Murphy v. California

Background

A city in California passed an ordinance in 1908 forbidding anyone from keeping rooms with billiard or pool tables for hire or public use, while allowing large hotels to keep a room for registered guests. A man who leased and operated a billiard hall was arrested, convicted, and fined after the trial court excluded his testimony that the place was orderly and free of gambling. State courts denied his habeas corpus claim, and the case reached this Court on the question whether the ordinance violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections.

Reasoning

The Court addressed whether the Constitution prevents a city from banning a lawful amusement and the business that supports it. It held that cities may use their police power to prohibit or regulate occupations that tend to harm public health, safety, comfort, or morals. Playing billiards is lawful, the Court said, but keeping a hall can have harmful tendencies and may be regulated or forbidden before obvious evils appear. Courts must generally accept local legislative judgments about such dangers and need not relitigate local conditions or the business owner’s testimony that his hall was orderly.

Real world impact

The decision lets municipalities bar commercial billiard and pool halls under their local health and safety authority. Business owners who invest in such enterprises cannot claim the Constitution protects them from a valid local ban, and cities may draw exceptions for certain hotel rooms while enforcing limits against hired play.