Singling out a class of one

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

A list member sent me an email (sorry, I've lost the email and can't remember 
who sent it) pointing out that in 1957 the USSC invalidated a law singling 
out American Express for special treatment was held to be a violation of equal 
protection in MOREY v. DOUD, 354 U.S. 457 (1957).
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=354&i
nvol=457

The Doud Court also favorably cited precedents involving cases in which a law 
in fact only affected one company, even if that was not apparent on the 
statute's face.

Doud was explicitly overruled in City of New Orleans v. Dukes in 1976.

I'm not surprised that modern federal doctrine wouldn't be sympathetic to 
such a claim, but given the dismissive response to my posts on the WalMart case, 
I'm glad to see that it's not off the wall to perceive a conceptual equal 
protection problem here, not to suggest that some states that have stricter review 
than current USSC doctrine may be suspicious of such a law.

David E. Bernstein
Visiting Professor
University of Michigan School of Law
Professor
George Mason University School of Law
http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste
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