Ichong v. Hernandez, 101 Phil. 1155 [Case Digest]

 

Ichong v. Hernandez,

101 Phil. 1155

Facts:

            RA 1180 – An Act to Regulate the Retail Business was enacted to nationalize the retail trade business in the Philippines.  The law prohibits persons not citizens of the Philippines, and against associations, partnerships, or corporations the capital of which are not wholly owned by citizens of the Philippines, from engaging directly or indirectly in the retail trade and other prohibitions and regulations.

            Petitioner attacks the constitutionality of the Act, contending that it denies to alien residents the equal protection of the laws and deprives of their liberty and property without due process of law.  SolGen content that the Act was passed in the valid exercise of the police power of the State, which exercise is authorized in the Constitution in the interest of national economic survival.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the Act is unconstitutional because it denies alien residents the equal protection of the laws.

 

Held:

            No.

 

Ratio:

            The equal protection of the law clause is against undue favor and individual or class privilege, as well as hostile discrimination or the oppression of inequality. It is not intended to prohibit legislation, which is limited either in the object to which it is directed or by territory within which is to operate. It does not demand absolute equality among residents; it merely requires that all persons shall be treated alike, under like circumstances and conditions both as to privileges conferred and liabilities enforced. The equal protection clause is not infringed by legislation which applies only to those persons falling within a specified class, if it applies alike to all persons within such class, and reasonable grounds exists for making a distinction between those who fall within such class and those who do not.

            The classification is actual, real and reasonable, and all persons of one class are treated alike, and as it cannot be said that the classification is patently unreasonable and unfounded, it is in duty bound to declare that the legislature acted within its legitimate prerogative and it can not declare that the act transcends the limit of equal protection established by the Constitution.