res communes

In 1975 and 1976 Montana required a resident to pay nine dollars for an elk license and four dollars for a tag. A nonresident had to buy a combination license for two hundred twenty-five dollars plus a tag for one hundred fifty-one dollars. This produced totals of thirteen dollars for residents and three hundred seventy-six dollars for nonresidents. Appellants included Lester Baldwin, a Montana resident and licensed outfitter whose customers were mostly nonresidents. Nonresidents Carlson, Huseby, Lee, and Moris from Minnesota traveled to Montana each year to hunt elk and had purchased the higher-priced nonresident licenses in prior seasons. Montana maintained more than four hundred outfitters. The State had a force of seventy game wardens. Each warden covered roughly two thousand one hundred square miles. The State spent more than twenty-six million dollars on wildlife management between 1966 and 1976, of which approximately thirteen million dollars came from license fees. The State determined annual elk harvest numbers from census data and winter-range availability. It issued seventeen thousand resident and twelve hundred nonresident licenses in 1975. Elk were concentrated in the mountainous western third of the State and depended on private ranch lands for winter forage. Nonresident big-game licenses rose five hundred thirty percent from 1960 to 1970 while resident licenses rose sixty-seven percent. Nonresidents constituted about thirteen percent of all hunters in the 1974-1975 season. In 1975 the five appellants filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Montana against the Fish and Game Commission, its director, and its five commissioners. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief plus partial reimbursement of fees already paid. A three-judge district court, with one judge dissenting in part, upheld the statutes. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in 1977.

Oklahoma is one of 23 states having statutes that prohibit or severely restrict the exportation of minnows taken from waters within the state. The challenged provision, Okla. Stat., Tit. 29, § 4-115 (B), states that no person may transport or ship minnows for sale outside the state which were seined or procured within the waters of this state, though the prohibition does not apply to minnows raised in a regularly licensed commercial minnow hatchery. William Hughes holds a license from Oklahoma to operate a commercial minnow hatchery and to sell minnows, and he also holds a Texas license to operate a commercial minnow business near Wichita Falls, Texas. In 1973, Hughes was arrested by an Oklahoma game ranger and convicted in Oklahoma state court of violating the statute by transporting 250 pounds of live minnows from Oklahoma to Texas. The minnows had been purchased from a minnow farm near Weatherford, Oklahoma, and were being transported to a buyer in Wichita Falls, Texas; Hughes was fined $200 and court costs. Hughes' conviction was affirmed by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in an unreported opinion that relied on Geer v. Connecticut. Hughes then brought this action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking a declaration that § 4-115 (B) was unconstitutional and an injunction against its enforcement. A three-judge District Court granted summary judgment for the appellees. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction over the appeal.

In 1947 five Georgia residents engaged in commercial shrimp fishing and a Florida nonprofit corporation representing fish dealers filed suit in federal district court against South Carolina officials charged with enforcing state fishing laws. The plaintiffs sought to enjoin enforcement of several South Carolina statutes governing commercial shrimp trawling in the three-mile maritime belt off the South Carolina coast. The shrimp fishery extends along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida and involves migratory shrimp that move southward in late summer and fall before returning northward in spring. With no federal regulation in place, the four states most directly involved adopted separate conservation and licensing measures. These measures produced differing restrictions on non-resident fishing and led to reciprocal limitations that effectively partitioned the fishery at state lines. South Carolina statutes impose a tax of one-eighth cent per pound on green shrimp taken in the maritime belt, require non-resident boat owners to pay an annual license fee of $2,500 per boat while residents pay $25, condition issuance of non-resident licenses on proof that the applicant has paid South Carolina income taxes on profits from operations in the state during the preceding year, and direct that all licensed boats must dock at a South Carolina port, unload, pack, and stamp their catch before it may be shipped or transported to another state. The state also maintains an annual closed season from March 1 to July 1 and prohibits trawling in its inland waters. A three-judge federal district court upheld the statutes, denied injunctive relief, and dismissed the suit. The plaintiffs took a direct appeal, and the Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. Some of the individual appellants had previously been convicted of shrimping out of season and in inland waters. The corporate plaintiff operates no fishing boats.