Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operations Association vs City of Manila

1. June 14, 1963 – The City Board of Manila approved and passed Ordinance No. 4760. Section 1 of said
Ordinance:
a. Imposes P6,000.00 per annum for first class motels and P4,500.00 for second class motels;
b. Requires the owner, manager or keeper of a hotel, motel or lodging house to refrain from
entertaining or accepting any guest or customer or letting any room or other quarter to any
person or persons without his filling up the prescribed form in a lobby open to public view
at all times and in his presence with his or their personal information; and
c. Requires that the premises and facilities would be open for inspection either by the City
Mayor, or the Chief of Police or their duly authorized representatives.
2. Petitioners contend that section 1 of said Ordinance is unconstitutional and void on due process
grounds not only for being arbitrary, unreasonable or oppressive but also for being vague, indefinite and
uncertain and for the invasion of the right to privacy and the guaranty against self-incrimination.
3. Section 2 of said Ordinance:
a. Classifies motels into two classes and requires maintenance of certain minimum facilities in
first class motels such as a telephone in each room, a dining room or, restaurant;
(Petitioner: Offends against the due process clause for being arbitrary, unreasonable and
oppressive)
b. Prohibits a person less than 18 years old from being accepted in such hotels, motels and
lodging houses; (Petitioner: Runs counter to the due process guaranty for lack of certainty
and for its unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive character)
c. Makes it unlawful for the owner, manager, keeper or duly authorized representative of
such establishments to lease any room or portion thereof more than twice every 24 hours.
(Petitioner: Same in b.)
4. Section 4 of said Ordinance:
a. Provides penalty for a subsequent conviction and automatic cancellation of the license of
the offended party. (Petitioner: Causes destruction of the business and loss of its
investments – a transgression of the due process clause.)
5. Petitioners asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction and for a final judgment declaring the
above ordinance null and void and unenforceable.
6. Lower Court issued a preliminary injunction ordering respondent Mayor to refrain from enforcing said
Ordinance No. 4760.
7. Supreme Court:
a. There is no evidence to offset the presumption of validity that attaches to a challenged
statute or ordinance. The Judiciary should not lightly set aside legislative action when there
is not a clear invasion of personal or property rights under the guise of police regulation.
Unless the statute or ordinance is void on its face.
b. The mantle of protection associated with the due process guaranty does not cover the
petitioners. This particular manifestation of a police power measure being specifically aimed
to safeguard public morals is immune from such imputation of nullity resting purely on
conjecture and unsupported by anything of substance. To hold otherwise it to unduly
restrict and narrow the scope of police power which has been properly characterized as the
most essential, insistent and the least limitable powers, extending as it does “to all the great
public needs.”
c. To deprive the state of its competence to promote public health, public morals, public safety
and the general welfare is to destroy the very purpose of the state.
d. Police power – is that inherent and plenary power in the State which enables it to prohibit
all that is hurtful to the comfort, safety and welfare of society.
e. The exercise of police power insofar as it may affect the life, liberty and property of any
person is subject to judicial inquiry. Where such exercise may be considered capricious,
whimsical, unjust or unreasonable, a denial of due process or a violation of any other
applicable constitutional guaranty may call for correction by the courts.
f. There is no controlling and precise definition of due process. It furnishes though a standard
to which governmental action should conform in order that deprivation of life, liberty and
property may be valid.
g. Standard of both procedural and substantive due process – it is responsiveness to the
supremacy of reason, obedience to the dictates of justice. Due process is thus hostile to any
official action marred by lack of reasonableness. It has been identified as freedom from
arbitrariness. It is not a narrow or technical conception with fixed content unrelated to time,
place and circumstances.
h. It has been a settled law that municipal license fees could be classified into those imposed
for regulating occupations or regular enterprises, for the regulation or restriction of non-
useful occupations or for revenue purposes only.
i. Licenses for non-useful regulations are also incidental to the police power and the right to
exact a fee may be implied from the power to license and regulate, but in fixing the amount
of the license fees the municipal corporations are allowed a much wider discretion in this
class of cases than in the former.
j. The desirability of imposing restraint upon the number of persons who might otherwise
engage in non-useful enterprises is generally an important factor in the determination of the
amount of this kind of license fee.
k. Taxation may be made to implement the state’s police power.
l. The broad taxing authority conferred to cities and municipalities is sufficiently plenary to
cover a wide range of subjects with the only limitation that the tax so levied is for public
purposes, just and uniform.
m. The mere fact that some individuals in the community may be deprived of their present
business or a particular mode of earning a living cannot prevent the exercise of the police
power.
n. The proviso that restricts the petitioners to rent any room or portion thereof for more than
twice every 24 hours is not a violation of the freedom to contract. It is neither unreasonable
nor arbitrary. It was intended to curb the opportunity for the immoral or illegitimate use of
the rooms. There appears a correspondence between the undeniable existence of an
undesirable situation and the legislative attempt at correction.
o. Every regulation of conduct amounts to curtailment of liberty.
p. Justice Malcolm: Liberty as understood in democracies, is not license; it is liberty regulated
by law. Implied in the term is restraint by law for the good of the individual and for the
greater good of the peace and order of society and the general well-being. The liberty of the
citizen may be restrained in the interest of the public health, or of the public order and
safety, or otherwise within the proper scope of the police power.
q. If the liberty involved were freedom of the mind or the person, the standard for the validity
of governmental acts is much more rigorous and exacting, but where the liberty curtailed
affects at the most rights of property, the permissible scope of regulatory measure is wider.