Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue v. William Wrigley, Jr., Co., 505 U.S. 214, 11 (1992)

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224

WISCONSIN DEPT. OF REVENUE v. WILLIAM WRIGLEY, JR., CO.

Opinion of the Court

In seeking the answer to that question, we reject the proposition put forward by Wisconsin and its amici that we must construe § 381 narrowly because we said in Heublein that " 'unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the Federal-State balance,' " 409 U. S., at 281-282 (citation omitted). That principle—which we applied in Heublein to reject a suggested inference from § 381 that States cannot regulate solicitation in a manner that might cause an out-of-state company to forfeit its tax immunity—has no application in the present case. Because § 381 unquestionably does limit the power of States to tax companies whose only in-state activity is "the solicitation of orders," our task is simply to ascertain the fair meaning of that term. FMC Corp. v. Holliday, 498 U. S. 52, 57 (1990).

Wisconsin views some courts as having adopted the position that an out-of-state company forfeits its § 381 immunity if it engages in "any activity other than requesting the customer to purchase the product." Brief for Petitioner 21; see also id., at 19, n. 8 (citing Hervey v. AMF Beaird, Inc., 250 Ark. 147, 464 S. W. 2d 557 (1971); Clairol, Inc. v. Kingsley, 109 N. J. Super. 22, 262 A. 2d 213, aff'd, 57 N. J. 199, 270 A. 2d 702 (1970), appeal dism'd, 402 U. S. 902 (1971)).2 Arguably supporting this interpretation is subsection (c) of § 381,

2 Amici New Jersey et al. contend that our summary disposition of Clairol binds us to this narrow construction of § 381(a). Though Clairol is frequently cited for this construction, the opinion in the case does not in fact recite it. In any event, our summary disposition affirmed only the judgment below, and cannot be taken as adopting the reasoning of the lower court. Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 784, n. 5 (1983); Fu-sari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 391-392 (1975) (Burger, C. J., concurring). The judgment in Clairol would have been the same even under a broader construction of "solicitation of orders," since the company's in-state activities included sending nonsales representatives to provide customers technical assistance in the use of Clairol products. 109 N. J. Super., at 29-30, 262 A. 2d, at 217. See United States Tobacco Co. v. Commonwealth, 478 Pa. 125, 136-137, 386 A. 2d 471, 476-477, cert. denied, 439 U. S. 880 (1978); Gillette Co. v. State Tax Comm'n, 56 App. Div. 2d 475, 479, 393 N. Y. S. 2d 186, 189 (1977), aff'd, 45 N. Y. 2d 846, 382 N. E. 2d 764 (1978).

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