Moose Lodge No. v. Irvis (107 )

On 12 June 1972 the Supreme Court issued its decision in favor of Moose Lodge No. 107 and against Leroy Irvis. Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion, in which he was joined by Chief Justice Burger, Justice Stewart, Justice White, Justice Powell, and Justice Blackmun. The majority dismissed the lower court's ruling that the Moose Lodge's discrimination constituted "state action" because the state had issued its liquor license. In his majority opinion, Rehnquist wrote:

The Court has never held, of course, that discrimination by an otherwise private entity would be violative of the Equal Protection Clause if the private entity receives any sort of benefit or service at all from the State, or if it is subject to state regulation in any degree whatever. Since state-furnished services include such necessities of life as electricity, water, and police and fire protection, such a holding would utterly emasculate the distinction between private as distinguished from State set forth in The Civil Rights Cases and adhered to in subsequent decisions. Our holdings indicate that where the impetus for the discrimination is private, the State must have "significantly involved itself with invidious discriminations . . . in order for the discriminatory action to fall within the ambit of the constitutional prohibition."

On the question of whether the state-licensed lodge represented a state-sponsored monopoly, Rehnquist also sided with the lodge:

However detailed this type of regulation may be in some particulars, it cannot be aid to in any way foster or encourage racial discrimination. Nor can it be said to make the State in any realistic sense a partner or even a joint venturer in the club's enterprise.

Three justices--Justice Marshall, Justice Brennan, and Justice Douglas--disagreed with the majority view. Douglas and Brennan each wrote separate dissenting opinions, both joined by Marshall. Brennan's took a much different view of the state's relationship to Moose Lodge No. 107:

When Moose Lodge obtained its liquor license, the State of Pennsylvania became an active participant in the operation of the Lodge bar. Liquor licensing laws are only incidentally revenue measures; they are primarily pervasive regulatory schemes under which the State dictates and continually supervises virtually every detail of the operation of the licensee's business. Very few, if any, other licensed businesses experience such complete state involvement.

In Brennan's view, a strong enough relationship existed between the state of Pennsylvania and the Moose Lodge to have its actions classified as "state action." The lodge's discriminatory policies were thus subject to federal civil rights laws.

Following the Supreme Court decision in Moose Lodge v. Irvis, the Pennsylvania Civil Rights Commission took the lodge to court, claiming that its actions violated state law. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case upon appeal, choosing to let the Pennsylvania law stand.