Steward Machine Co. v. Davis

Steward Machine Company v. Davis
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 8–9, 1937 Decided May 24, 1937
Full case name	Steward Machine Company, Petitioner v. Harwell G. Davis, Individually and as Collector of Internal Revenue
Citations	301 U.S. 548 (more) 57 S. Ct. 883; 81 L. Ed. 1279; 1937 U.S. LEXIS 1199
Case history
Prior	89 F.2d 207 (5th Cir. 1937); cert. granted, 300 U.S. 652 (1937).
Holding
The unemployment compensation sections of the Social Security Act are constitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices Willis Van Devanter · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland Pierce Butler · Harlan F. Stone Owen Roberts · Benjamin N. Cardozo
Case opinions
Majority	Cardozo, joined by Hughes, Brandeis, Stone, Roberts
Dissent	McReynolds
Dissent	Sutherland, joined by Van Devanter
Dissent	Butler
Laws applied
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8

Steward Machine Company v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937), was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the unemployment compensation provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935, which established the federal taxing structure that was designed to induce states to adopt laws for funding and payment of unemployment compensation.^[1] The decision signaled the Court's acceptance of a broad interpretation of Congressional power to influence state laws.

The primary challenges to the Act were based on the argument that it went beyond the powers granted to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution and that it involved coercion of the states that called for a surrender by the states of powers essential to their quasi-sovereign existence, in contravention of the Constitution's Tenth Amendment.