Southern Natural Gas Corp. v. Alabama

This case presents the question of the validity of a franchise tax assessed pursuant to a statute of the State of Alabama upon the Southern Natural Gas Corporation. The imposition of the tax was assailed as a direct burden upon interstate commerce and as also depriving the corporation of its property without due process of law and denying it the equal protection of the laws contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. The Supreme Court of the State sustained the tax (170 So. 178) and the case comes here on appeal.

The statute, enacted in pursuance of § 232 of the state…