MR. CHIEF JUSTICE HUGHES delivered the opinion of the Court.
Decrees dismissing the bills of complaint for the want of jurisdiction were affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, 54 F.2d 777, 778, and writs of certiorari were granted limited to the question of the jurisdiction of the District Court as a federal court. 285 U.S. 535.
There is no diversity of citizenship and jurisdiction depends upon the presentation by the bills of complaint of a substantial federal question. Jurisdiction is thus determined by the allegations of the bills and not by the way the facts turn out or by a decision of the merits. Pacific Electric Ry. Co. v. Los Angeles, 194 U.S. 112, 118; Columbus Railway, Power & Light Co. v. Columbus, 249 U.S. 399, 406; South Covington & Cincinnati Street Ry. Co. v. Newport, 259 U.S. 97, 99.
The suits were brought by petitioner as owner of parcels of land in the City of Phoenix, Arizona, to restrain the City from appropriating her land for purposes of a street improvement. The Circuit Court of Appeals, having decided in Collins v. Phoenix, 54 F.2d 770 (where jurisdiction of the federal court rested on diversity of citizenship), that the proceedings of the City were not authorized by the statutes of Arizona,
In this respect the instant cases are similar to that of Cuyahoga Power Co. v. Akron, 240 U.S. 462, where the plaintiff, after setting forth provisions of the statutes and constitution of Ohio and concluding that the City had no constitutional power to take the property and franchises of the plaintiff and was exceeding the authority conferred by state law, further alleged that the City was attempting to take the plaintiff's property without compensation and was going forward with the enterprise in question in violation of the contract clause and Fourteenth Amendment
We are of the opinion that the allegations of the bills of complaint that the City acting under color of state authority was violating the asserted private right secured by the Federal Constitution, presented a substantial federal question and that it was error of the District Court to refuse jurisdiction.
Decrees reversed.
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