Oyama v. California/Dissent Jackson

by Robert H. Jackson

Mr. Justice JACKSON, dissenting.

I am unable to see how this Court logically can set aside this judgment unless it is prepared to invalidate the California Alien Land Laws, on which it is based. If this judgment of escheat seems harsh as to the Oyamas, it is only because it faithfully carries out a legislative policy, the validity of which this Court does not question.

The State's argument is as simple as this: If California has power to forbid certain aliens to own its lands, it must have incidental power to prevent evasion of that prohibition by use of an infant's name to cloak a forbidden ownership. If it has the right to protect itself against such evasion, its courts must have the right to decide the question of fact whether a given transaction constitutes an evasion. And if its courts have to apply the Act, the State has power to aid them by creating reasonable presumptions. I cannot find that this reasoning is defective or that it fails to support the judgment below, however little I like the result.

In this case the elder Oyama arranged to acquire some six acres of agricultural lands. He could not take title in his own name because of his classification as an ineligible alien, and hence one forbidden to acquire such lands. Title was taken in the name of Fred, his son. When this was happening Fred was six years old. He had no funds and the entire consideration was paid by the father. We can hardly criticize the state court for concluding, especially in absence of any proof to the contrary, that a 6-year-old child did not decide for himself to go into agriculture, or that these particular lands would be suitable for him of he did. The lands would require continuous cultivation if they were not to revert to a state of nature and it was not unreasonable to doubt that the 6-year-old son could supply either the manual labor or the oversight necessary to preserve the investment or to make it yield a return. Moreover, the return from the lands, even if applied to the support of young Oyama, operated to reduce the parental obligation. In short, there is no proof that this 6-year-old child contributed to the purchase of these lands either funds, judgment or desire. The California court considered that his name was used in the transaction without the infant's understanding consent. Even if there were no presumption created by statute. I should find it difficult to say that this conclusion is an unreasonable one.

Nor do I think we could say that it would offend the Federal Constitution if the State, to make admittedly constitutional legislation effective, should go so far as to create a presumption that where the consideration is paid by an ineligible father and the title is taken in the name of his infant son, it is to be deemed the father's purchase. I do not understand the Court to say that this is a far-fetched or unreasonable inference from such facts. It seems to say, however, that a presumption, which it construes in this way, is invalid becaus it operates only against sons of persons ineligible for citizenship. If even such a presumption strikes only a limited class, it is because the basic prohibitions of the Act strike only a limited class. If the State can validly classify certain Asiatics as a separate class for exclusion from land ownership, I do not see why it could not do so for purposes of a presumption.

But the California statute has not made a presumption applicable only against sons of the excluded Asiatics. The statutory presumption, so far as it applies here, is cast in this language:

'A prima facie presumption that the conveyance is made with such intent shall arise upon proof of any of the following group of facts:

'(a) The taking of the property in the name of a person other than the persons mentioned in Section 2 hereof (the excluded alien) if the consideration is paid or agreed or understood to be paid by an alien mentioned in Section 2 hereof * * *.'

The same presumption would be raised by the statute against any American citizen or any alien or any person whatsoever if he received the title and any ineligible alien paid the consideration. The Court's decision is that the presumption denies Fred Oyama the equal protection of the laws because grantees are treated differently if they are sons of ineligible aliens than if they are the sons of others. This Act makes no such classification. The presumption does not apply to him because he is the son of an ineligible father-it applies because he is a grantee of lands paid for by an ineligible alien. The Court itself reads this father and son classification into the Act, quite unjustified by its words. It is true that in this case the relationship of father and son also exists, but that is not the relationship that calls the presumption into operation.

The Act classifies granted only as those whose lands have been paid for by an ineligible alien and those whose lands have not. Every member of the class whose lands have been paid for by such an alien must overcome the presumption. Every grantee similarly situated is saddled by the identical burden imposed on Fred Oyama whether the is the son of a Japanese, the son of an American citizen or the son of an eligible alien. Thus there is no discrimination apparent on its face in the provision of the statute which the Court strikes down.

But it is said that a discrimination is latent in this presumption from the fact that other fathers may give land to their sons and no presumption would apply. That there is a discrimination in this situation no one will deny; it is the fundamental one, which the Court does not touch, by which the elder Oyama could not, directly or indirectly, acquire this land while many other fathers could. The presumption, of course would not apply if the consideration were paid by a person to whom the statute does not apply. But Fred Oyama, the son, is in no different position as to the presumption than the son of any other person whatsoever. If a citizen's son received this land from Oyama senior under the same conditions, he would be confronted with the same presumption and escheat. If the Oyama lad, on the other hand, received this land from a citizen, he would take it as free of presumption and escheat as any California lad could do. The only discrimination which prejudices young Oyama is the one which makes his father ineligible to own land or be a donor of it. That discrimination is passed by as valid, and one that seems to me wholly fictitious is first erected by this Court and then struck down.

I do not find anything in the Federal Constitution which authorizes us to strip a State of its power to enact reasonable presumptions which put the burden of producing evidence upon the only person who possesses it. This presumption is not made conclusive and the California courts have sometimes held it to be overcome by evidence. In this case, if there is any name to acquire beneficial interests for himself which he was forbidden to acquire in name, no one knows those facts better than the senior Oyama. He did not take the witness stand. He left unrebutted both the presumption of the statute and the inference that most reasonable persons, even in the absence of a statute, would draw from the facts.

This Court also says that California used the default of the father, in failing to file accountings as trustee for the infant, as evidence against the infant, and seems to imply this was an unconstitutional procedure. As we have seen, this infant was of such tender years that he had neither ideas nor will nor understanding about the purchase. The only person's intention which would stamp this transaction as one in good faith or as an evasion of the statute was the intention of the father. He was the only actor; he gave the land to the son and accepted on his behalf, so we are told. Certainly it was competent for the California courts, as bearing on his intentions and good faith, to receive evidence of the fact that the sole actor did not consider himself under an obligation to account as the law would require him to do if the property really belonged to an infant and he were a trustee.

While I think that California has pursued a policy of unnecessary severity by which the Oyamas lose both land and investment, I do not see how this Court, while conceding the State's right to keep the policy on its books, can strip the State of the right to make its Act effective. What we seem to be holding is that while the State has power to exclude the alien from land ownership, the alien has the constitutional right to nullify the policy by a device we would be prompt to condemn if it were used to evade a federal statute.

A majority of the Court agrees that the ground assigned by the Court's opinion is sufficient to decide this litigation. It does not therefore seem necessary or helpful to enter into a discussion of the constitutionality of the Alien Land Laws themselves.