Beauty Hall, Inc. v. State Board of Cosmetology

210 A.2d 495, 418 Pa. 225, 1965 Pa. LEXIS 588
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 25, 1965
DocketAppeal, No. 9
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 210 A.2d 495 (Beauty Hall, Inc. v. State Board of Cosmetology) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Beauty Hall, Inc. v. State Board of Cosmetology, 210 A.2d 495, 418 Pa. 225, 1965 Pa. LEXIS 588 (Pa. 1965).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Cohen,

This is an appeal by the Commonwealth from a final decree which permanently enjoined the State Board of Cosmetology from enforcing a 1959 amendment to the Beanty Culture Law1 on the grounds that it deprives or interferes with plaintiff-appellee’s property rights without due process of law in violation of §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution2 and Article I, §1, of the Pennsylvania Constitution.3 The decree must be vacated because the financial loss allegedly suffered by appellee does not constitute a deprivation of or interference with property by the state within the meaning of the constitutional provisions asserted by it and does not provide the requisite standing to attack the constitutionality of the 1959 legislative enactment.

Purportedly, the Beauty Culture Law was enacted by the Legislature for “but one purpose, and that is the protection of patrons of . . . beauty shops.” Department of Licenses and Inspections v. Weber, 394 Pa. 466, 471, 147 A. 2d 326, 328 (1959). One of the methods by which this purpose is secured is the ensuring of the fitness of persons who perform the functions of a beauty operator upon patrons. Thus, these functions cannot be practiced by one who has not obtained a cer[228]*228tificate of registration from the Department of Public Instruction.4 To obtain such a certificate one must pass an examination promulgated and administered by the State Board of Cosmetology.5 Before 1959 there were two basic prerequisites to sitting for the examination — an age requirement of sixteen years and an instruction requirement of one thousand hours in a school of beauty culture registered as such with the Department of Public Instruction.6 The plaintiff-appellee, Beauty. Hall, Inc., is such a registered'school'of beauty culture.

In 1959 the Legislature added a third basic prerequisite to sitting for the state examination, viz., a tenth grade education or its equivalent.7 It is this amendment which appellee-beauty school attacks. But this amendment does not direct appellee to do any act or refrain from doing any act. It does not require appellee to turn away prospective beauty school students who are without a tenth grade education or its equivalent; the educational requirement is a prerequisite to taking the state examination not to entering appellee’s school. Nor is there any suggestion that one of the objects of the Legislature in enacting the amendment was to regulate appellee’s affairs. The ostensible ob[229]*229ject of the Legislature in enacting the amendment was the further protection of beauty parlor patrons. The means of obtaining the object is the direct regulation of the individual who desires to become a beauty operator; only this individual is directly burdened by or subject to the amendment.

The sole basis proposed by appellee to support its standing to make a constitutional attack on the amendment is that some persons who would have become tuition paying students in its school in the absence of the new educational requirement will not become its students in the presence of such a requirement and that it thereby has and will continue to suffer financial loss. As stated above, it is clear the amendment does not require such a consequence. But assuming arguendo that appellee could demonstrate that the amendment indirectly causes such an effect, nevertheless there is neither a legal injury nor standing to attack the amendment’s constitutionality.

In Northwestern Pennsylvania Automatic Phonograph Association v. Meadville, 359 Pa. 549, 59 A. 2d 907 (1948), a corporation, organized and associated for the benefit and protection of persons who owned and installed juke boxes in places of business, sought to enjoin the enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional license tax imposed upon the proprietors of the establishments where the juke boxes were installed. Plaintiff alleged, inter alia, that the enforcement of these ordinances against the proprietor would result in great loss of business to the owners and installers of the machines, because the taxed proprietors would stop the placing of such machines on their premises. We held a,t p. 553: “The record does not establish any right in appellant to maintain this bill. The pleadings do not reveal, nor does the record establish, that appellant is in any way subject to the terms of the ordinance. It is not subject to any penalty for neither it [230]*230nor its members possess . . . juke boxes within the meaning of the taxing ordinance.” We further held that “[i]t is well established that a party challenging the validity of legislation must aver and prove that it is subject to the challenged enactment . . .” and affirmed the dismissal of the bill in equity “for the reason that appellant had no standing to maintain the same.”

In Ex-Cell-O Corporation v. City of Chicago, 115 F. 2d 627 (7th Cir. 1940), the constitutionality of a Chicago ordinance forbidding the use of paper milk containers was attacked by the Ex-Cell-0 Corporation, which licensed patented machines used to manufacture such containers, and the American Can Company, which manufactured such containers and sold them to dairy companies. It was held that since the ordinance did not prohibit the licensing by Ex-Cell-0 or the manufacturing and selling to dairies by American Can neither company had standing to attack the constitutionality of the ordinance, notwithstanding the serious economic consequences to them. Setting forth numerous cases to the same effect, the court held at p. 629: “[I]t is apparent that inevitable financial pecuniary damage is not the test of the sufficiency of plaintiff’s interest. Otherwise the right to sue might be extended indefinitely. ... [T]he . . . question is whether the damage claimed springs directly to plaintiff from defendants. If it is incidental, if it is indirect, defendants may not invoke the court’s jurisdiction.”

A similar analysis has been made in cases involving the analogous question of who has standing to appeal from an administrative decision. In Seitz Liquor License Case, 157 Pa. Superior Ct. 553, 43 A. 2d 547 (1945), a residential property owner sought to appeal from an order of the Liquor Control Board granting a transfer of a restaurant liquor license to a location near his residence. Not relying solely on the Liquor [231]*231Control Act, which expressly gave standing to appeal only to an aggrieved applicant, the court held at p. 556: “The relationship which must exist between a person and a cause before a right to appeal will arise, in the absence of special statutory authority, has been stated as follows in Lansdowne Board of Adjustment’s Appeal, 313 Pa. 523, 525, 170 A. 867: ‘ “A cardinal principle, which applies alike to every person desiring to appeal, whether a party to the record or not, is that he must have a [direct] interest in the subject-matter of the [particular] litigation, otherwise he can have no standing to appeal. And not only must a party desiring to appeal have a [direct] interest in the particular question litigated, but his interest must be immediate and pecuniary, and not a remote consequence of the judgment. The interest must also be substantial.” ’ Any interest which appellant had in the outcome of the proceedings before the board was not direct and immediate, but was

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Bluebook (online)
210 A.2d 495, 418 Pa. 225, 1965 Pa. LEXIS 588, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/beauty-hall-inc-v-state-board-of-cosmetology-pa-1965.