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Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | Less than four years ago this Court held that "the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship" The holding was clear Congress could not, until today, consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment enact a *837 law stripping an American of his citizenship which he has never voluntarily renounced or given up Now this Court, by a vote of five to four through a simple change in its composition, overrules that decision The Court today holds that Congress can indeed rob a citizen of his citizenship just so long as five members of this Court can satisfy themselves that the congressional action was not "unreasonable, arbitrary," ante, at 831; "misplaced or arbitrary," ante, at 832; or "irrational or arbitrary or unfair," ante, at 833 My first comment is that not one of these "tests" appears in the Constitution Moreover, it seems a little strange to find such "tests" as these announced in an opinion which condemns the earlier decisions it overrules for their resort to cliches, which it describes as "too handy and too easy, and, like most cliches, can be misleading" Ante, at 835 That description precisely fits those words and clauses which the majority uses, but which the Constitution does not The Constitution, written for the ages, cannot rise and fall with this Court's passing notions of what is "fair," or "reasonable," or "arbitrary" The Fourteenth Amendment commands: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" Speaking of this very language, the Court held in Afroyim that no American can be deprived of his citizenship without his assent Today, the Court overrules that holding This precious Fourteenth Amendment American citizenship should not be blown around by every passing political wind that changes the composition of this Court I dissent Bellei became an American citizen under the terms of *838 1993 of the Revised Statutes, as amended,[1] and he has neither renounced his American citizenship nor voluntarily assented to any governmental act terminating it He has never given any indication of wanting to expatriate himself but, rather, has consistently maintained that he wants to keep his American citizenship In my view, the decision in Afroyim, therefore, requires the |
Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | In my view, the decision in Afroyim, therefore, requires the Court to hold here that Bellei has been unconstitutionally deprived by 301 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952[2] of his right to be an American citizen Since 301 (b) does not take into account in any way whether the citizen intends or desires to relinquish his citizenship, that section is inevitably inconsistent with the constitutional principles declared in Afroyim The Court today holds that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has no application to Bellei The Court first notes that Afroyim was essentially a case construing the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment Since the Citizenship Clause declares that: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States" the Court reasons that the protections against involuntary expatriation declared in Afroyim do not protect all American citizens, but only those "born or naturalized in the United States" Afroyim, the argument runs, was naturalized in this country so he was protected by the Citizenship Clause, but Bellei, since he acquired his American citizenship at birth in Italy as a foreign-born child of an American citizen, was neither born nor naturalized in the United States and, hence, falls outside the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees declared in Afroyim One could hardly call this a generous reading of the *839 great purposes the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to bring about While conceding that Bellei is an American citizen, the majority states: "He simply is not a Fourteenth-Amendment-first-sentence citizen" Therefore, the majority reasons, the congressional revocation of his citizenship is not barred by the Constitution I cannot accept the Court's conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the citizenship of some Americans and not others Indeed, the concept of a hierarchy of citizenship, suggested by the majority opinion, was flatly rejected in : "We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive" The Court there held that Congress could not deprive Mrs Schneider of her citizenship, which she, like Mr Bellei in the present case, acquired derivatively through her citizen mother Consequently, the majority in its rush to overrule Afroyim must also, in effect, overrule Schneider as well Under the view adopted by the majority today, all children born to Americans while abroad would be excluded from the protections of the Citizenship Clause and would instead be relegated to the permanent status of second-class citizenship, subject to revocation at the will of Congress The Court rejected such |
Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | revocation at the will of Congress The Court rejected such narrow, restrictive, and super-technical interpretations of the Citizenship Clause when it held in Afroyim that that Clause "was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation " 387 US, at Afroyim's broad interpretation of the scope of the Citizenship Clause finds ample support in the language and history of the Fourteenth Amendment Bellei was not "born in the United States," but he was, constitutionally speaking, "naturalized in the United States" Although those Americans who acquire their citizenship *840 under statutes conferring citizenship on the foreign-born children of citizens are not popularly thought of as naturalized citizens, the use of the word "naturalize" in this way has a considerable constitutional history Congress is empowered by the Constitution to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," Art I, 8 Anyone acquiring citizenship solely under the exercise of this power is, constitutionally speaking, a naturalized citizen The first congressional exercise of this power, entitled "An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," was passed in 1790 at the Second Session of the First Congress It provided in part: "And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States" 1 Stat 103, 104 This provision is the earliest form of the statute under which Bellei acquired his citizenship Its enactment as part of a "Rule of Naturalization" shows, I think, that the First Congress conceived of this and most likely all other purely statutory grants of citizenship as forms or varieties of naturalization However, the clearest expression of the idea that Bellei and others similarly situated should for constitutional purposes be considered as naturalized citizens is to be found in United States v Wong Kim 169 US 649 : "The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two only: birth and naturalization Citizenship by naturalization can only be acquired by naturalization under the authority and in the forms of law But citizenship by birth is established by the mere *841 fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either |
Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory; or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts" 169 US, at 702-703 The Court in Wong Kim thus stated a broad and comprehensive definition of naturalization As shown in Wong Kim naturalization when used in its constitutional sense is a generic term describing and including within its meaning all those modes of acquiring American citizenship other than birth in this country All means of obtaining American citizenship which are dependent upon a congressional enactment are forms of naturalization This inclusive definition has been adopted in several opinions of this Court besides United States v Wong Kim supra Thus in Minor v Happersett, 21 Wall 162, the Court said: "Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization [N]ew citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization" And in Elk v Wilkins, 112 US 94 the Court took the position that the Fourteenth Amendment "contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization Persons *842 not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards, except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired" 112 US, at 101-102 Moreover, this concept of naturalization is the only one permitted by this Court's consistent adoption of the view that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to supply a comprehensive definition of American citizenship In an opinion written shortly after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court stated that one of the primary purposes of the Citizenship Clause was "to establish a clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States, and also citizenship of a State" Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall 36, In his study, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, Professor similarly concluded that the Citizenship Clause "put beyond doubt and cavil in the original law, who were citizens of the United States" H The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 89 (1908) And in Afroyim both majority and dissenting Justices appear to have agreed on the |
Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | majority and dissenting Justices appear to have agreed on the basic proposition that the scope of the Citizenship Clause, whatever its effect, did reach all citizens The opinion of the Court in Afroyim described the Citizenship Clause as "calculated completely to control the status of citizenship" 387 US, at 262 And the dissenting Justices agreed with this proposition to the extent of holding that the Citizenship Clause was a "declaration of the classes of individuals to whom citizenship initially attaches" The majority opinion appears at times to rely on the argument that Bellei, while he concededly might *843 have been a naturalized citizen, was not naturalized "in the United States" This interpretation obviously imposes a limitation on the scope of the Citizenship Clause which is inconsistent with the conclusion expressed above that the Fourteenth Amendment provides a comprehensive definition of American citizenship, for the majority's view would exclude from the protection of that Clause all those who acquired American citizenship while abroad I cannot accept the narrow and extraordinarily technical reading of the Fourteenth Amendment employed by the Court today If, for example, Congress should decide to vest the authority to naturalize aliens in American embassy officials abroad rather than having the ceremony performed in this country, I have no doubt that those so naturalized would be just as fully protected by the Fourteenth Amendment as are those who go through our present naturalization procedures Rather than the technical reading adopted by the majority, it is my view that the word "in" as it appears in the phrase "in the United States" was surely meant to be understood in two somewhat different senses: one can become a citizen of this country by being born within it or by being naturalized into it This interpretation is supported by the legislative history of the Citizenship Clause That clause was added in the Senate rather late in the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment, and as originally introduced its reference was to all those "born in the United States or naturalized by the laws thereof" Cong Globe, 39th Cong, 1st Sess, 2768 (Emphasis added) The final version of the Citizenship Clause was undoubtedly intended to have this same scope See The majority takes the position that Bellei, although admittedly a citizen of this country, was not entitled to the protections of the Citizenship Clause I would not depart from the holding in Afroyim that every American *844 citizen has Fourteenth Amendment citizenship Bellei, as a naturalized American, is entitled to all the rights and privileges of American citizenship, including the right to keep his |
Justice Black | 1,971 | 21 | dissenting | Rogers v. Bellei | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108307/rogers-v-bellei/ | privileges of American citizenship, including the right to keep his citizenship until he voluntarily renounces or relinquishes it The Court today puts aside the Fourteenth Amendment as a standard by which to measure congressional action with respect to citizenship, and substitutes in its place the majority's own vague notions of "fairness" The majority takes a new step with the recurring theme that the test of constitutionality is the Court's own view of what is "fair, reasonable, and right" Despite the concession that Bellei was admittedly an American citizen, and despite the holding in Afroyim that the Fourteenth Amendment has put citizenship, once conferred, beyond the power of Congress to revoke, the majority today upholds the revocation of Bellei's citizenship on the ground that the congressional action was not "irrational or arbitrary or unfair" The majority applies the "shock-the-conscience" test to uphold, rather than strike, a federal statute It is a dangerous concept of constitutional law that allows the majority to conclude that, because it cannot say the statute is "irrational or arbitrary or unfair," the statute must be constitutional Of course the Court's construction of the Constitution is not a "strict" one On the contrary, it proceeds on the premise that a majority of this Court can change the Constitution day by day, month by month, and year by year, according to its shifting notions of what is fair, reasonable, and right There was little need for the founders to draft a written constitution if this Court can say it is only binding when a majority finds it fair, reasonable, and right to make it so That is the loosest construction that could be employed It is true that England has moved along very well in the world without a written constitution But with complete familiarity *845 with the English experience, our ancestors determined to draft a written constitution which the members of this Court are sworn to obey While I remain on the Court I shall continue to oppose the power of judges, appointed by changing administrations, to change the Constitution from time to time according to their notions of what is "fair" and "reasonable" I would decide this case not by my views of what is "arbitrary," or what is "fair," but rather by what the Constitution commands I dissent MR JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR |
Justice Scalia | 1,987 | 9 | second_dissenting | American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Scheiner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111942/american-trucking-assns-inc-v-scheiner/ | I agree with the Court that the "internal consistency" test it adopts requires invalidation of the Pennsylvania axle tax and marker fee as it would any unapportioned flat tax involving *304 multistate activities. For the reasons given in my dissent in Tyler Pipe Industries, Inc. v. Washington Dept. of Revenue, ante, p. 254, I do not believe that test can be derived from the Constitution or is compelled by our past decisions. The same tax is imposed on in-state as on out-of-state trucks; that is all I would require. See Capitol Greyhound ; Aero Mayflower Transit ; Aero Mayflower Transit The Court's disposition relieves it of the need to address appellants' narrower contention that the axle tax is facially discriminatory because the same law that introduced it reduced registration fees for Pennsylvania-based trucks by, for all practical purposes, precisely the amount of the axle taxes. I would reject that challenge as well. The axle tax is imposed uniformly on both in-state and out-of-state vehicles, and is therefore not facially discriminatory. The registration fee is imposed only on in-state trucks, and its reduction likewise does not facially discriminate against interstate commerce. Since both the axle tax and the reduction in registration fees are independently nondiscriminatory, I would sustain them. Appellants rely on in which we invalidated Louisiana's use tax on offshore gas because the State credited payments of that tax against other taxes imposed on local commerce, such as the severance tax on in-state production, and exempted gas used for certain in-state activities from the tax. That case is readily distinguishable. Pennsylvania provides no exemption from its axle tax for in-state truckers, and does not permit axle tax payments to be used as credits against the registration fee. The axle tax alone unlike the gas tax in is on its face nondiscriminatory. *305 It may well be that the lowering of the exclusively intrastate registration fee has the same net effect as would a tax credit for the axle tax. But so would have the establishment of the registration fee and the axle tax at their current levels in the first place. To determine the facially discriminatory character of a tax not on the basis of the tax alone, but on the basis of the structure of a State's tax code, is to extend our case law into a new field, and one in which principled distinctions become impossible. What if, for example, the registration fees for Pennsylvania-based barges, rather than trucks, had been reduced in an amount that precisely compensated for the additional revenues to be derived |
Justice Scalia | 1,987 | 9 | second_dissenting | American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Scheiner | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111942/american-trucking-assns-inc-v-scheiner/ | that precisely compensated for the additional revenues to be derived from the increased axle fees? Or what if Pennsylvania had enacted the axle tax without reducing registration fees, and then one year later made a corresponding reduction in truck registration fees? This case, of course, is more difficult than those examples, because the tax reduction and axle tax both apply to the same mode of transport and were enacted simultaneously. However, to inquire whether a tax reduction is close enough in time or in mode to another tax so that "in effect" the latter should be treated as facially discriminatory is to ask a question that has no answer. Legislative action adjusting taxes on interstate and intrastate activities spans a spectrum, ranging from the obviously discriminatory to the manipulative to the ambiguous to the wholly innocent. Courts can avoid arbitrariness in their review only by policing the entire spectrum (which is impossible), by policing none of it, or by adopting rules which subject to scrutiny certain well-defined classes of actions thought likely to come at or near the discriminatory end of the spectrum. We have traditionally followed the last course, confining our disapproval to forms of tax that seem clearly designed to discriminate,[*] and accepting the fact that some amount *306 of discrimination may slip through our net. A credit against intrastate taxes falls readily within the highly suspect category; a reduction of intrastate taxes to take account of increased revenue from a nondiscriminatory axle tax does not. I acknowledge that the distinction between a credit and a straight reduction is a purely formal one, but it seems to me less absurd than what we will be driven to if we abandon it. The axle tax and registration fee reduction in this case appeared in the same bill. Extend the rule to treat that as "in effect" a tax credit, and the next case will involve two different bills enacted the same day, or a week apart, or at the beginning and end of the same session. A line must be drawn somewhere, and (in the absence of direction from any authoritative text) I would draw it here. |
Justice Marshall | 1,980 | 15 | dissenting | Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110165/stryckers-bay-neighborhood-council-inc-v-karlen/ | The issue raised by these cases is far more difficult than the per curiam opinion suggests. The Court of Appeals held that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had acted arbitrarily in concluding that prevention of a delay in the construction process justified the selection of a housing site which could produce adverse social environmental effects, including racial and economic concentration. Today the majority responds that "once an agency has made a decision subject to NEPA's procedural requirements, the only role for a court is to insure that the agency has considered the environmental consequences," and that in this litigation "there is no doubt that HUD considered the environmental consequences of its decision to redesignate the proposed site for low-income housing. NEPA requires no more." The majority finds support for this conclusion in the closing paragraph *229 of our decision in Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Vermont Yankee does not stand for the broad proposition that the majority advances today. The relevant passage in that opinion was meant to be only a "further observation of some relevance to this case," That "observation" was a response to this Court's perception that the Court of Appeals in that case was attempting "under the guise of judicial review of agency action" to assert its own policy judgment as to the desirability of developing nuclear energy as an energy source for this Nation, a judgment which is properly left to Congress. at The Court of Appeals had remanded the case to the agency because of "a single alleged oversight on a peripheral issue, urged by parties who never fully cooperated or indeed raised the issue below," It was in this context that the Court remarked that "NEPA does set forth significant substantive goals for the Nation, but its mandate to the agencies is essentially procedural." Accordingly, "[a]dministrative decisions should be set aside in this context, as in every other, only for substantial procedural or substantive reasons as mandated by statute," Thus Vermont Yankee does not stand for the proposition that a court reviewing agency action under NEPA is limited solely to the factual issue of whether the agency's "considered" environmental consequences. The agency's decision must still be set aside if it is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law," 5 U.S. C. 706 (2) (A), and the reviewing court must still insure that the agency "has taken a `hard look' at environmental consequences," In the present case, the Court of Appeals did not "substitute its judgment for that of the agency as to the environmental consequences of |
Justice Marshall | 1,980 | 15 | dissenting | Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110165/stryckers-bay-neighborhood-council-inc-v-karlen/ | that of the agency as to the environmental consequences of its actions," ib for HUD in its *230 Special Environmental Clearance Report acknowledged the adverse environmental consequences of its proposed action: "the choice of Site 30 for development as a 100 percent low-income project has raised valid questions about the potential social environmental impacts involved." These valid questions arise from the fact that 68% of all public housing units would be sited on only one crosstown axis in this area of New York City. As the Court of Appeals observed, the resulting high concentration of low-income housing would hardly further racial and economic integration. The environmental "impact on social fabric and community structures" was given a B rating in the report, indicating that from this perspective the project is "questionable" and ameliorative measures are "mandated." The report lists 10 ameliorative measures necessary to make the project acceptable. The report also discusses two alternatives, Sites 9 and 41, both of which are the appropriate size for the project and require "only minimal" amounts of relocation and clearance. Concerning Site 9 the report explicitly concludes that "[f]rom the standpoint of social environmental impact, this location would be superior to Site 30 for the development of low-rent public housing." The sole reason for rejecting the environmentally superior site was the fact that if the location were shifted to Site 9, there would be a projected delay of two years in the construction of the housing. The issue before the Court of Appeals, therefore, was whether HUD was free under NEPA to reject an alternative acknowledged to be environmentally preferable solely on the ground that any change in sites would cause delay. This was hardly a "peripheral issue" in the case. Whether NEPA, which sets forth "significant substantive goals," Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power at permits a projected 2-year time difference to be controlling over environmental superiority is by no means clear. Resolution of the issue, however, is certainly within the normal scope of review of agency action to determine if it is arbitrary, *231 capricious, or an abuse of discretion.[*] The question whether HUD can make delay the paramount concern over environmental superiority is essentially a restatement of the question whether HUD in considering the environmental consequences of its proposed action gave those consequences a "hard look," which is exactly the proper question for the reviewing court to ask. at The issue of whether the Secretary's decision was arbitrary or capricious is sufficiently difficult and important to merit plenary consideration in this Court. Further, I do not subscribe to the Court's apparent suggestion that |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | The opinion in San Diego Building Trades set forth a general standard for determining when state proceedings or regulations are pre-empted by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), see 29 U.S. C. 151 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. II): Subject to exception only in limited circumstances, "[w]hen an activity is arguably subject to 7 or 8 of the Act [29 U.S. C. 157 or 158], the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted." This general standard has been applied in a multitude of cases decided since and it must be applied again today. Before addressing that question, however, we must consider the very nature of such pre-emption whether pre-emption is in the nature of an affirmative defense *382 that must be asserted in the trial court or be considered forever waived or whether it is in the nature of a challenge to a court's power to adjudicate that may be raised at any time. I Appellee Larry Davis was formerly employed by Ryan-Walsh Stevedoring Co. in Mobile, Alabama. At the times relevant to the events that gave rise to this suit, he was a ship superintendent or trainee ship superintendent. The ship superintendents apparently served as the immediate superiors of the longshoremen employed by Ryan-Walsh. They were on salary, however, and their compensation was generally lower than that received by the longshoremen, who worked on an hourly basis. In early 1981, Ben Trione, one of the ship superintendents who worked for Ryan-Walsh, contacted appellant International Longshoremen's Association (ILA or Union), a union that represents longshoremen and other employees on the waterfront, to discuss the possibility of organizing the superintendents and affiliating with the Union. Although the parties here dispute the content of the conversations that occurred at this stage between Trione and the ILA representatives regarding the ship superintendents and their eligibility for union membership, it is undisputed that a meeting of the superintendents was organized by Trione and attended by Benny Holland, an ILA official from Houston, Texas. At this meeting, several of the superintendents expressed a fear of being discharged for participating in union-related activities. According to Davis' witnesses, Holland's response to this was to reassure them that the Union would get them their jobs back with backpay if that happened. According to Holland, however, Holland's response was that they would be protected in that manner only if they were determined not to be supervisors under |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | only if they were determined not to be supervisors under the Act and that he did *383 not know whether or not they would be considered supervisors.[1] Holland further testified that he had submitted this issue to the Union's lawyers and had not received a definitive opinion from them by the time of the meeting. The meeting, according to all witnesses, resulted in a number of the ship superintendents, including Davis, signing pledge cards and a union charter application with the ILA.[2] On the day following the organizational meeting, Ryan-Walsh fired Trione. Trione contacted the ILA, which supplied him with an attorney. The attorney filed an unfair labor practice charge against Ryan-Walsh with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Trione was an employee under the Act and that Ryan-Walsh had violated 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(3) of the Act by discharging him for participating in *384 union activities. See 29 U.S. C. 158(a)(1), (3).[3] The NLRB's Regional Director, however, determined that Trione was a supervisor under the Act and declined to issue a complaint.[4] Trione did not, as he had a right to do, appeal this determination to the NLRB General Counsel. See 29 CFR 102.19 Shortly thereafter, Davis was also discharged *385 by Ryan-Walsh, apparently for his continued efforts to organize the ship superintendents and to join the Union. In response to his discharge, Davis filed this suit against the ILA in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, alleging fraud and misrepresentation under Ala. Code 6-5-101 (19).[5] The case proceeded to trial, and a jury entered a verdict in Davis' favor in the amount of $,000. Throughout the trial, the Union defended the suit on the merits, raising no issue that the suit was pre-empted by the NLRA. In its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, however, the ILA raised for the first time a claim that the state court lacked jurisdiction over the case because the filed had "been pre-empted by federal law and federal jurisdiction." App. 96a. The Circuit Court denied the Union's motion without opinion and entered judgment on the jury's verdict. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Alabama, the ILA argued that pre-emption was not a waivable defense and that the state fraud and misrepresentation action was pre-empted under Although acknowledging that other state courts had adopted the ILA's position that NLRA pre-emption was nonwaivable,[6] the Alabama court held that "[i]t is not the circuit court's subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate a damage claim for the tort of fraud even if it arises in the context of a labor-related dispute that is pre-empted. |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | the context of a labor-related dispute that is pre-empted. Rather, it is the state court's exercise of that power that is subject to preemption." The court's view was that as a state court of general jurisdiction the Circuit Court had had subject-matter jurisdiction over this ordinary tort claim for damages. As a waivable defense, the pre-emption claim was required under Alabama *386 law to be affirmatively pleaded. Since it was not so pleaded, it was deemed waived.[7] The Alabama Supreme Court, although holding that the ILA's pre-emption claim had been waived, in a footnote that if it had had occasion to reach the merits, it would have found no pre-emption: "The instant facts fall squarely within the `peripheral concern' exception to federal preemption of state jurisdiction of labor-related disputes. San Diego Building Trades The National Labor Relations Board has already determined that an employer's supervisors are not protected by the Labor Management Relations Act. Thus, in this case, [Davis] has no remedy before the NLRB, and this dispute, although somewhat laborrelated, is, at most, only of `peripheral concern' to the NLRB. See, e. g.," at -1217, n. 2 The Alabama Supreme Court accordingly affirmed the judgment against the Union. The Union appealed to this Court; Davis moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the decision below rested on an adequate and independent state ground because the Alabama Supreme Court's decision was based on an application of a state procedural rule. The ILA's submission, however, raised a substantial question whether reliance on the procedural rule rested on an erroneous view of the scope of pre-emption, a matter of *387 federal law, and hence whether the procedural ground relied on was adequate and independent. We noted probable jurisdiction,[8] II A Given the reliance of the Alabama Supreme Court on its procedural rule governing the presentation of affirmative defenses, we first decide whether that rule in this case represents an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment below. If it does, our review is at an end, for we have no authority to review state determinations of purely state law. Nor do we review federal issues that can have no effect on the state court's judgment. See, e. g., ; ; Fox Film The inquiry into the sufficiency of the asserted state ground, however, is one that we undertake ourselves. See ; Abie State In concluding that the Union's pre-emption claim was procedurally barred, the Alabama Supreme Court first held that because the Mobile County Circuit Court, as a state court of general jurisdiction, had subject-matter jurisdiction over the |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | state court of general jurisdiction, had subject-matter jurisdiction over the simple tort claim of misrepresentation, there could be no pre-emption of that court's actual jurisdiction. Only the exercise of that jurisdiction could be pre-empted. This explanation has a certain logic to it; but the point is not whether state law gives the state courts jurisdiction over particular controversies but whether jurisdiction provided by *388 state law is itself pre-empted by federal law vesting exclusive jurisdiction over that controversy in another body. It is clearly within Congress' powers to establish an exclusive federal forum to adjudicate issues of federal law in a particular area that Congress has the authority to regulate under the Constitution. See, e. g., Whether it has done so in a specific case is the question that must be answered when a party claims that a state court's jurisdiction is pre-empted. Such a determination of congressional intent and of the boundaries and character of a pre-empting congressional enactment is one of federal law. Pre-emption, the practical manifestation of the Supremacy Clause, is always a federal question. If the Alabama procedural ruling under state law implicates an underlying question of federal law, however, the state law is not an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment: "[W]hen resolution of the state procedural law question depends on a federal constitutional ruling, the state-law prong of the court's holding is not independent of federal law, and our jurisdiction is not precluded. In such a case, the federal-law holding is integral to the state court's disposition of the matter, and our ruling on the issue is in no respect advisory." ). To determine the sufficiency of the state procedural ground relied upon by the Alabama Supreme Court we must ascertain whether that court correctly resolved the antecedent federal question regarding the nature of pre-emption under the NLRA. Specifically, the question is whether pre-emption is a waivable affirmative defense such that a state court may adjudicate an otherwise pre-empted claim if the defense is not timely raised *389 or whether pre-emption is a nonwaivable foreclosure of the state court's very jurisdiction to adjudicate. B The Court's opinion in articulated what has come to be the accepted basis for the broadly pre-emptive scope of the NLRA: "Congress did not merely lay down a substantive rule of law to be enforced by any tribunal competent to apply law generally to the parties. It went on to confide primary interpretation and application of its rules to a specific and specially constituted tribunal and prescribed a particular procedure for investigation, complaint and notice, and hearing and |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | particular procedure for investigation, complaint and notice, and hearing and decision, including judicial relief pending a final administrative order. Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies. A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law." Building on this cornerstone, the Court went on to set out the now well-established scope of NLRA pre-emption. Given the NLRA's "complex and interrelated federal scheme of law, remedy, and administration," the Court held that "due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield," when the activities sought to be regulated by a State are clearly or may fairly be assumed to be within the purview of 7 or 8. The Court acknowledged that "[a]t times it has not been clear whether the particular activity regulated by the States was governed by 7 or 8 or was, perhaps, outside both these sections." Even in such ambiguous *390 situations, however, the Court concluded that "courts are not primary tribunals to adjudicate such issues. It is essential to the administration of the Act that these determinations be left in the first instance to the National Labor Relations Board." -245. Thus, the Court held that "[w]hen an activity is arguably subject to 7 or 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted." In Construction we considered the application of these principles to a situation in which the Georgia courts had awarded relief based on a complaint that contained allegations that made out "at least an arguable violation of 8(b)." There, we reviewed a claim that "the subject matter of [the] suit was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board," and held that, even though the state court was authorized to adjudicate the claim as a matter of state law, the state court "clearly exceeded its power" in awarding relief on the complaint. Specifically, "the state court had no jurisdiction to issue an injunction or to adjudicate this controversy, which lay within the exclusive powers of the National Labor Relations Board." -547. That our conclusion was in fact jurisdictional was accentuated by our discussion of the procedural context in which the case arose. |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | discussion of the procedural context in which the case arose. The state court had awarded a temporary injunction only, and a permanent order had not yet been issued. We rejected, however, the argument that the judgment was not yet final for purposes of our own jurisdiction: "[W]e believe our power to review this case rests upon solid ground. The federal question raised by petitioner in the Georgia court, and here, is whether the Georgia courts had power to proceed with and determine this controversy. The issue ripe for review is not whether a *391 Georgia court has erroneously decided a matter of federal law in a case admittedly within its jurisdiction nor is it the question of whether federal or state law governs a case properly before the Georgia courts. What we do have here is a judgment of the Georgia court finally and erroneously asserting its jurisdiction to deal with a controversy which is beyond its power and instead is within the exclusive domain of the National Labor Relations Board." See also Belknap, Curry made clear that when a state proceeding or regulation is claimed to be pre-empted by the NLRA under the issue is a choice-of-forum rather than a choice-of-law question. As such, it is a question whether the State or the Board has jurisdiction over the dispute. If there is pre-emption under then state jurisdiction is extinguished.[9] Since and Curry, we have reiterated many times the general pre-emption standard set forth in and the jurisdictional nature of pre-emption; we have also reaffirmed that our decisions describing the nature of pre-emption and defining its boundaries have rested on a determination that in enacting the NLRA Congress intended for the Board generally to exercise exclusive jurisdiction in this area. See, e. g., ; Iron ; 3 U.S. 301, ; ; ; Motor Coach Employees ; ; Sears, Roebuck & ; Operating 4 U.S. 669, ; Belknap, ; ; Wisconsin Dept. of Industry, Labor and Human 4 U.S. 282, Davis does not seriously dispute this conclusion at least as a general matter. He concedes, in fact, that "when a particular issue has been placed by Congress within the primary and exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB, a state court will have no subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the issue. In such cases, any judgment issued by the state court will be void ab initio because subject matter jurisdiction is pre-empted." Brief for Appellee 13. Davis notes, however, that this Court has acknowledged that does not pre-empt "all local regulation that touches or concerns in any way the complex interrelationships between |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | touches or concerns in any way the complex interrelationships between employees, employers, and unions; obviously, much of this is left to the States." Lockridge, Specifically, Davis points to 's own recognition that some controversies that are arguably subject to 7 or 8 are not pre-empted: "[D]ue regard for the presuppositions of our embracing federal system has required us not to find withdrawal from the States of power to regulate where the activity regulated was a merely peripheral concern of the Labor Management Relations Act. Or where the regulated conduct touched interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act." -244 Both before and since we have identified claims that fall within one or both these articulated exceptions. See, e. g., Belknap, *393 Automobile v. Russell, ; ; ; Construction v. Laburnum Construction Corp.,[10] But these cases serve only as more precise demarcations of the scope of pre-emption. They have not redefined the nature of that pre-emption in any way. A claim of pre-emption is a claim that the state court has no power to adjudicate the subject matter of the case, and when a claim of pre-emption is raised, it must be considered and resolved by the state court. Consequently, the state procedural rule relied on by the Alabama Supreme Court to support the judgment below was not a sufficient state ground, and the Union was and is entitled to an adjudication of its pre-emption claim on the merits.[11] *394 III As the line of cases directs, the pre-emption inquiry is whether the conduct at issue was arguably protected or prohibited by the NLRA. That much is clear. There is also no dispute that if Davis was a supervisor, he was legally fired,[12] the Union misspoke if it represented that there was legal redress for the discharge, and there is no pre-emption. But if Davis was an employee, his discharge for union activities was an unfair practice, the Union was protected in its attempt to interest him in the Union, and it did not err in representing that if he was discharged for joining the Union, there would be a remedy. We should inquire, then, whether Davis was arguably an employee, rather than a supervisor. If he was, the issue was to be initially decided by the NLRB, not the state courts. The precondition for pre-emption, that the conduct be "arguably" protected or prohibited, is not without substance. It is not satisfied by a conclusory assertion of |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | substance. It is not satisfied by a conclusory assertion of pre-emption and would therefore not be satisfied in this case by a claim, *395 without more, that Davis was an employee rather than a supervisor. If the word "arguably" is to mean anything, it must mean that the party claiming pre-emption is required to demonstrate that his case is one that the Board could legally decide in his favor. That is, a party asserting pre-emption must advance an interpretation of the Act that is not plainly contrary to its language and that has not been "authoritatively rejected" by the courts or the Board. Marine The party must then put forth enough evidence to enable the court to find that the Board reasonably could uphold a claim based on such an interpretation. In this case, therefore, because the pre-emption issue turns on Davis' status, the Union's claim of pre-emption must be supported by a showing sufficient to permit the Board to find that Davis was an employee, not a supervisor. Our examination of the record leads us to conclude that the Union has not carried its burden in this case. Expecting that the Union would put its best foot forward in this Court, we look first at its submission here that there is an arguable case for pre-emption. The Union's brief states that its conduct was protected by federal law if Davis was an employee, that in order to find the Union liable the jury must have found that Davis was a supervisor, and that "the state law controversy of whether the Union made a misrepresentation and the federal controversy of whether the superintendents were in fact supervisors are `the same in a fundamental respect.' " Brief for Appellant 16 (quoting Operating 4 U. S., at 682). So far, the argument proceeds in the right direction. As for the critical issue of whether Davis is an employee or a supervisor, the Union asserts only that "[a]bsent a clear determination by the NLRB that the ship superintendents are supervisors rather than employees, superintendents are arguably employees and the state is preempted from applying its law." Brief for Appellant 13. In making this contention, the ILA *396 relies on our cases indicating that pre-emption can be avoided if an individual's supervisory status has been determined " `with unclouded legal significance.' " Hanna Mining See also It does not undertake any examination of Davis' duties as a ship superintendent. It makes no attempt to show that Davis was more like an employee than a supervisor as those terms are defined in 2(1) and (11) |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | supervisor as those terms are defined in 2(1) and (11) of the Act, 29 U.S. C. 152(1) and (11).[13] It points to no evidence in the record indicating that Davis was not a supervisor. It does not argue that Davis' job was different from Trione's or that the Regional Director was wrong in finding that Trione was a supervisor. Its sole submission is that Davis was arguably an employee because the Board has not decided that he was a supervisor. We cannot agree that Davis' arguable status as a supervisor is made out by the mere fact that the Board has not finally determined his status. The lack of a Board decision in no way suggests how it would or could decide the case if it had the opportunity to do so. To accept the Union's submission would be essentially equivalent to allowing a conclusory claim of pre-emption and would effectively eliminate the necessity to make out an arguable case. The better view is that those claiming pre-emption must carry the burden of showing at least an arguable case before the jurisdiction of a state court will be ousted. Moreover, neither nor Hanna Mining supports the Union's position. itself is the source of the arguably protected or prohibited standard for pre-emption. The Court 359 U.S., : "When it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by *397 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, or constitute an unfair labor practice under 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield. To leave the States free to regulate conduct so plainly within the central aim of the federal regulation involves too great a danger of conflict between power asserted by Congress and requirements imposed by state law." Later the Court said: "When an activity is arguably subject to 7 or 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence" of the Board. Of course, the Court explained, the Board might decide the case one way or the other, but in the "absence of the Board's clear determination that an activity is neither protected or prohibited," it is not for the courts to decide the case. It is apparent from these passages that a court first must decide whether there is an arguable case for pre-emption; if there is, it must defer to the Board, and only if the Board decides that the conduct is not protected or prohibited may the court entertain the litigation. Nothing in suggests |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | prohibited may the court entertain the litigation. Nothing in suggests that an arguable case for pre-emption is made out simply because the Board has not decided the general issue one way or the other. Hanna Mining also does nothing for the Union's submission. The Court there, relying on held that there was no pre-emption because the Board or its General Counsel had in fact adversely decided the issues on which the claim of pre-emption rested. Obviously, no inference may be drawn from that decision that a party makes out a case for pre-emption by merely asserting that the issue involved has not been decided by the Board. The Union's position is also negated by Interlake S. S. Co., where the Court found pre-emption only after examining the facts and deciding "whether the evidence in this case was sufficient to show that either of [the organizations] was arguably a `labor organization' within the contemplation of 8(b)." The Court went on to hold that while there was persuasive evidence *398 that the marine engineers were supervisors, the Board had nevertheless effectively decided that the union involved was a labor organization within the meaning of the Act. While agreeing with the principles announced by the Court, Justice Douglas dissented because he had a different view of the facts of the case. Consequently, a party asserting pre-emption must put forth enough evidence to enable a court to conclude that the activity is arguably subject to the Act. Here, the Union points to no evidence in support of its assertion that Davis was arguably an employee. The Union's claim of pre-emption in the state courts was also devoid of any factual or legal showing that Davis was arguably not a supervisor but an employee. In this respect, its brief in the Alabama Supreme Court was similar to its brief here, and its post-trial motion for judgment in the trial court contained no more than a conclusory assertion that state jurisdiction was pre-empted. Until that motion, no claim of pre-emption had been made out, but whether Davis was a supervisor or an employee was a relevant inquiry in making out his case. He alleged in his complaint that he was a supervisor. The Union answered that it was without sufficient information to form a belief as to whether or not he was. Moreover, in moving for summary judgment or for directed verdict at the close of Davis' case and at the close of all the evidence the Union did not assert that Davis was an employee, not a supervisor, let alone point to any evidence to |
Justice White | 1,986 | 6 | majority | Longshoremen v. Davis | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111673/longshoremen-v-davis/ | not a supervisor, let alone point to any evidence to support such a claim.[14] In sum, the Union has not met its burden of showing that the conduct here was arguably subject to the Act. IV We hold that where state law is pre-empted by the NLRA under and our subsequent cases, the state courts lack the very power to adjudicate the claims that trigger pre-emption. *399 Thus, the Alabama Supreme Court's holding that the ILA had waived its pre-emption claim by noncompliance with state procedural rules governing affirmative defenses did not present an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment below, and that court erred in declining to address that claim on the merits. On the merits, we reject the ILA's characterization of our prior cases as holding that the mere lack of a conclusive determination by the Board that an activity is without the purview of the Act renders that activity arguably subject to the Act. Rather, we reaffirm our previously expressed view that the party asserting pre-emption must make an affirmative showing that the activity is arguably subject to the Act and we therefore affirm the judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court. So ordered. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom JUSTICE POWELL, JUSTICE STEVENS, and JUSTICE O'CONNOR join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | A Minnesota statute, the Private Pension Benefits Protection Act, Minn. Stat. 181B.01 et seq. (Pension Act), passed in April 1974, established minimum standards for the funding and vesting of employee pensions. The question in this case is whether this statute, which since January 1, 1975, has been pre-empted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA),[1] was pre-empted prior to that time by federal labor policy insofar as it purported to override or control the terms of collective-bargaining agreements negotiated under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). A Federal District Court held that it was not, but the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit disagreed and held the Pension Act invalid. Because the case fell within our mandatory appellate jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S. C. 1254 (2), we noted probable jurisdiction. We reverse. I In 1963, White Motor Corp. and its subsidiary, White Farm Equipment Co. (hereafter collectively referred to as appellee), *500 purchased from another company two farm equipment manufacturing plants, located in Hopkins, Minn., and Minneapolis, Minn. (on Lake Street). The employees at these plants, represented by the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), were covered by a pension plan established through collective bargaining. Under the 1971 collective-bargaining contract, the Pension Plan provided that an employee who attained the age of 40 and completed 10 or more years of credited service with the company was entitled to a pension. The amount of the pension would depend upon the age at which the employee retired. In language unchanged since 1950, the 1971 Plan provided that "[p]ensions shall be payable only from the Fund, and rights to pensions shall be enforceable only against the Fund." App. 155.[2] The Plan, however, was to be funded in part on a deferred basis. The unpaid past service liability the excess of accrued liability over the present value of the assets of the Fundwas to be met through contributions by the employer from its continuing operations.[3] *501 Section 10.02 of the Plan provided that "[t]he Company shall have the sole right at any time to terminate the entire plan." During the 1968 and 1971 negotiations, however, the UAW obtained from appellee guarantees that, upon termination, pensions for those entitled to them would remain at certain designated levels, though lower than those specified in the Plan.[4] By virtue of these guarantees, appellee assumed a direct liability for pension payments amounting to $7 million above the assets in the Fund. Appellee exercised its contractual right to terminate the Pension Plan on May 1, 1974.[5] A few |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | terminate the Pension Plan on May 1, 1974.[5] A few weeks before, however, the Pension Act had been enacted. This statute imposed "a pension funding charge" directly against any employer who ceased to operate a place of employment or a pension plan. This charge would be sufficient to insure that all employees with 10 or more years of service would receive whatever pension benefits had accrued to them, regardless of whether their rights to those benefits had "vested" within the terms of *502 the Plan. The funds obtained through the pension funding charge would then be used to purchase an annuity payable to the employee when he reached normal retirement age. Although the Pension Act did not compel an employer to adopt or continue a pension plan, it did guarantee to employees with 10 or more years' service full payment of their accrued pension benefits. Pursuant to the Pension Act, the appellant, Commissioner of Labor and Industry of the State of Minnesota, undertook an investigation of the pension plan termination here involved and later certified that the sum necessary to achieve compliance with the Pension Act was $19,150,053. Under the Pension Act, a pension funding charge in this amount became a lien on the assets of appellee. Appellee promptly filed this suit in Federal District Court. Appellee's complaint, as amended, asserted violations of the Supremacy Clause, the Contract Clause, and the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Supremacy Clause claim was based on the argument that the Pension Act was in conflict with several provisions of the NLRA,[6] as amended, 29 U.S. C. 151 et seq., because it "interferes with the right of Plaintiffs to free collective bargaining under federal law and vitiates collective bargaining agreements entered into under the authority of federal law, by imposing upon Plaintiffs obligations which, by the express terms of such collective bargaining agreements, Plaintiffs were not required to assume." App. A-9A-10. Appellee moved for partial summary judgment or, alternatively, for a preliminary injunction based on the pre-emption claim. Distinguishing and relying on evidence of congressional intent contained in *503 the federal Welfare and Pension Plans Disclosure Act (Disclosure Act), as amended, 29 U.S. C. 301 et seq., the District Court held that the Pension Act was not pre-empted by federal law. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that the Pension Act was pre-empted by federal labor law, and reversed the District Court. The reason was that the Pension Act purported to override the terms of the existing pension plan, |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | purported to override the terms of the existing pension plan, arrived at through collective bargaining, in at least three ways: It granted employees vested rights not available under the pension plan; to the extent of any deficiency in the pension fund, it required payment from the general assets of the employer, while the pension plan provided that benefits shall be paid only out of the pension fund; and the Pension Act imposed liability for post-termination payments to the pension fund beyond those specifically guaranteed. This, the court ruled, the State could not do; for if, under "states cannot control the economic weapons of the parties at the bargaining table, a fortiori, they may not directly control the substantive terms of the contract which results from that bargaining." Further, as the court understood the opinion in "a state cannot modify or change an otherwise valid and effective provision of a collective bargaining agreement." Finally, the Court of Appeals found that the pre-emption disclaimer in the Disclosure Act relied on by the District Court related only "to state statutes governing those obligations of trust undertaken by persons managing, administrating or operating employee benefit funds, the violation of which gives rise to civil and criminal penalties. Accordingly, no warrant exists for construing this legislation to leave to a state the power to change substantive terms of pension plan agreements." *504 II It is uncontested that whether the Minnesota statute is invalid under the Supremacy Clause depends on the intent of Congress. "The purpose of Congress is the ultimate touchstone." Retail Often Congress does not clearly state in its legislation whether it intends to pre-empt state laws; and in such instances, the courts normally sustain local regulation of the same subject matter unless it conflicts with federal law or would frustrate the federal scheme, or unless the courts discern from the totality of the circumstances that Congress sought to occupy the field to the exclusion of the States. Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co., ante, 7-158; ; "We cannot declare pre-empted all local regulation that touches or concerns in any way the complex interrelationships between employees, employers and unions; obviously, much of this is left to the States." Motor Coach The Pension Act "leaves much to the states, though Congress has refrained from telling us how much. We must spell out from conflicting indications of congressional will the area in which state action is still permissible." Here, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Minnesota statute was invalid because it trenched on what the court considered to be subjects that Congress had committed for determination |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | considered to be subjects that Congress had committed for determination to the collective-bargaining process. There is little doubt that under the federal statutes governing labor-management relations, an employer must bargain about wages, hours, and working conditions and that pension benefits are proper subjects of compulsory bargaining. But there is nothing in the NLRA, including those sections on which appellee relies, which expressly forecloses all state regulatory power with respect to those issues, such as pension *505 plans, that may be the subject of collective bargaining. If the Pension Act is pre-empted here, the congressional intent to do so must be implied from the relevant provisions of the labor statutes. We have concluded, however, that such implication should not be made here and that a far more reliable indicium of congressional intent with respect to state authority to regulate pension plans is to be found in 10 of the Disclosure Act. Section 10 (b) provided: "The provisions of this Act, except subsection (a) of this section and section 13 and any action taken thereunder, shall not be held to exempt or relieve any person from any liability, duty, penalty, or punishment provided by any present or future law of the United States or of any State affecting the operation or administration of employee welfare or pension benefit plans, or in any manner to authorize the operation or administration of any such plan contrary to any such law." Also, 10 (a), after shielding an employer from duplicating state and federal filing requirements, makes clear that other state laws remained unaffected: "Nothing contained in this subsection shall be construed to prevent any State from obtaining such additional information relating to any such plan as it may desire, or from otherwise regulating such plan." Contrary to the Court of Appeals, we believe that the foregoing provisions, together with the legislative history of the 1958 Disclosure Act, clearly indicate that Congress at that time recognized and preserved state authority to regulate pension plans, including those plans which were the product of collective bargaining. Because the 1958 Disclosure Act was in effect at the time of the crucial events in this case, the expression of congressional intent included therein should control the decision here.[7] *506 Congressional consideration of the problems in the pension field began in 1954, after the President sent a message to Congress recommending that "Congress initiate a thorough study of welfare and pension funds covered by collective bargaining agreements, with a view of enacting such legislation as will protect and conserve these funds for the millions of working men and women who are |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | for the millions of working men and women who are the beneficiaries."[8] In the next four years, through hearings, studies, and investigations, a Senate Subcommittee canvassed the problems of the nearly unregulated pension field and possible solutions to them. Although Congress turned up extensive evidence of kickbacks, embezzlement, and mismanagement, it concluded: "The most serious single weakness in this private social insurance complex is not in the abuses and failings enumerated above. Overshadowing these is the too frequent practice of withholding from those most directly affected, the employee-beneficiaries, information which will permit them to determine (1) whether the program is being administered efficiently and equitably, and (2) more importantly, whether or not the assets and prospective income of the programs are sufficient to guarantee the benefits which have been promised to them." S. Rep. No. 1440, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 12 (1958) (hereinafter S. Rep.). As a first step toward protection of the workers' interests in their pensions, Congress enacted the 1958 Disclosure Act. The statute required plan administrators to file with the Labor *507 Department and make available upon request both a description of the plan and an annual report containing financial information. In the case of a plan funded through a trust, the annual report was to include, inter alia, "the type and basis of funding, actuarial assumptions used, the amount of current and past service liabilities, and the number of employees both retired and nonretired covered by the plan" as well as a valuation of the assets of the fund. The statute did not, however, prescribe any substantive rules to achieve either of the two purposes described above. The Senate Report explained: "[T]he legislation proposed is not a regulatory statute. It is a disclosure statute and by design endeavors to leave regulatory responsibility to the States." S. Rep. 18. This objective was reflected in 10 (a) and 10 (b), quoted above. As the Senate Report explained, the statute was designed "to leave to the States the detailed regulations relating to insurance, trusts and other phases of their operations." S. Rep. 19. There was "no desire to get the Federal Government involved in the regulation of these plans but a disclosure statute which is administered in close cooperation with the States could also be of great assistance to the States in carrying out their regulatory functions." There is also no doubt that the Congress which adopted the Disclosure Act recognized that it was legislating with respect to pension funds many of which had been established by collective bargaining. The message from the President which had prompted the original |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | The message from the President which had prompted the original inquiry had focused on the need to protect workers "covered by collective bargaining agreements." The problems that Congress had identified were characteristic of bargained-for plans as well as of others. The Reports of both the Senate and House Committees explained that pension funds were frequently established *508 through the collective-bargaining process. S. Rep. 8; H. R. Rep. No. 2283, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 9 (1958) (hereinafter H. R. Rep.). The Senate Report emphasized the need for protection even where the plan was incorporated in a collective-bargaining agreement. S. Rep. 4, 8, 14. Congressmen explaining the bill on the floor also made clear that the bill would apply to pension plans "whether or not they have been brought into existence through collective bargaining." 104 Cong. Rec. 16420 (1958) (remarks of Cong. Lane); ; see Indeed, the bill met opposition in both the Senate and the House on the ground that its approach would "require employers to surrender to labor unions economic and bargaining power which should be negotiated through the normal channels of collective bargaining." S. Rep. 34 (minority view of Sen. Allott); accord, H. R. Rep. 25 (minority views).[9] Yet neither the bill as enacted nor its *509 legislative history drew a distinction between collectively bargained and all other plans, either with regard to the disclosure role of the federal legislation or the regulatory functions that would remain with the States. Appellee argues that the Disclosure Act's allocation of regulatory responsibility to the States is irrelevant here because the Disclosure Act was "enacted to deal with corruption and mismanagement of funds." Brief for Appellees 36. We think that the appellee advances an excessively narrow view of the legislative history. Congress was concerned not only with corruption, but also with the possibility that honestly managed pension plans would be terminated by the employer, leaving the employees without funded pensions at retirement age. The Senate Report specifically stated: "Entirely aside from abuses or violations, there are compelling reasons why there should be disclosure of the financial operation of all types of plans." S. Rep. 16. The Report then reproduced a chart showing the number of pension plans registered with the Internal Revenue Service that had been terminated during a 2-month period. The Senate Committee also observed: "Trusteed pension plans commonly limit benefits, even though fixed, to what can be paid out of the funds in the pension trust." As an illustration, the Report quoted language from a collectively bargained pension plan disclaiming any liability of the company in the event of termination. |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | any liability of the company in the event of termination. *510 [10] The Senate Report also showed an awareness of the problems posed by vesting requirements[11] and expressed concern that "employees whose rights do not mature within such contract period must rely upon the expectation that their union will be able to renew the contract or negotiate a similar one upon its termination." Thus, Congress was concerned with many of the same issues as are involved in this caseunexpected termination, inadequate funding, unfair vesting requirements. In preserving generally state laws "affecting the operation or administration of employee welfare or pension benefit plans," Congress indicated that the States had and were to have authority to deal with these problems. Moreover, it should be emphasized that 10 of the Disclosure Act referred specifically to the "future," as well as *511 "present" laws of the States. Congress was aware that the States had thus far attempted little regulation of pension plans.[12] The federal Disclosure Act was envisioned as laying a foundation for future state regulation. The Congress sought "to provide adequate information in disclosure legislation for possible later State regulatory laws." H. R. Rep. 2. Senator Kennedy, a manager of the bill, explained to his colleagues: "The objective of the bill is to provide more adequate protection for the employee-beneficiaries of these plans through a uniform Federal disclosure act which will make the facts available not only to the participants and the Federal Government but to the States, in order that any desired State regulation can be more effectively accomplished." 104 Cong. Rec. 7050 (1958). See also S. Rep. 18. Senator Kennedy had "no doubt that this [was] an area in which the States [were] going to begin to move." 104 Cong. Rec. 7053 (1958). The aim of the Disclosure Act was perhaps best summarized by Senator Smith, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee and a supporter of the bill. He stated: "It seems to be the policy of the pending legislation to extend beyond the problem of corruption. As stated in the language of the bill, one of its aims is to make available to the employee-beneficiaries information which will permit them to determine, first, whether the program is being administered efficiently and equitably; and, second, more importantly, whether or not the assets and *512 prospective income of the programs are sufficient to guarantee the benefits which have been promised to them. "This present bill provides for far more than anticorruption legislation directed against the machinations of dishonest men who betray their trust. Rather, it inaugurates a new social policy of |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | their trust. Rather, it inaugurates a new social policy of accountability. "This policy could very well lead to the establishment of mandatory standards by which these plans must be governed." It is also clear that Congress contemplated that the primary responsibility for developing such "mandatory standards" would lie with the States. Although Congress came to a quite different conclusion in 1974 when ERISA was adopted, the 1958 Disclosure Act clearly anticipated a broad regulatory role for the States. In light of this history, we cannot hold that the Pension Act is nevertheless implicitly pre-empted by the collective-bargaining provisions of the NLRA. Congress could not have intended that bargained-for plans, which were among those that had given rise to the very problems that had so concerned. Congress, were to be free from either state or federal regulation insofar as their substantive provisions were concerned. The Pension Act seeks to protect the accrued benefits of workers in the event of plan termination and to insure that the assets and prospective income of the plan are sufficient to guarantee the benefits promisedexactly the kind of problems which the 85th Congress hoped that the States would solve. This conclusion is consistent with the Court's decision in which concerned a claimed conflict between a state antitrust law and the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement specially adapted to the trucking business. The agreement prescribed a wage scale for truckdrivers and, in order to prevent evasion, provided that drivers who own and drive their own vehicles should be paid, in addition to the prescribed wage, a stated minimum rental *513 for the use of their vehicles. An Ohio court had invalidated this portion of the collective-bargaining agreement under Ohio antitrust law. This Court reversed, noting that "[t]he application [of the Ohio law] would frustrate the parties' solution of a problem which Congress has required them to negotiate in good faith toward solving, and in the solution of which it imposed no limitations relevant here." The opinion contains broad language affirming the independence of the collective-bargaining process from state interference: "Federal law here created the duty upon the parties to bargain collectively; Congress has provided for a system of federal law applicable to the agreement the parties made in response to that duty and federal law sets some outside limits (not contended to be exceeded here) on what their agreement may provide We believe that there is no room in this scheme for the application here of this state policy limiting the solutions that the parties' agreement can provide to the problems of wages and working conditions." The |
Justice White | 1,978 | 6 | majority | Malone v. White Motor Corp. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109826/malone-v-white-motor-corp/ | provide to the problems of wages and working conditions." The opinion nevertheless recognizes exceptions to this general rule. One of them, necessarily anticipated, was the situation where it is evident that Congress intends a different result: "The solution worked out by the parties was not one of a sort which Congress has indicated may be left to prohibition by the several States. Cf. Algoma Plywood & Veneer" [13] *514 As we understand the 1958 Disclosure Act and its legislative history, the collective-bargaining provisions at issue here dealt with precisely the sort of subject matter "which Congress indicated may be left to [regulation] by the several states." Congress clearly envisioned the exercise of state regulation power over pension funds, and we do not depart from in sustaining the Minnesota statute. III Insofar as the Supremacy Clause issue is concerned, no different conclusion is called for because the Minnesota statute was enacted after the UAW-White Motor Corp. agreement had been in effect for several years. Appellee points out that the parties to the 1971 collective-bargaining agreement therefore had no opportunity to consider the impact of any such legislation. Although we understand the equitable considerations which underlie appellee's argument, they are not material to the resolution of the pre-emption issue since they do not render the Minnesota Pension Act any more or less consistent with congressional policy at the time it was adopted.[14] Our decision in this case is, of course, limited to appellee's claim that the Minnesota statute is inconsistent with the federal labor statutes. Appellee's other constitutional claims are not before us. It remains for the District Court to consider on remand the contentions that the Minnesota Pension Act impairs contractual obligations and fails to provide due *515 process in violation of the United States Constitution. Without intimating any views on the merits of those questions,[15] we note that appellee's claim of unfair retroactive impact can be considered in that context. All that we decide here is that the decision of the Court of Appeals finding federal preemption of the Minnesota Pension Act should be and hereby is Reversed. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN and MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. MR. |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | This case presents the question whether a common carrier's violation of credit regulations issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) bars the carrier's collection of a lawful freight charge from a shipper-consignor who, under the terms of the shipment's bill of lading, is primarily liable for the charge. I Petitioner Southern Pacific Transportation Company (SP) is a common carrier by rail. Respondent Commercial Metals Company (Metals), a Delaware corporation with principal *338 place of business in Dallas, Tex., is in the business of buying and selling steel goods. Petitioner instituted this action against respondent in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas to recover freight charges for three cars of steel cobble shipped by rail in from Detroit, Mich., to Alhambra, Cal. Each of the three shipments was consigned by Metals to Penn Central Transportation Company, as initial carrier,[1] under the uniform straight bill of lading prescribed by the ICC. Each bill of lading included a "nonrecourse" clause that the consignor might sign. That clause reads: "Subject to Section 7 of Conditions, if the shipment is to be delivered to the consignee without recourse on the consignor, the consignor shall sign the following statement: The carrier shall not make delivery of this shipment without payment of freight and all other lawful charges."[2] In each instance, respondent Metals, as consignor, failed to execute this nonrecourse clause. Metals, however, already had received payment for the goods prior to shipment. Tr. of Oral Arg. 24-2; Brief for Respondent 21. *339 The first of the three cars was tendered to Penn Central at Detroit on April 11, for transportation to Carco Steel Corporation (Carco), as consignee, in Alhambra. SP released the car to Carco on April 2 without collecting the freight charge in advance of delivery. On the same day, however, SP mailed to Carco a bill for $4,34.11, the correct amount of the charge. Carco was not a credit patron of SP and had never applied to SP for credit. SP never before had made a delivery to Carco. Nevertheless, the carrier made no investigation of Carco's credit standing. The second and third shipments took place on May 2, when Metals consigned two other cars of cobble to Penn Central for transportation to Carco. SP delivered the cars to Carco on May 1. This time, SP released the cars only after receiving checks from Carco in the respective amounts of $,71.79 and $2,383.7 for the freight charges. The larger amount was correct, but the smaller check should have been for $3,283. and thus was $900 short.[3] On May 20, |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | for $3,283. and thus was $900 short.[3] On May 20, SP issued freight bills in the correct amounts to Carco. The two checks were dishonored by Carco's bank for insufficient funds. In August after efforts to collect the unpaid freight charges from Carco had proved fruitless, SP filed suit against Carco in a California state court. Attempts to serve the summons and complaint were unsuccessful. On December 17, 197, more than 30 months after the shipments, SP notified Metals of Carco's failure to pay the freight charges. SP requested that Metals, as the consignor who had failed to execute the nonrecourse provision in the bills of lading, pay the $13,79. total charges in satisfaction of its primary liability for the three shipments. This was the first notice to Metals that the freight charges had not been collected *340 from Carco. When payment was not forthcoming, SP instituted the present action against Metals in federal court. On this record, stipulated by the parties, the District Court ruled that SP had established a prima facie case for the recovery of the freight charges from Metals. It found the charges correct and in accord with applicable tariffs and that no part of those charges had been paid. App. 22. "Absent a showing of valid and affirmative defenses," then, Metals was liable to the carrier. The court rejected Metals' claim that the passage of time barred SP's recovery; although Metals lacked notice until December 197 that the charges for the shipments had not been paid, the court noted that the applicable period of limitation was three years and that the carrier had been making efforts to locate Carco and to receive payment. The District Court, however, went on to hold that Metals had established a valid equitable defense to SP's collection of the charges by showing that SP had failed to comply with the ICC's credit regulations promulgated pursuant to 3(2) of the Interstate Commerce Act, 49 U.S. C. 3(2).[4] App. 23. See 49 CFR pt. 1320 The court was not persuaded by SP's suggestion that Metals had failed to avail itself of its contractual opportunity for exoneration afforded by the nonrecourse provision in the bills of lading. The court concluded: "The loss sustained by [SP] was due entirely to its own fault and negligence by failing to take the proper credit precautions when it delivered the goods to Carco. I think that it is fundamentally unfair and inequitable for the defendant in this case to pay for the gross negligence of the plaintiff." App. 24. Accordingly, judgment was entered for Metals. *341 The |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | App. 24. Accordingly, judgment was entered for Metals. *341 The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed that judgment. Like the District Court, the Court of Appeals acknowledged that in the absence of a valid defense, Metals must be held liable to SP for the freight charges. The court felt, however, that 3(2) of the Act, the payment-before-delivery provision, provided a barrier to the carrier's collection of the charges from the consignor.[] The implementing regulation,[] which modified the statutory mandate by allowing for delivery of freight on credit for up to five days, nevertheless was "quite strict." Thus, Metals could assert as a defense the carrier's extension of credit to Carco without adequate precautions for a period in excess of that provided by the regulation. The court concluded: "Under these circumstances, we are compelled to hold that the carrier's failure to comply with the applicable ICC regulations is a defense, available to [Metals], in an action by [SP] for unpaid freight charges." 9. *342 Because of a conflict in the decided cases,[7] we granted certiorari. II Since 1919, the ICC has prescribed a uniform bill of lading for use on all interstate domestic shipments of freight by rail. See In re Bills of Lading, 2 I. C. C. 71 modified, 4 I. C. C. 37 (1921), further modified, I. C. C. 3 (1922).[8] The bill of lading is the basic transportation contract between the shipper-consignor and the carrier; its terms and conditions bind the shipper and all connecting carriers. Texas & Pacific R. *343 "Each [term] has in effect the force of a statute, of which all affected must take notice." Unless the bill provides to the contrary, the consignor remains primarily liable for the freight charges. When the ICC first promulgated the uniform bill of lading, it stated: "The consignor, being the one with whom the contract of transportation is made, is originally liable for the carrier's charges and unless he is specifically exempted by the provisions of the bill of lading, or unless the goods are received and transported under such circumstances as to clearly indicate an exemption for him, the carrier is entitled to look to the consignor for his charges." In re Bills of Lading, 2 I. C. C., at 721. This rule has not changed over time. Recently, the ICC again observed that the consignor's liability "is governed by the bill of lading contract between the parties and must be decided by interpreting that contract." C-G-F Grain v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. 31 I. C. C. 710, 712 (197). Clearly, |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | F. R. 31 I. C. C. 710, 712 (197). Clearly, then, under the contract between Metals as consignor and SP as the carrier, the consignor was primarily liable for the freight charges in question. Just as clearly, however, Metals was in a position to effectuate its release from liability by executing the nonrecourse clause in the bill of lading. Signing that clause would have operated to excuse Metals from liability. By failing to execute the nonrecourse provision, Metals continued to be primarily liable for those charges. Illinois Steel ; New York, N. H. & H. R. See also Louisville & Nashville R. It is perhaps appropriate to note that a carrier has not only the right but also the duty to recover its proper charges for services performed. and n. 3. See Pittsburgh, *344 C., C. & St. L. R. This rule of strict adherence to statutory standards is in line with the historic purpose of the Interstate Commerce Act to achieve uniformity in freight transportation charges, and thereby to eliminate the discrimination and favoritism that had plagued the railroad industry in the late 19th century. Midstate Horticultural ; New York, N. H. & H. R. 200 U.S. Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals correctly found that SP had established a prima facie case of Metals' liability for the freight charges in question by proving that Metals had failed to sign the nonrecourse clause. This much, indeed, is conceded by Metals. Brief for Respondent 11; Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. III SP concedes that its failure to collect all freight charges from Carco before releasing the shipments violated the ICC regulation with regard to at least the first of the three shipments. See 49 CFR 1320.1 quoted in n. The question, then, is whether the Court of Appeals properly found that SP's violation of the regulation provided Metals with an equitable affirmative defense to SP's prima facie case.[9] A. The ICC has comprehensively regulated the extension of credit to shippers by rail carriers. See 49 CFR pt. 1320 Yet neither the statute under which the regulations *34 were promulgated, 49 U.S. C. 3(2), nor the regulations themselves intimate that a carrier's violation of the credit rules automatically precludes it from collecting the lawful freight charge. Nor does either contain any words of affirmative defense to a freight charge action. Indeed, to the extent the ICC has spoken to this question, it has stated: "[A] violation of section 3(2) by [a carrier], in itself, would have had no effect on [a consignor's] responsibility for payment of undercharges." |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | no effect on [a consignor's] responsibility for payment of undercharges." C-G-F Grain v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. 31 I. C. C., at 712. Although 3(2) "prohibits a rail carrier from delivering freight without collecting all charges thereon[,] it contains no provision shielding a consignor from liability for lawful charges." Thus, at least in dictum, the ICC has suggested that "[t]he question of [a consignor's] liability [under a bill of lading] does not turn on whether any provision of the act has been violated." We view the absence of any provision for an affirmative defense in the ICC's credit regulations as an administrative construction of the statute that aids our determination of congressional intent. "[L]egislative silence is not always the result of a lack of prescience; it may instead betoken permission or, perhaps, considered abstention from regulation. Accordingly, caution must temper judicial creativity in the face of legislative or regulatory silence." Ford Motor Credit We so regard the administrative silence here. When an administrative agency historically has engaged in comprehensive regulation of an industry's credit practices, the agency's silence regarding an affirmative defense based on a violation of those regulations must be deemed significant. B. The legislative and administrative history of the credit regulations further indicates that this silence was not inadvertent the intent of the rules was to protect carriers, not to penalize them. Prior to 1918, the Federal Government did not regulate the extension of credit by rail carriers. *34 Wartime regulation revealed, however, that a general requirement of payment before delivery would protect the working capital of carriers and avoid discrimination among credit recipients. Cf. Ex parte No. MC-1, 2 M. C. C. 3, 374 (1937). After the first World War, when Congress returned the railroads to private control, 40 of the Transportation Act, 1920, added paragraph (2) to 3 of the Interstate Commerce Act. See n. The regulations adopted by the ICC in 1920 under the statute as so amended permitted railroads to extend limited credit to shippers on a nondiscriminatory basis. The regulations have remained largely unchanged to the present time. Until no court seriously suggested that a violation of the credit regulations precluded a carrier from collecting a freight charge from the party with primary liability. Instead, a defense of estoppel based on a violation of the credit regulations was held to be inconsistent with the purpose of the regulations themselves. Courts were concerned that a rule permitting selective estoppels would defeat the antidiscriminatory purpose of the Act and would weaken the capital structure of common carriers. See, e. g., Western Maryland |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | capital structure of common carriers. See, e. g., Western Maryland R. 9 W. Va. 73, 123 S.E. 72, 7 ; Chicago Junction R. 11 Minn. 4, 49, 2 (192); East Texas Motor Freight 184 S.W.2d 0, 07 Despite the absence of any textual or historical support for an affirmative defense in either the statute or the regulations, the Court of Appeals concluded that Metals could raise SP's failure to comply fully with the regulations as an absolute equitable defense to SP's freight charge action. The Court of Appeals relied primarily on what it regarded as "a closely analogous situation," 41 F.2d 7, presented in Consolidated Freightways 442 F.2d On examination, however, that Seventh Circuit case plainly is distinguishable from the present one. *347 The defendant there was a consignee to whom goods had been delivered under bills of lading marked "prepaid." Relying upon the carrier's explicit representation of prepayment, the consignee paid the amount of the freight charges to the shipper-consignor. In fact, however, the carrier had extended credit to the consignor and had failed to collect the charges within the period allowed by the regulations. When the consignor went out of business, the carrier turned to the consignee for payment. The Court of Appeals, by a divided vote, held the carrier estopped. Admiral differs from this case in four crucial respects. First, in Admiral, the carrier not only violated ICC credit regulations but also made to the defendant a material misrepresentation regarding prepayment. The carrier here, in contrast, was charged solely with failure to observe the applicable ICC credit regulations. Second, in the Seventh Circuit case, the consignee-defendant had paid full freight charges to the consignor. Had the Seventh Circuit also awarded relief to the carrier, it would have "require[d] an innocent consignee to defray freight charges exactly double the amount contemplated by the applicable tariffs." 442 F.2d, at Here, the defendant paid no freight charges; thus, an award of relief to the carrier creates no possibility of enforcing a double payment. Third, in Admiral, the grounds for equitable estoppel were created by the consignee's payment of freight charges in detrimental reliance on the carrier's misrepresentation. The carrier's violation of the credit regulations offered only "additional grounds for the intervention of the principles of equity." at 0 In this case, there is no suggestion that the consignor knew of, or changed its position detrimentally in reliance on, the carrier's credit violation. Fourth, and most significant, the defendant-consignee in the Seventh Circuit case had no means by which to protect itself from freight charge liability. In this case, of course, |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | itself from freight charge liability. In this case, of course, the defendant-consignor could have protected itself completely *348 simply by signing the nonrecourse clause in the bills of lading. C. Finally, public policy concerns disfavor judicial implication of affirmative defenses based on carrier violations of the Commission's credit regulations. We recognize that the regulations are technical. Thousands of railcars are delivered every day by the country's railroads. See Association of American Railroads, Yearbook of Railroad Facts 2 (approximately 2,000 deliveries per day). Almost inevitably, some cars will be delivered to noncredit patrons, some freight bills will be sent out late, and some accounts will not be collected within the specified time. A 19 study by the ICC's Bureau of Enforcement found that almost a third of 1,71 bills examined were overdue and that over half of those overdue were delinquent more than 10 days. See In re Regulations for Payment of Rates and Charges, 32 I. C. C. 483, 48 (19).[10] After appraising this data, the ICC agreed that "the evidence establishes many and continued violations of the credit regulations. However, we are unable to conclude on this record that rigid rules would provide a practical or desirable solution. [T]here are many reasons for credit violations which are beyond correction by rules, e. g., where shippers have unexpected peak workloads, where there are controversies over amounts due, where additional information is needed such as weights or evaluations, where standard office procedures are in the process of change, where temporary cash flow problems occur, and where it becomes necessary to check the validity of charges with third persons. Stringent credit rules would destroy the flexibility needed to meet problems of this nature." Indeed, in 1980, the ICC proposed repealing the credit regulations altogether, noting that "apparent, widespread *349 noncompliance with the regulations indicates that the payment periods and other time limits prescribed are simply not realistic for many of the situations in which they apply." Ex parte Nos. MC-1, 73, 143, and 170, 4 Fed. Reg. 317. It thus appears that the Court of Appeals in the present case implied an affirmative defense that would penalize railroads for violations of the credit regulations just as the agency responsible for administering those regulations was pronouncing them unrealistic. The prospect raised for the carrier is that it will be barred from recovering lawful freight charges, even from a consignor who fails to execute the nonrecourse clause, for possibly unavoidable violations of the credit rules. "The obvious consequence would be to discourage [carriers] from extending credit where the operation of this rather difficult statute |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | extending credit where the operation of this rather difficult statute is in doubt." Bruce's Juices, 73 Ironically, those shippers who pay their bills currently in a responsible manner would suffer as a result. Metals argues that a ruling for SP places SP "in the unrealistic position of being incapable of doing any wrong" and therefore creates "no incentive [for carriers] to improve inefficient and careless credit practices." Brief for Respondent 12. Metals further claims that the loss at issue here would not have occurred if SP only had complied with its obligations under the regulations. The answer to this is that the ICC has ample authority to police the credit practices of carriers and thereby to deter improper practices. This authority includes the power to issue a cease-and-desist order, see Shaw Warehouse v. Southern R. 308 I. C. C. 09, 33-34, 37 (199), appeal dism'd sub nom. Southern R. 18 F. Supp. 29 (ND Ala. 190); the power to seek a federal-court injunction requiring a carrier to comply with the regulations, see 0 F.2d 130 ; and the power to bring suit for the $,000 civil forfeiture, provided by 49 U.S. C. 1(8) and 49 U.S. C. 11901(a) (197 ed., Supp. *30 III), for each knowing violation of an order of the Commission, see, e. g., United 38 F.2d 11 (CA10 197), cert. denied sub nom. Denver & R. G. W. R. U.S. 919 (198); United (ED Pa. 199). Thus, the ICC may regulate the credit practices of carriers even without the judicially created remedy of forfeiture of freight charges. Furthermore, a reading of the cited cases reveals that the question whether a credit violation has occurred often will require the ICC or the courts to conduct a factual inquiry as to the carrier's intent to violate the regulations. The "credit violation defense" adopted by the Court of Appeals requires a carrier to forfeit freight charges without regard to the nature of its violation.[11] This inflexible approach *31 disenables courts from considering the carrier's intent, the degree of the shipper's fault, the effect of enforcement on the carrier's existing permissible credit practices, and other subjective factors in deciding whether or not to enforce a shipper's primary liability for freight charges. Metals also advances a number of "double payment" cases in support of its claim for an affirmative defense. See, e. g., Southern Pacific Transp. 4 F.2d 1219 ; Consolidated Freightways 442 F.2d ; Farrell Lines, 30 F. Supp. 1348 (SDNY), aff'd, 419 F.2d 83 (CA2 199), cert. denied, ; Southern Pacific 11 A.2d 70 (19). To be sure, these cases |
Justice Blackmun | 1,982 | 11 | majority | Southern Pacific Transp. Co. v. Commercial Metals Co. | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110700/southern-pacific-transp-co-v-commercial-metals-co/ | Pacific 11 A.2d 70 (19). To be sure, these cases speak in equity terms. But none of these cases turned solely on a carrier's violation of credit regulations. Each and all of them involved a carrier's misrepresentation, such as a false assertion of prepayment on the bill of lading, upon which a consignee detrimentally relied only to find itself later sued by the carrier for the same freight charges. We find that these double payment cases constitute their own category and stand against the placement of duplication of liability upon an innocent party. See Consolidated Freightways 442 F. 2d, at As we have noted above, no similar double payment liability is in prospect here. Metals, not the carrier, selected the consignee. Furthermore, Metals has been paid for its goods while the carrier has not been paid for its services. The carrier unsuccessfully has pursued its remedies against the consignee before turning to the shipper-consignor for payment. Nor had the statute of limitation run when SP finally sued Metals for payment. *32 We, of course, are in no position to condone slipshod collection practices and a carrier's violation of the governing regulations. But the terms of the bill of lading are specific and clear. Metals' failure to execute the nonrecourse provision in the bill of lading specifically placed upon it primary liability for the freight charges. To permit SP's violation of the credit regulations to be raised as an affirmative defense to its prima facie case would serve to nullify the enforceability of the nonrecourse clause. Nor do we believe that judicial implication of such a defense is necessary to encourage carrier compliance with credit rules. Railroads have real economic incentives to collect their freight charges from consignees insofar as they are able. The remedies for a carrier's violations of the regulations are best left to the ICC for such resolution as it thinks proper. We therefore hold that the Court of Appeals erred by permitting Metals to assert an affirmative defense against SP based on its violation of the ICC credit regulations. Such "equities" as may exist by virtue of the carrier's delay and its violation of the credit regulations are insufficient in magnitude to overcome the time-honored rule that under such circumstances, no "act or omission of the carrier (except the running of the statute of limitations) [will] estop or preclude it from enforcing payment of the full amount by a person liable therefor." Louisville & Nashville R. 2 U. S., at The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered. |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | The issue presented is whether the Fifth Amendment's grand jury guarantee[1] is violated when a defendant is tried under an indictment that alleges a certain fraudulent scheme but is convicted based on trial proof that supports only a significantly narrower and more limited, though included, fraudulent scheme. A grand jury in the Northern District of California returned an indictment charging respondent Miller with three counts of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S. C. 1341. After the Government moved to dismiss the third count, Miller was tried before a jury and convicted of the remaining two. He appealed asserting that there had been a fatal variance between the "scheme and artifice" to defraud charged in the indictment and that which the Government proved at trial. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed and vacated the judgment of conviction. modified, We granted certiorari, and reverse. I A The indictment had charged Miller with various fraudulent acts in connection with a burglary at his place of business. *132 Miller allegedly had defrauded his insurer both by consenting to the burglary in advance and by lying to the insurer about the value of his loss.[2] The trial proof, however, concerned only the latter allegation, focusing on whether, prior to the burglary, Miller actually had possessed all the property that he later claimed was taken. This proof was clearly sufficient *133 to support a jury finding that Miller's claim to his insurer had grossly inflated the value of any actual loss.[3] The Government moved to strike the part of the indictment that alleged prior knowledge of the burglary, and it correctly argued that even without that allegation the indictment still made out a violation of 1341.[4] Respondent's counsel opposed the change, and at his urging the entire indictment was sent to the jury. The jury found Miller *134 guilty, and respondent appealed on the basis that the trial proof had fatally varied from the scheme alleged in the Agreeing that Miller's Fifth Amendment right to be tried only on a grand jury indictment had been violated, the Court of Appeals vacated the conviction. It succinctly stated its rationale: "The grand jury may well have declined to indict Miller simply on the basis of his exaggeration of the amount of his claimed loss. In fact it is quite possible that the grand jury would have been unwilling or unable to return an indictment based solely on Miller's exaggeration of the amount of his claimed loss even though it had concluded that an indictment could be returned based on the overall scheme involving a |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | could be returned based on the overall scheme involving a use of the mail caused by Miller's knowing consent to the burglary." -1363. B Miller's indictment properly alleged violations of 18 U.S. C. 1341, and it fully and clearly set forth a number of ways in which the acts alleged constituted violations. The facts proved at trial clearly conformed to one of the theories of the offense contained within that indictment, for the indictment gave Miller clear notice that he would have to defend against an allegation that he " `well knew that the amount of copper claimed to have been taken during the alleged burglary was grossly inflated for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining $150,000 from Aetna Insurance Company.' " -1362 Competent defense counsel certainly should have been on notice that that offense was charged and would need to be defended against. Accordingly, there can be no showing here that Miller was prejudicially surprised at trial by the absence of proof concerning his alleged complicity in the burglary; *135 nor can there be a showing that the variance prejudiced the fairness of respondent's trial in any other way. Cf. See also Cf. also United The indictment was also sufficient to allow Miller to plead it in the future as a bar to subsequent prosecutions. Therefore, none of these "notice" related concerns which of course are among the important concerns underlying the requirement that criminal charges be set out in an indictment would support the result of the Court of Appeals. See The Court of Appeals did not disagree, but instead argued that Miller had been prejudiced in his right to be free from a trial for any offense other than that alleged in the grand jury's It reasoned that a grand jury's willingness to indict an individual for participation in a broad criminal plan does not establish that the same grand jury would have indicted the individual for participating in a substantially narrower, even if wholly included, criminal -1363. Relying on the Fifth Amendment's grand jury guarantee, the Court of Appeals concluded that a conviction could not stand where the trial proof corresponded to a fraudulent scheme much narrower than, though included within, the scheme that the grand jury had alleged. The Court of Appeals cited two prior decisions of this Court that emphasized the right of an accused to be tried only on charges that had in fact been passed on by a grand jury. and Ex parte Bain, ). Cf. United The Government correctly argues that the Court of Appeals' result conflicts with a number |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | that the Court of Appeals' result conflicts with a number of this Court's prior *136 decisions interpreting the Fifth Amendment's Grand Jury Clause. The Court has long recognized that an indictment may charge numerous offenses or the commission of any one offense in several ways. As long as the crime and the elements of the offense that sustain the conviction are fully and clearly set out in the indictment, the right to a grand jury is not normally violated by the fact that the indictment alleges more crimes or other means of committing the same crime. See, e. g., ; See also Hall v. United Indeed, a number of longstanding doctrines of criminal procedure are premised on the notion that each offense whose elements are fully set out in an indictment can independently sustain a conviction. See, e. g., Turner v. United ; Crain v. United ; Dealy v. United A review of prior cases allowing convictions to stand in the face of variances between the indictment and proof makes the Court of Appeals' error clear. Convictions generally have been sustained as long as the proof upon which they are based corresponds to an offense that was clearly set out in the A part of the indictment unnecessary to and independent of the allegations of the offense proved may normally be treated as "a useless averment" that "may be ignored." In Ford, for example, an indictment charged a defendant with *13 conspiring to import liquor in violation of various federal laws and in violation of a treaty. "The validity of the indictment [was] attacked because it charge[d] that the conspiracy was to violate the treaty, although the treaty create[d] no offense against the law of the United" Although the grand jury had included the treaty allegation as part of the indictment, this Court upheld the conviction because "that part of the indictment [was] merely surplusage and may be rejected." This treatment of allegations independent of and unnecessary to the offense on which a conviction ultimately rests has not been confined to allegations that, like those in Ford, would have had no legal relevance if proved. In for example, the Court was presented with facts quite similar to the instant case. A grand jury charged Salinger with mail fraud in an indictment containing several counts, "[a]ll relat[ing] to the same scheme to defraud, but each charg[ing] a distinct use of the mail for the purpose of executing the scheme." As was the case with Miller, Salinger's "scheme to defraud as set forth in the indictment comprehended several relatively distinct plans for |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | forth in the indictment comprehended several relatively distinct plans for fleecing intended victims." Because the evidence only sustained the charge as to one of the plans, the trial judge withdrew from the jury those portions of the indictment that related to all other plans. Salinger argued then, just as Miller argues now, that the variance between the broad allegations in the indictment and the narrower proof at trial violated his right to have had a grand jury screen any alleged offenses upon which he might be convicted at trial. This Court unanimously rejected Salinger's argument on the ground that the offense proved was fully contained within the Nothing had been added to the indictment which, in the Court's view, "remained just as it was returned by the grand jury." "[T]he trial was on the charge preferred in it and not on a modified charge," ibid., and there *138 was thus "not even remotely an infraction of the constitutional provision that `no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.' " See also ; ; Hall v. United at[5] The result reached by the Court of Appeals thus conflicts with the results reached by this Court in such cases as Salinger and Ford. See also Hall v. United at ; Crain v. United at I The Court of Appeals principally relied on this Court's decision in to support its conclusion that the Fifth Amendment's grand jury right is violated by a conviction for a criminal plan narrower than, but fully included within, the plan set forth in the Stirone, however, stands for a very different proposition. In Stirone the offense proved at trial was not fully contained in the indictment, for trial evidence had "amended" the indictment by broadening the possible bases for conviction from that which appeared in the Stirone was thus wholly unlike the cases discussed in Part and unlike respondent's case, all of which involve trial evidence that narrowed the indictment's charges without adding any new offenses. As the Stirone Court said, the issue was "whether [Stirone] was convicted of an offense not *139 charged in the " Stirone, a union official, was indicted for and convicted of unlawfully interfering with interstate commerce in violation of the Hobbs Act. 18 U.S. C. 1951. More specifically, the indictment charged that he had engaged in extortion that obstructed shipments of sand from outside Pennsylvania into that State, where it was to be used in the construction of a steel mill. At trial, however, the prosecution's |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | construction of a steel mill. At trial, however, the prosecution's proof of the required interference with interstate commerce went beyond the allegation of obstructed sand shipments. The prosecutor also attempted to prove that Stirone had obstructed the steel mill's eventual export of steel to surrounding Because the conviction might have been based on the evidence of obstructed steel exports, an element of an offense not alleged in the indictment, a unanimous Court held that the indictment had been unconstitutionally "broadened." "The right to have the grand jury make the charge on its own judgment is a substantial right which cannot be taken away with or without court amendment. Here,. we cannot know whether the grand jury would have included in its indictment a charge that commerce in steel from a nonexistent steel mill had been interfered with. Yet because of the court's admission of evidence and under its charge this might have been the basis upon which the trial jury convicted petitioner. If so, he was convicted on a charge the grand jury never made against him. This was fatal error." -219. The Court contrasted Stirone's case with cases like See As we discussed in Part in Ford the Court had refused to invalidate a conviction because of variances between the indictment and the narrower trial proof. The Stirone Court declared that, unlike that sort of variance, "the addition charging interference with steel exports [in Stirone was] neither trivial, *140 useless, nor innocuous. While there was a variance in the sense of a variation between pleading and proof, that variation [had in Stirone] destroyed the defendant's substantial right to be tried only on charges presented in an indictment returned by a grand jury. Deprivation of such a basic right is far too serious to be treated as nothing more than a variance and then dismissed as harmless error." Accord, -1 Miller has shown no deprivation of his "substantial right to be tried only on charges presented in an indictment returned by a grand jury." In contrast to Stirone, Miller was tried on an indictment that clearly set out the offense for which he was ultimately convicted. His complaint is not that the indictment failed to charge the offense for which he was convicted, but that the indictment charged more than was necessary. IV The one decision of this Court that does offer some support to the Court of Appeals' result is Ex parte Bain, for there the Court treated as an unconstitutional "amendment" the deletion from an indictment of allegations that would not have been necessary to prove the offense. |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | that would not have been necessary to prove the offense. This deletion, in the Court's view, did constitute a compromise of the defendant's right to be tried only on a grand jury's Bain was a bank cashier who had been indicted for including false statements in a report required to be made to the Comptroller of the Currency. The indictment charged that when Bain filed these required reports, he "did then and there well know and believe the said report and statement to be false to the extent and in the mode and manner above set forth; and [he] made said false statement and report in manner and form as above set forth with intent to deceive the Comptroller of the Currency and the agent appointed to examine the affairs of said [banking] association" The relevant statute made it a criminal offense to file *141 " `any false entry in any book, report, or statement with intent to deceive any agent appointed to examine the affairs of any such association' " (quoting Rev. Stat. 5209). Thus under the terms of the statute, there was no need to charge Bain with intending to deceive "the Comptroller of the Currency." An intent to deceive the agent appointed to examine the reports was all that was necessary to prove the offense. Under later cases, such as Ford and Salinger, the presence of such surplusage in the indictment would not invalidate a conviction as long as the necessary intent was also alleged and proved. But in Bain the trial court sustained Bain's demurrer to the After sustaining the demurrer, however, the court granted a motion by the Government "that the indictment be amended by striking out the words `the Comptroller of the Currency and.'" Bain was then required to plead to the amended indictment, and was tried and convicted under that This Court granted a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that Bain's Fifth Amendment right to stand trial only on an indictment returned by a grand jury had been violated. The opinion reasoned that a court could not, consistent with the Fifth Amendment, assume that the narrower indictment would have been returned by the grand jury that returned the broader one.[6] *142 Bain may best be understood in terms of two distinct propositions. Most generally, Bain stands for the proposition that a conviction cannot stand if based on an offense that is different from that alleged in the grand jury's But more specifically, Bain can support the proposition that the striking out of parts of an indictment invalidates the whole of the |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | of parts of an indictment invalidates the whole of the indictment, for a court cannot speculate as to whether the grand jury had meant for any remaining offense to stand independently, even if that remaining offense clearly was included in the original text. Under this latter proposition, the narrowing of an indictment is no different from the adding of a new allegation that had never been considered by the grand jury; both are treated as "amendments" that alter the nature of the offense charged. In evaluating the relevance of Bain to the instant case, it is necessary to examine these two aspects of Bain separately, for the Court has treated these two propositions quite differently in the years since Bain. The proposition that a defendant cannot be convicted of an offense different from that which was included in the indictment was broadly declared in Bain: "If it lies within the province of a court to change the charging part of an indictment to suit its own notions of what it ought to have been, or what the grand jury would probably have made it if their attention had been called to suggested changes, the great importance which *143 the common law attaches to an indictment by a grand jury, as a prerequisite to a prisoner's trial for a crime, and without which the Constitution says `no person shall be held to answer,' may be frittered away until its value is almost destroyed." This aspect of Bain has been reaffirmed in a number of subsequent cases. See, e. g., United v. Norris, The most important reaffirmation, of course, was Stirone. See Part I, In Stirone, the Court's unanimous opinion extensively relied on Bain for the proposition that "a court cannot permit a defendant to be tried on charges that are not made in the indictment against him," and therefore that "after an indictment has been returned its charges may not be broadened through amendment except by the grand jury itself." See also (citing Bain for the "settled rule in the federal courts that an indictment may not be amended except by resubmission to the grand jury, unless the change is merely a matter of form").[] *144 But this aspect of Bain gives no support to Miller in this case, see Part I, for the offense that formed the basis of Miller's conviction was clearly and fully set out in the Miller must instead rest on the second, and more specific, proposition found in Bain, that a narrowing of the indictment constitutes an amendment that renders the indictment void. As is clear |
Justice Marshall | 1,985 | 15 | majority | United States v. Miller | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111404/united-states-v-miller/ | an amendment that renders the indictment void. As is clear from the discussion of cases in Part this second proposition did not long survive Bain. Indeed, when defendants have sought to rely on Bain for this point, this Court has limited or distinguished the case, sustaining convictions where courts had withdrawn or ignored independent and unnecessary allegations in the indictments. See, e. g., ; 22 U. S., Modern criminal law has generally accepted that an indictment will support each offense contained within it. To the extent Bain stands for the proposition that it constitutes an unconstitutional amendment to drop from an indictment those allegations that are unnecessary to an offense that is clearly contained within it, that case has simply not survived. To avoid further confusion, we now explicitly reject that proposition. Rejecting this aspect of Bain is hardly a radical step, however, given that in the years since Bain this Court has largely ignored this element of the case. Moreover, in rejecting this proposition's continued validity, we do not limit Bain's more general proposition concerning the impermissibility of actual additions to the offenses alleged in an indictment, a proposition we have repeatedly reaffirmed. See Part I, text accompanying n. That our holding today is fully consistent with prior legal understanding is apparent from an examination of the state of the law, as seen by Chief Justice Stone, more than 40 years ago: "An indictment is amended when it is so altered as to charge a different offense from that found by the grand *145 jury. Ex parte Bain, But here there was no alteration of the indictment, nor did the court's action, in effect, add anything to it by submitting to the jury matters which it did not charge. United v. Norris, In we explicitly held that where an indictment charges several offenses, or the commission of one offense in several ways, the withdrawal from the jury's consideration of one offense or one alleged method of committing it does not constitute a forbidden amendment of the See also ; Were the rule otherwise the common practice of withdrawing from the jury's consideration one count of an indictment while submitting others for its verdict, sustained in Dealy v. United would be a fatal error." United - V In light of the foregoing, the proper disposition of this case is clear. The variance complained of added nothing new to the grand jury's indictment and constituted no broadening. As in Salinger and Ford, what was removed from the case was in no way essential to the offense on which the jury convicted. |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | Dorothy Jackson summoned police officers to her house to report that her daughter Gail Fischer had been beaten. Fischer told police that Ed Rodriguez, her boyfriend, was her assaulter. During an interview with Fischer, one of the officers asked if Rodriguez dealt in narcotics. Fischer did not respond. Fischer did agree, however, to the officers' request to let them into Rodriguez's apartment so that they could arrest him for battery. The police, without a warrant and despite the absence of an exigency, entered Rodriguez's home to arrest him. As a result of their entry, the police discovered narcotics that the State subsequently sought to introduce in a drug prosecution against Rodriguez. The majority agrees with the Illinois Appellate Court's determination that Fischer did not have authority to consent to the officers' entry of Rodriguez's apartment. Ante, at 181-182. The Court holds that the warrantless entry into Rodriguez's home was nonetheless valid if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent. Ante this page. The majority's defense of this position rests on a misconception of the basis for third-party consent searches. That *190 such searches do not give rise to claims of constitutional violations rests not on the premise that they are "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment, see ante, at 183-184, but on the premise that a person may voluntarily limit his expectation of privacy by allowing others to exercise authority over his possessions. Cf. Thus, an individual's decision to permit another "joint access [to] or control [over the property] for most purposes," United limits that individual's reasonable expectation of privacy and to that extent limits his Fourth Amendment protections. Cf. If an individual has not so limited his expectation of privacy, the police may not dispense with the safeguards established by the Fourth Amendment. The baseline for the reasonableness of a search or seizure in the home is the presence of a warrant. Indeed, "searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable." Exceptions to the warrant requirement must therefore serve "compelling" law enforcement goals. Because the sole law enforcement purpose underlying third-party consent searches is avoiding the inconvenience of securing a warrant, a departure from the warrant requirement is not justified simply because an officer reasonably believes a third party has consented to a search of the defendant's home. In holding otherwise, the majority ignores our longstanding view that "the informed and deliberate determinations *191 of magistrates as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers and others who may happen to |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | hurried action of officers and others who may happen to make arrests." United I The Fourth Amendment provides that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their houses shall not be violated." We have recognized that the "physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed." United We have further held that "a search or seizure carried out on a suspect's premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions." Those exceptions must be crafted in light of the warrant requirement's purposes. As this Court stated in : "The presence of a search warrant serves a high function. Absent some grave emergency, the Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police. This was done not to shield criminals nor to make the home a safe haven for illegal activities. It was done so that an objective mind might weigh the need to invade that privacy in order to enforce the law. The right of privacy was deemed too precious to entrust to the discretion of those whose job is the detection of crime and the arrest of criminals." The Court has tolerated departures from the warrant requirement only when an exigency makes a warrantless search imperative to the safety of the police and of the community. See, e. g., ; ; ; The Court has often heard, and steadfastly rejected, the invitation to carve out further exceptions to the warrant requirement for searches of the home because of the burdens on police investigation and prosecution of crime. Our rejection of such claims is not due to a lack of appreciation of the difficulty and importance of effective law enforcement, but rather to our firm commitment to "the view of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the privacy of a person's home and property may not be totally sacrificed in the name of maximum simplicity in enforcement of the criminal law." at 393 ). In the absence of an exigency, then, warrantless home searches and seizures are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The weighty constitutional interest in preventing unauthorized intrusions into the home overrides any law enforcement interest in relying on the reasonable but potentially mistaken belief that a third party has authority to consent to such a search or seizure. Indeed, as the present case illustrates, only the minimal interest in avoiding the inconvenience of obtaining a warrant weighs in on the law enforcement side. Against |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | a warrant weighs in on the law enforcement side. Against this law enforcement interest in expediting arrests is "the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." To be sure, in some cases in which police officers reasonably rely on a *193 third party's consent, the consent will prove valid, no intrusion will result, and the police will have been spared the inconvenience of securing a warrant. But in other cases, such as this one, the authority claimed by the third party will be false. The reasonableness of police conduct must be measured in light of the possibility that the target has not consented. Where "[n]o reason is offered for not obtaining a search warrant except the inconvenience to the officers and some slight delay necessary to prepare papers and present the evidence to a magistrate," the Constitution demands that the warrant procedure be observed. The concerns of expediting police work and avoiding paperwork "are never very convincing reasons and, in these circumstances, certainly are not enough to by-pass the constitutional requirement." In this case, as in Johnson, "[n]o suspect was fleeing or likely to take flight. The search was of permanent premises, not of a movable vehicle. No evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction If the officers in this case were excused from the constitutional duty of presenting their evidence to a magistrate, it is difficult to think of a case in which it should be required." Unlike searches conducted pursuant to the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, see third-party consent searches are not based on an exigency and therefore serve no compelling social goal. Police officers, when faced with the choice of relying on consent by a third party or securing a warrant, should secure a warrant and must therefore accept the risk of error should they instead choose to rely on consent. II Our prior cases discussing searches based on third-party consent have never suggested that such searches are "reasonable." In United this Court upheld a warrantless search conducted pursuant to the consent of a *194 third party who was living with the defendant. The Court rejected the defendant's challenge to the search, stating that a person who permits others to have "joint access or control for most purposes assume[s] the risk that [such persons] might permit the common area to be searched." 4 U.S., at ; see also U.S. 731, As the Court's assumption-of-risk analysis makes clear, third-party consent limits a person's ability to challenge the reasonableness of the search only because |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | ability to challenge the reasonableness of the search only because that person voluntarily has relinquished some of his expectation of privacy by sharing access or control over his property with another person. A search conducted pursuant to an officer's reasonable but mistaken belief that a third party had authority to consent is thus on an entirely different constitutional footing from one based on the consent of a third party who in fact has such authority. Even if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent, she did not, and Rodriguez's expectation of privacy was therefore undiminished. Rodriguez accordingly can challenge the warrantless intrusion into his home as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This conclusion flows directly from There, the Court required the suppression of evidence seized in reliance on a hotel clerk's consent to a warrantless search of a guest's room. The Court reasoned that the guest's right to be free of unwarranted intrusion "was a right which only [he] could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent." Accordingly, the Court rejected resort to "unrealistic doctrines of `apparent authority'" as a means of upholding the search to which the guest had not consented.[1] *195 III Acknowledging that the third party in this case lacked authority to consent, the majority seeks to rely on cases suggesting that reasonable but mistaken factual judgments by police will not invalidate otherwise reasonable searches. The majority reads these cases as establishing a "general rule" that "what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by agents of the governmentwhether the magistrate issuing a warrant, the police officer executing a warrant, or the police officer conducting a search or seizure under one of the exceptions to the *196 warrant requirementis not that they always be correct, but that they always be reasonable." Ante, at 185-186. The majority's assertion, however, is premised on the erroneous assumption that third-party consent searches are generally reasonable. The cases the majority cites thus provide no support for its holding. In for example, the Court confirmed the unremarkable proposition that police need only probable cause, not absolute certainty, to justify the arrest of a suspect on a highway. As Brinegar makes clear, the possibility of factual error is built into the probable cause standard, and such a standard, by its very definition, will in some cases result in the arrest of a suspect who has not actually committed a crime. Because probable cause defines the reasonableness of searches and seizures outside of the home, a search is reasonable under the |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | outside of the home, a search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment whenever that standard is met, notwithstanding the possibility of "mistakes" on the part of police. In contrast, our cases have already struck the balance against warrantless home intrusions in the absence of an exigency. See Because reasonable factual errors by law enforcement officers will not validate unreasonable searches, the reasonableness of the officer's mistaken belief that the third party had authority to consent is irrelevant.[2] *197 The majority's reliance on is also misplaced. In Garrison, the police obtained a valid warrant for the search of the "third floor apartment" of a building whose third floor in fact housed two apartments. Although the police had probable cause to search only one of the apartments, they entered both apartments because "[t]he objective facts available to the officers at the time suggested no distinction between [the apartment for which they legitimately had the warrant and the entire third floor]." The Court held that the officers' reasonable mistake of fact did not render the search unconstitutional. -89. As in Brinegar, the Court's decision was premised on the general reasonableness of the type of police action involved. Because searches based on warrants are generally reasonable, the officers' reasonable mistake of fact did not render their search "unreasonable." This reasoning is evident in the Court's conclusion that little would be gained by adopting additional burdens "over and above the bedrock requirement that, with the exceptions we have traced in our cases, the police may conduct searches only pursuant to a reasonably detailed warrant." Garrison, Garrison, like Brinegar, thus tells us nothing about the reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment of a warrantless arrest in the home based on an officer's reasonable but mistaken belief that the third party consenting to the arrest was empowered to do so. The majority's glib assertion that "[i]t would be superfluous to multiply" its citations to cases like Brinegar, Hill, and Garrison, ante, at 185, is thus correct, but for a reason entirely different than the majority suggests. Those cases provide no illumination of the issue raised in this case, and further citation to like cases would be *198 as superfluous as the discussion on which the majority's conclusion presently depends. IV Our cases demonstrate that third-party consent searches are free from constitutional challenge only to the extent that they rest on consent by a party empowered to do so. The majority's conclusion to the contrary ignores the legitimate expectations of privacy on which individuals are entitled to rely. That a person who allows another joint access to his property |
Justice Marshall | 1,990 | 15 | dissenting | Illinois v. Rodriguez | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112475/illinois-v-rodriguez/ | a person who allows another joint access to his property thereby limits his expectation of privacy does not justify trampling the rights of a person who has not similarly relinquished any of his privacy expectation. Instead of judging the validity of consent searches, as we have in the past, based on whether a defendant has in fact limited his expectation of privacy, the Court today carves out an additional exception to the warrant requirement for third-party consent searches without pausing to consider whether "`the exigencies of the situation' make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment," 437 U. S., at Where this free-floating creation of "reasonable" exceptions to the warrant requirement will end, now that the Court has departed from the balancing approach that has long been part of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, is unclear. But by allowing a person to be subjected to a warrantless search in his home without his consent and without exigency, the majority has taken away some of the liberty that the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect. |
Justice Stevens | 1,989 | 16 | concurring | United States v. Broce | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112177/united-states-v-broce/ | While I join the Court's opinion, I write separately to identify the doubtful character of the basic premise on which respondents' double jeopardy claim rests. Respondents assume that their price-fixing activities in April 1978 and July 1979 were not separate crimes because they were carried out pursuant to an overarching conspiracy that had been in existence for more than 25 years. "A conspiracy is a partnership in criminal purposes." United It "does not become several conspiracies because it continues over a period of time" or because it is an "agreement to commit several offenses." Thus, the continuous, cooperative effort among Kansas highway contractors to rig bids, which permeated the Kansas highway construction industry for more than 25 years, see ante, at 567, was unquestionably a single, continuing conspiracy that violated 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S. C. 1. It does not necessarily follow, however, that separate bid-rigging arrangements carried out in furtherance of an illegal master plan may not be prosecuted separately. All of the elements of a Sherman Act violation were alleged in the indictment charging respondents with price fixing on the Kansas highway project bid on April 25, 1978. App. 143a-151a. The same is true with respect to the indictment relating to the second project, bid more than a year later and to be performed in a different county. at 136a-142a. Each indictment alleged a separate crime. I am not at all sure that the fact that both may have been committed pursuant to still another continuing violation of the Sherman Act should bar separate prosecutions for each of those violations. There is something perverse in the assumption that respondents' constitutional rights may have been violated by separately prosecuting them for each of two complete and flagrant violations of the Sherman Act simply because they may also have been guilty of an ongoing and even more serious violation *581 of the same statute for more than a quarter of a century. Whether the law requires that all of these violations be merged into one is a question that need not be decided in this case. Yet I believe there is value in making it clear that the Court has not decided that question today. |
Justice Scalia | 1,988 | 9 | majority | Coy v. Iowa | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112146/coy-v-iowa/ | Appellant was convicted of two counts of lascivious acts with a child after a jury trial in which a screen placed between him and the two complaining witnesses blocked him from their sight. Appellant contends that this procedure, authorized by state statute, violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him. I In August 1985, appellant was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls earlier that month while they were camping out in the backyard of the house next door to him. According to the girls, the assailant entered their tent after they were asleep wearing a stocking over his head, shined a flashlight in their eyes, and warned them not to look at him; neither was able to describe his face. In November 1985, at the beginning of appellant's trial, the State made a motion pursuant to a recently enacted statute, Act of May 23, 1985, 6, now codified at Iowa Code 910A.14[1] to allow the complaining witnesses to testify either via closed-circuit television or behind a screen. See App. 4-5. The trial court approved the use of a large screen to be placed between appellant and the witness stand during the girls' testimony. After certain lighting adjustments *1015 in the courtroom, the screen would enable appellant dimly to perceive the witnesses, but the witnesses to see him not at all. Appellant objected strenuously to use of the screen, based first of all on his Sixth Amendment confrontation right. He argued that, although the device might succeed in its apparent aim of making the complaining witnesses feel less uneasy in giving their testimony, the Confrontation Clause directly addressed this issue by giving criminal defendants a right to face-to-face confrontation. He also argued that his right to due process was violated, since the procedure would make him appear guilty and thus erode the presumption of innocence. The trial court rejected both constitutional claims, though it instructed the jury to draw no inference of guilt from the screen. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed appellant's conviction, It rejected appellant's confrontation argument on the ground that, since the ability to cross-examine the witnesses was not impaired by the screen, there was no violation of the Confrontation Clause. It also rejected the due process argument, on the ground that the screening procedure was not inherently prejudicial. We noted probable jurisdiction, II The Sixth Amendment gives a criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." This language "comes to us on faded parchment," with a lineage that traces back to the beginnings of Western legal culture. There |
Justice Scalia | 1,988 | 9 | majority | Coy v. Iowa | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112146/coy-v-iowa/ | traces back to the beginnings of Western legal culture. There are indications that a right of confrontation existed under Roman law. The Roman Governor Festus, discussing the proper treatment of his prisoner, Paul, stated: "It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man up to die before the accused has met his accusers face to face, and has been given a chance to defend himself against the *1016 charges." Acts 25:16. It has been argued that a form of the right of confrontation was recognized in England well before the right to jury trial. The Right of Confrontation: Its History and Modern Dress, 8 J. Pub. L. 381, 384-387 (1959). Most of this Court's encounters with the Confrontation Clause have involved either the admissibility of out-of-court statements, see, e. g., ; or restrictions on the scope of cross-examination, ; Cf. (noting these two categories and finding neither applicable). The reason for that is not, as the State suggests, that these elements are the essence of the Clause's protection but rather, quite to the contrary, that there is at least some room for doubt (and hence litigation) as to the extent to which the Clause includes those elements, whereas, as Justice Harlan put it, "[s]imply as a matter of English" it confers at least "a right to meet face to face all those who appear and give evidence at trial." Simply as a matter of Latin as well, since the word "confront" ultimately derives from the prefix "con-" (from "contra" meaning "against" or "opposed") and the noun "frons" (forehead). Shakespeare was thus describing the root meaning of confrontation when he had Richard the Second say: "Then call them to our presence face to face, and frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear the accuser and the accused freely speak" Richard II, Act 1, sc. 1. We have never doubted, therefore, that the Confrontation Clause guarantees the defendant a face-to-face meeting with witnesses appearing before the trier of fact. See For example, in U.S. 47, which concerned the admissibility of prior convictions of codefendants to prove an element of the offense *1017 of receiving stolen Government property, we described the operation of the Clause as follows: "[A] fact which can be primarily established only by witnesses cannot be proved against an accused except by witnesses who confront him at the trial, upon whom he can look while being tried, whom he is entitled to cross-examine, and whose testimony he may impeach in every mode authorized by the established rules governing the trial or conduct of criminal cases." |
Justice Scalia | 1,988 | 9 | majority | Coy v. Iowa | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112146/coy-v-iowa/ | established rules governing the trial or conduct of criminal cases." Similarly, in we described a provision of the Philippine Bill of Rights as substantially the same as the Sixth Amendment, and proceeded to interpret it as intended "to secure the accused the right to be tried, so far as facts provable by witnesses are concerned, by only such witnesses as meet him face to face at the trial, who give their testimony in his presence, and give to the accused an opportunity of cross-examination." More recently, we have described the "literal right to `confront' the witness at the time of trial" as forming "the core of the values furthered by the Confrontation Clause." Last Term, the plurality opinion in stated that "[t]he Confrontation Clause provides two types of protections for a criminal defendant: the right physically to face those who testify against him, and the right to conduct cross-examination." The Sixth Amendment's guarantee of face-to-face encounter between witness and accused serves ends related both to appearances and to reality. This opinion is embellished with references to and quotations from antiquity in part to convey that there is something deep in human nature that regards face-to-face confrontation between accused and accuser as "essential to a fair trial in a criminal prosecution." What was true of old is no less true in modern times. President Eisenhower once described face-to-face confrontation as part of the code of his hometown of Abilene, Kansas. In Abilene, he said, it was necessary to "[m]eet anyone face to face with whom you *1018 disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an outraged citizenry. In this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow." Press release of remarks given to the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, November 23, 1953, quoted in The phrase still persists, "Look me in the eye and say that." Given these human feelings of what is necessary for fairness,[2] the right of confrontation *1019 "contributes to the establishment of a system of criminal justice in which the perception as well as the reality of fairness prevails." The perception that confrontation is essential to fairness has persisted over the centuries because there is much truth to it. A witness "may feel quite differently when he has to repeat his story looking at the man whom he will harm greatly by distorting or mistaking the facts. He can now understand what sort of human being that man is." Z. Chafee, The |
Justice Scalia | 1,988 | 9 | majority | Coy v. Iowa | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112146/coy-v-iowa/ | sort of human being that man is." Z. Chafee, The Blessings of Liberty 35 quoted in 3 U.S. 345, (Douglas, J., dissenting). It is always more difficult to tell a lie about a person "to his face" than "behind his back." In the former context, even if the lie is told, it will often be told less convincingly. The Confrontation Clause does not, of course, compel the witness to fix his eyes upon the defendant; he may studiously look elsewhere, but the trier of fact will draw its own conclusions. Thus the right to face-to-face confrontation serves much the same purpose as a less explicit component of the Confrontation Clause that we have had more frequent occasion to discuss *1020 the right to cross-examine the accuser; both "ensur[e] the integrity of the factfinding process." The State can hardly gainsay the profound effect upon a witness of standing in the presence of the person the witness accuses, since that is the very phenomenon it relies upon to establish the potential "trauma" that allegedly justified the extraordinary procedure in the present case. That face-to-face presence may, unfortunately, upset the truthful rape victim or abused child; but by the same token it may confound and undo the false accuser, or reveal the child coached by a malevolent adult. It is a truism that constitutional protections have costs. III The remaining question is whether the right to confrontation was in fact violated in this case. The screen at issue was specifically designed to enable the complaining witnesses to avoid viewing appellant as they gave their testimony, and the record indicates that it was successful in this objective. App. 10-11. It is difficult to imagine a more obvious or damaging violation of the defendant's right to a face-to-face encounter. The State suggests that the confrontation interest at stake here was outweighed by the necessity of protecting victims of sexual abuse. It is true that we have in the past indicated that rights conferred by the Confrontation Clause are not absolute, and may give way to other important interests. The rights referred to in those cases, however, were not the right narrowly and explicitly set forth in the Clause, but rather rights that are, or were asserted to be, reasonably implicit namely, the right to cross-examine, see ; the right to exclude out-of-court statements, see -65; and the asserted right to face-to-face confrontation at some point in the proceedings other than the trial itself, To hold that our determination of what *1021 implications are reasonable must take into account other important interests is not |
Justice Scalia | 1,988 | 9 | majority | Coy v. Iowa | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112146/coy-v-iowa/ | reasonable must take into account other important interests is not the same as holding that we can identify exceptions, in light of other important interests, to the irreducible literal meaning of the Clause: "a right to meet face to face all those who appear and give evidence at trial." 399 U. S., (emphasis added). We leave for another day, however, the question whether any exceptions exist. Whatever they may be, they would surely be allowed only when necessary to further an important public policy. Cf. ; at The State maintains that such necessity is established here by the statute, which creates a legislatively imposed presumption of trauma. Our cases suggest, however, that even as to exceptions from the normal implications of the Confrontation Clause, as opposed to its most literal application, something more than the type of generalized finding underlying such a statute is needed when the exception is not "firmly rooted in our jurisprudence." ). The exception created by the Iowa statute, which was passed in 1985, could hardly be viewed as firmly rooted. Since there have been no individualized findings that these particular witnesses needed special protection, the judgment here could not be sustained by any conceivable exception. The State also briefly suggests that any Confrontation Clause error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under the standard of We have recognized that other types of violations of the Confrontation Clause are subject to that harmless-error analysis, see e. g., 684, and see no reason why denial of face-to-face confrontation should not be treated the same. An assessment of harmlessness cannot include consideration of whether the witness' testimony would have been unchanged, or the *1022 jury's assessment unaltered, had there been confrontation; such an inquiry would obviously involve pure speculation, and harmlessness must therefore be determined on the basis of the remaining evidence. The Iowa Supreme Court had no occasion to address the harmlessness issue, since it found no constitutional violation. In the circumstances of this case, rather than decide whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we leave the issue for the court below. We find it unnecessary to reach appellant's due process claim. Since his constitutional right to face-to-face confrontation was violated, we reverse the judgment of the Iowa Supreme Court and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. JUSTICE KENNEDY took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | The question presented is whether 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 973[] requires the Federal Communications Commission to review a public television station's license renewal application under a different standard than it applies to a commercial licensee's renewal application. Contrary to the holding of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 20 U. S. App. D. C. 84, we conclude that it does not. I On October 28, 977, respondent Sue Gottfried filed a formal petition with the Federal Communications Commission requesting it to deny renewal of the television license of station KCET-TV in Los Angeles. She advanced two principal grounds for denial: First, that the licensee had failed to discharge its obligation to ascertain the problems, needs, and interests of the deaf and hearing-impaired population within its service area; and second, that the licensee had *50 violated, and remained in violation of, 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.[2] Correspondence attached to Gottfried's petition included complaints about KCET-TV's failure to carry enough programming with special captioning[3] or other aids to benefit the hearing-impaired members of the audience. The exhibits emphasized the station's failure to broadcast the ABC evening news in captioned form prior to May 23, 977, and its subsequent failure to broadcast the captioned program during prime time. In a verified opposition to the petition, the licensee recounted in some detail its efforts to ascertain the problems of the community it served, including the deaf and the hearing impaired, by a community leader survey and by a general public survey. App. in No. 79-722 (CADC), pp. 02-05. The licensee also described its programming efforts to respond to the special needs of the hearing impaired,[4] and *502 explained why its two daily broadcasts of the ABC captioned news had usually been scheduled for :30 p. m. and 6:30 a. m. The licensee specifically denied that it had violated 504 and averred that the Commission is not an appropriate forum for the adjudication of Rehabilitation Act claims. On December 22, 977, Gottfried filed a verified response, criticizing the station's public survey, and commenting further on the station's failure to rebroadcast ABC captioned news programs before May 23, 977. The response renewed the charge that the station had violated 504,[5] and asserted that the Federal Communications Commission was indeed the proper forum to evaluate that charge.[6] *503 Gottfried also filed separate formal objections to the renewal of seven commercial television station licenses in the Los Angeles area. E. g., The Commission consolidated all eight proceedings and ruled on Gottfried's objections in a single memorandum opinion adopted on August 8, 978. |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | in a single memorandum opinion adopted on August 8, 978. 69 F. C. C. 2d 45. The Commission first reviewed its own efforts to encourage the industry to serve the needs of the hearing impaired. In 970, the Commission had issued a Public Notice to all licensees, advising them of the special needs of the deaf in responding to emergency situations as well as in appreciating general television programming.[7] In 972, the Commission had granted authority to the Public Broadcasting System to begin experimentation with a "closed" captioning system, which would enable hearing-impaired persons with specially equipped television sets to receive captioned information that could not be seen by the remainder of the viewing audience.[8]*504 In 976, the Commission had adopted a rule requiring television licensees to broadcast emergency information visually. In that year, however, the Commission had also concluded that there were so many unanswered questions both technical and financial concerning the most effective means of improving television service for the hearing impaired, that it remained "the responsibility of each licensee to determine how it [could] most effectively meet those needs."[9] The Commission summarized its views concerning mandated forms of technology by noting that "there is no requirement that any television licensee commercial or noncommercial provide open or closed captioning or any other form of special visual program material other than for broadcasting emergency information." The Commission then turned to Gottfried's objections to the eight license renewals. It approached the question whether the renewals would serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity from three different perspectives: ascertainment, programming, and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. It first found that the licensees' efforts to ascertain the special needs of the community were adequate. Next, it held that the facts alleged by Gottfried did not give rise to a substantial and material question whether any of the eight stations had abused its discretion in its selection of programming matter. The Commission explained that it is more difficult to provide special programming for the hearing impaired than for other segments of the community;[0] in the *505 absence of any Commission requirement for specialized programming techniques, it found "no basis to fault a licensee for failure to provide these options for the deaf and hearing impaired in the station service area." The Commission held that 504 of the Rehabilitation Act had no application to the seven commercial licensees because they were not alleged to have received any federal financial assistance. The Commission agreed that KCET-TV might be governed by 504, and that a violation of the Act would need to |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | and that a violation of the Act would need to be considered in a license renewal proceeding, but it saw no reason to consider 504 in the absence of an adverse finding by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare "the proper governmental agency to consider such matters." On May 29, 979, the Commission adopted a second memorandum opinion and order denying Gottfried's petition for reconsideration. 72 F. C. C. 2d 273. The Commission again reviewed Gottfried's 504 charge and again concluded that the Rehabilitation Act does not apply to commercial stations and that the allegations against KCET-TV under that Act were premature unless and until the agency with authority to enforce compliance determined that the station had violated its provisions. The Commission also rejected Gottfried's additional argument that it had a duty to adopt regulations to implement 504. Finally, the Commission refused to hold that either its omission of a rule requiring "captioning or other techniques to enable the deaf and hearing impaired to have full access to television broadcasts," or the failure of the licensees to provide such services, was a violation of the "public interest" standard embodied in 309 of the Communications Act of 934, as amended. The Commission held: *506 "We find no error and nothing inconsistent in concluding that licensees are serving the public interest although they are not currently providing captioning, in view of the fact that we have not required licensees to undertake such an activity. Furthermore, to judge a licensee's qualifications on the basis of the retroactive application of such a requirement would, in our opinion, raise serious questions of fundamental fairness. Thus, there is no inconsistency or error in our finding that the subject licensees had met their public interest burden even though they did not caption their programming." Gottfried appealed the decision of the Commission to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, pursuant to 47 U.S. C. 402. The Court of Appeals affirmed the portion of the Commission's order that related to the commercial stations but vacated the renewal of the KCET-TV license and remanded for further proceedings. 20 U. S. App. D. C. 84, The court held that Congress did not intend the Commission's renewal of a broadcast license to be considered a form of "financial assistance" within the meaning of 504 and therefore that the Rehabilitation Act did not directly apply to the seven commercial stations. The court was persuaded, however, that the Act reflected a national policy of extending increased opportunities to the hearing impaired and that commercial stations must therefore make |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | the hearing impaired and that commercial stations must therefore make some accommodation for the hard of hearing, given the Communications Act's general requirement that licensees serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity." 47 U.S. C. 307(d), 309(a), 309(d). In the absence of a more specific statutory directive than that contained in the public interest standard, however, the court accepted the Commission's judgment that the commercial licenses should be renewed. "Recognizing that the Commission possesses special competence in weighing the factors of technological feasibility and economic viability that the concept of the public interest must embrace, we defer today *507 to its judgment." 20 U. S. App. D. C., at 202-, -36 The majority of the Court of Appeals reached a different conclusion with respect to KCET-TV. As a recipient of federal financial assistance, the public station was admittedly under a duty to comply with 504. The Court of Appeals did not hold that KCET-TV had violated 504, or that its efforts to provide programming for the hearing impaired were less satisfactory than the efforts of the commercial licensees; nevertheless, it held that a stricter "public interest" standard should be applied to a licensee covered by 504 than to a commercial licensee. Its narrow holding was that the Commission could not find the service of public stations "to be adequate to justify renewal without at least inquiring specifically into their efforts to meet the programming needs of the hearing impaired." Judge McGowan dissented in part. He agreed with the majority's view concerning commercial stations that rulemaking would be "a better, fairer, and more effective vehicle for considering how the broadcast industry is required to provide the enjoyment and educational benefits of television to persons with impaired hearing," 36, than case-by-case adjudication in license renewal proceedings. He felt, however, that the same standard should be applied to public stations until regulations had been issued by the Department of Education dealing specifically with the rights of access of the hearing impaired to television programs.[] Judge McGowan stated: "[F]orm is favored over substance when commercial stations are, for this reason, spared the expense and uncertainty of renewal hearings, and a noncommercial station is not. Neither, on the record before us, had advance notice during their expired license terms of what was, and therefore could reasonably be, expected *508 of them with respect to the wholly laudable, but technically complex, objective of providing access for the hearing impaired." Both the Commission and the licensee petitioned for certiorari. Because of the serious implications of the Court of Appeals' holding on the status of licenses of public |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | of Appeals' holding on the status of licenses of public broadcasting stations, we granted both petitions. II All parties agree that the public interest would be served by making television broadcasting more available and more understandable to the substantial portion of our population that is handicapped by impaired hearing.[2] The Commission recognized this component of the public interest even before the enactment of the Rehabilitation Act of 973, see The Use of Telecasts to Inform and Alert Viewers with Impaired Hearing, 26 F. C. C. 2d 97 (970), and that statute confirms the federal interest in developing the opportunities for all individuals with handicaps to live full and independent lives. No party suggests that a licensee, whether commercial or public, may simply ignore the needs of the hearing impaired in discharging its responsibilities to the community which it serves.[3] *509 We are not persuaded, however, that Congress intended the Rehabilitation Act of 973 to impose any new enforcement obligation on the Federal Communications Commission.[4] As originally enacted, the Act did not expressly allocate enforcement responsibility. See Tit. V, 504, Nevertheless, since 504 was patterned after Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 964, it was understood that responsibility for enforcing it, insofar as it regulated private recipients of federal funds, would lie with those agencies administering the federal financial assistance programs. See S. Rep. No. 93-297, pp. 39-40 (974). When the Act was amended in 978, that understanding was made explicit. See Tit. I, 9, ; n. It is clear that the Commission is not a funding agency and has never been thought to have responsibility for enforcing 504.[5] Furthermore, there is not a *50 word in the legislative history of the Act suggesting that it was intended to alter the Commission's standard for reviewing the programming decisions of public television licensees. If a licensee should be found guilty of violating the Rehabilitation Act, or indeed of violating any other federal statute, the Commission would certainly be obligated to consider the possible relevance of such a violation in determining whether or not to renew the lawbreaker's license.[6] But in the absence of a direction in the Rehabilitation Act itself, and without any expression of such intent in the legislative history, we are unwilling to assume that Congress has instructed the Federal Communications Commission to take original jurisdiction over the processing of charges that its regulatees have violated that Act.[7] *5 The fact that a public television station has a duty to comply with the Rehabilitation Act does not support the quite different conclusion that the Commission must evaluate a |
Justice Stevens | 1,983 | 16 | majority | Community Television of Southern Cal. v. Gottfried | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110830/community-television-of-southern-cal-v-gottfried/ | the quite different conclusion that the Commission must evaluate a public station's service to the handicapped community by a more stringent standard than that applicable to commercial stations. The interest in having all television stations public and commercial consider and serve their handicapped viewers is equally strong. By the same token, it is equally unfair to criticize a licensee whether public or commercial for failing to comply with a requirement of which it had no notice.[8] As both the majority and the dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals observed, rulemaking is generally a "better, fairer, and more effective" method of implementing a new industrywide policy than is the uneven application of conditions in isolated license renewal proceedings. That observation should be as determinative in relicensing a public station as it is in relicensing a commercial station. A federal agency providing financial assistance to a public television station may, of course, attach conditions to its subsidy *52 that will have the effect of subjecting such a licensee to more stringent requirements than must be met by a commercial licensee. Or regulations may be promulgated under the Rehabilitation Act that impose special obligations on the subsidized licensee. Conceivably, the Federal Communications Commission might determine that the policies underlying the Communications Act require extraordinary efforts to make certain types of programming universally accessible, thereby placing heightened responsibility on certain stations. But unless and until such a differential standard has been promulgated, the Federal Communications Commission does not abuse its discretion in interpreting the public interest standard, see when it declines to impose a greater obligation to provide special programming for the hearing impaired on a public licensee than on a commercial licensee.[9] The Court of Appeals was unanimous in its holding that the renewal of the seven commercial licensees was consistent with the public interest requirement in 309 of the Federal Communications Act. Neither that court nor the Commission suggested that there was anything in the record that would justify treating the public licensee differently from the commercial licensees if both classes were to be judged under the same standard. The Court of Appeals' affirmance of the Commission's rejection of Gottfried's objection to the renewal of the commercial licenses therefore requires a like disposition of the objections to the renewal of the KCET-TV license. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed insofar as it vacated the order of the Commission. It is so ordered. |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112069/bankers-life-casualty-co-v-crenshaw/ | I do not agree with the Court's analysis of our jurisdiction over appellant's federal due process claim. I therefore do not join Part II or footnote 1 of the Court's opinion. I join the remainder of the opinion, and I agree with the analysis of Part II insofar as claims under the Excessive Fines Clause and Contract Clause are concerned. Moreover, for the reasons given below, I ultimately concur in the Court's judgment with respect to the due process claim as well. In its brief on appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, appellant expressly invoked the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and argued that Mississippi law chilled its fundamental right of access to the courts by authorizing unlimited punitive damages. App. to Juris. Statement 135a. The Court does not acknowledge this argument in its discussion of why the due process claim was not raised and passed upon below, but only notes that appellant did not present a due process argument clearly in its petition for rehearing. Ante, at 77. The Court suggests that it need not consider the due process argument raised in appellant's brief to the Mississippi Supreme Court because it is "distinct from the attack on the size of the particular award that appellant has waged before this Court." Ante, at 75, n. 1. Standing alone, this observation is insufficient to deprive this Court of jurisdiction over appellant's due process claim. "Parties are not confined here to the same arguments which were advanced in the courts below upon a Federal question there discussed." See *87 Accordingly, the Court should examine the federal due process argument that appellant makes in this Court to determine whether it is "only an enlargement" of the due process argument it raised below. See In its principal brief in this Court, appellant contends that the Mississippi Supreme Court changed its standard for judging when an insurer may be liable for punitive damages and applied the new standard retroactively to this case. Appellant explains that it therefore had no advance notice of what conduct could render it liable for punitive damages. Citing cases in which this Court has struck down criminal statutes as void for vagueness, e. g., ; appellant maintains that this violated the Due Process Clause. Brief for Appellant 40-43. Then, in a supplemental brief filed after argument with the Court's leave, appellant expands the due process argument pressed below and mounts a more general attack on permitting juries to impose unlimited punitive damages on an ad hoc basis. Postargument Brief for Appellant 4-10. Appellant has touched on a due process |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112069/bankers-life-casualty-co-v-crenshaw/ | for Appellant 4-10. Appellant has touched on a due process issue that I think is worthy of the Court's attention in an appropriate case. Mississippi law gives juries discretion to award any amount of punitive damages in any tort case in which a defendant acts with a certain mental state. In my view, because of the punitive character of such awards, there is reason to think that this may violate the Due Process Clause. Punitive damages are awarded not to compensate for injury but, rather, "to punish reprehensible conduct and to deter its future occurrence." Punitive damages are not measured against actual injury, so there is no objective standard that limits their amount. Hence, "the impact of these windfall recoveries is unpredictable and potentially substantial." Electrical For these reasons, the Court has forbidden the award of punitive damages *88 in defamation suits brought by private plaintiffs, at 349-, and in unfair representation suits brought against unions under the Railway Labor Act, Electrical For similar reasons, the Court should scrutinize carefully the procedures under which punitive damages are awarded in civil lawsuits. Under Mississippi law, the jury may award punitive damages for any common law tort committed with a certain mental state, that is, "for a willful and intentional wrong, or for such gross negligence and reckless negligence as is equivalent to such a wrong." Although this standard may describe the required mental state with sufficient precision, the amount of the penalty that may ensue is left completely indeterminate. As the Mississippi Supreme Court said, "the determination of the amount of punitive damages is a matter committed solely to the authority and discretion of the jury." This grant of wholly standardless discretion to determine the severity of punishment appears inconsistent with due process. The Court has recognized that "vague sentencing provisions may pose constitutional questions if they do not state with sufficient clarity the consequences of violating a given criminal statute." United Nothing in Mississippi law warned appellant that by committing a tort that caused $20,000 of actual damages, it could expect to incur a $1.6 million punitive damages award. This due process question, serious as it is, should not be decided today. The argument was not appellant's principal submission to this Court. The analysis in the briefs and the discussion at oral argument were correspondingly abbreviated. Although the Court could assert jurisdiction over the due process question on the theory that the argument made here was a "mere enlargement" of the due process argument raised below, it would not be prudent to do so. Accordingly, *89 I concur in the |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112069/bankers-life-casualty-co-v-crenshaw/ | prudent to do so. Accordingly, *89 I concur in the Court's judgment on this question and would leave for another day the consideration of these issues. JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. I join Part I (except for footnote 1) and Part III of the opinion of the Court, and concur in its judgment. As to Part II, I agree with JUSTICE WHITE that the question of our entertaining the issues there discussed should be resolved as a matter of law, and not of discretion, and I therefore join his opinion. The Court having chosen not to follow that course, I agree with JUSTICE O'CONNOR regarding the basis on which our discretion should be exercised concerning the due process claim, and therefore join her opinion. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in part and dissenting in part. I join Parts I and II of the Court's opinion, for I agree that the Court should refrain from addressing appellant's challenge to the punitive damages awarded against it. I also agree with the Court's conclusion that appellant's challenge to Mississippi's "penalty statute," (Supp. 1987), is properly before the Court under its appellate jurisdiction. See 28 U.S. C. 1257(2). Nonetheless, because I conclude that the statute cannot survive scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent from the Court's conclusion to the contrary. Section 11-3-23 " `is in the nature of a penalty, or a condition of appeal.' " quoting Not all unsuccessful appellants, however, are subject to its penalizing effect. The statute imposes lump-sum "damages." calculated at 15% of the value of the underlying judgment, on an appellant who unsuccessfully appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court a money judgment *90 or possessory action.[1] Although the penalty applies to both the defendant and the prevailing but unsatisfied plaintiff who unsuccessfully appeals, it does not apply to the plaintiff who unsuccessfully appeals an adverse judgment or to the unsuccessful cross-appellant. There can be little doubt that this damages assessment burdens the statutory right of a litigant to appeal a money judgment. The statute makes it substantially more expensive to exercise the right if the judgment is ultimately affirmed, and it thereby obviously creates a disincentive to appeal.[2] The Court concludes that "the means chosen in 11-3-23 are reasonably related to the achievement of the State's objectives of discouraging frivolous appeals, compensating appellees for the intangible costs of litigation, and conserving judicial resources." *91 Ante, at 85. In my view, the 15% automatic penalty provision is not at all "reasonably related" to any of these interests.[3] To the contrary, the |
Justice O'Connor | 1,988 | 14 | concurring | Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw | https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/112069/bankers-life-casualty-co-v-crenshaw/ | related" to any of these interests.[3] To the contrary, the relationship of the statutory classification of a money-judgment appellant to the asserted governmental goals "is so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary [and] irrational." There is no rational relationship between the statute and the State's asserted desire to compensate a prevailing appellee for "having endured the slings and arrows of successful appellate litigation," whether the costs of that litigation are measured in economic or noneconomic terms. There is no reasonable justification for compensating only plaintiffs who prevail against an appeal. Defendants who have successfully defended in trial court against suits seeking money damages and who are subjected to appeals that prove unsuccessful are similarly burdened by the added emotional and financial costs of the appellate process. Yet, under the statute, they receive no "compensation" because the penalty is not imposed on nonprevailing plaintiffs who unsuccessfully appeal. The statute arbitrarily discriminates against defendant-appellants of money judgments, and the State offers no justification for the distinction so drawn. Not surprisingly, then, the Court makes no attempt to justify 11-3-23 based upon the "compensation" objective, despite its reference to that state interest. Instead, it upholds the penalty statute as reasonably related to Mississippi's interest in discouraging frivolous appeals and thereby protecting the Mississippi Supreme Court "from being required to spend its time and energy and resources on appeals thoughtlessly taken." See ante, at 81-82. In the Court explained that a State might adopt "reasonable procedural provisions to discourage patently insubstantial appeals, if these rules are reasonably tailored to achieve these ends and if they are uniformly and nondiscriminatorily applied." But 11-3-23 does not meet this standard. The penalty is neither applied in a uniform and nondiscriminatory manner, nor reasonably tailored to discourage "patently insubstantial appeals." Section 11-3-23 does not permit the Mississippi Supreme Court to determine whether an appeal is frivolous; the 15% penalty is imposed on certain unsuccessful appellants whenever the judgment is affirmed, regardless of the substantial merit of the appellant's case. Thus, even if, as in this very case, a money judgment is affirmed by a narrow 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court, the assessment automatically is made. Such a provision obviously sweeps substantial appeals as well as frivolous appeals within its deterrent net.[4] The claim that 11-3-23 operates to screen out frivolous appeals is no more persuasive than was the same claim advanced in Lindsey in support of the Oregon double-bond requirement. This Court found the argument "unpersuasive" in Lindsey because the Oregon requirement "bars nonfrivolous appeals by those who are unable to post the bond but also |
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