Mr. Justice BLACK dissenting, with whom Mr. Justice DOUGLAS and Mr. Justice MURPHY concur.
As a result of this decision, delays incident to obtaining a federal injunction have made wholly futile the diligent efforts of the State of Ohio to fix reasonable gas rates for the people of Portsmouth, Ohio. I cannot agree with the suggestion implied here that this results from any cause other than the unwarranted interposition by courts into the business of rate making. Cf. McCart v. Indianapolis Water Co., 302 U.S. 419, 435, 58 S.Ct. 324, 331, 82 L.Ed. 336. Here eight years after the Ohio Public Utilities Commission made United a party defendant in order to fix rates 'to be charged' by it, Ohio is told that United may keep any sum collected, no matter how unjust or unreasonable the rates charged may have been; and Ohio's citizens are denied the right to recoup possible losses because the Commission 'has not made the inquiry and the findings which must precede the establishment of new rates.' There is one reason, and only one reason, why the Commission has not made such inquiry and findings before any step could be taken toward establishing a final rate order, and even before a single witness could be heard, this federal injunction stopped the State Commission in its tracks. Had the Commission proceeded to make inquiry and findings in the face of the injunction it would have risked the possibility that its members, agents, and attorneys could have been seized and fined or imprisoned for contempt of court. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714, 13 L.R.A.,N.S., 932, 14 Ann.Cas. 764. If it be true, which I think dubious, that under Ohio law rates can never be fixed as of the date a proceeding begins even though delays are the consequence of improvident federal injunctions, such a legal situation makes it all the more essential that the court below should have abstained as a matter of 'equitable fitness or propriety', Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line, 211 U.S. 210, 229, 29 S.Ct. 67, 71, 53 L.Ed. 150, from tying the Commission's hands and barring it from making the final order here held to be vital. To stop these proceedings at the threshold and thus bar all possible relief for the years during which the litigation crawled along its interminable course seems to me far less justifiable than the action condemned by this Court in Petroleum Exploration v. Public Service Commission, 304 U.S. 209, 58 S.Ct. 834, 82 L.Ed. 1294.
The federal action halting the Ohio rate making process since 1935 is justified wholly on the ground that the Natural Gas Act passed in 1938 bars regulation by Ohio of United's rates since 1938 while Ohio law is said to bar any regulation prior to 1938 because no final order has yet been made by the Public Utilities Commission. The Court refuses to hold categorically that Ohio law nullifies this order, asserting instead that Ohio law requires us to interpret the Commission's order as not attempting to lead to rate making for the period 1935-1938. This will doubtless prove some surprise to the Commission which made the order in question in 1935 and which has argued both here and below that the Natural Gas Act is irrelevant because it took effect subsequent to the period in which the Commission is now interested. Whether the Court considers that Ohio law bars the Commission from making a valid order, or whether it uses its knowledge of Ohio law to tell the Commission what the Commission has attempted, is immaterial-in either case we press our conception of Ohio law on the Ohioans. But the local law question has never been squarely decided in Ohio. That question is whether United can successfully, by taking full advantage of the delays of the federal judicial system, jockey the City of Portsmouth and the State of Ohio into such a position that no one can now determine what were reasonable rates for the period prior to 1938.