Who was Frank Brushaber, and why was his U.S. Supreme Court case so important?
Frank Brushaber was the Plaintiff in the case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Company, 240 U.S. 1 (1916), the first U.S. Supreme Court case to consider the so‑called 16th amendment. Brushaber identified himself as a Citizen of New York State and a resident of the Borough of Brooklyn, in the city of New York, and nobody challenged that claim. The Union Pacific Railroad Company was a federal corporation created by Act of Congress to build a railroad through Utah (from the Union to the Pacific), at a time when Utah was a federal Territory, i.e. inside the federal zone. Brushaber’s attorney committed an error by arguing that the company had been chartered by the State of Utah, but Utah was not a State of the Union when Congress first created that corporation. Brushaber had purchased stock issued by the company. He then sued the company to recover taxes that Congress had imposed upon the dividends paid to its stockholders. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Frank Brushaber, and uph
