State Board of Insurance v. Todd Shipyards Corporation/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

370 U.S. 451

STATE BOARD OF INSURANCE et al., Petitioners,  v.  TODD SHIPYARDS CORPORATION.

No. 144.  Argued: March 21, 1962. --- Decided: June 25, 1962.

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

In holding that the McCarran-Ferguson Act withdrew from the States the power to tax the ownership and use of insurance policies on property located within their borders merely because those policies were made by representatives of the insurer and the insured in another State, I think the Court places an unwarranted construction upon that Act which may seriously impair the capacity of Texas and other States to provide and enforce effective regulation of the insurance business. The Texas statute held invalid was enacted by the State Legislature in 1957 in order to protect the State's comprehensive supervision of insurance companies and their policies from being unercut by the practice of insuring Texas property with insurance companies not authorized to do business in that State. Prior to 1957, the whole cost of the Texas program had been placed upon those insurance companies which had subjected themselves to Texas regulation and taxation by qualifying to do business in the State. The 1957 statute was passed for the express purpose of equalizing that burden by placing a tax upon the purchasers of unregulated insurance roughly equal to that imposed directly upon regulated companies. In this way the State tried to protect its qualified and regulated companies from unfair competition by companies which could sell insurance on Texas property cheaper because they did not have to pay their part of the cost of the Texas insurance regulation program. The Court's construction of the McCarran-Ferguson Act bars Texas from providing this sort of protection to regulated companies. This holding seems to me to threaten the whole foundation of the Texas regulatory program for it plainly encourages Texas residents to insure their property with unregulated companies and discourages out-of-state companies from qualifying to do business in and subjecting themselves to regulation and taxation by the State of Texas.

I cannot believe that an Act which was basically designed to leave the power to regulate and tax insurance companies to the States was intended to have any such effect. The McCarran-Ferguson Act 'declares that the continued regulation and taxation by the several States of the business of insurance is in the public interest, and that silence on the part of the Congress shall not be construed to impose any barrier to the regulation or taxation of such business by the several States'-a declaration which is not qualified by any other language of the Act. Nothing in the legislative history which the Court relies upon persuades me that we should read this Act in a way which so seriously impairs the power of the States to discharge their responsibilities under the Act to provide a comprehensive, effective, well-integrated program for regulating insurance on property within their borders. I think the McCarran-Ferguson Act left Texas with adequate power to place a tax on the ownership and use of insurance policies covering the vast properties owned and operated by this respondent in Texas, and I therefore dissent.

Notes