Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1909 — COUNTY OPTION LAW IS VALID [ARTICLE]

COUNTY OPTION LAW IS VALID

Indiana Supreme Bench Upholds Lower Court Decision.

SALOON KEEPER LOSES CASE

Fined for Selling Liquor After a “Dry” Victory In an Option Election, He Carried the Case Up Supreme Court Holds That None of His Contentions Against the Constitutionality of the Law Is Valid—Decision AffectaJ Sixty-Five Counties.

Indianapolis, Ind., Dec. 17. —The supreme court of Indiana held constitutional the county-option election law, enacted in 1908, under which sixty-five of the ninety-two counties of Indiana have closed their saloons. The supreme court affirms a judgment of a county court that fined a saloon keeper who had sold liquor after a “dry” victdry in an option election had been registered. The court says that none of the contentions against the constitutionality of the law is valid. The defendant argued thaf the state legislature had passed a law in 1875 providing for the issuing of liquor licenses and that the county-option law conferred upon the people the power to suspend the older law and was in fact prohibitlonary legislation.

This the qourt denies. The law Is not prohibitory legislation and it confers upon the people only the power to direct whether or not liquor licenses shall be issued in the different counties under the older law.