Guardia Act, which forbade the courts from issuing injunctive relief against striking workers. The Court rejected the union's claims, holding that the Norris–La Guardia Act applied only to disputes between employees and employers and that the federal government was not considered an employer under the statute. A splintered majority thus upheld the injunction and the contempt convictions, although the fine was reduced to $700,000 (equivalent to $ million in ). In dissent, Rutledge argued that the temporary restraining order did violate the Norris–La Guardia Act. He also decried the district court's decision to hold the union in both civil and criminal contempt, writing that "the idea that a criminal prosecution and a civil suit for damages or equitable relief could be hashed together in a single criminal-civil hodgepodge would be shocking to every American lawyer and to most citizens". Rutledge's dissent was rendered in the midst of substantial hostility among political leaders and the general public toward the union's actions, and the scholar Fred L. Israel characterized it as "courageous". In cases involving the Constitution's Commerce Clause, Rutledge favored a pragmatic approach that endeavored to balance the interests of states and the federal government. Writing for the Court in Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan, he ruled against a ferry company that had been charged with violating a Michigan civil rights law by refusing to serve African-Americans. The ferry company, noting that its boats sailed from Detroit to Bois Blanc Island in Ontario, Canada, had argued that it was engaged in foreign commerce that was exempt from state regulation under the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine. In a narrow ruling, Rutledge held that, although Michigan was technically regulating foreign commerce, the statute imposed no serious burden on it because the island was for all practical purposes a part of Detroit. The case exemplified his flexible approach to the Commerce Clause. In Prudential Insurance Co. v. Benjamin, Rutledge's opinion for the Court upheld a South Carolina tax on out-of-state insurers against a Commerce Clause challenge. The McCarran–Ferguson Act, passed by Congress in 1945, had authorized state regulation of the insurance market; Rutledge concluded that the act permissibly allowed South Carolina to discriminate against interstate commerce—something it otherwise lacked the power to do. His conclusion that Congress could consent to state regulations of interstate commerce demonstrated his support for what one scholar called "flexibility in the operations of the federal system". Personal life and