Pullman Co. v. Kansas

In Pullman Co. v. Kansas, 216 U.S. 56 (1910), the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a Kansas statute that required:

“

a condition of the right of a foreign corporation, seeking to do local business in Kansas, that it should apply to the State Charter Board for permission to do so. It is also prescribed as a condition of the right of a foreign corporation to do intrastate business in Kansas that it shall pay not only an application fee of $25, but a charter fee "of one per cent of its authorized capital upon the first one hundred thousand dollars of its capital stock or any part thereof; and upon the next four hundred thousand dollars or any part thereof, one-twentieth of one per cent; and for each million or major part thereof over and above the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, two hundred dollars.

”

The Court found the above condition to be unconstitutional because "the State could no more exact such a waiver than it could prescribe as a condition of the company's right to do local business in Kansas that it agree to waive the constitutional guaranty of the equal protection of the laws, or the guaranty against being deprived of its property otherwise than by due process of law."

A concurring opinion agreed by expressing stating that Kansas had imposed an "unconstitutional condition."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented, and was joined by two other Justices.