Police power

Police power, in U.S. constitutional law, the permissible scope of federal or state legislation so far as it may affect the rights of an individual when those rights conflict with the promotion and maintenance of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the public. When the U.S. Supreme Court has considered such cases, it has tended to use a doctrine called “balance of interests,” to determine whether a state has the right to exercise its implied police powers although that exercise may be in conflict with a federal law, either statutory or constitutional. The court has held, in these instances, that if a state does enact legislation for the protection and maintenance of the health, safety, or welfare of its citizens, such laws “fall within the most traditional concept of the state’s police power.” Therefore, even in matters where federal laws take precedence over those of the state, the court has decided in favour of the state. For example, a state’s police power may be employed to ban the export of immature citrus fruits on the grounds that such shipments would adversely affect the reputation of the grower state in the marketplace. Although it would seem to be a clear impediment to the free exercise of interstate commerce, the court, in Sligh v. Kirkwood (1915), upheld the measure as legitimate police power exercise on behalf of its citizenry. However, if the statute were intended to discriminate against another state’s market or resource, rather than (as in Sligh) to protect its own resource, then it is not a legitimate exercise of police power.

Even where the balance of interests may well lie in favour of the state’s apparent right to enact legislation under its police powers privilege, the burden on other factors, e.g., interstate commerce, may be too great to permit such enactment. In Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines Inc. (1959), an Illinois law requiring special mudguards on trucks using its highways was found to be too cumbersome a requirement although it had been enacted in behalf of the safety of its citizens.

State courts also render decisions on the validity of contested legislation that enables a state to exercise its police powers.

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Periodically, state courts have had to deal with matters involving private concepts of health in contention with the public’s health. One example is the insistence on immunizing school children against certain communicable diseases, or prohibiting children from entering school without such immunization. The private concerns of the parent who may feel that only he or she has a right to decide what medical treatment the child should have—or the convictions of a person who feels that medication is an infringement on his or her religious practice—are matters that do come to state courts from time to time. Again, the court usually finds that the public’s right to health tends to outweigh private or individual concerns.

In general, the courts tend to uphold laws exercising what it considers bona fide concerns for the public’s well-being, on the ground that the legislature has the discretion to discern public need and to enact legislation in protection of the public interest.