1. Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators Association, Inc. vs.
City Mayor of Manila
20 SCRA 849
Facts:
Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators Association, and one of its
members Hotel del Mar Inc. petitioned for the prohibition of Ordinance
4670 on June 14, 1963 to be applicable in the city of Manila.
They claimed that the ordinance was beyond the powers of the Manila
City Board to regulate due to the fact that hotels were not part of its
regulatory powers. They also asserted that Section 1 of the challenged
ordinance was unconstitutional and void for being unreasonable and
violative of due process insofar because it would impose P6,000.00 license
fee per annum for first class motels and P4,500.00 for second class motels;
there was also the requirement that the guests would fill up a form
specifying their personal information.
There was also a provision that the premises and facilities of such
hotels, motels and lodging houses would be open for inspection from city
authorites. They claimed this to be violative of due process for being vague.
The law also classified motels into two classes and required the
maintenance of certain minimum facilities in first class motels such as a
telephone in each room, a dining room or, restaurant and laundry. The
petitioners also invoked the lack of due process on this for being arbitrary.
It was also unlawful for the owner to lease any room or portion thereof
more than twice every 24 hours. There was also a prohibition for persons
below 18 in the hotel. The challenged ordinance also caused the automatic
cancellation of the license of the hotels that violated the ordinance. The
lower court declared the ordinance unconstitutional. Hence, this appeal by
the city of Manila.
Issue:
Whether Ordinance No. 4760 of the City of Manila is violative of the due
process clause?
Held: No. Judgment reversed.
Ratio:
"The presumption is towards the validity of a law.” However, the Judiciary
should not lightly set aside legislative action when there is not a clear
invasion of personal or property rights under the guise of police regulation.
O'Gorman & Young v. Hartford Fire Insurance Co- Case was in the scope of
police power. As underlying questions of fact may condition the
constitutionality of legislation of this character, the resumption of
constitutionality must prevail in the absence of some factual foundation of
record for overthrowing the statute." No such factual foundation being laid
in the present case, the lower court deciding the matter on the pleadings
and the stipulation of facts, the presumption of validity must prevail and the
judgment against the ordinance set aside.”
There is no question but that the challenged ordinance was precisely
enacted to minimize certain practices hurtful to public morals, particularly
fornication and prostitution. Moreover, the increase in the licensed fees was
intended to discourage "establishments of the kind from operating for
purpose other than legal" and at the same time, to increase "the income of
the city government." Police power is the power to prescribe regulations to
promote the health, morals, peace, good order, safety and general welfare
of the people. In view of the requirements of due process, equal protection
and other applicable constitutional guaranties, however, the power must
not be unreasonable or violative of due process.
There is no controlling and precise definition of due process. It has a
standard to which the governmental action should conform in order that
deprivation of life, liberty or property, in each appropriate case, be valid.
What then is the standard of due process which must exist both as a
procedural and a substantive requisite to free the challenged ordinance
from legal infirmity? It is responsiveness to the supremacy of
reason, obedience to the dictates of justice. Negatively put, arbitrariness is
ruled out and unfairness avoided.
Due process is not a narrow or "technical conception with fixed content
unrelated to time, place and circumstances," decisions based on such a
clause requiring a "close and perceptive inquiry into fundamental principles
of our society." Questions of due process are not to be treated narrowly or
pedantically in slavery to form or phrase.
Nothing in the petition is sufficient to prove the ordinance’s nullity for an
alleged failure to meet the due process requirement.
Cu Unjieng case: Licenses for non-useful occupations are also incidental to
the police power and the right to exact a fee may be implied from the power
to license and regulate, but in fixing amount of the license fees the
municipal corporations are allowed a much wider discretion in this class of
cases than in the former, and aside from applying the well-known legal
principle that municipal ordinances must not be unreasonable, oppressive,
or tyrannical, courts have, as a general rule, declined to interfere with such
discretion. Eg. Sale of liquors.
Lutz v. Araneta- Taxation may be made to supplement the state’s police
power.
In one case- “much discretion is given to municipal corporations in
determining the amount," here the license fee of the operator of a massage
clinic, even if it were viewed purely as a police power measure.
On the impairment of freedom to contract by limiting duration of use to
twice every 24 hours- It was not violative of due process. 'Liberty' as
understood in democracies, is not license; it is 'liberty regulated by law.'
Implied in the term is restraint by law for the good of the individual and for
the greater good of the peace and order of society and the general well-
being.
Laurel- The citizen should achieve the required balance of liberty and
authority in his mind through education and personal discipline, so that
there may be established the resultant equilibrium, which means peace and
order and happiness for all.
The freedom to contract no longer "retains its virtuality as a living principle,
unlike in the sole case of People v Pomar. The policy of laissez faire has to
some extent given way to the assumption by the government of the right of
intervention even in contractual relations affected with public interest.
What may be stressed sufficiently is that if the liberty involved were
freedom of the mind or the person, the standard for the validity of
governmental acts is much more rigorous and exacting, but where the
liberty curtailed affects at the most rights of property, the permissible scope
of regulatory measure is wider. On the law being vague on the issue of
personal information, the maintenance of establishments, and the “full rate
of payment”- Holmes- “We agree to all the generalities about not supplying
criminal laws with what they omit but there is no canon against using
common sense in construing laws as saying what they obviously mean."
