Constitutional Law in 1933–34

Following the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the state of Ohio authorized by statute the creation of a state liquor monopoly, purchased $4,500,000 worth of liquor, and perfected plans for the retailing of it through 187 stores owned and managed by the state. In Ohio v. Helvering, the state sought an injunction to restrain the commissioner of internal revenue from collecting from the state the customary federal excise taxes upon the sale of intoxicating liquors. It alleged the immunity of the state and its instrumentalities from federal taxation and further claimed that the federal taxing statutes were not intended by Congress to apply to the states. The court, speaking through Mr. Justice Sutherland, upheld the collection of the tax, reaffirming the doctrine laid down in 1905 in the South Carolina Dispensary Case. The immunity from federal taxation enjoyed by the states extends only to those agencies and functions which are governmental in character and not to those which are proprietary. “When a state enters the market place seeking customers, it divests itself of its quasi-sovereignty pro tanto, and takes on the character of a trader, so far, at least, as the taxing power of the federal government is concerned.” The Court rejected as “altogether fanciful” the argument that the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and its later repeal had so altered the status of the liquor traffic that its conduct by the state has become an exercise of the state's police power, and hence a governmental operation immune from federal taxation.