Hugo Black

“ Thus the advantages of early experience under friendly supervision in the locality of the pilot's training, the benefits to morale and esprit de corps which family and neighborly tradition might contribute, the close association in which pilots must work and live in their pilot communities and on the water, and the discipline and regulation which is imposed to assure the State competent pilot service after appointment, might have prompted the legislature to permit Louisiana pilot officers to select those which whom they would serve. ”

“ A pilot does not require a formalized technical education so much as a detailed and extremely intimate, almost intuitive, knowledge of the weather, waterways and conformation of the harbor or river which he serves. This seems to be particularly true of the approaches to New Orleans through the treacherous and shifting channel of the Mississippi River. [11] Moreover, harbor entrances where pilots can most conveniently make their homes and still be close to places where they board incoming and leave outgoing ships are usually some distance from the port cities they serve. ”

“ In these communities young men have an opportunity to acquire special knowledge of the weather and water hazards of the locality and seem to grow up with ambitions to become pilots in the traditions of their fathers, relatives, and neighbors. [14] We are asked, in effect, to say that Louisiana is without constitutional authority to conclude that apprenticeship under persons specially interested in a pilot's future is the best way to fit him for duty as a pilot officer in the service of the State. ”

“ The result of the decision therefore is to approve as constitutional state regulation which makes admission to the ranks of pilots turn finally on consanguinity. Blood is, in effect, made the crux of selection. That, in my opinion, is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment's guaranty against denial of the equal protection of the laws. The door is thereby closed to all not having blood relationship to presently licensed pilots. ”

“ Only those who have served a six month apprenticeship under incumbent pilots and who possess other § ecific qualifications may be certified to the governor by the board. [3] Appellants here have had at least fifteen years experience in the river, the port, and else where, as pilots of vessels whose pilotage was not governed by the State law in question. [4] Although they possess all the statutory qualifications except that they have not served the requisite six months apprenticeship under Louisiana officer pilots, [5] they have been denied appointment as State pilots. ”

“ Whether the occupation is considered as having the status of 'public officer' or of highly regulated private employment, it is beyond legislative power to make entrance to it turn upon such a criterion. ”

“ While the statutes applicable do not purport on their face to restrict the right to become a licensed pilot to members of the families of licensed pilots, the charge is that they have been so administered. ”

“ Indeed, something very worth while largely disappeared from our national life when the once prevalent familial system of conducting manufacturing and mercantile enterprises went out and was replaced by the highly impersonal corporate system for doing business. ”

“ Conceivably the familial system would be the most effective possible scheme for training many kinds of artisans or public servans, sheerly from the viewpoint of securing the highest degree of skill and competence. ”

“ It cannot be effective to overcome the bar itself. The discrimination here is not shown to be consciously racial in character. But I am unable to differentiate in effects one founded on blood relationship.
The case therefore falls squarely within the ruling in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220, [29] not only with relation to the line of discrimination employed, but also in the fact that unconstitutional administration of a statute otherwise valid on its face incurs the same condemnation as if the statute had incorporated the discrimination in terms. ”

“ The number of people, as a practical matter, who can be pilots is very limited. No matter what system of selection is adopted, all but the few occasionally selected must of necessity be excluded. Cf. Olsen v. ”

“ III (1916) .↑ Almost all the maritime states, some as colonies before the Revolution, adopted comprehensive pilotage laws which included unrestricted apprenticeship provisions. Mass.Laws, c. 13, § 2 (1783) , Mass.Rev.Stat. c. ”