## Facts

- Nevada enacted a statute imposing a $1 capitation tax on every person leaving the state by railroad, stagecoach, or other passenger vehicle for hire.
- The statute required owners and operators of such transportation to file monthly sworn passenger counts and to pay the tax to local officials based on persons transported out of Nevada.
- Crandall, an agent of a stage company, refused to report and pay the tax and was arrested and prosecuted.
- The Nevada Supreme Court upheld the statute against federal constitutional challenges.
- Crandall sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court by writ of error.

## Issues

1. Whether Nevada’s capitation tax on persons leaving the state, collected through passenger carriers, is unconstitutional under the federal Constitution.
2. Whether the tax is an impermissible burden on interstate commerce or otherwise beyond state power.
3. Whether a state may condition or burden U.S. citizens’ ability to travel between states and to access federal institutions by imposing a departure tax.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Nevada judgment and directed that Crandall be discharged.
- The Court held the tax unconstitutional because, in substance, it taxed passengers for the privilege of leaving the state by ordinary modes of travel.
- The Court did not rest its holding on the Export Clause and did not treat persons as “exports.”
- The majority grounded invalidation on structural constitutional principles: national citizenship, federal supremacy, and the correlative right of citizens to move through the states to reach federal seats, offices, and ports.
- Chief Justice Chase and Justice Clifford concurred, reasoning more directly that the tax impermissibly burdened interstate commerce.

## Legal Principles

- A state may not impose a tax that, in practical operation, burdens individuals for exercising interstate movement by ordinary means of travel.
- The federal structure presupposes that citizens must be able to approach federal departments and offices and to move within the Union without state-imposed tolls that could obstruct federal functions.
- Even a modest state tax is unconstitutional when it targets or threatens federally protected operations or correlative rights of national citizenship; the constitutional defect lies in the existence of the power, not the tax’s amount.
- Persons are not “exports” for purposes of the constitutional prohibition on state imposts or duties on exports.

## Conclusion

The Court struck down Nevada’s per-passenger departure tax because it effectively charged individuals for leaving the state and threatened the national government’s ability to function and citizens’ correlative right to interstate transit and access to federal institutions.


Crandall v. Nevada, 73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 35 (1868)