State Board of Barber Examiners v. Blocker

167 S.E. 298, 176 Ga. 125, 1932 Ga. LEXIS 403
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedDecember 15, 1932
DocketNo. 8963
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 167 S.E. 298 (State Board of Barber Examiners v. Blocker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Board of Barber Examiners v. Blocker, 167 S.E. 298, 176 Ga. 125, 1932 Ga. LEXIS 403 (Ga. 1932).

Opinions

Hill, J.

Mrs. Ruth Blocker and Mrs. Lola McKee brought an equitable petition against C. A. Morrison, H. W. Kitchens, and P. A. Meyer, as the State Board of Barber Examiners, R. C. Coleman, general secretary of examining boards of Georgia, John Wilson, secretary of State of Georgia, alleging, among other things, that plaintiffs will suffer a loss of time and incur burdensome expenses in their business and will be deprived of the opportunity of complying with their contracts with their employers to perform their services, and the loss to the plaintiffs will be irreparable, unless the defendants are enjoined; and they pray that the defendants be enjoined from enforcing or taking any steps whatsoever to enforce the provisions of the barbers act of 1931. as applied to the plaintiffs, the rules and regulations promulgated by the board of barber examiners of Georgia, and from levying tax executions, or from arresting the plaintiffs or their employees and all others similarly situated, or from prosecuting the plaintiffs or their employees, or from interfering with the operations of plaintiffs and their employees in any manner whatsoever; and that the barbers act of 1931 be declared to be unconstitutional and void, etc. A general demurrer to the petition was overruled by the court, and the defendants excepted.

The first act passed by the legislature of Georgia regulating the occupation of “barbering” was in 1914 (Ga. L. 1914, p. 75). The [127]*127caption of that act is: “An act to regulate the practice of the occupation of a barber in certain cities within the State of Georgia, and to provide for the registering and licensing of persons to carry on such practice, and to insure the proper sanitary conditions in barber-shops and prevent the spreading of disease in the State of Georgia, to establish a State board of barber examiners to carry out the purposes of this act, to make penal any violation of the terms of this act, and to prescribe punishments therefor; and for other purposes.” This court in Cooper v. Rollins, 152 Ga. 588 (supra), declared that act constitutional. Similar attacks are made upon the amendatory act of 1931 as were made on the act of 1914; and the principles there ruled with respect to those attacks are controlling in the instant case. Other attacks on the constitutionality of the act of 1931 are without merit. In the Cooper case this court held: “1. This court will not declare an act of the legislature unconstitutional, unless the conflict between the act and the constitution is clear and palpable. 2. What trades or occupations shall be regulated, and the nature and extent of the regulations to be applied, are questions for the legislature to determine, and fall within the proper exercise of the police power of the State; and unless the regulations are so unreasonable and extravagant that the property or personal rights of the citizens are unnecessarily and arbitrarily interfered with, without due process of law, they do not extend beyond the power of the State to pass. 3. The act of the legislature ‘regulating the occupation of barbers/ approved August 17, 1914 (Acts 1914, p. 75), as amended by the act of 1920 (Acts 1920, p. 109), is not unconstitutional, (a) because it violates the provision of our State constitution which provides that ‘Laws of a general nature shall have uniform operation throughout the State/ or (b) because it violates the equal-protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States and of the constitution of this State.” The caption of the act of 1931, amendatory of the act of 1914 (Ga. L. 1931, p. 157), after setting out in full the title of the act of 1914, proceeds to state the various provisions of the act, including the following: “and defining the practice of barbering.” The act of 1914 thus defines a barber: “Be it further enacted, that to shave any living person, or trim the beard, or cut or dress the hair of any such person, for hire or pay to the person performing any such services or to any other person, shall [128]*128be construed as practicing the occupation of barbering within the meaning of this act.” The act of 1931 gives the following definition: “Be it further enacted, that section 3 of said act be and the same is hereby repealed, and the following definition substituted therefor, to wit, ‘to shave or trim the beard, cut or dress the hair, to give facial or scalp massaging, facial or scalp treatment with oils or creams and other preparations made for this purpose, either by hand or mechanical appliances, to singe and shampoo the hair, or to dye the hair of ány living person, for hire or pay, shall be considered as practicing the profession of a barber within the meaning of this act/”

In arriving at the meaning of the words of an act we must ascertain, if possible, the legislative intent. This legislative intent by amending the act of 1914 appears to be to remove any doubt, if any existed, as to hairdressing and any other feature of barbering which is a specialized branch of that vocation. What other purpose or intent could the legislature have had than to put beyond question what the language of the act of 1914 meant? In Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. State, 104 Ga. 831 (31 S. E. 531, 43 L. R. A. 518), this court said: “A legislative body should always be presumed to mean something by the passage of an act. . . It would be difficult to conceive how language could more clearly or forcibly express the real intent of the legislature in this matter than the words used in the title . . of this act. If it means anything, it means a purpose of the legislature to adopt and make of force a code of laws, and hence to breathe into every provision in that code the vitality of a legislative enactment. Any other construction would ascribe to the legislature the folly of declaring, in effect, ‘We adopt as law in this code everything which would be law any way without further sanction/ It would be just as reasonable for that body to re-enact verbatim et literatim a statute which it recognized and knew to be already of force.” And so we must ascribe to the legislature in passing the act of 1931, amending the act of 1914, some meaning in changing the definition of a barber; and unless we give to the legislature an intention to include persons engaged in work such as the plaintiffs allege that they perform, we “ascribe to the legislature the folly of declaring, in effect, ‘We adopt as law . . everything which would be law any way/” In paragraph 8 of the petition the nature and kind of work performed by the plaintiffs is set out as fol[129]*129lows: “That the plaintiffs are beauticians, beauty eulturists, beauty-culture specialists, hairdressers

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

T. E. McRae v. Robbins
9 So. 2d 284 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1942)
Johnson v. Ervin
285 N.W. 77 (Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1939)
Bramley v. State
2 S.E.2d 647 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1939)
Beaty v. Humphrey, State Auditor
115 S.W.2d 559 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 1938)
Schneider v. Duer
184 A. 914 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, 1936)
Eason v. Morrison
182 S.E. 163 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1935)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
167 S.E. 298, 176 Ga. 125, 1932 Ga. LEXIS 403, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-board-of-barber-examiners-v-blocker-ga-1932.