Columbus & Greenville Ry. Co. v. Miller, 283 U.S. 96 (1931)

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Columbus & Greenville Railway Co. v. Miller

No.195
Argued March 6, 9, 1931
Decided April 13, 1931
283 U.S. 96

APPEAL FROM AND CERTIORARI TO THE

SUPREME COURT OF MISSISSIPPI

Syllabus

1. The protection of the Fourteenth Amendment against state action is only for the benefit of those who are injured through the invasions of personal or property rights, or through the discriminations, which the Amendment forbids. The constitutional guaranty does not extend to the mere interest of an official, as such, who has not been deprived of his property without due process of law or denied the equal protection of the laws. P. 99.

So held where a state official, suing a railway company in the state court to collect a tax, which had been reduced by an amendatory law relied on by the company, attacked the amendment upon the ground that the bill therefor had not been published as required by the state constitution, and where the state supreme court, ignoring that contention, adjudged the amendment invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

2. In taxing railroad within a levee district upon the mileage basis, it is not necessarily arbitrary and contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to fix a lower rate per mile for those having less than twenty-five miles of main line within the district than for those that have more. P. 100.

127 So. 784 reversed.

Appeal and certiorari, 282 U.S. 825, to review a judgment recovered by the present respondent in his suit to collect a tax. See also 154 Miss. 317; 122 So. 366.