action under § 301. The questions presented by this case arise because of the absence of such a provision.

The petitioner union and the respondent company were parties to a collective bargaining contract within the purview of § 301. The contract contained a section governing vacations. One clause in this section dealt with payment of accumulated vacation pay, by providing: “Employees who qualified for a vacation in the previous year and whose employment is terminated for any reason before the vacation is taken will be paid that vacation at time of termination.” On June 1, 1957, prior to the expiration of the contract, the company terminated the employment of employees covered by the agreement, but it did not pay them any accumulated vacation pay. Since that date, two lawsuits have been brought to recover amounts allegedly due. The first was a class action in early 1958, brought against the company in an Indiana court, but the court ruled that such an action was impermissible under Indiana law. In an attempt to remedy this pleading defect, the former employees assigned their vacation pay claims to a union representative who then filed an amended complaint, but this form of action, too, was held improper under Indiana law. Thereafter, by further amended complaints, the employees sought to reform and reinstitute the class action, but once again the trial court held the complaint insufficient as a matter of state law. The court dismissed the suit in June 1960, and the judgment of dismissal was affirmed on appeal. Johnson v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 134 Ind. 477, 189 N. E. 2d 592.

Almost four years after the dismissal of that lawsuit by the Indiana trial court, and almost seven years after the employees had left the company, the union filed the present action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. On the company’s motion, the trial court dismissed the complaint, concluding that the suit was barred by a six-year Indiana statute of limitations. The court regarded this action as based partly upon the written collective bargaining agreement and partly upon the oral employment contract each employee had made, and it held that Indiana would apply to such a hybrid action its six-year statute governing contracts not in writing. Ind. Stat. Ann. § 2-601 (1965 Supp.). 235 F. Supp. 183. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, 346 F. 2d 242, and we granted certiorari, 382 U. S. 808.

We note at the outset that this action was properly brought by the union under § 301. There is no merit to the contention that a union may not sue to recover wages or vacation pay claimed by its members pursuant to the terms of a collective bargaining contract. Such a suit is among those “[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization” that § 301 was designed to permit. This conclusion is unimpaired by the fact that each worker’s claim may also depend upon the existence of his individual contract of employment. See J. I. Case Co. v. Labor Board, 321 U. S. 332, 335-336. In Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U. S. 195, we rejected the view, once held for varying reasons by a majority of this Court, Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Corp., 348 U. S. 437, “that § 301 did not give the . . . courts jurisdiction over a suit brought by a union to enforce employee rights . . . characterized as . . . arising 'from separate hiring contracts between the employer and each employee.’ ” 371 U. S., at 198. Although the Smith case was brought by an individual worker, there is every reason to recognize the union’s standing to vindicate employee rights under a contract the union obtained. Such recognition is fully consistent with the language of § 301 (b): “Any . . . labor organization may sue . , . in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States.” 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185 (b) (1964 ed.). And indeed,,the union’s standing to vindicate employee rights under § 301 implements no more than the established doctrine that the union’s role in the collective bargaining process does not end with the making of the contract.

Since this suit was properly brought under § 301, the question of its timeliness is squarely presented. It is clearly a federal question, for in § 301 suits the applicable law is “federal law, which the courts must fashion from the policy of our national labor laws.” Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448, 456. Relying upon that statement and upon the coordinate principle that “incompatible doctrines of local law must give way to principles of federal labor law,” Teamsters Local v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95, 102, the union contends that this suit cannot be barred by a statute of limitations enacted by a State. We are urged instead to devise a uniform time limitation to close the statutory gap left by Congress. But the teaching of our cases does not require so bald a form of judicial innovation, Lincoln Mills instructs that, in fashioning federal law, the “range of judicial inventiveness will be determined by the nature of the problem.” 353 U. S., at 457. We do not question that there are problems so vital to the implementation of federal labor policy that they will commalid a high degree of inventiveness from the courts. The problem presented here, however, is not of that nature.

It is true that if state limitations provisions govern § 301 suits, these suits will lack a uniform standard of timeliness. It is also true that the subject matter of § 301 is “peculiarly one that calls for uniform law.” Teamsters Local v. Lucas Flour Co., supra, at 103. Our cases have defined the need for uniformity, however, in terms that are largely inapplicable here:

“The possibility that individual contract terms might have different meanings under [two systems of law] would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon both the negotiation and administration of collective agreements. Because neither party could be certain of the rights which it had obtained or conceded, the process of negotiating an agreement would be made immeasurably more difficult by the necessity of trying to formulate contract provisions in such a way as to contain the same meaning under two or more systems of law which might someday be invoked in enforcing the contract. Once the collective bargain was made, the possibility of conflicting substantive interpretation under competing legal systems would tend to stimulate and prolong disputes as to its interpretation. Indeed, the existence of possibly conflicting legal concepts might substantially impede the parties’ willingness to agree to contract terms providing for final arbitral or judicial resolution of disputes.
. . The ordering and adjusting of competing interests through a process of free and voluntary collective bargaining is the keystone of the federal scheme to promote industrial peace. State law which frustrates the effort of Congress to stimulate the smooth functioning of that process thus strikes at the very core of federal labor policy.” Teamsters Local v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95, 103-104.

The need for uniformity, then, is greatest where its absence would threaten the smooth functioning of those consensual processes that federal labor law is chiefly designed to promote — the formation of the collective agreement and the private settlement of disputes under it. For the most part, statutes of limitations come into play only when these processes have already broken down. Lack of uniformity in this area is therefore unlikely to frustrate in any important way the achievement of any significant goal of labor policy. Thus, although a uniform limitations provision for § 301 suits might well constitute a desirable statutory addition, there is no justification for the drastic sort of judicial legislation that is urged upon us. See Smith v. Evening News Assn., supra, at 203 (Black, J., dissenting).

That Congress did not provide a uniform limitations provision for § 301 suits is not an argument for judicially creating one, unless we ignore the context of this legislative omission. It is clear that Congress gave attention to limitations problems in the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947; it enacted a six months’ provision to govern unfair labor practice proceedings, 61 Stat. 146, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (b) (1964 ed.), and it did so only after appreciable controversy. In this context, and against the background of the relationship between Congress and the courts on the question of limitations provisions, it cannot be fairly inferred that when Congress left § 301 without a uniform time limitation, it did so in the expectation that the courts would invent one. As early as 1830, this Court held that state statutes of limitations govern the timeliness of federal causes of action unless Congress has specifically provided otherwise. McCluny v. Silliman, 3 Pet. 270, 277. In 1895, the question was re-examined in another context, but the conclusion remained firm. Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U. S. 610. Since that time, state statutes have repeatedly supplied the periods of limitations for federal causes of action when federal legislation has been silent on the question. E. g., McClaine v. Rankin, 197 U. S. 154, Cope v. Anderson, 331 U. S. 461 (National Bank Act); Chattanooga Foundry v. Atlanta, 203 U. S. 390 (Sherman Act); O’Sullivan v. Felix, 233 U. S. 318 (Civil Rights Act of 1870); Englander Motors, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 293 F. 2d 802 (C. A. 6th Cir.) (Clayton Act); but see Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392 (Federal Farm Loan Act). Yet when Congress has disagreed with such an interpretation of its silence, it has spoken to overturn it by enacting a uniform period of limitations. E. g., 69 Stat. 283, 15 U. S. C. § 15b (1964 ed.) (Clayton Act); 35 U. S. C. §286 (Patent Act). See also Herget v. Central Bank Co., 324 U. S. 4. Against this background, we cannot take the omission in the present statute as a license to judicially devise a uniform time limitation for § 301 suits.

Accordingly, since no federal provision governs, we hold that the timeliness of a § 301 suit, such as the present one, is to be determined, as a matter of federal law, by reference to the appropriate state statute of limitations. This leaves two subsidiary questions to be decided. Which of Indiana’s limitations provisions governs? Does any tolling principle preserve the timeliness of this action?

The union argues that if the timeliness of this action is to be determined by reference to Indiana statutes, federal law precludes reference to the Indiana six-year provision governing contracts not in writing. Reference must be made instead, it is urged, to the Indiana 20-year provision governing written contracts. Ind. Stat. Ann. § 2-602 (1965 Supp.). This contention rests on the view that under federal law this § 301 suit must be regarded as exclusively bottomed upon the written collective bargaining agreement. We agree that the characterization of this action for the purpose of selecting the appropriate state limitations provision is ultimately a question of federal law. Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, supra; McClaine v. Rankin, supra. But there is no reason to reject the characterization that state law would impose unless that characterization is unreasonable or otherwise inconsistent with national labor policy. Cf. Reconstruction Finance Corp. v. Beaver County, 328 U. S. 204, 210; De Sylva v. Ballentine, 351 U. S. 570, 580-582.

Applying this principle, we cannot agree that federal law requires that this action be regarded as exclusively based upon a written contract. For purposes of § 301 jurisdiction, we have rejected the view that a suit such as this is based solely upon the separate hiring contracts, frequently oral, between the employer and each employee. Smith v. Evening News Assn., supra. It does not follow, however, that the separate contracts of employment may not be taken into account in characterizing the nature of a specific § 301 suit for the purpose of selecting the appropriate state limitations provision. Indeed, as the present case indicates, consideration of the separate contracts for that purpose is entirely acceptable. The petitioner seeks damages based upon an alleged breach of the vacation pay clause in a written collective bargaining agreement. Proof of the breach and of the measure of damages, however, both depend upon proof of the existence and duration of separate employment contracts between the employer and each of the aggrieved employees. Hence, this § 301 suit may fairly be characterized as one not exclusively based upon a written contract.

Moreover, the characterization that Indiana law imposes upon this action does not lead to any conflict with federal labor policy. Indeed, to the extent that a policy is manifest in the Labor Management Relations Act, it supports acceptance of the characterization adopted here. The six months’ provision governing unfair labor practice proceedings, 61 Stat. 146, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (b), suggests that' relatively rapid disposition of labor disputes is a goal of federal labor law. Since state statutes of limitations governing contracts not exclusively in writing are generally shorter than those applicable to wholly written agreements, their applicability to § 301 actions comports with that goal. There may, of course, be § 301 actions that can only be characterized fairly as based exclusively upon a written agreement. But since many § 301 actions for wages or other individual benefits will concern employment contracts of the sort involved here, there is no reason to inhibit the achievement of an identifiable goal of labor policy by precluding application of the generally shorter limitations provisions.

Accordingly, we accept the District Court’s application of the six-year Indiana statute of limitations to this action. Cf. Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co., 350 U. S. 198, 204-205; Steele v. General Mills, 329 U. S. 433, 438. Thus, since this federal lawsuit was not filed until almost seven years after the cause of action accrued, the cause is barred by the six-year statute unless that statute was somehow tolled by reason of the particularized circumstances of this case.

The contention that some tolling principle saves the life of this action was raised for the first time in this Court. In any event, we find the contention without merit. In Burnett v. New York Central R. Co., 380 U. S. 424, we held that the bringing of a timely action under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act in a state court, even though venue was improper, served to toll the statute of limitations contained in that Act. The primary underpinning of Burnett, however, is wholly lacking here. As the Court noted in that case, a tolling principle was necessary to implement the national policy of a uniform time bar clearly expressed by Congress when it enacted the FELA limitations provision. .380 U. S., at 434. Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act establishes no such policy of uniformity expressed in a national limitations provision. Moreover, unlike the plaintiff in Burnett who could no longer bring a timely federal action after the state court dismissed his complaint, the union here had a full three years to bring this lawsuit in federal court after the dismissal of the state court action. Under these circumstances, we have no difficulty in concluding that this cause of action expired in June 1963, six years after it arose.

Affirmed.

Mb. Justice White,

with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mb. Justice Brennan join, dissenting.

Certain principles are undisputed in this case. The period of limitations for § 301 suits is to be determined by federal law; and, since Congress has made no express provision for any time limitation, this Court must fashion the governing rule. By adopting the statutes of the several States, the Court creates 50 or more different statutes of limitations rather than fashioning a uniform rule after consideration of relevant federal and state statutes.

The Court justifies its decision in part by reliance on cases decided under the Rules of Decisions Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1652 (1964 ed.), which interpreted “the silence of Congress ... to mean that it is federal policy to adopt the local law of limitation.” Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392, 395; see, e. g., Chattanooga Foundry v. Atlanta, 203 U. S. 390, 397; Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U. S. 610; McCluny v. Silliman, 3 Pet. 270, 277. But the cases also establish that the silence of Congress is not to be read as automatically putting an imprimatur on state law. Rather, state law is applied only because it supplements and fulfills federal policy, and the ultimate question is what federal policy requires. See Board of County Comm’rs v. United States, 308 U. S. 343, 350-352; Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392, 394-395; Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Corp., 348 U. S. 437, 463 (Reed, J., concurring).

More specifically, it is quite clear that with respect to § 301 suits congressional silence extends not just to the question of limitations but encompasses the entirety of the governing legal principles. Rather than inferring from congressional silence that state law was to govern, Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448, held that the federal courts were to “fashion from the policy of our national labor laws” general federal law applicable to suits on collective bargaining agreements. Id., at 456. Although Lincoln Mills recognized that “state law, if compatible with the purpose of § 301, may be resorted to in order to find the rule that will best effectuate the federal policy,” id., at 457, it did not intimate in any way that federal policy would be furthered by the adoption of 50 different state rules. To the contrary, subsequent decisions have recognized that “ [comprehensiveness is inherent in the process by which the law is to be formulated under the mandate of Lincoln Mills” and that, “[m]ore important, the subject matter of § 301 (a) ⅛ peculiarly one that calls for uniform law.' ” Teamsters Local v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95, 103. There is, therefore, no sound basis for saying that Congress by its silence on the limitations matter intended the state laws to apply or for adopting diverse state laws simply because of a reluctance to supply what Congress omitted. The courts are expected to develop the law of labor contracts, and this case represents only another task in this process.

The Court reasons, however, that to devise a uniform time limitation would be too “bald a form of judicial innovation.” Ante, at p. 701. Cases defining a need for uniformity in § 301 suits are said to be limited to matters concerning which the possible application of varying systems of law “ ‘would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon both the negotiation and administration of collective agreements.’ ” Ante, at pp. 701-702. Since, according to the majority, the lack of a uniform statute of limitations would generally not have that effect, the Court concludes that although such a uniform provision “might well constitute a desirable statutory addition, there is no justification for the drastic sort of judicial legislation that is urged upon us.” Ante, at pp. 702-703.

The Court is undoubtedly correct in stating that a uniform limitations period would be desirable. Suppose, for example, that the collective bargaining contract in dispute was one made in Detroit for a multi-state unit of truck drivers and that, as is true in this case, 100 of the covered employees were discharged without payment of accumulated vacation pay. Suppose further that some of the employees were hired in Chicago and discharged in Indiana while others were hired in St. Louis, Cleveland, and Terre Haute and were discharged in Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa (in whatever combinations are preferred). Suppose, finally, that some sue in Indiana, some in other States, some in federal court, and some in state court. Simple justice dictates in such a situation that the right of employees in different States to assert their federal claim should be equally available. Clearly there is no sense or justice in referring to 50 or more different statutes of limitations so that one employee may be barred after one year while another employee may sue any time within six years. Nor is there any reason why an employer operating under the contract in one State should be bothered with stale claims already barred as against other employers in other States.

Moreover, the Court’s decision creates unnecessary complexities and opportunities for vexatious litigation, some of which are reflected in the Court’s opinion. Thus the Court notes that in a situation involving multi-state contacts, such as the example given above, a federal court hearing the case would be required to decide whether to apply a federal, or the forum State’s, conflict of laws rules to select the State of governing law. If this Court ultimately holds that a federal conflict of laws rule is to govern in federal court suits, the additional question will be presented of whether the federal conflict of laws rule must also be applied by state courts or whether they may continue to apply their own conflict of laws rule. Whatever conflict of laws rule, state or federal, is selected, there will remain the difficult task of applying that rule to find the State whose limitations statute is to control. In cases not involving multi-state contacts, the court may have to choose between two or more state statutes; here the choice is between the limitations period for suits on written contracts and the period for suits on oral contracts. Under today’s decision, this choice is to be governed by the State’s characterization of the federal action (or a federal court’s Delphic opinion of what that characterization would be), “unless that characterization is unreasonable or otherwise inconsistent with national labor policy.” Ante, at p. 706. The governing state limitations statute, having finally been determined, is to be applied unless the period is “unusually short or long.” Ante, at p. 707, n. 9. The problems we have indicated are merely illustrative of the complex questions that must be decided under the Court’s approach before it can be determined which of several competing state statutes is to be applied and whether such application is reasonable when tested by the federal labor policy; undoubtedly the fertile imagination of counsel will conceive additional intricacies. The desirability of a single, uniform, federal statute to further justice and to avoid such litigation-creating complexities was of course recognized by Congress in passing the statutes, to which the majority refers, that overruled in particular areas past refusals of this Court to fashion such a uniform rule.

The case for the Court’s decision thus ultimately comes down to the proposition that fashioning a uniform federal statute would involve too bald an exercise of judicial innovation. This is an argument I have difficulty in fathoming. Courts have not always been reluctant to “create” statutes of limitations, the common-law doctrine of prescription by which judgments are presumed to have been paid after the lapse of 20 years, see Gaines v. Miller, 111 U. ,S. 395, 399; McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 327, being just one example. In equity they have applied the doctrine of laches, see Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392. But here there is no dispute concerning whether a statute of limitations is to be fashioned — the choice is between one statute or 50. If the Court is to develop the substantive law of labor contracts, which it has undertaken to do with the blessing of Congress, it seems odd that the Court should balk at establishing a single limitations period, drawn from any of the sources available to it, including the relevant federal and state statutes. I undertake no such canvass here, but think the Court should do so. I therefore dissent.

       We use the term “collective bargaining contracts” for convenience only, and do not intend to suggest that § 301 is limited to such contracts. See Retail Clerks v. Lion Dry Goods, 369 U. S. 17. Section 301 provides:
      “(a) Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.
      “(b) Any labor organization which represents employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act and any employer whose activities affect commerce as defined in this chapter shall be bound by the acts of its agents. Any such labor organization may sue or be sued as an entity and in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States. Any money judgment against a labor organization in a district court of the United States shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.
      “(c) For the purposes of actions and proceedings by or against labor organizations in the district courts of the United States, district courts shall be deemed to have jurisdiction of a labor organization (1) in the district in which such organization maintains its principal office, or (2) in any district in which its duly authorized officers or agents are engaged in representing or acting for employee members.
      “(d) The service of summons, subpena, or other legal process of any court of the United States upon an officer or agent of a labor organization, in his capacity as such,.shall constitute service upon the labor organization.
      “(e) For the purposes of this section, in determining whether any person is acting as an 'agent’ of another person so as to make such other person responsible for his acts, the question of whether the specific acts performed were actually authorized or subsequently ratified shall not be controlling.” 61 Stat. 156-157, 29 U. S. C. § 185 (1964 ed.).

       See also Rule 17 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; Dowd Box v. Courtney, 368 U. S. 502, 504; United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593.

       See, e. g., Conley v. Gibson, 355 U. S. 41, 46; Comment, 28 U. Chi. L. Rev. 707, 716.
      That the employees in this case did not assign their claims to the union presents no barrier to the union’s standing to sue in their behalf. Such a technical requirement would conflict with one of the "widely recognized purposes of Congress in enacting § 301— the elimination of common-law procedural obstacles to suits for breach of collective bargaining agreements, See, e. g., Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448, 451. Meltzer, The Supreme Court, Congress, and State Jurisdiction Over Labor Relations: II, 69 Col. L. Rev. 269.

       Our cases have spoken of the federal law applicable to § 301 suits as “substantive,” see, e. g., Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S., at 456, and the need for uniformity in the “substantive principles” that govern these suits. See Teamsters Local v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S., at 103. In the view we take of the problem presented here, we need not decide whether statutes of limitations are “substantive” or “procedural.” See Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U. S. 99; Burnett v. New York Central R. Co., 380 U. S. 424, 427, note 2. Nor need we rigidly classify them as “primary” or “remedial.” To the extent that these terms are useful, we need only notice that lack of uniformity in limitations provisions is unlikely to have substantial effect upon the private definition or effectu-ation of “substantive” or “primary” rights in the collective bargaining process. See Wellington, Labor and the Federal System, 26 U. Chi. L. Rev. 542, 556-559.

       Compare, e. g., the remarks of Senator Wagner, 93 Cong. Rec. 3323, and those of Senator Murray, 93 Cong. Rec. 4030, with the remarks of Senator Smith, 93 Cong. Rec. 4283.

       In McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U. S. 221, this Court held that, “where an action for unseaworthiness is combined with an action under the Jones Act a court cannot apply to the former a shorter period of limitations than Congress has prescribed for the latter.” 357 U. S., at 224. The McAllister case represents no departure from the tradition discussed in the text. The Court’s decision rested on the peculiar configuration of the federal maritime remedies. A seaman suing for both unseaworthiness and Jones Act negligence must do so in a single proceeding. Baltimore S. S. Co. v. Phillips, 274 U. S. 316. The Court had no occasion in McAllister to consider whether a state period longer than that provided in the Jones Act could be applied. 357 U. S., at 227 (BrenNAN, J.,' concurring).

       The present suit is essentially an action for damages caused by an alleged breach of an employer’s obligation embodied in a collective bargaining agreement. Such an action closely resembles an action for breach of contract cognizable at common law. Whether other § 301 suits different from the present one might call for the application of other rules on timeliness, we are not required to decide, and we indicate no view whatsoever on that question. See, e. g., Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392; Moviecolor Limited v. Eastman Kodak Co., 288 F. 2d 80 (C. A. 2d Cir.); 2 Moore Federal Practice ¶3.07[1]-[3], at 740-764 (2d ed. 1965); Hill, State Procedural Law in Federal Nondiversity Litigation, 69 Harv. L. Rev. 66, 111-114.

       The record indicates that Indiana is both the forum State and the State in which all operative events occurred. Neither party has suggested that the limitations provision of another State is relevant. There is therefore no occasion to consider whether such a choice of law should be made in accord with the principle of Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Mfg. Co., 313 U. S. 487, or by operation of a different federal conflict of laws rule. See Richards v. United States, 369 U. S. 1; De Sylva v. Ballentine, 351 U. S. 570; Vanston Bondholders Protective Committee v. Green, 329 U. S. 156; McKenzie v. Irving Trust Co., 323 U. S. 365; D’Oench, Duhme & Co. v. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp., 315 U. S. 447. See also discussion in Hart & Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 696 et seq.

       Other questions would be raised if this case presented a state law characterization of a § 301 suit that reasonably described the nature of the cause of action, but required application of an unusually short or long limitations period. See, e. g., N. M. Stat. § 59-3-4 (1953) (an action for wages “must be commenced within sixty [60] days from the date of discharge. . . .”). See Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U. S. 610, 615; Caldwell v. Alabama Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Co., 161 F. 2d 83 (C. A. 5th Cir.); Mishkin, The Variousness of “Federal Law”: Competence and Discretion in the Choice of National and State Rules for Decision, 105 U. Pa. L. Rev. 797, 805-806.

       Neither party has suggested that the cause of action “accrued” on any date other than June 1, 1957, when the company terminated the employees' jobs. Cf. Rawlings v. Ray, 312 U. S. 96; Cope v. Anderson, 331 U. S. 461; Moviecolor Limited v. Eastman Kodak Co., 288 F. 2d 80, 83 (C. A. 2d Cir.).

       It should be noted also that Indiana has a saving statute, Ind. Ann. Stat. §2-608 (1946 Repl. Vol.), but the union has never contended that it preserves the timeliness of this suit.

       The Court’s approach adopts (and thereby creates as federal law) at least one limitations statute for each State and Territory. In many States it adopts a multitude of limitations provisions, each applicable to a particular type of § 301 suit. The Court’s opinion suggests, for example, that had the present suit been “exclusively based upon a written contract,” ante, at p. 706, the Indiana 20-year, rather than the six-year, statute would have governed.

       However, limitations questions will have an impact on the negotiation and administration of the collective agreement in many instances — for example, if the parties decide to limit by contract the period for bringing suit. The laws of the several States vary with respect to the enforceability of such contractual limitations periods, particularly when it is asserted that the agreed period is unreasonable, see Williston on Contracts § 183, at 711, n. 10 (Jaeger 3d ed. 1957); Note, 63 Harv. L. Rev. 1177, 1181-1182 (1950). It may be assumed that, under the test advanced by the majority, uniform federal law will be fashioned to determine their validity, just as, at least in some circumstances, federal law will determine when the cause of action arose, see Cope v. Anderson, 331 U. S. 461; Rawlings v. Ray, 312 U. S. 96, and whether the running of limitations was tolled by fraudulent concealment, see Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392; Moviecolor Limited v. Eastman Kodak Co., 288 F. 2d 80 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1961).

       Unfortunately the Court provides no enlightenment concerning where we are to look for a limitations period should the state statute be held unreasonable. Perhaps in extremis even the Court’s approach will require the kind of innovation it now rejects.

       Nor do I intimate any opinion concerning the tolling question mooted in the Court’s opinion.