Ermita-Malate Hotel and Motel Operators v.

City of Manila: Police Power

1. Facts.

Petitioners motel operators impugn the validity of the ordinance for being arbitrary, unreasonable or
oppressive and also for being vague, indefinite and uncertain, and likewise for the alleged invasion of
the right to privacy and the guaranty against self-incrimination. Ordinance regulates the use of hotel
rooms, filling up of information in public view, prohibition of minors to enter such hotels. Respondent
reasoned alarming increase in the rate of prostitution, adultery and fornication in Manila traceable in
great part to the existence of motels, which "provide a necessary atmosphere for clandestine entry,
presence and exit" and thus become the "ideal haven for prostitutes and thrill seekers."

2. Issue:
Whether Ordinance No. 4760 of the City of Manila is violative of the due process clause.

3. Ruling.

Dismissed. On the legislative organs of the government, whether national of local, primarily rest the exercise of the
police power, which, it cannot be too often emphasized, is the power to prescribe regulations to promote the
health, morals, peace, good order, safety and general welfare of the people. In view of the requirements of due
process, equal protection and other applicable constitutional guaranties, however, the exercise of such police
power insofar as it may affect the life, liberty or property of any person is subject to judicial inquiry. Where such
exercise of police power may be considered as either capricious, whimsical, unjust or unreasonable, a denial of due
process or a violation of any other applicable constitutional guaranty may call for correction by the courts. What
then is the standard of due process which must exist both as a procedural and as substantive requisite to free the
challenged ordinance, or any government action for that matter, from the imputation of legal in firmity; sufficient
to spell its doom? It is responsiveness to the supremacy of reason, obedience to the dictates of justice. Negatively
put, arbitrariness is ruled out and unfairness avoided. Nor may petitioners assert with plausibility that on its face
the ordinance is fatally defective as being repugnant to the due process clause of the Constitution. The mantle of
protection associated with the due process guaranty does not cover petitioners. This particular manifestation of a
police power measure being specifically aimed to safeguard public morals is immune from such imputation of
nullity resting purely on conjecture and unsupported by anything of substance. To hold otherwise would be to
unduly restrict and narrow the scope of police power which has been properly characterized as the most essential,
insistent and the least limitable of powers, 4 extending as it does "to all the great public needs." 5 It would be, to
paraphrase another leading decision, to destroy the very purpose of the state if it could be deprived or allowed
itself to be deprived of its competence to promote public health, public morals, public safety and the general
welfare. 6 Negatively put, police power is "that inherent and plenary power in the State which enables it to
prohibit all that is hurtful to the comfort, safety, and welfare of society." 7