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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we must decide whether a District Judge may impose a sentence of less than five years, suspend the sentence, place the offender on probation, or specify that he be eligible for parole, where the offender was convicted of a federal narcotics offense that was committed before May 1, 1971, but where he was sentenced after that date. Petitioners were convicted of conspiring to violate 26 U. S. C. § 4705 (a) (1964 ed.) by selling cocaine not in pursuance of a written order form, in violation of 26 U. S. C. § 7237 (b) (1964 ed.). The conspiracy occurred in March 1971. At that time, persons convicted of such violations were subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. The sentence could not be suspended, nor could probation be granted, and parole pursuant to 18 U. S. C. § 4202 was unavailable. 26 U. S. C. § 7237 (d) (1964 ed. and Supp. V). These provisions were repealed by §§ 1101 (b)(3)(A) and (b) (4) (A) of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 84 Stat. 1292. The effective date of that Act was May 1, 1971, five days before petitioners were convicted.
Each petitioner was sentenced to a five-year term. On appeal to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, various points, not here relevant, were raised. Following affirmance of their convictions, petitioners moved that their sentences be vacated and their cases be remanded to the District Court for resentencing pursuant to Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 35. In their motion they contended that the District Court should have considered “certain sentencing alternatives, including probation, suspension of sentence and parole” which became available on May 1, 1971. The Court of Appeals considered this motion as an “appendage” to the appeal. It held that the specific saving clause of the 1970 Act, § 1103 (a), read against the background of the general saving provision, 1 U. S. C. § 109, required that “narcotics offenses committed prior to May 1, 1971, are to be punished according to the law in force at the time of the offense,” and that “under the mandate of § 109 the repealed statute, §7237 (d) is ‘[to] be treated as still remaining in force.’ ” 455 F. 2d 1181, 1190, 1191. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals held that the trial judge lacked power to impose a lesser sentence.
We granted the petition for writ of certiorari, 407 U. S. 908 (1972), in order to resolve the conflict between the First and Ninth Circuits, see United States v. Stephens, 449 F. 2d 103 (CA9 1971).
I
At common law, the repeal of a criminal statute abated all prosecutions which had not reached final disposition in the highest court authorized to review them. See Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, 230 (1964); Norris v. Crocker, 13 How. 429 (1852). Abatement by repeal included a statute’s repeal and re-enactment with different penalties. See 1 J. Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory-Construction § 2031 n. 2 (3d ed. 1943). And the rule applied even when the penalty was reduced. See, e. g., The King v. M‘Kenzie, 168 Eng. Rep. 881 (Cr. Cas. 1820); Beard v. State, 74 Md. 130, 21 A. 700 (1891). To avoid such results, legislatures frequently indicated an intention not to abate pending prosecutions by including in the repealing statute a specific clause stating that prosecutions of offenses under the repealed statute were not to be abated. See generally Note, Today’s Law and Yesterday’s Crime: Retroactive Application of Ameliorative Criminal Legislation, 121 U. Pa. L. Rev. 120, 121— 130 (1972).
Section 1103 (a) of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 is such a saving clause. It provides:
“Prosecutions for any violation of law occurring prior to the effective date of [the Act] shall not be affected by the repeals or amendments made by [it] ... or abated by reason thereof.”
Petitioners contend that the word “prosecutions” in § 1103 (a) must be given its everyday meaning. When people speak of prosecutions, they usually mean a proceeding that is under way in which guilt is to be determined. In ordinary usage, sentencing is not part of the prosecution, but occurs after the prosecution has concluded. In providing that “[p]rosecutions . . . shall not be affected,” § 1103 (a) means only that a defendant may be found guilty of an offense which occurred before May 1, 1971. The repeal of the statute creating the offense does not, on this narrow interpretation of § 1103 (a), prevent a finding of guilt. But § 1103 (a) does nothing more, according to petitioners.
Although petitioners’ argument has some force, we believe that their position is not consistent with Congress’ intent. Rather than using terms in their everyday sense, “[t]he law uses familiar legal expressions in their familiar legal sense.” Henry v. United States, 251 U. S. 393, 395 (1920). The term “prosecution” clearly imports a beginning and an end. Cf. Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972); Mempa v. Rhay, 389 U. S. 128 (1967).
In Berman v. United States, 302 U. S. 211 (1937), this Court said, “Final judgment in a criminal case means sentence. The sentence is the judgment. Miller v. Aderhold, 288 U. S. 206, 210; Hill v. Wampler, 298 U. S. 460, 464.” Id., at 212. In the legal sense, a prosecution terminates only when sentence is imposed. See also Korematsu v. United States, 319 U. S. 432 (1943); United States v. Murray, 275 U. S. 347 (1928); Affronti v. United States, 350 U. S. 79 (1955). So long as sentence has not been imposed, then, § 1103 (a) is to leave the prosecution unaffected.
We therefore conclude that the Court of Appeals properly rejected petitioners’ motion to vacate sentence and remand for resentencing. The District Judge had no power to consider suspending petitioners’ sentences or placing them on probation. Those decisions must ordinarily be made before the prosecution terminates, and § 1103 (a) preserves the limitations of § 7237 (d) on decisions made at that time.
II
The courts of appeals that have dealt with this problem have failed, however, to consider fully the special problem of the parole eligibility of offenders convicted before May 1, 1971. The Seventh and Ninth Circuits hold that such offenders are eligible for parole. The First Circuit in this case stated that petitioners were “ineligible for suspended sentences, parole, or probation.” 455 F. 2d, at 1191 (emphasis added).
In the federal system, offenders may be made eligible for parole in two ways. Any federal prisoner “whose record shows that he has observed the rules of the institution in which he is confined, may be released on parole after serving one-third of” his sentence. 18 U. S. C. § 4202. Alternatively, the District Judge, “[u]pon entering a judgment of conviction . . . may (1) designate in the sentence of imprisonment imposed a minimum term, at the expiration of which the prisoner shall become eligible for parole, which term may be less than, but shall not be more than one-third of the maximum sentence imposed by the court, or (2) the court may fix the maximum sentence of imprisonment to be served, in which event the court may specify that the prisoner may become eligible for parole at such time as the board of parole may determine.” 18 U. S. C. §4208 (a).
Section 1103 (a) clearly makes parole unavailable under the latter provision. As we have said, sentencing is part of the prosecution. The mandatory minimum sentence of five years must therefore be imposed on offenders wdio violated the law before May 1, 1971. And Congress specifically provided that § 4208 (a) does not apply to any offense “for which there is provided a mandatory penalty.” Pub. L. 85-752, § 7, 72 Stat. 847. In any event, the decision to make early parole available under §4208 (a) must be made “[u]pon entering a judgment of conviction,” which occurs before the prosecution has ended. Section 1103 (a) thus means that the District Judge cannot specify at the time of sentencing that the offender may be eligible for early parole.
That was the only question before the Court of Appeals, and it is therefore the only question before us. Petitioners’ motion, on which the Court of Appeals ruled, requested a remand so that the District Judge could consider the sentencing alternatives available to him under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. That Act, however, did not expand the choices open to the District Judge in this case, and the Court of Appeals correctly denied the motion to remand. The availability of parole under the general parole statute, 18 U. S. C. § 4202, is a rather different matter, on which we express no opinion.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice White join Part I of the Court’s opinion and would affirm for the reasons there expressed. They are also of the view that § 1103 (a) forecloses the availability of parole under both 18 U. S. C. § 4202 and 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (a), and that even if this were debatable as to § 4202, the general saving statute, 1 U. S. C. § 109, clearly mandates that conclusion as to that section. They therefore do not join Part II of the Court’s opinion. •
Petitioners Bradley, Helliesen, and Odell were found guilty also of unlawfully carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §924 (c)(2). Each was sentenced to one year in prison; the sentences were suspended, and each was placed on probation for three years on these counts.
See also United States v. McGarr, 461 F. 2d 1 (CA7 1972); United States v. Fiotto, 454 F. 2d 252 (CA2 1972).
These cases involve determining whether a judgment in a criminal case is final for the purpose of appeal and determining whether the function of the trial judge has been concluded so that he may not alter the sentence previously imposed to include probation. The precise issues are, of course, different from the issue in this case. But these cases do show the point at which a prosecution terminates, and that is the issue here.
Petitioners also argue that imposition of sentence precedes the suspension of sentence and the grant of probation. But the actions of the District Judge in imposing sentence and then ordering that it be suspended are usually so close in time that it would be unrealistic to hold that Congress intended so to fragment what is essentially a single proceeding.
See n. 2, supra. We were informed at oral argument that “the Board of Parole is now considering as eligible for parole only defendants who have been sentenced in the Seventh and Ninth Circuits for narcotics offenses.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 23. Our disposition of this case has no bearing on the power of the Board of Parole to consider parole eligibility for petitioners under 18 U. S. C. § 4202. See infra, at 611.
The decision to grant parole under §4202 lies with the Board of Parole, not with the District Judge, and must be made long after sentence has been entered and the prosecution terminated. Whether § 1103 (a) or the general saving statute, 1 U. S. C. § 109, limits that decision is a question we cannot consider in this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Goldberg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case, stripped of its procedural complexities, raises the question whether an alien long resident in this country is deportable-because, for a period during 1949 and 1950, he paid' dues to and attended several meetings of a club of the Communist Party in Los Angeles. The Immigration and Naturalization Service sought and obtained an order for petitioner’s deportation on the ground that these facts established petitioner’s membership in the. Communist Party of the United States within the meaning of § 241 (a)(6)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 163, 204-205, 8 U. S. C. § 1251 (a)(6)(C). Whether membership was so established turns on the application of- two decisions of this Court which construed the immediate predecessor of. §241 (a)(6)(C), § 22 of the Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 987, 1006, 1008. In Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, 528, it was held that deportability on the ground of Communist Party membership turns on whether the alien was “aware that he was joining an organization known as the Communist Party which operates as a distinct and active political organization . . . ,” and in Rowoldt v. Perfetto, 355 U. S. 115, 120, it was held, in elaboration of Galvan, that the alien must have had .a “meaningful association” with the Communist Party-in order to be deportable. The evidence, in the record-, to which the standards set forth in these decisions must be applied, was all elicited at hearings before the Service’s special inquiry officer in 1956. This evidence consists solely of the testimony of two government witnesses, petitioner having chosen to introduce no evidence.
The special inquiry officer entered a deportation order against petitioner on February 28, 1957. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed petitioner’s appeal on November 14, 1957, on the ground that the record established his voluntary membership in the Communist Party. A few weeks later, this Court decided Rowoldt v. Perfetto, supra, and petitioner asked the Board to reconsider its decision in light of the opinion in that case. The Board denied the application, pointing out that the record as it stood still supported the deportation order. It did, however, order a reopening of the proceedings before the special inquiry officer so that petitioner might have a chance to offer rebuttal testimony and thereby bring himself, possibly, within the framework of the Rowoldt decision.
At the reopened hearing, however, petitioner’s counsel took the position that on the record as„ it stood the Government had failed to establish Communist Party membership in the sense contemplated by the Rowoldt decision, and therefore chose not to offer further evidence. The Government also offered no additional evidence. The special inquiry officer reaffirmed his previous decision and the Board of Immigration Appeals on May 18, 1959, dismissed petitioner’s appeal. Petitioner thereupon filed an action in Federal District Court for review of the deportation order. That court granted the Government’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the action. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the dismissal, 109 U. S. App. D. C. 267, 286 F. 2d 324, and this Court denied a petition for certiorari, 365 U. S. 871.
Petitioner read the Court of Appeals’ opinion as suggesting that § 241 (a)(6)(C) would not have applied to him if he had introduced evidence that he had not personally advocated the forcible overthrow of the Government. He therefore moved before the Board of Immigration Appeals that the deportation hearing be reopened to permit him to introduce evidénce that he did not personally advocate the violent overthrow of the Government. The Board of Immigration Appeals heard oral argument on the motion and, on August 1,1961, denied it.
Petitioner then brought the present action in the District Court, praying that the Board be ordered to reopen the deportation hearing and that the Attorney General and his agents be enjoined from enforcing the outstanding deportation order. A preliminary injunction to the latter effect was also requested. The court denied the motion for preliminary injunction on August 14, 1961, and the Court of Appeals summarily affirmed this denial on September 13. Petitioner filed a petition for certiorari in this Court to review the denial of preliminary injunctive relief, and The Chief Justice ordered deportation stayed until the petition should be disposed of. Meanwhile, summary judgment was granted the Government on the merits of petitioner’s complaint, which was thereupon dismissed, a disposition which was summarily affirmed by the Court of Appeals on February 23, 1962. Petitioner filed an additional petition for certiorari to review this judgment. We granted both petitions. 371 U. S. 860. No. 39 involves the preliminary injunction, and No. 293 relates to the ultimate dismissal of petitioner’s complaint on the merits.
In determining whether, on the record before us, the Government has fulfilled its burden of proving that petitioner was a “member” of the Communist Party of the United States within the meaning of § 241 (a) (6) (C), we. must recognize at the outset what the history of the times amply demonstrates, that some Americans have joined the Communist Party without understanding its nature as a distinct political entity. The Bowoldt decision, as well as other decisions of this Court, reflects that there is a great practical and legal difference between those who firmly attach themselves to the Communist Party being aware of all of the aims and purposes attributed to it, and those who temporarily join the Party, knowing nothing of its international relationships and believing it to be a group solely trying to remedy unsatisfactory social or economic conditions, carry out trade-union objectives, eliminate racial discrimination, combat unemployment, or alleviate distress and poverty. Although the Court specifically recognized in Galvan, supra, at 528, that “support, or even demonstrated knowledge, of the Communist Party’s advocacy of violence was not intended to be a prerequisite to deportation;” it did condition deportability on the alien’s awareness of the “distinct and active political” nature of the Communist Party,ibid. This, together with the requirement % “meaningful association” enunciated in Bowoldt, supra, at 120, led the Court to declare later that in Galvan and Bowoldt it had “had no difficulty in interpreting ‘membership’ . . . as meaning more than the mere voluntary listing of a person’s name on Party rolls.” Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 222.
The operation in practice of this wise distinction is illustrated by Rowoldt, to which .we think the present case is analogous on its facts. In Rowoldt, the sole evidence in the record was Rowoldt’s statement to an inspector of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in the course of which he admitted voluntary membership but said nothing which indicated that he had been aware while a member that the Communist Party was a “distinct' and active political organization.” Mr. Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the Court, concluded that “[f]rom his own testimony in 1947, which is all there is, the dominating impulse to his ‘affiliation’ with the Communist Party may well have been wholly devoid of any‘political’ implications.” 355 U. S., at 120. The Court therefore decided that the record was too insubstantial to support the order of deportation. The same is true here. The testimony of the two government witnesses establishes only that between either late 1948 or early 1949 and the end of 1950 or early 1951 petitioner was a dues-paying member of a club of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, and that he attended about 15 meetings of his Party club, one executive meeting of the group, apd one area Party convention.
One witness, Scarletto, testified to having joined the Communist Party in Los Angeles in 1947 “under the supervision of the- F. B. I.” At a date which he did not recall, but which he thought was in late 1948 or early 1949, Scarletto was assigned to the El Sereno Club, which “was one of the large divisions [of the Communist Party] which was split up later.” There were “approximately 32 members in the El Sereno Club at that time,” and Scarletto was the press director of the club. Scarletto was only in the El Sereno Club for “a few months” when it “was split up into smaller units for security reasons.” During these few months, Scarletto testified, he was introduced to petitioner at an El Sereno Club meeting and saw him there one other time. Since attendance at club meetings was restricted to Communist Party members, Scarletto inferred that petitioner was a member of the Party.
Scarletto was next assigned, some time in early 1949, to the Mexican Concentration Club, which, he testified, was also a unit of the Communist Party of the United States. Petitioner, he said, was put into the same new group. Scarletto shortly became organization secretary of this group, a job which, among other things, gave him the duty of collecting dues, and he testified that he collected dues from petitioner. Scarletto left the Concentration Club in early 1951, when he was transferred by the Party “to the underground.”
Concentration Club meetings were held weekly. Petitioner, Scarletto testified, “just went once in awhile^ but he was a regular member.” Over the approximately two-year period of Scarletto’s membership in the Concentration Club, during which he attended “most” of its meetings, he testified that he saw petitioner at “about 15” meetings. All but “a couple” of these, he said, were restricted to Communist Party members. Although meetings were held in members’ homes, Scarletto did not recall any at petitioner’s home and said that he himself had never been in petitioner’s home. Scarletto did not remember whether petitioner ever held “an official position” in either the El Sereno Club or the Mexican Concentration Club. Finally, Scarletto, who attended Communist Party conventions in the Los Angeles area with some regularity, recalled seeing petitioner at one such convention. He said he himself attended these conventions in an official capacity, but did not know in what capacity petitioner attended, except that membership in the Party was a prerequisite to attendance.
The-other witness, one Elorriaga, testified that he, too, joined the Communist Party in Los Angeles in 1947. He, too; was a member of the El Sereno Club, but did not meet petitioner until he was assigned to a smaller unit “known as the Forty-Fifth Concentration,” which apparently was the same entity as the “Mexican Concentration Club” discussed by Scarletto. Elorriaga did not recall petitioner as being a member of the El Sereno Club. Elorriaga’s testimony as to the frequency of petitioner’s attendance at Concentration Club meetings was contradictory. After having testified on direct examination that he saw petitioner at three or four meetings a month, Elorriaga radically revised his estimate the next day on redirect examination to say that he saw petitioner at “about two or three meetings” in total, adding that “I was present at one meeting in 1951 and another- in -1949 with . . . [petitioner].” The over-all lack of precision of Elorriaga’s answers to questions concerning petitioner' is also suggested by a comparison of his assertion that petitioner must have been an official of the club “because he attended a few [of its] executive meetings,” with his immediately following admission that he himself remembered being present at only one executive meeting with petitioner.
The evidence contained in the record is thus extremely insubstantial in demonstrating the “meaningful.” character of petitioner’s association with the Party, either directly, by showing that he was, during the time of his membership, sensible to the Party’s nature as a political organization, or indirectly, by showing that he engaged in Party activities to a degree substantially supporting an inference of his awareness of the Party’s political aspect. In one sense, indeed, this record is even less substantial in support of the deportation order than was the record in Rowoldt, because, although Rowoldt stated that he joined thinking the Party’s aim was “to get something to eat for the people,” 355 U. S., at 117, it was also-true that he had worked as a salesman in a bookstore which was “an official outlet for communist literature,” id., at 118, and that he showed some awareness of Communist philosophy and tactics in response to questioning by the immigration inspector. Bearing in mind that the ultimate burden in deportation cases such as this is on the Government, it is apparent that- here, as in Rowoldt, there is insufficient evidence to support the deportation order.
As against the slimness of the evidence that it introduced, the Government seeks the. benefit of an inference, based upon petitioner’s failure' to produce or elicit evidence in response to the Government’s proof that he paid dues to the Party and attended some meetings, that his association with the Party was “more than the mere voluntary listing of . . . [his] name on Party rolls.” Scales, supra, at 222. It is a sufficient answer to the Government’s argument to point out that, as recognized in Galvan, supra, at 530, and Rowoldt, supra, at 120, deportation is a drastic sanction,' one which can destroy lives and disrupt families, and that a holding of deportability must therefore be premised upon evidence of “meaningful association” more directly probative than a mere inference based upon the alien’s silence. Moreover, the fact is that the Government might well have asked its two witnesses about petitioner’s knowledge of the Party as a political entity and about the qualitative nature of petitioner’s activities in the Party. If it were the fact that petitioner was more aware of the Party’s nature than this.record shows, the Government’s witnesses could likely have given testimony, either about petitioner’s knowledge or about his Party activities, which would have tended- to prove that awareness. With the facts concerning the nature of petitioner’s association perhaps near at hand, and in light of both the possibility that those facts would not be consistent with a finding of “meaningful association” and the harshness of the deportation sanction, we cannot sustain petitioner’s deportation upon a bare inference which the Government would have us derive from petitioner’s failure to introduce evidence in response to the Government’s proof of his dues-paying membership and sometime attendance at Party meetings.
We are hence confronted with a case in which the Government did not sustain its burden of establishing that petitioner was a meaningful member of the Party as contemplated by § 241 (a)(6)(C). To paraphrase the holding of Rowoldt, supra, at 120: from the testimony of the two government witnesses, which is all there is, the dominating impulse to petitioner’s affiliation with the Communist Party may well have been wholly devoid of any “political” implications. We hold that, on the record before us, the deportation order against petitioner is not supported by substantial evidence, Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474, and therefore cannot stand.
Judgment reversed.
“(a) Any alien in the United States . . . shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be deported who—
. . . . .
“(6) is or at any time has been after entry, a member of any of the following classes of aliens:
. . . . .
“(C) Aliens who are members of or affiliated with (i) the Com-' munist Party of the United States . . . .”
There is no dispute'before this Court, nor .could there be, that under Galvan, supra, at 528, the absence of personal advocacy of violent Overthrow is not by itself a bar to deportability under § 241 (a)(6) (C). See pp. 473-474, infra.
See, e. g., Aaron, Writers on the Left (1961), 149-160; Decter, The Profile of Communism (1961), 50-51; Ernst and Loth, Report on the American Communist (1952), passim; Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (1961), 115 and passim.
Compare Yates v. United. States, 354 U. S. 298, 327-333; Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 222-223, 230-255; Noto v. United States, 367 U. S. 290.
Elorriaga’s testimony on direct examination was as follows:
“Q. Now you say you met him in meetings of that club, how often would you say you saw the respondent in meetings of that club?
“A. How often, about maybe three or four meetings a month.” One possible explanation of the apparent contradiction. is that Elorriaga understood the question on direct examination as merely an inquiry into how often club meetings were held, and answered accordingly. This is borne out to some extent by the fact that the witness gave his “revised” answer to the question on two separate occasions, some minutes apart, during the redirect examination.
Since some activities may be engaged in without-the requisite awareness, satisfaction of the Government’s burden as to the ultimate fact of “meaningful association” by evidence of activities instead of by direct evidence of awareness of the Party’s “distinct and active political” nature must be based upon evidence of activities sufficient to give substantial support to an inference of the alien’s awareness of the Party’s political aspect. The sole aspect of the witness Scarletto’s testimony which might have implied that petitioner’s association with the Party was “meaningful” was his reference to having seen petitioner at one Los Angeles area convention of the Party. However, in contrast to the testimony in Niukkanen v. McAlexander, 362 U. S. 390, note 7, infra, Scarletto neither described what petitioner would have heard at the convention nor suggested that there was any prerequisite such as officership or executive responsibility to petitioner’s attendance at the convention. Scarletto said that the nature of such conventions generally was that “they would have discussions on what was going on in the Party, and what drives were coining up,” but did not elaborate this statement with reference to the convention that petitioner attended or to what petitioner did there. Scarletto could only be sure that petitioner had to be a member to be present. The only facet of Elorriaga’s testimony which touched upon the qualitative aspect of petitioner’s membership was his statement that he had seen petitioner at one executive board meeting of the Party unit. However, in contrast to the testimony in Galvan, supra, at 524, 529, he only supposed petitioner to have been an “official of the club” because of petitioner’s presence at an executive meeting which Elorriaga thought was “probably” limited to “officials of the club,” and he did not elaborate specifically upon the significance of petitioner’s presence at the one meeting, making only the general statement that “[a]t this time I cannot say definitely the purpose [of that meeting] but it was either organizational or to form an agenda for the regular meeting.” Thus, none of the testimony of either Scarletto or Elorriaga was significantly probative of petitioner’s “meaningful association” with the Party.
This Court’s later per curiam decision in Niukkanen v. McAlexander, 362 U. S. 390, in no way qualified the meaning of Rowoldt, since the evidence in the record in Niukkanen clearly showed “meaningful association.” See Niukkanen v. McAlexander, 265 F. 2d 825 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1959). Two witnesses testified for the Government. Both confirmed Niukkanen’s Party membership and his regular attendance at meetings In addition, one witness testified that Niukkanen helped in the distribution of a Communist-controlled trade-union newspaper edited by the witness, and actively participated in discussions at the newspaper office and elsewhere pertaining to policies of the Communist Party and circulation of the newspaper as a Communist organ. This, witness also testified that Niukkanen had attended a regional “plenum” of the Party — a meeting wherein all aspects of regional Party activities were reported on. Such a meeting, said the witness, was only for the “anointed people,” the “top fraction” in the Party, to' which, the witness added, Niukkanen belonged. The other witness, who had been a member of the same unit of the Party as Niukkanen, added that Niukkanen, although never an officer of the unit, was a member of its executive board.
Nor is Galvan, supra, which was decided before Rowoldt, inconsistent with either that case or the present one. Mr. Justice Frankfurter, who wrote the Court’s opinions in both Galvan and Rowoldt, stated in Rowoldt that “[t]he differences on the facts between Galvan v. Press, supra, and this case are too obvious to be detailed.” 355 Ú. S., at 121.
In the present case, for example, deportation would remove a man who has resided in this country since 1920 when he came from Mexico as a 10-year-old boy, and has raised and supported a family who are all American citizens.
Our disposition of the case makes it unnecessary to consider petitioner’s contention that “at least the spirit” of 28 U. S-. C. § 46 was violated when the panel of'the Court of Appeals assigned to hear petitioner’s appeal in the current series of proceedings transferred the appeal instead to the same panel which had heard his first appeal, 109 U. S. App. D. C. 267, 286 F. 2d 824, it being clearly predictable thht one of the three judges on that panel would not participate, since he had been unable to participate in the disposition of the first appeal.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The appeal is dismissed for want of a properly presented federal question.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent Stubbs was convicted of a felony in a New York State court and sentenced as a second offender under the laws of that State by reason of a prior Tennessee murder conviction obtained in 1964. He thereafter sought federal habeas corpus, claiming that the Tennessee conviction was had in violation of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him, and thus could not be used by New York as the predicate for a stiffer punishment. The District Court denied habeas corpus, but the Court of Appeals reversed, 442 F. 2d 561 (CA2 1971). We granted certiorari, 404 U. S. 1014, and reverse for the reasons hereinafter stated.
I
Prior to our consideration of the merits it is necessary to deal with a suggestion that because petitioner did not seek a stay of the mandate of the Court of Appeals, but rather obeyed it and resentenced Stubbs, this case is therefore moot. The parties agreed at oral argument that Stubbs upon resentencing in New York had received the same sentence, based upon still another conviction in Texas. However, he was appealing from that sentence on grounds that the Texas conviction was constitutionally infirm, and that appeal has not run its course even through the state courts.
Until it can be said with certainty that the New York courts may validly resentence respondent to the same term as they imposed prior to the decision of the Court of Appeals now under review here, petitioner continues to have an interest in the availability of the Tennessee conviction as a support for second-offender sentencing of respondent. Petitioner’s obedience to the mandate of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the District Court does not moot this case. In Bakery Drivers v. Wagshal, 333 U. S. 437 (1948), the union appealed from an injunction issued by the United States District Court on the ground that it had been issued in violation of the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Dealing with a “preliminary claim” of mootness in that case, the Court said:
“The claim of mootness is also based on an affidavit stating that after dismissal of the appeal by the Court of Appeals, the union lifted its boycott. Since the record does not show that a stay of the injunction was granted pending action in this Court, we must assume that the union’s action was merely obedience to the judgment now here for review. We therefore turn to the merits.” 333 U. S., at 442.
Much earlier the Court had stated a similar view of mootness in these circumstances:
“There can be no question that a debtor against whom a judgment for money is recovered may pay that judgment and bring a writ of error to reverse it, and if reversed can recover back his money. And a defendant in an action of ejectment may bring a writ of error, and failing to give a supersedeas bond, may submit to the judgment by giving possession of the land, which he can recover if he reverses the judgment by means of a writ of restitution. In both these cases the defendant has merely submitted to perform the judgment of the court, and has not thereby lost his right to seek a reversal of that judgment by writ of error or appeal.” Dakota County v. Glidden, 113 U. S. 222, 224 (1885).
Under these authorities the case is not moot, and we turn to the merits.
II
In July 1954, respondent was convicted in the Tennessee trial court of murder in the first degree, assault with intent to murder, and two counts of kidnaping. The jury impaneled for that trial could have concluded from the evidence presented to it that respondent, a few days after his release from a Texas penitentiary in June 1954, kidnaped Mr. and Mrs. Alex Holm and forced them at gunpoint to accompany him in their car. Stubbs drove the car and sat in the front seat, while the Holms sat in the back seat. Mr. Holm testified that somewhere east of Blountville, Tennessee, Stubbs, without saying anything, shot him twice in the head and shot and killed Mrs. Holm. Stubbs then left the car, obtained a ride as a hitchhiker, and was ultimately arrested at a roadblock. At the time of his arrest, Stubbs explained the blood on his clothing as having resulted from his having fallen off a cliff while fishing.
Stubbs took the stand in his own defense, admitted that he had kidnaped the Holms at gunpoint, and that as he drove the Holms’ car, with them in the back seat, he at intervals pointed the gun in Mrs. Holm’s face. He testified that during the ride he apologized for forcing a ride; that the Holms then assured him they would let him out at Bristol, Tennessee, and would not cause him any trouble; and that he therefore laid the pistol on the front seat of the car. He also testified that near Bristol, Tennessee:
“It seems awful strange, but everything just seemed to be awful still and I remember a tree and it just seemed to come up just like that in clear focus, but in a reddish haze. I mean there was no pain or nothing. ... 1 felt a sharp pain that seem to start in my head and go all the way down through me and I reached up with both hands and I heard this loud roar, bang . . . Stuff started running down my face and down my shirt and all that I could think of that he has got the gun. ... I just went outside through the car door. ...”
After that, Stubbs testified, “everything went black.”
Nine years after his state court trial for murder, Stubbs sought release on federal habeas corpus from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
He successfully urged upon that court the contention that he had been denied the effective assistance of counsel in this 1954 trial because counsel had been appointed for him only four days before the trial took place. Stubbs v. Bomar, Civil Action No. 3585 (MD Tenn. 1964). The State of Tennessee then elected to retry him, and did so in 1964. By that time Holm, who had been born in Sweden but had become a naturalized American citizen, had returned to Sweden and taken up permanent residence there. Tennessee issued a subpoena that was sent to Texas authorities in an attempt to serve Holm at his last known United States address. No service having been obtained, the State at trial called Holm’s son as a witness and elicited from him the fact that his father now resided in Sweden. Over appropriate objection on constitutional grounds, the Tennessee trial judge then permitted Holm’s testimony at the earlier trial to be read to the jury. Stubbs again took the stand, recited his version of the events, and was again convicted. This conviction was in due course affirmed by the Supreme Court of Tennessee. Stubbs v. State, 216 Tenn. 567, 393 S. W. 2d 150 (1965).
Respondent has challenged the present second-offender sentence that was imposed upon him by the New York courts on the ground that his 1964 conviction upon retrial was constitutionally infirm because he was denied his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to confront the witness Holm. The Court of Appeals sustained this contention, relying on this Court’s opinion in Barber v. Page, 390 U. S. 719 (1968).
In Barber, a prospective witness for the prosecution in an Oklahoma felony trial was incarcerated in a federal prison in Texas. The court there said:
“We start with the fact that the State made absolutely no effort to obtain the presence of Woods at trial other than to ascertain that he was in a federal prison outside Oklahoma. It must be acknowledged that various courts and commentators have heretofore assumed that the mere absence of a witness from the jurisdiction was sufficient ground for dispensing with confrontation on the theory that ‘it is impossible to compel his attendance, because the process of the trial Court is of no force without the jurisdiction, and the party desiring his testimony is therefore helpless.’ 5 Wigmore, Evidence § 1404 (3d ed. 1940).
“Whatever may have been the accuracy of that theory at one time, it is clear that at the present time increased cooperation between the States themselves and between the States and the Federal Government has largely deprived it of any continuing validity in the criminal law. For example, in the case of a prospective witness currently in federal custody, 28 U. S. C. §2241 (c)(5) gives federal courts the power to issue writs of habeas corpus ad testificandum at the request of state prosecu-torial authorities. [Citations omitted.] In addition, it is the policy of the United States Bureau of Prisons to permit federal prisoners to testify in state court criminal proceedings pursuant to writs of habeas corpus ad testificandum issued out of state courts. . . .
“In this case the state authorities made no effort to avail themselves of either of the above alternative means of seeking to secure Woods’ presence at petitioner’s trial.” (Footnotes omitted.) Id., at 723-724.
Because the State had made no attempt to use one of these methods to obtain the attendance of the witness at trial, the Court reversed the conviction on that ground without considering whether the testimony taken at the preliminary hearing was subject to cross-examination. The Court said:
“Moreover, we would reach the same result on the facts of this case had petitioner’s counsel actually cross-examined Woods at the preliminary hearing. See Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458 (1900). The right to confrontation is basically a trial right. It includes both the opportunity to cross-examine and the occasion for the jury to weigh the demeanor of the witness. A preliminary hearing is ordinarily a much less searching exploration into the merits of a case than a trial, simply because its function is the more limited one of determining whether probable cause exists to hold the accused for trial. While there may be some justification for holding that the opportunity for cross-examination of a witness at a preliminary hearing satisfies the demands of the confrontation clause where the witness is shown to be actually unavailable, this is not, as we have pointed out, such a case.” 390 U. S., at 725-726.
In this case, of course, Holm was not merely absent from the State of Tennessee; he was a permanent resident of Sweden. Respondent argues that Tennessee might have obtained Holm as a trial witness by attempting to invoke 28 U. S. C. § 1783 (a), which provided as of the time here relevant that:
“A court of the United States may subpoena, for appearance before it, a citizen or resident of the United States who ... is beyond the jurisdiction of the United States and whose testimony in a criminal proceeding is desired by the Attorney General. . . .” (1958 ed.) (Emphasis supplied.)
We have been cited to no authority applying this section to permit subpoena by a federal court for testimony in a state felony trial, and certainly the statute on its face does not appear to be designed for that purpose.
The Uniform Act to secure the attendance of witnesses from without a State, the availability of federal writs of habeas corpus ad testificandum, and the established practice of the United States Bureau of Prisons to honor state writs of habeas corpus ad testificandum, all supported the Court’s conclusion in Barber that the State had not met its obligations to make a good-faith effort to obtain the presence of the witness merely by showing that he was beyond the boundaries of the prosecuting State. There have been, however, no corresponding developments in the area of obtaining witnesses between this country and foreign nations. Upon discovering that Holm resided in a foreign nation, the State of Tennessee, so far as this record shows, was powerless to compel his attendance at the second trial, either through its own process or through established procedures depending on the voluntary assistance of another government. Cf. People v. Trunnell, 19 Cal. App. 3d 567, 96 Cal. Rptr. 810 (1971). We therefore hold that the predicate of unavailability was sufficiently stronger here than in Barber that a federal habeas court was not warranted in. upsetting the determination of the state trial court as to Holm’s unavailability. Before it can be said that Stubbs’ constitutional right to confront witnesses was not infringed, however, the adequacy of Holm’s examination at the first trial must be taken into consideration.
In addition to Barber v. Page, recent decisions of this Court that have dealt at some length with the requirements of the Confrontation Clause are California v. Green, 399 U. S. 149 (1970), and Dutton v. Evans, 400 U. S. 74 (1970). The focus of the Court’s concern has been to insure that there “are indicia of reliability which have been widely viewed as determinative of whether a statement may be placed before the jury though there is no confrontation of the declarant,” Dutton v. Evans, supra, at 89, and to “afford the trier of fact a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the prior statement,” California v. Green, supra, at 161. It is clear from these statements, and from numerous prior decisions of this Court, that even though the witness be unavailable his prior testimony must bear some of these “indicia of reliability” referred to in Dutton.
At least since the decision of this Court in Mattox v. United States, 156 U. S. 237 (1895), prior-recorded testimony has been admissible in appropriate cases. The circumstances surrounding the giving of Alex Holm’s testimony at the 1954 trial were significantly more conducive to an assurance of reliability than were those obtaining in Barber v. Page, supra. The 1954 Tennessee proceeding was a trial of a serious felony on the merits, conducted in a court of record before a jury, rather than before a magistrate. Stubbs was represented by counsel who could and did effectively cross-examine prosecution witnesses.
Stubbs urges that because the 1954 conviction was itself overturned by a federal habeas court on a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel, that court must necessarily have concluded that the cross-examination of Holm conducted by such counsel likewise fell short of constitutional standards. The federal habeas judge in Stubbs v. Bomar, supra, however, rested his determination on an apparent per se rule of ineffective assistance that was conclusively presumed from the short interval between the time of counsel’s appointment and the date of the trial. If the habeas court had rendered its decision after our holding in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970), which disapproved any such per se rule, it might have addressed itself to the effectiveness of the examination of the witness Holm. But it did not in fact do so. When Stubbs appealed his 1964 conviction to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, that court in affirming the judgment expressly determined that the prior cross-examination of Holm had been adequate. Stubbs v. State, 216 Tenn. 567, 393 S. W. 2d 150 (1965). Whatever might be the case in other circumstances, the State of New York was not bound under any theory of res judicata by Stubbs v. Bomar as to the efficacy of the prior cross-examination of the witness Holm.
Stubbs also contends that even though the prior determination may not be binding upon subsequent review, the fact that counsel was appointed only four days before trial necessarily requires a finding that the cross-examination of Holm was constitutionally inadequate. Counsel for Stubbs at the 1964 trial placed in the record a list of 12 questions not asked of Holm in 1954, which he said he would have asked had the witness been present at the second trial. With one exception these were directed to the events leading up to and surrounding the shooting. Though not asked in haec verba in 1954, they were nonetheless adverted to in the earlier cross-examination. No one defense counsel will ever develop precisely the same lines of inquiry or frame his questions in exactly the words of another, but from this record counsel at the retrial did not in his proffer show any new and significantly material line of cross-examination that was not at least touched upon in the first trial.
The Court of Appeals concluded that the cross-examination had been inadequate. It reached this conclusion, at least in part, because it felt that Holm could have been questioned about whether Stubbs, although originally having kidnaped the Holms at gunpoint, later became in effect their guest. Parts of Stubbs’ own testimony presented that version of the events to the jury, and the Second Circuit thought it significant because even if Stubbs fired his pistol accidentally, he might still have been found guilty of felony murder unless the felony of kidnaping had ended. Under this theory, if Stubbs had during the trip been transmogrified from a kidnaper into a guest, at least the argument to the jury as to whether the kidnaping had ended before the shooting would have been strengthened by any support Holm’s testimony might have given to this notion.
The Tennessee trial court, however, did not charge that the jury could convict Stubbs of felony murder as a result of a death occurring during a kidnaping. Its charge authorized conviction upon a finding of premeditated murder, or upon a finding of murder during the commission of robbery. The failure to elicit from Holm his own views as to whether Stubbs had become a guest in the Holm car prior to the time that he turned from the front seat, shot Mr. Holm, and killed Mrs. Holm — however interesting they might have been to hear — could not have prejudiced Stubbs’ case as to any issue that the jury was authorized to deliberate under the trial judge’s charge.
Since there was an adequate opportunity to cross-examine Holm at the first trial, and counsel for Stubbs availed himself of that opportunity, the transcript of Holm’s testimony in the first trial bore sufficient “indicia of reliability” and afforded “ 'the trier of fact a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the prior statement,’ ” Dutton v. Evans, 400 U. S., at 89. The witness Holm, consistently with the requirement of the Confrontation Clause, could have been and was found by the trial court to be unavailable at the time of the second trial. There was, therefore, no constitutional error in permitting his prior-recorded testimony to be read to the jury at that trial, and no constitutional infirmity in the judgment of conviction resulting from that trial that would prevent the New York courts from considering that conviction in sentencing Stubbs as a second offender. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore
Reversed.
The dissent states that this case is controlled by SEC v. Medical Committee, 404 U. S. 403 (1972). In that case, respondent committee had requested Dow Chemical to place the committee’s proposed resolution on the proxy statement for the annual meeting of Dow Chemical stockholders. Dow Chemical initially refused the request, and the committee thereupon invoked the aid of the SEC to bring suit against. Dow Chemical to compel inclusion of the proposal. The SEC refused to bring suit, and the committee then succeeded in having the agency’s refusal set aside by the Court of Appeals. While review of this latter action was pending here, Dow Chemical acceded to the committee’s request. The committee thereby accomplished the purpose for which it sought ancillary assistance from the SEC, not because of compliance by the SEC with the judgment uifder review, but because of the action of Dow Chemical, which was not required to do anything by that judgment.
There would be a rough parallel between our case and SEC v. Medical Committee if, pending review here of the ruling of the Court of Appeals in favor of Stubbs, the Governor of New York should pardon Stubbs. But, on the facts we have before us now, the mootness issue is controlled by Bakery Drivers v. Wagshal, 333 U. S. 437 (1948), and Dakota County v. Glidden, 113 U. S. 222 (1885), rather than by SEC v. Medical Committee,
Stubbs argues that the 1964 amendment to 28 U. S. C. § 1783, authorizing a subpoena to bring a witness “before a person or body-designated by” the District Court, sheds a different light on this case. That amendment was not available to the Tennessee authorities for Stubbs’ 1964 trial, and therefore we have no occasion to decide whether it would afford assistance to state authorities on the facts represented by this case.
The significant difference between the nature of examination at a preliminary hearing and at a trial on the merits is discussed both in Barber v. Page, 390 U. S. 719 (1968), and in MR. Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in California v. Green, 399 U. S. 149, 196—199 (1970).
This was in accord with the Tennessee felony-murder statute which provides:
“Every murder . . . committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any murder in the first degree, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, or larceny, is murder in the first degree.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2402.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S. 238 (1962), the Court held that § 301 (a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185 (a), does not authorize a damages action against individual union officers and members when their union is liable for violating a no-strike clause in a collective-bargaining agreement. We expressly reserved the question whether an employer might maintain a suit for damages against “individual defendants acting not in behalf of the union but in their personal and nonunion capacity” where their “unauthorized, individual action” violated the no-strike provision of the collective-bargaining agreement. 370 U. S., at 249, n. 7. We granted cer-tiorari to decide this important question of federal labor law. 449 ü. S. 898 (1980).
I
Petitioners are three companies engaged in the transportation by truck of motor vehicles. All three are parties to a collective-bargaining agreement with the Teamsters Union that covers operations at their respective facilities in Flint, Mich. Respondents are employees of petitioners and members of Teamsters Local Union No. 332. The collective-bargaining agreement contains a no-strike clause and subjects all disputes to a binding grievance and arbitration procedure.
On June 8, 1976, respondents commenced a wildcat strike, because they believed that “the union was not properly representing them in . . . negotiations for amendments to the collective bargaining agreement.” 614 F. 2d 1110, 1111 (CA6 1980). Soon thereafter, petitioners brought this § 301 (a) action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, seeking injunctive relief and “damages against the [employees], in their individual capacity, for all losses arising out of the unlawful work stoppage and for attorneys fees.” App. 21. Petitioners alleged that the strike was neither authorized nor approved by the union and, therefore, sought no damages from the union. See 614 F. 2d, at 1115; App. 18, 20-21. After a hearing, the District Court found that “the issue which had caused the work stoppage was not arbitrable” because, .it' was “an internal dispute between factions in the Local,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 15a-16a, and accordingly denied preliminary injunctive relief, citing Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S. 235 (1970). Following additional hearings and settlement of the “internal dispute,” the District Court concluded that “the work stoppage continued only because of a dispute between the Local and [petitioners] over amnesty for the strikers [and that] this issue was arbitrable.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 16a. The court, therefore, issued a preliminary injunction, enjoining continuation of the strike. Respondents obeyed the order and returned to work on June 21, 1976.
Nine months later, respondents moved to dissolve the preliminary injunction and to dismiss the complaint for damages. Relying on this Court’s intervening decision in Buffalo Forge Co. v. Steelworkers, 428 U. S. 397 (1976), the District Court dissolved the injunction on the ground that the work stoppage was not precipitated by an arbitrable issue. App. to Pet. for Cert. 18a. The court also dismissed petitioners’ claim for damages, holding that, “an employer may not sue his employees for monetary relief for breach of the collective bargaining agreement . . . whether or not the union may also be liable.” Id., at 16a.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the District Court’s dissolution of the injunction, holding that an injunction may be granted even where the issue which precipitated the strike was nonarbitrable provided an arbitrable issue, other than the simple legality of the strike itself, caused the continuation of the strike with the purpose of “compel [ling] the employer to concede on the arbitrable issue.” 614 F. 2d, at 1114. Petitioners do not seek review of this part of the Court of Appeals’ ruling.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of petitioners’ claim for damages from the individual union members. Relying principally on the legislative history of § 301, the Court of Appeals concluded that Congress had not intended through § 301 to “create a cause of action for damages against individual union members for breach of a no-strike agreement.” 614 F. 2d, at 1116. We agree.
II
Since Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448 (1957), it has been settled that § 301(a) does more than confer jurisdiction on federal courts to decide lawsuits alleging violations of collective-bargaining agreements. Section 301 (a) also “authorizes federal courts to fashion a body of federal law for the enforcement of these collective bargaining agreements.” Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S., at 451. Lincoln Mills defined the mode of analysis- for fashioning this body of federal law as follows:
“The Labor Management Relations Act expressly furnishes some substantive law. It points out what the parties may or may not do in certain situations. Other problems will lie in the penumbra of express statutory mandates. Some will lack express statutory sanction but will be solved by looking at the policy of the legislation and fashioning a remedy that will effectuate that policy. The range of judicial inventiveness will be determined by the nature of the problem.” Id., at 457.
Of course, “Lincoln Mills did not envision any freewheeling inquiry into what the federal courts might find to be the most desirable rule, irrespective of congressional pronouncements.” Howard Johnson Co. v. Hotel & Restaurant Employees, 417 U. S. 249, 255 (1974). Rather, it is clear that in fashioning federal law under § 301 (a) substantial deference should be paid to revealed congressional intention. See Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S., at 248-249.
In Atkinson, the Court relied on the intent of Congress in passing § 301 (b) to hold that individual union members may not be sued for damages where the union has breached the no-strike provision of its collective-bargaining agreement. Section 301 (b) states in pertinent part that “[a]ny money judgment against a labor organization . . . shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.” Thus, in Atkinson, we noted that “in discharging the duty Congress imposed on us to formulate the federal law to govern § 301 (a) suits, we are strongly guided by and do not give a niggardly reading to § 301 (b).” Ibid. Accordingly, we consulted and relied on the legislative history of § 301 (b) which made it “clear that th[e] third clause [of §301 (b) ] was a deeply felt congressional reaction against the Danbury Hatters case . . . and an expression of legislative determination that the aftermath ... of that decision was not to be permitted to recur.” Id., at 248. Similarly, in deciding the question presented in this case, we “discharg [e] the duty Congress imposed on us to formulate the federal law to govern § 301 (a) suits,” id., at 248-249, by looking to the “penumbra” of § 301 (b), 353 U. S., at 457, as informed by its legislative history. See Howard Johnson Co. v. Hotel & Restaurant Employees, supra, at 255.
Section 301 (b) by its terms prohibits a money judgment entered against a union from being enforced against individual union members. See Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., supra. It is a mistake to suppose that Congress thereby suggested by negative implication that employees should be held liable where their union is not liable for the strike. See Sinclair Oil Corp. v. Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers, 452 F. 2d 49, 52 (CA7 1971). Although lengthy and complex, the legislative history of § 301 clearly reveals Congress’ intent to shield individual employees from liability for damages arising from their breach of the no-strike clause of a collective-bargaining agreement, whether or not the union participated in or authorized the illegality. Indeed, Congress intended this result even though it might leave the employer unable to recover for his losses. See Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., supra, at 248.
The legislative history of § 301 begins with a review of congressional efforts in the year prior to adoption of the Labor Management Relations Act. Section 10 of the Case bill, H. R. 4908, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. (1946), passed by both Houses of Congress, but vetoed by the President in 1946, was “the direct antecedent of § 301.” Charles Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, 368 U. S. 502, 509 (1962). Since § 10 “contained provisions substantially the same ... as the provisions of § 301,” ibid., its legislative history is highly relevant in ascertaining congressional intent with respect to § 301, see id., at 511-512.
The purpose of § 10 was “to establish a mutual responsibility when the collective-bargaining process has resulted in a contract.” 92 Cong. Rec. 838 (1946) (remarks of Rep. Case). As introduced in the House, § 10 provided for collective-bargaining agreements to be enforceable “against each of the parties thereto.” The Senate adopted a bill which encompassed the purposes of § 10 of the House version and which, in addition, explicitly permitted an employer to discharge an employee who participated in a strike which was not authorized by the union. Senator Taft, principal proponent of the provision, explained:
“If the union violates its collective bargaining-agreement, it is responsible, but no individual member is responsible, and he can in no way be deprived of his rights. But if the union tries to keep its contract and, in violation of its undertaking, some of its members proceed to strike, then the employer may fire those members and they do not have the protection of the Wagner Act.” 92 Cong. Rec. 5705-5706 (1946).
Thus the Senator stopped short of proposing that individual employees be held liable in damages for engaging in unauthorized strikes.
The House’s subsequent consideration of the Senate’s version reflected its clear understanding of the Senate’s limitation on employers’ remedies. Representative Case explained the Senate amendment on the floor of the House:
“Individual members of a union are not made liable for any money judgment, I might point out, but only the union as an entity. If employees strike in violation of their agreement, the only individual penalty that can be employed is the forfeiture of their right to employment under that contract which is cured when the employer reemploys them.” Id., at 5930-5931 (emphasis added).
The House then passed the Senate version. In doing so, the House, like the Senate, clearly intended to protect employees from the sanction of a suit for damages for a strike in breach of the collective-bargaining agreement, whether or not the union participated in or authorized the strike. It is true that the President vetoed this bill and that his veto was sustained. Nevertheless, the substantial similarity between the pertinent language of the Case bill as passed by Congress and of § 301 as it reads today makes the legislative history of the Case bill vitally significant to a full understanding of the policy behind § 301 (b).
Six months after the veto, Congress began work on the legislation which became § 301. The bill ultimately passed by the House created a federal cause of action for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement. The Committee Report explained that “actions and proceedings involving violations of contracts between employers and labor organizations may be brought by either party.” H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 45-46 (1947). Section 302 (b) also contained express language precluding enforcement against individuals of judgments entered against unions. In addition, the bill included an amendment to § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act providing that “violations of collective bargaining-agreements” would not be protected under the Act, H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947), § 7 (a), thereby allowing employers to discharge wildcat strikers. The House bill also included a provision, however, which allowed an employer to recover damages from individual employees. Section 12 created a damages action against any person engaging in an unlawful concerted activity. The bill defined “unlawful concerted activities” to include, inter alia, jurisdictional strikes, sympathy strikes, and certain picketing activities.
Significantly, however, the Senate rejected the House’s imposition in § 12 of damages liability against individuals for unlawful concerted activity, and a Conference Committee adopted the Senate version. The Senate counterpart to § 12 of the House bill was § 303. Senator Taft offered a floor amendment to § 303 which would have established a damages action against individuals who engage in certain types of unlawful concerted activity such as secondary boycotts and jurisdictional strikes. 93 Cong. Rec. 4900 (1947). In a critical exchange during the debate on the proposed amendment, Senator Taft altered the language to limit damages actions to claims against unions, in order to conform with § 301 (b) and bar imposition of individual damages liability against employees:
“Mr. MORSE: [T]he proposal of the Senator from Ohio would open wide the doors of the Federal courts to damage suits against any person who engaged in a strike or attempted to persuade other employees to engage in a strike for one of the prohibited objectives.
“The proposal would very definitely take us back at least 40 years and we would again have the spectacle of mass suits against employees, similar to the infamous Danbury Hatters case. Senators will recall that in that case some 150 members of the union were sued by their employer and the Supreme Court of the United States sustained a judgment against them in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars. . . .
“It also should be pointed out that the substitute proposal is inconsistent with the present provision in the bill allowing a union to be sued for breach of contract. Section 301 of the bill permits suits against labor organizations only, whereas the substitute proposal allows damage suits against ‘any person.’ Also, section 301 limits recovery to the assets of the union. The substitute allows the attachment of employees’ bank accounts and all their property..
“Mr. TAFT: On request by . . . Senator [Ives] from New York and others who raised the point, I am amending the proposal, by striking out the word ‘person,’ in the second line, and inserting in lieu thereof ‘labor organization,’ so the action will be open only against labor organizations promoting this type of strike.” Id., at 4839-4841.
The Senate passed this version of the bill, foreclosing individual damages liability in both § 301 and § 303 lawsuits.
At conference, the Conference Committee squarely rejected § 12 of the House bill in favor of § 303 of the Senate bill, thereby refusing to create a damages action against individual employees for the conduct prohibited in that section. In addition, the Committee deleted the provision in the House bill which had removed protection under § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act for concerted activity in breach of a collective-bargaining agreement for the stated reason that the provision was unnecessary in light of recent decisions of the National Labor Relations Board. Those provisions had held that “strikes in violation of collective bargaining contracts were not concerted activities protected by the act and [the NLRB had] refused to reinstate employees discharged for engaging in such activities.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 39 (1947). The Committee, therefore, opted for a discharge remedy for violations of § 303 by individuals, rather than for the damages remedy that had been proposed by the House. At the same time, it preferred discharge as the employer’s remedy under § 301 where employees violate the no-strike provision of their collective-bargaining agreement.
Thus, while § 301 (b) explicitly addresses only union-authorized violations of a collective-bargaining agreement, the “penumbra” of § 301 (b), Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S., at 457, as informed by its legislative history, establishes that Congress meant to exclude individual strikers from damages liability, whether or not they were authorized by their union to strike. The legislative debates and the process of legislative amendment demonstrate that Congress deliberately chose to allow a damages remedy for breach of the no-strike provision of a collective-bargaining agreement only against unions, not individuals, and, as to unions, only when they participated in or authorized the strike. See Carbon Fuel Co. v. Mine Workers, 444 U. S. 212, 216 (1979). Congress itself balanced the competing advantages and disadvantages inherent in the possible remedies to combat wildcat strikes, and “we are strongly guided by” its choice. Atkin son v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S., at 249. See Howard Johnson Co. v. Hotel & Restaurant Employees, 417 U. S., at 255. Accordingly, we hold that § 301 (a) does not sanction damages actions against individual employees for violating the no-strike provision of the collective-bargaining agreement, whether or not their union participated in or authorized the strike.
Affirmed.
The no-strike clause provides that “[t]he Unions and the Employers agree that there shall be no strike, tie-up of equipment, slowdowns or walkouts on the part of the employees, nor shall the Employer use any method of lockout or legal proceeding without first using all possible means of a settlement, as provided for in this Agreement, of any controversy which might arise.” See Exhibit A to Complaint of Complete Auto Transit, Inc., 24r-25.
In Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S., at 253-254, this Court held that the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s prohibition against enjoining strikes does not apply where the “collective-bargaining contract contains a mandatory grievance adjustment or arbitration procedure,” where the grievance is subject to arbitration, and where the usual requirements for obtaining equitable relief have been satisfied.
In Buffalo Forge Co. v. Steelworkers, 428 U. S., at 407 (emphasis in original), this Court held that the Federal District Court properly refused to enjoin a sympathy strike because “the strike was not over any dispute between the Union and the employer that was even remotely subject to the arbitration provisions of the contract.” The Court further held that, even though the “dispute whether the sympathy strike violated the Union’s no-strike undertaking . . . was arbitrable,” injunctive relief was not warranted, since to hold otherwise “would cut deeply into the policy of the Norris-LaGuardia Act and make the courts potential participants in a wide range of arbitrable disputes.” Id., at 410.
We express no view on whether the Court of Appeals’ ruling was correct.
Section 301, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 185, states in pertinent part:
“(a) Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.
“(b) Any labor organization which represents employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this chapter and any employer whose activities affect commerce as defined in this chapter shall be bound by the acts of its agents. Any such labor organization may sue or be sued as an entity and in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States. Any money judgment against a labor organization in a district court of the United States shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.”
In the Danbury Hatters ease, “an antitrust treble damage action was brought against a large number of union members, including union officers and agents, to recover from them the employer’s losses in a nationwide, union-directed boycott of his hats. The union was not named as a party, nor was judgment entered against it. A large money judgment was entered, instead, against the individual defendants for participating in the plan 'emanating from headquarters’ ... , by knowingly authorizing and delegating authority to the union officers to- do the acts involved. In the debates, Senator Ball, one of the Act’s sponsors, declared that § 301, ‘by providing that the union may sue and be sued as a legal entity, for a violation of contract, and the liability for damages will lie against union assets only, will prevent a repetition of the Danbury Hatters case, in which many members lost their homes.’ ” Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S., at 248. See Savings Bank of Danbury v. Loewe, 242 U. S. 357 (1917); Lawlor v. Loewe, 235 U. S. 522 (1915); Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274 (1908).
Section 10 of the Case bill provided:
“All collective-bargaining contracts shall be mutually and equally binding and enforceable either at law or in equity against each of the parties thereto, any other law to the contrary notwithstanding. In the event of a breach of any such contract or of any agreement contained in such contract by either party thereto, then, in addition to any other remedy or remedies existing either in law or equity, a suit for damages for such breach or for injunctive relief in equity may be maintained by the other party or parties in any United States district court having jurisdiction of the parties. If the defendant against whom action is sought to be commenced and maintained is a labor organization, such action may be filed in the United States district court of any district wherein any officer of such labor organization resides or may be found.” H. R. 5262, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. (1946).
Representative Case explained that the “parties” against whom a “suit for damages” would lie were limited to the employer and to “the recognized bargaining agent rather than an individual.” 92 Cong. Rec. 765 (1946).
Senate Amendment No. 3 to H. R. 4908, passed by the Senate, stated in pertinent part:
“(a) Suits for violation of a contract concluded as the result of collective bargaining between an employer and a labor organization if such contract affects commerce as defined in this act may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties.
“(b) Any labor organization whose activities affect commerce as defined in this act shall be bound by the acts of its duly authorized agents acting within the scope of their authority from the said labor organization and may sue or be sued as an entity and in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States: Provided, That any money judgment against such labor organization shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.
“(d) Any employee who participates in a strike or other stoppage of work in violation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement, if such strike or stoppage is not ratified or approved by the labor organization party to such agreement and having exclusive bargaining rights for such employee, shall lose his status as an employee of the employer party to such agreement for the purposes of sections 8, 9, and 10 of the National Labor Relations Act: Provided, That such loss of status for such employee shall cease if and when he is reemployed by such employer.” 92 Cong. Rec. 5705 (1946). .
Representative Halleck echoed Representative Case:
“Mr. Speaker, there is substituted for that [the provision] which has to do with the responsibility of the individual who goes out on a wildcat strike in violation of a contract and in violation of the wishes of his organization. All we say is that if he breaches his contract as an individual in that manner, his employer does not have to take him back unless he wants to. What is the matter with that[?]” Id., at 5932.
In the House, Representative Case introduced a bill containing a provision establishing federal-court jurisdiction over actions for breaches of collective-bargaining agreements. Subsections (a) and (b) were virtually identical to their counterparts in the bill passed in the previous session of Congress. As Representative Case explained the bill before the House Committee on Education and Labor, “there is no provision for suing individual workers, as such, or rendering any judgment against them.” Hearings before the House Committee on Education and Labor on Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 125 (1947). Instead, wildcat strikers would be subject to discharge. Ibid.
Representative Case’s testimony before the House Committee is also instructive:
“Mr. Landis. I agree that you can deny the members the rights of the Wagner Act, but say there is one coal mine — we had an instance in Indiana where one coal mine went out on a wildcat strike, and the United Mineworkers organization did not like it, and they tried to get the men to go back to work, and they would not go back to work, and still refused to go back to work for several days.
“Who would you sue in that case?
“Mr. Case. Of course, I would think the United Mine Workers, as an organization, would have a pretty good defense to any suit for damages against them, if they ordered the men back to work.
“It would seem to me, if you had a local that went out on strike, and they were parties to a contract, the local would be liable for damages.” Id., at 126.
Section 302 (a) stated:
“(a) Any action for or proceeding involving a violation of an agreement between an employer and a labor organization or other representative of employees may be brought by either party in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without regard to the amount in controversy, if such agreement affects commerce, or the court otherwise has jurisdiction of the cause.” H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (as passed by the House) (1947).
Section 302 (b) stated:
“(b) Any labor organization whose activities affect commerce shall be bound by the acts of its agents, and may sue or be sued as an entity and in behalf of the employees whom it represents in the courts of the United States. Any money judgment against a labor organization' in a district court of the United States shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.” H. R. 3020, supra.
The Committee Report stated that “[t]he committee has revised this section by writing into it in express terms that employees who strike or engage in similar activities in violation of collective-bargaining agreements . . . forfeit the protection of the Labor Act.” H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 27 (1947).
The Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare had earlier reported a bill creating a federal cause of action for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement. It stated in pertinent part:
“Sec. 301 (a) Suits for violation of contracts concluded as the result of collective bargaining between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.
“(b) Any labor organization which represents employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act may sue or be sued in its common name in the courts of the United States: Provided, That any money judgment against such labor organization shall be enforceable only against the organization as an entity and against its assets, and shall not be enforceable against any individual member or his assets.” H. R. 3020, supra.
During the floor debate, proponents of the Committee bill emphasized the limited nature of the damages remedy in the proposed legislation. For example, Senator Ball stated: “[W]e give to employers the right to- sue a union in interstate commerce, in a Federal court, for violation of contract. It does not go beyond that.” 93 Cong. Rec. 5014 (1947) (emphasis added).
“Many of the matters covered in section 12 of the House bill are also covered in the conference agreement in different form, as has been pointed out above in the discussion of section 7 and section 8 (b) (1) of the conference agreement. Under existing principles of law developed by the courts and recently applied by the Board, employees who engage in violence, mass picketing, unfair labor practices, contract violations, or other improper conduct, or who force the employer to violate the law, do not have any immunity under the act and are subject to discharge without right of reinstatement. The right of the employer to discharge an employee for any such reason is protected in specific terms in section 10 (c). Furthermore, under section 10 (k) of the conference agreement, the Board is given authority to apply to the district courts for temporary injunctions restraining alleged unfair labor practices temporarily pending the decision of the Board on the merits.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 59 (1947).
Petitioners’ reliance on the statement in Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U. S. 554, 562 (1976) (emphasis added), that “Section 301 contemplates suits by and against individual employees” is misplaced. We decide a much narrower question not before the Court in Hines: that § 301 does not contemplate recovery of damages from individual employees as a result of a breach of the no-strike provision of a collective-bargaining agreement. Whether Hines contemplated injunc-tive suits against individuals was not decided by the Court in Hines and we have no occasion to decide that issue now. See n. 18, infra.
Petitioners argue that a damages remedy against individual employees is indispensable to preserve the integrity of the collective-bargaining agreement and thereby to further the national labor policy of promoting industrial peace. This proposition is questionable on its own terms, overlooks an array of potential remedies that are available to the employer apart from a damages remedy against individuals, and in any event was rejected by Congress.
It is by no means certain that an individual damages remedy will meaningfully increase deterrence of wildcat strikes above that resulting from use of other available remedies. It is just as likely that damages actions against individuals would exacerbate industrial strife: “an action for damages prosecuted during or after a labor dispute would only tend to aggravate industrial strife and delay an early resolution of the difficulties between employer and union.” Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S., at 248 (footnote omitted); see Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 414 U. S. 368, 381, n. 14 (1974).
The significant array of other remedies available to employers to achieve adherence to collective-bargaining agreements casts further doubt on petitioners’ proposition. First, an employer may seek damages against the union where responsibility may be traced to the union for the contract breach. See 29 U. S. C. § 185 (b); Carbon Fuel Co. v. Mine Workers, 444 U. S. 212, 216-218 (1979); Atkinson v. Sinclair Refining Co., 370 U. S., at 247-249. Second, an employer may discharge, or otherwise discipline, an employee who unlawfully walks off the job. See id., at 246; NLRB v. Rockaway News Supply Co., 345 U. S. 71, 80 (1953); Lakeshore Motor Freight Co. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 483 F. Supp. 1150, 1154, n. 2 (WD Pa. 1980) (wildcat strikers discharged, and those allowed to return were rehired as new employees). Third, the union itself may discipline its members. See Carbon Fuel Co. v. Mine Workers, supra, at 220; Sinclair Oil Corp. v. Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers, 452 F. 2d 49, 54 (CA7 1971); see 92 Cong. Rec. 5706 (1946) (Sen. Capehart) (debate on Case bill). Finally, an employer may seek injunctive relief against unions for breach of a no-strike provision in a collective-bargaining agreement where the underlying dispute giving rise to the breach is subject to binding arbitration. See Buffalo Forge Co. v. Steelworkers, 428 U. S., at 407; Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, supra, at 380-387; Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, supra. Whether a Boys Markets-Buffalo Forge injunction could have issued against individual union members engaged in the wildcat strike at issue here is not before us. It may be that an injunction would not issue against a participating or authorizing union in circumstances otherwise the same: in the instant case the District Judge found that the strike commenced over a nonarbitrable labor dispute, and that ruling was not disturbed by the Court of Appeals.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute requires federal agencies and the unions that represent their employees to “meet and negotiate in good faith for the purposes of arriving at a collective bargaining agreement.” 5 U. S. C. § 7114(a)(4). We here consider whether that duty to bargain extends to a clause proposed by a union that would bind the parties to bargain midterm — that is, while the basic comprehensive labor contract is in effect — about subjects not included in that basic contract. We vacate a lower court holding that the statutory duty to bargain does not encompass midterm bargaining (or bargaining about midterm bargaining). We conclude that the Statute delegates to the Federal Labor Relations Authority the legal power to determine whether the parties must engage in midterm bargaining (or bargaining about that matter). We remand these cases so that the Authority may exercise that power.
I
Congress enacted the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (Statute or FSLMRS) in 1978. See 5 U. S. C. §7101 et seq. Declaring that “labor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest,” § 7101(a), the Statute grants federal agency employees the right to organize, provides for collective bargaining, and defines various unfair labor practices. See §§ 7114(a)(1), 7116. It creates the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which it makes responsible for implementing the Statute through the exercise of broad adjudicatory, policy-making, and rulemaking powers. §§ 7104, 7105. And it establishes within the Authority a Federal Service Impasses Panel, to which it grants the power to resolve negotiation impasses through compulsory arbitration, § 7119, hence without the strikes that the law forbids to federal employees, § 7116(b)(7).
Of particular relevanee here, the Statute requires a federal agency employer to “meet” with the employees’ collective-bargaining representative and to “negotiate in good faith for the purposes of arriving at a collective bargaining agreement.” § 7114(a)(4). The Courts of Appeals disagree about whether, or the extent to which, this good-faith-bargaining requirement extends to midterm bargaining. Suppose, for example, that the federal agency and the union negotiate a basic 5-year contract. In the third year a matter arises that the contract does not address. If the union seeks negotiations about the matter, does the Statute require the agency to bargain then and there, or can the agency wait for basic contract renewal negotiations? Does it matter whether the basic contract itself contains a “zipper clause” expressly forbidding such bargaining? Does it matter whether the basic contract itself contains a clause expressly permitting midterm bargaining? Can the parties insist upon bargaining endterm (that is, during the negotiations over adopting or renewing a basic labor contract) about whether to include one or the other such clauses in the basic contract itself?
In 1985 the Authority began to answer some of these questions. It considered a union’s effort to force midterm negotiations about a matter the basic labor contract did not address, and it held that the Statute did not require the agency to bargain. Internal Revenue Service, 17 F. L. R. A. 731 (1985) (IRS I).
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, however, set aside the Authority’s ruling. The court held that in light of the intent and purpose of the Statute, it must be read to require midterm bargaining, inasmuch as it did not create any distinction between bargaining at the end of a labor contract’s term and bargaining during that term. National Treasury Employees Union v. FLRA, 810 F. 2d 295 (1987) (NTEU). On remand the Authority reversed its earlier position. Internal Revenue Service, 29 F. L. R. A. 162, 166 (1987) (IRS II). Accepting the D. C. Circuit’s analysis, the Authority held:
“[TJhe duty to bargain in good faith imposed by the Statute requires an agency to bargain during the term of a collective bargaining agreement on negotiable union-initiated proposals concerning matters which are not addressed in the [basic] agreement and were not clearly and unmistakably waived by the union during negotiation of the agreement." Id., at 167.
The Fourth Circuit has taken a different view of the matter. It has held that “union-initiated midterm bargaining is not required by the statute and would undermine the congressional policies underlying the statute.” Social Security Administration v. FLRA, 956 F. 2d 1280, 1281 (1992) (SSA). Nor, in its view, may the basic labor contract itself impose a midterm bargaining duty upon the parties. Department of Energy v. FLRA, 106 F. 3d 1158, 1163 (1997) (holding unlawful a midterm bargaining clause that the Federal Service Impasses Panel had imposed upon the parties’ basic labor contract).
In the present suit, the National Federation Employees, Local 1309 (Union), representing employees of the United States Geological Survey, a subagency of the Department of the Interior (Agency), proposed including in the basic labor contract a midterm bargaining provision that said:
“The Union may request and the Employer will be obliged to negotiate [midterm] on any negotiable matters not covered by the provisions of this [basic] agreement.” Department of Interior, 52 F. L. R. A. 475, 476 (1996).
The Agency, relying on the Fourth Circuit’s view that the Statute prohibits such a provision, refused to accept, or to bargain about, the proposed clause. The Authority, reiterating its own (and the D. C. Circuit’s) contrary view, held that the Agency’s refusal to bargain amounted to an unfair labor practice. Id., at 479-481. The Statute itself, said the Authority, imposes an obligation to engage in midterm bargaining — an obligation that the proposed clause only reiterates. Id., at 479-480. And even if such an obligation did not exist under the Statute, the Authority added, a proposal to create a contractual obligation to bargain midterm is a fit subject for endterm negotiation. Id., at 480-481. Consequently, the Authority ordered the Agency to bargain over the proposed clause.
The Fourth Circuit set aside the Authority’s order. 132 F. 3d 157 (1997). The court reiterated its own view that the Statute itself does not impose any midterm bargaining duty. Id., at 161-162. That being so, it concluded, the parties should not be required to bargain endterm about including a clause that would require bargaining midterm. The court reasoned that once bargaining over such a clause began, the employer would have no choice but to accept the clause. Were the employer not to do so (by bargaining to impasse over the proposed clause), the Federal Service Impasses Panel would then inevitably insert the clause over the employer’s objection, as the Impasses Panel (like the D. C. Circuit) believes that a midterm bargaining clause would merely reiterate the duty to bargain midterm that the Statute itself imposes. Ibid.
We granted certiorari to consider the conflicting views of the Circuits.
II
We shall focus primarily upon the basic question that divided the Gircuits: Does the Statute itself impose a duty to bargain during the term of an existing labor contract? The Fourth Circuit thought that the Statute did not impose a duty to bargain midterm and that the matter was sufficiently clear to warrant judicial rejection of the contrary view of the agency charged with the Statute’s administration. SSA, supra, at 1284 (stating that “ ‘Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue,’” and quoting Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842 (1984)). We do not agree with the Fourth Circuit, for we find the Statute’s language sufficiently ambiguous or open on the point as to require judicial deference to reasonable interpretation or elaboration by the agency charged with its execution. See id., at 842-845; Fort Stewart Schools v. FLRA, 495 U. S. 641, 644-645 (1990).
The D. C. Circuit, all agree that the Statute itself does not expressly address union-initiated midterm bargaining. See NTEU, supra, at 298; SSA, supra, at 1284; Brief for Petitioner FLRA in No. 97-1243, p. 18. The Statute’s relevant language simply says that federal agency employer and union representative “shall meet and negotiate in good faith for the purposes of arriving at a collective bargaining agreement.” 5 U. S. C. § 7114(a)(4). It defines the key term “collective bargaining agreement” as an “agreement entered into as a result of collective bargaining.” § 7103(a)(8). And it goes on to define “collective bargaining” as involving the meeting of employer and employee representatives “at reasonable times” to “consult” and to “bargain in a good-faith effort to reach agreement with respect to the conditions of employment,” incorporating “any collective bargaining agreement reached” as a result of these negotiations in “a written document.” § 7103(a)(12). This language, taken literally, may or may not include a duty to bargain collectively midterm.
The Agency, here gues that in context, this language must exclude midterm bargaining. We shall explain why we do not agree with each of the Agency’s basic arguments.
First, the Agency a As an initial matter, it emphasizes the words “arriving at” in the Statute’s general statement that the parties must bargain “for the purposes of arriving at a collective bargaining agreement.” This statement tends to exclude midterm bargaining, the Agency contends, because parties engage in midterm bargaining, not for the purpose of arriving at, but for the purpose of supplementing, their basic, comprehensive labor contract. In other words, the basic collective-bargaining agreement is the only appropriate destination at which negotiations might “arriv[e].” The Agency adds that “collective bargaining agreement” is a term of art, which only and always refers to basic labor contracts, not to midterm agreements.
Further, while the Agency acknowledges that there is a duty to bargain midterm in the private sector, see NLRB v. Jacobs Manufacturing Co., 196 F. 2d 680 (CA2 1952), it argues that this private-sector duty is based upon language in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that is different in significant respects from the language in the Statute here. The Agency explains that the NLRA defines private-sector collective bargaining to include (1) negotiation “with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, or [(2)] the negotiation of an agreement, or any question arising thereunder.” 29 U. S. C. § 158(d) (emphasis added). The “or,” under this view, indicates that private-sector employers have a comprehensive duty to “bargain collectively” whether or not such bargaining is part of “the negotiation of an agreement” leading to “written contract.”
arguments, while logical, make too much of too little. One can easily read “arriving at a collective bargaining agreement5” as including an agreement reached at the conclusion of midterm bargaining, particularly because the Statute itself does no more than define the relevant term “collective bargaining agreement” in a circular way — as “an agreement entered into as a result of collective bargaining.” 5 U. S. C. § 7103(a)(8). Nor have we found any statute, judicial opinion, agency document, or treatise that says whether the words “collective bargaining agreement” are words of art that must necessarily exclude midterm agreements. Finally, the linguistic differences between the NLRA and the FSLMRS tell us little, particularly given the fact that the two labor statutes, like collective bargaining itself, are not otherwise identical in the two sectors. For all these reasons, we find in the relevant statutory language ambiguity, not certainty.
Second, the Agency — like that the Statute’s policies demand a reading of the statutory language that would exclude midterm bargaining from its definition of “collective bargaining.” The availability of midterm bargaining, the Agency argues, might lead unions to withhold certain subjects from ordinary endterm negotiations and then to raise them during the term, under more favorable bargaining conditions. A union might conclude, for example, that it is more likely to get what it wants by presenting a proposal during the term (when no other issues are on the table and a compromise is less likely) and then negotiating to impasse, thus leaving the matter for the Federal Service Impasses Panel to resolve. The Agency also points out that public-sector and private-sector bargaining differ in this respect. Private-sector unions enforce their views through strikes, and because they hesitate to strike midterm, they also have no particular incentive to bargain midterm. But public-sector unions enforce their views through compulsory arbitration, not strikes. Hence, the argument goes, public-sector unions have a unique incentive to bargain midterm on a piecemeal basis, thereby threatening to undermine the basic collective-bargaining process. See, a. g., SSA, 956 F. 2d, at 1288-1289.
Other policy concerns, argue ing of the Statute. Without midterm bargaining, for example, will it prove possible to find a collective solution to a workplace problem, say, a health or safety hazard, that first appeared midterm? The Statute’s emphasis upon collective bargaining as “eontributEing] to the effective conduct of public business,” 5 U. S. C. § 7101(a)(1)(B), suggests that it would favor joint, not unilateral, solutions to such midterm problems.
The Authority would seem better suited than a court to make the workplace-related empirical judgments that would help properly balance these, and other, policy-related considerations. The Statute does not indicate that Congress itself decided to make these specific policy judgments. Hence the Agency’s policy arguments illustrate the need for the Authority’s elaboration or refinement of the basic statutory collective-bargaining obligation; they illustrate the appropriateness of judicial deference to considered Authority views on the matter; and, most importantly, they do not narrow the scope of a statutory provision the language of which is consistent with a variety of interpretations.
Third, the Agency argues that the Statute’s history and prior administrative practice support its view that federal agencies have no duty to bargain midterm. The Statute grew out of an Executive Order that previously had governed federal-sector labor relations. See Exec. Order No. 11491, 3 CFR 861 (1966-1970 Comp.), as amended by Exec. Order Nos. 11616, 11636, and 11838, 3 CFR 605, 634, 957 (1971-1975 Comp.). In support, the Agency cites a ease in which an Assistant Secretary of Labor, applying that Executive Order, dismissed an unfair labor practice complaint on the ground, among others, that a federal agency need not bargain over midterm union proposals. Army and Air Force Exchange Serv., Capital Exchange Region Headquarters, Case No. 22-6657(CA), 2 Rulings on Requests for Review of Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations 561-562 (1976) (not reviewed by the Federal Labor Relations Council, predecessor to the Authority); see IRS I, 17 F. L. R. A., at 786-737, n. 7 (finding, based upon this decision, that there was no obligation to bargain over midterm union proposals under the Executive Order). A single alternative ground, however — in a single, unreviewed decision from before the Statute was enacted — does not demonstrate the kind of historical practice that one might assume would be reflected in the Statute, particularly when at least one treatise suggested at the time that federal labor relations practice was to the contrary. See H. Robinson, Negotiability in the Federal Sector 10-11, and n. 9 (1981) (stating that under the Executive Order both unions and agencies had a continuing duty to bargain through the term of a basic labor contract).
The Agency also points to a Senate Report in support its interpretation of the Statute. That Report speaks of the parties’ “mutual duty to bargain” with respect to (1) “changes in established personnel policies proposed by management,” and (2) “negotiable proposals initiated by either the agency or [the union] ... in the context of negotiations leading to a basic collective bargaining agreement.” S. Rep. No. 95-969, p. 104 (1978) (emphasis added). This Report, however, concerns a bill that contains language similar to the language before us but was not enacted into law. According to the D. C. Circuit, at least, any distinction between basic and midterm bargaining that is indicated by this passage “did not survive the rejection by Congress of the Senate’s restrictive view of the rights of labor and the importance of collective bargaining.” NTEU, 810 F. 2d, at 298. In any event, the Report’s list of possible occasions for collective bargaining does not purport to be an exclusive list; it does not say that the Statute was understood to exclude midterm bargaining; and any such implication is simply too distant to control our reading of the Statute.
Fourth, the Agency the “management rights” provision of the Statute, 5 U. S. C § 7106, does authorize limited midterm bargaining in respect to certain matters (not here at 'issue), and that by negativ< implication it denies permission to bargain midterm in re spect to any others. See, e. g., SSA, supra, at 1284 (“Th inclusion of a specific duty of midterm effects bargainin;
. . . suggests the duty into the statute”). Our examination of that provisior however, finds little support for such a strong negative implication.
Subsection (a) of the management rights provision withdraws from collective bargaining certain subjects that it reserves exclusively for decision by management. It specifies, for example, that federal agency “management offieial[s]” will retain their authority to hire, fire, promote, and assign work, and also to determine the agency’s “mission, budget, organization, number of employees, and internal security practices.” § 7106(a).
Subsection (b), however, permits a certain amount of collective bargaining in respect to the very subjects that subsection (a) withdrew. Subsection (b) states:
“Nothing in this section shall preclude any agency and any labor organization from negotiating—
the agency, on the numbers, types, and grades of employees or positions assigned to any organizational subdivision, work project, or tour of duty, or on the technology, methods, and means of performing work;
procedures which management officials . . . will observe in exercising any authority under this section; or
“(3) appropriate arrangements for employees adversely affected by the exercise of any authority under this section by such management officials.” § 7106(b) (emphasis added).
The two subsections of the management rights provision, taken together, do not help the Agency. While the provision contemplates that bargaining over the impact and implementation of management changes may take place during the term of the basic labor contract, subsection (b) need not be read to actually impose a duty to bargain midterm. The italicized clause, “[njothing in this section shall preclude,” indicates only that the delegation of certain rights to management (e. g., promotions) shall not preclude negotiations about certain related matters (e. g., promotion procedures). By its terms, then, subsection (b) does nothing more than create an exception to subsection (a), preserving the duty to bargain with respect to certain matters otherwise committed to the discretion of management. Because § 7106(b) chiefly addresses the subject matter of bargaining and not the timing, one could reasonably conclude that while that subsection contemplates midterm bargaining in the circumstances there specified, the duty to bargain midterm finds its source elsewhere in the Statute. Hence, the management rights provision seems to hurt, as much as to help, the Agency’s basic argument.
The upshot of this analysis the Fourth Circuit find a clear statutory denial of any midterm bargaining obligation, we find ambiguity created by the Statute’s use of general language that might, or might not, encompass various forms of midterm bargaining. That kind of statutory ambiguity is inconsistent both with the Fourth Circuit’s absolute reading of the Statute and also with the D. C. Circuit’s similarly absolute, but opposite, reading. Compare SSA, 956 F. 2d, at 1284, with NTEU, 810 F. 2d, at 301 (rejecting the Authority’s position that there is no duty to bargain midterm on the ground that it is “contrary to the intent of the legislature and the guiding purpose of the statute”). Indeed, the D. C. Circuit’s analysis implicitly concedes the need to make at least some midterm bargaining distinctions, when it assumes that the midterm bargaining obligation does not extend to matters that are covered by the basic contract. See id., at 296.
The statutory ambiguity is perfectly consistent, with the conclusion that Congress delegated to the Authority the power to determine — within appropriate legal bounds, see, e.g., 5 U. S. C. §706 (Administrative Procedure Act); Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 887 (1984) — whether, when, where, and what sort of midterm bargaining is required. The Statute’s delegation of rulemaking, adjudieatory, and policymaking powers to the Authority supports this conclusion. See 5 U. S. C. § 7105(a)(1) (“Authority shall provide leadership in establishing policies and guidance”); § 7105(a)(2)(E) (Authority “resolves issues relating to the duty to bargain in good faith”); § 7117(c) (Authority resolves disputes about whether the duty to bargain in good faith extends to a particular matter); accord, American Federation of Govt. Employees, Local 2986, AFL-CIO v. FLRA, 775 F. 2d 1022, 1027 (CA9 1985); American Federation of Govt. Employees, AFL-CIO, Council of Soc. Sec. Dist. Office Locals, San Francisco Region v. FLRA, 716 F. 2d 47, 50 (CADC 1983). This conclusion is also supported by precedent recognizing the similarity of the Authority’s public-sector and the National Labor Relations Board’s private-sector roles. As we have recognized, the Authority’s function is “to develop specialized expertise in its field of labor relations and to use that expertise to give content to the principles and goals set forth in the Act,” and it “is entitled to considerable deference when it exercises its ‘special function of applying the general provisions of the Act to the complexities’ of federal labor relations.” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 97 (1983) (quoting NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 236 (1963)).
We conclude that Congress “left” the matters of whether, when, and where midterm bargaining is required “to be resolved by the agency charged with the administration of the statute in light of everyday realities.” Chevron, supra, at 865-866.
Ill
The specific question before us is whether an agency must bargain endterm about including in the basic labor contract a clause that would require certain forms of midterm bargaining. As is true of midterm bargaining itself, and for similar reasons, the Statute grants the Authority leeway (within ordinary legal limits) in answering that question as well.
The Authority says its own judgment, that the parties must bargain over such a provision. Our reading of its relevant administrative determinations, however, leads us to conclude that its judgment on the matter was occasioned by the D. C. Circuit’s holding that the Statute must be read to impose on agencies a duty to bargain midterm. See, e. g., Merit Systems Protection Bd. Professional Assn., 30 F. L. R. A. 852, 859-860 (1988) (midterm bargaining clause is negotiable because it “reiterates a right the Union has under the Statute”); 52 F. L. R. A., at 479 (in the instant suit, restating that same conclusion). The Authority did indicate below that even if it agreed with the Fourth Circuit’s position that the Statute does not impose a duty to bargain midterm, the outcome in this litigation would be no different, as the Authority “ ‘has previously upheld the negotiability of proposals despite the absence of a statutory right concerning the matter in question.’ ” Id., at 480 (quoting Department of Energy, 51 F. L. R. A. 124, 127 (1995), enf. denied, Department of Energy v. FLRA, 106 F. 3d 1158 (CA4 1997)). This explanation, however, seems more an effort to respond to, and to distinguish, a contrary judicial authority, rather than an independently reasoned effort to develop complex labor policies. Regardless, the Authority’s conclusion would seem linked to the D. C. Circuit’s basic understanding about the statutory requirements.
In our resolve the question of midterm bargaining, nor the related question of bargaining about midterm bargaining, we believe the Authority should have the opportunity to consider these questions aware that the Statute permits, but does not compel, the conclusions it reached.
The judgment of the Fourth Circuit is vacated, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Supplemental Decree.
For the purpose of giving effect to the conclusions of this Court as stated in its opinion, announced May 31, 1960, and the decree entered by this Court on December 12, 1960, it is ordered, adjudged and decreed as follows:
1. As against the defendant State of Louisiana, the United States is entitled to all the lands, minerals and other natural resources underlying the Gulf of Mexico, south of grid line y=499,394.40 on the Louisiana Plane Coordinate System, South Zone, that are more than three geographical miles seaward from a line described as follows (coordinates refer to the Louisiana Plane Coordinate System, South Zone):
Beginning at the point where grid line y — 499,-394.40 intersects the line of mean low water on the eastern side of Chandeleur Island, thence southerly along the line of mean low water on the eastern side of the Chandeleur Islands, and by straight lines across channels between the islands, to the south-westernmost extremity of Errol Shoal, at latitude 29°35'48" N., longitude 89°00/48" W. (x=2,737,-287.96, y=345,654.41); thence to Pass a Loutre lighted whistle buoy 4, at latitude 29°09'55.9" N., longitude 88°56'54.4" W. (x=2,761,169.19, y= 189,334.14); thence to South Pass lighted whistle buoy 2, at latitude 28°58'44.9" N., longitude 89°06'36.9" W. (x=2,710,848.37, y=120,529.26) ; thence to Southwest Pass entrance mid-channel lighted whistle buoy, at latitude 28°52'37.1" N., longitude 89°25'57.1" W. (x=2,608,424.04, y= 81,526.86); thence to Ship Shoal lighthouse at latitude 28°54'51.512" N., longitude 91°04'15.985" W. (x=2,083,908.09, y=90,154.12); thence to Calcasieu Pass lighted whistle buoy 1, at latitude 29°36'21.7" N., longitude 93°19'07.6" W. (x=l,369,080.08, y= 347,060.52); thence to Sabine Pass lighted whistle buoy 1, at latitude 29°36'16" N., longitude 93°48'-31.2" W. (x=l,213,416.18, y=349,514.72).
2. The State of Louisiana is not entitled to any interest in the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 1 hereof, and said State, its privies, assigns, lessees and other persons claiming under it are hereby enjoined from interfering with the rights of the United States in such lands, minerals and resources.
3. With the exceptions provided by § 5 of the Submerged Lands Act, 67 Stat. 32, 43 U. S. C. § 1313 (1964 ed.), the State of Louisiana is entitled, as against the United States, to all the lands, minerals and other natural resources in the portions of the disputed area described in this paragraph. These portions of the disputed area are bounded on the landward side by the seaward boundary of Zone 1, as delineated on Exhibit A to the parties’ Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, on file with the Court. They are bounded on the seaward side by lines three geographical miles seaward from baselines as herein described, consisting of (1) segments of, or salient points on, the line of mean low water on the mainland, on naturally formed islands, or on naturally formed low-tide elevations situated wholly or partly within three geographical miles from the low-water line on the mainland or on such islands, and (2) straight lines across designated openings in the low-water line. As used herein, “salient point” means any point on the low-water line, so situated that there is some area within three geographical miles seaward from such point that is more than three geographical miles from all other points on the baseline. These baselines are ambulatory and subject to continual modification by natural or artificial changes in the shore line to the extent the law may provide, but for purposes of present identification and practical administration until notice by either party to the other they are described herein by their coordinates in the Louisiana Plane Coordinate System, South Zone, as shown by Exhibits 1 to 4, inclusive, filed with the Motion of the United States herein. Each three-mile line is to be drawn in such manner that every point on the three-mile line is exactly three geographical miles from the nearest point or points on the baseline, continuing in each direction until it meets another specified boundary of the particular portion of the disputed area. The portions of the disputed area referred to herein are as follows:
(a) In the vicinity of Calcasieu Pass, all that portion of the disputed area bounded on the landward side by the seaward boundary of Zone 1, and bounded on the seaward side by a line three geographical miles seaward from the tip of the western jetty, at x=:l,362,416, y=397,822; from the tip of the eastern jetty, at x= 1,363,392, y=397,870; and from a straight line between said points.
(b) In the vicinity of Marsh Island and Atchaf-alaya Bay, all that portion of the disputed area bounded on the landward side by the seaward boundary of Zone 1, and bounded on the seaward side by a line three geographical miles seaward from salient points on islands and low-tide elevations at x= 1,778,769, y=324,757; x=l,782,391, y=321,876; x=l,783,067, y=321,331; x=l,791,584, y=307,545; x=l,809,845, y=296,285; x=l,820,994, y=291,804; x=r 1,833,527, y=271,423; x=l,834,019, y=270,-301; x — 1,835,344, y=270,839; x=l,843,467, y= 275,912; x=l,844,320, y=278,858; x=l,875,200, y=285,729; and x= 1,877,582, y=283,274; three geographical miles seaward from a straight line between South Point, Marsh Island, at x=l,863,474, y=298,772, and Point Au Fer, at x= 1,993,420, y=241,930; and three geographical miles seaward from a salient point on a low-tide elevation at x=l,987,371, y=241,272.
(c) In East Bay, all that portion of the disputed area bounded on the landward side by the seaward boundary of Zone 1, and bounded on the seaward side by a line three geographical miles seaward from salient points on the mean low-water line at x=2,639,545, y=126,825; x=2,641,835, y=129,725; and x=2,644,940, y=134,910, and from the line of mean low water which may be considered to consist of straight lines between said points; three geographical miles seaward from a salient point on a low-tide elevation at x=2,672,315, y=141,745; three geographical miles seaward from the line of mean low water which may be considered to consist of straight lines between the points x=2,673,-482, y=141,245; x=2,678,500, y=139,250; and x=2,682,605, y=136,895; and three geographical miles seaward from a salient point on the mean low-water line at x=2,685,325, y= 133,800.
(d) Between Pass a Loutre and Breton Island, all that portion of the disputed area west of grid line x=2,740,710, bounded on the landward side by the seaward boundary of Zone 1, and bounded on the seaward side by a line three geographical miles seaward from salient points on the mainland, on islands, or on low-tide elevations at x=2,738,320, y=210,230; x=2,737,065, y=210,155; x=2,727,090, y=209,195; x=2,709,100, y=220,995; x=2,708,835, yr=221,440; x=2,707,635, y=223,640; x=2,701,500, y=232,820; x=2,700,735, y=234,640; x=2,689,305, y=250,395; and x=2,688,235, y=252,215; and three geographical miles seaward from a straight line between the eastern headland of Main Pass, at x= 2,681,915, y=257,755, and the southern extremity of Breton Island, at x=2,678,009, y=294,303.
4. The United States is not entitled, as against the State of Louisiana, to any interest in the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 3 hereof, with the exceptions provided by § 5 of the Submerged Lands Act, 43 U. S. C. § 1313.
5. All sums now held impounded by the United States under the Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, derived from or attributable to the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 1 hereof are hereby released to the United States absolutely, and the United States is hereby relieved of any obligation under said agreement to impound any sums hereafter received by it, derived from or attributable to said lands, minerals, or resources.
6. All sums now held impounded by the State of Louisiana under the Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, derived from or attributable to the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 3 hereof are hereby released to the State of Louisiana absolutely, and the State of Louisiana is hereby relieved of any obligation under said agreement to impound any sums hereafter received by it, derived from or attributable to said lands, minerals or resources.
7. Within 75 days after the entry of this decree—
(a) The State of Louisiana shall pay to the United States or other persons entitled thereto under the Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, all sums, if any, now held impounded by the State of Louisiana under said agreement, derived from or attributable to the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 1 hereof;
(b) The State of Louisiana shall render to the United States and file with the Court a true, full, accurate and appropriate account of any and all other sums of money derived by the State of Louisiana since June 5, 1950, either by sale, leasing, licensing, exploitation or otherwise from or on account of any of the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 1 hereof;
(c) The United States shall pay to the State of Louisiana or other persons entitled thereto under the Interim Agreement, as amended, all sums, if any, now held impounded by the United States under said agreement, derived from or attributable to the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 3 hereof;
(d) The United States shall render to the State of Louisiana and file with the Court a true, full, accurate and appropriate account of any and all other sums of money derived by the United States either by sale, leasing, licensing, exploitation or otherwise from or on account of the lands, minerals or resources described in paragraph 3 hereof.
8. Within 60 days after receiving the account provided for by paragraph 7(b) or 7(d) hereof, a party may serve on the other and file with the Court its objections thereto. Thereafter either party may file such motion or motions at such time as may be appropriate to have the account settled in conjunction with the issues concerning the areas still in dispute. If neither party files such an objection within 60 days, then each party shall forthwith pay to any third person any amount shown by such accounts to be payable by it to such person, and the party whose obligation io the other party is shown by such accounts to be the greater shall forthwith pay to the other party the net balance so shown to be due. If objections are filed but any undisputed net balance is shown which will be due from one party to the other party or to any third person regardless of what may be the ultimate ruling on the objections, the party so shown to be under any such obligation shall forthwith pay each such undisputed balance to the other party or other person so shown to be entitled thereto. The payments directed by paragraphs 7 (a) and 7 (c) hereof shall be made irrespective of the accounting provided for by paragraphs 7 (b) and 7 (d).
9. Until further order of the Court or agreement of the parties filed with the Court, both parties shall continue to recognize as a single lease for all purposes any existing lease now being administered under the Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, that covers lands, minerals, or resources, part of which are described in paragraph 1 or paragraph 3 hereof and part of which remain in dispute (including any existing leasehold partly in Zone 1 and partly within the area confirmed to the United States by this decree); but the party hereby awarded part of the lands, minerals, or resources covered by any such lease shall hereafter administer the lease as to such lands, minerals, or resources as sole lessor, shall be entitled to receive from the lessee all payments hereafter due under said lease to the extent that they are derived from or attributable to such part of the lands, minerals, or resources covered by the lease, and shall be under no duty to account for or impound any payments so received. Either party, for its own convenience, may nevertheless impound any or all of such moneys if it wishes to do so, or may terminate such impoundment in whole or in part at any time, without further order of the Court or agreement of the other party. In all other respects each such lease (including any existing leasehold partly in Zone 1 and partly within the area confirmed to the United States by this decree) shall continue to be administered as at present.
10. Nothing in this supplemental decree or the proceedings leading to it shall prejudice any rights, claims or defenses of the United States or of the State of Louisiana with respect to the remainder of the disputed area or past or future payments derived therefrom or attributable thereto or the operation of the Interim Agreement of October 12, 1956, as amended, with respect to such area and payments.
11. The Court retains jurisdiction to entertain such further proceedings, enter such orders and issue such writs as may from time to time be deemed necessary or advisable to give proper force and effect to the decree of December 12, 1960, herein, or to this decree, including, if necessary, further adjustments of the accounting between the parties with respect to the lands, minerals and resources described in paragraph 1 and paragraph 3 of this decree.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Clark took no part in the consideration or decision of this motion or in the formulation of this decree.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | J | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent brought this action under the Copyright Act to recover for infringement of copyright on a work of art entitled “Cocker Spaniel in Show Position.” The District Court found the copyright, of which respondent was assignee, valid and infringed and awarded statutory damages of $5,000, with a $2,000 attorney’s fee. The Court of Appeals affirmed. We granted certiorari, limiting the issues to the measure of the recovery, as to which conflict appears among lower courts.
Respondent made small sculptures and figurines, among which were statues of the cocker spaniel, and marketed them chiefly through gift and art shops. Petitioner, from a different source, bought 127 dozen cocker spaniel statuettes and distributed them through thirty-four Woolworth stores. Unbeknown to Woolworth, these dogs had been copied from respondent’s and by marketing them it became an infringer.
By the Act an infringer becomes liable — •
“To pay to the copyright proprietor such damages as the copyright proprietor may have suffered due to the infringement, as well as all the profits which the infringer shall have made from such infringement, and in proving profits the plaintiff shall be required to prove sales only, and the defendant shall be required to prove every element of cost which he claims, or in lieu of actual damages and profits, such damages as to the court shall appear to be just, and in assessing such damages^ the court may, in its discretion, allow the amounts as hereinafter stated . . . and such damages shall in no other case exceed the sum of $5,000 nor be less than the sum of $250, and shall not be regarded as a penalty. . . .” 17 U. S. C. § 101 (b).
Profits made by the petitioner from the infringement were sufficiently proved to enable assessment of that element of liability. Petitioner itself showed, without contradiction, that the 127 dozen dogs were bought at 60 cents apiece and sold for $1.19 each, yielding a gross profit of $899.16. The infringer did not assume the burden, which the statute casts upon it, of proving any other costs that might be deductible, so the gross figure is left to stand as the profit factor of the infringer’s total liability.
As to the other ingredient in computing liability, damages suffered by the copyright proprietor, the record is inadequate to establish an actually sustained amount. Enough appears to indicate that real and substantial injury was inflicted. Respondent had gross annual income of about $35,000 and engaged only eight employees, indicating its small production. Its statuettes were of three media and prices: red plaster retailed at $4, red porcelain at $9, while a black and white porcelain brought $15. There was evidence that the cheaper infringing statuette was inferior in quality. Respondent proved loss of some customers and offered, but was not allowed, to show complaints from sales outlets about the Woolworth competition, decline in respondent’s sales, and eventual abandonment of the line with an unsalable stock on hand. The trial judge excluded or struck most of this testimony on the ground that authority to allow statutory damages rendered proof of actual damage unnecessary. It might have been better practice to have received the evidence, even if it fell short of establishing the measure of liability; for when recovery may be awarded without any proof of injury, it cannot hurt and may aid the exercise of discretion to hear any evidence on the subject that has probative value. However, petitioner cannot complain of this exclusion, which was in response to its objections. At length, the court said: “If you establish this was an infringement of copyright, it is inescapably clear there is enough evidence in this case upon which to predicate damage up to $5000. I don’t think Mr. Barnes [counsel for defendant] disagrees with that, do you?” Mr. Barnes: “No, your Honor.”
The court, having found infringement, accordingly allowed recovery of “statutory damages in the amount of Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.) as provided by the Copyright Laws of the United States,” with an injunction and attorney’s fee.
Petitioner’s contention here is that the statute was misapplied because its own gross profit of $899.16 supplied an actual figure which became the exclusive measure of its liability. It argues that an infringing defendant, by coming forward with an undisputed admission of its own profit from the infringement, can tie the hands of the court and limit recovery to that amount. We cannot agree.
In Douglas v. Cunningham, 294 U. S. 207, 209, we said:
“The phraseology of the section was adopted to avoid the strictness of construction incident to a law imposing penalties, and to give the owner of a copyright some recompense for injury done him, in a case where the rules of law render difficult or impossible proof of damages or discovery of profits.”
To fulfill that purpose, the statute has been interpreted to vest in the trial court broad discretion to determine whether it is more just to allow a recovery based on calculation of actual damages and profits, as found from evidence, or one based on a necessarily somewhat arbitrary estimate within the limits permitted by the Act.
“In other words, the court’s conception of what is just in the particular case, considering the nature of the copyright, the circumstances of the infringement and the like, is made the measure of the damages to be paid, but with the express qualification that in every case the assessment must be within the prescribed limitations, that is to say, neither more than the maximum nor less than the minimum. Within these limitations the court’s discretion and sense of justice are controlling, but it has no discretion when proceeding under this provision to go outside of them.” L. A. Westermann Co. v. Dispatch Printing Co., 249 U. S. 100, 106-107.
Few bodies of law would be more difficult to reduce to a short and simple formula than that which determines the measure of damage recoverable for actionable wrongs. The necessary flexibility to do justice in the variety of situations which copyright cases present can be achieved only by exercise of the wide judicial discretion within limited amounts conferred by this statute. It is plain that the court’s choice between a computed measure of damage and that imputed by statute cannot be controlled by the infringer’s admission of his profits which might be greatly exceeded by the damage inflicted. Indeed sales at a small margin might cause more damage to the copyright proprietor than sales of the infringing article at a higher price.
Whether discretionary resort to estimation of statutory damages is just should be determined by taking into account both components and the difficulties in the way of proof of either. In this case the profits realized were established by uncontradicted evidence, but the court was within the bounds of its discretion in concluding that the amount of damages suffered was not computable from the testimony. Lack of adequate proof on either element would warrant resort to the statute in the discretion of the court, subject always to the statutory limitations.
The case before us illustrates what capricious results would follow from the practice for which petitioner contends. It has admitted gross profits, which make no deduction for sales costs, overheads or taxes and, hence, may appear substantial on this particular record. But gross profits is not what a copyright owner is entitled to recover, but only such profits as remain after the defendant reduces them, as it may, by proof of allowable elements of cost. If we sustain petitioner’s contention that profits may be the sole measure of liability as matter of law, such profits could be diminished even to the vanishing point.
Net profits realized by a far-flung distributing enterprise like Woolworth’s upon sales of a given item in a few of its many stores can be calculated only by a process of allocating overheads, sales expenses, taxes, and a host of items. A plaintiff in the position of the present one could hardly verify or contest such apportionments unless it should audit the whole Wool worth business.
Moreover, a rule of liability which merely takes away the profits from an infringement would offer little discouragement to infringers. It would fall short of an effective sanction for enforcement of the copyright policy. The statutory rule, formulated after long experience, not merely compels restitution of profit and reparation for injury but also is designed to discourage wrongful conduct. The discretion of the court is wide enough to permit a resort to statutory damages for such purposes. Even for uninjurious and unprofitable invasions of copyright the court may, if it deems it just, impose a liability within statutory limits to sanction and vindicate the statutory policy.
Petitioner cites Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 309 U. S. 390, 399, where this Court said that the “in lieu” clause “is not applicable here, as the profits have been proved and the only question is as to their apportionment,” a statement on which petitioner leans almost its whole weight. There net profits from exhibition of an infringing picture were found to be $587,604.37. The copyright owner could show no such value to himself of his copyright; indeed, he had negotiated its sale at $30,000. The Court of Appeals cut the award of these actual profits to one-fifth thereof, upon the ground that success of the picture had been largely due to factors not contributed by the infringement. The propriety of this reduction was the sole issue before this Court. Petitioner copyright owner asserted that in such circumstances the “in lieu” clause “is not involved here.” This Court agreed that under those facts resort to the statute was not appropriate. That case did not present the question now here. Nor does anything in Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co. v. Buck, 283 U. S. 202, in the light of its facts, support petitioner. It holds use of the “in lieu” clause permissible, “there being no proof of actual damages,” but it does not hold that partial or unacceptable proof on that subject will preclude resort to the “in lieu” clause.
We think that the statute empowers the trial court in its sound exercise of judicial discretion to determine whether on all the facts a recovery upon proven profits and damages or one estimated within the statutory limits is more just. We find no abuse of that discretion.
The judgment below is
Affirmed.
193 F. 2d 162.
343 U. S. 963.
F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, 193 F. 2d 162, 167—169; Sammons v. Colonial Press, 126 F. 2d 341, 350; Davilla v. Brunswick-Balke Collender Co., 94 F. 2d 567; Malsed v. Marshall Field & Co., 96 F. Supp. 372, 376-377.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This is a direct appeal by the United States from a district court judgment holding unconstitutional § 501 (c)(14)(B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, '26 U. S. C. §501 (c)(14)(B) (1964 ed., Supp. V), on the ground that it arbitrarily discriminates between Maryland Savings-Share Insurance Corp. (MSSIC), the ap-pellee, and-other similar nonprofit, mutual insurers.
MSSIC was established by the Maryland Legislature with the object of insuring the accounts of shareholders of member savings and loan associations. Although first chartered in 1962, it seeks the benefit of § 501 (c) (14) (B), which exempts from tax nonprofit corporations such as appellee but only if organized before September 1, 1957. MSSIC’s position is that September 1, 1957,. is an arbitrary and unconstitutional cutoff date which must be excised from the section, leaving the section applicable to all corporations of the same nature as itsélf regardless of the date of their creation. We do not agree.
Prior to 1951, all savings and loan associations were exempt from taxation of income derived from their operations. Also exempt were nonprofit corporations that insured the savings institutions. In 1951, the exemption for savings and loan associations was discontinued, on findings that the industry had developed to a. point comparable to that of commercial banks. The exemption for insurers, however, was continued, provided they were already in existence as of September 1, 1951. See Revenue Act of 1951, § 313 (b), 65 Stat. 490; S. Rep. No. 781, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 22-29; 2 U. S. Code Cong. & Ad. News 1969, 1991-1997 (1951). As of that date three private insurers fell within the scope of the section — two of them in Massachusetts and one in Connecticut. Then, in 1956,'a fourth such corporation was organized in Ohio, and four years later Congress moved the cutoff date forward to September 1, 1957. Act of April 22, 1960, 74 Stat. 54.
In 1963, a similar bill, H. R. 3297, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., which would have moved the cutoff, date forward to January 1, 1963, for the benefit of MSSIC, passed the House, but was never reported out by the Senate Finance Committee. Testimony before the committee indicated that continued forward movement of the date might lead to proliferation of state insurers that could hinder the operations and threaten the financial stability of -the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. See Hearing on H. R. 3297 before the Senate Committee on Finance, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., 9-10 (1964).
Against this background, the District Court’s invalidation of § 501 (c) (14) (B) was error. The fact that Con-: gress enacts a statute containing a “grandfather clause,” which exempts from the general income tax certain corporations organized prior to a specified date, does not of itself indicate that Congress has made an arbitrary classification. Cf. Stanley v. Public Utilities Comm’n, 295 U. S. 76 (1935); Sperry & Hutchinson Co. v. Rhodes; 220 U. S. 502 (1911); Watson v. Maryland, 218 U. S. 173 (1910); Sampere v. New Orleans, 166 La. 776, 117 So. 827 (1928), aff’d per curiam, 279 U. S. 812 (1929). Normally, a legislative classification will not be set aside if any state of facts rationally justifying it is demonstrated to or perceived by the courts. McDonald v. Board of Election Comm’rs,.394 U. S. 802, 809 (1969); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 426. (1961); Standard Oil Co. v. City of Marysville, 279 U. S. 582, 586-587 (1929). See also Watson v. Maryland, supra, at 178. Here the legislative history of H. R. 3297 affirmatively discloses that Congress had a rational basis for declining in 1963 to broaden the exemption by extending the-cutoff-date of § 501 (c)(T4)(B). Just as a State may provide that after a specified date newly established common carriers must obtain state approval before entering into business so as to prevent proliferation of such carriers and excessive use of the State’s highways, see Stanley v. Public Utilities Comm’n, supra, similarly Congress does not exceed its power to tax nor does it violate the Fifth Amendment when it refuses to exempt from tax newly formed corporations, the multiplication of which might burden otherwise valid federal programs.
Having noted probable jurisdiction by order of October 12, 1970, we now reverse the judgment of the District ^our^'
So ordered;
Mr. Justice Harlan, considering that the issues in this case are deserving of plenary consideration, would set the case for argument.
Internal Revenue Code § 501 (c) (14) (B), 26 U. S. C. §501 (c)(14)(B) (1964 ed., Supp. V), provides:
“(B) Corporations or associations without capital stock organized before September 1, 1957, and operated for mutual • purposes and without profit for the purpose of providing reserve funds for, and insurance of shares or deposits in—
“(i) domestic building and loan associations,
“(ii) cooperative banks without capital stock organized and operated for mutual purposes and without profit, or
“(in) mutual savings banks not having capital stock represented by shares.”
The District Court’s reliance on Mayflower Farms, Inc. v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 266 (1936), was misplaced, since, according to the Court in that case, the legislative record contained no affirmative showing of a valid legislative purpose. We thus heed not pass upon the- continuing validity of Mayflower’s holding. We also find unpersuasive MSSIC’s remaining argument that it is an instrumentality of the State and hence entitled to exemption from federal taxation under the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity and under § 115 (a)(1) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. § 115 (a)(1). The District Court properly rejected this argument.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented in this case is whether, in a suit brought by a limited partnership, the citizenship of the limited partners must be taken into account to determine diversity of citizenship among the parties.
I
Respondent Arkoma Associates (Arkoma), a limited partnership organized under the laws of Arizona, brought suit on a contract dispute in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, relying upon diversity of citizenship for federal jurisdiction. The defendants, C. Tom Carden and Leonard L. Limes, citizens of Louisiana, moved to dismiss, contending that one of Arkoma’s limited partners was also a citizen of Louisiana. The District Court denied the motion but certified the question for interlocutory appeal, which the Fifth Circuit declined. Thereafter Magee Drilling Company intervened in the suit and, together with the original defendants, counterclaimed against Arkoma under Texas law. Following a bench trial, the District Court awarded Arkoma a money judgment plus interest and attorney’s fees; it dismissed Carden and Limes’ counterclaim as well as Magee’s intervention and counterclaim. Carden, Limes, and Magee (petitioners here) appealed, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 874 F. 2d 226 (1988). With respect to petitioners’ jurisdictional challenge, the Court of Appeals found complete diversity, reasoning that Arkoma’s citizenship should be determined by reference to the citizenship of the general, but not the limited, partners. We granted certiorari. 490 U. S. 1045 (1989).
II
Article III of the Constitution provides, in pertinent part, that “[t]he judicial Power shall extend to . . . Controversies . . . between Citizens of different States.” Congress first authorized the federal courts to exercise diversity jurisdiction in the Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, § 11, 1 Stat. 78. In its current form, the diversity statute provides that “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds . . . $50,000 . . . , and is between . . . citizens of different States . . . .” 28 U. S. C. § 1332(a). Since its enactment, we have interpreted the diversity statute to require “complete diversity” of citizenship. See Strawbridge v. Curtiss, 3 Cranch 267 (1806). The District Court erred in finding complete diversity in this case unless (1) a limited partnership may be considered in its own right a “citizen” of the State that created it, or (2) a federal court must look to the citizenship of only its general, but not its limited, partners to determine whether there is complete diversity of citizenship. We consider these questions in turn.
A
We have often had to consider the status of artificial entities created by state law insofar as that bears upon the existence of federal diversity jurisdiction. The precise question posed under the terms of the diversity statute is whether such an entity may be considered a “citizen” of the State under whose laws it was created. A corporation is the paradigmatic artificial “person,” and the Court has considered its proper characterization under the diversity statute on more than one occasion — not always reaching the same conclusion. Initially, we held that a corporation “is certainly not a citizen,” so that to determine the existence of diversity juris.diction the Court must “look to the character of the individuals who compose [it].” Bank of United States v. Deveaux, 5 Cranch 61, 86, 91-92 (1809). We overruled Deveaux 35 years later in Louisville, C. & C. R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497, 558 (1844), which held that a corporation is “capable of being treated as a citizen of [the State which created it], as much as a natural person.” Ten years later, we reaffirmed the result of Letson, though on the somewhat different theory that “those who use the corporate name, and exercise the faculties conferred by it,” should be presumed conclusively to be citizens of the corporation’s State of incorporation. Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 16 How. 314, 329 (1854).
While the rule regarding the treatment of corporations as “citizens” has become firmly established, we have (with an exception to be discussed presently) just as firmly resisted extending that treatment to other entities. For example, in Chapman v. Barney, 129 U. S. 677 (1889), a case involving an unincorporated “joint stock company,” we raised the question of jurisdiction on our own motion, and found it to be lacking:
“On looking into the record we find no satisfactory showing as to the citizenship of the plaintiff. The allegation of the amended petition is, that the United States Express Company is a joint stock company organized under a law of the State of New York, and is. a citizen of that State. But the express company cannot be a citizen of New York, within the meaning of the statutes regulating jurisdiction, unless it be a corporation. The allegation that the company was organized under the laws of New York is not an allegation that it is a corporation. In fact the allegation is, that the company is not a corporation, but a joint stock company — that is, a mere partnership.” Id., at 682.
Similarly, in Great Southern Fire Proof Hotel Co. v. Jones, 177 U. S. 449 (1900), we held that a “limited partnership association” — although possessing “some of the characteristics of a corporation” and deemed a “citizen” by the law creating it — may not be deemed a “citizen” under the jurisdictional rule established for corporations. Id., at 456. “That rule must not be extended.” Id., at 457. As recently as 1965, our unanimous opinion in Steelworkers v. R. H. Bouligny, Inc., 382 U. S. 145, reiterated that “the doctrinal wall of Chapman v. Barney,” id., at 151, would not be breached.
The one exception to the admirable consistency of our jurisprudence on this matter is Puerto Rico v. Russell & Co., 288 U. S. 476 (1933), which held that the entity known as a sociedad en comandita, created under the civil law of Puerto Rico, could be treated as a citizen of Puerto Rico for purposes of determining federal-court jurisdiction. The sociedad’s juridical personality, we said, “is so complete in contemplation of the law of Puerto Rico that we see no adequate reason for holding that the sociedad has a different status for purposes of federal jurisdiction than a corporation organized under that law.” Id., at 482. Arkoma fairly argues that this language, and the outcome of the case, “reflec[t] the Supreme Court’s willingness to look beyond the incorporated/unincorporated dichotomy and to study the internal organization, state law requirements, management structure, and capacity or lack thereof to act and/or sue, to determine diversity of citizenship.” Brief .for Respondent 14. The problem with this argument lies not in its logic, but in the fact that the approach it espouses was proposed and specifically rejected in Bouligny. There, in reaffirming “the doctrinal wall of Chapman v. Barney,” we explained Russell as a case resolving the distinctive problem “of fitting an exotic creation of the civil law . . . into a federal scheme which knew it not.” 382 U. S., at 151. There could be no doubt, after Bouligny, that at least common-law entities (and likely all entities beyond the Puerto Rican sociedad en comandita) would be treated for purposes of the diversity statute pursuant to what Russell called “[t]he tradition of the common law,” which is “to treat as legal persons only incorporated groups and to assimilate all others to partnerships.” 288 U. S., at 480.
Arkoma claims to have found another exception to our Chapman tradition in Navarro Savings Assn. v. Lee, 446 U. S. 458 (1980). That case, however, did not involve the question whether a party that is an artificial entity other than a corporation can be considered a “citizen” of a State, but the quite separate question whether parties that were undoubted “citizens” (viz., natural persons) were the real parties to the controversy. The plaintiffs in Navarro were eight individual trustees of a Massachusetts business trust, suing in their own names. The defendant, Navarro Savings Association, disputed the existence of complete diversity, claiming that the trust beneficiaries rather than the trustees were the real parties to the controversy, and that the citizenship of the former and not the latter should therefore control. In the course of rejecting this claim, we did indeed discuss the characteristics of a Massachusetts business trust — not at all, however, for the purpose of determining whether the trust had attributes making it a “citizen,” but only for the purpose of establishing that the respondents were “active trustees whose control over the assets held in their names is real and substantial,” thereby bringing them under the rule, “more than 150 years” old, which permits such trustees “to sue in their own right, without regard to the citizenship of the trust beneficiaries.” Id., at 465-466. Navarro, in short, has nothing to do with the Chapman question, except that it makes available to respondent the argument by analogy that, just as business reality is taken into account for purposes of determining whether a trustee is the real party to the controversy, so also it should be taken into account for purposes of determining whether an artificial entity is a citizen. That argument is, to put it mildly, less than compelling.
B
As an alternative ground for finding complete diversity, Arkoma asserts that the Fifth Circuit correctly determined its citizenship solely by reference to the citizenship of its general partners, without regard to the citizenship of its limited partners. Only the general partners, it points out, “manage the assets, control the litigation, and bear the risk of liability for the limited partnership’s debts,” and, more broadly, “have exclusive and complete management and control of the operations of the partnership.” Brief for Respondent 30, 36. This approach of looking to the citizenship of only some of the members of the artificial entity finds even less support in our precedent than looking to the State of organization (for which one could at least point to Russell). We have never held that an artificial entity, suing or being sued in its own name, can invoke the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts based on the citizenship of some but not all of its members. No doubt some members of the joint stock company in Chapman, the labor union in Bouligny, and the limited partnership association in Great Southern exercised greater control over their respective entities than other members. But such considerations have played no part in our decisions.
To support its approach, Arkoma seeks to press Navanv into service once again, arguing that just as that case looked to the trustees to determine the citizenship of the business trust, so also here we should look to the general partners, who have the management powers, in determining the citizenship of this partnership. As we have already explained, however, Navarro had nothing to do with the citizenship of the “trust,” since it was a suit by the trustees in their own names.
The dissent supports Arkoma’s argument on this point, though, as we have described, under the rubric of determining which parties supposedly before the Court are the real parties, rather than under the rubric of determining the citizenship of the limited partnership. See n. 1, supra. The dissent asserts that “[t]he real party to the controversy approach,” post, at 201 — by which it means an approach that looks to “control over the conduct of the business and the ability to initiate or control the course of litigation,” post, at 204 — “has been implemented by the Court both in its oldest and in its most recent cases examining diversity jurisdiction with respect to business associations.” Post, at 201. Not a single case the dissent discusses, either old or new, supports that assertion. Deveaux, which was in any event overruled by Letson, seems to be applying not a “real party to the controversy” test, but rather the principle that for jurisdictional purposes the corporation has no substance, and merely “represents” its shareholders, see 5 Cranch, at 90-91; but even if it can be regarded as applying a “real party to the controversy” test, it deems that test to be met by all the shareholders of the corporation, without regard to their “control over the operation of the business.” Marshall, which as we have discussed rerationalized Letson’s holding that a corporation was a “citizen” in its own right, contains language quite clearly adopting a “real party to the controversy” approach, and arguably even adopting a “control” test for that status. (“[T]he court. . . will look behind the corporate or collective name ... to find the persons who act as'the representatives, curators, or trustees . . . .” 16 How., at 328-329 (emphasis added). “The presumption arising from the habitat of a corporation in the place of its creation [is] conclusive as to the residence or citizenship of those who use the corporate name and exercise the factdties conferred by it ... .” Id., at 329 (emphasis added).) But as we have also discussed, and as the last quotation shows, that analysis was a complete fiction; the real citizenship of the shareholders (or the controlling shareholders) was not consulted at all. From the fictional Marshall, the dissent must leap almost a century and a third to Navarro to find a “real party to the controversy” analysis that discusses “control.” That case, as we have said, is irrelevant, since it involved not a juridical person but the distinctive common-law institution of trustees.
The dissent finds its position supported, rather than contradicted, by the trilogy of Chapman, Great Southern, and Bouligny — cases that did involve juridical persons but that did not apply “real party to the controversy” analysis, much less a “control” test as the criterion for that status. In those cases, the dissent explains, “the members of each association held equivalent power and control over the association’s assets, business, and litigation.” Post, at 202. It seeks to establish this factual matter, however, not from the text of the opinions (where not the slightest discussion of the point appears) but, for Chapman, by citation of scholarly commentary dealing with the general characteristics of joint stock company agreements, with no reference to (because the record does not contain) the particular agreement at issue in the case, post, at 202-203; for Gr'eat Southern, by citation of scholarly commentary dealing with the general characteristics of Pennsylvania limited partnership associations, and citation of Pennsylvania statutes, post, at 203; and, for Bouligny, by nothing more than the observation that “[t]here was no indication that any of the union members had any greater power over the litigation or the union’s business and assets than any other member, and, therefore, as in Chapman and Great Southern, the Court was not called upon to decide” the issue, post, at 204. This will not do. Since diversity of citizenship is a jurisdictional requirement, the Court is always “called upon to decide” it. As the Court said in Great Southern itself:
“[T]he failure of parties to urge objections [to diversity of citizenship] cannot relieve this court from the duty of ascertaining from the record whether the Circuit Court could properly take jurisdiction of this suit. . . . ‘The rule ... is inflexible and without exception, which requires this court, of its own motion, to deny its own jurisdiction, and, in the exercise of its appellate power, that of all other courts of the United States, in all cases where such jurisdiction does not affirmatively appear in the record on which, in the exercise of that power, it is called to act.’” 177 U. S., at 453 (quoting Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U. S. 379, 382 (1884)).
If, as the dissent contends, these three cases were applying a “real party to the controversy” test governed by “control” over the associations, so that the citizenship of all members would be consulted only if all members had equivalent control, it is inconceivable that the existence of equivalency, or at least the absence of any reason to suspect nonequivalency, would not have been mentioned in the opinions. Given what 180 years of cases have said and done, as opposed to what they might have said, it is difficult to understand how the dissent can characterize as “newly formulated” the “rule that the Court will, without analysis of the particular entity before it, count every member of an unincorporated association for purposes of diversity jurisdiction.” Post, at 199.
In sum, we reject the contention that to determine, for diversity purposes, the citizenship of an artificial entity, the court may consult the citizenship of less than all of the entity’s members. We adhere to our oft-repeated rule that diversity jurisdiction in a suit by or against the entity depends on the citizenship of “all the members,” Chapman, 129 U. S., at 682, “the several persons composing such association,” Great Southern, 177 U. S., at 456, “each of its members,” Bouligny, 382 U. S., at 146.
C
The resolutions we have reached above can validly be characterized as technical, precedent-bound, and unresponsive to policy considerations raised by the changing realities of business organization. But, as must be evident from our earlier discussion, that has been the character of our jurisprudence in this field after Letson. See Currie, The Federal Courts and the American Law Institute, 36 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1, 35 (1968). Arkoma is undoubtedly correct that limited partnerships are functionally similar to “other types of organizations that have access to federal courts,” and is perhaps correct that “[cjonsiderations of basic fairness and substance over form require that limited partnerships receive similar treatment.” Brief for Respondent 33. Similar arguments were made in Bouligny. The District Court there had upheld removal because it could divine “ ‘no common sense reason for treating an unincorporated national labor union differently from a corporation,’” 382 U. S., at 146, and we recognized that that contention had “considerable merit,” id., at 150. We concluded, however, that “[w]hether unincorporated labor unions ought to be assimilated to the status of corporations for diversity purposes,” id., at 153, is “properly a matter for legislative consideration which cannot adequately or appropriately be dealt with by this Court,” id., at 147. In other words, having entered the field of diversity policy with regard to artificial entities once (and forcefully) in Letson, we have left further adjustments to be made by Congress.
Congress has not been idle. In 1958 it revised the rule established in Letson, providing that a corporation shall be deemed a citizen not only of its State of incorporation but also “of the State where it has its principal place of business.” 28 U. S. C. § 1332(c). No provision was made for the treatment of artificial entities other than corporations, although the existence of many new, post-Letson forms of commercial enterprises, including at least the sort of joint stock company at issue in Chapman, the sort of limited partnership association at issue in Great Southern, and the the sort of Massachusetts business trust at issue in Navairo, must have been obvious.
Thus, the course we take today does not so much disregard the policy of accommodating our diversity jurisdiction to the changing realities of commercial organization, as it honors the more important policy of leaving that to the people’s elected representatives. Such accommodation is not only performed more legitimately by Congress than by courts, but it is performed more intelligently by legislation than by interpretation of the statutory word “citizen.” The 50 States have created, and will continue to create, a wide assortment of artificial entities possessing different powers and characteristics, and composed of various classes of members with varying degrees of interest and control. Which of them is entitled to be considered a “citizen” for diversity purposes, and which of their members’ citizenship is to be consulted, are questions more readily resolved by legislative prescription than by legal reasoning, and questions whose complexity is particularly unwelcome at the threshold stage of determining whether a court has jurisdiction. We have long since decided that, having established special treatment for corporations, we will leave the rest to Congress; we adhere to that decision.
Ill
Arkoma argues that even if this Court finds complete diversity lacking with respect to Carden and Limes, we should nonetheless affirm the judgment with respect to Magee because complete diversity indisputably exists between Magee and Arkoma. This question was not considered by the Court of Appeals. We decline to decide it in the first instance, and leave it to be resolved by the Court of Appeals on remand.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The dissent reaches a conclusion different from ours primarily because it poses, and then answers, an entirely different question. It “do[es] not consider” “whether the limited partnership is a ‘citizen,’” but simply “assum[es] it is a citizen,” because even if we hold that it is, “we are still required to consider which, if any, of the other citizens before the Court as members of Arkoma Associates are real parties to the controversy.” Post, at 198 (emphasis added). Furthermore, “[t]he only potentially non-diverse party in this case is a limited partner” because “[a]ll other parties, including the general partners and the limited partnership itself, assuming it is a citizen, are diverse.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
That is the central fallacy from which, for the most part, the rest of the dissent’s reasoning logically follows. The question presented today is not which of various parties before the Court should be considered for purposes of determining whether there is complete diversity of citizenship, a question that will generally be answered by application of the “real party to the controversy” test. There are not, as the dissent assumes, multiple respondents before the Court, but only one: the artificial entity called Arkoma Associates, a limited partnership. And what we must decide is the quite different question of how the citizenship of that single artificial entity is to be determined — which in turn raises the question whether it can (like a corporation) assert its own citizenship, or rather is deemed to possess the citizenship of its members, and, if so, which members. The dissent fails to cite a single case in which the citizenship of an artificial entity, the issue before us today, has been decided by application of the “real party to the controversy” test that it describes. See infra, at 192-195.
The dissent correctly observes that “Russell tells us nothing about whether the citizenship of the sociedad’s members, unlimited or limited, should be considered for purposes of diversity jurisdiction.” Post, at 207. Rather, as is evident from our discussing the case here instead of in Part B below, Russell (according to respondent) tells us something about whether an artificial entity other than a corporation can be considered a “citizen” in its own right. That “[t]he issue in Russell was not diversity, but whether the suit against the sociedad en comandita could be removed from the Insular Court to the United States District Court for Puerto Rico,” post, at 207, does not affect Russell’s arguable relevance to that question because the operative word in both the diversity statute and the removal statute at issue in Russell is “citizens.”
The dissent goes on to criticize as “seriously flawed,” post, at 208, our attempt to distinguish Russell in connection with the issue we do address, whether a partnership can be considered a “citizen.” We point out, not by way of complaint but to prevent confusion, that the criticism is gratuitous, inasmuch as the dissent itself takes no position on this issue, announcing at the very outset that it “do[es] not consider” the question “whether the limited partnership is a ‘citizen.’ ” Post, at 198. In any event, the dissent’s evidence bearing on the historical pedigree of partnerships comes to our attention at least 25 years too late. For the reasons stated in the text, Bouligny considered and rejected applying Russell beyond its facts.
Marshall's fictional approach appears to have been abandoned. Later cases revert to the formulation of Louisville, C. & C. R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497 (1844), that the corporation has its own citizenship. See Great Southern Fire Proof Hotel Co. v. Jones, 177 U. S. 449, 456 (1900) (“[F]or purposes of jurisdiction ... a corporation was to be deemed a citizen of the State creating it") (citing Letson); Chapman v. Barney, 129 U. S. 677, 682 (1889) (“[E]xpress company cannot be a citizen of New York, within the meaning of the statutes regulating jurisdiction, unless it be a corporation").
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1901 the Klamath Indian Tribe ceded 621,824 acres of reservation land to the United States. The question presented in this case is whether the Tribe thereafter retained a special right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands free of state regulation. In answering that question we consider not only the terms of the 1901 Cession Agreement but also the predecessor 1864 Treaty that established the Tribe’s original reservation and certain other events in the history of the Tribe.
I
In the early 19th century, the Klamath and Modoc Tribes and the Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians claimed aboriginal title to approximately 22 million acres of land extending east from the Cascade Mountains in southern Oregon. In 1864 these Tribes (now collectively known as the Klamath Indian Tribe) entered into a Treaty with the United States, ceding “all their right, title and claim to all the country claimed by them” and providing that a described tract of approximately 1.9 million acres “within the country ceded” would be set apart for them, to be “held and regarded as an Indian reservation.” 16 Stat. 707, 708. The 1864 Treaty also provided that the Tribes would have “secured” to them “the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes, included in said reservation, and of gathering edible roots, seeds, and berries within its limits.” Ibid. No right to hunt or fish outside the reservation was preserved.
The boundaries of the reservation were first surveyed by the United States in 1871. Members of the Tribe immediately complained that the surveyor had erroneously excluded large areas of land from the reservation as described in the 1864.Treaty. These complaints continued after the Government resurveyed the boundaries, and slightly enlarged them, in 1888. In response to these complaints, in 1896 Congress authorized a Boundary Commission to determine the amount and value of the land that had been incorrectly excluded from the reservation.
In October 1896, the three-member Boundary Commission visited the reservation, traveled its disputed boundaries with a Klamath Indian guide, and interviewed a number of Klam-ath Indians who had participated in the negotiation of the 1864 Treaty. See Klamath Boundary Commission Report (Dec. 18, 1896), reprinted in S. Doc. No. 93, 54th Cong., 2d Sess., 5-19 (1897). These Indians specifically recalled that the parties to the 1864 Treaty had intended to include the Sycan and Sprague River Valleys within the eastern portion of the reservation because those valleys had been an important source of fish and game for members of the Tribe. Based on its review of the 1864 negotiations and the geographical description provided in the Treaty itself, the Boundary Commission concluded that over 617,000 acres of land had been erroneously excluded from the reservation in previous Government surveys. Id., at 11.
The Boundary Commission determined that the excluded land had an average value of 83.36 cents per acre. This figure took into account “the good timber land and the meadows of the Sycan and Sprague River valleys” as well as the “rocky and sterile mountain ranges, producing very ordinary timber and little grass.” The Commission’s valuation was based on the use of the land for stock grazing and as a source of timber. Its report did not discuss hunting or fishing on the excluded lands, nor did it advert to any valuation for the right to conduct such activities on the land.
Upon receiving the Boundary Commission’s report, Congress appropriated funds in 1898 for a precise “resurvey of the exterior boundaries of the Klamath Reservation,” and authorized the Secretary of the Interior “to negotiate through an Indian inspector with said Klamath Indians for the relinquishment of all their right and interest in and to” the excluded lands. Act of July 1, 1898, ch. 545, 30 Stat. 571, 592.
The course of negotiations with the Tribe extended over the next two years. The Tribe was assisted by counsel and actively asserted its interests when those interests diverged from the proposals of the United States. Yet the historical record provided by a number of congressional documents contains no reference to continuation of any special hunting or fishing rights for members of the Tribe after payment for the excluded lands. No objection by the Tribe to resolving the problem by selling the excluded lands to the Government appears anywhere in the record. Although one Government inspector felt that the price recommended by the Boundary Commission was too high, see n. 7, supra, the Commission’s recommendation ultimately was accepted. The final Cession Agreement was signed by 191 adult male members of the Tribe on June 17, 1901.
In the 1901 Agreement, the United States agreed to pay the Tribe $537,007.20 for 621,824 acres of reservation land. In return, the Tribe agreed in Article I to “cede, surrender, grant, and convey to the United States all their claim, right, title and interest in and to” that land. The reservation was thereby diminished to approximately two-thirds of its original size as described in the 1864 Treaty. The 1901 Agreement also provided in Article IV that “nothing in this agreement shall be construed to deprive [the Tribe] of any benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement.”
The 1901 Agreement was ratified by Congress in 1906. Act of June 21, 1906, ch. 3504, 34 Stat. 325, 367. Between 1901 and 1906, virtually all of the ceded land was closed to settlement entry and placed in national forests or parks, App. 14, a status much of the land retains to this day. The parties have stipulated that members of the Tribe continued to hunt and fish on the ceded lands, from the time of the cession to the commencement of this litigation in 1982. Ibid. During that period, there is no record of any assertion by the State of Oregon, or any denial by the Tribe, of state regulatory jurisdiction over Indian hunting or fishing on the ceded lands. Id., at 15. It is also stipulated that hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering were “crucial to the survival” of the Klamath Indians in 1864, 1901, and 1906, and that these activities continue to “play a highly significant role” in the fives of Klamath Indians. Id., at 19.
I l-H
In 1954, Congress terminated federal supervision over the Klamath Tribe and its property, including the Klamath Reservation. Pub. L. 587, 68 Stat. 718-723, as amended, 25 U. S. C. §§564-564x. The Termination Act required members of the Tribe to elect either to withdraw from the Tribe and receive the monetary value of their interest in tribal property, or to remain in the Tribe and participate in a nongovernmental tribal management plan. §564d(a)(2). The Termination Act also authorized the sale of that portion of the reservation necessary to provide funds for the compensation of withdrawing members, and the transfer of the unsold portion to a private trustee. §564e(a). The Termination Act further specified that its provisions would not “abrogate any fishing rights or privileges of the tribe or the members thereof enjoyed under Federal treaty.” § 564m(b).
In 1969, the Indian Claims Commission awarded the Tribe $4,162,992.80 as additional compensation for the lands ceded by the 1901 Agreement. Klamath and Modoc Tribes v. United States, 20 Ind. Cl. Comm’n 522. As had been the case in 1896 and in 1901, the amount of the Commission’s award was based on the estimated value of the land for stock grazing and timber harvesting, which the parties had agreed constituted the “highest and best uses” for the land. Id., at 525. The Claims Commission’s opinion did not specify a value for, or mention, hunting or fishing rights.
Ill
In 1982 the Tribe filed this action against the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and various state officials, seeking an injunction against interference with tribal members’ hunting and fishing activities on the lands ceded in 1901. The State conceded that it had no authority to interfere with tribal hunting or fishing on lands sold or transferred pursuant to the 1954 Termination Act, but it asserted the right to enforce state regulations against the Tribe on the lands that had been ceded in 1901.
The essential facts were stipulated. The District Court entered summary judgment in favor of the Tribe, declaring that the 1901 Agreement “did not abrogate” the Tribe’s 1864 “treaty rights... to hunt, fish, trap and gather, free from regulation by the... State of Oregon” on the ceded lands. The District Court relied on the language in Article IV of the 1901 Agreement preserving any benefits to which the Tribe was “entitled under existing treaties not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement,” and on the Government’s failure to compensate the Tribe expressly for the loss of hunting and fishing rights either in 1901 or 1969.
The Court of Appeals affirmed. 729 F. 2d 609 (1984). It held that the 1864 Treaty had reserved to the Tribe rights to hunt and fish that were not appurtenant to the land itself. Accordingly, when the erroneously excluded lands were ceded to the United States in 1901, that cession did not necessarily include the hunting and fishing rights. Construing the 1901 Agreement in the Indians’ favor, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Tribe had retained all rights consistent with the cession not expressly conveyed. The court then ruled that continued hunting and fishing by the Indians on the ceded lands was not necessarily inconsistent with the provisions of the 1901 Agreement. The omission of any reference to hunting or fishing rights, and the failure to compensate the Tribe expressly for such rights, supported the conclusion that Congress had not intended to abrogate them, and the State had not otherwise sustained its burden of demonstrating a clear congressional intent to extinguish these tribal treaty rights. Id., at 612-613.
Because the Court of Appeals’ decision appeared to conflict in principle with the decision of the Eighth Circuit in Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians v. Minnesota, 614 F. 2d 1161 (per curiam), cert. denied, 449 U. S. 905 (1980), we granted certiorari, 469 U. S. 879 (1984). We now reverse.
I — I
At issue in this case is an asserted right of tribal members to hunt and fish outside the reservation boundaries established in 1901, free of state regulation. The Tribe argues that this special right continued on the lands that were ceded in the 1901 Agreement, even though the reservation boundaries were diminished and the exclusivity of the 1864 Treaty rights necessarily expired on the ceded lands. The Tribe agrees that ceded lands now privately owned may be closed to tribal hunting and fishing, and that the Federal Government validly may regulate Indian activity on the ceded lands now held as national parks or forests. See 729 F. 2d, at 611; Brief for Respondent 12,17. It is also clear that non-Indians may hunt and fish on at least some of the ceded lands and that members of the Tribe are entitled to the same hunting and fishing privileges as all other residents of Oregon. Our inquiry, therefore, is whether a special right, nonexclusive but free of state regulation, was intended to survive in the face of the language of the 1901 Agreement ceding “all... right... in and to” the ceded lands.
The Court of Appeals’ holding was predicated on its understanding that the hunting and fishing rights reserved to the Tribe by the 1864 Treaty were not appurtenant to the land within the reservation boundaries. 729 F. 2d, at 612. We agree with the Court of Appeals that Indians may enjoy special hunting and fishing rights that are independent of any ownership of land, and that, as demonstrated in 25 U. S. C. § 564m(b), the 1954 Termination Act for the Klamath Tribe, such rights may survive the termination of an Indian reservation. Moreover, the Court of Appeals was entirely correct in its view that doubts concerning the meaning of a treaty with an Indian tribe should be resolved in favor of the tribe. See Washington v. Washington Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn., 443 U. S. 658, 675-676 (1979); Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 367 (1930). Nevertheless, we cannot agree with the court’s interpretation of the 1901 Cession Agreement or with its reading of the 1864 Treaty.
V
Before the 1864 Treaty was executed, the Tribe claimed aboriginal title to about 22 million acres of land. The Treaty language that ceded that entire tract — except for the 1.9 million acres set apart for the Klamath Reservation — stated only that the Tribe ceded “all their right, title, and claim” to the described area. Yet that general conveyance unquestionably carried with it whatever special hunting and fishing rights the Indians had previously possessed in over 20 million acres outside the reservation. Presumptively, the similar language used in the 1901 Cession Agreement should have the same effect.
More importantly, the language of the 1864 Treaty plainly describes rights intended to be exercised within the limits of the reservation. This point can be best understood by consideration of the entire portion of the Treaty in which the right of taking fish is described. The relevant language of the 1864 Treaty is found in Article I:
“That the following described tract, within the country ceded by this treaty, shall, until otherwise directed by the President of the United States, be set apart as a residence for said Indians, [and] held and regarded as an Indian reservation.... And the tribes aforesaid agree and bind themselves that, immediately after the ratification of this treaty, they will remove to said reservation and remain thereon, unless temporary leave of absence be granted to them by the superintendent or agent having charge of the tribes.
“It is further stipulated and agreed that no white person shall be permitted to locate or remain upon the reservation, except the Indian superintendent and agent, employés of the Indian department, and officers of the army of the United States... [and] that in case persons other than those specified are found upon the reservation, they shall be immediately expelled therefrom; and the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes, included in said reservation, and of gathering edible roots, seeds, and berries within its limits, is hereby secured to the Indians aforesaid....” 16 Stat. 708.
The fishing right thus reserved is described as a right to take from the streams and lakes “included in said reservation,” and the gathering right is for edible roots, seeds, and berries “within its limits.” This limiting language surely indicates that the fishing and gathering rights pertained to the area that was reserved for the Indians and from which non-Indians were excluded. Although hunting is not expressly mentioned in the Treaty, it is clear that any exclusive right to hunt was also confined to the reservation. The fact that the rights were characterized as “exclusive” forecloses the possibility that they were intended to have existence outside of the reservation; no exclusivity would be possible on lands open to non-Indians. Moreover, in view of the fact that Article I restricted members of the Tribe to the reservation, to “remain thereon, unless temporary leave of absence be granted,” it is manifest that the rights secured to the Indians by that same Article did not exist independently of the reservation itself.
The language of the 1901 Agreement must be read with these terms of the 1864 Treaty in mind. In 1954 when Congress terminated the Klamath Reservation, it enacted an express provision continuing the Indians’ right to fish on the former reservation land. 25 U. S. C. § 564m(b); see Kimball v. Callahan, 590 F. 2d 768 (CA9), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 826 (1979). The 1901 Agreement contained no such express provision concerning the right to hunt and fish on the lands ceded by the Tribe. Instead, the 1901 Agreement contained a broad and unequivocal conveyance of the Tribe’s title to the land and a surrender of “all their claim, right, title, and interest in and to” that portion of the reservation. 34 Stat. 367 (emphasis added). The 1901 Agreement thus was both a divestiture of the Tribe’s ownership of the ceded lands and a diminution of the boundaries of the reservation within which the Tribe exercised its sovereignty. In the absence of any language reserving any specific rights in the ceded lands, the normal construction of the words used in the 1901 Agreement unquestionably would encompass any special right to use the ceded lands for hunting and fishing.
This conclusion is unequivocally confirmed by the fact that the rights secured by the 1864 Treaty were “exclusive.” Since the 1901 Cession Agreement concededly diminished the reservation boundaries, any tribal right to hunt and fish on the ceded, off-reservation lands can no longer be “exclusive” as specified in the 1864 Treaty. Indeed, even if the Tribe had expressly reserved a “privilege of fishing and hunting” on the ceded lands, our precedents demonstrate that such an express reservation would not suffice to defeat the State’s power to reasonably and evenhandedly regulate such activity. See n. 16, supra. In light of these precedents, the absence of any express reservation of rights, as found in other 19th-century agreements, only serves to strengthen the conclusion that no special off-reservation rights were comprehended by the parties to the 1901 Agreement.
As both the District Court and the Court of Appeals noted, Article IV of the 1901 Agreement preserved all of the Klam-ath Indians’ “benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties, not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement.” Article IV thus made it clear that none of the benefits that the Tribe had preserved within its reservation in the 1864 Treaty would be lost. But because the right to hunt and fish reserved in the 1864 Treaty was an exclusive right to be exercised within the reservation, that right could not consistently survive off the reservation under the clear provisions of cession and diminution contained in Article I. Moreover, a glaring inconsistency in the overall Treaty structure would have been present if the Tribe simultaneously could have exercised an independent right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands outside the boundaries of the diminished reservation while remaining bound to honor its 1864 Treaty commitment to stay within the reservation absent permission. Article IV cannot fairly be construed as an implicit preservation of benefits previously linked to the reservation when those benefits could be enjoyed thereafter only outside the reservation boundaries.
In sum, the language of the 1864 Treaty indicates that the Tribe’s rights to hunt and fish were restricted to the reservation. The broad language used in the 1901 Agreement, virtually identical to that used to extinguish off-reservation rights in the 1864 Treaty, accomplished a diminution of the reservation boundaries, and no language in the 1901 Agreement evidences any intent to preserve special off-reservation hunting or fishing rights for the Tribe. Indeed, in light of the 1901 diminution, a silent preservation of off-reservation rights would have been inconsistent with the broad language of cession as well as with the Tribe’s 1864 Treaty agreement to remain within the reservation.
í — i >
The Tribe acknowledges that the 1901 Agreement is silent with regard to hunting and fishing rights, but argues that that silence itself, viewed in historical context, demonstrates an intent to preserve tribal hunting and fishing rights in the ceded land. The Tribe asserts that Congress’ “singular” purpose in negotiating and ratifying the 1901 Agreement was “to benefit the Indians by honoring the United States’ Treaty obligations,” and that an intent to extinguish hunting and fishing rights would be inconsistent with this purpose. Brief for Respondent 28-30, and n. 13. We disagree for two reasons.
First, an end to the Tribe’s special hunting and fishing rights on lands ceded to the Government, if accomplished with the understanding and assent of the Tribe in return for compensation, is not at all inconsistent with an intent to honor the 1864 Treaty. Having acknowledged an intent to remedy its breach of the 1864 Treaty, the United States might have opted to restore the correct boundaries of the reservation and compensate the Indians for any loss occasioned by the erroneous surveys, or, instead, to acquire the erroneously excluded land for a price intended to represent fair compensation. Both options are consistent with an intent to honor the Treaty obligations. Choice of the purchase and compensation option is also consistent with an intent, on both sides, to end any special privileges attaching to the excluded land. Moreover, since the boundary restoration option would have unquestionably preserved such rights for the Tribe, the rejection of that option is also consistent with an intent not to preserve those rights.
Second, Congress in 1901 was motivated by additional goals. By 1896, non-Indian settlers had moved onto the disputed reservation lands, the State of Oregon had completed a military road across the reservation, and conflicts between members of the Tribe and non-Indians perceived as interlopers were sufficient to require congressional attention. See S. Doc. No. 129, 53d Cong., 2d Sess. (1894); n. 8, supra. Negotiations with the Tribe were authorized in order to settle these conflicts as well as to honor fairly the terms of the 1864 Treaty. These goals again suggest two equally consistent options: restoration of the correct reservation boundaries and exclusion of non-Indians as the 1864 Treaty required, or purchase of the excluded, entered-upon lands. Rather than restore the excluded lands to the Tribe — an option that would have left intact the Tribe’s exclusive right to hunt and fish on those lands — Congress chose to remove the excluded lands from the reservation, leaving them open for non-Indian use, and to compensate the Indians for the taking.
The historical record of the lengthy negotiations between the Tribe and the United States provides no reason to reject the presumption that the 1901 Agreement fairly describes the entire understanding between the parties. The Tribe was represented by counsel, the tribal negotiating committee members spoke and understood English, and the Tribe secured a number of alterations to the United States’ original proposals. H. R. Doc. No. 156, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 29-30 (1900). Although members of the Tribe had stressed the importance of hunting and fishing on the excluded lands in order to establish their claim to title with the Boundary Commission in 1896, there is no record of even a reference to a right to continue those activities on those lands in the course of negotiating for the cession of the land and all rights “in and to” it. The failure to mention these rights in the face of this language, as well as the specific terms of the 1864 Treaty that would appear to render their continued exercise inconsistent with diminution, strongly supports the conclusion that there existed no contemporary intention specially to preserve those rights.
The Tribe finally contends that the absence of any payment expressly in compensation for hunting and fishing rights on the ceded lands demonstrates that the parties did not intend to extinguish such rights in 1901. This contention again rests entirely on the assumption that the 1864 Treaty created hunting and fishing rights that were separate from and not appurtenant to the reservation. As explained above, that assumption is incorrect. Moreover, the fact that there was no separate valuation of the right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands is consistent with the view that the parties did not understand any such separate right to exist, and that the value of fish, game, and vegetation on the ceded lands was subsumed within the estimated value of the land in general. Indeed, had the parties actually intended to preserve independent hunting and fishing rights for the Tribe on the ceded lands, the Boundary Commission presumably would have computed the value of such rights and explicitly subtracted that amount from the price to be paid for land so encumbered.
Moreover, the Tribe has since been afforded an opportunity to recover additional compensation for the ceded lands, in light of the “unconscionable” amount paid in 1906. 20 Ind. Cl. Comm’n, at 530. Yet in that proceeding, which resulted in an award to the Tribe of over $4 million, id., at 543, the Tribe apparently agreed that the “highest and best uses” for the ceded lands were commercial lumbering and livestock grazing, again without mention of any hunting or fishing rights. The absence of specific compensation for the rights at issue is entirely consistent with our interpretation of the 1901 Agreement.
VII
Thus, even though “legal ambiguities are resolved to the benefit of the Indians,” DeCoteau v. District County Court, 420 U. S. 425, 447 (1975), courts cannot ignore plain language that, viewed in historical context and given a “fair appraisal,” Washington v. Washington Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn., 443 U. S., at 675, clearly runs counter to a tribe’s later claims. Careful examination of the entire record in this case leaves us with the firm conviction that the exclusive right to hunt, fish, and gather roots, berries, and seeds on the lands reserved to the Klamath Tribe by the 1864 Treaty was not intended to survive as a special right to be free of state regulation in the ceded lands that were outside the reservation after the 1901 Agreement. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Powell took no part in the decision of this case.
Treaty of Oct. 14, 1864 (ratified by the Senate on July 2, 1866, and proclaimed by President Grant on February 17, 1870).
Relying on our decision in Menominee Tribe v. United States, 391 U. S. 404 (1968), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held that the language of the 1864 Treaty also served to reserve for the Tribe a right to hunt and trap game within the reservation, as well as the rights to fish and gather. Kimball v. Callahan, 493 F. 2d 564, 566, cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1019 (1974). See also California & Oregon Land Co. v. Worden, 85 F. 94, 97 (CC Ore. 1898) (Klamath’s 1864 Treaty “operates as a reservation of the rights held by the Indians at the time the treaty was entered into”).
Act of June 10, 1896, ch. 398, 29 Stat. 321, 342. The Act provided:
“That the President of the United States is hereby authorized to appoint a commission... whose duty it shall be to visit and thoroughly investigate and determine as to the correct location of the boundary lines of the Klam-ath Indian Reservation.... [S]aid commission shall ascertain and determine, as nearly as practicable, the number of acres, if any, of the land, the character thereof, and also the value thereof, in a state of nature, that have been excluded from said treaty reservation by the erroneous survey....”
Thus, Henry Blow, a former Klamath Tribe chief who had signed the 1864 Treaty, testified as follows:
“Q. Was anything said by Mr. Huntington [the United States’ treaty negotiator] or the Indians about Sycan or Sprague River Valley?
“A. Yes; the Indians said they wanted to keep these two valleys for the camas roots and pastures, the fish, etc., as well as the game in the mountains.” S. Doc. No. 93, 54th Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1897).
Mo Ghen Kas Kit, a chief of the Klamath Tribe at the time of the 1864 Treaty negotiations and a Treaty signatory, testified:
“At the time of the treaty of Council Grove we, the Indians, told Mr. Huntington, before and after describing these points, that we particularly wanted all the Sycan Valley down to Ish tish e wax [place of small fish], including the Sprague River Valley, because we needed it, especially for the camas and other roots in the valley and the game and the fishing....
“The Indians particularly told Mr. Huntington of this great need of these two valleys for this purpose, and they were dependent upon them principally for their living. All the headmen and leaders among the Indians saying this — and Mr. Huntington said 7 will/ — you shall have them in the treaty.” Id., at 15-16.
The Boundary Commission reported:
“The character of the excluded areas varies greatly. There are some limited tracts of good meadow and grazing land, but the major portion of the area is of inferior quality. With the exception of the meadows of the Sycan and Sprague River sections, which are the principal bone of contention, the greater part of the excluded land consists of rocky and sterile mountain ranges, producing very ordinary timber and little grass.
“The territory in the vicinage of Mounts Scott and Cowhorn on the northwest and north is especially of little or no value.
“Being of volcanic formation, the land consists of substrata of basalt and pumice stone lightly covered with volcanic ashes and decomposed pumice, offering scanty sustenance to vegetation.
’ “The extensive areas embraced in the eastern slopes and spurs of Yamsay Mountains and the western of Winter Ridge are likewise of little worth owing to their rugged and rocky formation.
“Giving these inferior tracts, the good timber land and the meadows of the Sycan and Sprague River valleys their proportionate valuation, we determine the value of the excluded land to be $533,270, or 617,490 acres at 86.36 cents per acre.” Id., at 11.
Citing the Boundary Commission’s report, the parties to this litigation stipulated:
“The Boundary Commission did not take the value of the Tribe’s hunting, fishing and trapping rights into account when arriving at its valuation of the land.” App. 12.
Negotiation of the final agreement required the efforts of two different negotiators for the United States, first Inspector William J. McConnell and then Inspector James McLaughlin. Throughout the negotiations, the Tribe’s central concerns were that it receive some immediate cash payment as a portion of the purchase price, that the remainder be available for use at the Tribe’s discretion at least to some degree, and that specific expenditures for irrigation of reservation lands be charged only to Tribe members who would benefit directly from the irrigation. See H. R. Doc. No. 156, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 10-12 (1900) (letter from Wm. J. McConnell to Secretary of the Interior (Jan. 2,1899)); id., at 28-30 (letter from J. McLaughlin to Secretary of the Interior (Oct. 29, 1900)); H. R. Doc. No. 79, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (1901) (letter from J. McLaughlin to Secretary of the Interior (June 19, 1901)). Inspector McConnell apparently lacked authority to agree to some of these terms and, after the Tribe rejected McConnell’s initial proposals, it proposed a general agreement depositing the full sum recommended by the Boundary Commission with the United States Treasury in the Tribe’s name. H. R. Doc. No. 156, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 11-12 (1900). “As this was their ultimatum,” McConnell reported, “I concluded the agreement.” Id., at 12.
Despite his negotiation of this agreement, however, Inspector McConnell also reported that, in his opinion, the excluded land was for the most part “practically worthless,” and that he believed Congress should restore the unentered excluded acreage to the Tribe rather than purchase it. Id., at 10. If Congress nevertheless chose to purchase all the excluded acreage, McConnell recommended, “the sum to be paid [to the Tribe] should not exceed $250,000,” as opposed to the $533,270 that the Boundary Commission had suggested. Ibid.
Shortly after McConnell submitted this report, two attorneys for the Tribe wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs criticizing McConnell’s views as gratuitous “individual opinion.” The Tribe’s attorneys requested that “further investigation” be made, “so that full and complete information on this question may be presented to Congress.” Id., at 18-19 (letter from J. McCammon and R. Belt to the Hon. W. Jones (Apr. 10, 1899)). In light of the Tribe’s objections, and because the United States also was not satisfied with McConnell’s agreement in light of his negative report, id., at 21 (letter from A. Tonner to Secretary of the Interior (May 15, 1899)), the second inspector, James McLaughlin, was dispatched to evaluate the excluded lands and negotiate a new agreement. Id., at 22.
The excluded lands posed a problem to the Tribe as well as to the United States because after the erroneous 1871 survey some of the excluded lands had been entered upon and settled by non-Indians. See S. Exec. Doc. No. 129, 53d Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1894) (extract from annual report of U. S. Indian Agent Joseph Emery for 1887) (noting competing claims of Klamath Indians and “white settlers and cattlemen in the vicinity”); Attachment to S. Exec. Doc. No. 129 (map indicating existence of 34 “townships” outside 1871 reservation boundaries but within the “approximate limits claimed by Indians”). See also T. Stern, The Klamath Tribe 87 (1965). In 1899, Inspector McConnell reported that 62,361 acres of the excluded lands had been “entered” by non-Indians, including 7,080 acres allotted to “proposed settlers,” “leaving a balance of 555,129 acres... yet unoccupied.” H. R. Doc. No. 156, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 10 (1900) (letter from Wm. J. McConnell to Secretary of the Interior (Jan. 2, 1899)).
Although the Boundary Commission and Congress apparently assumed that the United States would pay the Tribe for the excluded land, rather than restore it to the reservation, the United States’ first negotiator, Inspector McConnell, suggested that the unentered excluded acreage should be restored to the Tribe with payment being made only for acres that had already been entered upon. Ibid. As already noted, n. 7, supra, the attorneys for the Tribe objected to McConnell’s report. Although the Department of the Interior considered McConnell’s suggestions, it ultimately decided to recommend to Congress that all the excluded lands be purchased.
The second inspector, James McLaughlin, reported that
“whilst it is true that there are a great many acres of valueless land in the said tract, yet there are many acres of arable land which already possess considerable value, and an immense amount of pine timber that must become very valuable in the near future; and, when taking into consideration the twenty-nine years that the Klamath Indians have been deprived of these lands, together with the value of the valleys, meadows, and heavily timbered portions, I most heartily indorse the price....” H. R. Doc. No. 156, at 28.
The substantive terms of the agreement had
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stevens
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice Stewart, and Mr. Justice Blackmun joined.
Petitioner received an award of disability benefits under the Virginia Workmen’s Compensation Act. The question presented is whether the obligation of the District of Columbia to give full faith and credit to that award bars a supplemental award under the District’s Workmen’s Compensation Act.
Petitioner is a resident of the District of Columbia and was hired in the District of Columbia. During the year that he was employed by respondent, he worked primarily in the District but also worked in Virginia and Maryland. He sustained a back injury while at work in Arlington, Va., on January 22, 1971. Two weeks later he entered into an “Industrial Commission of Virginia Memorandum of Agreement as to Payment of Compensation” providing for benefits of $62 per week. Several weeks later the Virginia Industrial Commission approved the agreement and issued its award directing that payments continue “during incapacity,” subject to various contingencies and changes set forth in the Virginia statute. App. 49.
In 1974, petitioner notified the Department of Labor of his intention to seek compensation under the District of Columbia Act. Respondent opposed the claim primarily on the ground that since, as a matter of Virginia law, the Virginia award excluded any other recovery “at common law or otherwise” on account of the injury in Virginia, the District of Columbia’s obligation to give that award full faith and credit precluded a second, supplemental award in the District.
The Administrative Law Judge agreed with respondent that the Virginia award must be given res judicata effect in the District to the extent that it was res judicata in Virginia. He held, however, that the Virginia award, by its terms, did not preclude a further award of compensation in Virginia. Moreover, he construed the statutory prohibition against additional recovery “at common law or otherwise” as merely covering “common law and other remedies under Virginia law.” After the taking of medical evidence, petitioner was awarded permanent total disability benefits payable from the date of his injury with a credit for the amounts previously paid under the Virginia award. Id., at 31.
The Benefits Review Board upheld the award. 9 BRBS 760 (1978). Its order, however, was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, judgment order reported at 598 F. 2d 617, which squarely held that a “second and separate proceeding in another jurisdiction upon the same injury after a prior recovery in another State [is] precluded by the Full Faith and Credit Clause.” We granted certiorari, 444 U. S. 962, and now reverse.
I
Respondent contends that the District of Columbia was without power to award petitioner additional compensation because of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution or, more precisely, because of the federal statute implementing that Clause. An analysis of this contention must begin with two decisions from the 1940’s that are almost directly on point: Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, and Industrial Comm’n of Wisconsin v. McCartin, 330 U. S. 622.
In Magnolia, a case relied on heavily both by respondent and the Court of Appeals, the employer hired a Louisiana worker in Louisiana. The employee was later injured during the course of his employment in Texas. A tenuous majority held that Louisiana was not permitted to award the injured worker supplementary compensation under the Louisiana Act after he had already obtained a recovery from the Texas Industrial Accident Board:
“Respondent was free to pursue his remedy in either state but, having chosen to seek it in Texas, where the award was res judicata, the full faith and credit clause precludes him from again seeking a remedy in Louisiana upon the same grounds.” 320 U. S., at 444.
Little more than three years later, the Court severely curtailed the impact of Magnolia,. In McCartin, the employer and the worker both resided in Illinois and entered into an employment contract there for work to be performed in Wisconsin. The employee was injured in the course of that employment. He initially filed a claim with the Industrial Commission of Wisconsin. Prior to this Court’s decision in Magnolia, the Wisconsin Commission informed him that under Wisconsin law, he could proceed under the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act, and then claim compensation under the Wisconsin Act, with credit to be given for any payments made under the Illinois Act. Thereafter, the employer and the employee executed a contract for payment of a specific sum in full settlement of the employee’s right under Illinois law. The contract expressly provided, however, that it would “ 'not affect any rights that applicant may have under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of the State of Wisconsin.’ ” 330 U. S., at 624. The employee then obtained a supplemental award from the Wisconsin Industrial Commission; but the Wisconsin state courts vacated it under felt compulsion of the intervening decision in Magnolia.
This Court reversed, holding without dissent that Magnolia was not controlling. Although the Court could have relied exclusively on the contract provision reserving the employee’s rights under Wisconsin law to distinguish the case from Magnolia, Mr. Justice Murphy’s opinion provided a significantly different ground for the Court’s holding when it said:
“[T]he reservation spells out what we believe to be implicit in [the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation] Act— namely, that an... award of the type here involved does not foreclose an additional award under the laws of another state. And in the setting of this case, that fact is of decisive significance.” 330 TJ. S., at 630.
Earlier in the opinion, the Court had stated that “[o]nly some unmistakable language by a state legislature or judiciary would warrant our accepting... a construction” that a workmen’s compensation statute “is designed to preclude any recovery by proceedings brought in another state.” Id., at 627-628. The Illinois statute, which the Court held not to contain the “unmistakable language” required to preclude a supplemental award in Wisconsin, broadly provided:
“ ‘No common law or statutory right to recover damages for injury or death sustained by any employe while engaged in the line of his duty as such employe, other than the compensation herein provided, shall be available to any employe who is covered by the provisions of this act,.. Id., at 627.
The Virginia Workmen’s Compensation Act’s exclusive-remedy provision, see n. 4, supra, is not exactly the same as Illinois’; but it contains no “unmistakable language” directed at precluding a supplemental compensation award in another State that was not also in the Illinois Act. Consequently, McCartin by its terms, rather than the earlier Magnolia decision, is controlling as between the two precedents. Nevertheless, the fact that we find ourselves comparing the language of two state statutes, neither of which has been construed by the highest court of either State, in an attempt to resolve an issue arising under the Full Faith and Credit Clause makes us pause to inquire whether there is a fundamental flaw in our analysis of this federal question.
II
We cannot fail to observe that, in the Court’s haste to retreat from Magnolia, it fashioned a rule that clashes with normally accepted full faith and credit principles. It has long been the law that “the judgment of a state court should have the same credit, validity, and effect, in every other court in the United States, which it had in the state where it was pronounced.” Hampton v. McConnel, 3 Wheat. 234, 235 (Marshall, C. J.,). See also Mills v. Duryee, 7 Cranch 481, 484 (Story, J.). This rule, if not compelled by the Full Faith and Credit Clause itself, see n. 18, infra, is surely required by 28 U. S. C. § 1738, which provides that the “Acts, records and judicial proceedings... [of any State] shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States... as they have by law or usage in the courts of [the] State... from which they are taken.” See n. 1, supra. Thus, in effect, by virtue of the full faith and credit obligations of the several States, a State is permitted to determine the extraterritorial effect of its judgments; but it may only do so indirectly, by prescribing the effect of its judgments within the State.
The McCartin rule, however, focusing as it does on the extraterritorial intent of the rendering State, is fundamentally different. It authorizes a State, by drafting or construing its legislation in “unmistakable language,” directly to determine the extraterritorial effect of its workmen’s compensation awards. An authorization to a state legislature of this character is inconsistent with the rule established in Pacific Em ployers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S. 493, 502:
“This Court must determine for itself how far the full faith and credit clause compels the qualification or denial of rights asserted under the laws of one state, that of the forum, by the statute of another state.”
It follows inescapably that the McCartin “unmistakable language” rule represents an unwarranted delegation to the States of this Court’s responsibility for the final arbitration of full faith and credit questions. The Tull Faith and Credit Clause “is one of the provisions incorporated into the Constitution by its framers for the purpose of, transforming an aggregation of independent, sovereign States into a nation.” Sherrer v. Sherrer, 334 U. S. 343, 355. To vest the power of determining the extraterritorial effect of a State’s own laws and judgments in the State itself risks the very kind of parochial entrenchment on the interests of other States that it was the purpose of the Full Faith and Credit Clause and other provisions of Art. IV of the Constitution to prevent. See Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 424-425.
Thus, a re-examination of McCartin’s, “unmistakable language” test reinforces our tentative conclusion that it does not provide an acceptable basis on which to distinguish Magnolia. But if we reject that test, we must decide whether to overrule either Magnolia or McCartin. In making this kind of decision, we must take into account both the practical values served by the doctrine of stare decisis and the principles that inform the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
Ill
The doctrine of stare decisis imposes a severe burden on the litigant who asks us to disavow one of our precedents. For that doctrine not only plays an important role in orderly adjudication; it also serves the broader societal interests in evenhanded, consistent, and predictable application of legal rules. When rights have been created or modified in reliance on established rules of law, the arguments against their change have special force.
It is therefore appropriate to begin the inquiry by considering whether a rule that permits, or a rule that forecloses, successive workmen’s compensation awards is more consistent with settled practice. The answer to this question is pel-lucidly clear.
It should first be noted that Magnoliaby only the slimmest majority, see n. 11, supra, effected a dramatic change in the law that had previously prevailed throughout the United States. See Mr. Justice Black’s dissent in Magnolia, 320 U. S., at 457-459, 462. Of greater importance is the fact that as a practical matter the “unmistakable language” rule of construction announced in McCartin left only the narrowest area in which Magnolia could have any further precedential value. For the exclusivity language in the Illinois Act construed in McCartin was typical of most state workmen’s compensation laws. Consequently, it was immediately recognized that Magnolia no longer had any significant practical impact. Moreover, since a state legislature seldom focuses on the extraterritorial effect of its enactments, and since a state court has even less occasion to consider whether an award under its State’s law is intended to preclude a supplemental award under another State’s Workmen’s Compensation Act, the probability that any State would thereafter announce a new rule against supplemental awards in other States was extremely remote. As a matter of fact, subsequent cases in the state courts have overwhelmingly followed McCartin and permitted successive state workmen’s compensation awards. Thus, all that really remained of Magnolia after McCartin was a largely theoretical difference between what the Court described as “unmistakable language” and the broad language of the exclusive-remedy provision in the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act involved in McCartin.
This history indicates that the principal values underlying the doctrine of stare decisis would not be served either by attempting to revive Magnolia or by attempting to preserve the uneasy coexistence of Magnolia and McCartin. The latter attempt could only breed uncertainty and unpredictability, since the application of the “unmistakable language” rule of McCartin necessarily depends on a determination by one state tribunal of the effect to be given to statutory language enacted by the legislature of a different State. And the former would represent a rather dramatic change that surely would not promote stability in the law. Moreover, since Magnolia has been so rarely followed, there appears to be little danger that there has been any significant reliance on its rule. We conclude that a fresh examination of the full faith and credit issue is therefore entirely appropriate.
IV
Three different state interests are affected by the potential conflict between Virginia and the District of Columbia. Virginia has a valid interest in placing a limit on the potential liability of companies that transact business within its borders. Both jurisdictions have a valid interest in the welfare of the injured employee — Virginia because the injury occurred within that State, and the District because the injured party was employed and resided there. And finally, Virginia has an interest in having the integrity of its formal determinations of contested issues respected by other sovereigns.
The conflict between the first two interests was resolved in Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 294 U. S. 532, and a series of later cases. In Alaska Packers, California, the State where the employment contract was made, was allowed to apply its own workmen’s compensation statute despite the statute of Alaska, the place where the injury occurred, which was said to afford the exclusive remedy for injuries occurring there. Id., at 539. The Court held that the conflict between the statutes of two States ought not to be resolved “by giving automatic effect to the full faith and credit clause, compelling the courts of each state to subordinate its own statutes to those of the other, but by appraising the governmental interests of each jurisdiction, and turning the scale of decision according to their weight.” Id., at 547.
The converse situation was presented in Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S. 493. In that case the injury occurred in California, and the objection to California’s jurisdiction was based on a statute of Massachusetts, the State where the employee resided and where the employment contract had been made. The Massachusetts statute provided that the remedy afforded was exclusive of the worker’s “ ‘right of action at common law or under the law of any other jurisdiction.’” Id., at 498. Again, however, California was permitted to provide the employee with an award under the California statute.
The principle that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not require a State to subordinate its own compensation policies to those of another State has been consistently applied in more recent cases. Carroll v. Lanza, 349 U. S. 408; Crider v. Zurich Ins. Co., 380 U. S. 39; Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S., at 421-424. Indeed, in the Nevada case the Court not only rejected the contention that California was required to respect a statutory limitation on the defendant’s liability, but did so in a case in which the defendant was the sovereign State itself asserting, alternatively, an immunity from any liability in the courts of California.
It is thus perfectly clear that petitioner could have sought a compensation award in the first instance either in Virginia, the State in which the injury occurred, Carroll v. Lanza, supra; Pacific Employers, supra, or in the District of Columbia, where petitioner resided, his employer was principally located, and the employment relation was formed, Cardillo v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 330 U. S. 469; Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, supra. And as those cases underscore, compensation could have been sought under either compensation scheme even if one statute or the other purported to confer an exclusive remedy on petitioner. Thus, for all practical purposes, respondent and its insurer would have had to measure their potential liability exposure by the more generous of the two workmen’s compensation schemes in any event. It follows that a State’s interest in limiting the potential liability of businesses within the State is not of controlling importance.
It is also manifest that the interest in providing adequate compensation to the injured worker would be fully served by the allowance of successive awards. In this respect the two jurisdictions share a common interest and there is no danger of significant conflict.
The ultimate issue, therefore, is whether Virginia’s interest in the integrity of its tribunal’s determinations forecloses a second proceeding to obtain a supplemental award in the District of Columbia. We return to the Court’s prior resolution of this question in Magnolia.
The majority opinion in Magnolia took the position that the case called for a straightforward application of full faith and credit law: the worker’s injury gave rise to a cause of action; relief was granted by the Texas Industrial Accident Board; that award precluded any further relief in Texas; and further relief was therefore precluded elsewhere as well. The majority relied heavily on Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. v. Schendel, 270 U. S. 611, for the propositions that a workmen’s compensation award stands on the same footing as a court judgment, and that a compensation award under one State’s law is a bar to a second award under another State’s law. See 320 U. S., at 441, 446.
But Schendel did not compel the result in Magnolia. See 320 U. S., at 448 (Douglas, J., dissenting); id., at 457 (Black, J., dissenting). In Schendel, the Court held that an Iowa state compensation award, which was grounded in a contested factual finding that the deceased railroad employee was engaged in intrastate commerce, precluded a subsequent claim under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) brought in the Minnesota state courts, which would have required a finding that the employee was engaged in interstate commerce. Schendel therefore involved the unexceptionable full faith and credit principle that resolutions of factual matters underlying a judgment must be given the same res judicata effect in the forum State as they have in the rendering State. See Durfee v. Duke, 375 U. S. 106; Sherrer v. Sherrer, 334 U. S., at 351-352. The Minnesota courts could not have granted relief under the FELA and also respected the factual finding made in Iowa.
In contrast, neither Magnolia nor this case concerns a second State’s contrary resolution of a factual matter determined in the first State’s proceedings. Unlike the situation in Schendel, which involved two mutually exclusive remedies, compensation could be obtained under either Virginia’s or the District’s workmen’s compensation statutes on the basis of the same set of facts. A supplemental award gives full effect to the facts determined by the first award and also allows full credit for payments pursuant to the earlier award. There is neither inconsistency nor double recovery.
We are also persuaded that Magnolia’s reliance on Schendel for the proposition that workmen’s compensation awards stand on the same footing as court judgments was unwarranted. To be sure, as was held in Schendel, the factfindings of state administrative tribunals are entitled to the same res judicata effect in the second State as findings by a court. But the critical differences between a court of general jurisdiction and an administrative agency with limited statutory authority forecloses the conclusion that constitutional rules applicable to court judgments are necessarily applicable to workmen’s compensation awards.
A final judgment entered by a court of general jurisdiction normally establishes not only the measure of the plaintiff’s rights but also the limits of the defendant’s liability. A traditional application of res judicata principles enables either party to claim the benefit of the judgment insofar as it resolved issues the court had jurisdiction to decide. Although a Virginia court is free to recognize the perhaps paramount interests of another State by choosing to apply that State’s law in a particular case, the Industrial Commission of Virginia does not have that power. Its jurisdiction is limited to questions arising under the Virginia Workmen’s Compensation Act. See Va. Code §65:1-92 (1980). Typically, a workmen’s compensation tribunal may only apply its own State’s law. In this case, the Virginia Commission could and did establish the full measure of petitioner’s rights under Virginia law, but it neither could nor purported to determine his rights under the law of the District of Columbia. Full faith and credit must be given to the determination that the Virginia Commission had the authority to make; but by a parity of reasoning, full faith and credit need not be given to determinations that it had no power to make. Since it was not requested, and had no authority, to pass on petitioner’s rights under District of Columbia law, there can be no constitutional objection to a fresh adjudication of those rights.
It is true, of course, that after Virginia entered its award, that State had an interest in preserving the integrity of what it had done. And it is squarely within the purpose of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, as explained in Pacific Employers, 306 U. S., at 501, “to preserve rights acquired or confirmed under the public acts” of Virginia by requiring other States to recognize their validity. See n. 23, supra. Thus, Virginia had an interest in having respondent pay petitioner the amounts specified in its award. Allowing a supplementary recovery in the District does not conflict with that interest.
As we have already noted, Virginia also has a separate interest in placing a ceiling on the potential liability of companies that transact business within the State. But past cases have established that that interest is not strong enough to prevent other States with overlapping jurisdiction over particular injuries from giving effect to their more generous compensation policies when the employee selects the most favorable forum in the first instance. Thus, the only situations in which the Magnolia rule would tend to serve that interest are those in which an injured workman has either been constrained by circumstances to seek relief in the less generous forum or has simply made an ill-advised choice of his first forum.
But in neither of those cases is there any reason to give extra weight to the first State’s interest in placing'a ceiling on the employer’s liability than it otherwise would have had. For neither the first nor the second State has any overriding interest in requiring an injured employee to proceed with special caution when first asserting his claim. Compensation proceedings are often initiated' informally, without the advice of counsel, and without special attention to the choice of the most appropriate forum. Often the worker is still hospitalized when benefits are sought as was true in this case. And indeed, it is not always the injured worker who institutes the claim. See Schendel, 270 U. S., at 614. This informality is consistent with the interests of both States. A rule forbidding supplemental recoveries under more favorable workmen’s compensation schemes would require a far more formal and careful choice on the part of the injured worker than may be possible or desirable when immediate commencement of benefits may be essential.
Thus, whether or not the worker has sought an award from the less generous jurisdiction in the first instance, the vindication of that State’s interest in placing a ceiling on employers’ liability would inevitably impinge upon the substantial interests of the second jurisdiction in thé welfare and subsistence of disabled workers — interests that a court of general jurisdiction might consider, but which must be ignored by the Virginia Industrial Commission. The.reasons why the statutory policy of exclusivity of the other jurisdictions involved in Alaska Packers and Pacific Employers, could not defeat California’s implementation of its own compensation policies therefore continue to apply even after the entry of a workmen’s compensation award.
Of course, it is for each State to formulate its own policy whether to grant supplemental awards according to its perception of its own interests. We simply conclude that the substantial interests of the second State in these circumstances should not be overridden by another State through an unnecessarily aggressive application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, as was implicitly recognized at the time of McCartin.
We therefore would hold that a State has no legitimate interest within the context of our federal system in preventing another State from granting a supplemental compensation award when that second State would have had the power to apply its workmen’s compensation law in the first instance. The Full Faith and Credit Clause should not be construed to preclude successive workmen’s compensation awards. Accordingly, Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt should be overruled.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded.
bo ordered.
United States Constitution, Art. IV, § 1:
“Full Faitb and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
Title 28 U. S. C. § 1738 provides, in part:
“The Acts of the legislature of any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or copies thereof, shall be authenticated by affixing the seal of such State, Territory or Possession thereto.
“Such Acts, records and judicial proceedings or copies thereof, so authenticated, shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory, or Possession from which they are taken.”
The District of Columbia Workmen’s Compensation Act, D. C. Code §§501-502 (1968), adopts the terms of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U. S. C. §901 et seq. The program is administered by the United States Department of Labor.
Respondent also contended' that the claim was barred by limitations. The Administrative Law Judge ruled, however, that respondent’s failure to file the report of injury required by the District of Columbia Act had tolled the statute and made respondent automatically liable for a 10% penalty. Respondent also argues in this Court that the LHWCA forbade the granting of an award where compensation could have been obtained under a state workmen’s compensation program. Since the Court of Appeals passed on neither of these statutory arguments, they remain open ón remand.
Virginia- Code § 65.1-40 (1980) provides:
“Employee’s rights under Act exclude all others. — ’The rights and remedies herein granted to an employee. when he and his employer have accepted the provisions of this Act respectively to pay and accept compensation on account of personal injury or death by accident shall exclude all other rights and remedies of such employee, his personal representative, parents, dependents or next of kin, at common law or otherwise, on account of such injury, loss of service or death.”
“Accordingly, it is concluded that, in the instant matter, Claimant’s award under the Virginia compensation law must be given such faith and credit in the District as it is given in Virginia; that, to the extent that the Virginia award is res judicata in Virginia, it is res judicata in the District.” App. 42.
“The award did not effect a final settlement of the rights and liabilities of the parties. Rather, by its terms, it contemplated further awards.
“In view of the foregoing, it is determined that, because the Virginia award was not a bar to further recovery of compensation in Virginia, it was not, under the full faith and credit concept, res judicata as a bar to further recovery of compensation under District law.” Id., at 46-47.
Id., at 48. He added that the exclusive-remedy provisions “were not designed for extraterritorial extension to other sovereign jurisdictions. They do not preclude jurisdiction under District law.” Ibid.
See 33 IT. S. C. §921 (c), which provides for review of decisions of the Benefits Review Board “in the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the injury occurred....”
The quoted language is from the Fourth Circuit’s opinion in the similar case of Pettus v. American Airlines, Inc., 587 F. 2d 627, 630 (1978), cert, denied, 444 U. S. 883. In this case the Court of Appeals merely issued a brief unpublished order citing Pettus. App. 2a.
The statute places on courts in the District of Columbia the same obligation to respect state judgments as is imposed on the courts of the several States. See n. 1, supra.
Four Members of the Court — Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge — dissented, expressing the opinion that the holding was not supported by precedent and did not accord proper respect to the States’ interests in implementing their policies of compensating injured workmen.
Mr. Justice Jackson concurred in Mr. Chief Justice Stone’s opinion for the Court, but only because he felt bound by Williams v. North Carolina, 317 TJ. S. 287, a decision from which he vigorously dissented. Id., at 311. In that case, the Court held that North Carolina had to respect an ex parte divorce decree obtained in Nevada in a bigamy prosecution of a North Carolina resident. (It was assumed for purposes of decision that the petitioner was a bona fide domiciliary of Nevada at the time of the divorce, id., at 302.) In his concurring opinion in Magnolia, Mr. Justice Jackson explained that he was “unable to see how Louisiana can be constitutionally free to apply its own workmen’s compensation law to its citizens despite a previous adjudication in another state if North Carolina was not free to apply its own matrimonial policy to its own citizens after judgment on the subject in Nevada.” 320 U. S., at 446.
Mr. Justice Douglas, author of the opinion for the Court in Williams. pointed out, in one of the two dissents filed in the Magnolia case, that as compared with the dual workmen’s compensation award problem then before the Court, “questions of status, i. e., marital capacity, involve conflicts between the policies of two States which are quite irreconcilable.” 320 TJ. S., at 447.
Mr. Justice Rutledge concurred only in the result.
Magnolia had not been well received. See Cheatham, Res Judicata and the Full Faith and Credit Clause: Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 44 Colum. L. Rev. 330, 344-346 (1944) (hereinafter Cheatham); Freund, Chief Justice Stone and the Conflict of Laws, 59 Harv, L. Rev. 1210, 1227-1230 (1946) (hereinafter Freund); Wolkin, Workmen’s Compensation Award — Commonplace or Anomaly in Full Faith and Credit Pattern?, 92 U. Pa. L. Rev. 401, 405-411 (1944) (hereinafter Wolkin); Note, 23 Ind. L. J. 214 (1948); Note, 18 Tulane L. Rev. 509 (1944); Recent Cases, 12 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 487 (1944).
That statute, insofar as it is relevant here, reads exactly as it did when the first Congress passed it in 1790. See 1 Stat. 122.
See Magnolia, 320 U. S., at 438; Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S., at 302; Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 294 U. S. 532, 547; Reese & Johnson, The Scope of Full Faith and Credit to Judgments, 49 Colum. L. Rev. 153, 161-162 (1949) (hereinafter Reese & Johnson):
“Full faith and credit is a national policy, not a state policy. Its purpose is not merely to demand respect from one state for another, but rather to give us.the benefits of a unified nation by altering the status of otherwise ‘independent, sovereign states.’ Hence it is for federal law, not state law, to prescribe the measure of credit which one state shall give to another’s judgment. In this regard, it is interesting to note that in dealing with full faith and credit to statutes the Supreme Court in recent years has accorded no weight to language which purported to give a particular statute extraterritorial effect.49 There is every reason why a similar attitude should be taken with respect to judgments.
“49 Pacific Employers Insurance Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 306 U. S. 493 (1939); Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 294 U. S. 532 (1935); Tennessee Coal Iron & R. R. Co. v. George, 233 U. S. 354 (1914); Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. v. Sowers, 213 U. S. 55 (1909)....” (Some footnotes omitted.)
In Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. George, cited in the authors’ footnote, the Court held that a Georgia court, consistent with its full faith and credit obligations, could ignore a provision in the Alabama statute creating the cause of action there sued upon, which required that any suit to enforce the right of action “must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction within the State of Alabama and not elsewhere.” 233 U S., at 358. The Sowers case is much like the George case. Pacific Employers and Alaska Packers are discussed in Part IV, infra.
Cf. Note, Unconstitutional Discrimination in Choice of Law, 77 Colum. L. Rev. 272 (1977) (Privileges and Immunities Clause).
“[limitation of the past, until we have a clear reason for a change, no more needs justification than appetite. It is a form of the inevitable to be accepted until we have a clear vision of what different things we want.” 0. Holmes, Collected Legal Papers 290 (1920).
The doctrine of stare decisis has a more limited application when the precedent rests on constitutional grounds, because “correction through legislative action is practically impossible.” Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 407-408 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). See Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600, 627 (Powell, J., concurring).
The full faith and credit area presents special problems, because the Constitution expressly delegates to Congress the authority “by general Laws [to] prescribe the Manner in which [the States’] Acts. Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.” (Emphasis added.) See n. 1, supra. Yet it is quite clear that Congress’ power in this area is not exclusive, for this Court has given effect to the Clause beyond that, required by implementing legislation. See Bradford Electric Co v Clapper, 286 U. S. 145, in which the Court required the New Hampshire courts to respect a Vermont statute which precluded a worker from bringing a common-law action against his employer for job-related injuries where the employment relation was formed in Vermont, even though the injury occurred in New Hampshire. At the time the Clapper case was decided, the predecessor of 28 U. S. C. § 1738 included no reference to “Acts” in the sentence that required the forum State to accord the same full faith and credit to records and judicial proceedings as they have in the State from which they are taken. The reference to Acts was added for the first time in 1948. See Carroll v.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Vinson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
New York City has adopted an ordinance which makes it unlawful to hold public worship meetings on the streets without first obtaining a permit from the city police commissioner. Appellant, Carl Jacob Kunz, was convicted and fined $10 for violating this ordinance by holding a religious meeting without a permit. The conviction was affirmed by the Appellate Part of the Court of Special Sessions, and by the New York Court of Appeals, three judges dissenting, 300 N. Y. 273, 90 N. E. 2d 455 (1950). The case is here on appeal, it having been urged that the ordinance is invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Appellant is an ordained Baptist minister who speaks under the auspices of the “Outdoor Gospel Work,” of which he is the director. He has been preaching for about six years, and states that it is his conviction and duty to “go out on the highways and byways and preach the word of God.” In 1946, he applied for and received a permit under the ordinance in question, there being no-question that appellant comes within the classes of persons entitled to receive permits under the ordinance. This permit, like all others, was good only for the calendar year in which issued. In November, 1946, his permit was revoked after a hearing by the police commissioner. The revocation was based on evidence that he had ridiculed and denounced other religious beliefs in his meetings.
Although the penalties of the ordinance apply to anyone who “ridicules and denounces other religious beliefs,” the ordinance does not specify this as a ground for permit revocation. Indeed, there is no mention in the ordinance of any power of revocation. However, appellant did not seek judicial or administrative review of the revocation proceedings, and any question as to the propriety of the revocation is not before us in this case. In any event, the revocation affected appellant’s rights to speak in 1946 only. Appellant applied for another permit in 1947, and again in 1948, but was notified each time that his application was “disapproved,” with no reason for the disapproval being given. On September 11, 1948, appellant was arrested for speaking at Columbus Circle in New York City without a permit. It is from the conviction which resulted that this appeal has been taken.
Appellant’s conviction was thus based upon his failure to possess a permit for 1948. We are here concerned only with the propriety of the action of the police commissioner in refusing to issue that permit. Disapproval of the 1948 permit application by the police commissioner was Justified by the New York courts on the ground that a permit had previously been revoked “for good reasons.” It is noteworthy that there is no mention in the ordinance of reasons for which such a permit application can be refused. This interpretation allows the police commissioner, an administrative official, to exercise discretion in denying subsequent permit applications on the basis of his interpretation, at that time, of what is deemed to be conduct condemned by the ordinance. We have here, then, an ordinance which gives an administrative official discretionary power to control in advance the right of citizens to speak on religious matters on the streets of New York. As such, the ordinance is clearly invalid as a prior restraint on the exercise of First Amendment rights.
In considering the right of a municipality to control the use of public streets for the expression of religious views, we start with the words of Mr. Justice Roberts that “Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.” Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496, 515 (1939). Although this Court has recognized that a statute may be enacted which prevents serious interference with normal usage of streets and parks, Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 (1941), we have consistently condemned licensing systems which vest in an administrative official discretion to grant or withhold a permit upon broad criteria unrelated to proper regulation of public places. In Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940), this Court held invalid an ordinance which required a license for soliciting money for religious causes. Speaking for a unanimous Court, Mr. Justice Roberts said: “But to condition the solicitation of aid for the perpetuation of religious views or systems upon a license, the grant of which rests in the exercise of a determination by state authority as to what is a religious cause, is to lay a forbidden burden upon the exercise of liberty protected by the Constitution.” 310 U. S. at 307. To the same effect are Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S. 444 (1938); Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496 (1939); Largent v. Texas, 318 U. S. 418 (1943). In Saia v. New York, 334 U. S. 558 (1948), we reaffirmed the invalidity of such prior restraints upon the right to speak: "We hold that § 3 of this ordinance is unconstitutional on its face, for it establishes a previous restraint on the right of free speech in violation of the First Amendment which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against State action. To use a loudspeaker or amplifier one has to get a permit from the Chief of Police. There are no standards prescribed for the exercise of his discretion.” 334 U. S. at 559-560.
The court below has mistakenly derived support for its conclusion from the evidence produced at the trial that appellant’s religious meetings had, in the past, caused some disorder. There are appropriate public remedies to protect the peace and order of the community if appellant’s speeches should result in disorder or violence. “In the present case, we have no occasion to inquire as to the permissible scope of subsequent punishment.” Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697, 715 (1931). We do not express any opinion on the propriety of punitive remedies which the New York authorities may utilize. We are here concerned with suppression — not punishment. It is sufficient to say that New York cannot vest restraining control over the right to speak on religious subjects in an administrative official where there are no appropriate standards to guide his action.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Black concurs in the result.
[For opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring in the result, see ante, p. 273.]
Section 435-7.0 of chapter 18 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York reads as follows:
“a. Public worship.- — It shall be unlawful for any person to be concerned or instrumental in collecting or promoting any assemblage of persons for public worship or exhortation, or to ridicule or denounce any form of religious belief, service or reverence, or to preach or expound atheism or agnosticism, or under any pretense therefor, in any street. A clergyman or minister of any denomination, however, or any person responsible to or regularly associated with any church or incorporated missionary society, or any lay-preacher, or lay-reader may conduct religious services, or any authorized representative of a duly incorporated organization devoted to the advancement of the principles of atheism or agnosticism may preach or expound such cause, in any public place or places specified in a permit therefor which may be granted and issued by the police commissioner. This section shall not be construed to prevent any congregation of the Baptist denomination from assembling in a proper place for the purpose of performing the rites of baptism, according to the ceremonies of that church.
“b. Interference with street services. — It shall be unlawful for any person to disturb, molest or interrupt any clergyman, minister, missionary, lay-preacher or lay-reader, who shall be conducting religious services by authority of a permit, issued hereunder, or any minister or people who shall be performing the rite of baptism as permitted herein, nor shall any person commit any riot or disorder in any such assembly.
“c. Violations. — Any person who shall violate any provision of this section, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not more than twenty-five dollars, or imprisonment for thirty days, or both.”
This ordinance was previously challenged in People v. Smith, 263 N. Y. 255, 188 N. E. 745, appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question, Smith v. New York, 292 U. S. 606 (1934). Smith, who had not applied for a permit under the ordinance, argued that the regulation of religious speakers alone constituted an unreasonable classification. None of the questions involved in the instant appeal were presented in the previous case.
The New York Court of Appeals has construed the ordinance to require that all initial requests for permits by eligible applicants must be granted. 300 N. Y. at 276, 90 N. E. 2d at 456.
The New York Court of Appeals said: “The commissioner had no reason to assume, and no promise was made, that defendant wanted a new permit for any uses different from the disorderly ones he had been guilty of before.” 300 N. Y. at 278, 90 N. E. 2d at 457.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Thomas Easterwood was killed on February 24, 1988 when a train owned and operated by petitioner and cross-respondent CSX Transportation, Inc., collided with the truck he was driving at the Cook Street crossing in Cartersville, Georgia. His widow, respondent and cross-petitioner Lizzie Easterwood, brought this diversity wrongful-death action, which alleges, inter alia, that CSX was negligent under Georgia law for failing to maintain adequate warning devices at the crossing and for operating the train at an excessive speed. The issue before the Court is the extent to which the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 (FRSA), 84 Stat. 971, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §§421-447 (1988 ed. and Supp. II), pre-empts these claims.
The District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted summary judgment for CSX on the ground that both claims were pre-empted. 742 F. Supp. 676, 678 (1990). The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, holding that respondent’s allegation of negligence based on the train’s speed was pre-empted, but that the claim based on the absence of proper warning devices was not. 933 F. 2d 1548, 1553-1556 (1991). Because Courts of Appeals have differed over the pre-emptive effect of FRSA on negligence suits against railroads, we granted the petitions of both parties. 505 U. S. 1217 (1992). We now affirm.
I
FRSA was enacted in 1970 “to promote safety in all areas of railroad operations and to reduce railroad-related accidents, and to reduce deaths and injuries to persons . . . .” 45 U. S. C. §421. To aid in the achievement of these goals, the Act specifically directs the Secretary of Transportation to study and develop solutions to safety problems posed by grade crossings. §433. In addition, the Secretary is given broad powers to “prescribe, as necessary, appropriate rules, regulations, orders, and standards for all areas of railroad safety ....” § 431(a). The pre-emptive effect of these regulations is governed by § 434, which contains express saving and pre-emption clauses. Thus, the States are permitted to “adopt or continue in force any law, rule, regulation, order, or standard relating to railroad safety until such time as the Secretary has adopted a rule, regulation, order, or standard covering the subject matter of such State requirement.” Even after federal standards have been promulgated, the States may adopt more stringent safety requirements “when necessary to eliminate or reduce an essentially local safety hazard,” if those standards are “not incompatible with” federal laws or regulations and not an undue burden on interstate commerce.
In 1971, the Secretary, acting through the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), promulgated regulations under FRSA setting maximum train speeds for different classes of track. See 49 CB'R §213.9 (1992). Also in 1971, and again in 1972, the Secretary duly reported to Congress on the problem of grade crossings and on possible solutions. Congress responded by enacting the Highway Safety Act of 1973, Title II of the Act of Aug. 13, 1973, 87 Stat. 282, as amended, note following 23 U. S. C. § 130. This Act makes federal funds available to the States to improve grade crossings, in return for which the States must “conduct and systematically maintain a survey of all highways to identify those railroad crossings which may require separation, relocation, or protective devices, and establish and implement a schedule of projects for this purpose.” 23 U. S. C. § 130(d). Further conditions on the States’ use of federal aid to improve grade crossings have been set out in regulations promulgated by the Secretary through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) under FRSA and the Highway Safety Act. See 23 CFR pts. 646, 655, 924, 1204 (1992). It is petitioner’s contention that the Secretary’s speed and grade crossing regulations “cove[r] the subject matter” of, and therefore pre-empt, the state law on which respondent relies.
Where a state statute conflicts with, or frustrates, federal law, the former must give way. U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2; Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 746 (1981). In the interest of avoiding unintended encroachment on the authority of the States, however, a court interpreting a federal statute pertaining to a subject traditionally governed by state law will be reluctant to find pre-emption. Thus, preemption will not lie unless it is “the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947). Evidence of pre-emptive purpose is sought in the text and structure of the statute at issue. Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 95 (1983). If the statute contains an express pre-emption clause, the task of statutory construction must in the first instance focus on the plain wording of the clause, which necessarily contains the best evidence of Congress’ pre-emptive intent.
According to § 434, applicable federal regulations may preempt any state “law, rule, regulation, order, or standard relating to railroad safety.” Legal duties imposed on railroads by the common law fall within the scope of these broad phrases. Cf. Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 522 (1992) (federal statute barring additional “ 'requirements] ’ . . . ‘imposed under State law’” pre-empts common-law claims); id., at 548-549 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (same). Thus, the issue before the Court is whether the Secretary of Transportation has issued regulations covering the same subject matter as Georgia negligence law pertaining to the maintenance of, and the operation of trains at, grade crossings. To prevail on the claim that the regulations have pre-emptive effect, petitioner must establish more than that they “touch upon” or “relate to” that subject matter, cf. Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 504 U. S. 374, 383-384 (1992) (statute’s use of “relating to” confers broad pre-emptive effect), for “covering” is a more restrictive term which indicates that pre-emption will lie only if the federal regulations substantially subsume the subject matter of the relevant state law. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 524 (1961) (in the phrase “policy clauses covering the situation,” cover means “to comprise, include, or embrace in an effective scope of treatment or operation”). The term “covering” is in turn employed within a provision that displays considerable solicitude for state law in that its express pre-emption clause is both prefaced and succeeded by express saving clauses. See supra, at 662.
II
After filing an answer denying the allegations of negligence with respect to the warning devices at Cook Street and with respect to the train’s speed, petitioner moved for summary judgment on the ground that these claims were pre-empted. As the litigation comes to us, petitioner does not assert that the complaint fails to state a claim under Georgia law. The sole issue here is pre-emption, which depends on whether the regulations issued by the Secretary cover the subject matter of the two allegations, each of which we may assume states a valid cause of action.
As indicated above, the Secretary of Transportation has addressed grade crossing safety through a series of regulations. Each State receiving federal aid is required to establish a “highway safety improvement program” that establishes priorities for addressing all manner of highway hazards and guides the implementation and evaluation of remedial measures. 23 CFR pt. 924 (1992). In setting priorities, the States are directed to consider and rank the dangers posed by grade crossings. § 924.9(a)(4). Having developed a program, each State must evaluate its effectiveness and costs, §924.13, and file yearly reports with the FHWA, §924.15.
States are subject to further regulations governing the use of particular warning devices. For all projects, they must employ devices that conform to standards set out in FHWA’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD or Manual). §§ 646.214(b)(1), 655.603. In addition, for projects that involve grade crossings “located within the limits of or near the terminus of a Federal-aid highway project for construction of a new highway or improvement of [an] existing roadway,” see § 646.214(b)(2), or in which “Federal-aid funds participate in the installation of the [warning] devices,” regulations specify warning devices that must be installed. See §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4). Thus, States must employ automatic gates with flashing light signals as part of any improvement project that concerns a crossing that features, inter alia, multiple tracks, high speed trains operating in areas of limited visibility, heavy vehicle or train traffic, or if a diagnostic team made up of “représentatives of the parties of interest in [the crossing],” § 646.204(g), recommends them. For federally funded installations at crossings that do not present the track conditions specified in § 646.214(b)(3), “the type of warning device to be installed, whether the determination is made by a State . . . agency, and/or the railroad, is subject to the approval of the FHWA.” § 646.214(b)(4).
The regulations of 23 CFR pt. 924 do not of themselves support petitioner’s claim of pre-emption. These provisions establish the general terms of the bargain between the Federal and State Governments: The States may obtain federal funds if they take certain steps to ensure that the funds are efficiently spent. On its face, this federal effort to encourage the States to rationalize their decisionmaking has little to say about the subject matter of negligence law, because, with respect to grade crossing safety, the responsibilities of railroads and the State are, and traditionally have been, quite distinct. Before the enactment of FRSA, for example, Georgia’s authority over grade crossing improvements did not excuse a railroad’s liability in negligence for failing to maintain a safe crossing, see n. 5, supra, just as a jury finding of railroad negligence bore no particular significance on the State’s safety efforts beyond that which the State wished to give it. Certainly there is no explicit indication in the regulations of 23 CFR pt. 924 that the terms of the Federal Government’s bargain with the States require modification of this regime of separate spheres of responsibility. And, contrary to the view of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, it does not necessarily follow that “[t]he hit-or-miss common law method runs counter to a statutory scheme of planned prioritization.” Hatfield v. Burlington Northern R. Co., 958 F. 2d 320, 324 (1992). In fact, the scheme of negligence liability could just as easily complement these regulations by encouraging railroads — the entities arguably most familiar with crossing conditions — to provide current and complete information to the state agency responsible for determining priorities for improvement projects in accordance with §924.9. In light of the relatively stringent standard set by the language of § 434 and the presumption against preemption, and given that the regulations provide no affirmative indication of their effect on negligence law, we are not prepared to find pre-emption solely on the strength of the general mandates of 23 CFR pt. 924.
Likewise, the requirement that the States comply with the MUTCD does not cover the subject matter of the tort law of grade crossings. Petitioner’s contrary reading rests primarily on language that appears in Part VIII of the Manual, entitled “Traffic Control Systems for Railroad-Highway Grade Crossings”:
“[T]he highway agency and the railroad company are entitled to jointly occupy the right-of-way in the conduct of their assigned duties. This requires joint responsibility in the traffic control function between the public agency and the railroad. The determination of need and selection of devices at a grade crossing is made by the public agency with jurisdictional authority. Subject to such determination and selection, the design, installation and operation shall be in accordance with the national standards contained herein.” Manual, at 8A-1.
According to petitioner, the third sentence of this paragraph, combined with the directive in 23 CFR § 646.214(b)(1) that the States comply with the Manual, amounts to a determination by the Secretary that state governmental bodies shall bear exclusive responsibility for grade crossing safety.
Petitioner’s argument suffers from an initial implausibility: It asserts that established state negligence law has been implicitly displaced by means of an elliptical reference in a Government Manual otherwise devoted to describing for the benefit of state employees the proper size, color, and shape of traffic signs and signals. Not surprisingly, the Manual itself disavows any such pretensions: “It is the intent that the provisions of this Manual be standards for traffic control devices installation, but not a legal requirement for installation.” Manual, at 1A-4. The language on which petitioner relies undermines rather than supports its claim by acknowledging that the States must approve the installation of any protective device even as the railroads maintain “joint responsibility” for traffic safety at crossings. As is made clear in the FHWA’s guide to the Manual, the MUTCD provides a description of, rather than a prescription for, the allocation of responsibility for grade crossing safety between the Federal and State Governments and between States and railroads:
“8A-6 Grade-Crossing Responsibility
“Jurisdiction
“Jurisdiction over railroad-highway crossings resides almost exclusively in the States. Within some States, responsibility is frequently divided among several public agencies and the railroad.” U. S. Dept, of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Traffic Control Devices Handbook (1983).
Rather than establishing an alternative scheme of duties incompatible with existing Georgia negligence law, the Manual disavows any claim to cover the subject matter of that body of law.
The remaining potential sources of pre-emption are the provisions of 23 CFR §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4), which, unlike the foregoing provisions, do establish requirements as to the installation of particular warning devices. Examination of these regulations demonstrates that, when they are applicable, state tort law is pre-empted. However, petitioner has failed to establish that the regulations apply to these cases, and hence we find respondent’s grade crossing claim is not pre-empted.
As discussed supra, at 666-667, under §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4), a project for the improvement of a grade crossing must either include an automatic gate or receive FHWA approval if federal funds “participate in the installation of the [warning] devices.” Thus, unlike the Manual, §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4) displace state and private decision-making authority by establishing a federal-law requirement that certain protective devices be installed or federal approval obtained. Indeed, §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4) effectively set the terms under which railroads are to participate in the improvement of crossings. The former section envisions railroad involvement in the selection of warning devices through their participation in diagnostic teams which may recommend the use or nonuse of crossing gates. §§ 646.214(b)(3)(i)(F) and (3)(ii). Likewise, § 646.214(b)(4), which covers federally funded installations at crossings that do not feature multiple tracks, heavy traffic, or the like, explicitly notes that railroad participation in the initial determination of “the type of warning device to be installed” at particular crossings is subject to the Secretary’s approval. In either case, the Secretary has determined that the railroads shall not be made to pay any portion of installation costs. § 646.210(b)(1). In short, for projects in which federal funds participate in the installation of warning devices, the Secretary has determined the devices to be installed and the means by which railroads are to participate in their selection. The Secretary’s regulations therefore cover the subject matter of state law which, like the tort law on which respondent relies, seeks to impose an independent duty on a railroad to identify and/or repair dangerous crossings.
The remaining question with respect to respondent’s grade crossing claim is whether the preconditions for the application of either regulation have been met. A review of the record reveals that they have not. Petitioner relies on an affidavit from an engineer for the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) which was submitted in support of its motion for summary judgment. The affidavit indicates that, in 1979-1980, the DOT decided to install a crossing gate at the West Avenue crossing in Cartersville. That gate could not be installed, however, without placing motion-detection devices at four adjacent crossings, including Cook Street. App. 16. The DOT therefore installed new circuitry at each crossing, and subsequently installed gates at West Avenue and each of the adjacent crossings except Cook Street. Although a gate was also planned for Cook Street and funds set aside for the project, no other devices were installed because the street’s width required the construction of a traffic island, which in turn required city approval. When the city declined to approve the island out of concern for the flow of vehicular traffic, the plan, for the gate was shelved and the funds allocated for use in another project.
These facts do not establish that federal funds “participate[d] in the installation of the [warning] devices” at Cook Street. The only equipment installed was the motion-detection circuitry. Such circuitry does not meet the definition of warning devices provided in 23 CFR §§ 646.204(f) and (j) (1992). Petitioner nevertheless contends that the Cook Street crossing was part of a single project to improve the five Cartersville crossings, and that the regulations were applicable because federal funds participated in the installation of gates at the other four crossings. Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. 91-790, p. 20. Neither party identifies any statutory or regulatory provisions defining the term “project,” although some usages cast doubt on petitioner’s view. See, e. g., 23 CFR § 646.210(c)(3) (describing the elimination of “a grade crossing” as “the ... project”). Even if the term could be construed to include either individual or multiple crossing projects, it is clear that the Georgia DOT treated the installation of warning devices at West Avenue and Cook Street as distinct projects. Respondent’s own affiant states that the cost of the motion detector installed at Cook Street “was included in the estimated costs proposal prepared . . . for the West Avenue crossing improvements ....” App. 17. Moreover, as found by the District Court, when Cartersville scotched the plans for the Cook Street gate, “the funds earmarked for this crossing were . . . transferred to other projects. The decision to install gate arms at the Cook Street crossing was placed on a list of projects to be considered at a later time.” 742 F. Supp., at 678. In light of the inapplicability of §§ 646.214(b)(3) and (4) to these cases, we conclude that respondent’s grade crossing claim is not pre-empted.
H — 1 HH HH
Federal regulations issued by the Secretary pursuant to FRSA and codified at 49 CFR § 213.9(a) (1992) set maximum allowable operating speeds for all freight and passenger trains for each class of track on which they travel. The different classes of track are in turn defined by, inter alia, their gage, alinement, curvature, surface uniformity, and the number of crossties per length of track. See §§213.51-213.143. The track at the Cook Street crossing is class four, for which the maximum speed is 60 miles per hour. Although respondent concedes that petitioner’s train was traveling at less than 60 miles per hour, she nevertheless contends that petitioner breached its common-law duty to operate its train at a moderate and safe rate of speed. See, e. g., Central of Georgia R. Co. v. Markert, 200 Ga. App. 851, 852; 410 S. E. 2d 437, 438, cert. denied, 200 Ga. App. 895 (1991). Petitioner contends that this claim is pre-empted because the federal speed limits are regulations covering the subject matter of the common law of train speed.
On their face, the provisions of § 213.9(a) address only the maximum speeds at which trains are permitted to travel given the nature of the track on which they operate. Nevertheless, related safety regulations adopted by the Secretary reveal that the limits were adopted only after the hazards posed by track conditions were taken into account. Understood in the context of the overall structure of the regulations, the speed limits must be read as not only establishing a ceiling, but also precluding additional state regulation of the sort that respondent seeks to impose on petitioner.
Because the conduct of the automobile driver is the major variable in grade crossing accidents, and because trains offer far fewer opportunities for regulatory control, the safety regulations established by the Secretary concentrate on providing clear and accurate warnings of the approach of oncoming trains to drivers. Accordingly, the Secretary’s regulations focus on providing appropriate warnings given variations in train speed. The MUTCD, for example, requires the installation at grade crossings of signaling devices that provide uniform periods of advance notice regardless of train speed. Manual, at 8C-7. Likewise, as discussed supra, at 666, automatic gates are required for federally funded projects affecting crossings over which trains travel at high speeds. 23 CFR §§ 646.214(b)(3)(C) and (D). Further support for the view that the limits in § 213.9(a) were set with safety concerns already in mind is found in § 213.9(c). Under that section, railroads may petition for permission from the Railroad Administrator to operate in excess of the maximum speed limit of 110 miles per hour, but only upon submission of information pertaining to the signals, grade crossing protections, and other devices that will allow safe operation.
Read against this background, § 213.9(a) should be understood as covering the subject matter of train speed with respect to track conditions, including the conditions posed by grade crossings. Respondent nevertheless maintains that pre-emption is inappropriate because the Secretary’s primary purpose in enacting the speed limits was not to ensure safety at grade crossings, but rather to prevent derailments. Section 434 does not, however, call for an inquiry into the Secretary’s purposes, but instead directs the courts to determine whether regulations have been adopted that in fact cover the subject matter of train speed. Respondent also argues that common-law speed restrictions are preserved by the second saving clause of § 434, under which “a State may . .. continue in force an additional or more stringent law ... relating to railroad safety when necessary to eliminate or reduce an essentially local safety hazard, and when not incompatible with any Federal law, rule, regulation, order, or standard ....” The state law on which respondent relies is concerned with local hazards only in the sense that its application turns on the facts of each case. The common law of negligence provides a general rule to address all hazards caused by lack of due care, not just those owing to unique local conditions. Respondent’s contrary view would completely deprive the Secretary of the power to pre-empt state common law, a power clearly conferred by §434. At the least, this renders respondent’s reliance on the common law “incompatible with” FRSA and the Secretary’s regulations. We thus conclude that respondent’s excessive speed claim cannot stand in light of the Secretary’s adoption of the regulations in § 213.9.
> H-i
We hold that, under the FRSA, federal regulations adopted by the Secretary of Transportation pre-empt respondent’s negligence action only insofar as it asserts that petitioner’s train was traveling at an excessive speed. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
See Karl v. Burlington Northern R. Co., 880 F. 2d 68, 75-76 (CA8 1989); Marshall v. Burlington Northern, Inc., 720 F. 2d 1149, 1154 (CA9 1983); Hatfield v. Burlington Northern R. Co., 958 F. 2d 320, 321 (CA10 1992).
The section reads:
Ҥ 434. National uniformity of laws, rules, regulations, orders, and standards relating to railroad safety; State regulation
“The Congress declares that laws, rules, regulations, orders, and standards relating to railroad safety shall be nationally uniform to the extent practicable. A State may adopt or continue in force any law, rule, regulation, order, or standard relating to railroad safety until such time as the Secretary has adopted a rule, regulation, order, or standard covering the subject matter of such State requirement. A State may adopt or continue in force an additional or more stringent law, rule, regulation, order, or standard relating to railroad safety when necessary to eliminate or reduce an essentially local safety hazard, and when not incompatible with any Federal law, rule, regulation, order, or standard, and when not creating an undue burden on interstate commerce.”
See U. S. Dept. of Transportation, Railroad-Highway Safety, Part I: A Comprehensive Statement of the Problem (1971); U. S. Dept. of Transportation, Railroad-Highway Safety, Part II: Recommendations for Resolving the Problem (1972).
The Court of Appeals found that, because the grade crossing regulations were promulgated pursuant to the Highway Safety Act (rather than FRSA), their pre-emptive effect is not governed by § 434. 933 F. 2d 1548, 1555 (CA11 1991). As petitioner notes, this distinction does not apply to 23 CFR pts. 646 and 1204, which were promulgated under the authority of both statutes. See Brief for Petitioner in No. 91-790, p. 36. In any event, the plain terms of § 434 do not limit the application of its express pre-emption clause to regulations adopted by the Secretary pursuant to FRSA. Instead, they state that any regulation “adopted” by the Secretary may have pre-emptive effect, regardless of the enabling legislation. At the very least, the Court of Appeals’ conclusion is inappropriate with respect to regulations issued under 23 U. S. C. § 130, given that the latter is a direct outgrowth of FRSA.
Because the litigation comes to us in this posture, neither party provides a description of Georgia statute or case law dealing with train speeds or the duties of railroads with respect to grade crossings. However, we note that Georgia Code Ann. §32-6-190 (1991) provides that railroads are under a duty to maintain their grade crossings “in such condition as to permit the safe and convenient passage of public traffic.” While 'final authority for the installation of particular safety devices at grade crossings has long rested with state and local governments, see, e. g., § 40-6-25, this allocation of authority apparently does not relieve the railroads of their duty to take all reasonable precautions to maintain grade crossing safety, Southern R. Co. v. Georgia Kraft Co., 188 Ga. App. 623, 624, 373 S. E. 2d 774, 776 (1988), including, for example, identifying and bringing to the attention of the relevant authorities dangers posed by particular crossings.
. Parallel provisions require state programs to systematically identify hazardous crossings and to develop “a program for the elimination of hazards.” 23 CFR §1204.4 (1992), Highway Safety Program Guideline No. 12(G).
U. S. Dept. of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (1988). The Manual has been incorporated into federal regulations promulgated by the Secretary. See 23 CFR §§666.601-665.603 (1992).
23 CFR § 646.214(b)(3) reads:
“(3)(i) Adequate learning devices under § 646.214(b)(2) or on any project where Federal-aid funds participate in the installation of the devices are to include automatic gates with flashing light signals when one or more of the following conditions exist:
“(A) Multiple main line railroad tracks.
“(B) Multiple tracks at or in the vicinity of the crossing which may be occupied by a train or locomotive so as to obscure the movement of another train approaching the crossing.
“(C) High Speed train operation combined with limited sight distance at either single or multiple track crossings.
“(D) A combination of high speeds and moderately high volumes of highway and railroad traffic.
“(E) Either a high volume of vehicular traffic, high number of train movements, substantial numbers of schoolbuses or trucks carrying hazardous materials, unusually restricted sight distance, continuing accident occurrences, or any combination of these conditions.
“(F) A diagnostic team recommends them.
“(ii) In individual cases where a diagnostic team justifies that gates are not appropriate, FHWA may find that the above requirements are not applicable.”
For the definition of “diagnostic team,” see 23 CFR § 646.204(g) (1992).
Petitioner also notes similar language contained in the Manual, at 8D-1:
“The selection of traffic control devices at a grade crossing is determined by public agencies having jurisdictional responsibility at specific locations.
“. . . Before a new or modified grade crossing traffic control system is installed, approval is required from the appropriate agency within a given State.”
As petitioner has not suggested that the Cook Street crossing is located in, or near the terminus of, a federal-aid highway project, the issue of the proper application of 23 CFR § 646.214(b)(2) (1992) is not before us.
The relevant definitions state:
“(i) Passive warning devices means those types of traffic control devices, including signs, markings and other devices, located at or in advance of grade crossings to indicate the presence of a crossing but which do not change aspect upon the approach or presence of a train.
“(j) Active warning devices means those traffic control devices activated by the approach or presence of a train, such as flashing light signals, automatic gates and similar devices, as well as manually operated devices and crossing watchmen, all of which display to motorists positive warning of the approach or presence of a train.” 23 CFR §§646.204© and (j) (emphases added).
We reject petitioner’s claim of implied “conflict” pre-emption, Brief for Petitioner in No. 91-790, pp. 40-43, on the basis of the preceding analysis. Of course we express no opinion on how the state-law suit against the railroad should come out in light of the decisions taken by Cartersville and the Georgia DOT with respect to the Cook Street project.
Affidavits submitted by the parties indicate that the train was moving at a rate of 32 to 50 miles per hour.
See U. S. Dept. of Transportation, Railroad-Highway Safety, Part I: A Comprehensive Statement of the Problem iv (1971) (“Nearly all grade crossing accidents can be said to be attributable to some degree of ‘driver error.’ Thus, any effective program for improving [crossing] safety should be oriented around the driver and his needs in approaching, traversing, and leaving the crossing site as safely and efficiently as possible”); see also U. S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Rail-Highway Crossings Study 8-1 (1989) (“[T]he most influential predictors of train-vehicle accidents at rail-highway crossings are type of warning devices installed, highway traffic volumes, and train volumes. Less influential, but sometimes significant [is] maximum train speed ...”).
Petitioner is prepared to concede that the pre-emption of respondent’s excessive speed claim does not bar suit for breach of related tort law duties, such as the duty to slow or stop a train to avoid a specific, individual hazard. Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. 91-790, p. 3. As respondent’s complaint alleges only that petitioner’s train was traveling too quickly given the “time and place,” App. 4, this case does not present, and we do not address, the question of FRSA’s pre-emptive effect on such related claims.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | J | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Burton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question here is whether a labor organization engages in an unfair labor practice, within the meaning of § 8 (b) (6) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, when it insists that newspaper publishers pay printers for reproducing advertising matter for which the publishers ordinarily have no use. For the reasons hereafter stated, we hold that it does not.
Petitioner, American Newspaper Publishers Association, is a New York corporation the membership of which includes more than 800 newspaper publishers. They represent over 90% of the circulation of the daily and Sunday newspapers in the United States and carry oyer 90% of the advertising published in such papers.
In November, 1947, petitioner filed with the National Labor Relations Board charges that the International Typographical Union, here called ITU, and its officers were engaging in unfair labor practices within the meaning of § 8 (b)(1), (2) and (6) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, here called the Taft-Hartley Act. The Regional Director of the Board issued its complaint, including a charge of engaging in an unfair labor practice as defined in § 8 (b)(6), popularly known as the “anti-featherbedding” section of the Act. It is not questioned that the acts complained of affected interstate commerce.
The trial examiner recommended that ITU be ordered to cease and desist from several of its activities but that the “featherbedding” charges under § 8 (b) (6) be dismissed. 86 N. L. R. B. 951, 964, 1024-1033. The Board dismissed those charges. Id., at 951, 963. Petitioner then filed the instant proceeding in the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seeking review and modification of the Board’s orders. That court upheld the Board’s dismissal of all charges under § 8 (b) (6). 193 F. 2d 782, 796, 802. See also, 190 F. 2d 45. A comparable view was expressed in Rabouin v. Labor Board, 195 F. 2d 906, 912-913 (C. A. 2d Cir.), but a contrary view was taken in Gamble Enterprises v. Labor Board, 196 F. 2d 61 (C. A. 6th Cir.). Because of this claimed conflict upon an important issue of first impression, we granted cer-tiorari in the instant case, 344 U. S. 812, and in Labor Board v. Gamble Enterprises, 344 U. S. 814. Our decision in the Gamble case follows this, post, p. 117.
Printers in newspaper composing rooms have long sought to retain the opportunity to set up in type as much as possible of whatever is printed by their respective publishers. In 1872, when printers were paid on a piecework basis, each diversion of composition was at once reflected by a loss in their income. Accordingly, ITU, which had been formed in 1852 from local typographical societies, began its long battle to retain as much typesetting work for printers as possible.
With the introduction of the linotype machine in 1890, the problem took on a new aspect. When a newspaper advertisement was set up in type, it was impressed on a cardboard matrix, or “mat.” These mats were used by their makers and also were reproduced and distributed, at little or no cost, to other publishers who used them as molds for metal castings from which to print the same advertisement. This procedure by-passed all compositors except those who made up the original form. Facing this loss of work, ITU secured the agreement of newspaper publishers to permit their respective compositors, at convenient times, to set up duplicate forms for all local advertisements in precisely the same manner as though the mat had not been used. For this reproduction work the printers received their regular pay. The doing of this “made work” came to be known in the trade as “setting bogus.” It was a wasteful procedure. Nevertheless, it has become a recognized idiosyncrasy of the trade and a customary feature of the wage structure and work schedule of newspaper printers.
By fitting the “bogus” work into slack periods, the practice interferes little with “live” work. The publishers who set up the original compositions find it advantageous because it burdens their competitors with costs of mat making comparable to their own. Approximate time limits for setting “bogus” usually have been fixed by agreement at from four days to three weeks. On rare occasions the reproduced compositions are used to print the advertisements when rerun, but, ordinarily, they are promptly consigned to the “hell box” and melted down. Live matter has priority over reproduction work but the latter usually takes from 2 to 5% of the printers’ time. By 1947, detailed regulations for reproduction work were included in the “General Laws” of ITU. They thus became a standard part of all employment contracts signed by its local unions. The locals were allowed to negotiate as to foreign language publications, time limits for setting “bogus” and exemptions of mats received from commercial compositors or for national advertisements.
Before the enactment of § 8 (b)(6), the legality and enforceability of payment for setting “bogus,” agreed to by the publisher, was recognized. Even now the issue before us is not what policy should be adopted by the Nation toward the continuance of this and other forms of featherbedding. The issue here is solely one of statutory interpretation: Has Congress made setting “bogus” an unfair labor practice?
While the language of § 8 (b) (6) is claimed by both sides to be clear, yet the conflict between the views of the Seventh and Sixth Circuits amply justifies our examination of both the language and the legislative history of the section. The section reads:
“Sec. 8. . . .
“(b) It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
“(6) to cause or attempt to cause an employer to pay or deliver or agree to pay or deliver any money or other thing of value, in the nature of an exaction, for services which are not performed or not to be performed. . . .” 61 Stat. 140-142, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. V) 1158(b)(6).
From the above language and its history, the court below concluded that the insistence by ITU upon securing payment of wages to printers for setting “bogus” was not an unfair labor practice. It found that the practice called for payment only for work which actually was done by employees of the publishers in the course of their employment as distinguished from payment “for services which are not performed or not to be performed.” Setting “bogus” was held to be service performed and it remained for the parties to determine its worth to the employer. The Board here contends also that the insistence of ITU and its agents has not been “in the nature of an exaction” and did not “cause or attempt to cause an employer” to pay anything “in the nature of an exaction.” Agreement with the position taken by the court below makes it unnecessary to consider the additional contentions of the Board.
However desirable the elimination of all industrial featherbedding practices may have appeared to Congress, the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act demonstrates that when the legislation was put in final form Congress decided to limit the practice but little by law.
A restraining influence throughout this congressional consideration of featherbedding was the fact that the constitutionality of the Lea Act penalizing featherbedding in the broadcasting industry was in litigation. That Act, known also as the Petrillo Act, had been adopted April 16, 1946, as an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934. Its material provisions are stated in the margin. December 2, 1946, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that it violated the First, Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. United States v. Petrillo, 68 F. Supp. 845. The case was pending here on appeal throughout the debate on the Taft-Hartley bill. Not until June 23, 1947, on the day of the passage of the Taft-Hartley bill over the President’s veto, was the constitutionality of the Lea Act upheld. United States v. Petrillo, 332 U. S. 1.
The purpose of the sponsors of the Taft-Hartley bill to avoid the controversial features of the Lea Act is made clear in the written statement which Senator Taft, cosponsor of the bill and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, caused to be incorporated in the proceedings of the Senate, June 5, 1947. Referring to the substitution of § 8 (b) (6) in place of the detailed featherbedding provisions of the House bill, that statement said:
“The provisions in the Lea Act from which the House language was taken are now awaiting determination by the Supreme Court, partly because of the problem arising from the term ‘in excess of the number of employees reasonably required.’ Therefore, the conferees were of the opinion that general legislation on the subject of featherbedding was not warranted at least until the joint study committee proposed by this bill could give full consideration to the matter.” 93 Cong. Rec. 6443.
On the same day this was amplified in the Senator’s oral statement on the floor of the Senate:
“There is one further provision which may possibly be of interest, which was not in the Senate bill. The House had rather elaborate provisions prohibiting so-called feather-bedding practices and making them unlawful labor practices. The Senate conferees, while not approving of feather-bedding practices, felt that it was impracticable to give to a board or a court the power to say that so many men are all right, and so many men are too many. It would require a practical application of the law by the courts in hundreds of different industries, and a determination of facts which it seemed to me would be almost impossible. So we declined to adopt the provisions which are now in the Petrillo Act. After all, that statute applies to only one industry. Those provisions are now the subject of court procedure. Their constitutionality has been questioned. We thought that probably we had better wait and see what happened, in any event, even though we are in favor of prohibiting all feather-bedding practices. However, we did accept one provision which makes it an unlawful-labor practice for a union to accept money for people who do not work. That seemed to be a fairly clear case, easy to determine, and we accepted that additional unfair labor practice on the part of unions, which was not in the Senate bill.” 93 Cong. Rec. 6441. See also, his supplementary analysis inserted in the Record June 12, 1947. 93 Cong. Rec. 6859.
As indicated above, the Taft-Hartley bill, H. R. 3020, when it passed the House, April 17, 1947, contained in §§ 2 (17) and 12 (a)(3)(B) an explicit condemnation of featherbedding. Its definition of featherbedding was based upon that in the Lea Act. For example, it condemned practices which required an employer to employ “persons in excess of the number of employees reasonably required by such employer to perform actual services,” as well as practices which required an employer to pay “for services . . . which are not to be performed.” The substitution of the present § 8 (b) (6) for that definition compels the conclusion that § 8 (b)(6) means what the court below has said it means. The Act now limits its condemnation to instances where a labor organization or its agents exact pay from an employer in return for services not performed or not to be performed. Thus, where work is done by an employee, with the employer’s consent, a labor organization’s demand that the employee be compensated for time spent in doing the disputed work does not become an unfair labor practice. The transaction simply does not fall within the kind of featherbedding defined in the statute. In the absence of proof to the contrary, the employee’s compensation reflects his entire relationship with his employer.
We do not have here a situation comparable to that mentioned by Senator Taft as an illustration of the type of featherbedding which he would consider an unfair labor practice within the meaning of § 8 (b)(6). June 5, 1947, in a colloquy on the floor of the Senate he said in reference to § 8 (b) (6):
“[I]t seems to me that it is perfectly clear what is intended. It is intended to make it an unfair labor practice for a man to say, ‘You must have 10 musicians, and if you insist that there is room for only 6, you must pay for the other 4 anyway.’ That is in the nature of an exaction from the employer for services which he does not want, does not need, and is not even willing to accept.” 93 Cong. Rec. 6446.
In that illustration the service for which pay was to be exacted was not performed and was not to be performed by anyone. The last sentence of the above quotation must be read in that context. There was no room for more than six musicians and there was no suggestion that the excluded four did anything or were to do anything for their pay. Section 8 (b) (6) leaves to collective bargaining the determination of what, if any, work, including bona fide “made work,” shall be included as compensable services and what rate of compensation shall be paid for it.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals sustaining dismissal of the complaint, insofar as it was based upon § 8 (b)(6), is
Affirmed.
“Sec. 8. . . .
“(b) It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
■“(6) to cause or attempt to cause an employer to pay or deliver or agree to pay or deliver any money or other thing of value, in the nature of an exaction, for services which are not performed or not to be performed. . . 61 Stat. 140-142, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 158 (b) (6).
49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq., as amended, 61 Stat. 140-142, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 158 (b)(1), (2) and (6).
The grant was—
“limited to question No. 2 presented by the petition for the writ, i. e.:
“Whether the demand and insistence of the International Typographical Union that publishers pay employees in their composing rooms for setting ‘bogus’ violated Section 8 (b) (6) of the National Labor Relations Act in view of the fact that composing room employees perform no service incident or essential to the production of a newspaper in their handling of such ‘bogused’ material.”
For a general discussion of the problems in these cases, see Cox, Some Aspects of the Labor Management Relations Act, 19 V7, 61 Harv. L. Rev. 274, 288-290; Featherbedding and Taft-Hartle, 52 Col. L. Rev. 1020-1033.
In metropolitan areas, only the printers on the “ad side” of a composing room, as contrasted with those on the “news side,” take part in the reproduction work and never on a full-time basis. Such work is not done at overtime rates but when there is an accumulation of it, the newspaper is not permitted to reduce its work force or decline to hire suitable extra printers applying for employment. The trial examiner, in the instant case, found that reproduction work at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle cost over $5,000 a year, at the Chicago Herald-American, about $50,000, and at the New York Times, about $150,000.
“Sec. 506. (a) It shall be unlawful, by the use or express or implied threat of the use of force, violence, intimidation, or duress, or by the use or express or implied threat of the use of other means, to coerce, compel or constrain or attempt to coerce, compel, or constrain a licensee—
“(1) to employ or agree to employ, in connection with the conduct of the broadcasting business of such licensee, any person or persons in excess of the number of employees needed by such licensee to perform actual services; or
“(2) to pay or give or agree to pay or give any money or other thing of value in lieu of giving, or on account of failure to give, employment to any person or persons, in connection with the conduct of the broadcasting business of such licensee, in excess of the number of employees needed by such licensee to perform actual services; or
“(3) to pay or agree to pay more than once for services performed in connection with the conduct of the broadcasting business of such licensee; or
“(4) to pay or give or agree to pay or give any money or other thing of value for services, in connection with the conduct of the broadcasting business of such licensee, which are not to be performed; ....
“(c) The provisions of subsection (a) or (b) of this section shall not be held to make unlawful the enforcement or attempted enforcement, by means lawfully employed, of any contract right heretofore or hereafter existing or of any legal obligation heretofore or hereafter incurred or assumed.
“(d) Whoever willfully violates any provision of subsection (a) or (b) of this section shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by imprisonment for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than $1,000, or both. . . .” 60 Stat. 89, 90, 47 U. S. C. § 506 (a) (c)(d).
For a report of the subsequent trial and acquittal on the merits, see United States v. Petrillo, 75 F. Supp. 176.
In its report of December 31, 1948, the Joint Committee on Labor-Management Relations, established under § 401 of the Taft-Hartley Act, later reviewed the litigation arising under § 8 (b) (6), including the trial examiner’s report in the instant case, and recommended “a continuing study of cases arising under the present featherbedding provision, since there has not been sufficient experience upon which to base intelligent amendments at this time.” S. Rep. No. 986, Pt. 3, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 61, and see pp. 58-61.
See also, Hartley, Our New National Labor Policy (1948), p. xiii (Taft), 174,182-183 (Hartley).
H. R. 3020 as it passed the House provided that:
“Sec. 2. When used in this Act—
“(17) The term 'featherbedding practice’ means a practice which has as its purpose or effect requiring an employer—
“(A) to employ or agree to employ any person or persons in excess of the number of employees reasonably required by such employer to perform actual services; or
“(B) to pay or give or agree to pay or give any money or other thing of value in lieu of employing, or on account of failure to employ, any person or persons, in connection with the conduct of the business of an employer, in excess of the number of employees reasonably required by such employer to perform actual services; or
“(C) to pay or agree to pay more than once for services performed; or
“(D) to pay or give or agree to pay or give any money or other thing of value for services, in connection with the conduct of a business, which are not to be performed; or
“(E) to pay or agree to pay any tax or exaction for the privilege of, or on account of, producing, preparing, manufacturing, selling, buying, renting, operating, using, or maintaining any article, machine, equipment, or materials; or to accede to or impose any restriction upon the production, preparation, manufacture, sale, purchase, rental, operation, use, or maintenance of the same, if such restriction is for the purpose of preventing or limiting the use of such article, machine, equipment, or materials.
“Sec. 12. (a) The following activities, when affecting commerce, shall be unlawful concerted activities:
“(3) Calling, authorizing, engaging in, or assisting—
“(B) any strike or other concerted interference with an employer’s operations, an object of which is to compel an employer to accede to featherbedding practices; . . . .” 1. Legislative History of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 160, 170-171, 204, 205.
Section 8 (b)(6) does not relate to union requests for, or insistence upon, such types of payments as employees’ wages during lunch, rest, waiting or vacation periods; payments for service on relief squads; or payments for reporting for duty to determine whether work is to be done. Such practices are recognized to be incidental to the employee’s general employment and are given consideration in fixing the rate of pay for it. They are not in the nature of exactions of pay for something not performed or not to be performed. See 93 Cong. Rec. 6859.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case, we must decide whether, in order to observe a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) generally visible from outside an automobile, a police officer may reach into the passenger compartment of a vehicle to move papers obscuring the VIN after its driver has been stopped for a traffic violation and has exited the car. We hold that, in these circumstances, the police officer’s action does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
I
On the afternoon of May 11, 1981, New York City police officers Lawrence Meyer and William McNamee observed respondent Benigno Class driving above the speed limit in a car with a cracked windshield. Both driving with a cracked windshield and speeding are traffic violations under New York law. See N. Y. Veh. & Traf. Law §§375(22), 1180(d) (McKinney 1970). Respondent followed the officers’ ensuing directive to pull over. Respondent then emerged from his car and approached Officer Meyer. Officer McNamee went directly to respondent’s vehicle. Respondent provided Officer Meyer with a registration certificate and proof of insurance, but stated that he had no driver’s license.
Meanwhile, Officer McNamee opened the door of respondent’s car to look for the VIN, which is located on the left doorjamb in automobiles manufactured before 1969. When the officer did not find the VIN on the doorjamb, he reached into the interior of respondent’s car to move some papers obscuring the area of the dashboard where the VIN is located in later model automobiles. In doing so, Officer McNamee saw the handle of a gun protruding about one inch from underneath the driver’s seat. The officer seized the gun, and respondent was promptly arrested. Respondent was also issued summonses for his traffic violations.
It is undisputed that the police officers had no reason to suspect that respondent’s car was stolen, that it contained contraband, or that respondent had committed an offense other than the traffic violations. Nor is it disputed that respondent committed the traffic violations with which he was charged, and that, as of the day of the arrest, he had not been issued a valid driver’s license.
After the state trial court denied a motion to suppress the gun as evidence, respondent was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. See N. Y. Penal Law § 265.02(4) (McKinney 1980). The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the conviction without opinion. 97 App. Div. 2d 741, 468 N. Y. S. 2d 892 (1983). The New York Court of Appeals reversed. It reasoned that the police officer’s “intrusion . . . was undertaken to obtain information and it exposed . . . hidden areas” of the car, and “therefore constituted a search.” 63 N. Y. 2d 491, 495, 472 N. E. 2d 1009, 1011 (1984). Although it recognized that a search for a VIN generally involves a minimal intrusion because of its limited potential locations, and agreed that there is a compelling law enforcement interest in positively identifying vehicles involved in accidents or automobile thefts, the court thought it decisive that the facts of this case “reveal no reason for the officer to suspect other criminal activity [besides the traffic infractions] or to act to protect his own safety.” Id., at 495-496, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1012. The state statutory provision that authorizes officers to demand that drivers reveal their VIN “provided no justification for the officer’s entry of [respondent’s] car.” Id., at 497, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1013. If the officer had taken advantage of that statute and asked to see the VIN, respondent could have moved the papers away himself and no intrusion would have occurred. In the absence of any justification for the search besides the traffic infractions, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the gun must be excluded from evidence.
We granted certiorari, 471 U. S. 1003 (1985), and now reverse.
II
Respondent asserts that this Court is without jurisdiction to hear this case because the decision of the New York Court of Appeals rests on an adequate and independent state ground. We disagree.
The opinion of the New York Court of Appeals mentions the New York Constitution but once, and then only in direct conjunction with the United States Constitution. 63 N. Y. 2d, at 493, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1010. Cf. Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1043 (1983). The opinion below makes use of both federal and New York cases in its analysis, generally citing both for the same proposition. See, e. g., 63 N. Y. 2d, at 494, 495, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1011. The opinion lacks the requisite “plain statement” that it rests on state grounds. Michigan v. Long, supra, at 1042, 1044. Accordingly, our holding in Michigan v. Long is directly applicable here:
“[WJhen ... a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law, and when the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion, we will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so.” 463 U. S., at 1040-1041.
See also California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 389, n. 1 (1985).
Respondent’s claim that the opinion below rested on independent and adequate state statutory grounds is also without merit. The New York Court of Appeals did not hold that §401 of New York’s Vehicle and Traffic Law prohibited the search at issue here, but, in rejecting an assertion of petitioner, merely held that § 401 “provided no justification” for a search. 63 N. Y. 2d, at 497, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1013 (emphasis added). In determining that the police officer’s action was prohibited, the court below looked to the Federal Constitution, not the State’s statute. Moreover, New York adheres to the general rule that, when statutory construction can resolve a case, courts should not decide constitutional issues. See Ashwander v. TV A, 297 U. S. 288, 346-347 (1936) (Brandéis, J., concurring); In re Peters v. New York City Housing Authority, 307 N. Y. 519, 527, 121 N. E. 2d 529, 531 (1954). Since the New York Court of Appeals discussed both statutory and constitutional grounds, we may infer that the court believed the statutory issue insufficient to resolve the case. The discussion of the statute therefore could not have constituted an independent and adequate state ground.
i — I h-i
A
The officer here, after observing respondent commit two traffic violations and exit the car, attempted to determine the VIN of respondent’s automobile. In reaching to remove papers obscuring the VIN, the officer intruded into the passenger compartment of the vehicle.
The VIN consists of more than a dozen digits, unique to each vehicle and required on all cars and trucks. See 49 CFR §571.115 (1984). The VIN is roughly analogous to a serial number, but it can be deciphered to reveal not only the place of the automobile in the manufacturer’s production run, but also the make, model, engine type, and place of manufacture of the vehicle. See § 565.4.
The VIN is a significant thread in the web of regulation of the automobile. See generally 43 Fed. Reg. 2189 (1978). The ease with which the VIN allows identification of a particular vehicle assists the various levels of government in many ways. For the Federal Government, the VIN improves the efficacy of recall campaigns, and assists researchers in determining the risks of driving various makes and models of automobiles. In combination with state insurance laws, the VIN reduces the number of those injured in accidents who go uncompensated for lack of insurance. In conjunction with the State’s registration requirements and safety inspections, the VIN helps to ensure that automobile operators are driving safe vehicles. By making automobile theft more difficult, the VIN safeguards not only property but also life and limb. See 33 Fed. Reg. 10207 (1968) (noting that stolen vehicles are disproportionately likely to be involved in automobile accidents).
To facilitate the VIN’s usefulness for these laudable governmental purposes, federal law requires that the VIN be placed in the plain view of someone outside the automobile:
“The VIN for passenger cars [manufactured after 1969] shall be located inside the passenger compartment. It shall be readable, without moving any part of the vehicle, through the vehicle glazing under daylight lighting conditions by an observer having 20/20 vision (Snellen) whose eye point is located outside the vehicle adjacent to the left windshield pillar. Each character in the VIN subject to this paragraph shall have a minimum height of 4 mm.” 49 CFR §571.115 (S4.6) (1984) (emphasis added).
In Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 658 (1979), we recognized the “vital interest” in highway safety and the various programs that contribute to that interest. In light of the important interests served by the VIN, the Federal and State Governments are amply justified in making it a part of the web of pervasive regulation that surrounds the automobile, and in requiring its placement in an area ordinarily in plain view from outside the passenger compartment.
B
A citizen does not surrender all the protections of the Fourth Amendment by entering an automobile. See Delaware v. Prouse, supra, at 663; Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266, 269 (1973). Nonetheless, the State’s intrusion into a particular area, whether in an automobile or elsewhere, cannot result in a Fourth Amendment violation unless the area is one in which there is a “constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 360 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). See Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, 177-180 (1984); Maryland v. Macon, 472 U. S. 463, 469 (1985).
The Court has recognized that the physical characteristics of an automobile and its use result in a lessened expectation of privacy therein:
“One has a lesser expectation of privacy in a motor vehicle because its function is transportation and it seldom serves as one’s residence or as the repository of personal effects. A car has little capacity for escaping public scrutiny. It travels public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view.” Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583, 590 (1974) (plurality opinion).
Moreover, automobiles are justifiably the subject of pervasive regulation by the State. Every operator of a motor vehicle must expect that the State, in enforcing its regulations, will intrude to some extent upon that operator’s privacy:
“Automobiles, unlike homes, are subject to pervasive and continuing governmental regulation and controls, including periodic inspection and licensing requirements. As an everyday occurrence, police stop and examine vehicles when license plates or inspection stickers have expired, or if other violations, such as exhaust fumes or excessive noise, are noted, or if headlights or other safety equipment are not in proper working order.” South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 368 (1976).
See also Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 441-442 (1973); California v. Carney, 471 U. S., at 392.
The factors that generally diminish the reasonable expectation of privacy in automobiles are applicable a fortiori to the VIN. As we have discussed above, the VIN plays an important part in the pervasive regulation by the government of the automobile. A motorist must surely expect that such regulation will on occasion require the State to determine the VIN of his or her vehicle, and the individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN is thereby diminished. This is especially true in the case of a driver who has committed a traffic violation. See Delaware v. Prouse, supra, at 659 (“The foremost method of enforcing traffic and vehicle safety regulations ... is acting upon observed violations. Vehicle stops for traffic violations occur countless times each day; and on these occasions, licenses and registration papers are subject to inspection and drivers without them will be as certained”) (emphasis added). In addition, it is unreasonable to have an expectation of privacy in an object required by law to be located in a place ordinarily in plain view from the exterior of the automobile. The VIN’s mandated visibility makes it more similar to the exterior of the car than to the trunk or glove compartment. The exterior of a car, of course, is thrust into the public eye, and thus to examine it does not constitute a “search.” See Cardwell v. Lewis, supra, at 588-589. In sum, because of the important role played by the VIN in the pervasive governmental regulation of the automobile and the efforts by the Federal Government to ensure that the VIN is placed in plain view, we hold that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN.
We think it makes no difference that the papers in respondent’s car obscured the VIN from the plain view of the officer. We have recently emphasized that efforts to restrict access to an area do not generate a reasonable expectation of privacy where none would otherwise exist. See Oliver v. United States, supra, at 182-184 (placement of “No Trespassing” signs on secluded property does not create “legitimate privacy interest” in marihuana fields). Here, where the object at issue is an identification number behind the transparent windshield of an automobile driven upon the public roads, we believe that the placement of the obscuring papers was insufficient to create a privacy interest in the VIN. The mere viewing of the formerly obscured VIN was not, therefore, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
C
The evidence that respondent sought to have suppressed was not the VIN, however, but a gun, the handle of which the officer saw from the interior of the car while reaching for the papers that covered the VIN. While the interior of an automobile is not subject to the same expectations of privacy that exist with respect to one’s home, a car’s interior as a whole is nonetheless subject to Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable intrusions by the police. We agree with the New York Court of Appeals that the intrusion into that space constituted a “search.” 63 N. Y. 2d, at 495, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1011. Cf. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S., at 653 (“[Shopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a ‘seizure’. . . even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief”). We must decide, therefore, whether this search was constitutionally permissible.
If respondent had remained in the car, the police would have been justified in asking him to move the papers obscuring the VIN. New York law authorizes a demand by officers to see the VIN, see 63 N. Y. 2d, at 496-497, 472 N. E. 2d, at 1012-1013, and even if the state law were not explicit on this point we have no difficulty in concluding that a demand to inspect the VIN, like a demand to see license and registration papers, is within the scope of police authority pursuant to a traffic violation stop. See Prouse, supra, at 659. If respondent had stayed in his vehicle and acceded to such a request from the officer, the officer would not have needed to intrude into the passenger compartment. Respondent chose, however, to exit the vehicle without removing the papers that covered the VIN; the officer chose to conduct his search without asking respondent to return to the car. We must therefore decide whether the officer acted within the bounds of the Fourth Amendment in conducting the search. We hold that he did.
Keeping the driver of a vehicle in the car during a routine traffic stop is probably the typical police practice. See D. Schultz & D. Hunt, Traffic Investigation and Enforcement 17 (1983). Nonetheless, out of a concern for the safety of the police, the Court has held that officers may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, exercise their discretion to require a driver who commits a traffic violation to exit the vehicle even though they lack any particularized reason for believing the driver possesses a weapon. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 108-111 (1977) (per curiam). While we impute to respondent no propensity for violence, and while we are conscious of the fact that respondent here voluntarily left the vehicle, the facts of this case may be used to illustrate one of the principal justifications for the discretion given police officers by Pennsylvania v. Mimms: while in the driver’s seat, respondent had a loaded pistol at hand. Mimms allows an officer to guard against that possibility by requiring the driver to exit the car briefly. Clearly, Mimms also allowed the officers here to detain respondent briefly outside the car that he voluntarily exited while they completed their investigation.
The question remains, however, as to whether the officers could not only effect the seizure of respondent necessary to detain him briefly outside the vehicle, but also effect a search for the VIN that may have been necessary only because of that detention. The pistol beneath the seat did not, of course, disappear when respondent closed the car door behind him. To have returned respondent immediately to the automobile would have placed the officers in the same situation that the holding in Mimms allows officers to avoid — permitting an individual being detained to have possible access to a dangerous weapon and the benefit of the partial concealment provided by the car’s exterior. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, supra, at 110. In light of the danger to the officers’ safety that would have been presented by returning respondent immediately to his car, we think the search to obtain the VIN was not prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment by its terms prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. We have noted:
“[T]here is ‘no ready test for determining reasonableness other than by balancing the need to search [or seize] against the invasion which the search [or seizure] entails.’ Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523, 534-535, 536-537 (1967). And in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, justifiably warrant that intrusion.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21 (1968) (footnote omitted) (brackets as in Terry).
This test generally means that searches must be conducted pursuant to a warrant backed by probable cause. See United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102, 105-109 (1965); United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705, 714-715 (1984). When a search or seizure has as its immediate object a search for a weapon, however, we have struck the balance to allow the weighty interest in the safety of police officers to justify war-rantless searches based only on a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. See Terry v. Ohio, supra; Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143 (1972). Such searches are permissible despite their substantial intrusiveness. See Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 24-25 (search was “a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security, and . . . must surely [have] b[een] an annoying, frightening, and perhaps humiliating experience”).
When the officer’s safety is less directly served by the detention, something more than objectively justifiable suspicion is necessary to justify the intrusion if the balance is to tip in favor of the legality of the governmental intrusion. In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, supra, at 107, the officers had personally observed the seized individual in the commission of a traffic offense before requesting that he exit his vehicle. In Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692, 693 (1981), the officers had obtained a warrant to search the house that the person seized was leaving when they came upon him. While the facts in Pennsylvania v. Mimms and Michigan v. Summers differ in some respects from the facts of this case, the similarities are strong enough that the balancing of governmental interests against governmental intrusion undertaken in those cases is also appropriate here. All three of the factors involved in Mimms and Summers are present in this case: the safety of the officers was served by the governmental intrusion; the intrusion was minimal; and the search stemmed from some probable cause focusing suspicion on the individual affected by the search. Indeed, here the officers’ probable cause stemmed from directly observing respondent commit a violation of the law.
When we undertake the necessary balancing of “the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion,” United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696, 703 (1983), the conclusion that the search here was permissible follows. As we recognized in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S., at 658, the governmental interest in highway safety served by obtaining the VIN is of the first order, and the particular method of obtaining the VIN here was justified by a concern for the officers’ safety. The “critical” issue of the intrusiveness of the government’s action, United States v. Place, supra, at 722 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment), also here weighs in favor of allowing the search. The search was focused in its objective and no more intrusive than necessary to fulfill that objective. The search was far less intrusive than a formal arrest, which would have been permissible for a traffic offense under New York law, see N. Y. Veh. & Traf. Law § 155 (McKinney Supp. 1986); N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law §140.10(1) (McKinney 1981), and little more intrusive than a demand that respondent — under the eyes of the officers — move the papers himself. The VIN, which was the clear initial objective of the officer, is by law present in one of two locations — either inside the doorjamb, or atop the dashboard and thus ordinarily in plain view of someone outside the automobile. Neither of those locations is subject to a reasonable expectation of privacy. The officer here checked both those locations, and only those two locations. The officer did not root about the interior of respondent’s automobile before proceeding to examine the VIN. He did not reach into any compartments or open any containers. He did not even intrude into the interior at all until after he had checked the doorjamb for the VIN. When he did intrude, the officer simply reached directly for the unprotected space where the VIN was located to move the offending papers. We hold that this search was sufficiently unintrusive to be constitutionally permissible in light of the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN and the fact that the officers observed respondent commit two traffic violations. Any other conclusion would expose police officers to potentially grave risks without significantly reducing the intrusiveness of the ultimate conduct — viewing the VIN — which, as we have said, the officers were entitled, to do as part of an undoubtedly justified traffic stop.
We note that our holding today does not authorize police officers to enter a vehicle to obtain a dashboard-mounted VIN when the VIN is visible from outside the automobile. If the VIN is in the plain view of someone outside the vehicle, there is no justification for governmental intrusion into the passenger compartment to see it.
The judgment of the New York Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Petitioner invites us to hold that respondent’s status as an unlicensed driver deprived him of any reasonable expectations of privacy in the vehicle, because the officers would have been within their discretion to have prohibited respondent from driving the ear away, to have impounded the ear, and to have later conducted an inventory search thereof. Cf. South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364 (1976) (police may conduct inventory search of car impounded for multiple parking violations); Nix v. Williams, 467 U. S. 431 (1984) (discussing the “inevitable discovery” exception to the exclusionary rule). Petitioner also argues that there can be no Fourth Amendment violation here because the police could have arrested respondent, see N. Y. Veh. & Traf. Law §155 (McKinney Supp. 1986); N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law §140.10(1) (McKinney 1981), and could then have searched the passenger compartment at the time of arrest, cf. New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), or arrested respondent and searched the car after impounding it pursuant to the arrest, see Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433 (1973). We do not, however, reach those questions here.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We are asked to decide whether a federal court may direct that a prison sentence under 18 U.- S. C. § 924(c) run concurrently with a state-imposed sentence, even though § 924(c) provides that a sentence imposed under that statute “shall [not] . . . run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment.” We hold that it may not.
I
Respondents were arrested in a drug sting operation during which two of them pulled guns on undercover police officers. All three were convicted in New Mexico courts on charges arising from the holdup. The state courts sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 13 to 17 years. After they began to serve their state sentences, respondents were convicted in federal court of committing various drug offenses connected to the sting operation, and conspiring to do so, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§841 and 846. They were also convicted of using firearms during and in relation to those drug trafficking crimes, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 924(c). Respondents received sentences ranging from 120 to 147 months in prison, of which 60 months reflected the mandatory sentence required for their firearms convictions. Pursuant to § 924(c), the District Court ordered that the portion of respondents’ federal sentences attributable to the drug convictions run concurrently with their state sentences, with the remaining 60 months due to the firearms offenses to run consecutively to both.
The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated respondents’ sentences for the firearms violations, on the ground that the § 924(c) sentences should have run concurrently with the state prison terms. 66 F. 3d 814 (1995). (The court also vacated respondents’ substantive drug convictions and dealt with various other sentencing issues not before us.) Although the Court of Appeals recognized that other Circuits had uniformly “held that §924(c)’s plain language prohibits sentences imposed under that statute from running concurrently with state sentences,” it nevertheless thought that “a literal reading of the statutory language would produce an absurd result.” Id., at 819. Feeling obliged to “venture into the thicket of legislative history,” id., at 820 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted), the court found a line in a Senate Committee Report indicating that “ ‘the mandatory sentence under the revised subsection 924(c) [should] be served prior to the start of the sentence for the underlying or any other offense,’” ibid. (quoting S. Rep. No. 98-225, pp. 313-314 (1983) (hereinafter S. Rep.)) (emphasis deleted). If this statement were applied literally, respondents would have to serve first their state sentences, then their 5-year federal firearms sentences, and finally the sentences for their narcotics convictions — even though the narcotics sentences normally would have run concurrently with the state sentences, since they all arose out of the same criminal activity. 65 F. 3d, at 821. To avoid this irrational result, the court held that “§924(c)’s mandatory five-year sentence may run concurrently with a previously imposed state sentence that a defendant has already begun to serve.” Id., at 819.
We granted certiorari, 518 U. S. 1003, and now vacate and remand.
II
Our analysis begins, as always, with the statutory text. Section 924(c)(1) provides:
“Whoever, during and in relation to any ... drug trafficking crime ... for which he may be prosecuted in a court of the United States, uses or carries a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime ... , be sentenced to imprisonment for five years .... Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the court shall not place on probation or suspend the sentence of any person convicted of a violation of this subsection, nor shall the term of imprisonment imposed under this subsection run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment including that imposed for the ... drug trafficking crime in which the firearm was used or carried.” 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1) (emphasis added).
The question we face is whether the phrase “any other term of imprisonment” “means what it -says, or whether it should be limited to some subset” of prison sentences, Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4 (1980)—namely, only federal sentences. Read naturally, the word “any” has an expansive meaning, that is, “one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 97 (1976). Congress did not add any language limiting the breadth of that word, and so we must read § 924(c) as referring to all “term[s] of imprisonment,” including those imposed by state courts. Cf. United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U. S. 350, 358 (1994) (noting that statute referring to “any law enforcement officer” includes “federal, state, or local” officers); Collector v. Hubbard, 12 Wall. 1, 15 (1871) (stating “it is quite clear” that a statute prohibiting the filing of suit “in any court” “includes the State courts as well as the Federal courts,” because “there is not a word in the [statute] tending to show that the words ‘in any court’ are not used in their ordinary sense”). There is no basis in the text for limiting § 924(c) to federal sentences.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens suggests that the word “any” as used in the first sentence of § 924(c) “unquestionably has the meaning ‘any federal.’” Post, at 14. In that first sentence, however, Congress explicitly limited the scope of'the phrase “any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime” to those “for which [a defendant] may be prosecuted in a court of the United States.” Given that Congress expressly limited the phrase “any crime” to only federal crimes, we find it significant that no similar restriction modifies the phrase “any other term of imprisonment,” which appears only two sentences later and is at issue in this case. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983) (“ ‘Where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion’ ”).
The Court of Appeals also found ambiguity in Congress’ decision, in drafting § 924(c), to prohibit concurrent sentences instead of simply mandating consecutive sentences. 65 F. 3d, at 820. Unlike the lower court, however, we see nothing remarkable (much less ambiguous) about Congress’ choice of words. Because consecutive and concurrent sentences are exact opposites, Congress implicitly required one when it prohibited the other. This “ambiguity” is, in any event, beside the point because this phraseology has no bearing on whether Congress meant § 924(c) sentences to run consecutively only to other federal terms of imprisonment.
Given the straightforward statutory command, there is no reason to resort to legislative history. Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 254 (1992). Indeed, far from clarifying the statute, the legislative history only muddies the waters. The excerpt from the Senate Report accompanying the 1984 amendment to § 924(c), relied upon by the Court of Appeals, reads:
“[T]he Committee intends that the mandatory sentence under the revised subsection 924(c) be served prior to the start of the sentence for the underlying or any other offense.” S. Rep., at 313-314.
This snippet of legislative history injects into § 924(c) an entirely new idea — that a defendant must serve the 5-year prison term for his firearms conviction before any other sentences. This added requirement, however, is “in no way anchored in the text of the statute.” Shannon v. United States, 512 U. S. 573, 583 (1994).
The Court of Appeals was troubled that this rule might lead to irrational results. Normally, a district court has authority to decide whether federal prison terms should run concurrently with or consecutively to other prison sentences. 18 U. S. C. § 3584(a) (vesting power in district court to run most prison terms either concurrently or consecutively); United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual §5G1.3 (Nov. 1995) (USSG) (guiding court’s discretion under § 3584(a)). If the prison terms for respondents’ other federal sentences could not begin until after their § 924(c) terms were completed, however,.the District Court would effectively be stripped of its statutory power to decide whether the sentences for the underlying narcotics offenses should run concurrently with respondents’ state terms of imprisonment. 65 F. 3d, at 822. The court observed that such a rule could lead to dramatically higher sentences, particularly for the respondents in this case. Perez, for example, is already serving a 17-year state prison term for his role in the holdup. Normally, his 7.25-year federal sentence for narcotics possession would run concurrently with that state term under USSG § 5G1.3(b); his 5-year firearm sentence under § 924(c) would follow both, for a total of 22 years in prison. If he must serve his federal narcotics sentence after his 5-year firearms sentence, however, he would face a total of 29.25 years in prison. 65 F. 3d, at 821.
Seeking to avoid this conflict between § 924(c) (as reinterpreted in light of its legislative history) and § 3584(a), the Court of Appeals held that § 924(c) only prohibited running federal terms of imprisonment concurrently. Ibid. It also reasoned that such a narrow reading was necessary because “there is no way in which a later-sentencing federal court can cause the mandatory 5-year § 924(c) sentence to be served before a state sentence that is already being served.” Ibid.
We see three flaws in this reasoning. First, the statutory texts of §§ 924(c) and 3584(a), unvarnished by legislative history, are entirely consistent. Section 924(c) specifies only that a court must not run a firearms sentence concurrently with other prison terms. It leaves plenty of room for a court to run other sentences—whether for state or federal offenses—concurrently with one another pursuant to § 3584(a) and USSG §5G1.3. The statutes clash only if we engraft onto § 924(c) a requirement found only in a single sentence buried in the legislative history: that the firearms sentence must run first. We therefore follow the text, rather than the legislative history, of § 924(c). By disregarding the suggestion that a district court must specify that a sentence for a firearms conviction be served before other sentences, we give full meaning to the texts of both §§ 924(c) and 3584(a). See United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95-96 (1820) (Marshall, C. J.) (“Where there is no ambiguity in the words, there is no room for construction. The case must be a strong one indeed, which would justify a court in departing from the plain meaning of words ... in search of an intention which the words themselves did not suggest”).
Second, even if we ignored the plain language of § 924(c) and required courts to list the order in which a defendant must serve the sentences for different convictions, we would thereby create a rule that is superfluous in light of § 3584(c). That statute instructs the Bureau of Prisons to treat multiple terms of imprisonment, whether imposed concurrently or consecutively, “for administrative purposes as a single, aggregate term of imprisonment.” Ibid. As a practical matter, then, it makes no difference whether a court specifies the sequence in which each portion of an aggregate sentence must be served. We will not impose on sentencing courts new duties that, in view of other statutory commands, will be effectively meaningless.
Third, the Court of Appeals’ solution — to allow § 924(c) prison terms to run concurrently with state sentences — does not eliminate any anomaly that arises when a firearms sentence must run “first.” Although it is clear that a prison term under § 924(c) cannot possibly run before an earlier imposed state prison term, the same holds true when a prisoner is already serving a federal sentence. See § 3585(a) (providing that a federal prison term commences when the defendant is received into custody or voluntarily arrives to begin serving the sentence). Because it is impossible to start a § 924(c) sentence before any prison term that the prisoner is already serving, whether imposed by a state or federal court, limiting the phrase “any other term of imprisonment” to state sentences does not get rid of the problem. Thus, we think that the Court of Appeals both invented the problem and devised the wrong solution.
Justice Breyer questions, in dissent, whether Congress wanted to impose a § 924(c) sentence on a defendant who is already serving a prison term pursuant to a virtually identical state sentencing enhancement statute. Post, at 15. A federal court could not (for double jeopardy reasons) sentence a person to two consecutive federal prison terms for a single violation of a federal criminal statute, such as § 924(c). If Congress cannot impose two consecutive federal § 924(c) sentences, the dissent argues, it is unlikely that Congress would have wanted to stack a § 924(c) sentence onto a prison term under a virtually identical state firearms enhancement. Ibid.
As we have already observed, however, the straightforward language of § 924(c) leaves no room to speculate about congressional intent. See supra, at 4-5. The statute speaks of “any term of imprisonment” without limitation, and there is no intimation that Congress meant § 924(c) sentences to run consecutively only to certain types of prison terms. District courts have some discretion under the Sentencing Guidelines, of course, in cases where related offenses are prosecuted in multiple proceedings, to establish sentences “with an eye toward having such punishments approximate the total penalty that would have been imposed had the sentences for the different offenses been imposed at the same time . . . .” Witte v. United States, 515 U. S. 389, 404 (1995) (discussing USSG §5G1.3). See post, at 14-15 (Breyer, J., dissenting). When Congress enacted § 924(c)’s consecutive-sentencing provision, however, it cabined the sentencing discretion of district courts in a single circumstance: When a defendant violates § 924(c), his sentencing enhancement under that statute must run consecutively to all other prison terms. Given this clear legislative directive, it is not for the courts to carve out statutory exceptions based on judicial perceptions of good sentencing policy.
Other language in § 924(c) reinforces our conclusion. In 1984, Congress amended § 924(c) so that its sentencing enhancement would apply regardless of whether the underlying felony statute “provides for an enhanced punishment if committed by the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or device.” Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub. L. 98-473, § 1005(a), 98 Stat. 2138-2139. Congress thus repudiated the result we reached in Busic v. United States, 446 U. S. 398 (1980), in which we held that “prosecution and enhanced sentencing under § 924(c) is simply not permissible where the predicate felony statute contains its own enhancement provision,” irrespective of whether the Government had actually sought an enhancement under that predicate statute. Id., at 404; see also Simpson v. United States, 435 U. S. 6, 15 (1978) (holding that a federal court may not impose sentences under both § 924(c) and the weapon enhancement under the armed bank robbery statute, 18 U. S. C. § 2113, based on a single criminal transaction). Our holdings in these cases were based on our conclusion that the unamended text of § 924(c) left us with little “more than a guess” as to how Congress meant to mesh that statute with the sentencing enhancement provisions scattered throughout the federal criminal code. Simpson, supra, at 15; Busic, supra, at 405. The 1984 amendment, however, eliminated these ambiguities. At that point, Congress made clear its desire to run § 924(c) enhancements consecutively to all other prison terms, regardless of whether they were imposed under firearms enhancement statutes similar to § 924(c). We therefore cannot agree with Justice Breyer’s contention that our interpretation of § 924(c) distinguishes between “those subject to undischarged state, and those subject to undischarged federal, sentences.” Post, at 16. Both sorts of defendants face sentences for their other convictions that run concurrently with or consecutively to each other according to normal sentencing principles, plus an enhancement under § 924(c). In short, in light of the 1984 amendment, we think that Congress has foreclosed the dissent’s argument that § 924(c) covers only federal sentences.
Finally, we pause to comment on Justice Stevens’ concern over how today’s decision might affect other cases where “the state trial follows the federal trial and the state judge imposes a concurrent sentence” that might be viewed as inconsistent with § 924(c). Post, at 12. That, of course, was not the sequence in which the respondents were sentenced in this case, and so we have no occasion to decide whether a later sentencing state court is bound to order its sentence to run consecutively to the § 924(c) term of imprisonment. See ibid. All that is before us today is the authority of a later sentencing federal court to impose a consecutive sentence under § 924(c). We are hesitant to reach beyond the facts of this case to decide a question that is not squarely presented for our review.
Ill
In sum, we hold that the plain language of 18 U. S. C. § 924(c) forbids a federal district court to direct that a term of imprisonment under that statute run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment, whether state or federal. The statute does not, however, limit the court’s authority to order that other federal sentences run concurrently with or consecutively to other prison terms — state or federal— under §3584.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Whittaker
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Upon his plea of guilty to a charge of kidnaping in the District Court of Tulsa County, Oklahoma, petitioner was sentenced to death. On appeal, the Criminal Court of Appeals of Oklahoma affirmed, 321 P. 2d 990, and cer-tiorari was sought on the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We granted the writ to determine that question. 357 U. S. 925.
The undisputed facts are that on June 17, 1956, within a few hours after robbing a filling station attendant in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and eluding police in an ensuing chase, petitioner forced his way into an automobile being driven by one Tommy Cooke, a young divinity student, as it stopped for a traffic light in that city, and, at gunpoint, forced Cooke to drive beyond the City and County of Tulsa and for a considerable distance through northeastern Oklahoma to a point on a dead-end road in Muskogee County where he shot and killed him, and then escaped in the car. On June 19, 1956, petitioner was apprehended, and soon afterward he was charged in the District Court of Muskogee County with murdering Cooke in that county. On arraignment, he entered a plea of not guilty, but during the course of his trial petitioner, on November 19, 1956, withdrew that plea and entered a plea of guilty as charged. He was thereupon convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
Thereafter, on December 17, 1956, petitioner was charged in the District Court of Tulsa County with kid-naping Cooke in that county on June 17, 1956, in violation of Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, § 745. At his arraignment on December 19, 1956, petitioner entered a plea of not guilty, but on January 30, 1957, a few days before the scheduled date of trial, he withdrew that plea and entered a plea of guilty as charged. After interrogating petitioner to make sure that he had entered the plea of guilty voluntarily and that he understood that he might be sentenced to death upon it, the court accepted the plea and adjudged petitioner guilty of the crime of kidnaping Cooke as charged. Thereupon the court asked counsel for petitioner if he wished to be heard regarding the sentence to be imposed, and counsel replied that he preferred to reserve his statement until after the State’s Attorney had spoken. The State’s Attorney then made a statement — reading much of it from a prepared statement— recounting the armed robbery of the filling station attendant and the following chase by and elusion of the Tulsa police; reciting the gruesome details of the kidnaping of Cooke in Tulsa County and of his murder in Muskogee County; stating petitioner’s past criminal record as shown by the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and concluding with a request for a death sentence. Counsel for petitioner objected to any reference to the murder on the ground that sentence for that crime had already been imposed by the District Court of Muskogee County and that it could not again lawfully be considered in imposing sentence on the kidnaping charge. The court, expressing the view that it was “proper to advise the Court of all the facts [occurring while petitioner] had the victim in his charge and under his control,” overruled the objection. After the State’s Attorney had concluded, counsel for petitioner put in evidence a transcript of the sentencing proceedings had in the .District Court of Muskogee County in the murder case, and made an extended plea for a sentence to life imprisonment rather than a sentence to death.
After thus fully hearing the parties, the court deferred the imposition of sentence for two days. Upon reconvening, the court called petitioner to the bar and asked him whether he wished to make any correction in the statement that had been made to the court by the State’s Attorney. Petitioner answered that he did not, and that the matters related in that statement were true. Thereupon, the court sentenced petitioner to death, and in the course of his pronouncement the judge said, among other things, that he had considered the facts “which [had] been stated [by counsel] and which [petitioner had] admitted were [involved in] this crime [of kidnaping], committed in Tulsa County, which resulted in the murder of the victim, [all of] which the Court takes into consideration ... as a continuing thing.”
As stated, petitioner’s broad claim is that these proceedings show that the death sentence was determined and imposed in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of that position he makes, and variously repeats, a number of arguments which upon analysis come down to three contentions: first, that the trial court violated the presentence procedure prescribed by Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 22, §§ 973, 974 and'975, in permitting the State’s Attorney to make an unsworn statement to the court of the details of the crime and of petitioner’s criminal record, and that this also denied to him the rights of confrontation and cross-examination ; second, that the court in taking the murder into consideration in imposing sentence on the kidnaping charge punished him a second time for the same offense; and, third, that in any event the sentence to death for kidnaping was “disproportionate” to.that crime and to the life sentence that had earlier been imposed upon him for the “ultimate” crime of murder.
Petitioner’s contentions that the trial court deprived him of his legal rights and of fundamental fairness in failing to pursue the formal presentence procedures prescribed by Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 22, §§ 973, 974 and 975, and in permitting the State’s Attorney to make an unsworn statement to the court of the details of the crime and of petitioner’s criminal record were also made by petitioner in the Criminal Court of Appeals of Oklahoma. That court rejected those contentions. Sections 973-975 provide in substance that after a plea or verdict of guilty in a case where the extent of the punishment is left with the court, the court, upon the suggestion of either party that there are circumstances which may be properly taken into view, either in aggravation or mitigation of the punishment, may, in its discretion, hold a formal hearing and take evidence thereon. The Oklahoma court held that whether those procedures shall be used is discretionary with the trial court, and that, at all events, petitioner waived their use by failing to request a hearing under those statutes. In construing those statutes it said: “But, two things are clear under the provisions of § 973. First, pursuing this method of procedure is a matter of the trial court’s sound discretion. Second, its use is further contingent upon the request of either the state or the defendant.” It further said: “It is contended that under the provisions of § 975 it is the mandatory duty of the court to hear witnesses. But, in construing §§ 974 and 975 in light of the provisions of § 973, we are of the opinion that both the provisions of § 974 and § 975 are contingent upon the request for evidence under the provisions of § 973, [and that] [w]hen the parties fail to make a request for the privilege thereof, the same is waived and some other method of supplying the court with the necessary information for the pronouncement of judgment and sentence may be substituted instead.” This construction of the State’s statutes by its court of last resort must be accepted here.
It is not contended that petitioner requested or suggested that the trial court hear evidence in mitigation of the sentence. Nor did petitioner request or suggest that the court require the State to offer evidence in .support of the aggravating' circumstances. In these circumstances, we cannot say that petitioner was deprived of any right or of fundamental fairness by the fact that the trial court did not pursue the presentencing procedures prescribed by the Oklahoma statutes.
Nor did the State’s Attorney’s statement of the details of the crime and of petitioner’s criminal record deprive petitioner of fundamental fairness or of any right of confrontation or cross-examination. As we have seen, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma held in this case that when petitioner failed to request the privilege of adducing evidence in mitigation of the crime, and thereby waived the presentence procedures prescribed by §§ 973-975, the law of Oklahoma authorized “some other method of supplying the court with the necessary information for the pronouncement of judgment and sentence [to] be substituted instead,” and it held that the State's Attorney’s statement was a proper method in these circumstances under the law of Oklahoma. Moreover, after the State’s Attorney had made his statement, petitioner, upon interrogation by the court, stated that the recitals of that statement were true. See Note 5. This alone should be a complete answer to the contention. But we go on to consider this Court’s opinion in Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241. This Court there dealt with very similar contentions and held that, once the guilt of the accused has been properly established, the sentencing judge, in determining the kind and extent of punishment to be imposed, is not restricted to evidence derived from the examination and cross-examination of witnesses in open court but may, consistently with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, consider responsible unsworn or “out-of-court” information relative to the circumstances of the crime and to the convicted person’s life and characteristics.
These considerations make it cleat that the State’s Attorney’s statement of the details of the crime and of petitioner’s criminal record — all admitted by petitioner to be true — did not deprive petitioner of fundamental fairness or of any right of confrontation or cross-examination.
We come now to petitioner’s contention that the court in taking the murder into consideration in imposing sentence on the kidnaping charge punished him a second time for the same offense. But murder and kidnaping are not the same offense in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma statutes separately create and define the crimes of murder and of kidnaping, and it is evident from their terms that, as held by the Oklahoma court in this case, they create “separate and distinct offenses.” It is not contended that the charge of murder to which petitioner pleaded guilty and was sentenced in Muskogee County made any reference to the crime of kidnaping, and the charge involved in this case made no reference to the murder but was substantially in the language of the kidnaping statute. See Note 2. Petitioner did not object to the charge in the trial court on double jeopardy or double punishment grounds as the Oklahoma courts have held to be necessary to preserve such a point, but instead he entered a plea of guilty to the charge. Upon that plea it became the duty of the trial judge to impose an appropriate sentence. The statute made appropriate, and required the imposition of, a sentence within the range of imprisonment for a term of 10 years to the maximum of death (see Note 2), as determined by the sentencing judge in the exercise of his sound discretion. Necessarily, the exercise of a sound discretion in such a case required consideration of all the circumstances of the crime, for “[t]he belief no longer prevails that every offense in a like legal category calls for an identical punishment. . . .” Williams v. New York, supra, at 247. In discharging his duty of imposing a proper sentence, the sentencing judge is authorized, if not required, to consider all of the mitigating and aggravating circumstances involved in the crime. The Oklahoma court has so declared in this case and in Powell v. State, 94 Okla. Crim. 1, 229 P. 2d 230. This Court, too, has so held. Williams v. New York, supra. Certainly one of the aggravating circumstances involved in this kidnaping crime was the fact that petitioner shot and killed the victim in the course of its commission. We cannot say that the sentencing judge was not entitled to consider that circumstance, along with all the other circumstances involved, in determining the proper sentence to be imposed for the kidnaping crime. And in view of the obvious fact that, under the law of Oklahoma, kidnaping is a separate crime, entirely distinct from the crime of murder, the court’s consideration of the murder as a circumstance involved in the kidnaping crime cannot be said to have resulted in punishing petitioner a second time for the same offense, nor to have denied to him due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Petitioner’s further claim that the sentence to death for kidnaping was “disproportionate” to that crime and to the life sentence that had earlier been imposed upon him for the “ultimate” crime of murder proceeds on the basis that the sentence for kidnaping was excessive, that the murder was the greater offense, and that the sentence for the lesser crime of kidnaping ought not, in conscience and with due regard for fundamental fairness, exceed the life sentence that was imposed in another jurisdiction for the murder. But the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not, nor does anything in the Constitution, require a State to fix or impose any particular penalty for any crime it may define or to impose the same or “proportionate” sentences for separate and independent crimes. Therefore we cannot say that the sentence to death for the kidnaping, which was within the range of punishments authorized for that crime by the law of the State, denied to petitioner due process of law or any other constitutional right. Nor, in view of the fact that kidnaping and murder are separate and independent offenses in Oklahoma, is there any merit in petitioner’s collateral claim that what he calls “the lesser crime” of kidnaping “merged” in what he calls “the greater crime” of murder and that the sentence to life imprisonment for the murder was a bar to the imposition of any sentence for the kidnaping, or at least to any greater sentence than was imposed for the murder, and that imposition of a death sentence for the kidnaping deprived him of due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We have now treated with all of petitioner’s claims, and failing to find any deprivation'by the Oklahoma courts of any of his fundamental rights, we must hold that petitioner was not denied due process of law.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Douglas, being of the view that petitioner was in substance tried for murder twice in violation of the guarantee against double jeopardy, dissents.
Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, §707, provides, in pertinent part: “Every person convicted of murder shall suffer death, or imprisonment at hard labor in the State penitentiary for life, at the discretion of the jury, [but] upon a plea of guilty the Court shall determine the [punishment].”
Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, § 745, provides, in pertinent part, that “Every person who, without lawful authority, forcibly seizes and confines another, or inveigles or kidnaps another, for the purpose of extorting any money, property or thing of value or advantage from the person so seized ... , or in any manner threatens [the person so seized] shall be guilty of a felony, and upon conviction shall suffer death or imprisonment in the penitentiary, not less than ten years.”
The court's interrogation and petitioner’s answers were as follows:
“The Court: [T]he Court is advised by the assistant County Attorney and also by your counsel, that at this time you wish to withdraw your plea of not guilty, which has heretofore been entered in this case, wherein you are charged with the crime of kidnapping, and enter a plea of guilty to this charge—
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The CouRt: • — is that correct?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court: Now, you understand the nature of this charge, do you?
“Mr. Williams: That’s right.
“The Court: You understand, that it is a charge that is punishable with the extreme penalty of life imprisonment, or death in the electric chair ?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court: In the light of that knowledge and information and understanding, are you entering this plea freely and voluntarily upon your part?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court: Has there been any representation made to you by counsel, or by anyone else, as to the sentence which you might expect from the Court in this case?
“Mr. Williams: I was told I could expect the maximum.
“The Court: Of death in the electric chair?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court: In the light of that representation made to you by your counsel, you wish to withdraw your plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty to the charge?
“Mr Williams: Yes, sir.”
As recited by the State’s Attorney, the FBI files disclosed the commission of five crimes by petitioner, consisting of grand theft in 1944, at the age of 14, resulting in his release to a juvenile bureau; a Dyer Act violation in 1945, resulting in a three-year sentence to the federal juvenile correctional institution at Inglewood, Colorado; escape from Inglewood and a Dyer Act violation in 1947, resulting in a sentence for a term of 18 months; and armed robbery in 1949, resulting in a sentence for a term of 12 years in the Indiana State Penitentiary.
The court’s questions and petitioner’s answers were as follows:
“The Court: Now, at that time on Wednesday, there was a statement of facts made by the State, relative to this case, and the sequence of events and the facts surrounding the sequence of events and the facts surrounding the commission of this crime. Do you have any correction to make in reference to the statement of counsel for the State, in that regard?
“Mr. Williams: No, sir.
“The Court: Those facts were true?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court: And you at this time admit that they were true and that you committed the acts as set forth by the State, that is correct, is it?
“Mr. Williams: Yes, sir.
“The Court [addressing counsel for petitioner]: All right. Do you have anything further to say on behalf of this defendant?
“[Counsel for Petitioner]: Nothing further.”
Sections 973, 974 and 975, Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 22, provide:
§ 973. “After a plea or verdict of guilty in a case where the extent of the punishment is left with the court, the court, upon the suggestion of either party that there are circumstances which may be properly taken into view, either in aggravation or mitigation of the punishment, may in its discretion hear the same summarily at a specified time and upon such notice to the adverse party as it may direct.”
§ 974. “The circumstances must be presented by the testimony of witnesses examined in open court. . . ."
§ 975. “No affidavit or testimony, or representation of any kind, verbal or written, can be offered to or received by the court or member thereof in aggravation or mitigation of the punishment, except as provided in the last two sections.”
Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, §701, provides:
“Homicide is murder in the following cases.
“1. When perpetrated without authority of law, and with a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, or of any other human being.
“2. When perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.
“3. When perpetrated without any design to effect death by a person engaged in the commission of any felony.”
See Note 2.
Collins v. State, 70 Okla. Crim. 340, 106 P. 2d 273; Mowels v. State, 52 Okla. Crim. 193, 11 P. 2d 205; Ex parte Zeligson, 47 Okla. Crim. 45, 287 P. 731; Fines v. State, 32 Okla. Crim. 304, 240 P. 1079; White v. State, 23 Okla. Crim. 198, 214 P. 202.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1964 this Court held that a criminal defendant who challenges the voluntariness of a confession made to officials and sought to be used against him at his trial has a due process right to a reliable determination that the confession was in fact voluntarily given and not the outcome of coercion which the Constitution forbids. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368. While our decision made plain that only voluntary confessions may be admitted at the trial of guilt or innocence, we did not then announce, or even suggest, that the factfinder at a coercion hearing need judge voluntariness with reference to an especially severe standard of proof. Nevertheless, since Jackson, state and federal courts have addressed themselves to the issue with a considerable variety of opinions. We granted certiorari in this case to resolve the question. 401 U. S. 992 (1971).
Petitioner Lego was convicted of armed robbery in 1961 after a jury trial in Superior Court, Cook County, Illinois. The court sentenced him to prison for 25 to 50 years. The evidence introduced against Lego at trial included a confession he had made to police after arrest and while in custody at the station house. Prior to trial Lego sought to have the confession suppressed. He did not deny making it but did challenge that he had done so voluntarily. The trial judge conducted a hearing, out of the presence of the jury, at which Lego testified that police had beaten him about the head and neck with a gun butt. His explanation of this treatment was that the local police chief, a neighbor and former classmate of the robbery victim, had sought revenge upon him. Lego introduced into evidence a photograph that had been taken of him at the county jail on the day after his arrest. The photograph showed that petitioner’s face had been swollen and had traces of blood on it. Lego admitted that his face had been scratched in a scuffle with the robbery victim but maintained that the encounter did not explain the condition shown in the photograph. The police chief and four officers also testified. They denied either beating or threatening petitioner and disclaimed knowledge that any other officer had done so. The trial judge resolved this credibility problem in favor of the police and ruled the confession admissible. At trial, Lego testified in his own behalf. Although he did not dispute the truth of the confession directly, he did tell his version of the events that had transpired at the police station. The trial judge instructed the jury as to the prosecution’s burden of proving guilt. He did not instruct that the jury was required to find the confession voluntary before it could be used in judging guilt or innocence. On direct appeal the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the conviction. People v. Lego, 32 Ill. 2d 76, 203 N. E. 2d 875 (1965).
Four years later petitioner challenged his conviction by seeking a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He maintained that the trial judge should have found the confession voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt before admitting it into evidence. Although the judge had made no mention of the standard he used, Illinois law provided that a confession challenged as involuntary could be admitted into evidence if, at a hearing outside the presence of the jury, the judge found it voluntary by a preponderance of the evidence. In the alternative petitioner argued that the voluntariness question should also have been submitted to the jury for its separate consideration. After first denying the writ for failure to exhaust state remedies, the District Court granted a rehearing motion, concluded that Lego had no state remedy then available to him and denied relief on the merits. United States ex rel. Lego v. Pate, 308 F. Supp. 38 (1970). The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
I
Petitioner challenges the judgment of the Court of Appeals on three grounds. The first is that he was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt as required by In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), because the confession used against him at his trial had been proved voluntary only by a preponderance of the evidence. Implicit in the claim is an assumption that a voluntariness hearing is designed to enhance the reliability of jury verdicts. To judge whether that is so we must return to Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368 (1964).
In New York prior to Jackson, juries most often determined the voluntariness of confessions and hence whether confessions could be used in deciding guilt or innocence. Trial judges were required to make an initial determination and could exclude a confession, but only if it could not under any circumstances be deemed voluntary. When voluntariness was fairly debatable, either because a dispute of fact existed or because reasonable men could have drawn differing inferences from undisputed facts, the question whether the confession violated due process was for the jury. This meant the confession was introduced at the trial itself. If evidence challenging its voluntariness were adduced, the jury was instructed first to pass upon voluntariness and, if it found the confession involuntary, ignore it in determining guilt. If, on the other hand, the confession were found to be voluntary, the jury was then free to consider its truth or falsity and give the confession an appropriate weight in judging guilt or innocence.
We concluded that the New York procedure was constitutionally defective because at no point along the way did a criminal defendant receive a clear-cut determination that the confession used against him was in fact voluntary. The trial judge was not entitled to exclude a confession merely because he himself would have found it involuntary, and, while we recpgnized that the jury was empowered to perform that function, we doubted it could do so reliably. Precisely because confessions of guilt, whether coerced or freely given, may be truthful and potent evidence, we did not believe a jury could be called upon to ignore the probative value of a truthful but coerced confession; it was also likely, we thought, that in judging voluntariness itself the jury would be influenced by the reliability of a confession it considered an accurate account of the facts. “It is now axiomatic,” we said,
“that a defendant in a criminal case is deprived of due process of law if his conviction is founded, in whole or in part, upon an involuntary confession, without regard for the truth or falsity of the confession, Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, and even though there is ample evidence aside from the confession to support the conviction. Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401; Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181; Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560. Equally clear is the defendant’s constitutional right at some stage in the proceedings to object to the use of the confession and to have a fair hearing and a reliable determination on the issue of voluntariness, a determination uninfluenced by the truth or falsity of the confession. Rogers v. Richmond, supra.”
We did not think it necessary, or even appropriate, in Jackson to announce that prosecutors would be required to meet a particular burden of proof in a Jackson hearing held before the trial judge. Indeed, the then-established duty to determine voluntariness had not been framed in terms of a burden of proof, nor has it been since Jackson was decided. We could fairly assume then, as we can now, that a judge would admit into evidence only those confessions that he reliably found, at least by a preponderance of the evidence, had been made voluntarily.
We noted in Jackson that there may be a relationship between the involuntariness of a confession and its unreliability. But our decision was not based in the slightest on the fear that juries might misjudge the accuracy of confessions and arrive at erroneous determinations of guilt or innocence. That case was not aimed at reducing the possibility of convicting innocent men.
Quite the contrary, we feared that the reliability and truthfulness of even coerced confessions could impermis-sibly influence a jury’s judgment as to voluntariness. The use of coerced confessions, whether true or false, is forbidden because the method used to extract them offends constitutional principles. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 540-541 (1961). The procedure we established in Jackson was designed to safeguard the right of an individual, entirely apart from his guilt or innocence, not to be compelled to condemn himself by his own utterances. Nothing in Jackson questioned the province or capacity of juries to assess the truthfulness of confessions. Nothing in that opinion took from the jury any evidence relating to the accuracy or weight of confessions admitted into evidence. A defendant has been as free since Jackson as he was before to familiarize a jury with circumstances that attend the taking of his confession, including facts bearing upon its weight and voluntariness. In like measure, of course, juries have been at liberty to disregard confessions that are insufficiently corroborated or otherwise deemed unworthy of belief.
Since the purpose that a voluntariness hearing is designed to serve has nothing whatever to do with improving the reliability of jury verdicts, we cannot accept the charge that judging the admissibility of a confession by a preponderance of the evidence undermines the mandate of In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970). Our decision in Winship was not concerned with standards for determining the admissibility of evidence or with the prosecution’s burden of proof at a suppression hearing when evidence is challenged on constitutional grounds. Win-ship went no further than to confirm the fundamental right that protects “the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” Id., at 364. A high standard of proof is necessary, we said, to ensure against unjust convictions by giving substance to the presumption of innocence. Id., at 363. A guilty verdict is not rendered less reliable or less consonant with Winship simply because the admissibility of a confession is determined by a less stringent standard. Petitioner does not maintain that either his confession or its voluntariness is an element of the crime with which he was charged. He does not challenge the constitutionality of the standard by which the jury was instructed to decide his guilt or innocence; nor does he question the sufficiency of the evidence that reached the jury to satisfy the proper standard of proof. Petitioner’s rights under Winship have not been violated.
II
Even conceding that Winship is inapplicable because the purpose of a voluntariness hearing is not to implement the presumption of innocence, petitioner presses for reversal on the alternative ground that evidence offered against a defendant at a criminal trial and challenged on constitutional grounds must be determined admissible beyond a reasonable doubt in order to give adequate protection to those values that exclusionary rules are designed to serve. Jackson v. Denno, supra, an offspring of Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936), requires judicial rulings on voluntariness prior to admitting confessions. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), excludes confessions flowing from custodial interrogations unless adequate warnings were administered and a waiver was obtained. Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), and Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), make impermissible the introduction of evidence obtained in violation of a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. In each instance, and without regard to its probative value, evidence is kept from the trier of guilt or innocence for reasons wholly apart from enhancing the reliability of verdicts. These independent values, it is urged, themselves require a stricter standard of proof in judging admissibility.
The argument is straightforward and has appeal. But we are unconvinced that merely emphasizing the importance of the values served by exclusionary rules is itself sufficient demonstration that the Constitution also requires admissibility to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment has been excluded from federal criminal trials for many years. Weeks v. United States, supra. The same is true of coerced confessions offered in either federal or state trials. Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532 (1897); Brown v. Mississippi, supra. But, from our experience over this period of time no substantial evidence has accumulated that federal rights have suffered from determining admissibility by a preponderance of the evidence.. Petitioner offers nothing to suggest that admissibility rulings have been unreliable or otherwise wanting in quality because not based on some higher standard. Without good cause, we are unwilling to expand currently applicable exclusionary rules by erecting additional barriers to placing truthful and probative evidence before state juries and by revising the standards applicable in collateral proceedings. Sound reason for moving further in this direction has not been offered here nor do we discern any at the present time. This is particularly true since the exclusionary rules are very much aimed at deterring lawless conduct by police and prosecution and it is very doubtful that escalating the prosecution’s burden of proof in Fourth and Fifth Amendment suppression hearings would be sufficiently productive in this respect to outweigh the public interest in placing probative evidence before juries for the purpose of arriving at truthful decisions about guilt or innocence.
To reiterate what we said in Jackson: when a confession challenged as involuntary is sought to be used against a criminal defendant at his trial, he is entitled to a reliable and clear-cut determination that the confession was in fact voluntarily rendered. Thus, the prosecution must prove at least by a preponderance of the evidence that the confession was voluntary. Of course, the States are free, pursuant to their own law, to adopt a higher standard. They may indeed differ as to the appropriate resolution of the values they find at stake.
III
We also reject petitioner’s final contention that, even though the trial judge ruled on his coercion claim, he was entitled to have the jury decide the claim anew. To the extent this argument asserts that the judge’s determination was insufficiently reliable, it is no more persuasive than petitioner’s other contentions. To the extent the position assumes that a jury is better suited than a judge to determine voluntariness, it questions the basic assumptions of Jackson v. Denno; it also ignores that Jackson neither raised any question about the constitutional validity of the so-called orthodox rule for judging the admissibility of confessions nor even suggested that the Constitution requires submission of voluntariness claims to a jury as well as a judge. Finally, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (1968), which made the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury applicable to the States, did not purport to change the normal rule that the admissibility of evidence is a question for the court rather than the jury. Nor did that decision require that both judge and jury pass upon the admissibility of evidence when constitutional grounds are asserted for excluding it. We are not disposed to impose as a constitutional requirement a procedure we have found wanting merely to afford petitioner a second forum for litigating his claim.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
MR. Justice Powell and Mr. Justice Rehnquist took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
State courts that have considered the question since Jackson have adopted a variety of standards, most of them founded upon state law. Many have sanctioned a standard of proof less strict than beyond a reasonable doubt, including proof of voluntariness by a preponderance of the evidence or to the satisfaction of the court or proof of voluntariness in fact. E. g., Duncan v. State, 278 Ala. 145, 176 So. 2d 840 (1965); State v. Dillon, 93 Idaho 698, 471 P. 2d 553 (1970), cert. denied, 401 U. S. 942 (1971); People v. Harper, 36 Ill. 2d 398, 223 N. E. 2d 841 (1967); State v. Milow, 199 Kan. 576, 433 P. 2d 538 (1967); Barnhart v. State, 5 Md. App. 222, 246 A. 2d 280 (1968); Commonwealth v. White, 353 Mass. 409, 232 N. E. 2d 335 (1967); State v. Nolan, 423 S.W.2d 815 (Mo. 1968); State v. White, 146 Mont. 226, 405 P. 2d 761 (1965), cert. denied, 384 U. S. 1023 (1966); State v. Brewton, 238 Or. 590, 395 P. 2d 874 (1964); Commonwealth ex rel. Butler v. Rundle, 429 Pa. 141, 239 A. 2d 426 (1968); Monts v. State, 218 Tenn. 31, 400 S.W.2d 722 (1966); State v. Davis, 73 Wash. 2d 271, 438 P. 2d 185 (1968).
Other States, using state law or not specifying a basis, require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. E. g., State v. Ragsdale, 249 La. 420, 187 So. 2d 427 (1966), cert. denied, 385 U. S. 1029 (1967); State v. Keiser, 274 Minn. 265, 143 N. W. 2d 75 (1966); State v. Yough, 49 N. J. 587, 231 A. 2d 598 (1967); People v. Huntley, 15 N. Y. 2d 72, 204 N. E. 2d 179 (1965); State v. Thundershield, 83 S. D. 414, 160 N. W. 2d 408 (1968); State ex rel. Goodchild v. Burke, 27 Wis. 2d 244, 133 N. W. 2d 753 (1965), cert. denied, 384 U. S. 1017 (1966).
Two federal courts have held as an exercise of supervisory power that voluntariness must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Ralph v. Warden, 438 F. 2d 786, 793 (CA4 1970), clarifying United States v. Inman, 352 F. 2d 954 (CA4 1965); Pea v. United States, 130 U. S. App. D. C. 66, 397 F. 2d 627 (1967); cf. United States v. Schipani, 289 F. Supp. 43 (EDNY 1968), aff’d, 414 F. 2d 1262 (CA2 1969), cert. denied, 397 U. S. 922 (1970), requiring the Government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that certain evidence was not tainted by violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In ruling the confession admissible, the judge stated:
“The petitioner has admitted under oath he had a struggle with the complaining witness over the gun; he was wounded, obtained a facial wound. The Officers testified he was bloody at the time he was arrested.
“I don’t believe the defendant’s testimony at all that he was beaten up by the Police. The condition he is in is well explained by the defendant himself.”
Illinois followed what we described in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368 (1964), as “the orthodox rule, under which the judge himself solely and finally determines the voluntariness of the confession . . . .” Id., at 378. While the procedures of all the States could not be neatly classified, we noted that some followed the Massachusetts procedure whereby the judge himself first resolves evidentiary conflicts and determines whether a confession is in fact voluntary. If he is unable so to conclude, the confession may not be admitted into evidence. If judged voluntary and therefore admissible, the jury must also determine the coercion issue and is instructed to ignore a confession it finds involuntary. Id., at 378 n. 8. Other States had adopted the New York procedure at issue in Jackson. Our decision in Jackson cast no doubt upon the orthodox and Massachusetts procedures but did call into question the practice of every State that did not clearly follow one of these procedures. A thorough tabulation of what States did in the wake of Jackson appears in 3 J. Wigmore, Evidence 585-593 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1970).
People v. Wagoner, 8 Ill. 2d 188, 133 N. E. 2d 24 (1956); People v. Thomlison, 400 Ill. 555, 81 N. E. 2d 434 (1948).
Respondent makes no contention here that petitioner either waived the right to adjudicate his federal claims or deliberately bypassed state procedures for testing those claims. Cf. Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 439 (1963).
The Seventh Circuit’s affirmance is unreported. United States ex rel. Lego v. Pate, No. 18313 (CA7 Oct. 8, 1970).
A more thorough description of the New York procedure is found in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 377-391.
Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 376-377.
“Judge” is used here and throughout the opinion to mean a factfinder, whether trial judge or jury, at a voluntariness hearing. The proscription against permitting the jury that passes upon guilt or innocence to judge voluntariness in the same proceeding does not preclude the States from impaneling a separate jury to determine voluntariness. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 391 n. 19.
See, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503 (1963); Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315 (1959); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560 (1958).
See, e. g., Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731 (1969); Boulden v. Holman, 394 U. S. 478 (1969); Harrison v. United States, 392 U. S. 219 (1968); Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U. S. 519 (1968); Clewis v. Texas, 386 U. S. 707 (1967); Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U. S. 737 (1966); cf. Procunier v. Atchley, 400 U. S. 446 (1971).
We noted that coerced confessions are forbidden in part because of their “probable unreliability.” Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 385-386. However, it had been settled when this Court decided Jackson that the exclusion of unreliable confessions is not the purpose that a voluntariness hearing is designed to serve. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534 (1961). The sole issue in such a hearing is whether a confession was coerced. Whether it be true or false is irrelevant; indeed, such an inquiry is forbidden. The judge may not take into consideration evidence that would indicate that the confession, though compelled, is reliable, even highly so. Id., at 545. As difficult as such tasks may be to accomplish, the judge is also duty-bound to ignore implications of reliability in facts relevant to coercion and to shut from his mind any internal evidence of authenticity that a confession itself may bear.
In Jackson, 378 U. S., at 377-391, we traced the genesis of the view that due process forbids the use of coerced confessions, whether or not reliable. The Court had departed from that view in Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156 (1953), whose premise was that a confession is excludable because of its inherent untrustworthiness. The Stein premise was repudiated in Rogers v. Richmond and Rogers was reaffirmed in Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U. S., at 739, and Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 729 n. 9 (1966). That case continues to serve as the basis for evaluating coercion claims. See cases cited in n. 11, supra.
This is the course that petitioner pursued. Cf. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S., at 386 n. 13. Although 18 U. S. C. §3501 (a) is inapplicable here, it is relevant to note the provisions of that section:
“(a) In any criminal prosecution brought by the United States or by the District of Columbia, a confession, as defined in subsection (e) hereof, shall be admissible in evidence if it is voluntarily given. Before such confession is received in evidence, the trial judge shall, out of the presence of the jury, determine any issue as to voluntariness. If the trial judge determines that the confession was voluntarily made it shall be admitted in evidence and the trial judge shall permit the jury to hear relevant evidence on the issue of voluntariness and shall instruct the jury to give such weight to the confession as the jury feels it deserves under all the circumstances.”
Nothing is to be gained from restating the constitutional rule as requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of constitutionally obtained evidence and then arguing that rights under Winship are diluted unless admissibility is governed by a high standard. Transparently, this assumes the question at issue, which is whether a confession is admissible if found voluntary by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Schipani, supra, n. 1, followed this unsatisfactory course in a Fourth Amendment case but stopped short of basing the decision on the Constitution.
It is no more persuasive to impose the stricter standard of proof as an exercise of supervisory power than as a constitutional rule. Cf. Ralph v. Warden, supra, n. 1, clarifying United States v. Inman, supra, n. 1; Pea v. United States, supra, n. 1.
See cases cited in n. 1, supra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, Western Air Lines, Inc., requires that its flight engineers retire at age 60. Although the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 29 U. S. C. §§621-634, generally prohibits mandatory retirement before age 70, the Act provides an exception “where age is a bona fide occupational qualification [BFOQ] reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business.” A jury concluded that Western’s mandatory retirement rule did not qualify as a BFOQ even though it purportedly was adopted for safety reasons. The question here is whether the jury was properly instructed on the elements of the BFOQ defense.
I
In its commercial airline operations, Western operates a variety of aircraft, including the Boeing 727 and the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. These aircraft require three crew members in the cockpit: a captain, a first officer, and a flight engineer. “The ‘captain’ is the pilot and controls the aircraft. He is responsible for all phases of its operation. The ‘first officer’ is the copilot and assists the captain. The ‘flight engineer’ usually monitors a side-facing instrument panel. He does not operate the flight controls unless the captain and the first officer become incapacitated.” Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S. 111, 114 (1985).
A regulation of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prohibits any person from serving as a pilot or first officer on a commercial flight “if that person has reached his 60th birthday.” 14 CFR § 121.383(c) (1985). The FAA has justified the retention of mandatory retirement for pilots on the theory that “incapacitating medical events” and “adverse psychological, emotional, and physicial changes” occur as a consequence of aging. “The inability to detect or predict with precision an individual’s risk of sudden or subtle incapacitation, in the face of known age-related risks, counsels against relaxation of the rule.” 49 Fed. Reg. 14695 (1984). See also 24 Fed. Reg. 9776 (1959).
At the same time, the FAA has refused to establish a mandatory retirement age for flight engineers. “While a flight engineer has important duties which contribute to the safe operation of the airplane, he or she may not assume the responsibilities of the pilot in command.” 49 Fed. Reg., at 14694. Moreover, available statistics establish that flight engineers have rarely been a contributing cause or factor in commercial aircraft “accidents” or “incidents.” Ibid.
In 1978, respondents Criswell and Starley were captains operating DC-10s for Western. Both men celebrated their 60th birthdays in July 1978. Under the collective-bargaining agreement in effect between Western and the union, cockpit crew members could obtain open positions by bidding in order of seniority. In order to avoid mandatory retirement under the FAA’s under-age-60 rule for pilots, Criswell and Starley applied for reassignment as flight engineers. Western denied both requests, ostensibly on the ground that both employees were members of the company’s retirement plan which required all crew members to retire at age 60. For the same reason, respondent Ron, a career flight engineer, was also retired in 1978 after his 60th birthday.
Mandatory retirement provisions similar to those contained in Western’s pension plan had previously been upheld under the ADEA. United Air Lines, Inc. v. McMann, 434 U. S. 192 (1977). As originally enacted in 1967, the Act provided an exception to its general proscription of age discrimination for any actions undertaken “to observe the terms of a... bona fide employee benefit plan such as a retirement, pension, or insurance plan, which is not a subterfuge to evade the purposes of this Act.” In April 1978, however, Congress amended the statute to prohibit employee benefit plans from requiring the involuntary retirement of any employee because of age.
Criswell, Starley, and Ron brought this action against Western contending that the under-age-60 qualification for the position of flight engineer violated the ADEA. In the District Court, Western defended, in part, on the theory that the age-60 rule is a BFOQ “reasonably necessary” to the safe operation of the airline. All parties submitted evidence concerning the nature of the flight engineer’s tasks, the physiological and psychological traits required to perform them, and the availability of those traits among persons over age 60.
As the District Court summarized, the evidence at trial established that the flight engineer’s “normal duties are less critical to the safety of flight than those of a pilot.” 514 F. Supp. 384, 390 (CD Cal. 1981). The flight engineer, however, does have critical functions in emergency situations and, of course, might cause considerable disruption in the event of his own medical emergency.
The actual capabilities of persons over age 60, and the ability to detect disease or a precipitous decline in their faculties, were the subject of conflicting medical testimony. Western’s expert witness, a former FAA Deputy Federal Air Surgeon, was especially concerned about the possibility of a “cardiovascular event” such as a heart attack. He testified that “with advancing age the likelihood of onset of disease increases and that in persons over age 60 it could not be predicted whether and when such diseases would occur.” Id., at 389.
The plaintiffs’ experts, on the other hand, testified that physiological deterioration is caused by disease, not aging, and that “it was feasible to determine on the basis of individual medical examinations whether flight deck crew members, including those over age 60, were physically qualified to continue to fly.” Ibid. These conclusions were corroborated by the nonmedical evidence:
“The record also reveals that both the FAA and the airlines have been able to deal with the health problems of pilots on an individualized basis. Pilots who have been grounded because of alcoholism or cardiovascular disease have been recertified by the FAA and allowed to resume flying. Pilots who were unable to pass the necessary examination to maintain their FAA first class medical certificates, but who continued to qualify for second class medical certificates were allowed to ‘downgrade’ from pilot to [flight engineer]. There is nothing in the record to indicate that these flight deck crew members are physically better able to perform their duties than flight engineers over age 60 who have not experienced such events or that they are less likely to become incapacitated.” Id., at 390.
Moreover, several large commercial airlines have flight engineers over age 60 “flying the line” without any reduction in their safety record. Ibid.
The jury was instructed that the “BFOQ defense is available only if it is reasonably necessary to the normal operation or essence of defendant’s business.” Tr. 2626. The jury was informed that “the essence of Western’s business is the safe transportation of their passengers.” Ibid. The jury was also instructed:
“One method by which defendant Western may establish a BFOQ in this case is to prove:
“(1) That in 1978, when these plaintiffs were retired, it was highly impractical for Western to deal with each second officer over age 60 on an individualized basis to determine his particular ability to perform his job safely; and
“(2) That some second officers over age 60 possess traits of a physiological, psychological or other nature which preclude safe and efficient job performance that cannot be ascertained by means other than knowing their age.
“In evaluating the practicability to defendant Western of dealing with second officers over age 60 on an individualized basis, with respect to the medical testimony, you should consider the state of the medical art as it existed in July 1978.” Id., at 2627.
The jury rendered a verdict for the plaintiffs, and awarded damages. After trial, the District Court granted equitable relief, explaining in a written opinion why it found no merit in Western’s BFOQ defense to the mandatory retirement rule. 514 F. Supp., at 389-391.
On appeal, Western made various arguments attacking the verdict and judgment below, but the Court of Appeals affirmed in all respects. 709 F. 2d 544 (CA9 1983). In particular, the Court of Appeals rejected Western’s contention that the instruction on the BFOQ defense was insufficiently deferential to the airline’s legitimate concern for the safety of its passengers. Id., at 549-551. We granted certiorari to consider the merits of this question. 469 U. S. 815 (1984).
h-i hH
Throughout the legislative history of the ADEA, one empirical fact is repeatedly emphasized: the process of psychological and physiological degeneration caused by aging varies with each individual. “The basic research in the field of aging has established that there is a wide range of individual physical ability regardless of age.” As a result, many older American workers perform at levels equal or superior to their younger colleagues.
In 1965, the Secretary of Labor reported to Congress that despite these well-established medical facts there “is persistent and widespread use of age limits in hiring that in a great many cases can be attributed only to arbitrary discrimination against older workers on the basis of age and regardless of ability.” Two years later, the President recommended that Congress enact legislation to abolish arbitrary age limits on hiring. Such limits, the President declared, have a devastating effect on the dignity of the individual and result in a staggering loss of human resources vital to the national economy.
After further study, Congress responded with the enactment of the ADEA. The preamble declares that the purpose of the ADEA is “to promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age [and] to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment.” 81 Stat. 602, 29 U. S. C. § 621(b). Section 4(a)(1) makes it “unlawful for an employer... to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age.” 81 Stat. 603, 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1). This proscription presently applies to all persons between the ages of 40 and 70. 29 U. S. C. § 631(a).
The legislative history of the 1978 Amendments to the ADEA makes quite clear that the policies and substantive provisions of the Act apply with especial force in the case of mandatory retirement provisions. The House Committee on Education and Labor reported:
“Increasingly, it is being recognized that mandatory retirement based solely upon age is arbitrary and that chronological age alone is a poor indicator of ability to perform a job. Mandatory retirement does not take into consideration actual differing abilities and capacities. Such forced retirement can cause hardships for older persons through loss of roles and loss of income. Those older persons who wish to be re-employed have a much more difficult time finding a new job than younger persons.
“Society, as a whole, suffers from mandatory retirement as well. As a result of mandatory retirement, skills and experience are lost from the work force resulting in reduced GNP. Such practices also add a burden to Government income maintenance programs such as social security.”
In the 1978 Amendments, Congress narrowed an exception to the ADEA which had previously authorized involuntary retirement under limited circumstances. See supra, at 405.
In both 1967 and 1978, however, Congress recognized that classifications based on age, like classifications based on religion, sex, or national origin, may sometimes serve as a necessary proxy for neutral employment qualifications essential to the employer’s business. The diverse employment situations in various industries, however, forced Congress to adopt a “case-by-case basis... as the underlying rule in the administration of the legislation.” H. R. Rep. No. 805, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 7 (1967), Legislative History 80. Congress offered only general guidance on when an age classification might be permissible by borrowing a concept and statutory language from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and providing that such a classification is lawful “where age is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business.” 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(1).
Shortly after the passage of the Act, the Secretary of Labor, who was at that time charged with its enforcement, adopted regulations declaring that the BFOQ exception to the ADEA has only “limited scope and application” and “must be construed narrowly.” 33 Fed. Reg. 9172 (1968), 29 CFR §860.102(b) (1984). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) adopted the same narrow construction of the BFOQ exception after it was assigned authority for enforcing the statute. 46 Fed. Reg. 47727 (1981), 29 CFR § 1625.6 (1984). The restrictive language of the statute and the consistent interpretation of the administrative agencies charged with enforcing the statute convince us that, like its Title VII counterpart, the BFOQ exception “was in fact meant to be an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition” of age discrimination contained in the ADEA. Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U. S. 321, 334 (1977).
HH 1 — 1 H-1
In Usery v. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc., 531 F. 2d 224 (1976), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was called upon to evaluate the merits of a BFOQ defense to a claim of age discrimination. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc., had a policy of refusing to hire persons over age 40 as intercity bus drivers. At trial, the bus company introduced testimony supporting its theory that the hiring policy was a BFOQ based upon safety considerations — the need to employ persons who have a low risk of accidents. In evaluating this contention, the Court of Appeals drew on its Title VII precedents, and concluded that two inquiries were relevant.
First, the court recognized that some job qualifications may be so peripheral to the central mission of the employer’s business that no age discrimination can be “reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business.” 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(1). The bus company justified the age qualification for hiring its drivers on safety considerations, but the court concluded that this claim was to be evaluated under an objective standard:
“[T]he job qualifications which the employer invokes to justify his discrimination must be reasonably necessary to the essence of his business — here, the safe transportation of bus passengers from one point to another. The greater the safety factor, measured by the likelihood of harm and the probable severity of that harm in case of an accident, the more stringent may be the job qualifications designed to insure safe driving.” 531 F. 2d, at 236.
This inquiry “adjusts to the safety factor” by ensuring that the employer’s restrictive job qualifications are “reasonably necessary” to further the overriding interest in public safety. Ibid. In Tamiami, the court noted that no one had seriously challenged the bus company’s safety justification for hiring drivers with a low risk of having accidents.
Second, the court recognized that the ADEA requires that age qualifications be something more than “convenient” or “reasonable”; they must be “reasonably necessary... to the particular business,” and this is only so when the employer is compelled to rely on age as a proxy for the safety-related job qualifications validated in the first inquiry. This showing could be made in two ways. The employer could establish that it “‘had reasonable cause to believe, that is, a factual basis for believing, that all or substantially all [persons over the age qualifications] would be unable to perform safely and efficiently the duties of the job involved.’” In Tamiami, the employer did not seek to justify its hiring qualification under this standard.
Alternatively, the employer could establish that age was a legitimate proxy for the safety-related job qualifications by proving that it is “ ‘impossible or highly impractical’ ” to deal with the older employees on an individualized basis. “One method by which the employer can carry this burden is to establish that some members of the discriminated-against class possess a trait precluding safe and efficient job performance that cannot be ascertained by means other than knowledge of the applicant’s membership in the class.” Id., at 235. In Tamiami, the medical evidence on this point was conflicting, but the District Court had found that individual examinations could not determine which individuals over the age of 40 would be unable to operate the buses safely. The Court of Appeals found that this finding of fact was not “clearly erroneous,” and affirmed the District Court’s judgment for the bus company on the BFOQ defense. Id., at 238.
Congress, in considering the 1978 Amendments, implicitly endorsed the two-part inquiry identified by the Fifth Circuit in the Tamiami case. The Senate Committee Report expressed concern that the amendment prohibiting mandatory retirement in accordance with pension plans might imply that mandatory retirement could not be a BFOQ:
“For example, in certain types of particularly arduous law enforcement activity, there may be a factual basis for believing that substantially all employees above a specified age would be unable to continue to perform safely and efficiently the duties of their particular jobs, and it may be impossible or impractical to determine through medical examinations, periodic reviews of current job performance and other objective tests the employees’ capacity or ability to continue to perform the jobs safely and efficiently.
“Accordingly, the committee adopted an amendment to make it clear that where these two conditions are satisfied and where such a bona fide occupational qualification has therefore been established, an employer may lawfully require mandatory retirement at that specified age.” S. Rep. No. 95-493, pp. 10-11 (1977), Legislative History 443-444.
The amendment was adopted by the Senate, but deleted by the Conference Committee because it “neither added to nor worked any change upon present law.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-950, p. 7 (1978), Legislative History 518.
Every Court of Appeals that has confronted a BFOQ defense based on safety considerations has analyzed the problem consistently with the Tamiami standard. An EEOC regulation embraces the same criteria. Considering the narrow language of the BFOQ exception, the parallel treatment of such questions under Title VII, and the uniform application of the standard by the federal courts, the EEOC, and Congress, we conclude that this two-part inquiry properly identifies the relevant considerations for resolving a BFOQ defense to an age-based qualification purportedly justified by considerations of safety.
hH
In the trial court, Western preserved an objection to any instruction in the Tamiami mold, claiming that “any instruction pertaining to the statutory phrase ‘reasonably necessary to the normal operation of [defendant’s] business’... is irrelevant to and confusing for the deliberations of the jury.” Western proposed an instruction that would have allowed it to succeed on the BFOQ defense by proving that “in 1978, when these plaintiffs were retired, there existed a rational basis in fact for defendant to believe that use of [flight engineers] over age 60 on its DC-10 airliners would increase the likelihood of risk to its passengers.” The proposed instruction went on to note that the jury might rely on the FAA’s age-60 rule for pilots to establish a BFOQ under this standard “without considering any other evidence.” It also noted that the medical evidence submitted by the parties might provide a “rational basis in fact.”
On appeal, Western defended its proposed instruction, and the Court of Appeals soundly rejected it. 709 F. 2d, at • 549-551. In this Court, Western slightly changes its course. The airline now acknowledges that the Tamiami standard identifies the relevant general inquiries that must be made in evaluating the BFOQ defense. However, Western claims that in several respects the instructions given below were insufficiently protective of public safety. Western urges that we interpret or modify the Tamiami standard to weigh these concerns in the balance.
Reasonably Necessary Job Qualifications
Western relied on two different kinds of job qualifications to justify its mandatory retirement policy. First, it argued that flight engineers should have a low risk of incapacitation or psychological and physiological deterioration. At this vague level of analysis respondents have not seriously disputed — nor could they — that the qualification of good health for a vital crew member is reasonably necessary to the essence of the airline’s operations. Instead, they have argued that age is not a necessary proxy for that qualification.
On a more specific level, Western argues that flight engineers must meet the same stringent qualifications as pilots, and that it was therefore quite logical to extend to flight engineers the FAA’s age-60 retirement rule for pilots. Although the FAA’s rule for pilots, adopted for safety reasons, is relevant evidence in the airline’s BFOQ defense, it is not to be accorded conclusive weight. Johnson v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, ante, at 370-371. The extent to which the rule is probative varies with the weight of the evidence supporting its safety rationale and “the congruity between the... occupations at issue.” Ante, at 371. In this case, the evidence clearly established that the FA A, Western, and other airlines all recognized that the qualifications for a flight engineer were less rigorous than those required for a pilot.
In the absence of persuasive evidence supporting its position, Western nevertheless argues that the jury should have been instructed to defer to “Western’s selection of job qualifications for the position of [flight engineer] that are reasonable in light of the safety risks.” Brief for Petitioner 30. This proposal is plainly at odds with Congress’ decision, in adopting the ADEA, to subject such management decisions to a test of objective justification in a court of law. The BFOQ standard adopted in the statute is one of “reasonable necessity,” not reasonableness.
In adopting that standard, Congress did not ignore the public interest in safety. That interest is adequately reflected in instructions that track the language of the statute. When an employer establishes that a job qualification has been carefully formulated to respond to documented concerns for public safety, it will not be overly burdensome to persuade a trier of fact that the qualification is “reasonably necessary” to safe operation of the business. The uncertainty implicit in the concept of managing safety risks always makes it “reasonably necessary” to err on the side of caution in a close case. The employer cannot be expected to establish the risk of an airline accident “to a certainty, for certainty would require running the risk until a tragic accident would prove that the judgment was sound.” Usery v. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc., 531 F. 2d, at 238. When the employer’s argument has a credible basis in the record, it is difficult to believe that a jury of laypersons — many of whom no doubt have flown or could expect to fly on commercial air carriers— would not defer in a close case to the airline’s judgment. Since the instructions in this case would not have prevented the airline from raising this contention to the jury in closing argument, we are satisfied that the verdict is a consequence of a defect in Western’s proof rather than a defect in the trial court’s instructions.
Western’s Statutory Safety Obligation
The instructions defined the essence of Western’s business as “the safe transportation of their passengers.” Tr. 2626. Western complains that this instruction was defective because it failed to inform the jury that an airline must conduct its operations “with the highest possible degree of safety.”
Jury instructions, of course, “may not be judged in artificial isolation,” but must be judged in the “context of the overall charge” and the circumstances of the case. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141, 147 (1973). In this case, the instructions characterized safe transportation as the “essence” of Western’s business and specifically referred to the importance of “safe and efficient job performance” by flight engineers. Tr. 2627. Moreover, in closing argument counsel pointed out that because “safety is the essence of Western’s business,” the airline strives for “the highest degree possible of safety.” Viewing the record as a whole, we are satisfied that the jury’s attention was adequately focused on the importance of safety to the operation of Western’s business. Cf. United States v. Park, 421 U. S. 658, 674 (1975).
Age as a Proxy for Job Qualifications
Western contended below that the ADEA only requires that the employer establish “a rational basis in fact” for believing that identification of those persons lacking suitable qualifications cannot occur on an individualized basis. This “rational basis in fact” standard would have been tantamount to an instruction to return a verdict in the defendant’s favor. Because that standard conveys a meaning that is significantly different from that conveyed by the statutory phrase “reasonably necessary,” it was correctly rejected by the trial court.
Western argues that a “rational basis” standard should be adopted because medical disputes can never be proved “to a certainty” and because juries should not be permitted “to resolve bona fide conflicts among medical experts respecting the adequacy of individualized testing.” Reply Brief for Petitioner 9, n. 10. The jury, however, need not be convinced beyond all doubt that medical testing is impossible, but only that the proposition is true “on a preponderance of the evidence.” Moreover, Western’s attack on the wisdom of assigning the resolution of complex questions to 12 laypersons is inconsistent with the structure of the ADEA. Congress expressly decided that problems involving age discrimination in employment should be resolved on a “case-by-case basis” by proof to a jury.
The “rational basis” standard is also inconsistent with the preference for individual evaluation expressed in the language and legislative history of the ADEA. Under the Act, employers are to evaluate employees between the ages of 40 and 70 on their merits and not their age. In the BFOQ defense, Congress provided a limited exception to this general principle, but required that employers validate any discrimination as “reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business.” It might well be “rational” to require mandatory retirement at any age less than 70, but that result would not comply with Congress’ direction that employers must justify the rationale for the age chosen. Unless an employer can establish a substantial basis for believing that all or nearly all employees above an age lack the qualifications required for the position, the age selected for mandatory retirement less than 70 must be an age at which it is highly impractical for the employer to insure by individual testing that its employees will have the necessary qualifications for the job.
Western argues that its lenient standard is necessary because “where qualified experts disagree as to whether persons over a certain age can be dealt with on an individual basis, an employer must be allowed to resolve that controversy in a conservative manner.” Reply Brief for Petitioner 8-9. This argument incorrectly assumes that all expert opinion is entitled to equal weight, and virtually ignores the function of the trier of fact in evaluating conflicting testimony. In this case, the jury may well have attached little weight to the testimony of Western’s expert witness. See supra, at 406, and n. 8. A rule that would require the jury to defer to the judgment of any expert witness testifying for the employer, no matter how unpersuasive, would allow some employers to give free reign to the stereotype of older workers that Congress decried in the legislative history of the ADEA.
When an employee covered by the Act is able to point to reputable businesses in the same industry that choose to eschew reliance on mandatory retirement earlier than age 70, when the employer itself relies on individualized testing in similar circumstances, and when the administrative agency with primary responsibility for maintaining airline safety has determined that individualized testing is not impractical for the relevant position, the employer’s attempt to justify its decision on the basis of the contrary opinion of experts— solicited for the purposes of litigation — is hardly convincing on any objective standard short of complete deference. Even in cases involving public safety, the ADEA plainly does not permit the trier of fact to give complete deference to the employer’s decision.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Justice Powell took no part in the decision of this case.
Section 4(f)(1) of the ADEA provides:
“It shall not be unlawful for an employer...
“(1) to take any action otherwise prohibited... where age is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business... 81 Stat. 603, 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(1).
In Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S. 111 (1985), decided earlier this Term, TWA allowed flight engineers to continue working past age 60, and allowed pilots to downbid to flight engineer positions provided that they were able to find an open position prior to their 60th birthdays. See id., at 115-116. Pilots who were displaced for any reason besides the Federal Aviation Administration’s age-60 rule, however, were permitted to “bump” less senior persons occupying flight engineer positions without waiting for vacancies to occur. We held that this transfer policy discriminated among pilots on the basis of age, and violated the ADEA. Since TWA did not impose an under-age-60 qualification for flight engineers, however, it had no occasion to rely on the same BFOQ theory presented here by Western.
While this lawsuit was proceeding to trial, Criswell and Starley also pursued their remedies under the collective-bargaining agreement. The System Wide Board of Adjustment, over a dissent, ultimately ruled that the contract provision that appeared to authorize the pilots’ downbidding was only intended to allow senior pilots operating narrow-body equipment to bid for first officer or flight engineer positions on wide-body aircraft. App. to Pet. for Cert. A84-A90. Since Criswell and Starley were already serving on wide-body aircraft, the provision did not apply to them. The Board also concluded that the provision would not support a transfer “for the obvious purpose of evading the application of [the] agreed retirement plan.” Id., at A89. Western relied on this ground in its motion for summary judgment, but the District Court concluded that material questions of fact remained on the question of whether age was a substantial and determinative factor in the denial of the downbids. Id., at A81.
The Western official who was responsible for the decision to retire the plaintiffs conceded that “the sole basis” for the denial of the applications of Criswell, Starley, and Ron was the same: “the provision in the pension plan regarding retirement at age 60.” Tr. 1163. In addition, he admitted that he had “no personal knowledge” of any safety rationale for the under-age-60 rule for flight engineers, id., at 2059, nor had it played any significant role in his decision to retire them. See id., at 61, 2027-2033, 2056-2057. The airline sent Starley and Ron form letters informing them of its “considered judgment after examining all of the applicable statutory law that since you have been a member of our Pilot retirement plan, that we cannot continue your employment beyond the normal retirement date of age 60.” See App. 89, 91.
§ 4(f)(2), 81 Stat. 603, 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(2).
92 Stat. 189, 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(2).
Western also contended that its denials of the downbids by pilots Starley and Criswell were based on “reasonable factors other than age.” 29 U. S. C. § 623(f)(1); see n. 10, infra.
Although the witness had served with the FAA for seven years ending in 1979, he conceded that throughout his tenure at the FAA he never had advocated that the agency extend the age-60 rule to flight engineers. Tr. 1521.
After the judgment in the Criswell action, eight other pilots and one career flight officer filed a separate action seeking similar relief. A preliminary injunction was granted on behalf of the flight engineer, and Western appealed. The Court of Appeals consolidated the appeal with Western’s appeal in Criswell, and affirmed the preliminary injunction. 709 F. 2d 544, 558-559 (CA9 1983). The plaintiffs in the collateral action are respondents here.
One of Western’s claims in the trial court was that its refusal to allow pilots to serve as flight engineers after they reached age 60 was based on “reasonable factors other than age” (RFOA), namely, a facially neutral policy embodied in its collective-bargaining agreement which prohibited downbidding. See nn. 3 and 7, supra. The jury rejected this defense in its verdict. On appeal, Western claimed that the instructions had improperly required it to bear the burden of proof on the RFOA issue inasmuch as the burden of persuasion on the issue of age discrimination is at all times on the plaintiff. Cf. Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U. S. 248 (1981); Furnco Construction Co. v. Waters, 438 U. S. 567 (1978). The Court of Appeals rejected this claim on the merits. 709 F. 2d, at 552-553. We granted certiorari to consider the merits of this question, 469 U. S. 815 (1984), but as we read the instructions the burden was placed on the plaintiffs on the RFOA issue. The general instruction on the question of discrimination provided that the “burden of proof is on the plaintiffs to show discriminatory treatment on the basis of age.” App. 58. The instructions expressly informed the jury when the burden shifted to the defendant to prove various issues, e. g., id., at 60 (business necessity); id., at 61 (BFOQ), but did not so inform the jury in the RFOA instruction, id., at 62-63. Because the plaintiffs were assigned the burden of proof, we need not consider whether it would have been error to assign it to the defendant.
Report of the Secretary of Labor, The Older American Worker: Age Discrimination in Employment 9 (1965) (hereinafter Report), EEOC, Legislative History of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act 26 (1981) (hereinafter Legislative History). See also S. Rep. No. 95-493, p. 2 (1977), Legislative History 435 (“Scientific research... indicates that chronological age alone is a poor indicator of ability to perform a job”).
Report, at 21, Legislative History 37.
“Hundreds of thousands not yet old, not yet voluntarily retired, find themselves jobless because of arbitrary age discrimination. Despite our present low rate of unemployment, there has been a persistent average of 850,000 people age 45 and over who are unemployed.
“In economic terms, this is a serious — and senseless — loss to a nation on the move. But the greater loss is the cruel sacrifice in happiness and well-being which joblessness imposes on these citizens and their families.” H. R. Doc. No. 40, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 7 (1967), Legislative History 61.
See EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U. S. 226, 230 (1983).
H. R. Rep. No. 95-527, pt. 1, p. 2 (1977), Legislative History 362. Cf. S. Rep. No. 95-493, p. 4 (1977), Legislative History 437 (“The committee believes that the arguments for retaining existing mandatory retirement policies are largely based on misconceptions rather than upon a careful analysis of the facts”).
“Many different types of employment situations prevail. Administration of this law must place emphasis on case-by-case basis, with unusual working conditions weighed on their own merits. The purpose of this legislation, simply stated, is to insure that age
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The complaint, alleging a cause of action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, states that Cruz is a Buddhist, who is in a Texas prison. While prisoners who are members of other religious sects are allowed to use the prison chapel, Cruz is not. He shared his Buddhist religious material with other prisoners and, according to the allegations, in retaliation was placed in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water for two weeks, without access to newspapers, magazines, or other sources of news. He also alleged that he was prohibited from corresponding with his religious advisor in the Buddhist sect. Those in the isolation unit spend 22 hours a day in total idleness.
Again, according to the allegations, Texas encourages inmates to participate in other religious programs, providing at state expense chaplains of the Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant faiths; providing also at state expense copies of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and conducting weekly Sunday school classes and religious services. According to the allegations, points of good merit are given prisoners as a reward for attending orthodox religious services, those points enhancing a prisoner’s eligibility for desirable job assignments and early parole consideration. Respondent answered, denying the allegations and moving to dismiss.
The Federal District Court denied relief without a hearing or any findings, saying the complaint was in an area that should be left “to the sound discretion of prison administration.” It went on to say, “Valid disciplinary and security reasons not known to this court may prevent the 'equality’ of exercise of religious practices in prison.” The Court of Appeals affirmed. 445 F. 2d 801.
Federal courts sit not to supervise prisons but to enforce the constitutional rights of all “persons,” including prisoners. We are not unmindful that prison officials must be accorded latitude in the administration of prison affairs, and that prisoners necessarily are subject to appropriate rules and regulations. But persons in prison, like other individuals, have the right to petition the Government for redress of grievances which, of course, includes “access of prisoners to the courts for the purpose of presenting their complaints.” Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, 485; Ex parte Hull, 312 U. S. 546, 549. See also Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U. S. 15, aff’g Gilmore v. Lynch, 319 F. Supp. 105 (ND Cal.). Moreover, racial segregation, which is unconstitutional outside prisons, is unconstitutional within prisons, save for “the necessities of prison security and discipline.” Lee v. Washington, 390 U. S. 333, 334. Even more closely in point is Cooper v. Pate, 378 U. S. 546, where we reversed a dismissal of a complaint brought under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. We said: “Taking as true the allegations of the complaint, as they must be on a motion to dismiss, the complaint stated a cause of action.” Ibid. The allegation made by that petitioner was that solely because of his religious beliefs he was denied permission to purchase certain religious publications and denied other privileges enjoyed by other prisoners.
We said in Conley v. Gibson, 355 U. S. 41, 45-46, that “a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.”
If Cruz was a Buddhist and if he was denied a reasonable opportunity of pursuing his faith comparable to the opportunity afforded fellow prisoners who adhere to conventional religious precepts, then there was palpable discrimination by the State against the Buddhist religion, established 600 B. C., long before the Christian era. The First Amendment, applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488, 492-493, prohibits government from making a law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. If the allegations of this complaint are assumed to be true, as they must be on the motion to dismiss, Texas has violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for certiorari is granted, the judgment is vacated, and the cause remanded for a hearing and appropriate findings.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Blackmun concurs in the result.
The amended complaint alleges, inter alia:
“Plaintiff is an inmate of the Texas Department of Corrections and is a member of the Buddhist Churches of America. At the time of filing of this suit, he was incarcerated at the Eastham Unit and has since been transferred to the Ellis Unit. There is a substantial number of prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections who either are adherents of the Buddhist Faith or who wish to explore the gospel of Buddhism; however, the Defendants have refused in the past, and continue to refuse, Buddhists the right to hold religious services or to disseminate the teachings of Buddha. The Plaintiff has been prevented by the Defendants from borrowing or lending Buddhist religious books and materials and has been punished by said Defendants by being placed in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water for two weeks for sharing his Buddhist religious material with other prisoners.
“Despite repeated requests to Defendants for the use of prison chapel facilities for the purpose of holding Buddhist religious services and the denials thereof the Defendants have promulgated customs and regulations which maintain a religious program within the penal system under which:
“A. Consecrated chaplains of the Protestant, Jewish and Roman Catholic religions at state expense are assigned to various units.
“B. Copies of the Holy Bible (Jewish and Christian) are distributed at state expense free to all prisoners.
“C. Religious services and religious classes for Protestant, Jewish and Roman Catholic adherents are held regularly in chapel facilities erected at state expense for ‘non-denominational’ purposes.
“D. Records are maintained by Defendants of religious participation by inmates.
“E. Religious participation is encouraged on inmates by the Defendants as necessary steps toward true rehabilitation.
“F. Points of good merit are given to inmates by the Defendants as a reward for religious participation in Protestant, Jewish and Roman Catholic faiths which enhance on inmates eligibility for promotions in class, job assignment and parole.
“Because inmates of the Buddhist faith are being denied the right to participate in the religious program made available for Protestant, Jewish and Roman Catholic faiths by the Defendants, Plaintiff and the members of the class he represents are being subjected to an arbitrary and unreasonable exclusion without any lawful justification which invidiously discriminates against them in violation of their constitutional right of religious freedom and denies them equal protection of the laws.”
We do not suggest, of course, that every religious sect or group within a prison — however few in number — must have identical facilities or personnel. A special chapel or place of worship need not be provided for every faith regardless of size; nor must a chaplain, priest, .or minister be provided without regard to the extent of the demand. But reasonable opportunities must be afforded to all prisoners to exercise the religious freedom guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments without fear of penalty.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
A Minnesota law provides that "the dissolution or annulment of a marriage revokes any revocable[ ] beneficiary designation[ ] made by an individual to the individual's former spouse." Minn. Stat. § 524.2-804, subd. 1 (2016). That statute establishes a default rule for use when Minnesotans divorce. If one spouse has made the other the beneficiary of a life insurance policy or similar asset, their divorce automatically revokes that designation-on the theory that the policyholder would want that result. But if he does not, the policyholder may rename the ex-spouse as beneficiary.
We consider here whether applying Minnesota's automatic-revocation rule to a beneficiary designation made before the statute's enactment violates the Contracts Clause of the Constitution. We hold it does not.
I
All good trust-and-estate lawyers know that "[d]eath is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate." 8 The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce 365 (1911). That epigram, beyond presaging this case, helps explain the statute at its center.
The legal system has long used default rules to resolve estate litigation in a way that conforms to decedents' presumed intent. At common law, for example, marriage automatically revoked a woman's prior will, while marriage and the birth of a child revoked a man's. See 4 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 507, 512 (1830). The testator could then revive the old will or execute a new one. But if he (or she) did neither, the laws of intestate succession (generally prioritizing children and current spouses) would control the estate's distribution. See 95 C.J.S., Wills § 448, pp. 409-410 (2011) ; R. Sitkoff & J. Dukeminier, Wills, Trusts, and Estates 63 (10th ed. 2017). Courts reasoned that the average person would prefer that allocation to the one in the old will, given the intervening life events. See T. Atkinson, Handbook of the Law of Wills 423 (2d ed. 1953). If he'd only had the time, the thought went, he would have replaced that will himself.
Changes in society brought about changes in the laws governing revocation of wills. In addition to removing gender distinctions, most States abandoned the common-law rule canceling whole wills executed before a marriage or birth. In its place, they enacted statutes giving a new spouse or child a specified share of the decedent's estate while leaving the rest of his will intact. See Sitkoff & Dukeminier, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, at 240. But more important for our purposes, climbing divorce rates led almost all States by the 1980s to adopt another kind of automatic-revocation law. So-called revocation-on-divorce statutes treat an individual's divorce as voiding a testamentary bequest to a former spouse. Like the old common-law rule, those laws rest on a "judgment about the typical testator's probable intent." Id., at 239. They presume, in other words, that the average Joe does not want his ex inheriting what he leaves behind.
Over time, many States extended their revocation-on-divorce statutes from wills to "will substitutes," such as revocable trusts, pension accounts, and life insurance policies. See Langbein, The Nonprobate Revolution and the Future of the Law of Succession, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 1108, 1109 (1984) (describing nonprobate assets). In doing so, States followed the lead of the Uniform Probate Code, a model statute amended in 1990 to include a provision revoking on divorce not just testamentary bequests but also beneficiary designations to a former spouse. See §§ 2-804(a)(1), (b)(1), 8 U.L.A. 330, 330-331 (2013). The new section, the drafters wrote, aimed to "unify the law of probate and nonprobate transfers." § 2-804, Comment, id ., at 333. The underlying idea was that the typical decedent would no more want his former spouse to benefit from his pension plan or life insurance than to inherit under his will. A wealth transfer was a wealth transfer-and a former spouse (as compared with, say, a current spouse or child) was not likely to be its desired recipient. So a decedent's failure to change his beneficiary probably resulted from "inattention," not "intention." Statement of the Joint Editorial Bd. for Uniform Probate Code, 17 Am. College Trust & Est. Counsel 184 (1991). Agreeing with that assumption, 26 States have by now adopted revocation-on-divorce laws substantially similar to the Code's. Minnesota is one.
Under prior Minnesota law, a divorce alone did not affect a beneficiary designation-but a particular divorce decree could do so. Take first the simple case: Joe names his wife Ann as beneficiary of his insurance policy, later gets divorced, but never changes the designation. Upon his death, Ann would receive the insurance proceeds-even if Joe had just forgotten to redirect the money. In other words, the insurance contract's beneficiary provision would govern after the divorce, exactly as it would have before. See Larsen v. Northwestern Nat. Life Ins. Co., 463 N.W.2d 777, 779 (Minn.App.1990). But now introduce a complication, in the form of a court addressing a spousal designation in a divorce decree. In Minnesota, as across the nation, divorce courts have always had "broad discretion in dividing property upon dissolution of a marriage." Maurer v. Maurer, 623 N.W.2d 604, 606 (Minn.2001) ; see 24 Am.Jur.2d, Divorce and Separation § 456 (2008). In exercising that power, a court could revoke a beneficiary designation to a soon-to-be ex-spouse; or conversely, a court could mandate that the old designation remain. See, e.g., Paul v. Paul, 410 N.W.2d 329, 330 (Minn.App.1987) ; O'Brien v. O'Brien, 343 N.W.2d 850, 853 (Minn.1984). Either way, the court, rather than the insured, would decide whether the ex-spouse would stay the beneficiary.
In contrast to the old law, Minnesota's new revocation-on-divorce statute starts from another baseline: the cancellation, rather than continuation, of a beneficiary designation. Enacted in 2002 to track the Code, the law provides that "the dissolution or annulment of a marriage revokes any revocable [ ] disposition, beneficiary designation, or appointment of property made by an individual to the individual's former spouse in a governing instrument." Minn. Stat. § 524.2-804, subd. 1. The term "governing instrument" is defined to include an "insurance or annuity policy," along with a will and other will substitutes. § 524.1-201. So now when Joe and Ann divorce, the clause naming Ann as Joe's insurance beneficiary is automatically revoked. If nothing else occurs before Joe's death, his insurance proceeds go to any contingent beneficiary named in the policy (perhaps his daughter Emma) or, failing that, to his estate. See § 524.2-804, subd. 2.
Something else, however, may well happen. As under Minnesota's former law, a divorce decree may alter the natural state of things. So in our example, the court could direct that Ann remain as Joe's insurance beneficiary, despite the normal revocation rule. See § 524.2-804, subd. 1 (providing that a "court order" trumps the rule). And just as important, the policyholder himself may step in to override the revocation. Joe, for example, could agree to a marital settlement ensuring Ann's continued status as his beneficiary. See ibid. (providing that such an agreement controls). Or else, and more simply, he could notify his insurance company at any time that he wishes to restore Ann to that position.
But enough of our hypothetical divorcees: It is time they give way to Mark Sveen and Kaye Melin, whose marriage and divorce led to this case. In 1997, Sveen and Melin wed. The next year, Sveen purchased a life insurance policy. He named Melin as the primary beneficiary, while designating his two children from a prior marriage, Ashley and Antone Sveen, as the contingent beneficiaries. The Sveen-Melin marriage ended in 2007. The divorce decree made no mention of the insurance policy. And Sveen took no action, then or later, to revise his beneficiary designations. In 2011, he passed away.
In this action, petitioners the Sveen children and respondent Melin make competing claims to the insurance proceeds. The Sveens contend that under Minnesota's revocation-on-divorce law, their father's divorce canceled Melin's beneficiary designation and left the two of them as the rightful recipients. Melin notes in reply that the Minnesota law did not yet exist when her former husband bought his insurance policy and named her as the primary beneficiary. And she argues that applying the later-enacted law to the policy would violate the Constitution's Contracts Clause, which prohibits any state "Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." Art. I, § 10, cl. 1.
The District Court rejected Melin's argument and awarded the insurance money to the Sveens. See Civ. No. 14-5015, 2016 WL 9000457 (D.Minn., Jan. 7, 2016), App. to Pet. for Cert. 9a-16a. But the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. It held that a "revocation-upon-divorce statute like [Minnesota's] violates the Contract Clause when applied retroactively." 853 F.3d 410, 412 (2017).
We granted certiorari, 583 U.S. ----, 138 S.Ct. 542, 199 L.Ed.2d 422 (2017), to resolve a split of authority over whether the Contracts Clause prevents a revocation-on-divorce law from applying to a pre-existing agreement's beneficiary designation. We now reverse the decision below.
II
The Contracts Clause restricts the power of States to disrupt contractual arrangements. It provides that "[n]o state shall ... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." U.S. Const., Art. I, § 10, cl. 1. The origins of the Clause lie in legislation enacted after the Revolutionary War to relieve debtors of their obligations to creditors. See Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 502-503, 107 S.Ct. 1232, 94 L.Ed.2d 472 (1987). But the Clause applies to any kind of contract. See Allied Structural Steel Co. v. Spannaus, 438 U.S. 234, 244-245, n. 16, 98 S.Ct. 2716, 57 L.Ed.2d 727 (1978). That includes, as here, an insurance policy.
At the same time, not all laws affecting pre-existing contracts violate the Clause. See El Paso v. Simmons, 379 U.S. 497, 506-507, 85 S.Ct. 577, 13 L.Ed.2d 446 (1965). To determine when such a law crosses the constitutional line, this Court has long applied a two-step test. The threshold issue is whether the state law has "operated as a substantial impairment of a contractual relationship." Allied Structural Steel Co., 438 U.S., at 244, 98 S.Ct. 2716. In answering that question, the Court has considered the extent to which the law undermines the contractual bargain, interferes with a party's reasonable expectations, and prevents the party from safeguarding or reinstating his rights. See id., at 246, 98 S.Ct. 2716 ; El Paso, 379 U.S., at 514-515, 85 S.Ct. 577 ; Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516, 531, 102 S.Ct. 781, 70 L.Ed.2d 738 (1982). If such factors show a substantial impairment, the inquiry turns to the means and ends of the legislation. In particular, the Court has asked whether the state law is drawn in an "appropriate" and "reasonable" way to advance "a significant and legitimate public purpose." Energy Reserves Group, Inc. v. Kansas Power & Light Co., 459 U.S. 400, 411-412, 103 S.Ct. 697, 74 L.Ed.2d 569 (1983).
Here, we may stop after step one because Minnesota's revocation-on-divorce statute does not substantially impair pre-existing contractual arrangements. True enough that in revoking a beneficiary designation, the law makes a significant change. As Melin says, the "whole point" of buying life insurance is to provide the proceeds to the named beneficiary. Brief for Respondent 16. But three aspects of Minnesota's law, taken together, defeat Melin's argument that the change it effected "severely impaired" her ex-husband's contract. Ibid . First, the statute is designed to reflect a policyholder's intent-and so to support, rather than impair, the contractual scheme. Second, the law is unlikely to disturb any policyholder's expectations because it does no more than a divorce court could always have done. And third, the statute supplies a mere default rule, which the policyholder can undo in a moment. Indeed, Minnesota's revocation statute stacks up well against laws that this Court upheld against Contracts Clause challenges as far back as the early 1800s. We now consider in detail each of the features that make this so.
To begin, the Minnesota statute furthers the policyholder's intent in many cases-indeed, the drafters reasonably thought in the typical one. As earlier described, legislatures have long made judgments about a decedent's likely testamentary intent after large life changes-a marriage, a birth, or a divorce. See supra, at 1816 - 1817. And on that basis, they have long enacted statutes revoking earlier-made wills by operation of law. Legislative presumptions about divorce are now especially prevalent-probably because they accurately reflect the intent of most divorcing parties. Although there are exceptions, most divorcees do not aspire to enrich their former partners. (And that is true even when an ex-spouse has custody of shared children, given the many ways to provide them with independent support.) The Minnesota statute (like the model code it tracked) applies that understanding to beneficiary designations in life insurance policies and other will substitutes. See supra, at 1819 - 1821. Melin rightly notes that this extension raises a brand-new constitutional question because "an insurance policy is a contract under the Contracts Clause, and a will is not." Brief for Respondent 44 (internal quotation marks omitted). But in answering that question, it matters that the old legislative presumption equally fits the new context: A person would as little want his ex-spouse to benefit from his insurance as to collect under his will. Or said otherwise, the insured's failure to change the beneficiary after a divorce is more likely the result of neglect than choice. And that means the Minnesota statute often honors, not undermines, the intent of the only contracting party to care about the beneficiary term. The law no doubt changes how the insurance contract operates. But does it impair the contract? Quite the opposite for lots of policyholders.
And even when presumed and actual intent diverge, the Minnesota law is unlikely to upset a policyholder's expectations at the time of contracting. That is because an insured cannot reasonably rely on a beneficiary designation remaining in place after a divorce. As noted above, divorce courts have wide discretion to divide property between spouses when a marriage ends. See supra, at 1820 - 1821. The house, the cars, the sporting equipment are all up for grabs. See Judgment and Decree in 14-cv-5015 (D Minn.), p. 51 (awarding Melin, among other things, a snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle). And (what matters here) so too are the spouses' life insurance policies, with their beneficiary provisions. Although not part of the Sveen-Melin divorce decree, they could have been; as Melin acknowledges, they sometimes are. See supra, at 1820 -1821; Brief for Respondent 38. Melin counters that the Contracts Clause applies only to legislation, not to judicial decisions. See id., at 38-39; see also post, at 1830 - 1831 (GORSUCH, J., dissenting). That is true, but of no moment. The power of divorce courts over insurance policies is relevant here because it affects whether a party can reasonably expect a beneficiary designation to survive a marital breakdown. We venture to guess that few people, when purchasing life insurance, give a thought to what will happen in the event of divorce. But even if someone out there does, he can conclude only that ... he cannot possibly know. So his reliance interests are next to nil. And as this Court has held before, that fact cuts against providing protection under the Contracts Clause. See, e.g., El Paso, 379 U.S., at 514-515, 85 S.Ct. 577.
Finally, a policyholder can reverse the effect of the Minnesota statute with the stroke of a pen. The law puts in place a presumption about what an insured wants after divorcing. But if the presumption is wrong, the insured may overthrow it. And he may do so by the simple act of sending a change-of-beneficiary form to his insurer. (Or if he wants to commit himself forever, like Ulysses binding himself to the mast, he may agree to a divorce settlement continuing his ex-spouse's beneficiary status. See supra, at 1820 - 1821.) That action restores his former spouse to the position she held before the divorce-and in so doing, cancels the state law's operation. The statute thus reduces to a paperwork requirement (and a fairly painless one, at that): File a form and the statutory default rule gives way to the original beneficiary designation.
In cases going back to the 1800s, this Court has held that laws imposing such minimal paperwork burdens do not violate the Contracts Clause. One set of decisions addresses so-called recording statutes, which extinguish contractual interests unless timely recorded at government offices. In Jackson v. Lamphire, 3 Pet. 280, 7 L.Ed. 679 (1830), for example, the Court rejected a Contracts Clause challenge to a New York law granting title in property to a later rather than earlier purchaser whenever the earlier had failed to record his deed. It made no difference, the Court held, whether the unrecorded deed was "dated before or after the passage" of the statute; in neither event did the law's modest recording condition "impair[ ] the obligation of contracts." Id., at 290. Likewise, in Vance v. Vance, 108 U.S. 514, 2 S.Ct. 854, 27 L.Ed. 808 (1883), the Court upheld a statute rendering unrecorded mortgages unenforceable against third parties-even when the mortgages predated the law. We reasoned that the law gave "due regard to existing contracts" because it demanded only that the mortgagee make a "public registration," and gave him several months to do so. Id., at 517, 518, 2 S.Ct. 854. And more recently, in Texaco, Inc. v. Short, 454 U.S. 516, 102 S.Ct. 781, 70 L.Ed.2d 738 (1982), the Court held that a statute terminating pre-existing mineral interests unless the owner filed a "statement of claim" in a county office did not "unconstitutionally impair" a contract. Id., at 531, 102 S.Ct. 781. The filing requirement was "minimal," we explained, and compliance with it would effectively "safeguard any contractual obligations or rights." Ibid.
So too, the Court has long upheld against Contracts Clause attack laws mandating other kinds of notifications or filings. In Curtis v. Whitney, 13 Wall. 68, 20 L.Ed. 513 (1872), for example, the Court approved a statute retroactively affecting buyers of "certificates" for land offered at tax sales. The law required the buyer to notify the tax-delinquent property owner, who could then put up the funds necessary to prevent the land's final sale. If the buyer failed to give the notice, he could not take the land-and if he provided the notice, his chance of gaining the land declined. Still, the Court made short work of the Contracts Clause claim. Not "every statute which affects the value of a contract," the Court stated, "impair[s] its obligation." Id., at 70. Because the law's notice rule was "easy [to] compl[y] with," it did not raise a constitutional problem. Id., at 71. Similarly, in Gilfillan v. Union Canal Co. of Pa., 109 U.S. 401, 3 S.Ct. 304, 27 L.Ed. 977 (1883), the Court sustained a state law providing that an existing bondholder's failure to reject a settlement proposal in writing would count as consent to the deal. The law operated to reduce the interest received by an investor who did not respond. Yet the Court rebuffed the ensuing Contracts Clause suit. "If [the bondholder did] not wish to abandon his old rights and accept the new," the Court explained, "all he ha[d] to do [was] to say so in writing." Id., at 406, 3 S.Ct. 304. And one last: In Conley v. Barton, 260 U.S. 677, 43 S.Ct. 238, 67 L.Ed. 456 (1923), the Court held that the Contracts Clause did not bar a State from compelling existing mortgagees to complete affidavits before finally foreclosing on properties. The law effectively added a paperwork requirement to the mortgage contracts' foreclosure terms. But the Court said it was "only [a] condition, easily complied with, which the law, for its purposes, requires." Id., at 681, 43 S.Ct. 238.
The Minnesota statute places no greater obligation on a contracting party-while imposing a lesser penalty for noncompliance. Even supposing an insured wants his life insurance to benefit his ex-spouse, filing a change-of-beneficiary form with an insurance company is as "easy" as, say, providing a landowner with notice or recording a deed. Curtis, 13 Wall., at 71. Here too, with only "minimal" effort, a person can "safeguard" his contractual preferences. Texaco, 454 U.S., at 531, 102 S.Ct. 781. And here too, if he does not "wish to abandon his old rights and accept the new," he need only "say so in writing." Gilfillan, 109 U.S., at 406, 3 S.Ct. 304. What's more, if the worst happens-if he wants his ex-spouse to stay as beneficiary but does not send in his form-the consequence pales in comparison with the losses incurred in our earlier cases. When a person ignored a recording obligation, for example, he could forfeit the sum total of his contractual rights-just ask the plaintiffs in Jackson and Vance. But when a policyholder in Minnesota does not redesignate his ex-spouse as beneficiary, his right to insurance does not lapse; the upshot is just that his contingent beneficiaries (here, his children) receive the money. See supra, at 1820 - 1821. That redirection of proceeds is not nothing; but under our precedents, it gives the policyholder-who, again, could have "easily" and entirely escaped the law's effect-no right to complain of a Contracts Clause violation. Conley, 260 U.S., at 681, 43 S.Ct. 238.
In addressing those precedents, Melin mainly urges us to distinguish between two ways a law can affect a contract. The Minnesota law, Melin claims, "operate[s] on the contract itself" by "directly chang[ing] an express term" (the insured's beneficiary designation). Brief for Respondent 51; Tr. of Oral Arg. 57. In contrast, Melin continues, the recording statutes "impose[ ] a consequence" for failing to abide by a "procedural" obligation extraneous to the agreement (the State's recording or notification rule). Brief for Respondent 51; Tr. of Oral Arg. 58. The difference, in her view, parallels the line between rights and remedies: The Minnesota law explicitly alters a person's entitlement under the contract, while the recording laws interfere with his ability to enforce that entitlement against others. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 57-59; see also post, at 1830 - 1831 (GORSUCH, J., dissenting).
But we see no meaningful distinction among all these laws. The old statutes also "act[ed] on the contract" in a significant way. Tr. of Oral Arg. 59. They added a paperwork obligation nowhere found in the original agreement-"record the deed," say, or "notify the landowner." And they informed a contracting party that unless he complied, he could not gain the benefits of his bargain. Or viewed conversely, the Minnesota statute also "impose[s] a consequence" for not satisfying a burden outside the contract. Brief for Respondent 51. For as we have shown, that law overrides a beneficiary designation only when the insured fails to send in a form to his insurer. See supra, at 1823 - 1824. Of course, the statutes (both old and new) vary in their specific mechanisms. But they all make contract benefits contingent on some simple filing-or more positively spun, enable a party to safeguard those benefits by taking an action. And that feature is what the Court, again and again, has found dispositive.
Nor does Melin's attempt to distinguish the cases gain force when framed in terms of rights and remedies. First, not all the old statutes, as a formal matter, confined the consequence of noncompliance to the remedial sphere. In Gilfillan, for example, the result of failing to give written consent to a settlement was to diminish the interest rate a bondholder got, not to prevent him from enforcing a claim against others. And second, even when the consequence formally related to enforcement-for example, precluding an earlier purchaser from contesting a later one's title-the laws in fact wiped out substantive rights. Failure to record or notify, as noted earlier, would mean that the contracting party lost what (according to his agreement) was his land or mortgage or mineral interest. See supra, at 1824 - 1825. In Texaco, we replied to an argument like Melin's by saying that when the results of "eliminating a remedy" and "extinguishing a right" are "identical," the Contracts Clause "analysis is the same." 454 U.S., at 528, 102 S.Ct. 781 ; see El Paso, 379 U.S., at 506-507, 85 S.Ct. 577. That statement rebuts Melin's claim too. Once again: Just like Minnesota's statute, the laws discussed above hinged core contractual benefits on compliance with noncontractual paperwork burdens. When all is said and done, that likeness controls.
For those reasons, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered .
See Ala. Code § 30-4-17 (2016) ; Alaska Stat. § 13.12.804 (2016) ; Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14-2804 (2012); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 15-11-804 (2017) ; Fla. Stat. § 732.703 (2017) ; Haw. Rev. Stat. § 560:2-804 (2006); Idaho Code Ann. § 15-2-804 (2017 Cum. Supp.); Iowa Code § 598.20A (2017); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 190B, § 2-804 (2016); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 700.2807 (West 2018 Cum. Supp.); Minn. Stat. § 524.2-804 subd. 1 (2016) ; Mont. Code Ann. § 72-2-814 (2017); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 111.781 (2015); N.J. Stat. Ann. § 3B:3-14 (West 2007) ; N.M. Stat. Ann. § 45-2-804 (2014) ; N.Y. Est., Powers & Trusts Law Ann. § 5-1.4 (West 2018 Cum. Supp.); N.D. Cent. Code Ann. § 30.1-10-04 (2010); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 5815.33 (Lexis 2017) ; 20 Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. Ann. § 6111.2 (2010); S.C. Code Ann. § 62-2-507 (2017 Cum. Supp.); S.D. Codified Laws § 29A-2-804 (2004) ; Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 9.301 (West 2006) ; Utah Code § 75-2-804 (Supp. 2017); Va. Code Ann. § 20-111.1 (2016) ; Wash. Rev. Code § 11.07.010 (2016); Wis. Stat. § 854.15 (2011).
Compare 853 F.3d 410, 414 (C.A.8 2017) (case below) (yes, it does); Parsonese v. Midland Nat. Ins. Co., 550 Pa. 423, 434, 706 A.2d 814, 819 (1998) (same), with Lazar v. Kroncke, 862 F.3d 1186, 1199-1200 (C.A.9 2017) (no, it does not); Stillman v. Teachers Ins. & Annuity Assn. College Retirement Equities Fund, 343 F.3d 1311, 1322 (C.A.10 2003) (same); In re Estate of DeWitt, 54 P.3d 849, 859-860 (Colo.2002) (same).
Because that is true, we have no occasion to address Melin's contention that we should abandon our two-step Contracts Clause test to whatever extent it departs from the Clause's original meaning and earliest applications. See Brief for Respondent 6-10, 18-33. Part of Melin's argument focuses on the back half of the test, which we do not reach today. Another part claims that the front half goes wrong in exempting in substantial impairments from the Clause's reach. But as we explain below, see infra, at 1823 - 1825, the Court has always recognized that some laws affect contracts without violating the Contracts Clause. See, e.g., Curtis v. Whitney, 13 Wall. 68, 70, 20 L.Ed. 513 (1872) ("No[t] every statute which affects the value of a contract impair[s] its obligation"). And in particular, the Court has always approved statutes like this one, which enable a party with only minimal effort to protect his original contract rights against the law's operation. See, e.g., Jackson v . Lamphire, 3 Pet. 280, 290, 7 L.Ed. 679 (1830). So this case presents no clash, of the kind Melin says we should resolve, between the Court's two-step test and any older approach to applying the Contracts Clause.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to decide whether the Federal Government violates the First Amendment when it excludes legal defense and political advocacy organizations from participation in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC or Campaign), a charity drive aimed at federal employees. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that the respondent organizations could not be excluded from the CFC, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 234 U. S. App. D. C. 148, 727 F. 2d 1247 (1984). We granted certiorari, 469 U. S. 929 (1984), and we now reverse.
I — i
The CFC is an annual charitable fundraising drive conducted in the federal workplace during working hours largely through the voluntary efforts of federal employees. At all times relevant to this litigation, participating organizations confined their fundraising activities to a 30-word statement submitted by them for inclusion in the Campaign literature. Volunteer federal employees distribute to their coworkers literature describing the Campaign and the participants along with pledge cards. 5 CFR §§ 950.521(c) and (e) (1983). Contributions may take the form of either a payroll deduction or a lump-sum payment made to a designated agency or to the general Campaign fund. §950.523. Un-designated contributions are distributed on the local level by a private umbrella organization to certain participating organizations. § 950.509(c)(5). Designated funds are paid directly to the specified recipient. Through the CFC, the Government employees contribute in excess of $100 million to charitable organizations each year. Brief for Petitioner 3.
The CFC is a relatively recent development. Prior to 1957, charitable solicitation in the federal workplace occurred on an ad hoc basis. Federal managers received requests from dozens of organizations seeking endorsements and the right to solicit contributions from federal employees at their worksites. U. S. Civil Service Commission, Manual on Fund-Raising Within the Federal Service for Voluntary Health and Welfare Agencies §1.1 (1977) (Manual on Fund-Raising). In facilities where solicitation was permitted, weekly campaigns were commonplace. Executive Orders 12353 and 12404 As They Regulate the Combined Federal Campaign (Part 1), Hearing before the House Committee on Government Operations, 98th Cong., 1st Sess., 67-68 (1983). Because no systemwide regulations were in place to provide for orderly procedure, fundraising frequently consisted of passing an empty coffee can from employee to employee. Id., at 68. Eventually, the increasing number of entities seeking access to federal buildings and the multiplicity of appeals disrupted the work environment and confused employees who were unfamiliar with the groups seeking contributions. Ibid.
In 1957, President Eisenhower established the forerunner of the Combined Federal Campaign to bring order to the solicitation process and to ensure truly voluntary giving by federal employees. Exec. Order No. 10728, 3 CFR 387 (1954-1958 Comp.). The Order established an advisory committee and set forth general procedures and standards for a uniform fundraising program. It permitted no more than three charitable solicitations annually and established a system requiring prior approval by a committee on fundraising for participation by “voluntary health and welfare” agencies. Id., §§ 1(c) and 3(d). One of the principal goals of the plan was to minimize the disturbance of federal employees while on duty. Id., § 1(d).
Four years after this initial effort, President Kennedy abolished the advisory committee and ordered the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission to oversee fundraising by “national voluntary health and welfare agencies and such other national voluntary agencies as may be appropriate” in the solicitation of contributions from all federal employees. Exec. Order No. 10927, 3 CFR 454 (1959-1963 Comp.). From 1963 until 1982, the CFC was implemented by guidelines set forth in the Civil Service Commission’s Manual on Fund-Raising. Only tax-exempt, nonprofit charitable organizations that were supported by contributions from the public and that provided direct health and welfare services to individuals were eligible to participate in the CFC. Manual on Fund-Raising §5.21 (1977).
Respondents in this case are the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Federally Employed Women Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Indian Law Resource Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Each of the respondents attempts to influence public policy through one or more of the following means: political activity, advocacy, lobbying, or litigation on behalf of others. In 1980, two of the respondents — the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (the Legal Defense Funds) — joined by the NAACP Special Contribution Fund, for the first time sought to participate in the CFC. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which in 1978 had assumed the duties of the Civil Service Commission, refused admission to the Legal Defense Funds. This action led to a series of three lawsuits, the third of which is before us today.
In the first action the Legal Defense Funds challenged the “direct services” requirement on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Campbell, 504 F. Supp. 1365 (DC 1981) (NAACP I). The District Court did not reach the equal protection challenge, because it found that the “direct services” requirement as formulated in the Manual on Fund-Raising was too vague to satisfy the strict standards of specificity required by the First Amendment. Id., at 1368. The Government did not appeal the District Court’s decision, and the plaintiffs, along with other legal defense funds, were allowed to participate in the 1982 and 1983 Campaigns and receive funds designated for their use by federal employees.
In the second proceeding, the Legal Defense Funds challenged the decision of the Director of OPM to authorize local federal coordinating groups to determine what share, if any, of the undesignated funds to allocate to organizations classified as national service associations. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Devine, 560 F. Supp. 667, 672 (DC 1983) (NAACP II). The plaintiff legal defense funds categorized themselves as “national service associations,” a category that OPM had defined as agencies having a domestic welfare service function which includes direct services to meet basic human welfare needs. Manual on Fund-Raising § 4.2(e). The District Court rejected claims that OPM’s decision, which essentially permitted local coordinating groups to choose not to allocate undesignated funds to the Legal Defense Funds, violated their rights under the Due Process Clause and the First Amendment. 560 F. Supp., at 676. The court found that local coordinating groups must have flexibility to distribute funds in accordance with the intent of donors and the benefit to the local community. Due process was satisfied by the participation of national service associations in the process by which the local groups determined how to distribute funds. Id., at 675. The court determined that the exclusion was necessary to protect the First Amendment rights of donors not to contribute to organizations whose purposes were inconsistent with their beliefs and to serve the Government’s interest in ensuring that as much money as possible was received through the Campaign. Id., at 675-676. The Legal Defense Funds did not appeal the decision.
In response to the District Court’s decision in NAACP I, President Reagan took several steps to restore the CFC to what he determined to be its original purpose. In 1982, the President issued Executive Order No.-12353, 3 CFR 139 (1983), to replace the 1961 Executive Order which had established the CFC. The new Order retained the original limitation to “national voluntary health and welfare agencies and such other national voluntary agencies as may be appropriate,” and delegated to the Director of the Office of Personnel Management the authority to establish criteria for determining appropriateness. Shortly thereafter, the President amended Executive Order No. 12353 to specify the purposes of the CFC and to identify groups whose participation would be consistent with those purposes. Exec. Order No. 12404, 3 CFR 151 (1984). The CFC was designed to lessen the Government’s burden in meeting human health and welfare needs by providing a convenient, nondisruptive channel for federal employees to contribute to nonpartisan agencies that directly serve those needs. Id., § 1(b), amending Exec. Order No. 12353, § 2(b)(1). The Order limited participation to “voluntary, charitable, health and welfare agencies that provide or support direct health and welfare services to individuals or their families,” ibid., amending Exec. Order No. 12353, § 2(b)(2), and specifically excluded those “[a]gencies that seek to influence the outcomes of elections or the determination of public policy through political activity or advocacy, lobbying, or litigation on behalf of parties other than themselves.” Ibid., amending Exec. Order No. 12353, §2(b)(3).
Respondents brought this action challenging their threatened exclusion under the new Executive Order. They argued that the denial of the right to seek designated funds violates their First Amendment right to solicit charitable contributions and that the denial of the right to participate in undesignated funds violates their rights under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. Respondents also contended that the “direct services” requirement in § 1(b) of the Executive Order suffered from the same vagueness problems as the requirement struck down in NAACP I. The District Court dismissed the vagueness challenge and the equal protection claim on ripeness grounds. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Devine, 567 F. Supp. 401 (DC 1983) (NAACP III). Those rulings were not appealed and are not before us. The District Court also held that respondents’ exclusion from the designated contribution portion of the CFC was unconstitutional. The court reasoned that the CFC was a “limited public forum” and that respondents’ exclusion was content based. Id., at 407. Finding that the regulation was not narrowly drawn to support a compelling governmental interest, the District Court granted summary judgment to respondents and enjoined the denial of respondents’ pending or future applications to participate in the solicitation of designated contributions. Id., at 410.
The judgment was affirmed by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Devine, 234 U. S. App. D. C. 148, 727 F. 2d 1247 (1984). The majority did not decide whether the CFC was a limited public forum or a nonpublic forum under Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S. 37 (1983), because in its view the Government restrictions were not reasonable and therefore failed even the least exacting scrutiny. The dissent disagreed with both the analysis used and the result reached by the majority. 234 U. S. App. D. C., at 169, 727 F. 2d, at 1268 (Starr, J., dissenting). The dissent defined the relevant forum as the federal workplace and found that it was a nonpublic forum under our cases. Based on this characterization, the dissent argued that the Government must merely provide a rational basis for the exclusion, and that this standard was met here. An equally divided court denied the Government’s request for rehearing en banc. App. to Pet. for Cert. 80a.
I — I hH
The issue presented is whether respondents have a First Amendment right to solicit contributions that was violated by their exclusion from the CFC. To resolve this issue we must first decide whether solicitation in the context of the CFC is speech protected by the First Amendment, for, if it is not, we need go no further. Assuming that such solicitation is protected speech, we must identify the nature of the forum, because the extent to which the Government may limit access depends on whether the forum is public or nonpublic. Finally, we must assess whether the justifications for exclusion from the relevant forum satisfy the requisite standard. Applying this analysis, we find that respondents’ solicitation is protected speech occurring in the context of a nonpublic forum and that the Government’s reasons for excluding respondents from the CFC appear, at least facially, to satisfy the reasonableness standard. We express no opinion on the question whether petitioner’s explanation is merely a pretext for viewpoint discrimination. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
A
Charitable solicitation of funds has been recognized by this Court as a form of protected speech. In Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620 (1980), the Court observed:
“[Sjoliciting funds involves interests protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U. S. 748, 761 (1976)....” Id., at 629.
“Soliciting financial support is undoubtedly subject to reasonable regulation but the latter must be undertaken with due regard for the reality that solicitation is characteristically intertwined with informative and perhaps persuasive speech seeking support for particular causes or for particular views... and for the reality that without solicitation the flow of such information and advocacy would likely cease.... Furthermore,, it has not been dealt with in our cases as a variety of purely commercial speech.” Id,., at 632.
See also Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350, 363 (1977).
In Village of Schaumburg, the Court struck down a local ordinance prohibiting solicitation in a public forum by charitable organizations that expended less than 75 percent of the receipts collected for charitable purposes. The plaintiff in that case was a public advocacy group that employed canvassers to distribute literature and answer questions about the group’s goals and activities as well as to solicit contributions. The Court found that “charitable appeals for funds, on the street or door to door, involve a variety of speech interests — communication of information, the dissemination and propagation of views and ideas, and the advocacy of causes — that are within the protection of the First Amendment.” 444 U. S., at 632. The ordinance was invalid, the Court held, because it unduly interfered with the exercise of protected rights.
Although Village of Schaumburg establishes that noncommercial solicitation is protected by the First Amendment, petitioner argues that solicitation within the confines of the CFC is entitled to a lesser degree of protection. This argument is premised on the inherent differences between the face-to-face solicitation involved in Village of Schaumburg and the 30-word written statements at issue here. In a face-to-face encounter there is a greater opportunity for the exchange of ideas and the propagation of views than is available in the CFC. The statements contained in the CFC literature are merely informative. Although prepared by the participants, the statements must conform to federal standards which prohibit persuasive speech and the use of symbols “or other distractions” aimed at competing for the potential donor’s attention. 5 CFR § 950.521(d) (1983).
Notwithstanding the significant distinctions between in-person solicitation and solicitation in the abbreviated context of the CFC, we find that the latter deserves First Amendment protection. The brief statements in the CFC literature directly advance the speaker’s interest in informing readers about its existence and its goals. Moreover, an employee’s contribution in response to a request for funds functions as a general expression of support for the recipient and its views. See Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 21 (1976). Although the CFC does not entail direct discourse between the solicitor and the donor, the CFC literature facilitates the dissemination of views and ideas by directing employees to the soliciting agency to obtain more extensive information. 5 CFR §950.521(e)(ii) (1983). Finally, without the funds obtained from solicitation in various fora, the organization’s continuing ability to communicate its ideas and goals may be jeopardized. See Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, supra, at 632. Thus, the nexus between solicitation and the communication of information and advocacy of causes is present in the CFC as in other contexts. Although Government restrictions on the length and content of the request are relevant to ascertaining the Government’s intent as to the nature of the forum created, they do not negate the finding that the request implicates interests protected by the First Amendment.
B
The conclusion that the solicitation which occurs in the CFC is protected speech merely begins our inquiry. Even protected speech is not equally permissible in all places and at all times. Nothing in the Constitution requires the Government freely to grant access to all who wish to exercise their right to free speech on every type of Government property without regard to the nature of the property or to the disruption that might be caused by the speaker’s activities. Cf. Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, 433 U. S. 119, 136 (1977). Recognizing that the Government, “no less than a private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated,” Greer v. Spook, 424 U. S. 828, 836 (1976), the Court has adopted a forum analysis as a means of determining when the Government’s interest in limiting the use of its property to its intended purpose outweighs the interest of those wishing to use the property for other purposes. Accordingly, the extent to which the Government can control access depends on the nature of the relevant forum. Because a principal purpose of traditional public fora is the free exchange of ideas, speakers can be excluded from a public forum only when the exclusion is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and the exclusion is narrowly drawn to achieve that interest. See Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S., at 45. Similarly, when the Government has intentionally designated a place or means of communication as a public forum speakers cannot be excluded without a compelling governmental interest. Access to a nonpublic forum, however, can be restricted as long as the restrictions are “reasonable and [are] not an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose the speaker’s view.” Id., at 46.
To determine whether the First Amendment permits the Government to exclude respondents from the CFC, we must first decide whether the forum consists of the federal workplace, as petitioner contends, or the CFC, as respondents maintain. Having defined the relevant forum, we must then determine whether it is public or nonpublic in nature.
Petitioner contends that a First Amendment forum necessarily consists of tangible government property. Because the only “property” involved here is the federal workplace, in petitioner’s view the workplace constitutes the relevant forum. Under this analysis, the CFC is merely an activity that takes place in the federal workplace. Respondents, in contrast, argue that the forum should be defined in terms of the access sought by the speaker. Under their view, the particular channel of communication constitutes the forum for First Amendment purposes. Because respondents seek access only to the CFC and do not claim a general right to engage in face-to-face solicitation in the federal workplace, they contend that the relevant forum is the CFC and its attendant literature.
We agree with respondents that the relevant forum for our purposes is the CFC. Although petitioner is correct that as an initial matter a speaker must seek access to public property or to private property dedicated to public use to evoke First Amendment concerns, forum analysis is not completed merely by identifying the government property at issue. Rather, in defining the forum we have focused on the access sought by the speaker. When speakers seek general access to public property, the forum encompasses that property. See, e. g., Greer v. Spook, supra. In cases in which limited access is sought, our cases have taken a more tailored approach to ascertaining the perimeters of a forum within the confines of the government property. For example, Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., supra, examined the access sought by the speaker and defined the forum as a school’s internal mail system and the teachers’ mailboxes, notwithstanding that an “internal mail system” lacks a physical situs. Similarly, in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298, 300 (1974), where petitioners sought to compel the city to permit political advertising on city-owned buses, the Court treated the advertising spaces on the buses as the forum. Here, as in Perry Education Assn., respondents seek access to a particular means of communication. Consistent with the approach taken in prior cases, we find that the CFC, rather than the federal workplace, is the forum. This conclusion does not mean, however, that the Court will ignore the special nature and function of the federal workplace in evaluating the limits that may be imposed on an organization’s right to participate in the CFC. See Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., supra, at 44.
Having identified the forum as the CFC, we must decide whether it is nonpublic or public in nature. Most relevant in this regard, of course, is Perry Education Assn. There the Court identified three types of fora: the traditional public forum, the public forum created by government designation, and the nonpublic forum. Traditional public fora are those places which “by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate.” 460 U. S., at 45. Public streets and parks fall into this category. See Hague v. CIO, 307 U. S. 496, 515 (1939). In addition to traditional public fora, a public forum may be created by government designation of a place or channel of communication for use by the public at large for assembly and speech, for use by certain speakers, or for the discussion of certain subjects. Perry Education Assn., supra, at 45 and 46, n. 7. Of course, the government “is not required to indefinitely retain the open character of the facility.” Id., at 46.
The government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse. Ibid. Accordingly, the Court has looked to the policy and practice of the government to ascertain whether it intended to designate a place not traditionally open to assembly and debate as a public forum. Ibid. The Court has also examined the nature of the property and its compatibility -with expressive activity to discern the government’s intent. For example, in Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981), we found that, a state university that had an express policy of making its meeting facilities available to registered student groups had created a public forum for their use. Id., at 267. The policy evidenced a clear intent to create a public forum, notwithstanding the University’s erroneous conclusion that the Establishment Clause required the exclusion of groups meeting for religious purposes. Additionally, we noted that a university campus, at least as to its students, possesses many of the characteristics of a traditional public forum. Id., at 267, n. 5. And in Madison Joint School District v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 429 U. S. 167 (1976), the Court held that a forum for citizen involvement was created by a state statute providing for open school board meetings. Id., at 174, n. 6. Similarly, the Court found a public forum where a municipal auditorium and a city-leased theater were designed for and dedicated to expressive activities. Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U. S. 546, 555 (1975).
Not every instrumentality used for communication, however, is a traditional public forum or a public forum by designation. United States Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., 453 U. S. 114, 130, n. 6 (1981). “[T]he First Amendment does not guarantee access to property simply because it is owned or controlled by the government.” Id., at 129. We wall not find that a public forum has been created in the face of clear evidence of a contrary intent, see ibid., nor will we infer that the government intended to create a public forum when the nature of the property is inconsistent with expressive activity. See, e. g., Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, 433 U. S. 119 (1977). In Perry Education Assn., we found that the School District’s internal mail system was not a public forum. In contrast to the general access policy in Widmar, school board policy did not grant general access to the school mail system. The practice was to require permission from the individual school principal before access to the system to communicate with teachers was granted. Similarly, the evidence in Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298 (1974), revealed that the city intended to limit access to the advertising spaces on city transit buses. It had done so for 26 years, and its management contract required the managing company to exercise control over the subject matter of the displays. Id., at 299-300. Additionally, the Court found that the city’s use of the property as a commercial enterprise was inconsistent with an intent to designate the car cards as a public forum. In cases where the principal function of the property would be disrupted by expressive activity, the Court is particularly reluctant to hold that the government intended to designate a public forum. Accordingly, we have held that military reservations, Greer v. Spook, 424 U. S. 828 (1976), and jailhouse grounds, Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S. 39 (1966), do not constitute public fora.
Here the parties agree that neither the CFC nor the federal workplace is a traditional public forum. Respondents argue, however, that the Government created a limited public forum for use by all charitable organizations to solicit funds from federal employees. Petitioner contends, and we agree, that neither its practice nor its policy is consistent with an intent to designate the CFC as a public forum open to all tax-exempt organizations. In 1980, an estimated 850,000 organizations qualified for tax-exempt status. H. Godfrey, Handbook on Tax Exempt Organizations 5 (1983). In contrast, only 237 organizations participated in the 1981 CFC of the National Capital Area. 1981 Combined Federal Campaign Contributor’s Leaflet, National Capital Area. The Government’s consistent policy has been to limit participation in the CFC to “appropriate” voluntary agencies and to require agencies seeking admission to obtain permission from federal and local Campaign officials. Although the record does not show how many organizations have been denied permission throughout the 24-year history of the CFC, there is no evidence suggesting that the granting of the requisite permission is merely ministerial. Cf. Perry Education Assn., 460 U. S., at 47. The Civil Service Commission and, after 1978, the Office of Personnel Management developed extensive admission criteria to limit access to the Campaign to those organizations considered appropriate. See Manual on Fund-Raising, ch. 5, and 5 CFR pt. 950 (1983). Such selective access, unsupported by evidence of a purposeful designation for public use, does not create a public forum. See Greer v. Spook, supra, at 838, n. 10.
Nor does the history of the CFC support a finding that the Government was motivated by an affirmative desire to provide an open forum for charitable solicitation in the federal workplace when it began the Campaign. The historical background indicates that the Campaign was designed to minimize the disruption to the workplace that had resulted from unlimited ad hoc solicitation activities by lessening the amount of expressive activity occurring on federal property. Indeed, the OPM stringently limited expression to the 30-word statement included in the Campaign literature. The decision of the Government to limit access to the CFC is not dispositive in itself; instead, it is relevant for what it suggests about the Government’s intent in creating the forum. The Government did not create the CFC for purposes of providing a forum for expressive activity. That such activity occurs in the context of the forum created does not imply that the forum thereby becomes a public forum for First Amendment purposes. See United States Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., supra, at 130, n. 6, and cases cited therein.
An examination of the'nature of the Government property involved strengthens the conclusion that the CFC is a nonpublic forum. Cf. Greer v. Spook, supra, at 838 (“[T]he business of a military installation [is] to train soldiers, not to provide a public forum”). The federal workplace, like any place of employment, exists to accomplish the business of the employer. Cf. Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 150-151 (1983). “[T]he Government, as an employer, must have wide discretion and control over the management of its personnel and internal affairs.” Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U. S. 134, 168 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring in part). It follows that the Government has the right to exercise control over access to the federal workplace in order to avoid interruptions to the performance of the duties of its employees. Cf. United States Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., 453 U. S., at 128-129. In light of the Government policy in creating the CFC and its practice in limiting access, we conclude that the CFC is a nonpublic forum.
C
Control over access to a nonpublic forum can be based on subject matter and speaker identity so long as the distinctions drawn are reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum and are viewpoint neutral. Perry Education Assn., supra, at 49. Although a speaker may be excluded from a nonpublic forum if he wishes to address a topic not encompassed within the purpose of the forum, see Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298 (1974), or if he is not a member of the class of speakers for whose especial benefit the forum was created, see Perry Education Assn., supra, the government violates the First Amendment when it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point of view he espouses on an otherwise includible subject. The Court of Appeals found it unnecessary to resolve whether the government’s denial of access to respondents was viewpoint based, because it determined that respondents’ exclusion was unreasonable in light of the purpose served by the CFC.
Petitioner maintains that the purpose of the CFC is to provide a means for traditional health and welfare charities to solicit contributions in the federal workplace, while at the same time maximizing private support of social programs that would otherwise have to be supported by Government funds and minimizing costs to the Federal Government by controlling the time that federal employees expend on the Campaign. Petitioner posits that excluding agencies that attempt to influence the outcome of political elections or the determination of public policy is reasonable in light of this purpose. First, petitioner contends that there is likely to be a general consensus among employees that traditional health and welfare charities are worthwhile, as compared with the more diverse views concerning the goals of organizations like respondents. Limiting participation to widely accepted groups is likely to contribute significantly to employees’ acceptance of the Campaign and consequently to its ultimate success. In addition, because the CFC is conducted largely through the efforts of federal employees during their working hours, any controversy surrounding the CFC would produce unwelcome disruption. Finally, the President determined that agencies seeking to affect the outcome of elections or the determination of public policy should be denied access to the CFC in order to avoid the reality and the appearance of Government favoritism or entanglement with particular viewpoints. In such circumstances, petitioner contends that the decision to deny access to such groups was reasonable.
In respondents’ view, the reasonableness standard is satisfied only when there is some basic incompatibility between the communication at issue and the principal activity occurring on the Government property. Respondents contend that the purpose of the CFC is to permit solicitation by groups that provide health and welfare services. By permitting such solicitation to take place in the federal workplace, respondents maintain, the Government has concluded that such activity is consistent with the activities usually conducted there. Because respondents are seeking to solicit such contributions and their activities result in direct, tangible benefits to the groups they represent, the Government’s attempt to exclude them is unreasonable. Respondents reject petitioner’s justifications on the ground that they are unsupported by the record.
The Court of Appeals accepted the position advanced by respondents. When the excluded and included speakers share a similar “status,” the court asserted that a heightened reasonableness inquiry is appropriate. Here the status of respondents, in the court’s view, is analogous to that of traditional health and welfare organizations, because both provide direct health and welfare services and are tax exempt under 26 U. S. C. § 501(c)(3). 234 U. S. App. D. C., at 159, 727 F. 2d, at 1258. In such circumstances, the Court of Appeals believed that the Government’s decision to exclude some speakers from the nonpublic forum is reasonable only if the exclusion furthers a legitimate Government interest and that interest adequately accounts for the differential treatment accorded the speakers. Id., at 160, 727 F. 2d, at 1259.
Under this test, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioner’s justifications as unreasonable. The court agreed that assistance to the needy is a laudable goal, but noted that respondents further this goal because their litigation efforts achieved direct benefits for many low-income persons. Id., at 161, 727 F. 2d, at 1260. It also agreed that avoiding the appearance of federal support for partisan causes is a legitimate interest, but rejected it as a justification in this case because the Tax Code does not define legal defense funds as political advocacy groups. Ibid. Relying principally on public forum cases, the court declined to accept the rationale that exclusion could be premised on the Government’s interest in minimizing disruption in the workplace and maximizing the success of the Campaign. Id., at 162-163, 727 F. 2d, at 1261-1262.
Based on the present record, we disagree and conclude that respondents may be excluded from the CFC. The Court of Appeals’ conclusion to the contrary fails to reflect the nature of a nonpublic forum. The Government’s decision to restrict access to a nonpublic forum need only be reasonable; it need not be the most reasonable or the only reasonable limitation. In contrast to a public forum, a finding of strict incompatibility between the nature of the speech or the identity of the speaker and the functioning of the nonpublic forum is not mandated. Cf. Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S. 37 (1983); Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298 (1974). Even if some incompatibility with general expressive activity were required, the CFC would meet the requirement because it would be administratively unmanageable if access could not be curtailed in a reasonable manner. Nor is there a requirement that the restriction be narrowly tailored or that the Government’s interest be compelling. The First Amendment does not demand unrestricted access to a nonpublic forum merely because use of that forum may be the most efficient means of delivering the speaker’s message. See United States Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., 453 U. S., at 129. Rarely will a nonpublic forum provide the only means of contact with a particular audience. Here, as in Perry Education Assn., supra, at 53-54, the speakers have access to alternative channels, including direct mail and in-person solicitation outside the workplace, to solicit contributions from federal employees.
The reasonableness of the Government’s restriction of access to a nonpublic forum must be assessed in the light of the purpose of the forum and all the surrounding circumstances
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The appeal is dismissed for want of a properly presented federal question.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
MR. Justice Rutledge
delivered the opinion of the Court.
An ordinance of Saddle River Township, New Jersey, forbids carrying on the business of storing goods for hire except upon the payment of an annual license tax. Independent Warehouses, Inc., and Thompson, an agent of that company, have been convicted and fined for conducting such a business without procuring the license or paying the tax. The convictions have been sustained by New Jersey’s highest court. The appeal here seeks to have that judgment reversed on the basis that the business done was exclusively interstate and consequently the application made of the ordinance contravenes the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, Art. I, § 8. Fourteenth Amendment objections also are raised.
The main thrust of the argument has been toward the commerce clause phase of the case. In this the controversy is of the familiar “interruption” or “cessation” type. The issue accordingly requires only a determination of the proper application to be mad® of well-established legal principles to the particular circumstances. It is whether the cessation taking place in the movement of goods interstate, as shown by the record, is of a nature which permits the state or a municipality to tax the goods or services, here the business of storing them, rendered in connection with their handling.
The governing principles were stated in Minnesota v. Blasius, 290 U. S. 1, 9-10, as follows:
“. . . the States may not tax property in transit in interstate commerce. But, by reason of a break in the transit, the property may come to rest within a State and become subject to the power of the State to impose a non-discriminatory property tax. Such an exertion of state power belongs to that class of cases in which, by virtue of the nature and importance of local concerns, the State may act until Congress, if it has paramount authority over the subject, substitutes its own regulation. The ‘crucial question/ in determining whether the State's taxing power may thus be exerted, is that of ‘continuity of transit/ Carson Petroleum Co. v. Vial, 279 U. S. 95, 101.
“If the interstate movement has not begun, the mere fact that such a movement is contemplated does not withdraw the property from the State’s power to tax it. . . . If the interstate movement has begun, it may be regarded as continuing, so as to maintain the immunity of the property from state taxation, despite temporary interruptions due to the necessities of the journey or for the purpose of safety and convenience in the course of the movement. . . . Formalities, such as the forms of billing, and mere changes in the method of transportation do not affect the continuity of the transit. The question is always one of substance, and in each case it is necessary to consider the particular occasion or purpose of the interruption during which the tax is sought to be levied. . . .
“Where property has come to rest within a State, being held there at the pleasure of the owner, for disposal or use, so that he may dispose of it either within the State, or for shipment elsewhere, as his interest dictates, it is deemed to be a part of the general mass of property within the State and is thus subject to its taxing power.”
Since the circumstances characterizing the interruption are of controlling importance, we turn to the details of the movement and of the stoppage shown by the record.
I.
The suit is the culmination of a controversy extending back to 1939, with earlier litigious chapters in the state and federal courts. It grows out of the operation of facilities for storing and handling coal under various arrangements between the Erie Railroad Company and other corporations affiliated for this and other enterprises by stock ownership or by contract.
The Pennsylvania Coal Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Erie. It owns and operates coal mines in Pennsylvania. In 1901 it acquired 67.25 acres of land in Saddle River Township, New Jersey. This acreage and its facilities, known as Coalberg, are located on the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad and perform functions connected with that road’s operations not material to this cause. Coalberg also is connected directly with the Bergen County Railroad, a freight cutoff of Erie. Its chief purpose, and the only one relevant to this controversy, is to provide storage for coal shipped in from the Coal Company’s Pennsylvania mines and later shipped out to various destinations.
Prior to 1939, Coalberg was operated by the Coal Company or its lessees as a private business, not as a public utility. During this time the Township levied personal property taxes upon the coal in storage, assessing and collecting them from its owners. These were, as they are now, chiefly coal distributors using Coalberg’s storage facilities, principally because of their accessibility to distributing centers, especially in the vicinity of New York City, and to shipping facilities both by rail and by water.
In 1939, however, by arrangements to be set forth involving Erie, the Coal Company and Independent Warehouses, Coalberg was converted into a public utility to serve shippers of coal on Erie lines. Under New Jersey law, goods stored in warehouses conducted for hire are exempted from personal property taxes. Rev. Stat. N. J. § 54:4-3.20. The Township, despite the change in Coal-berg’s mode of operation, continued to levy such taxes on the stored coal until the 1940 assessment was invalidated in the state courts. Pattison & Bowns v. Saddle River Township, 129 N. J. L. 135; 130 N. J. L. 177.
The municipality’s resulting loss in revenue amounted to about eight per cent of the total collected for local, county and state purposes. To make up for this, as its brief here candidly admits, the Township enacted the ordinance now in question, acting under other provisions of state law. N. J. Stat. Ann. §§ 40:52-1, 40:52-2. The effect was to shift the direct incidence of the tax from the owners of the coal, i. e., the shipper-distributors, to the operator of the storage business and to change its character from a direct property tax to that of a license or franchise tax for the privilege of conducting that business in the state. The amount of revenue thus produced, though in dispute, substantially will repair the loss suffered from invalidation of the property tax. This suit is the outgrowth of the Township’s effort to enforce the new taxing provisions.
It is necessary to state in some detail the arrangements made in 1939 by which the change was brought about in the mode of operating Coalberg. An agreement then made between the Coal Company and Erie provides that the former shall operate Coalberg “as a public service facility for shippers of prepared anthracite coal on Erie lines desiring storage space in accordance with and under the rates named in a certain Tariff on file with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Public Utilities Commission of the State of New Jersey . . . The agreement recites that it is made in view of the considerations that the Coal Company has no need for Coalberg’s storage facilities and that they are of use to Erie in affording “facilities for the storage of prepared anthracite coal for shippers on Erie lines whereon said Coalberg Storage Yard is located so that shipments of coal may not be diverted to other and competing lines on which facilities for coal storage are available . . . .” Erie pays the net monthly loss, if any, of operating the yard and the Coal Company remits to Erie the net monthly surplus, if any. Erie also undertakes to maintain an agent at Coalberg duly authorized on its behalf to issue warehouse receipts for coal placed in storage by shippers.
The Coal Company has discharged the operating function under its agreement with Erie by an arrangement also made in 1939 with Independent Warehouses, which is a New York corporation engaged in the warehousing business. The Coal Company leased Coalberg to Independent Warehouses for $1.00 a year and the latter undertook to operate the plant for a consideration which now amounts to approximately $500 a year. The agreement between the Coal Company and Erie governs the manner of Coal-berg’s operation by Independent Warehouses.
Under these arrangements purchasers from the Coal Company who ship coal from the mines designate the destination on the shipping papers. If they designate Coalberg, the coal is sent there in railroad cars. It is unloaded to the storage pile where it is kept until ordered out by the owner. It is then reloaded into railroad cars, and when it is reshipped there is a new billing to the new destination. Most of the coal, after it has been stored, goes to states other than New Jersey. Some, however, is marketed in New Jersey. It is disputed whether there is any local distribution in the Township, but if so the amount is comparatively insignificant.
The financial arrangements under the governing tariff are as follows. On arrival of the shipments at Coalberg the transportation charges on the movement from the mine to Coalberg are paid to the Erie freight agent at Coalberg. When the coal is moved again after storage, the remainder of the through tariff rate from the point of original shipment at the mine in Pennsylvania is paid. This arrangement is known as the transit privilege. “The privilege of transit enables grain [here coal] to be shipped from point A to point B, there to be stored, marketed, or processed, and later reshipped to point C at a rate less than the combination of the separate rates from A to B and B to C.” Board of Trade v. United States, 314 U. S. 534, 537-538, and authorities cited.
The storage facilities given to shippers are free for a period of two years, although a charge is made by Erie for unloading the cars into the stock pile and for reloading the cars for reshipment. A charge is also made by Independent Warehouses upon such coal owners as obtain warehouse receipts from it.
The licensing ordinance applied in this case was adopted in 1943, following upon the New Jersey decision in Pattison & Bowns v. Saddle River Township, supra. The ordinance provides:
“No person, firm or corporation shall conduct or carry on the business of the storage of personal property in a warehouse engaged in storing goods for hire or work in, occupy, or, directly, or indirectly in any manner whatsoever, utilize any place or premises in which is conducted or carried on the storage of personal property in a warehouse engaged in the business of storing goods for hire, unless and until there shall be granted by the Township Committee of the Township of Saddle River in accordance with the terms of this ordinance, and shall be in force and effect, a license to conduct said business for the place and premises in or at which said business shall be conducted and carried on.”
The ordinance specifies that for the license there shall be charged and collected in advance an annual fee of three-quarters of a cent for each square foot of ground in the Township where the business is carried on. There is also a penalty clause, in addition to other provisions not now pertinent.
Independent Warehouses did not apply for the license or pay the tax for 1943. Consequently that company and Thompson were convicted in the Magistrate’s Court before appellee Scheele, the Recorder of the Township, for having violated the ordinance by conducting the storage operations at Coalberg without complying with its requirements. Each was fined $200. The Coal Company and Erie were allowed to intervene when the case went before the New Jersey Supreme Court, because of their obvious interest in the outcome of the litigation. That court held the ordinance unconstitutional as an undue burden on interstate commerce and reversed the convictions. 132 N. J. L. 390. In turn the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals reversed the Supreme Court’s determination. 134 N. J. L. 133. It held that the ordinance was valid under the provisions of state law, and that neither the commerce clause nor the Fourteenth Amendment guaranties relied upon had been infringed. The case comes here on appeal, pursuant to § 237 (a) of the Judicial Code. See King Mfg. Co. v. Augusta, 277 U. S. 100; Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413, 414.
II.
That the storage of the coal is part of a transit privilege does not in itself sustain appellants’ claim that the interstate movement had not stopped sufficiently for the state’s taxing power to attach when the coal reached and was stored in Coalberg. Cf. Minnesota v. Blasius, supra; Bacon v. Illinois, 227 U. S. 504. It has long been recognized that transit privileges rest “upon the fiction that the incoming and the outgoing transportation services, which are in fact distinct, constitute a continuous shipment of the identical article from point of origin to final destination.” Central Railroad Co. v. United States, 257 U. S. 247, 257. See also Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. Co. v. United States, 279 U. S. 768, 779-780. Of course this fiction, which may be desirable for ratemaking or other purposes, cannot control the power of a state or municipality to tax activities properly subject to exercise of that power apart from the fiction’s application to them.
Indeed, the facts of this case demonstrate that here at least the fiction is complete. They show that the journey of the coal from the Pennsylvania mines to Coalberg and the subsequent journeys upon leaving Coalberg were not parts of a “continuity of transit” in the sense held by this Court’s previous decisions to preclude a valid exercise of the states’ taxing or regulatory powers. See, e. g., Pittsburg & Southern Coal Co. v. Bates, 156 U. S. 577; General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211; Bacon v. Illinois, supra; Susquehanna, Coal Co. v. South Amboy, 228 U. S. 665.
A characteristic feature of those cases in which the state has been allowed to tax property which has come to rest after an interstate journey is that at the time the tax is laid it cannot be determined what the ultimate destination or use of the property may be. Thus in General Oil Co. v. Crain, supra, the oil was shipped to Memphis and held there until required to supply orders from out-of-state customers. In Brown v. Houston, 114 U. S. 622, coal sent from Pennsylvania to New Orleans was held taxable in Louisiana because, although some of it was subsequently exported, it “was being held for sale to anyone who might wish to buy.” Champlain Co. v. Brattleboro, 260 U. S. 366, 376. In Bacon v. Illinois, supra, the grain sent to Bacon’s elevator was at his complete disposal. “He might sell the grain in Illinois or forward it as he saw fit.” Although his intention was to forward it after inspection, grading, etc., this purpose was held irrelevant. 227 U. S. at 516. And in Susquehanna Coal Co. v. South Amboy, supra, although there was an anticipation of orders for the coal unloaded at South Amboy, yet there were no actual orders from customers. See also Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249; Edelman v. Boeing Air Transport, 289 U. S. 249.
Those cases are indistinguishable from this one as to the facts and the effect of the stoppage. Once the coal has reached Coalberg, no one can determine, without receiving an order from the owner, to what point or person it finally will be sent or to what use it will be put. Indeed, at the actual time of storage, even the owner may not know where the coal will go next, for the very purpose of the storage is in part to meet seasonal demand. And while the form of billing is not conclusive, Minnesota v. Blasius, supra, the fact that the coal is billed to Coalberg and is not rebilled until the owner asks that it be released from storage further shows that the final destination is not known by the owner or by others.
Moreover, in all these cases the duration of the cessation of transit is indefinite and in this case may extend as long as two years without loss of transit privilege. Indeed, except for that loss it may extend indefinitely, since under the controlling tariff Erie does not require, but only reserves the right to require, removal at the end of two years. It is also significant that invariably the goods are fungibles, a fact pointing up the fictional basis of the in-transit privilege. The goods which are sent initially into the interstate commerce stream are not the identical goods which finally arrive at the place of consumption.
In view of all these considerations, the case falls more appropriately in the category allowing the state’s taxing power to apply, than in the one denying its applicability. The interruption hardly can be held to be “due to the necessities of the journey or for the purpose of safety and convenience in the course of the movement,” Minnesota v. Blasius, 290 U. S. at 9-10, broad as may be the latitude given for such incidents of transit. More is involved here than stopping to take advantage of such latitudes. The case therefore is one, again in the language of the Blasius case, “where property has come to rest within a State, being held there at the pleasure of the owner, for disposal or use, so that he may dispose of it either within the State, or for shipment elsewhere, as his interest dictates . . . 290 U. S. at 10.
The facts bring the case exactly within this description, although the record shows that most of the coal after storage goes to other states and little, if any, is distributed locally at Coalberg. Not what ultimately happens to the goods or where they finally go, but the occasion and purpose of the interruption are controlling. “The question is always one of substance, and in each case it is necessary to consider the particular occasion or purpose of the interruption during which the tax is sought to be levied.” Minnesota v. Blasius, 290 U. S. at 10.
Here the cessation takes place not simply for the carrier’s transit reasons relating to the necessities or convenience of the journey, but for reasons primarily concerned with the owner’s business interests. As in the Bacon and Susquehanna Coal cases, supra, he is entirely free to keep or market the goods in New Jersey or to send them elsewhere. Marketing considerations primarily, and it may be exclusively, determine this choice and many or all of the controlling factors may not arise until after the coal has reached Coalberg or indeed many months later.
The situation in this respect is not materially different from those involved in the Susquehanna Coal, Bacon, and other cases cited, or indeed from one in which a coal distributor might place his storage facilities at some distance from his place of market, as at a near-by way station, in order to reduce the cost of his storage operations. That reasons of economy and convenience or even of necessity arising from the absence or prohibitive cost of storage space at the immediate point of distribution might lead him thus to locate his storage operations, and thereby incur the necessity and expense of hauling the goods from storage to market, hardly could be held to make the interruption an incident of transit rather than one of his own business policy and interest. That he may secure the same advantages by using the storage facilities of others for like purposes, rather than his own, does not change the result. In neither case does the arrangement defeat the state’s power to tax his property so located or his business thus conducted.
Moreover, as has been noted, some of the coal remains in New Jersey, being shipped out from Coalberg as the shipper directs. As to this all interstate transportation has ended. The fact that the owner elects to take advantage of Coalberg’s storage facilities for conducting his storage operations rather than his own located at the point or points of final distribution in New Jersey, whether near to Coalberg or at some distance, does not make the final wholly intrastate movement between those points a leg of the initial interstate movement begun at the mine.
As for the coal moving out of Coalberg interstate, the fact that this movement crosses a state line makes it of course an interstate movement. But this does not make it part of a continuous journey beginning at the mine and ending in the second state of destination. Indeed, not until after the storage has taken place is it determined or can it be known whether this coal will move out of Coal-berg interstate or intrastate. And this is because it cannot be known before that time whether the owner’s interest, disconnected from the ordinary and usual incidents of transportation, will dictate one market or use rather than another. Interruptions thus governed cannot be classified as interruptions merely incident to transit or dictated by its necessities or convenience.
The 1939 change in Coalberg’s mode of operation did not alter in any substantial way the character, duration or purpose of the stoppage. Since then as before, the primary reasons dictating the shippers’ action in taking advantage of it are their business reasons rather than transit reasons as such. Accordingly the state’s power to tax the goods stored could not be affected by that change. That the state has chosen to discontinue exercising it as a matter of state taxing policy can make no difference in this respect. Nor can this fact, or the change in method of operation, defeat the state’s power to tax the business of furnishing the facilities for storage, since that business also becomes local or interstate depending upon the purposes of the stoppage, whether for transit reasons or chiefly for non transit ones.
The authorities above cited, it is true, generally involved property taxes levied upon the stored coal. But their controlling principle applies equally to franchise or other taxes upon the business of furnishing the storage facilities. Cf. General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211; American Steel & Wire Co. v. Speed, 192 U. S. 500. It would be an impermissible anomaly to hold that the goods stored may be taxed, because the interruption of transit is for nontransit purposes, but that the business of furnishing the facilities for storing them is not affected or governed legally by the same purposes, for applying the state’s powers of taxation.
Accordingly, the ease is governed by the prior decisions allowing states and municipalities to tax in situations of this sort. It follows that the tax is not forbidden because it is part of a licensing measure. Even where it is undisputed that the commerce is exclusively interstate in nature, “not the mere fact or form of licensing, but what the license stands for by way of regulation is important.” Robertson v. California, 328 U. S. 440, 458. See also Union Brokerage Co. v. Jensen, 322 U. S 202; Federal Compress Co. v. McLean, 291 U. S. 17. Nor does anything in the Interstate Commerce Act forbid local taxation where it is otherwise permissible. The tax therefore is valid under the commerce clause.
III.
Whether the tax and the licensing measure as applied may stand under the Fourteenth Amendment also must be considered. Appellants say that the ordinance is discriminatory and unreasonable. Discrimination is claimed because the ordinance is applicable only to commercial warehouses and not to private warehouses and because there are no other commercial warehousing facilities in the Township subject to the tax. This contention is grounded on the provisions of New Jersey law, noted above, exempting property stored in commercial warehouses from taxation. It also is closely related to the further claim that the tax is prohibitory and unreasonable, and the two claims may be considered together.
“It is inherent in the exercise of the power to tax that a state be free to select the subjects of taxation and to grant exemptions. Neither due process nor equal protection imposes upon a state any rigid rule of equality of taxation. . . . This Court has repeatedly held that inequalities which result from a singling out of one particular class for taxation or exemption, infringe no constitutional limitation.” Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., 301 U. S. 495, 509.
We need not consider in this connection the ultimate power of the state to tax, for we are of opinion that neither the selection made here nor the amount of the tax is barred by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals has held that the present tax is not an illegal evasion of the state laws exempting personal property in commercial warehouses from property taxes, and that the municipality was empowered by state law to levy this tax. Those rulings are conclusive upon us. Nor is it material to any question we have to decide that the practical result of the valid taxing power given the municipality enabled it to make up the loss in revenue suffered when Coalberg was transformed to a public facility.
Constitutionally speaking, the tax is not invalid as being unreasonably large for the privilege conferred. It is not shown that the exaction is unrelated to the value of the privilege conferred and the Court of Errors and Appeals found to the contrary. Private contractual arrangements, such as have been made here, cannot be effective to defeat the state’s power to impose such a tax, with the practical effect of relieving the real beneficiaries of the privilege from all taxation by virtue of their success in shunting its burden contractually to the nominal operator. And the suggestion that the tax under the ordinance is prohibitive can carry no weight in view of the fact that substantially equal personal property taxes were paid prior to 1939.
Appellants’ other arguments may be given shorter disposition. The contention that Thompson’s conviction is “unlawful” is answered by the decision of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals which held that the municipality possesses the power which it exercised to convict persons working in unlicensed warehousing premises as well as to prohibit corporations and others from carrying on the business of warehousing without obtaining a license. Thompson was convicted not for his employer’s act but for his own.
It is suggested also that the ordinance gives to the municipality an uncontrolled discretion to revoke the license and is therefore invalid for uncertainty, since it permits the Township Committee to “revoke any such license for sufficient cause after notice and hearing.” Appellants have made no attempt to secure a license and therefore are not in position to attack the revocation provisions of the ordinance. Cf. Bourjois, Inc. v. Chapman, 301 U. S. 183, 188, and authorities cited.
Finally the ordinance is said to be invalid because of the provision for cumulative penalties. The penal provisions however have not been imposed cumulatively in this case. Moreover the New Jersey Court has held them separable, if illegal. In such circumstances, the objection that the mere unapplied provision for cumulation violates the Fourteenth Amendment is without substance. Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Garrett, 231 U. S. 298, 311, and authorities cited.
The judgment is
Affirmed.
The material terms of the ordinance appear at note 9 infra and text.
See text Part I infra. A prior suit in a federal district court to enjoin enforcement was dismissed because of the existence of a “plain, speedy, and efficient remedy” in the state courts. Independent Warehouses v. Saddle River Township, 52 F. Supp. 96; 28 U. S. C. §41(1).
Those objections are discussed in Part III of this opinion.
“A non-discriminatory tax upon the business of storing” goods which are not yet in interstate commerce is not forbidden. Federal Compress Co. v. McLean, 291 U. S. 17, 21.
See note 4.
In 1921 the New Jersey Supreme Court sustained the imposition of these taxes against attack on various grounds. Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Saddle River, 96 N. J. L. 40.
Coalberg is located conveniently to tidewater ports, as well as rail facilities for distribution in northern New Jersey and elsewhere. The distributors using Coalberg’s facilities forward their coal not only to the near-by metropolitan area of New York City and northern New Jersey, but also to the New England States.
The tariff provides: “The period of time allowed for the storage privilege and protection of the through rate from point of origin to ultimate destination shall be two (2) years from date of delivery at storage point, as shown on the inbound freight' (expense) bill. The Erie Railroad reserves the right to require owners to remove their coal at the expiration of the two years period. Any coal which is not reshipped within two (2) years will lose the privilege of being reshipped at the through rates from point of origin to destinations beyond the storage yard
“Any person, firm or corporation who shall violate any term or provision of this ordinance shall upon conviction thereof be subject to imprisonment in the County Jail or in any place provided by the Township of Saddle River for the detention of prisoners, for a term not exceeding ninety (90) days or to a fine not exceeding Two Hundred Dollars ($200.00), or both. Any person so convicted may, in the discretion of the Magistrate by whom he was convicted, in default of the payment of any fine be imprisoned in the County Jail or place of detention provided by the Township of Saddle River, for any term not exceeding ninety (90) days. . . . Each day that a violation of any of the terms or provisions of this ordinance shall continue shall constitute a separate offense.”
Thompson was to be imprisoned for 90 days in the event of default in payment of his fine.
It is to be noted however that the two-year period allowed by the tariff for storage, see note 8, is longer than is necessary to allow for meeting seasonal demand.
Storage-in-transit privileges are supplied, it is said, “as a result of traffic demands.” A witness gave the following illustrations:
“(a) Coal is a commodity of seasonal consumption. Most of it is consumed in cold weather. If the mines could produce currently sufficient coal to meet cold weather requirements, the railroads would be swamped with coal traffic during the fall and winter months when other seasonal products are moving in large volume and weather conditions retard transportation operations. By spreading coal shipments for winter use over the months of most favorable operating conditions, a more uniform transportation revenue is assured.
“(b) Coal dealers and consumers ship it more uniformly throughout the year by using storage-in-transit privileges under railroad tariffs, and use negotiable warehouse receipts to finance their purchases where necessary.
“(c) The movement during warm weather of the bulk of the winter coal supply avoids car storage and releases cars more rapidly than if they arrived frozen solid, as they often do in winter, where delayed by bad weather or had to wait unloading and use at the place of consumption.
“(d) Experience has shown many instances, like those of recent occurrence, when a supply of stored coal close to the market areas has been necessary to prevent or relieve acute shortages of fuel in cases of labor, weather, or other interruptions in production or transportation.
“(e) A uniform movement of coal during favorable operating conditions, avoids the congestion, delay and increased expense which otherwise attends rush and emergency transportation in winter weather.
“(f) Such storage-in-transit facilitates a more uniform and steady employment, not only of the miners but also of railroad employees, as well as a more uniform and steady railroad revenue.”
See note 8.
See the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brandeis in Liggett Co. v. Lee. 288 U. S. at 570 ff.
The tax, however, may be somewhat larger than the aggregate of the former personal property taxes. Personal property taxes paid prior to 1939 amounted to about $12,000 a year. Estimates of this tax given in the record vary from about that sum to around $20,000 a year. The variation corresponds to different estimates of the area, in terms of footage, constituting the base for calculation of the tax.
See note 14. Cf. the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brandeis in Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U. S. at 573, “The Federal Constitution does not require that taxes ... be proportionate to the differences in benefits received by the taxpayers ... or that taxes be proportionate to the taxpayer’s ability to bear the burden.”
The record discloses that the present agreements between Independent Warehouses and the coal company are from year to year until terminated upon notice.
Cf. Browning v. Waycross, 233 U. S. 16, 23; Federal Compress Co. v. McLean, 291 U. S. 17, 22: “It is not within the power of the parties, by the descriptive terms of their contract, to convert a local business into an interstate commerce business protected by the interstate commerce clause.”
See note 14.
The ordinance makes each day’s continuance of violation a separate offense.
The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals stated: “The ordinance contains a provision that in case ‘any section or part’ thereof shall be held illegal or unconstitutional, such invalidity ‘shall not be construed as impairing the force and effect of the remainder of the ordinance.’ If it be conceded arguendo that the cumulative penalty clause is invalid in whole or in part, the remainder of the provision for sanctions is severable and would stand unaffected. 134 N. J. L. at 144.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Subject to certain limitations, 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1) prohibits possession of a firearm by anyone with a prior felony conviction, which the Government can prove by introducing a record of judgment or similar evidence identifying the previous offense. Fearing prejudice if the jury learns the nature of the earlier crime, defendants sometimes seek to avoid such an informative disclosure by offering to concede the fact of the prior conviction. The issue here is whether a district court abuses its discretion if it spurns such an offer and admits the full record of a prior judgment, when the name or nature of the prior offense raises the risk of a verdict tainted by improper considerations, and when the purpose of the evidence is solely to prove the element of prior conviction. We hold that it does.
I
In 1993, petitioner, Old Chief, was arrested after a fracas involving at least one gunshot. The ensuing federal charges included not only assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence but violation of 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1). This statute makes it unlawful for anyone “who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” to “possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm....” “[A] crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” is defined to exclude “any Federal or State offenses pertaining to antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, restraints of trade, or other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business practices” and “any State offense classified by the laws of the State as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less.” § 921(a)(20).
The earlier crime charged in the indictment against Old Chief was assault causing serious bodily injury. Before trial, he moved for an order requiring the Government “to refrain from mentioning — by reading the Indictment, during jury selection, in opening statement, or closing argument— and to refrain from offering into evidence or soliciting any testimony from any witness regarding the prior criminal convictions of the Defendant, except to state that the Defendant has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding one (D year.” App. 6. He said that revealing the name and nature of his prior assault conviction would unfairly tax the jury’s capacity to hold the Government to its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on current charges of assault, possession, and violence with a firearm, and he offered to “solve the problem here by stipulating, agreeing and requesting the Court to instruct the jury that he has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding one (1) yea[r].” Id., at 7. He argued that the offer to stipulate to the fact of the prior conviction rendered evidence of the name and nature of the offense inadmissible under Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the danger being that unfair prejudice from that evidence would substantially outweigh its probative value. He also proposed this jury instruction:
“The phrase ‘crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year’ generally means a crime which is a felony. The phrase does not include any state offense classified by the laws of that state as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less and certain crimes concerning the regulation of business practices.
“[I] hereby instruct you that Defendant JOHNNY LYNN OLD CHIEF has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” Id., at ll.
The Assistant United States Attorney refused to join in a stipulation, insisting on his right to prove his case his own way, and the District Court agreed, ruling orally that, “If he doesn’t want to stipulate, he doesn’t have to.” Id., at 15-16. At trial, over renewed objection, the Government introduced the order of judgment and commitment for Old Chief’s prior conviction. This document disclosed that on December 18, 1988, he “did knowingly and unlawfully assault Rory Dean Fenner, said assault resulting in serious bodily injury,” for which Old Chief was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Id., at 18-19. The jury found Old Chief guilty on all counts, and he appealed.
The Ninth Circuit addressed the point with brevity:
“Regardless of the defendant’s offer to stipulate, the government is entitled to prove a prior felony offense through introduction of probative evidence. See United States v. Breitkreutz, 8 F. 3d 688, 690 (9th Cir. 1993) (citing United States v. Gilman, 684 F. 2d 616, 622 (9th Cir. 1982)). Under Ninth Circuit law, a stipulation is not proof, and, thus, it has no place in the FRE 403 balancing process. Breitkreutz, 8 F. 3d at 691-92.
“Thus, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion by allowing the prosecution to introduce evidence of Old Chief’s prior conviction to prove that element of the unlawful possession charge.” No. 94-30277, 1995 WL 325745, *1 (CA9, May 31, 1995) (unpublished), App. 50-51, judgt. order reported at 56 F. 3d 75 (1995).
We granted Old Chief’s petition for writ of certiorari, 516 U. S. 1110 (1996), because the Courts of Appeals have divided sharply in their treatment of defendants’ efforts to exclude evidence of the names and natures of prior offenses in cases like this. Compare, e.g., United States v. Burkhart, 545 F. 2d 14, 15 (CA6 1976); United States v. Smith, 520 F. 2d 544, 548 (CA8 1975), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 925 (1976); and United States v. Breitkreutz, 8 F. 3d 688, 690-692 (CA9 1993) (each recognizing a right on the part of the Government to refuse an offered stipulation and proceed with its own evidence of the prior offense), with United States v. Tavares, 21 F. 3d 1, 3-5 (CA1 1994) (en banc); United States v. Poore, 594 F. 2d 39, 40-43 (CA4 1979); United States v. Wacker, 72 F. 3d 1453, 1472-1473 (CA10 1995); and United States v. Jones, 67 F. 3d 320, 322-325 (CADC 1995) (each holding that the defendant’s offer to stipulate to or to admit to the prior conviction triggers an obligation of the district court to eliminate the name and nature of the underlying offense from the case by one means or another). We now reverse the judgment of the Ninth Circuit.
II
A
As a threshold matter, there is Old Chief’s erroneous argument that the name of his prior offense as contained in the record of conviction is irrelevant to the prior-conviction element, and for that reason inadmissible under Rule 402 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Rule 401 defines relevant evidence as having “any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Fed. Rule Evid. 401. To be sure, the fact that Old Chief’s prior conviction was for assault resulting in serious bodily injury rather than, say, for theft was not itself an ultimate fact, as if the statute had specifically required proof of injurious assault. But its demonstration was a step on one evidentiary route to the ultimate fact, since it served to place Old Chief within a particular subclass of offenders for whom firearms possession is outlawed by § 922(g)(1). A documentary record of the conviction for that named offense was thus relevant evidence in making Old Chief’s § 922(g)(1) status more probable than it would have been without the evidence.
Nor was its evidentiary relevance under Rule 401 affected by the availability of alternative proofs of the element to which it went, such as an admission by Old Chief that he had been convicted of a crime “punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” within the meaning of the statute. The 1972 Advisory Committee Notes to Rule 401 make this point directly:
“The fact to which the evidence is directed need not be in dispute. While situations will arise which call for the exclusion of evidence offered to prove a point conceded by the opponent, the ruling should be made on the basis of such considerations as waste of time and undue prejudice (see Rule 403), rather than under any general requirement that evidence is admissible only if directed to matters in dispute.” Advisory Committee’s Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 401, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 859.
If, then, relevant evidence is inadmissible in the presence of other evidence related to it, its exclusion must rest not on the ground that the other evidence has rendered it “irrelevant,” but on its character as unfairly prejudicial, cumulative or the like, its relevance notwithstanding.
B
The principal issue is the scope of a trial judge’s discretion eviunder Rule 403, which authorizes exclusion of relevant evidence when its “probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” Fed. Rule Evid. 403. Old Chief relies on the danger of unfair prejudice.
1
The term “unfair prejudice,” as to a criminal defendant, speaks to the capacity of some concededly relevant evidence to lure the factfinder into declaring guilt on a ground different from proof specific to the offense charged. See generally 1 J. Weinstein, M. Berger, & J. McLaughlin, Weinstein’s Evidence ¶ 403[03] (1996) (discussing the meaning of “unfair prejudice” under Rule 403). So, the Committee Notes to Rule 403 explain, “‘Unfair prejudice’ within its context means an undue tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.” Advisory Committee’s Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 403, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 860. the one that Old
U. S. p. Such improper grounds certainly include the one that Old Qiief points to here: generalizing a defendant’s earlier bad act into bad character and taking that as raising the odds that he did the later bad act now charged (or, worse, as calling for preventive conviction even if he should happen to be innocent momentarily). As then-judge Breyer put it, “Although... 'propensity evidence’ is relevant, the risk that a jury will convict for crimes other than those charged — or that, uncertain of guilt, it will convict anyway because a bad person deserves punishment — creates a prejudicial effect that outweighs ordinary relevance.” United States v. Moccia, 681 F. 2d 61, 63 (CA1 1982). Justice Jackson described how the law has handled this risk:
“Courts that follow the common-law tradition almost unanimously have come to disallow resort by the prosecution to any kind of evidence of a defendant’s evil character to establish a probability of his guilt. Not that the law invests the defendant with a presumption of good character, Greer v. United States, 246 U. S. 559, but it simply closes the whole matter of character, disposition and reputation on the prosecution’s case-in-ehief. The state may not show defendant’s prior trouble with the law, specific criminal acts, or ill name among his neighbors, even though such facts might logically be persuasive that he is by propensity a probable perpetrator of the crime. The inquiry is not rejected because character is irrelevant; on the contrary, it is said to weigh too much with the jury and to so overpersuade them as to prejudge one with a bad general record and deny him a fair opportunity to defend against a particular charge. The overriding policy of excluding such evidence, despite its admitted probative value, is the practical experience that its disallowance tends to prevent confusion of issues, unfair surprise and undue prejudice.” Michelson v. United States, 335 U. S. 469, 475-476 (1948) (footnotes omitted).
Rule of Evidence 404(b) reflects this common-law tradition by addressing propensity reasoning directly: “Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith.” Fed. Rule Evid. 404(b). There is, accordingly, no question that propensity would be an “improper basis” for conviction and that evidence of a prior conviction is subject to analysis under Rule 403 for relative probative value and for prejudicial risk of misuse as propensity evidence. Cf. 1 J. Strong, McCormick on Evidence 780 (4th ed. 1992) (hereinafter McCormick) (Rule 403 prejudice may occur, for example, when “evidence of convictions for prior, unrelated crimes may lead a juror to think that since the defendant already has a criminal record, an erroneous conviction would not be quite as serious as would otherwise be the case”). 403 balanc-
As for the ing, two basic possibilities present themselves. An item of evidence might be viewed as an island, with estimates of its own probative value and unfairly prejudicial risk the sole reference points in deciding whether the danger substantially outweighs the value and Whether the evidence ought to be excluded. Or the question of admissibility might be seen as inviting further comparisons to take account of the full evidentiary context of the case as the court understands it when the ruling must be made. This second approach would start out like the first but be ready to go further. On objection, the court would decide whether a particular item of evidence raised a danger of unfair prejudice. If it did, the judge would go on to evaluate the degrees of probative value and unfair prejudice not only for the item in question but for any actually available substitutes as well. If an alternative were found to have substantially the same or greater probative value but a lower danger of unfair prejudice, sound judicial discretion would discount the value of the item first offered and exclude it if its discounted probative value were substantially outweighed by unfairly prejudicial risk. As we will explain later on, the judge would have to make these calculations with an appreciation of the offering party’s need for evidentiary richness and narrative integrity in presenting a case, and the mere fact that two pieces of evidence might go to the same point would not, of course, necessarily mean that only one of them might come in. It would only mean that a judge applying Rule 403 could reasonably apply some discount to the probative value of an item of evidence when faced with less risky alternative proof going to the same point. Even under this second approach, as we explain below, a defendant’s Rule 403 objection offering to concede a point generally cannot prevail over the Government’s choice to offer evidence showing guilt and all the circumstances surrounding the offense. See infra, at 186-189.
The first understanding of the Rule is open to a very telling objection. That reading would leave the party offering evidence with the option to structure a trial in whatever way would produce the maximum unfair prejudice consistent with relevance. He could choose the available alternative carrying the greatest threat of improper influence, despite the availability of less prejudicial but equally probative evidence. The worst he would have to fear would be a ruling sustaining a Rule 403 objection, and if that occurred, he could simply fall back to offering substitute evidence. This would be a strange rule. It would be very odd for the law of evidence to recognize the danger of unfair prejudice only to confer such a degree of autonomy on the party subject to temptation, and the Rules of Evidence are not so odd.
Rather, a reading of the companions to Rule 403, and of the commentaries that went with them to Congress, makes it clear that what counts as the Rule 403 “probative value” of an item of evidence, as distinct from its Rule 401 “relevance,” may be calculated by comparing evidentiary alternatives. The Committee Notes to Rule 401 explicitly say that a party’s concession is pertinent to the court’s discretion to exclude evidence on the point conceded. Such a concession, according to the Notes, will sometimes “call for the exclusion of evidence offered to prove [the] point conceded by the opponent....” Advisory Committee’s Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 401, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 859. As already mentioned, the Notes make it clear that such rulings should be made not on the basis of Rule 401 relevance but on “such considerations as waste of time and undue prejudice (see Rule 403)....” Ibid. The Notes to Rule 403 then take up the point by stating that when a court considers “whether to exclude on grounds of unfair prejudice,” the “availability of other means of proof may... be an appropriate factor.” Advisory Committee’s Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 403, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 860. The point gets a reprise in the Notes to Rule 404(b), dealing with admissibility when a given evidentiary item has the dual nature of legitimate evidence of an element and illegitimate evidence of character: “No mechanical solution is offered. The determination must be made whether the danger of undue prejudice outweighs the probative value of the evidence in view of the availability of other means of proof and other facts appropriate for making decision of this kind under 403.” Advisory Committee’s Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 404, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 861. Thus the notes leave no question that when Rule 403 confers discretion by providing that evidence “may” be excluded, the discretionary judgment may be informed not only by assessing an evidentiary item’s twin tendencies, but by placing the result of that assessment alongside similar assessments of evidentiary alternatives. See 1 McCormick 782, and n. 41 (suggesting that Rule 403’s “probative value” signifies the “marginal probative value” of the evidence relative to the other evidence in the case); 22 C. Wright & K. Graham, Federal Practice and Procedure § 5250, pp. 546-547 (1978) (“The probative worth of any particular bit of evidence is obviously affected by the scarcity or abundance of other evidence on the same point”).
2
In dealing with the specific problem raised by § 922(g)(1) and its prior-conviction element, there can be no question that evidence of the name or nature of the prior offense generally carries a risk of unfair prejudice to the defendant. That risk will vary from case to case, for the reasons already given, but will be substantial whenever the official record offered by the Government would be arresting enough to lure a juror into a sequence of bad character reasoning. Where a prior conviction was for a gun crime or one similar to other charges in a pending case the risk of unfair prejudice would be especially obvious, and Old Chief sensibly worried that the prejudicial effect of his prior assault conviction, significant enough with respect to the current gun charges alone, would take on added weight from the related assault charge against him.
The District Court was also presented with alternative, relevant, admissible evidence of the prior conviction by Old Chief’s offer to stipulate, evidence necessarily subject to the District Court’s consideration on the motion to exclude the record offered by the Government. Although Old Chief’s formal offer to stipulate was, strictly, to enter a formal agreement with the Government to be given to the jury, even without the Government’s acceptance his proposal amounted to an offer to admit that the prior-conviction element was satisfied, and a defendant’s admission is, of course, good evidence. See Fed. Rule Evid. 801(d)(2)(A). have been
Old Chief’s proffered admission would, in fact, have been not merely relevant but seemingly conclusive evidence of the element. The statutory language in which the prior-conviction requirement is couched shows no congressional concern with the specific name or nature of the prior offense beyond what is necessary to place it within the broad category of qualifying felonies, and Old Chief clearly meant to admit that his felony did qualify, by stipulating “that the Government has proven one of the essential elements of the offense.” App. 7. As a consequence, although the name of the prior offense may have been technically relevant, it addressed no detail in the definition of the prior-conviction element that would not have been covered by the stipulation or admission. Logic, then, seems to side with Old Chief.
3
There is, however, one more question to be considered before deciding whether Old Chief’s offer was to supply eviden-tiary value at least equivalent to what the Government’s own evidence carried. In arguing that the stipulation or admission would not have carried equivalent value, the Government invokes the familiar, standard rule that the prosecution is entitled to prove its case by evidence of its own choice, or, more exactly, that a criminal defendant may not stipulate or admit his way out of the full evidentiary force of the case as the Government chooses to present it. The authority usually cited for this rule is Parr v. United States, 255 F. 2d 86 (CA5), cert. denied, 358 U. S. 824 (1958), in which the Fifth Circuit explained that the “reason for the rule is to permit a party ‘to present to the jury a picture of the events relied upon. To substitute for such a picture a naked admission might have the effect to rob the evidence of much of its fair and legitimate weight.’ ” 255 F. 2d, at 88 (quoting Dunning v. Maine Central R. Co., 91 Me. 87, 39 A. 352, 356 (1897)).
This is unquestionably true as a general matter. The “fair and legitimate weight” of conventional evidence showing individual thoughts and acts amounting to a crime reflects the fact that making a case with testimony and tangible things not only satisfies the formal definition of an offense, but tells a colorful story with descriptive richness. Unlike an abstract premise, whose force depends on going precisely to a particular step in a course of reasoning, a piece of evidence may address any number of separate elements, striking hard just because it shows so much at once; the account of a shooting that establishes capacity and causation may tell just as much about the triggerman’s motive and intent. Evidence thus has force beyond any linear scheme of reasoning, and as its pieces come together a narrative gains momentum, with power not only to support conclusions but to sustain the willingness of jurors to draw the inferences, whatever they may be, necessary to reach an honest verdict. This persuasive power of the concrete and particular is often essential to the capacity of jurors to satisfy the obligations that the law places on them. Jury duty is usually unsought and sometimes resisted, and it may be as difficult for one juror suddenly to face the findings that can send another human being to prison, as it is for another to hold out conscientiously for acquittal. When a juror’s duty does seem hard, the eviden-tiary account of what a defendant has thought and done can accomplish what no set of abstract statements ever could, not just to prove a fact but to establish its human signifi-canee, and so to implicate the law’s moral underpinnings and a juror’s obligation to sit in judgment. Thus, the prosecution may fairly seek to place its evidence before the jurors, as much to tell a story of guiltiness as to support an inference of guilt, to convince the jurors that a guilty verdict would be morally reasonable as much as to point to the discrete elements of a defendant’s legal fault. Cf. United States v. Gilliam, 994 F. 2d 97, 100-102 (CA2), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 927 (1993).
But there is something even more to the prosecution’s interest in resisting efforts to replace the evidence of its choice with admissions and stipulations, for beyond the power of conventional evidence to support allegations and give life to the moral underpinnings of law’s claims, there lies the need for evidence in all its particularity to satisfy the jurors’ expectations about what proper proof should be. Some such demands they bring with them to the courthouse, assuming, for example, that a charge of using a firearm to commit an offense will be proven by introducing a gun in evidence. A prosecutor who fails to produce one, or some good reason for his failure, has something to be concerned about. “If [jurors’] expectations are not satisfied, triers of fact may penalize the party who disappoints them by drawing a negative inference against that party.” Saltzburg, A Special Aspect of Relevance: Countering Negative Inferences Associated with the Absence of Evidence, 66 Calif. L. Rev. 1011, 1019 (1978) (footnotes omitted). Expectations may also arise in jurors’ minds simply from the experience of a trial itself. The use of witnesses to describe a train of events naturally related can raise the prospect of learning about every ingredient of that natural sequence the same way. If suddenly the prosecution presents some occurrence in the series differently, as by announcing a stipulation or admission, the effect may be like saying, “never mind what’s behind the door,” and jurors may well wonder what they are being kept from knowing. A party seemingly responsible for cloaking something has reason for apprehension, and the prosecution with its burden of proof may prudently demur at a defense request to interrupt the flow of evidence telling the story in the usual way.
In sum, the accepted rule that the prosecution is entitled to prove its case free from any defendant’s option to stipulate the evidence away rests on good sense. A syllogism is not a story, and a naked proposition in a courtroom may be no match for the robust evidence that would be used to prove it. People who hear a story interrupted by gaps of abstraction may be puzzled at the missing chapters, and jurors asked to rest a momentous decision on the story’s truth can feel put upon at being asked to take responsibility knowing that more could be said than they have heard. A convincing tale can be told with economy, but when economy becomes a break in the natural sequence of narrative evidence, an assurance that the missing link is really there is never more than second best.
4
This recognition that the prosecution with its burden of persuasion needs evidentiary depth to tell a continuous story has, however, virtually no application when the point at issue is a defendant’s legal status, dependent on some judgment rendered wholly independently of the concrete events of later criminal behavior charged against him. As in this case, the choice of evidence for such an element is usually not between eventful narrative and abstract proposition, but between propositions of slightly varying abstraction, either a record saying that conviction for some crime occurred at a certain time or a statement admitting the same thing without naming the particular offense. The issue of substituting one statement for the other normally arises only when the record of conviction would not be admissible for any purpose beyond proving status, so that excluding it would not deprive the prosecution of evidence with multiple utility; if, indeed, there were a justification for receiving evidence of the nature of prior acts on some issue other than status (i. e., to prove “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident,” Fed. Rule Evid. 404(b)), Rule 404(b) guarantees the opportunity to seek its admission. Nor can it be argued that the events behind the prior conviction are proper nourishment for the jurors’ sense of obligation to vindicate the public interest. The issue is not whether concrete details of the prior crime should come to the jurors’ attention but whether the name or general character of that crime is to be disclosed. Congress, however, has made it plain that distinctions among generic felonies do not count for this purpose; the fact of the qualifying conviction is alone what matters under the statute. “A defendant falls within the category simply by virtue of past conviction for any [qualifying] crime ranging from possession of short lobsters, see 16 U. S. C. § 3372, to the most aggravated murder.” Tavares, 21 F. 3d, at 4. The most the jury needs to know is that the conviction admitted by the defendant falls within the class of crimes that Congress thought should bar a convict from possessing a gun, and this point may be made readily in a defendant’s admission and underscored in the court’s jury instructions. Finally, the most obvious reason that the general presumption that the prosecution may choose its evidence is so remote from application here is that proof of the defendant’s status goes to an element entirely outside the natural sequence of what the defendant is charged with thinking and doing to commit the current offense. Proving status without telling exactly why that status was imposed leaves no gap in the story of a defendant’s subsequent criminality, and its demonstration by stipulation or admission neither displaces a chapter from a continuous sequence of conventional evidence nor comes across as an officious substitution, to confuse or offend or provoke reproach.
Given these peculiarities of the element of felony-convict status and of admissions and the like when used to prove it, there is no cognizable difference between the evidentiary significance of an admission and of the legitimately probative component of the official record the prosecution would prefer to place in evidence. For purposes of the Rule 408 weighing of the probative against the prejudicial, the functions of the competing evidence are distinguishable only by the risk inherent in the one and wholly absent from the other. In this ease, as in any other in which the prior conviction is for an offense likely to support conviction on some improper ground, the only reasonable conclusion was that the risk of unfair prejudice did substantially outweigh the discounted probative value of the record of conviction, and it was an abuse of discretion to admit the record when an admission was available. What we have said shows why this will be the general rule when proof of convict status is at issue, just as the prosecutor’s choice will generally survive a Rule 403 analysis when a defendant seeks to force the substitution of an admission for evidence creating a coherent narrative of his thoughts and actions in perpetrating the offense for which he is being tried. to the
The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Ninth Circuit for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered.
It is so ordered.
The standard of review applicable to the evidentiary rulings of the district court is abuse of discretion. United States v. Abel, 469 U. S. 45, 54-55 (1984).
Proposals for instructing the jury in this ease proved to be perilous. We will not discuss Old Chief’s proposed instruction beyond saying that, even on his own legal theory, revision would have been required to dispel ambiguity. The jury could not have said whether the instruction that Old Chief had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year meant that, as a matter of law, his conviction fell within the definition of “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,” or was instead merely a statement of fact, in which case the jurors could not have determined whether the predicate offense was within one of the statute’s categorical exceptions, a “state... misdemeanor... punishable by a term... of two years or less” or a “business” crime. The District Court did not, however, deny Old Chief’s motion because of the artless instruction he proposed, but because of the general rule, to be discussed below, that permits the Government to choose its own evidence. defective even under the
discussed While Old Chief’s proposed instruction was defective even under the law as he viewed it, the instruction actually given was erroneous even on the Government’s view of the law. The District Court charged, “You have also heard evidence that the defendant has previously been convicted of a felony. You may consider that evidence only as it may affect the defendant’s believability as a witness. You may not consider a prior conviction as evidence of guilt of the crime for which the defendant is now on trial.” App. 31. This instruction invited confusion. First, of course, if the jury had applied it literally there would have been an acquittal for the wrong reason: Old Chief was on trial for, among other offenses, being a felon in possession, and if the jury had not considered the evidence of prior conviction it could not have found that he was a felon. Second, the remainder of the instruction referred to an issue that was not in the case. While it is true that prior-offense evidence may in a proper case be admissible for impeachment, even if for no other purpose, Fed. Rule Evid. 609, petitioner did not testify at trial; there was no justification for admitting the evidence for impeachment purposes and consequently no basis for the District Court’s suggestion that the jurors could consider the prior conviction as impeachment evidence. The fault for this error lies at least as much with Old Chief as with the District Court, since Old Chief apparently sought some such instruction and withdrew the request only after the court had charged the jury.
“All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority. Evidence which is not relevant is not admissible.” Fed. Rule Evid. 402.
Viewing evidence of the name of the prior offense as relevant, there is no reason to dwell on the Government’s argument that relevance is to be determined with respect to the entire item offered in evidence (here, the entire record of conviction) and not with reference to distinguishable subunits of that object (here, the name of the offense and the sentence received). We see no impediment in general to a district court’s determination, after objection, that some sections of a document are relevant within the meaning of Rule 401, and others irrelevant and inadmissible under Rule 402. refusal to
Petitioner accept an adequate stipulation and jury instruction in the narrow context presented by this ease to be prosecutorial misconduct. The argument is that, since a prosecutor is charged with the pursuit of just convictions, not victory by fair means or foul, any ethical prosecutor must agree to stipulate in the situation here. But any ethical obligation will depend on the construction of Rule 403, and we have no reason to anticipate related ethical lapses once the meaning of the Rule is settled.
It is important that a reviewing court evaluate the trial court’s decision from its perspective when it had to rule and not indulge in review by hindsight. See, for example, United States v. O’Shea, 724 F. 2d 1514, 1517 (CA11 1984), where the appellate court approved the trial court’s pretrial refusal to impose a stipulation on the Government and exclude the Government’s corresponding evidence of past convictions because the trial court had found at that stage that the evidence would quite likely come in anyway on other grounds.
While our discussion has been general because of the general wording of Rule 403, our holding is limited to cases involving proof of felon status. On appellate review of a Rule 403 decision, a defendant must establish abuse of discretion, a standard that is not satisfied by a mere showing of some alternative means of proof that the prosecution in its broad discretion chose not to rely upon.
It is true that a prior offense may be so far removed in time or nature from the current gun charge and any others brought with it that its potential to prejudice the defendant unfairly will be minimal. Some prior offenses, in fact, may even have some potential to prejudice the Government’s case unfairly. Thus an extremely old conviction for a relatively minor felony that nevertheless qualifies under the statute might strike many jurors as a foolish basis for convicting an otherwise upstanding member of the community of otherwise legal gun possession. Since the Government could not,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This appeal presents a challenge to the scope of the remedy allowed by a three-judge District Court for the Middle District of Georgia for failure of appellees to comply with the approval provisions of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c (1970 ed., Supp. V).
In 1968, the State of Georgia enacted a statute intended to stagger the terms of the three members of the Peach County Board of Commissioners of Roads and Revenues. The then-existing statute, adopted in 1964, provided that all three posts were to be filled at four-year intervals. By operation of the 1968 amendment, the single at-large member was to be elected to a two-year term in 1968 and to a four-year term at subsequent general elections. Appellees concede, and the three-judge court found, that the 1968 statute constituted a change in voting procedures subject to the provisions of § 5 and that the change had been implemented without first having been submitted for approval either to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or to the Attorney General as required by § 5.
Four days prior to the August 10, 1976, primary election for the two seats on the Board not including the at-large post, appellants filed this action to enforce the requirements of § 5. Appellants’ requests for declaratory and injunctive relief were not acted upon until after the scheduled 1976 primary and general elections.
-On February 28, 1977, the three-judge court, without a hearing, enjoined further enforcement of the 1968 statute until such time as appellees effected compliance with § 5. However, the District Court refused appellants’ request to set aside the 1976 elections, noting "the rather technical changes made in the county’s election law by the 1968 amendment and, more important, the apparent lack of any discriminatory purpose or effect surrounding the use of the law in the 1976 elections.” In expressly limiting its order to prospective relief, the District Court also relied on our decision in Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544 (1969).
On April 26, 1977, the three-judge court denied appellants’ motion for reconsideration.
In this Court, appellants take the position that the relief awarded in this case is wholly inadequate in failing to remedy the existing § 5 violation. Appellants assert that by refusing either to set aside the 1976 election or to order that all three Board members be elected in 1978, the District Court, at least until the 1980 election, leaves undisturbed the effects of the § 5 violation, thereby acknowledging that, at least for a time, local officials may successfully disregard § 5 requirements.
Appellees urge us to affirm the District Court judgment on grounds that the 1976 election involved the two Board posts which were not mentioned in the 1968 statute. Accordingly, appellees argue, election to these posts is not subject to § 5. However, even assuming that the District Court had the power to effect one of the alternative remedies suggested by appellants, appellees believe that the court below was correct in refusing to do so.
At our request, the United States, as amicus curiae, has filed a brief in this case. The Government takes the view, espoused by appellants, that the 1976 election was affected by the voting change prescribed in the 1968 statute and that the District Court's failure to require prompt compliance with § 5 permits the violation to continue. It is the submission of the United States that the question whether the staggering of Board terms provided for by state' statute in this case necessarily-has a racially discriminatory effect should properly be promptly submitted to either the District Court for the District of Columbia or to the Attorney General in conformity with the approval procedures set forth in § 5.
In Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379 (1971), decided after Allen, supra, we had occasion to address the remedy issue which now confronts us. We indicated in that case that “[i]n certain circumstances ... it might be appropriate to enter an order affording local officials an opportunity to seek federal approval and ordering a new election only if local officials fail to do so or if the required federal approval is not forthcoming.” 400 U. S., at 396-397. The circumstances present here make such a course appropriate.
In this case, appellees’ undisputed obligation to submit the 1968 voting law change to a forum designated by Congress has not been discharged. We conclude that the requirement of federal scrutiny imposed by § 5 should be satisfied by appellees without further delay. Accordingly, we adopt the suggestion of the United States that the District Court should enter an order allowing appellees 30 days within which to apply for approval of the 1968 voting change under § 5. If approval is obtained, the matter will be at an end. If approval is denied, appellants are free to renew to the District Court their request for simultaneous election of all members of the Board at the 1978 general election.
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed insofar as it holds that appellees have violated the approval provisions of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act; the judgment is reversed insofar as it denies affirmative relief, and the case is remanded to the District Court with instructions to issue an order allowing appellees 30 days within which to apply for approval of the 1968 voting change under § 5, and for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. Upon the suggestion of the Solicitor General that the case be remanded to the Court of Appeals in light of what we are informed is the present practice of that court “to appoint an attorney in all cases on direct appeal where the trial judge’s certificate of bad faith is attacked” the petition for writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is vacated and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
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Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Inc. (ASME), is a nonprofit membership corporation organized in 1880 under the laws of the State of New York. This case presents the important issue of the Society’s civil liability under the antitrust laws for acts of its agents performed with apparent authority. Because the judgment of the Court of Appeals upholding civil liability is consistent with the central purposes of the antitrust laws, we affirm that judgment.
I
ASME has over 90,000 members drawn from all fields of mechanical engineering. It has an annual operating budget of over $12 million. It employs a full-time staff, but much of its work is done through volunteers from industry and government. The Society engages in a number of activities, such as publishing a mechanical engineering magazine and conducting educational and research programs.
In addition, ASME promulgates and publishes over 400 separate codes and standards for areas of engineering and industry. These codes, while only advisory, have a powerful influence: federal regulations have incorporated many of them by reference, as have the laws of most States, the ordinances of major cities, and the laws of all the Provinces of Canada. See Brief for Petitioner 2. Obviously, if a manufacturer’s product cannot satisfy the applicable ASME code, it is at a great disadvantage in the marketplace.
Among ASME’s many sets of standards is its Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code. This set, like ASME’s other codes, is very important in the affected industry; it has been adopted by 46 States and all but one of the Canadian Provinces. See id., at 5. Section IV of the code sets forth standards for components of heating boilers, including “low-water fuel cutoffs.” If the water in a boiler drops below a level sufficient to moderate the boiler’s temperature, the boiler can “dry fire” or even explode. A low-water fuel cutoff does what its name implies: when the water in the boiler falls below a certain level, the device blocks the flow of fuel to the boiler before the water level reaches a dangerously low point. To prevent dry firing and boiler explosions, ¶ HG-605 of Section IV provides that each boiler “shall have an automatic low-water fuel cutoff so located as to automatically cut off the fuel supply when the surface of the water falls to the lowest visible part of the water gage glass.” Plaintiffs Exhibit 30A. See 635 F. 2d 118, 121 (CA2 1980).
For some decades, McDonnell & Miller, Inc. (M&M), has dominated the market for low-water fuel cutoffs. But in the mid-1960’s, respondent Hydrolevel Corporation entered the low-water fuel cutoff market with a different version of this device. The relevant distinction, for the purposes of this case, was that Hydrolevel’s fuel cutoff, unlike M&M’s, included a time delay.
In early 1971, Hydrolevel secured an important customer. Brooklyn Union Gas Company, which had purchased M&M’s product for several years, decided to switch to Hydrolevel’s probe. Not surprisingly, M&M was concerned.
Because of its involvement in ASME, M&M was in an advantageous position to react to Hydrolevel’s challenge. ASME’s governing body had delegated the interpretation, formulation, and revision of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code to a Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee. See App. 120. That committee in turn had authorized subcommittees to respond to public inquiries about the interpretation of the code. An M&M vice president, John W. James, was vice chairman of the subcommittee which drafted, revised, and interpreted Section IV, the segment of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code governing low-water fuel cutoffs.
After Hydrolevel obtained the Brooklyn Union Gas account, James and other M&M officials met with T. R. Hardin, the chairman of the Section IV subcommittee. The participants at the meeting planned a course of action. They decided to send an inquiry to ASME’s Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee asking whether a fuel cutoff with a time delay would satisfy the requirements of ¶ HG-605 of Section IV. James and Hardin, as vice chairman and chairman, respectively, of the relevant subcommittee, cooperated in drafting a letter, one they thought would elicit a negative response.
The letter was mailed over the name of Eugene Mitchell, an M&M vice president, to W. Bradford Hoyt, secretary of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee and a full-time ASME employee. App. 62. Following ASME’s standard routine, Hoyt referred the letter to Hardin, as chairman of the subcommittee. Under the procedures of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee, the subcommittee chairman— Hardin — could draft a response to a public inquiry without referring it to the entire subcommittee if he treated it as an “unofficial communication.”
As a result, Hardin, one of the very authors of the inquiry, prepared the response. Id., at 63. Although he retained control over the inquiry by treating the response as “unofficial,” the response was signed by Hoyt, secretary of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee, and it was sent out on April 29, 1971, on ASME stationery. Id., at 64. Predictably, Hardin’s prepared answer, utilized verbatim in the Hoyt letter, condemned fuel cutoffs that incorporated a time delay:
“A low-water fuel cut-off is considered strictly as a safety device and not as some kind of an operating control. Assuming that the water gage glass is located in accordance with the requirements of Par. HG-602(b), it is the intent of Par. HG-605(a) that the low-water fuel cut-off operate immediately and positively when the boiler water level falls to the lowest visible part of the water gage glass.
“There are many and varied designs of heating boilers. If a time delay feature were incorporated in a low-water fuel cut-off, there would be no positive assurance that the boiler water level would not fall to a dangerous point during a time delay period.” Ibid.
As the Court of Appeals in this case observed, the second paragraph of the response does not follow from the first: “If the cut-off is positioned sufficiently above the lowest permissible water level, a cut-off with a time-delay could assure, even allowing for the delay, that the fuel supply would stop by the time the water fell to the lowest visible part of the water-gauge glass.” 685 F. 2d, at 122-123. Hoyt signed and mailed the response without checking its accuracy. See App. 124-126.
As anticipated, M&M seized upon this interpretation of Section IV to discourage customers from buying Hydrolevel’s product. It instructed its salesmen to tell potential customers that Hydrolevel’s fuel cutoff failed to satisfy ASME’s code. See 635 F. 2d, at 123. And M&M’s employees did in fact carry the message of the subcommittee’s response to customers interested in buying fuel cutoffs. Thus, M&M successfully used its position within ASME in an effort to thwart Hydrolevel’s competitive challenge.
Several months later, Hydrolevel learned of the subcommittee interpretation from a former customer. Hydro-level wrote ASME for a copy of the April 29 response. On February 8, 1972, over the signature of the assistant secretary of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee, ASME sent Hydrolevel a letter quoting the two paragraphs of the April 29 interpretation of Section IV. App. 66-67.
On March 23, Hydrolevel’s president wrote Hoyt and demanded that ASME cure the effect of the April 29 letter by sending a correction to whomever might have received it. Id., at 68-73. Hoyt placed Hydrolevel’s complaint on the agenda for the meetings of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Committee and Subcommittee to be held on May 4 and 5.
On May 4, the subcommittee voted to confirm the intent of the first quoted paragraph of the April 29 letter. James, by then the chairman of the subcommittee, reported this recommendation to the committee on May 5. Id., at 82. Thereafter, the committee designated two persons to propose a response to Hydrolevel. Id., at 83. In the end, on June 9 the committee mailed Hydrolevel a reply that “confirmed the intent” of the April 29 letter. Id., at 84. The committee’s letter further advised that there was
“no intent in Section IV to prohibit the use of low water fuel cutoffs having time delays in order to meet the requirements of Par. HG-605(a). This paragraph relates itself to Par. HG-602(b) which specifically delineates the location of the lowest visible part of the water gage glass.” Ibid.
The committee concluded the letter with a warning paragraph suggested by James, see id., at 111-112:
“If a means for retarding control action is incorporated in a low-water fuel cutoff, the termination of the retard function must operate to cutoff the fuel supply before the boiler water level falls below the visible part of the water gage glass.” Id., at 84.
After this response to its complaint, Hydrolevel continued to suffer from market resistance. Two years later, the Wall Street Journal published an article describing Hydrolevel’s predicament in trying to sell a fuel cutoff that many in the industry thought to be in violation of ASME’s code. Wall Street Journal, July 9, 1974, p. 44, col. 1; App. 94-98. Reacting to this story, ASME’s Professional Practice Committee opened an investigation. It never discovered that James had been involved with the original inquiry. In a resolution reporting the results of its investigation, the committee decided that all ASME officials had acted properly. Further, the Professional Practice Committee “commend[ed] [James] for conducting himself in a forthright manner.” Id., at 104.
Subsequently, James’ part in drafting the original letter of inquiry became public because of his testimony in March 1975 before a Senate Subcommittee. See Voluntary Industrial Standards: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 186-199 (1975) (testimony of John W. James of M&M (ITT)); see also id., at 171-185 (testimony of Eugene Mitchell, Manager of Original Equipment Sales, ITT Fluid Handling Division). Within a few months, Hydrolevel filed suit against ITT, ASME, and Hartford in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Hydrolevel alleged that the defendants’ actions had violated §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1 and 2. App. 11. Prior to trial, Hydrolevel sold all its assets, except this suit, for salvage value. Ultimately, ITT and Hartford settled.
The lawsuit proceeded to trial against ASME, as the remaining defendant. Hydrolevel requested the trial court to instruct the jury that ASME could be held liable under the antitrust laws for its agents’ conduct if the agents acted within the scope of their apparent authority. See id., at 59. The District Court, however, rejected this approach and, instead, at ASME’s suggestion, charged the jury that ASME could be held liable only if it had ratified its agents’ actions or if the agents had acted in pursuit of ASME’s interests. The District Court explained to the jury:
“If the officers or agents act on behalf of interests adverse to the corporation or acted for their own economic benefit or the benefit of another person or corporation, and this action was not ratified or adopted by the defendant [ASME], their misconduct cannot be considered that of the corporation with which they are associated.” Id., at 49.
The jury, nonetheless, returned a verdict for Hydrolevel.
Before the Court of Appeals, the parties disputed the sufficiency of the evidence to support a verdict based on the District Court’s instruction. See 635 F. 2d, at 125. But the Court of Appeals chose not to decide whether the evidence was sufficient to demonstrate that ASME had ratified its agents’ actions or that the agents had acted to advance ASME’s interests. Instead, after surveying the law of agency and the policies underlying the antitrust laws, the Court of Appeals concluded that ASME could be held liable if its agents had acted within the scope of their apparent authority. Id., at 124-127. Since, therefore, the District Court had delivered “a charge that was more favorable to the defendant than the law requires,” id., at 127, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on liability, that is, the jury’s finding that ASME was liable under § 1 of the Sherman Act for its agents’ actions.
Because the Court of Appeals’ decision presents an important issue concerning the interpretation of the antitrust laws, we granted certiorari. 452 U. S. 937 (1981).
HH HH
A
As the Court of Appeals observed, under general rules of agency law, principals are liable when their agents act with apparent authority and commit torts analogous to the antitrust violation presented by this case. See generally 10 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Private Corporations ¶ 4886, pp. 400—401 (rev. ed. 1978); W. Seavey, Law of Agency § 92 (1964). For instance, a principal is liable for an agent’s fraud though the agent acts solely to benefit himself, if the agent acts with apparent authority. See, e. g., Standard Surety & Casualty Co. v. Plantsville Nat. Bank, 158 F. 2d 422 (CA2 1946), cert. denied, 331 U. S. 812 (1947). Similarly, a principal is liable for an agent’s misrepresentations that cause pecuniary loss to a third party, when the agent acts within the scope of his apparent authority. Restatement (Second) of Agency §§ 249, 262 (1957) (Restatement); see Rutherford v. Rideout Bank, 11 Cal. 2d 479, 80 P. 2d 978 (1938). Also, if an agent is guilty of defamation, the principal is liable so long as the agent was apparently authorized to make the defamatory statement. Restatement §§ 247, 254. Finally, a principal is responsible if an agent acting with apparent authority tortiously injures the business relations of a third person. Id., § 248 and Comment b, p. 548.
Under an apparent authority theory, “[liability is based upon the fact that the agent’s position facilitates the consummation of the fraud, in that from the point of view of the third person the transaction seems regular on its face and the agent appears to be acting in the ordinary course of the business confided to him.” Id., § 261, Comment a, p. 571. See Record v. Wagner, 100 N. H. 419, 128 A. 2d 921 (1957). As with the April 29 letter issued by the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Subcommittee, the injurious statements are “effective, in part at least, because of the personality of the one publishing it.” Restatement § 247, Comment c, p. 545. In other words, “one who appears to have authority to make statements for the [principal] gives to his statements the weight of the [principal’s] reputation,” ibid. — in this case, the weight of ASME’s acknowledged expertise in boiler safety. See generally W. Prosser, Law of Torts 467 (4th ed. 1971).
ASME’s system of codes and interpretative advice would not be effective if the statements of its agents did not carry with them the assurance that persons in the affected industries could reasonably rely upon their apparent trustworthiness. Behind the principal’s liability under an apparent authority theory, then, is “business expediency — the desire that third persons should be given reasonable protection in dealing with agents.” Restatement § 262, Comment a, p. 572. See Ricketts v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 153 F. 2d 757 (CA2 1946). The apparent authority theory thus benefits both ASME and the public whom ASME attempts to serve through its codes: “It is... for the ultimate interest of persons employing agents, as well as for the benefit of the public, that persons dealing with agents should be able to rely upon apparently true statements by agents who are purporting to act and are apparently acting in the interests of the principal.” Restatement § 262, Comment a, p. 572.
The apparent authority theory has long been the settled rule in the federal system. See Ricketts v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 153 F. 2d, at 759. In Friedlander v. Texas & Pacific R. Co., 130 U. S. 416 (1889), the Court held that an employer was not liable for the fraud of his agent, when the employer could derive no benefit from the agent’s fraud. But Gleason v. Seaboard Air Line R. Co., 278 U. S. 349 (1929), discarded that rule. In Gleason, a railroad’s employee sought to enrich himself by defrauding a customer of the railroad through a forged bill of lading. The Court of Appeals had absolved the railroad from liability because the employee perpetrated the fraud solely for his own benefit. But this Court reversed, overruling Friedlander. 278 U. S., at 357. Noting that “there was... no want of authority in the agent,” id., at 355, the Court held the railroad liable despite the agent’s desire to benefit only himself. It explained that “few doctrines of the law are more firmly established or more in harmony with accepted notions of social policy than that of the liability of the principal without fault of his own.” Id., at 356.
In a wide variety of areas, the federal courts, like this Court in Gleason, have imposed liability upon principals for the misdeeds of agents acting with apparent authority. See, e. g., Dark v. United States, 641 F. 2d 805 (CA9 1981) (federal tax liability); National Acceptance Co. v. Coal Producers Assn., 604 F. 2d 540 (CA7 1979) (common-law fraud); Holloway v. Howerdd, 536 F. 2d 690 (CA6 1976) (federal securities fraud); United States v. Sanchez, 521 F. 2d 244 (CA5 1975) (bail bond fraud), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 817 (1976); Kerbs v. Fall River Industries, Inc., 502 F. 2d 731 (CA10 1974) (federal securities fraud); Gilmore v. Constitution Life Ins. Co., 502 F. 2d 1344 (CA10 1974) (common-law fraud).
In the past, the Court has refused to permit broad common-law barriers to relief to constrict the antitrust private right of action. Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., 392 U. S. 134 (1968). It stated there that “the purposes of the antitrust laws are best served by insuring that the private action will be an ever-present threat” to deter antitrust violations. Id., at 139. In Perma Life Mufflers, the Court honored that purpose by denying defendants the right to invoke a common-law defense (the doctrine of in pari delicto) that was inconsistent with the antitrust laws. In this case, we can honor the statutory purpose best by interpreting the antitrust private cause of action to be at least as broad as a plaintiff’s right to sue for analogous torts, absent indications that the antitrust laws are not intended to reach so far. See Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U. S. 630, 639 (1981); Perma Life Mufflers, 392 U. S., at 138. Our remaining inquiry, then, is whether ASME’s liability under a theory of apparent authority is consistent with the intent behind the antitrust laws.
B
We hold that the apparent authority theory is consistent with the congressional intent to encourage competition. ASME wields great power in the Nation’s economy. Its codes and standards influence the policies of numerous States and cities, and, as has been said about “so-called voluntary standards” generally, its interpretations of its guidelines “may result in economic prosperity or economic failure, for a number of businesses of all sizes throughout the country,” as well as entire segments of an industry. H. R. Rep. No. 1981, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 75 (1968). ASME can be said to be “in reality an extra-governmental agency, which prescribes rules, for the regulation and restraint of interstate commerce.” Fashion Originators’ Guild of America, Inc. v. FTC, 312 U. S. 457, 465 (1941). When it cloaks its subcommittee officials with the authority of its reputation, ASME permits those agents to affect the destinies of businesses and thus gives them the power to frustrate competition in the marketplace.
The facts of this case dramatically illustrate the power of ASME’s agents to restrain competition. M&M instigated the submission of a single inquiry to an ASME subcommittee. For its efforts, M&M secured a mere “unofficial” response authored by a single ASME subcommittee chairman. Yet the force of ASME’s reputation is so great that M&M was able to use that one “unofficial” response to injure seriously the business of a competitor.
Furthermore, a standard-setting organization like ASME can be rife with opportunities for anticompetitive activity. Many of ASME’s officials are associated with members of the industries regulated by ASME’s codes. Although, undoubtedly, most serve ASME without concern for the interests of their corporate employers, some may well view their positions with ASME, at least in part, as an opportunity to benefit their employers. When the great influence of ASME’s reputation is placed at their disposal, the less altruistic of ASME’s agents have an opportunity to harm their employers’ competitors through manipulation of ASME’s codes.
Again, the facts of this case are illustrative. Hardin was able to issue an interpretation of ASME’s Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code which in effect declared Hydrolevel’s product unsafe. Hardin’s interpretation of the code was sent out under Hoyt’s name as secretary of the committee, though Hoyt exercised only ministerial duties and played no role in confirming the substance of the April 29, 1971, letter. See App. 125-126. Thus, without any meaningful safeguards, ASME entrusted the interpretation of one of its codes to Hardin. As a result, M&M was able to use ASME’s reputation to hinder Hydrolevel’s competitive threat.
A principal purpose of the antitrust private cause of action, see 15 U. S. C. § 15, is, of course, to deter anticompetitive practices. Pfizer Inc. v. Government of India, 434 U. S. 308, 314 (1978); Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., 392 U. S., at 139; see Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 342-344 (1979). It is true that imposing liability on ASME’s agents themselves will have some deterrent effect, because they will know that if they violate the antitrust laws through their participation in ASME, they risk the consequences of personal civil liability. But if, in addition, ASME is civilly liable for the antitrust violations of its agents acting with apparent authority, it is much more likely that similar antitrust violations will not occur in the future. “[Pressure [will be] brought on [the organization] to see to it that [its] agents abide by the law.” United States v. A & P Trucking Co., 358 U. S. 121, 126 (1958). Only ASME can take systematic steps to make improper conduct on the part of all its agents unlikely, and the possibility of civil liability will inevitably be a powerful incentive for ASME to take those steps. Thus, a rule that imposes liability on the standard-setting organization — which is best situated to prevent antitrust violations through the abuse of its reputation — is most faithful to the congressional intent that the private right of action deter antitrust violations.
The wisdom of the apparent authority rule becomes evident when it is compared to the alternative approaches advanced by the District Court’s instructions to the jury, see supra, at 564-565, and advocated by ASME. First, ASME insists that it should not be held liable unless it ratified the actions of its agents. But a ratification rule would have anti-competitive effects, directly contrary to the purposes of the antitrust laws. ASME could avoid liability by ensuring that it remained ignorant of its agents’ conduct, and the antitrust laws would therefore encourage ASME to do as little as possible to oversee its agents. Thus, ASME’s ratification theory would actually enhance the likelihood that the Society’s reputation would be used for anticompetitive ends.
Second, ASME contends that it should not be held liable unless its agents act with an intent to benefit the Society. This proposed rule falls short, though, because it is simply irrelevant to the purposes of the antitrust laws. Whether they intend to benefit ASME or not, ASME’s agents exercise economic power because they act with the force of the Society’s reputation behind them. And, whether they act in part to benefit ASME or solely to benefit themselves or their employers, ASME’s agents can have the same anticompetitive effects on the marketplace. The anticompetitive practices of ASME’s agents are repugnant to the antitrust laws even if the agents act without any intent to aid ASME, and ASME should be encouraged to eliminate the anticompetitive practices of all its agents acting with apparent authority, especially those who use their positions in ASME solely for their own benefit or the benefit of their employers.
C
Finally, ASME makes two additional arguments in an attempt to avoid antitrust liability. It characterizes treble damages for antitrust violations as punitive, and urges that under traditional agency law the courts do not employ apparent authority to impose punitive damages upon a principal for the acts of its agents. See Lake Shore & M. S. R. Co. v. Prentice, 147 U. S. 101 (1893); United States v. Ridglea State Bank, 357 F. 2d 495 (CA5 1966); see also Restatement § 217C. It is true that antitrust treble damages were designed in part to punish past violations of the antitrust laws. See Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U. S., at 639. But treble damages were also designed to deter future antitrust violations. Ibid. Moreover, the antitrust private action was created primarily as a remedy for the victims of antitrust violations. Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 485-486 (1977); see Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U. S. 720, 746-747 (1977). Treble damages “make the remedy meaningful by counterbalancing ‘the difficulty of maintaining a private suit’ ” under the antitrust laws. Brunswick Corp., supra, at 486, n. 10, quoting 21 Cong. Rec. 2456 (1890) (remarks of Sen. Sherman). Since treble damages serve as a means of deterring antitrust violations and of compensating victims, it is in accord with both the purposes of the antitrust laws and principles of agency law to hold ASME liable for the acts of agents committed with apparent authority. See Restatement § 217C, Comment c, p. 474 (rule limiting principal’s liability for punitive damages does not apply to special statutes giving triple damages).
In addition, ASME contends it should not bear the risk of loss for antitrust violations committed by its agents acting with apparent authority because it is a nonprofit organization, not a business seeking profit. But it is beyond debate that nonprofit organizations can be held liable under the antitrust laws. See, e. g., Radiant Burners, Inc. v. Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co., 364 U. S. 656 (1961); Associated Press v. United States, 326 U. S. 1 (1945). Although ASME may not operate for profit, it does derive benefits from its codes, including the fees the Society receives for its code-related publications and services, the prestige the codes bring to the Society, the influence they permit ASME to wield, and the aid the standards provide the profession of mechanical engineering. Since the antitrust violation in this ¿ase could not have occurred without ASME’s codes and ASME’s method of administering them, it is not unfitting that ASME be liable for the damages arising from that violation. See W. Prosser, Law of Torts 459 (4th ed. 1971); W. Seavey, Law of Agency § 83 (1964). Furthermore, as shown above, ASME is in the best position to take precautions that will prevent future antitrust violations. Thus, the fact that ASME is a nonprofit organization does not weaken the force of the antitrust and agency principles that indicate that ASME should be liable for Hydrolevel’s antitrust injuries.
h — i HH
We need not delineate today the outer boundaries of the antitrust liability of standard-setting organizations for the actions of their agents committed with apparent authority. There is no doubt here that Hardin acted within his apparent authority when he answered an inquiry about ASME’s Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code as the chairman of the relevant ASME subcommittee. And in this case, we do not face a challenge to a good-faith interpretation of an ASME code reasonably supported by health or safety considerations. See Silver v. New York Stock Exchange, 373 U. S. 341 (1963). We have no difficulty in finding that this set of facts falls well within the scope of ASME’s liability on an apparent authority theory.
When ASME’s agents act in its name, they are able to affect the lives of large numbers of people and the competitive fortunes of businesses throughout the country. By holding ASME liable under the antitrust laws for the antitrust violations of its agents committed with apparent authority, we recognize the important role of ASME and its agents in the economy, and we help to ensure that standard-setting organizations will act with care when they permit their agents to speak for them. We thus make it less likely that competitive challengers like Hydrolevel will be hindered by agents of organizations like ASME in the future.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
So ordered.
M&M’s fuel cutoff is a floating bulb that falls with the boiler’s water level. When the level reaches the critical point, the bulb causes a switch to cut off the boiler’s fuel supply. Hydrolevel’s product, in contrast, was an immovable probe inserted in the side of the boiler; when the water level dropped below the probe, the fuel supply was interrupted. Because water in a boiler surges and bubbles, the level intermittently would seem to fall slightly below the probe even though the overall level remained safe. To prevent premature fuel cutoff because of these intermittent fluctuations, Hydrolevel’s probe included a time delay that allowed the boiler to operate for a brief period after the water level dropped beneath the probe.
Hardin was an executive vice president of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. A controlling interest in Hartford was owned by International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, which acquired M&M within the year. See 635 F. 2d 118, 122, n. 2 (CA2 1980).
Actually, the committee “confirmed the intent” of ASME’s February 8, 1972, letter to Hydrolevel. That letter, however, simply quoted the original April 29, 1971, response. See App. 66-67.
The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the District Court after finding that the damages awarded Hydrolevel were excessive and that the District Court had made errors in its calculation of damages. 635 F. 2d, at 128-131. The damages issue is the subject of a pending cross-petition for certiorari, No. 80-1771, filed April 22, 1981. Hydrolevel’s damages arguments are not now before us, and we express no opinion on that aspect of the Court of Appeals’ decision.
“Apparent authority is the power to affect the legal relations of another person by transactions with third persons, professedly as agent for the other, arising from and in accordance with the other’s manifestations to such third persons.” Restatement (Second) of Agency § 8 (1957).
The dissent delves into the agency law of the late 19th century and concludes that “it was far from clear” that a principal could be held liable for the deliberate torts of his agent. Post, at 587. But in fact, while there was a division of authority, many courts had made it very clear that principals could be held liable for torts analogous to the antitrust violations committed by ASME’s agents.
For instance, a treatise of that era noted that a “considerable number of American courts” had held the principal liable for the agent’s fraud, though the agent acted solely for his own benefit, and praised a leading opinion for its “singular ability and lucidity.” E. Huffcut, Elements of the Law of Agency § 155, p. 168 (1895). Indeed, the author commented that the cases holding a principal liable when his agent acted with apparent authority and for the agent’s sole benefit were “too various to be referred to in detail.” Id., §157.
In holding a telegraph company liable for the fraud of its agent committed solely for his personal benefit, one court summarized the reasoning that became widespread during the last half of the 19th century: “Persons receiving dispatches in the usual course of business, when there is nothing to excite suspicion, are entitled to rely upon the presumption that the agents intrusted with the performance of the business of the company have faithfully and honestly discharged the duty owed by it to its patrons, and that they would not knowingly send a false or forged message.” McCord v. Western Union Tel. Co., 39 Minn. 181, 185, 39 N. W. 315, 317 (1888). See, e. g., Bank of Batavia v. New York, L. E. & W. R. Co., 106 N. Y. 195, 12 N. E. 433 (1887).
Thus, based on the agency law of the late 19th century, there is ample support for holding ASME liable, particularly since Congress intended that the antitrust laws be given broad, remedial effect. See, e. g., Pfizer Inc. v. Government of India, 434 U. S. 308, 312-313 (1978). But, as we have made clear before, Victorian common law does not define the limits of the antitrust private action. Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., 392 U. S. 134 (1968) (refusing to apply the ancient defense of in pari delicto in antitrust cases). We look to the general principles of the common law for guidance in deciding the scope of the antitrust cause of action, see National Society of Professional Engineers v. United States, 435 U. S. 679, 688 (1978), but our decisions are determined by the congressional intent that led to the enactment of the
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question we address in this case is whether the restrictions on federal habeas review of Fourth Amendment claims announced in Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465 (1976), should be extended to Sixth Amendment claims of ineffective assistance of counsel where the principal allegation and manifestation of inadequate representation is counsel’s failure to file a timely motion to suppress evidence allegedly obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
I
Respondent, Neil Morrison, was convicted by the State of New Jersey of raping a 15-year-old girl. The case presented by the State at respondent’s bench trial consisted of scientific evidence and of the testimony of the victim, her mother, and the police officers who handled the victim’s complaint.
The victim testified that Morrison, who was her employer, had taken her to his apartment, where he forced her onto his bed and raped her. Upon returning home, the girl related the incident to her mother, who, after first summoning Morrison and asking for his account of events, phoned the police. The police came to the victim’s home and transported her to the hospital, where she was examined and tested for indicia of a sexual assault.
The State also called as a witness Detective Dolores Most, one of the officers who investigated the rape complaint. Most testified that she accompanied the victim to Morrison’s apartment building a few hours after the rape. Morrison was not at home, but another tenant in the building let them into respondent’s one-room apartment. While there, Most stated, she seized a sheet from respondent’s bed.
At this point in the testimony respondent’s counsel objected to the introduction of the sheet and to any testimony concerning it on the ground that Most had seized it without a search warrant. New Jersey Court Rules, however, require that suppression motions be made within 30 days of indictment unless the time is enlarged by the trial court for good cause. N. J. Ct. Rule 3:5-7. Because the 30-day deadline had long since expired, the trial judge ruled that counsel’s motion was late. Defense counsel explained to the court that he had not heard of the seizure until the day before, when trial began, and that his client could not have known of it because the police had not left a receipt for the sheet. The prosecutor responded that defense counsel, who had been on the case from the beginning, had never asked for any discovery. Had trial counsel done so, the prosecutor observed, police reports would have revealed the search and seizure. The prosecutor stated further that one month before trial he had sent defense counsel a copy of the laboratory report concerning the tests conducted on stains and hairs found on the sheets.
Asked repeatedly by the trial court why he had not conducted any discovery, respondent’s attorney asserted that it was the State’s obligation to inform him of its case against his client, even though he made no request for discovery. The judge rejected this assertion and stated: “I hate to say it, but 1 have to say it, that you were remiss. I think this evidence was there and available to you for examination and inquiry.” 2 Tr. 114. Defense counsel then attempted to justify his omission on the ground that he had not expected to go to trial because he had been told that the victim did not wish to proceed. The judge rejected this justification also, reminding counsel that once an indictment is handed down, the decision to go through with the complaint no longer belongs to the victim, and that it requires a court order to dismiss an indictment. Id., at 115. While the judge agreed that defense counsel had “br[ought] about a very valid basis... for suppression... if the motion had been brought and timely made,” he refused “to entertain a motion to suppress in the middle of the trial.” Id., at 110.
The State then called a number of expert witnesses who had conducted laboratory tests on the stains and hairs found on the sheet, on a stain found on the victim’s underpants, and on blood and hair samples provided by the victim and respondent. This testimony established that the bedsheet had been stained with semen from a man with type 0 blood, that the stains on the victim’s underwear similarly exhibited semen from a man with type 0 blood, that the defendant had type 0 blood, that vaginal tests performed on the girl at the hospital demonstrated the presence of sperm, and that hairs recovered from the sheet were morphologically similar to head hair of both Morrison and the victim. Defense counsel aggressively cross-examined all of the expert witnesses.
The defense called four friends and acquaintances of the defendant and the defendant himself in an attempt to establish a different version of the facts. The defense theory was that the girl and her mother fabricated the rape in order to punish respondent for being delinquent with the girl’s wages. According to Morrison, the girl and her mother had not intended to go through with the prosecution, but ultimately they found it impossible to extricate themselves from their lies. Morrison admitted that he had taken the girl to his apartment, but denied having had intercourse with her. He claimed that his sexual activity with other women accounted for the stains on his sheet, and that a hair from the girl’s head was on his sheet because she had seated herself on his bed. Defense counsel also implied that the girl’s underwear and vaginal secretions tested positive for semen and sperm because she probably had recently engaged in relations with the father of her baby. Counsel did not, however, call the girl’s boyfriend to testify or have him tested for blood type, an omission upon which the prosecution commented in closing argument.
The trial judge, in rendering his verdict, noted: “As in most cases nothing is cut and dry. There are discrepancies in the State’s case, there are discrepancies in the defense as it’s presented.” 6 Tr. 86. After pointing out some of the more troublesome inconsistencies in the testimony of several of the witnesses, the judge declared his conclusion that the State had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
After trial, respondent dismissed his attorney and retained new counsel for his appeal. On appeal, respondent alleged ineffective assistance of counsel and error in the trial court’s refusal to entertain the suppression motion during trial. The appeals court announced summarily that it found no merit in either claim and affirmed respondent’s conviction. The Supreme Court of New Jersey subsequently denied respondent’s petition for discretionary review. Respondent then sought postconviction relief in the New Jersey Superior Court, from the same judge who had tried his case. There Morrison presented the identical issues he had raised on direct appeal. The court denied relief on the ground that it was bound by the appellate court’s resolution of those issues against respondent.
Respondent then sought a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court, again raising claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and erroneous admission of illegally seized evidence. The District Court ruled that because respondent did not allege that the State had denied him an opportunity to litigate his Fourth Amendment claim fully and fairly, direct consideration of this claim on federal habeas review was barred by Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465 (1976). 579 F. Supp. 796 (NJ 1984). The District Court did find respondent’s ineffective-assistance claim meritorious.
Because the District Court rendered its decision before this Court announced the standards to be applied to claims of constitutionally deficient representation in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), the District Court relied on Third Circuit precedent for guidance, particularly United States v. Baynes, 687 F. 2d 659 (1982), and Moore v. United States, 432 F. 2d 730 (1970). Like Strickland, these cases required a two-pronged inquiry into counsel’s competence and into the prejudicial effect of counsel’s unprofessional errors. With respect to trial counsel’s competence, the District Court used as its standard the “‘customary skill and knowledge which normally prevails at the time and place.’” 579 F. Supp., at 802 (quoting Moore, supra, at 736). Noting that this standard “‘entails a careful inquiry into the particular circumstances surrounding each case,’” 579 F. Supp., at 802 (quoting Baynes, supra, at 665), the court concluded:
“[Cjounsel failed to conduct any meaningful pretrial discovery, and thus was totally unaware that certain damaging evidence might have been the appropriate subject for a suppression motion. Counsel seems to have acted on the misapprehension that the State was obligated to turn over anything that the defense might be interested in examining. Little else was offered by way of excuse by [Morrison’s] lawyer in the face of repeated criticism by the state trial judge, except for counsel’s rather remarkable attempt to justify his conduct by noting that up until trial he had been told that the victim ‘didn’t want to go ahead with this case.’... Based on the unmitigated negligence of petitioner’s trial counsel in failing to conduct any discovery, combined with the likelihood of success of a suppression motion had it been timely made, we find that petitioner was deprived of effective representation.” 579 F. Supp., at 802-803.
The District Court then determined that, measured by the harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard prescribed by Baynes, supra, respondent had been prejudiced by counsel’s ineffectiveness and issued a conditional writ of habeas corpus ordering Morrison’s release unless New Jersey should retry him.
Although the District Court did not address the relevance of Stone, supra, to respondent’s Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, the Court of Appeals did. Relying on both the language of Stone and the different natures of Fourth and Sixth Amendment claims, the Court of Appeals concluded that Stone should not be extended to bar federal habeas consideration of Sixth Amendment claims based on counsel’s alleged failure competently to litigate Fourth Amendment claims. 752 F. 2d 918 (1985). Because Strickland had recently been decided by this Court, the Court of Appeals reviewed the District Court’s determination of ineffective assistance under Strickland’s test. The Court of Appeals determined that respondent’s trial counsel had been “grossly ineffective,” 752 F, 2d, at 922, but vacated and remanded for the District Court to consider whether, under the standards set forth in Strickland, swpra, respondent had been prejudiced by his attorney’s incompetence.
Petitioners, the Attorney General of New Jersey and the Superintendent of Rahway State Prison, petitioned for cer-tiorari. We granted their petition, 474 U. S. 815 (1985), and now affirm.
II
Petitioners urge that the Sixth Amendment veil be lifted from respondent’s habeas petition to reveal what petitioners argue it really is — an attempt to litigate his defaulted Fourth Amendment claim. They argue that because respondent’s claim is in fact, if not in form, a Fourth Amendment one, Stone directly controls here. Alternatively, petitioners maintain that even if Morrison’s Sixth Amendment claim may legitimately be considered distinct from his defaulted Fourth Amendment claim, the rationale and purposes of Stone are fully applicable to ineffective-assistance claims where the principal allegation of inadequate representation is counsel’s failure to file a timely motion to suppress evidence allegedly obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Stone, they argue, will be emasculated unless we extend its bar against federal habeas review to this sort of Sixth Amendment claim. Finally, petitioners maintain that consideration of defaulted Fourth Amendment claims in Sixth Amendment federal collateral proceedings would violate principles of comity and federalism and would seriously interfere with the State’s interest in the finality of its criminal convictions.
A
We do not share petitioners’ perception of the identity between respondent’s Fourth and Sixth Amendment claims. While defense counsel’s failure to make a timely suppression motion is the primary manifestation of incompetence and source of prejudice advanced by respondent, the two claims are nonetheless distinct, both in nature and in the requisite elements of proof.
Although it is frequently invoked in criminal trials, the Fourth Amendment is not a trial right; the protection it affords against governmental intrusion into one’s home and affairs pertains to all citizens. The gravamen of a Fourth Amendment claim is that the complainant’s legitimate expectation of privacy has been violated by an illegal search or seizure. See, e. g., Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967). In order to prevail, the complainant need prove only that the search or seizure was illegal and that it violated his reasonable expectation of privacy in the item or place at issue. See, e. g., Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U. S. 98, 104 (1980).
The right to counsel is a fundamental right of criminal defendants; it assures the fairness, and thus the legitimacy, of our adversary process. E. g., Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 344 (1963). The essence of an ineffective-assistance claim is that counsel’s unprofessional errors so upset the adversarial balance between defense and prosecution that the trial was rendered unfair and the verdict rendered suspect. See, e. g., Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S., at 686; United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S. 648, 655-657 (1984). In order to prevail, the defendant must show both that counsel’s representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, Strickland, 466 U. S., at 688, and that there exists a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. Id., at 694. Where defense counsel’s failure to litigate a Fourth Amendment claim competently is the principal allegation of ineffectiveness, the defendant must also prove that his Fourth Amendment claim is meritorious and that there is a reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different absent the excludable evidence in order to demonstrate actual prejudice. Thus, while respondent’s defaulted Fourth Amendment claim is one element of proof of his Sixth Amendment claim, the two claims have separate identities and reflect different constitutional values.
B
We also disagree with petitioners’ contention that the reasoning and purposes of Stone are fully applicable to a Sixth Amendment claim which is based principally on defense counsel’s failure to litigate a Fourth Amendment claim competently.
At issue in Stone was the proper scope of federal collateral protection of criminal defendants’ right to have evidence, seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, excluded at trial in state court. In determining that federal courts should withhold habeas review where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, the Court found it crucial that the remedy for Fourth Amendment violations provided by the exclusionary rule “is not a personal constitutional right.” 428 U. S., at 486; see also id., at 495, n. 37. The Court expressed the understanding that the rule “is not calculated to redress the injury to the privacy of the victim of the search or seizure,” id., at 486; instead, the Court explained, the exclusionary rule is predominately a “‘judicially created’” structural remedy “ ‘designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect.’” Ibid, (quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348 (1974)).
The Court further noted that “[a]s in the case of any remedial device, ‘the application of the rule has been restricted to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served,”’ 428 U. S., at 486-487 (quoting Calan-dra, supra, at 348), and that the rule has not been extended to situations such as grand jury proceedings, 428 U. S., at 486-487, (citing Calandra, supra), and impeachment of a defendant who testifies broadly in his own behalf, 428 U. S., at 488 (citing Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62 (1954)), where the rule’s costs would outweigh its utility as a deterrent to police misconduct. Applying this “pragmatic analysis,” 428 U. S., at 488, to the question whether prisoners who have been afforded a full and fair opportunity in state court to invoke the exclusionary rule may raise their Fourth Amendment claims on federal habeas review, the Court determined that they may not. While accepting that the exclusionary rule’s deterrent effect outweighs its costs when enforced at trial and on direct appeal, the Court found any “additional contribution... of the consideration of search-and-seizure claims... on collateral review,” id., at 493, to be too small in relation to the costs to justify federal habeas review. Id., at 492-495.
In Stone the Court also made clear that its “decision... [was] not concerned with the scope of the habeas corpus statute as authority for litigating constitutional claims generally.” Id., at 495, n. 37 (emphasis in original). Rather, the Court simply “reaffirm[ed] that the exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy rather than a personal constitutional right... and... emphasized] the minimal utility of the rule” in the context of federal collateral proceedings. Ibid. See also Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545, 560 (1979) (“In Stone v. Powell... the Court carefully limited the reach of its opinion... to cases involving the judicially created exclusionary rule, which had minimal utility when applied in a ha-beas corpus proceeding”); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 323 (1979) (declining to extend Stone to claims by state prisoners that, in violation of the constitutional standard set forth in In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), the evidence in support of their convictions was not sufficient to permit a rational trier of fact to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).
In contrast to the habeas petitioner in Stone, who sought merely to avail himself of the exclusionary rule, Morrison seeks direct federal habeas protection of his personal right to effective assistance of counsel.
The right of an accused to counsel is beyond question a fundamental right. See, e. g., Gideon, 372 U. S., at 344 (“The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours”). Without counsel the right to a fair trial itself would be of little consequence, see, e. g., Cronic, supra, at 653; United States v. Ash, 413 U. S. 300, 307-308 (1973); Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25, 31-32 (1972); Gideon, supra, at 343-345; Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 462-463 (1938); Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 68-69 (1932), for it is through counsel that the accused secures his other rights. Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S. 159, 168-170 (1985); Cronic, supra, at 653; see also, Schaefer, Federalism and State Criminal Procedure, 70 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 8 (1956) (“Of all the rights that an accused person has, the right to be represented by counsel is by far the most pervasive, for it affects his ability to assert any other rights he may have”). The constitutional guarantee of counsel, however, “cannot be satisfied by mere formal appointment,” Avery v. Alabama, 308 U. S. 444, 446 (1940). “An accused is entitled to be assisted by an attorney, whether retained or appointed, who plays the role necessary to ensure that the trial is fair.” Strickland, supra, at 685. In other words, the right to counsel is the right to effective assistance of counsel. Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U. S. 387, 395-396 (1985); Strickland, supra, at 686; Cronic, 466 U. S., at 654; Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U. S. 335, 344 (1980); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 771, n. 14 (1970).
Because collateral review will frequently be the only means through which an accused can effectuate the right to counsel, restricting the litigation of some Sixth Amendment claims to trial and direct review would seriously interfere with an accused’s right to effective representation. A layman will ordinarily be unable to recognize counsel’s errors and to evaluate counsel’s professional performance, cf. Powell v. Alabama, supra, at 69; consequently a criminal defendant will rarely know that he has not been represented competently until after trial or appeal, usually when he consults another lawyer about his case. Indeed, an accused will often not realize that he has a meritorious ineffectiveness claim until he begins collateral review proceedings, particularly if he retained trial counsel on direct appeal. Were we to extend Stone and hold that criminal defendants may not raise ineffective-assistance claims that are based primarily on incompetent handling of Fourth Amendment issues on federal habeas, we would deny most defendants whose trial attorneys performed incompetently in this regard the opportunity to vindicate their right to effective trial counsel. We would deny all defendants whose appellate counsel performed inadequately with respect to Fourth Amendment issues the opportunity to protect their right to effective appellate counsel. See Evitts, supra. Thus, we cannot say, as the Court was able to say in Stone, that restriction of federal habeas review would not severely interfere with the protection of the constitutional right asserted by the habeas petitioner.
Furthermore, while the Court may be free, under its analysis in Stone, to refuse for reasons of prudence and comity to burden the State with the costs of the exclusionary rule in contexts where the Court believes the price of the rule to exceed its utility, the Constitution constrains our ability to allocate as we see fit the costs of ineffective assistance. The Sixth Amendment mandates that the State bear the risk of constitutionally deficient assistance of counsel. See Murray v. Carrier, post, at 488 (where a “procedural default is the result of ineffective assistance of counsel, the Sixth Amendment itself requires that responsibility for the default be imputed to the State”); Cuyler, supra, at 344 (“The right to counsel prevents the States from conducting trials at which persons who face incarceration must defend themselves without adequate legal assistance”); see also Evitts, supra, at 396 (“The constitutional mandate is addressed to the action of the State”).
We also reject the suggestion that criminal defendants should not be allowed to vindicate through federal habeas review their right to effective assistance of counsel where counsel’s primary error is failure to make a timely request for the exclusion of illegally seized evidence — evidence which is “typically reliable and often the most probative information bearing on the guilt or innocence of the defendant.” Stone, 428 U. S., at 490. While we have recognized that the “‘premise of our adversary system of criminal justice... that partisan advocacy... will best promote the ultimate objective that the guilty be convicted and the innocent go free,’” Evitts, 469 U. S., at 394, quoting Herring v. New York, 422 U. S. 853, 862 (1975), underlies and gives meaning to the right to effective assistance, Cronic, supra, at 655-656, we have never intimated that the right to counsel is conditioned upon actual innocence. The constitutional rights of criminal defendants are granted to the innocent and the guilty alike. Consequently, we decline to hold either that the guarantee of effective assistance of counsel belongs solely to the innocent or that it attaches only to matters affecting the determination of actual guilt. Furthermore, petitioners do not suggest that an ineffective-assistance claim asserted on direct review would fail for want of actual prejudice whenever counsel’s primary error is failure to make a meritorious objection to the admission of reliable evidence the exclusion of which might have affected the outcome of the proceeding. We decline to hold that the scope of the right to effective assistance of counsel is altered in this manner simply because the right is asserted on federal habeas review rather than on direct review.
C
Stone’s restriction on federal habeas review, petitioners warn, will be stripped of all practical effect unless we extend it to Sixth Amendment claims based principally on defense counsel’s incompetent handling of Fourth Amendment issues. Petitioners predict that every Fourth Amendment claim that fails or is defaulted in state court will be fully litigated in federal habeas proceedings in Sixth Amendment guise and that, as a result, many state-court judgments will be disturbed. They seem to believe that a prisoner need only allege ineffective assistance, and if he has an underlying, meritorious Fourth Amendment claim, the writ will issue and the State will be obligated to retry him without the challenged evidence. Because it ignores the rigorous standard which Strickland erected for ineffective-assistance claims, petitioners’ forecast is simply incorrect.
In order to establish ineffective representation, the defendant must prove both incompetence and prejudice. 466 U. S., at 688. There is a strong presumption that counsel’s performance falls within the “wide range of professional assistance,” id., at 689; the defendant bears the burden of proving that counsel’s representation was unreasonable under prevailing professional norms and that the challenged action was not sound strategy. Id., at 688-689. The reasonableness of counsel’s performance is to be evaluated from counsel’s perspective at the time of the alleged error and in light of all the circumstances, and the standard of review is highly deferential. Id., at 689. The defendant shows that he was prejudiced by his attorney’s ineffectiveness by demonstrating that “there is a reasonable probability that, but for- counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Id., at 694. See also, id., at 695 (Where a defendant challenges his conviction, he must show that there exists “a reasonable probability that, absent the errors, the factfinder would have had a reasonable doubt respecting guilt”). And, in determining the existence vel non of prejudice, the court “must consider the totality of the evidence before the judge or jury.” Ibid.
As is obvious, Strickland’s standard, although by no means insurmountable, is highly demanding. More importantly, it differs significantly from the elements of proof applicable to a straightforward Fourth Amendment claim. Although a meritorious Fourth Amendment issue is necessary to the success of a Sixth Amendment claim like respondent’s, a good Fourth Amendment claim alone will not earn a prisoner federal habeas relief. Only those habeas petitioners who can prove under Strickland that they have been denied a fair trial by the gross incompetence of their attorneys will be granted the writ and will be entitled to retrial without the challenged evidence.
D
In summary, we reject petitioners’ argument that Stone’s restriction on federal habeas review of Fourth Amendment claims should be extended to Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims which are founded primarily on incompetent representation with respect to a Fourth Amendment issue. Where a State obtains a criminal conviction in a trial in which the accused is deprived of the effective assistance of counsel, the “State... unconstitutionally deprives the defendant of his liberty.” Cuyler, 446 U. S., at 343. The defendant is thus “in custody in violation of the Constitution,” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a), and federal courts have habeas jurisdiction over his claim. We hold that federal courts may grant habeas relief in appropriate cases, regardless of the nature of the underlying attorney error.
h-1 b-i I — i
Petitioners also argue that respondent has not satisfied either the performance or the prejudice prong of the test for ineffective assistance of counsel set forth in Strickland. We address each component of that test in turn.
A
With respect to the performance component of the Strickland test, petitioners contend that Morrison has not overcome the strong presumption of attorney competence established by Strickland. While acknowledging that this Court has said that a single, serious error may support a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, Brief for Petitioners 33, n. 16 (citing Cronic, 466 U. S., at 657, n. 20), petitioners argue that the mere failure to file a timely suppression motion alone does not constitute a per se Sixth Amendment violation. They maintain that the record “amply reflects that trial counsel crafted a sound trial strategy” and that, “[vjiewed in its entirety, counsel’s pretrial investigation, preparation and trial performance were professionally reasonable.” Brief for Petitioners 33 (footnotes and citations omitted). While we agree with petitioners’ view that the failure to file a suppression motion does not constitute per se ineffective assistance of counsel, we disagree with petitioners’ assessment of counsel’s performance.
In Strickland we explained that “access to counsel’s skill and knowledge is necessary to accord defendants the ‘ample opportunity to meet the case of the prosecution’ to which they are entitled.” 466 U. S., at 685 (quoting Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U. S. 269, 275, 276 (1942)). “Counsel... has a duty to bring to bear such skill and knowledge as will render the trial a reliable adversarial testing process.” 466 U. S., at 688. Counsel’s competence, however, is presumed, id., at 689, and the defendant must rebut this presumption by proving that his attorney^ representation was unreasonable under prevailing professional norms and that the challenged action was not sound strategy. Id., at 688-689. The reasonableness of counsel’s performance is to be evaluated from counsel’s perspective at the time of the alleged error and in light of all the circumstances. Id., at 689. In making the competency determination, the court “should keep in mind that counsel’s function, as elaborated in prevailing professional norms, is to make the adversarial testing process work in the particular case.” Id., at 690. Because that testing process generally will not function properly unless defense counsel has done some investigation into the prosecution’s case and into various defense strategies, we noted that “counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Id., at 691. But, we observed, “a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel’s judgments.” Ibid.
The trial record in this case clearly reveals that Morrison’s attorney failed to file a timely suppression motion, not due to strategic considerations, but because, until the first day of trial, he was unaware of the search and of the State’s intention to introduce the bedsheet into evidence. Counsel was unapprised of the search and seizure because he had conducted no pretrial discovery. Counsel’s failure to request discovery, again, was not based on “strategy,” but on counsel’s mistaken beliefs that the State was obliged to take the initiative and turn over all of its inculpatory evidence to the defense and that the victim’s preferences would determine whether the State proceeded to trial after an indictment had been returned.
Viewing counsel’s failure to conduct any discovery from his perspective at the time he decided to forgo that stage of pretrial preparation and applying a “heavy measure of deference,” ibid., to his judgment, we find counsel’s decision unreasonable, that is, contrary to prevailing professional norms. The justifications Morrison’s attorney offered for his omission betray a startling ignorance of the law — or a weak attempt to shift blame for inadequate preparation. “[C]oun-sel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Ibid. Respondent’s lawyer neither investigated, nor made a reasonable decision not to investigate, the State’s case through discovery. Such a complete lack of pretrial preparation puts at risk both the defendant’s right to an “‘ample opportunity to meet the case of the prosecution,’” id., at 685 (quoting Adams, swpra, at 275), and the reliability of the adversarial testing process. See 466 U. S., at 688.
Petitioners attempt to minimize the seriousness of counsel’s errors by asserting that the State’s case turned far more on the credibility of witnesses than on the bedsheet and related testimony. Consequently, they urge, defense counsel’s vigorous cross-examination, attempts to discredit witnesses, and effort to establish a different version of the facts lift counsel’s performance back into the realm of professional acceptability.
Strickland requires a reviewing court to “determine whether, in light of all the circumstances, the identified acts or omissions were outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance.” Id., at 690. It will generally be appropriate for a reviewing court to assess counsel’s overall performance throughout the case in order to determine whether the “identified acts or omissions” overcome the presumption that counsel rendered reasonable professional assistance. Since “[t]here are countless ways to provide effective assistance in any given case,” id., at 689, unless consideration is given to counsel’s overall performance, before and at trial, it will be “all too easy for a court, examining counsel’s defense after it has proved unsuccessful, to conclude that a particular act or omission of counsel was unreasonable.” Ibid.
In this case, however, we deal with a total failure to conduct pretrial discovery, and one as to which counsel offered only implausible explanations. Counsel’s performance at trial, while generally creditable enough, suggests no better explanation for this apparent and pervasive failure to “make reasonable-investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Id., at 691. Under these circumstances, although the failure of the District Court and the Court of Appeals to examine counsel’s overall performance was inadvisable, we think this omission did not affect the soundness of the conclusion both courts reached — that counsel’s performance fell below the level of reasonable professional assistance in the respects alleged.
Moreover, petitioners’ analysis is flawed, however, by their use of hindsight to evaluate the relative importance of various components of the State’s case. See, id., at 689 (“A fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight, to reconstruct the circumstances of counsel’s challenged conduct, and to evaluate the conduct from counsel’s perspective at the time”). At the time Morrison’s lawyer decided not to request any discovery, he did not — and, because he did not ask, could not — know what the State’s case would be. While the relative importance of witness credibility vis-a-vis the bedsheet and related expert testimony is pertinent to the determination whether respondent was prejudiced by his attorney’s incompetence, it sheds no light on the reasonableness of counsel’s decision not to request any discovery. We therefore agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that the assistance rendered respondent by his trial counsel was constitutionally deficient.
B
1
Petitioners also argue that respondent suffered no prejudice from his attorney’s failure to make a timely suppression motion and that the Third Circuit erred in remanding the case to the District Court for a determination of prejudice under Strickland’s standard. The essence of petitioners’ argument is that, at a post-trial hearing on respondent’s motion for bail pending appeal, the same judge who presided at respondent’s trial made a finding of historical fact, which is entitled to a presumption of correctness under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). If that finding were presumed correct, petitioners contend that it would be dispositive of the prejudice issue— that is, no court could find that there exists “a reasonable probability that, absent [Morrison’s attorney’s] errors, the factfinder would have had a reasonable doubt respecting guilt.” Strickland, 466 U. S., at 695. Thus, petitioners conclude, no ground for a remand exists.
In New Jersey, bail after conviction is appropriate where a substantial issue for review exists and where the defendant poses no threat to the community. N. J. Ct. Rule 2:9-4. At Morrison’s bail hearing, the public defender representing
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Once more it becomes necessary to determine “What Congress has made the allowable unit of prosecution,” United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218, 221, under a statute which does not explicitly give the answer. This recurring problem now arises under what is familiarly known as the Mann Act. The relevant provisions of the Act in its present form are:
“Whoever knowingly transports in interstate or foreign commerce . . . any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose ....
“Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” § 2 of the Act of June 25, 1910, 36 Stat. 825, now 18 U. S. C. § 2421.
The facts need not detain us long. Petitioner pleaded guilty to violations laid in two counts, each referring to a different woman. Concededly, the petitioner transported the two women on the same trip and in the same vehicle. This was the basis of his claim that he committed only a single offense and could not be subjected to cumulative punishment under the two counts. The District Court rejected this conception of the statute and sentenced the petitioner to consecutive terms of two years and six months on each of the two counts. On appeal from denial of a motion to correct the sentence, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court. “While the act of transportation was a single one,” it ruled, “the unlawful purpose must of necessity have been selective and personal as to each of the women involved. ... We therefore believe that two separate offenses were committed in this case.” 213 F. 2d 629, 630. This decision was in accord with decisions of other lower federal courts, but a contrary holding by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Robinson v. United States, 143 F. 2d 276, raised a square conflict for settlement by this Court. This led us to bring the case here. 348 U. S. 895.
The punishment appropriate for the diverse federal offenses is a matter for the discretion of Congress, subject only to constitutional limitations, more particularly the Eighth Amendment. Congress could no doubt make the simultaneous transportation of more than one woman in violation of the Mann Act liable to cumulative punishment for each woman so transported. The question is: did it do so? It has not done so in words in the provisions defining the crime and fixing its punishment. Nor is guiding light afforded by the statute in its entirety or by any controlling gloss. The constitutional basis of the statute is the withdrawal of “the facility of interstate transportation,” Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308, 322, though, to be sure, the power was exercised in aid of social morality. Again, it will not promote guiding analysis to indulge in what might be called the color-matching of prior decisions concerned with “the unit of prosecution” in order to determine how near to, or how far from, the problem under this statute the answers are that have been given under other statutes.
It is not to be denied that argumentative skill, as was shown at the Bar, could persuasively and not unreasonably reach either of the conflicting constructions. About only one aspect of the problem can one be dogmatic. When Congress has the will it has no difficulty in expressing it — when it has the will, that is, of defining what it desires to make the unit of prosecution and, more particularly, to make each stick in a faggot a single criminal unit. When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity. And this not out of any sentimental consideration, or for want of sympathy with the purpose of Congress in proscribing evil or antisocial conduct. It may fairly be said to be a presupposition of our law to resolve doubts in the enforcement of a penal code against the imposition of a harsher punishment. This in no wise implies that language used in criminal statutes should not be read with the saving grace of common sense with which other enactments, not cast in technical language, are to be read. Nor does it assume that offenders against the law carefully read the penal code before they embark on crime. It merely means that if Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses, when we have no more to go on than the present case furnishes. _ 7
_ Reversed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
As a condition of federal financial assistance, the Education of the Handicapped Act requires States to ensure a “free appropriate public education” for all disabled children within their jurisdictions. In aid of this goal, the Act establishes a comprehensive system of procedural safeguards designed to ensure parental participation in decisions concerning the education of their disabled children and to provide administrative and judicial review of any decisions with which those parents disagree. Among these safeguards is the so-called “stay-put” provision, which directs that a disabled child “shall remain in [his or her] then current educational placement” pending completion of any review proceedings, unless the parents and state or local educational agencies otherwise agree. 20 U. S. C. § 1415(e)(3). Today we must decide whether, in the face of this statutory proscription, state or local school authorities may nevertheless unilaterally exclude disabled children from the classroom for dangerous or disruptive conduct growing out of their disabilities. In addition, we are called upon to decide whether a district court may, in the exercise of its equitable powers, order a State to provide educational services directly to a disabled child when the local agency fails to do so.
I
In the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA or the Act), 84 Stat. 175, as amended, 20 U. S. C. §1400 et seq., Congress sought “to assure that all handicapped children have available to them... a free appropriate public education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs, [and] to assure that the rights of handicapped children and their parents or guardians are protected.” § 1400(c). When the law was passed in 1975, Congress had before it ample evidence that such legislative assurances were sorely needed: 21 years after this Court declared education to be “perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 493 (1954), congressional studies revealed that better than half of the Nation’s 8 million disabled children were not receiving appropriate educational services. § 1400(b)(3). Indeed, one out of every eight of these children was excluded from the public school system altogether, § 1400(b)(4); many others were simply “warehoused” in special classes or were neglectfully shepherded through the system until they were old enough to drop out. See H. R. Rep. No. 94-332, p. 2 (1975). Among the most poorly served of disabled students were emotionally disturbed children: Congressional statistics revealed that for the school year immediately preceding passage of the Act, the educational needs of 82 percent of all children with emotional disabilities went unmet. See S. Rep. No. 94-168, p. 8 (1975) (hereinafter S. Rep.).
Although these educational failings resulted in part from funding constraints, Congress recognized that the problem reflected more than a lack of financial resources at the state and local levels. Two federal-court decisions, which the Senate Report characterized as “landmark,” see id., at 6, demonstrated that many disabled children were excluded pursuant to state statutes or local rules and policies, typically without any consultation with, or even notice to, their parents. See Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, 348 F. Supp. 866 (DC 1972); Pennsylvania Assn. for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania, 334 F. Supp. 1257 (ED Pa. 1971), and 343 F. Supp. 279 (1972) (PARC). Indeed, by the time of the EHA’s enactment, parents had brought legal challenges to similar exclusionary practices in 27 other States. See S. Rep., at 6.
In responding to these problems, Congress did not content itself with passage of a simple funding statute. Rather, the EHA confers upon disabled students an enforceable substantive right to public education in participating States, see Board of Education of Hendrick Hudson Central School Dist. v. Rowley, 458 U. S. 176 (1982), and conditions federal financial assistance upon a State’s compliance with the substantive and procedural goals of the Act. Accordingly, States seeking to qualify for federal funds must develop policies assuring all disabled children the “right to a free appropriate public education,” and must file with the Secretary of Education formal plans mapping out in detail the programs, procedures, and timetables under which they will effectuate these policies. 20 U. S. C. §§ 1412(1), 1413(a). Such plans must assure that, “to the maximum extent appropriate,” States will “mainstream” disabled children, i. e., that they will educate them with children who are not disabled, and that they will segregate or otherwise remove such children from the regular classroom setting “only when the nature or severity of the handicap is such that education in regular classes... cannot be achieved satisfactorily.” § 1412(5).
The primary vehicle for implementing these congressional goals is the “individualized educational program” (IEP), which the EHA mandates for each disabled child. Prepared at meetings between a representative of the local school district, the child’s teacher, the parents or guardians, and, whenever appropriate, the disabled child, the IEP sets out the child’s present educational performance, establishes annual and short-term objectives for improvements in that performance, and describes the specially designed instruction and services that will enable the child to meet those objectives. § 1401(19). The IEP must be reviewed and, where necessary, revised at least once a year in order to ensure that local agencies tailor the statutorily required “free appropriate public education” to each child’s unique needs. § 1414(a)(5).
Envisioning the IEP as the centerpiece of the statute’s education delivery system for disabled children, and aware that schools had all too often denied such children appropriate educations without in any way consulting their parents, Congress repeatedly emphasized throughout the Act the importance and indeed the necessity of parental participation in both the development of the IEP and any subsequent assessments of its effectiveness. See §§ 1400(c), 1401(19), 1412(7), 1415(b)(1)(A), (C), (D), (E), and 1415(b)(2). Accordingly, the Act establishes various procedural safeguards that guarantee parents both an opportunity for meaningful input into all decisions affecting their child’s education and the right to seek review of any decisions they think inappropriate. These safeguards include the right to examine all relevant records pertaining to the identification, evaluation, and educational placement of their child; prior written notice whenever the responsible educational agency proposes (or refuses) to change the child’s placement or program; an opportunity to present complaints concerning any aspect of the local agency’s provision of a free appropriate public education; and an opportunity for “an impartial due process hearing” with respect to any such complaints. §§ 1415(b)(1), (2).
At the conclusion of any such hearing, both the parents and the local educational agency may seek further administrative review and, where that proves unsatisfactory, may file a civil action in any state or federal court. §§ 1415(c), (e)(2). In addition to reviewing the administrative record, courts are empowered to take additional evidence at the request of either party and to “grant such relief as [they] determine[ ] is appropriate.” § 1415(e)(2). The “stay-put” provision at issue in this case governs the placement of a child while these often lengthy review procedures run their course. It directs that:
“During the pendency of any proceedings conducted pursuant to [§ 1415], unless the State or local educational agency and the parents or guardian otherwise agree, the child shall remain in the then current educational placement of such child....” § 1415(e)(3).
The present dispute grows out of the efforts of certain officials of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to expel two emotionally disturbed children from school indefinitely for violent and disruptive conduct related to their disabilities. In November 1980, respondent John Doe assaulted another student at the Louise Lombard School, a developmental center for disabled children. Doe’s April 1980 IEP identified him as a socially and physically awkward 17-year-old who experienced considerable difficulty controlling his impulses and anger. Among the goals set out in his IEP was “[i]mprovement in [his] ability to relate to [his] peers [and to] cope with frustrating situations without resorting to aggressive acts.” App. 17. Frustrating situations, however, were an unfortunately prominent feature of Doe’s school career: physical abnormalities, speech difficulties, and poor grooming habits had made him the target of teasing and ridicule as early as the first grade, id., at 23; his 1980 IEP reflected his continuing difficulties with peers, noting that his social skills had deteriorated and that he could tolerate only minor frustration before exploding. Id., at 15-16.
On November 6, 1980, Doe responded to the taunts of a fellow student in precisely the explosive manner anticipated by his IEP: he choked the student with sufficient force to leave abrasions on the child’s neck, and kicked out a school window while being escorted to the principal’s office afterwards. Id., at 208. Doe admitted his misconduct and the school subsequently suspended him for five days. Thereafter, his principal referred the matter to the SFUSD Student Placement Committee (SPC or Committee) with the recommendation that Doe be expelled. On the day the suspension was to end, the SPC notified Doe’s mother that it was proposing to exclude her child permanently from SFUSD and was therefore extending his suspension until such time as the expulsion proceedings were completed. The Committee further advised her that she was entitled to attend the November 25 hearing at which it planned to discuss the proposed expulsion.
After unsuccessfully protesting these actions by letter, Doe brought this suit against a host of local school officials and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Alleging that the suspension and proposed expulsion violated the EHA, he sought a temporary restraining order canceling the SPC hearing and requiring school officials to convene an IEP meeting. The District Judge granted the requested injunctive relief and further ordered defendants to provide home tutoring for Doe on an interim basis; shortly thereafter, she issued a preliminary injunction directing defendants to return Doe to his then current educational placement at Louise Lombard School pending completion of the IEP review process. Doe reentered school on December 15, 514 weeks, and 24 schooldays, after his initial suspension.
Respondent Jack Smith was identified as an emotionally disturbed child by the time he entered the second grade in 1976. School records prepared that year indicated that he was unable “to control verbal or physical outburst[s]” and exhibited a “[sjevere disturbance in relationships with peers and adults.” Id., at 123. Further evaluations subsequently revealed that he had been physically and emotionally abused as an infant and young child and that, despite above average intelligence, he experienced academic and social difficulties as a result of extreme hyperactivity and low self-esteem. Id., at 136, 139, 155, 176. Of particular concern was Smith’s propensity for verbal hostility; one evaluator noted that the child reacted to stress by “attempting] to cover his feelings of low self worth through aggressive behavior[,]... primarily verbal provocations.” Id., at 136.
Based on these evaluations, SFUSD placed Smith in a learning center for emotionally disturbed children. His grandparents, however, believed that his needs would be better served in the public school setting and, in September 1979, the school district acceded to their requests and enrolled him at A. P. Giannini Middle School. His February 1980 IEP recommended placement in a Learning Disability Group, stressing the need for close supervision and a highly structured environment. Id., at 111. Like earlier evalúations, the February 1980 IEP noted that Smith was easily distracted, impulsive, and anxious; it therefore proposed a half-day schedule and suggested that the placement be undertaken on a trial basis. Id., at 112, 115.
At the beginning of the next school year, Smith was assigned to a full-day program; almost immediately thereafter he began misbehaving. School officials met twice with his grandparents in October 1980 to discuss returning him to a half-day program; although the grandparents agreed to the reduction, they apparently were never apprised of their right to challenge the decision through EHA procedures. The school officials also warned them that if the child continued his disruptive behavior — which included stealing, extorting money from fellow students, and making sexual comments to female classmates — they would seek to expel him. On November 14, they made good on this threat, suspending Smith for five days after he made further lewd comments. His principal referred the matter to the SPC, which recommended exclusion from SFUSD. As it did in John Doe’s case, the Committee scheduled a hearing and extended the suspension indefinitely pending a final disposition in the matter. On November 28, Smith’s counsel protested these actions on grounds essentially identical to those raised by Doe, and the SPC agreed to cancel the hearing and to return Smith to a half-day program at A. P. Giannini or to provide home tutoring. Smith’s grandparents chose the latter option and the school began home instruction on December 10; on January 6, 1981, an IEP team convened to discuss alternative placements.
After learning of Doe’s action, Smith sought and obtained leave to intervene in the suit. The District Court subsequently entered summary judgment in favor of respondents on their EHA claims and issued a permanent injunction. In a series of decisions, the District Judge found that the proposed expulsions and indefinite suspensions of respondents for conduct attributable to their disabilities deprived them of their congressionally mandated right to a free appropriate public education, as well as their right to have that education provided in accordance with the procedures set out in the EHA. The District Judge therefore permanently enjoined the school district from taking any disciplinary action other than a 2- or 5-day suspension against any disabled child for disability-related misconduct, or from effecting any other change in the educational placement of any such child without parental consent pending completion of any EHA proceedings. In addition, the judge barred the State from authorizing unilateral placement changes and directed it to establish an EHA compliance-monitoring system or, alternatively, to enact guidelines governing local school responses to disability-related misconduct. Finally, the judge ordered the State to provide services directly to disabled children when, in any individual case, the State determined that the local educational agency was unable or unwilling to do so.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the orders with slight modifications. Doe v. Maher, 793 F. 2d 1470 (1986). Agreeing with the District Court that an indefinite suspension in aid of expulsion constitutes a prohibited “change in placement” under § 1415(e)(3), the Court of Appeals held that the stay-put provision admitted of no “dangerousness” exception and that the statute therefore rendered invalid those provisions of the California Education Code permitting the indefinite suspension or expulsion of disabled children for misconduct arising out of their disabilities. The court concluded, however, that fixed suspensions of up to 30 schooldays did not fall within the reach of § 1415(e)(3), and therefore upheld recent amendments to the state Education Code authorizing such suspensions. Lastly, the court affirmed that portion of the injunction requiring the State to provide services directly to a disabled child when the local educational agency fails to do so.
Petitioner Bill Honig, California Superintendent of Public Instruction, sought review in this Court, claiming that the Court of Appeals’ construction of the stay-put provision conflicted with that of several other Courts of Appeals which had recognized a dangerousness exception, compare Doe v. Maher, supra (case below), with Jackson v. Franklin County School Board, 765 F. 2d 535, 538 (CA5 1985); Victoria L. v. District School Bd. of Lee County, Fla., 741 F. 2d 369, 374 (CA11 1984); S-1 v. Turlington, 635 F. 2d 342, 348, n. 9 (CA5), cert. denied, 454 U. S. 1030 (1981), and that the direct services ruling placed an intolerable burden on the State. We granted certiorari to resolve these questions, 479 U. S. 1084 (1987), and now affirm.
II
At the outset, we address the suggestion, raised for the first time during oral argument, that this case is moot. Under Article III of the Constitution this Court may only adjudicate actual, ongoing controversies. Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U. S. 539, 546 (1976); Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395, 401 (1975). That the dispute between the parties was very much alive when suit was filed, or at the time the Court of Appeals rendered its judgment, cannot substitute for the actual ease or controversy that an exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction requires. Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 459, n. 10 (1974); Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 125 (1973). In the present case, we have jurisdiction if there is a reasonable likelihood that respondents will again suffer the deprivation of EHA-mandated rights that gave rise to this suit. We believe that, at least with respect to respondent Smith, such a possibility does in fact exist and that the case therefore remains justiciable.
Respondent John Doe is now 24 years old and, accordingly, is no longer entitled to the protections and benefits of the EHA, which limits eligibility to disabled children between the ages of 3 and 21. See 20 U. S. C. § 1412(2)(B). It is clear, therefore, that whatever rights to state educational services he may yet have as a ward of the State, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 23, 26, the Act would not govern the State’s provision of those services, and thus the case is moot as to him. Respondent Jack Smith, however, is currently 20 and has not yet completed high school. Although at present he is not faced with any proposed expulsion or suspension proceedings, and indeed no longer even resides within the SFUSD, he remains a resident of California and is entitled to a “free appropriate public education” within that State. His claims under the EHA, therefore, are not moot if the conduct he originally complained of is “ ‘capable of repetition, yet evading review.’” Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U. S. 478, 482 (1982). Given Smith’s continued eligibility for educational services under the EHA, the nature of his disability, and petitioner’s insistence that all local school districts retain residual authority to exclude disabled children for dangerous conduct, we have little difficulty concluding that there is a “reasonable expectation,” ibid., that Smith would once again be subjected to a unilateral “change in placement” for conduct growing out of his disabilities were it not for the statewide injunctive relief issued below.
Our cases reveal that, for purposes of assessing the likelihood that state authorities will reinflict a given injury, we generally have been unwilling to assume that the party seeking relief will repeat the type of misconduct that would once again place him or her at risk of that injury. See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 105-106 (1983) (no threat that party seeking injunction barring police use of chokeholds would be stopped again for traffic violation or other offense, or would resist arrest if stopped); Murphy v. Hunt, supra, at 484 (no reason to believe that party challenging denial of pretrial bail “will once again be in a position to demand bail”); O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 497 (1974) (unlikely that parties challenging discriminatory bond-setting, sentencing, and jury-fee practices would again violate valid criminal laws). No such reluctance, however, is warranted here. It is respondent Smith’s very inability to conform his conduct to socially acceptable norms that renders him “handicapped” within the meaning of the EHA. See 20 U. S. C. § 1401(1); 34 CFR § 300.5(b)(8) (1987). As noted above, the record is replete with evidence that Smith is unable to govern his aggressive, impulsive behavior — indeed, his notice of suspension acknowledged that “Jack’s actions seem beyond his control.” App. 152. In the absence of any suggestion that respondent has overcome his earlier difficulties, it is certainly reasonable to expect, based on his prior history of behavioral problems, that he will again engage in classroom misconduct. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Smith’s future educational placement will so perfectly suit his emotional and academic needs that further disruptions on his part are improbable. Although Justice Sc alia suggests in his dissent, post, at 338, that school officials are unlikely to place Smith in a setting where they cannot control his misbehavior, any efforts to ensure such total control must be tempered by the school system’s statutory obligations to provide respondent with a free appropriate public education in “the least restrictive environment,” 34 CFR § 300.552(d) (1987); to educate him, “to the maximum extent appropriate,” with children who are not disabled, 20 U. S. C. § 1412(5); and to consult with his parents or guardians, and presumably with respondent himself, before choosing a placement. §§ 1401(19), 1415 (b). Indeed, it is only by ignoring these mandates, as well as Congress’ unquestioned desire to wrest from school officials their former unilateral authority to determine the placement of emotionally disturbed children, see infra, at 323-324, that the dissent can so readily assume that respondent’s future placement will satisfactorily prevent any further dangerous conduct on his part. Overarching these statutory obligations, moreover, is the inescapable fact that the preparation of an IEP, like any other effort at predicting human behavior, is an inexact science at best. Given the unique circumstances and context of this case, therefore, we think it reasonable to expect that respondent will again engage in the type of misconduct that precipitated this suit.
We think it equally probable that, should he do so, respondent will again be subjected to the same unilateral school action for which he initially sought relief. In this regard, it matters not that Smith no longer resides within the SFUSD. While the actions of SFUSD officials first gave rise to this litigation, the District Judge expressly found that the lack of a state policy governing local school responses to disability-related misconduct had led to, and would continue to result in, EHA violations, and she therefore enjoined the state defendant from authorizing, among other things, unilateral placement changes. App. 247-248. She of course also issued injunctions directed at the local defendants, but they did not seek review of those orders in this Court. Only petitioner, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has invoked our jurisdiction, and he now urges us to hold that local school districts retain unilateral authority under the EHA to suspend or otherwise remove disabled children for dangerous conduct. Given these representations, we have every reason to believe that were it not for the injunction barring petitioner from authorizing such unilateral action, respondent would be faced with a real and substantial threat of such action in any California school district in which he enrolled. Cf. Los Angeles v. Lyons, supra, at 106 (respondent lacked standing to seek injunctive relief because he could not plausibly allege that police officers choked all persons whom they stopped, or that the city “authorized police officers to act in such manner” (emphasis added)). Certainly, if the SFUSD’s past practice of unilateral exclusions was at odds with state policy and the practice of local school districts generally, petitioner would not now stand before us seeking to defend the right of all local school districts to engage in such aberrant behavior.
We have previously noted that administrative and judicial review under the EHA is often “ponderous,” Burlington School Committee v. Massachusetts Dept. of Education, 471 U. S. 359, 370 (1985), and this case, which has taken seven years to reach us, amply confirms that observation. For obvious reasons, the misconduct of an emotionally disturbed or otherwise disabled child who has not yet reached adolescence typically will not pose such a serious threat to the well-being of other students that school officials can only ensure classroom safety by excluding the child. Yet, the adolescent student improperly disciplined for misconduct that does pose such a threat will often be finished with school or otherwise ineligible for EHA protections by the time review can be had in this Court. Because we believe that respondent Smith has demonstrated both “a sufficient likelihood that he will again be wronged in a similar way,” Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S., at 111, and that any resulting claim he may have for relief will surely evade our review, we turn to the merits of his case.
Ill
The language of § 1415(e)(3) is unequivocal. It states plainly that during the pendency of any proceedings initiated under the Act, unless the state or local educational agency and the parents or guardian of a disabled child otherwise agree, “the child shall remain in the then current educational placement.” § 1415(e)(3) (emphasis added). Faced with this clear directive, petitioner asks us to read a “dangerousness” exception into the stay-put provision on the basis of either of two essentially inconsistent assumptions: first, that Congress thought the residual authority of school officials to exclude dangerous students from the classroom too obvious for comment; or second, that Congress inadvertently failed to provide such authority and this Court must therefore remedy the oversight. Because we cannot accept either premise, we decline petitioner’s invitation to rewrite the statute.
Petitioner’s arguments proceed, he suggests, from a simple, commonsense proposition: Congress could not have intended the stay-put provision to be read literally, for such a construction leads to the clearly unintended, and untenable, result that school districts must return violent or dangerous students to school while the often lengthy EHA proceedings run their course. We think it clear, however, that Congress very much meant to strip schools of the unilateral authority they had traditionally employed to exclude disabled students, particularly emotionally disturbed students, from school. In so doing, Congress did not leave school administrators powerless to deal with dangerous students; it did, however, deny school officials their former right to “self-help,” and directed that in the future the removal of disabled students could be accomplished only with the permission of the parents or, as a last resort, the courts.
As noted above, Congress passed the EHA after finding that school systems across the country had excluded one out of every eight disabled children from classes. In drafting the law, Congress was largely guided by the recent decisions in Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, 348 F. Supp. 866 (1972), and PARC, 343 F. Supp. 279 (1972), both of which involved the exclusion of hard-to-handle disabled students. Mills in particular demonstrated the extent to which schools used disciplinary measures to bar children from the classroom. There, school officials had labeled four of the seven minor plaintiffs “behavioral problems,” and had excluded them from classes without providing any alternative education to them or any notice to their parents. 348 F. Supp., at 869-870. After finding that this practice was not limited to the named plaintiffs but affected in one way or another an estimated class of 12,000 to 18,000 disabled students, id., at 868-869, 875, the District Court enjoined future exclusions, suspensions, or expulsions “on grounds of discipline.” Id., at 880.
Congress attacked such exclusionary practices in a variety of ways. It required participating States to educate all disabled children, regardless of the severity of their disabilities, 20 U. S. C. § 1412(2)(C), and included within the definition of “handicapped” those children with serious emotional disturbances. § 1401(1). It further provided for meaningful parental participation in all aspects of a child’s educational placement, and barred schools, through the stay-put provision, from changing that placement over the parent’s objection until all review proceedings were completed. Recognizing that those proceedings might prove long and tedious, the Act’s drafters did not intend § 1415(e)(3) to operate inflexibly, see 121 Cong. Rec. 37412 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Stafford), and they therefore allowed for interim placements where parents and school officials are able to agree on one. Conspicuously absent from § 1415(e)(3), however, is any emergency exception for dangerous students. This absence is all the more telling in light of the injunctive decree issued in PARC, which permitted school officials unilaterally to remove students in “‘extraordinary circumstances.’” 343 F. Supp., at 301. Given the lack of any similar exception in Mills, and the close attention Congress devoted to these “landmark” decisions, see S. Rep., at 6, we can only conclude that the omission was intentional; we are therefore not at liberty to en-graft onto the statute an exception Congress chose not to create.
Our conclusion that § 1415(e)(3) means what it says does not leave educators hamstrung. The Department of Education has observed that, “[w]hile the [child’s] placement may not be changed [during any complaint proceeding], this does not preclude the agency from using its normal procedures for dealing with children who are endangering themselves or others.” Comment following 34 CFR §300.513 (1987). Such procedures may include the use of study carrels, timeouts, detention, or the restriction of privileges. More drastically, where a student poses an immediate threat to the safety of others, officials may temporarily suspend him or her for up to 10 schooldays. This authority, which respondent in no way disputes, not only ensures that school administrators can protect the safety of others by promptly removing the most dangerous of students, it also provides a “cooling down” period during which officials can initiate IEP review and seek to persuade the child’s parents to agree to an interim placement. And in those cases in which the parents of a truly dangerous child adamantly refuse to permit any change in placement, the 10-day respite gives school officials an opportunity to invoke the aid of the courts under § 1415(e)(2), which empowers courts to grant any appropriate relief.
Petitioner contends, however, that the availability of judicial relief is more illusory than real, because a party seeking review under § 1415(e)(2) must exhaust time-consuming administrative remedies, and because under the Court of Appeals’ construction of § 1415(e)(3), courts are as bound by the stay-put provision’s “automatic injunction,” 793 F. 2d, at 1486, as are schools. It is true that judicial review is normally not available under § 1415(e)(2) until all administrative proceedings are completed, but as we have previously noted, parents may bypass the administrative process where exhaustion would be futile or inadequate. See Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992, 1014, n. 17 (1984) (citing cases); see also 121 Cong. Rec. 37416 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Williams) (“[E]xhaustion... should not be required... in cases where such exhaustion would be futile either as a legal or practical matter”). While many of the EHA’s procedural safeguards protect the rights of parents and children, schools can and do seek redress through the administrative review process, and we have no reason to believe that Congress meant to require schools alone to exhaust in all cases, no matter how exigent the circumstances. The burden in such cases, of course, rests with the school to demonstrate the futility or inadequacy of administrative review, but nothing in § 1415(e)(2) suggests that schools are completely barred from attempting to make such a showing. Nor do we think that § 1415(e)(3) operates to limit the equitable powers of district courts such that they cannot, in appropriate cases, temporarily enjoin a dangerous disabled child from attending school. As the EHA’s legislative history makes clear, one of the evils Congress sought to remedy was the unilateral exclusion of disabled children by schools, not courts, and one of the purposes of § 1415(e)(3), therefore, was “to prevent school officials from removing a child from the regular public school classroom over the parents’ objection pending completion of the review proceedings.” Burlington School Committee v. Massachusetts Dept, of Education, 471 U. S., at 373 (emphasis added). The stay-put provision in no way purports to limit or pre-empt the authority conferred on courts by § 1415(e)(2), see Doe v. Brookline School Committee, 722 F. 2d 910, 917 (CA1 1983); indeed, it says nothing whatever about judicial power.
In short, then, we believe that school officials are entitled to seek injunctive relief under § 1415(e)(2) in appropriate cases. In any such action, § 1415(e)(3) effectively creates a presumption in favor of the child’s current educational placement which school officials can overcome only by showing that maintaining the child in his or her current placement is substantially likely to result in injury either to himself or herself, or to others. In the present case, we are satisfied that the District Court, in enjoining the state and local defendants from indefinitely suspending respondent or otherwise unilaterally altering his then current placement, properly balanced respondent’s interest in receiving a free appropriate public education in accordance with the procedures and requirements of the EH A against the interests of the state and local school officials in maintaining a safe learning environment for all their students.
IV
We believe the courts below properly construed and applied § 1415(e)(3), except insofar as the Court of Appeals held that a suspension in excess of 10 schooldays does not constitute a “change in placement.” We therefore affirm the Court of Appeals’ judgment on this issue as modified herein. Because we are equally divided on the question whether a court may order a State to provide services directly to a disabled child where the local agency has failed to do so, we affirm the Court of Appeals’ judgment on this issue as well.
Affirmed.
Congress’ earlier efforts to ensure that disabled students received adequate public education had failed in part because the measures it adopted were largely hortatory. In the 1966 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Congress established a grant program “for the purpose of assisting the States in the initiation, expansion, and improvement of programs and projects... for the education of handicapped children.” Pub. L. 89-750, § 161, 80 Stat. 1204. It repealed that program four years later and replaced it with the original version of the Education of the Handicapped Act, Pub. L. 91-230, 84 Stat. 175, Part B of which contained a similar grant program. Neither statute, however, provided specific guidance as to how States were to use the funds, nor did they condition the availability of the grants on compliance with any procedural or substantive safeguards. In amending the EHA to its present form, Congress rejected its earlier policy of “merely establishing] an unenforceable goal requiring all children to be in school.” 121 Cong. Rec. 37417 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Schweiker). Today, all 50 States and the District of Columbia receive funding assistance under the EHA. U. S. Dept. of Education, Ninth Annual Report to Congress on Implementation of Education of the Handicapped Act (1987).
California law at the time empowered school principals to suspend students for no more than five consecutive schooldays,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This petition for a writ of certiorari presents the question whether petitioner’s relinquishment of an evidentiary hearing in a federal habeas corpus proceeding taking place prior to Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293, bars him from obtaining such a hearing on a subsequent application made after Townsend was decided.
In 1957, petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder in a New Jersey court, and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed the conviction, State v. Smith, 27 N. J. 433, 142 A. 2d 890, and subsequently affirmed the denial of a motion for a new trial. State v. Smith, 29 N. J. 561, 150 A. 2d 769.
Petitioner thereafter sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. During oral argument before the District Court on June 5, 1961, petitioner’s counsel, referring to the then recent decision in Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, stated:
“The United States Supreme Court says your Honor may hold a hearing de novo if need be to go into the historical facts behind this case. I don’t think it is necessary here.
“I think if your Honor limits himself to the record, I think that the error, the fundamental constitutional error in this case is so overwhelming that I need not stand here and argue this case at any great length.” Appendix to Petition 69a.
The District Court did not conduct an evidentiary hearing. Relying on the state trial record, it denied the application, holding, inter alia, that petitioner’s confession, introduced at his trial, was not the product of coercion. United States ex rel. Smith v. New Jersey, 201 F. Supp. 272. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 322 F. 2d 810.
In 1965, petitioner again sought habeas corpus in the District Court, requesting an evidentiary hearing. As supplemented, the application alleged facts relevant to the admissibility of the confession which were not brought out at trial, and which, if proved, presented a stronger case that the confession was coerced. The District Court denied the application without conducting an evidentiary hearing, noting that the issue of coercion had been adjudicated in the prior habeas proceeding. The Court of Appeals affirmed per curiam, Judge Biggs dissenting. Referring to the above-quoted statement by petitioner’s counsel, and to some remarks of the District Court at an earlier stage of the 1961 proceeding, the Court of Appeals concluded that petitioner had waived his claim to an evidentiary hearing in 1961. 395 F. 2d 245. Rehearing en banc was denied, Judge Freedman dissenting, and this petition for certiorari followed.
We note initially that the usual principles of res judi-cata are inapplicable to successive habeas corpus proceedings. Salinger v. Loisel, 265 U. S. 224; cf. Sanders v. United States, 373 U. S. 1. Whatever the standards for waiver may be in other circumstances, the essential question here is whether the petitioner “deliberately withheld the newly asserted ground” in the prior proceeding, or “otherwise abused the writ.” 28 U. S. C. § 2244 (b) (1964 ed., Supp. III).
At the time of the 1961 proceeding, Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, indicated that a District Court’s discretion to hold an evidentiary hearing was to be exercised only in “unusual circumstances,” 344 U. S., at 463, or where a “vital flaw” existed in the state procedure. 344 U. S., at 506 (opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter). Townsend v. Sain, supra, had not yet been decided. This Court recognized in Townsend “that the opinions in Brown v. Allen ... do not provide answers for all aspects of the hearing problem for the lower federal courts, which have reached widely divergent, in fact often irreconcilable, results,” 372 U. S., at 310, and established criteria for the granting of evidentiary hearings “which must be considered to supersede, to the extent of any inconsistencies, the opinions in Brown v. Allen . . . 372 U. S., at 312. Townsend v. Sain substantially increased the availability of evidentiary hearings in habeas corpus proceedings, and made mandatory much of what had previously been within the broad discretion of the District Court. See also Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391.
It is at least doubtful whether petitioner could have obtained an evidentiary hearing as the law stood in 1961. Indeed, at the time, the State argued to the District Court with some cogency that petitioner presented “no unusual circumstances calling for a hearing.” We do not believe that petitioner should be placed in a worse position because his then counsel asserted that he had a right to an evidentiary hearing and then relinquished it. Whatever counsel’s reasons for this obscure gesture of noblesse oblige, we cannot now examine the state of his mind, or presume that he intentionally relinquished a known right or privilege, Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464, when the right or privilege was of doubtful existence at the time of the supposed waiver. In short, we conclude that petitioner’s failure to demand an evi-dentiary hearing in 1961, followed by such a demand after the decision in Townsend v. Sain, supra, constitutes no abuse of the writ of habeas corpus.
“If, for any reason not attributable to the inexcusable neglect of petitioner . . . evidence crucial to the adequate consideration of the constitutional claim was not developed at the state hearing, a federal hearing is compelled.” Townsend v. Sain, supra, at 317. Petitioner’s assertion that he comes within this principle is not controverted by respondent or by the record below. We do not, however, pass on this question, or on the other questions presented in the petition. These, as well as other issues appropriately raised below, may be considered by the District Court. We hold only that petitioner has not, by reason of anything that occurred during the 1961 habeas proceeding, waived his claim to an eviden-tiary hearing in the District Court.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for proceedings consistent with this opinion. /£ {s so ordered.
Mb. Justice White dissents and would grant certiorari and set the case for oral argument.
Petitioner has sought, and was denied, certiorari in this Court on three previous occasions — twice to the state courts, 361 U. S. 861; 379 U. S. 1005, once to the United States Court of Appeals in the prior habeas corpus proceeding, 376 U. S. 928. It is worth noting that the present pleadings below substantially expand and clarify the claims heretofore presented by petitioner.
The allegations, which include claims of physical harassment by the police, are set out in Judge Biggs’ dissenting opinion below, 395 F. 2d 245, 253, n. 12.
On May 15, 1961, during argument on the State’s motion to strike petitioner’s “Amended and/or Supplemental Petition,” the District Court indicated its concern that the record be complete to the satisfaction of both parties. The Court of Appeals construed this as an offer to conduct an evidentiary hearing. No explicit mention of an evidentiary hearing was made, however. A reading of the entire colloquy in the District Court, though not unambiguous, suggests, as Judge Biggs noted in dissent below, that the discussion was concerned only with “the issue of whether or not the case would proceed upon the original petition for habeas corpus and answer, the supplemental petition for habeas corpus and answer, or on both sets of pleadings.” 395 F. 2d 245, 249, n. 4.
Judge Biggs did not participate.
For this reason, if no other, the fact that Townsend v. Sain was decided before the Court of Appeals’ decision in the first proceeding, and considered by the Court of Appeals there in denying rehearing en banc, is not dispositive of the present case.
As the State pointed out during the 1961 hearing, Rogers v. Richmond, supra, the case chiefly relied on by petitioner, does not appear to support his claim to an evidentiary hearing. See especially 365 U. S., at 547.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
We consider whether a contractual waiver of class arbitration is enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act when the plaintiff's cost of individually arbitrating a federal statutory claim exceeds the potential recovery.
I
Respondents are merchants who accept American Express cards. Their agreement with petitioners-American Express and a wholly owned subsidiary-contains a clause that requires all disputes between the parties to be resolved by arbitration. The agreement also provides that "[t]here shall be no right or authority for any Claims to be arbitrated on a class action basis." In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 667 F.3d 204, 209 (C.A.2 2012).
Respondents brought a class action against petitioners for violations of the federal antitrust laws. According to respondents, American Express used its monopoly power in the market for charge cards to force merchants to accept credit cards at rates approximately 30% higher than the fees for competing credit cards. This tying arrangement, respondents said, violated § 1 of the Sherman Act. They sought treble damages for the class under § 4 of the Clayton Act.
Petitioners moved to compel individual arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq. In resisting the motion, respondents submitted a declaration from an economist who estimated that the cost of an expert analysis necessary to prove the antitrust claims would be "at least several hundred thousand dollars, and might exceed $1 million," while the maximum recovery for an individual plaintiff would be $12,850, or $38,549 when trebled. App. 93. The District Court granted the motion and dismissed the lawsuits. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for further proceedings. It held that because respondents had established that "they would incur prohibitive costs if compelled to arbitrate under the class action waiver," the waiver was unenforceable and the arbitration could not proceed. In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 554 F.3d 300, 315-316 (C.A.2 2009).
We granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 130 S.Ct. 1758, 176 L.Ed.2d 605 (2010), which held that a party may not be compelled to submit to class arbitration absent an agreement to do so. American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 559 U.S. 1103, 130 S.Ct. 2401, 176 L.Ed.2d 920 (2010). The Court of Appeals stood by its reversal, stating that its earlier ruling did not compel class arbitration. In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 634 F.3d 187, 200 (C.A.2 2011). It then sua sponte reconsidered its ruling in light of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. ----, 131 S.Ct. 1740, 179 L.Ed.2d 742 (2011), which held that the FAA pre-empted a state law barring enforcement of a class-arbitration waiver. Finding AT&T Mobility inapplicable because it addressed pre-emption, the Court of Appeals reversed for the third time. 667 F.3d, at 213. It then denied rehearing en banc with five judges dissenting. In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 681 F.3d 139 (C.A.2 2012). We granted certiorari, 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 594, 184 L.Ed.2d 390 (2012), to consider the question "[w]hether the Federal Arbitration Act permits courts ... to invalidate arbitration agreements on the ground that they do not permit class arbitration of a federal-law claim," Pet. for Cert. i.
II
Congress enacted the FAA in response to widespread judicial hostility to arbitration. See AT&T Mobility, supra, at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1745. As relevant here, the Act provides:
"A written provision in any maritime transaction or contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract or transaction ... shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract." 9 U.S.C. § 2.
This text reflects the overarching principle that arbitration is a matter of contract. See Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. ----, ----, 130 S.Ct. 2772, 2776, 177 L.Ed.2d 403 (2010). And consistent with that text, courts must "rigorously enforce" arbitration agreements according to their terms, Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U.S. 213, 221, 105 S.Ct. 1238, 84 L.Ed.2d 158 (1985), including terms that "specify with whom [the parties] choose to arbitrate their disputes," Stolt-Nielsen, supra, at 683, 130 S.Ct. 1758, and "the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted," Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ ., 489 U.S. 468, 479, 109 S.Ct. 1248, 103 L.Ed.2d 488 (1989). That holds true for claims that allege a violation of a federal statute, unless the FAA's mandate has been " 'overridden by a contrary congressional command.' " CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 665, 668-669, 181 L.Ed.2d 586 (2012) (quoting Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220, 226, 107 S.Ct. 2332, 96 L.Ed.2d 185 (1987) ).
III
No contrary congressional command requires us to reject the waiver of class arbitration here. Respondents argue that requiring them to litigate their claims individually-as they contracted to do-would contravene the policies of the antitrust laws. But the antitrust laws do not guarantee an affordable procedural path to the vindication of every claim. Congress has taken some measures to facilitate the litigation of antitrust claims-for example, it enacted a multiplied-damages remedy. See 15 U.S.C. § 15 (treble damages). In enacting such measures, Congress has told us that it is willing to go, in certain respects, beyond the normal limits of law in advancing its goals of deterring and remedying unlawful trade practice. But to say that Congress must have intended whatever departures from those normal limits advance antitrust goals is simply irrational. "[N]o legislation pursues its purposes at all costs." Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U.S. 522, 525-526, 107 S.Ct. 1391, 94 L.Ed.2d 533 (1987) (per curiam ).
The antitrust laws do not "evinc[e] an intention to preclude a waiver" of class-action procedure. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U.S. 614, 628, 105 S.Ct. 3346, 87 L.Ed.2d 444 (1985). The Sherman and Clayton Acts make no mention of class actions. In fact, they were enacted decades before the advent of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which was "designed to allow an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only." Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 700-701, 99 S.Ct. 2545, 61 L.Ed.2d 176 (1979). The parties here agreed to arbitrate pursuant to that "usual rule," and it would be remarkable for a court to erase that expectation.
Nor does congressional approval of Rule 23 establish an entitlement to class proceedings for the vindication of statutory rights. To begin with, it is likely that such an entitlement, invalidating private arbitration agreements denying class adjudication, would be an "abridg[ment]" or "modif[ication]" of a "substantive right" forbidden to the Rules, see 28 U.S.C. § 2072(b). But there is no evidence of such an entitlement in any event. The Rule imposes stringent requirements for certification that in practice exclude most claims. And we have specifically rejected the assertion that one of those requirements (the class-notice requirement) must be dispensed with because the "prohibitively high cost" of compliance would "frustrate [plaintiff's] attempt to vindicate the policies underlying the antitrust" laws. Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U.S. 156, 166-168, 175-176, 94 S.Ct. 2140, 40 L.Ed.2d 732 (1974). One might respond, perhaps, that federal law secures a nonwaivable opportunity to vindicate federal policies by satisfying the procedural strictures of Rule 23 or invoking some other informal class mechanism in arbitration. But we have already rejected that proposition in AT&T Mobility, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1748.
IV
Our finding of no "contrary congressional command" does not end the case. Respondents invoke a judge-made exception to the FAA which, they say, serves to harmonize competing federal policies by allowing courts to invalidate agreements that prevent the "effective vindication" of a federal statutory right. Enforcing the waiver of class arbitration bars effective vindication, respondents contend, because they have no economic incentive to pursue their antitrust claims individually in arbitration.
The "effective vindication" exception to which respondents allude originated as dictum in Mitsubishi Motors, where we expressed a willingness to invalidate, on "public policy" grounds, arbitration agreements that "operat [e] ... as a prospective waiver of a party's right to pursue statutory remedies." 473 U.S., at 637, n. 19, 105 S.Ct. 3346 (emphasis added). Dismissing concerns that the arbitral forum was inadequate, we said that "so long as the prospective litigant effectively may vindicate its statutory cause of action in the arbitral forum, the statute will continue to serve both its remedial and deterrent function." Id., at 637, 105 S.Ct. 3346. Subsequent cases have similarly asserted the existence of an "effective vindication" exception, see, e.g., 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U.S. 247, 273-274, 129 S.Ct. 1456, 173 L.Ed.2d 398 (2009) ; Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 28, 111 S.Ct. 1647, 114 L.Ed.2d 26 (1991), but have similarly declined to apply it to invalidate the arbitration agreement at issue.
And we do so again here. As we have described, the exception finds its origin in the desire to prevent "prospective waiver of a party'sright to pursue statutory remedies," Mitsubishi Motors, supra, at 637, n. 19, 105 S.Ct. 3346 (emphasis added). That would certainly cover a provision in an arbitration agreement forbidding the assertion of certain statutory rights. And it would perhaps cover filing and administrative fees attached to arbitration that are so high as to make access to the forum impracticable. See Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79, 90, 121 S.Ct. 513, 148 L.Ed.2d 373 (2000) ("It may well be that the existence of large arbitration costs could preclude a litigant ... from effectively vindicating her federal statutory rights"). But the fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy. See 681 F.3d, at 147 (Jacobs, C.J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). The class-action waiver merely limits arbitration to the two contracting parties. It no more eliminates those parties' right to pursue their statutory remedy than did federal law before its adoption of the class action for legal relief in 1938, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U.S.C., p. 864 (1938 ed., Supp V); 7A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1752, p. 18 (3d ed. 2005). Or, to put it differently, the individual suit that was considered adequate to assure "effective vindication" of a federal right before adoption of class-action procedures did not suddenly become "ineffective vindication" upon their adoption.
A pair of our cases brings home the point. In Gilmer, supra, we had no qualms in enforcing a class waiver in an arbitration agreement even though the federal statute at issue, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, expressly permitted collective actions. We said that statutory permission did " 'not mean that individual attempts at conciliation were intended to be barred.' " Id., at 32, 111 S.Ct. 1647. And in Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S.A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U.S. 528, 115 S.Ct. 2322, 132 L.Ed.2d 462 (1995), we held that requiring arbitration in a foreign country was compatible with the federal Carriage of Goods by Sea Act. That legislation prohibited any agreement " 'relieving' " or " 'lessening' " the liability of a carrier for damaged goods, id., at 530, 534, 115 S.Ct. 2322 (quoting 46 U.S.C.App. § 1303(8) (1988 ed.))-which is close to codification of an "effective vindication" exception. The Court rejected the argument that the "inconvenience and costs of proceeding" abroad "lessen[ed]" the defendants' liability, stating that "[i]t would be unwieldy and unsupported by the terms or policy of the statute to require courts to proceed case by case to tally the costs and burdens to particular plaintiffs in light of their means, the size of their claims, and the relative burden on the carrier." 515 U.S., at 532, 536, 115 S.Ct. 2322. Such a "tally[ing] [of] the costs and burdens" is precisely what the dissent would impose upon federal courts here.
Truth to tell, our decision in AT&T Mobility all but resolves this case. There we invalidated a law conditioning enforcement of arbitration on the availability of class procedure because that law "interfere [d] with fundamental attributes of arbitration." 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1748."[T]he switch from bilateral to class arbitration," we said, "sacrifices the principal advantage of arbitration-its informality-and makes the process slower, more costly, and more likely to generate procedural morass than final judgment." Id., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1751. We specifically rejected the argument that class arbitration was necessary to prosecute claims "that might otherwise slip through the legal system." Id., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1753.
The regime established by the Court of Appeals' decision would require-before a plaintiff can be held to contractually agreed bilateral arbitration-that a federal court determine (and the parties litigate) the legal requirements for success on the merits claim-by-claim and theory-by-theory, the evidence necessary to meet those requirements, the cost of developing that evidence, and the damages that would be recovered in the event of success. Such a preliminary litigating hurdle would undoubtedly destroy the prospect of speedy resolution that arbitration in general and bilateral arbitration in particular was meant to secure. The FAA does not sanction such a judicially created superstructure.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Justice SOTOMAYOR took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
A charge card requires its holder to pay the full outstanding balance at the end of a billing cycle; a credit card requires payment of only a portion, with the balance subject to interest.
Contrary to the dissent's claim, post, at 2316 - 2317, and n. 3 (opinion of KAGAN, J.), the Court in Mitsubishi Motors did not hold that federal statutory claims are subject to arbitration so long as the claimant may effectively vindicate his rights in the arbitral forum. The Court expressly stated that, "at this stage in the proceedings," it had "no occasion to speculate" on whether the arbitration agreement's potential deprivation of a claimant's right to pursue federal remedies may render that agreement unenforceable. 473 U.S., at 637, n. 19, 105 S.Ct. 3346. Even the Court of Appeals in this case recognized the relevant language in Mitsubishi Motors as dicta. In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 667 F.3d 204, 214 (C.A.2 2012).
The dissent contends that a class-action waiver may deny a party's right to pursue statutory remedies in the same way as a clause that bars a party from presenting economic testimony. See post, at 2314, 2317. That is a false comparison for several reasons: To begin with, it is not a given that such a clause would constitute an impermissible waiver; we have never considered the point. But more importantly, such a clause, assuming it makes vindication of the claim impossible, makes it impossible not just as a class action but even as an individual claim.
Who can disagree with the dissent's assertion that "the effective-vindication rule asks about the world today, not the world as it might have looked when Congress passed a given statute"? Post, at 2319. But time does not change the meaning of effectiveness, making ineffective vindication today what was effective vindication in the past. The dissent also says that the agreement bars other forms of cost sharing-existing before the Sherman Act-that could provide effective vindication. See post, at 2318 - 2319, and n. 5. Petitioners denied that, and that is not what the Court of Appeals decision under review here held. It held that, because other forms of cost sharing were not economically feasible ("the only economically feasible means for ... enforcing [respondents'] statutory rights is via a class action "), the class-action waiver was unenforceable. 667 F.3d, at 218 (emphasis added). (The dissent's assertion to the contrary cites not the opinion on appeal here, but an earlier opinion that was vacated. See In re American Express Merchants' Litigation, 554 F.3d 300 (C.A.2 2009), vacated and remanded, 559 U.S. 1103, 130 S.Ct. 2401, 176 L.Ed.2d 920 (2010).) That is the conclusion we reject.
In dismissing AT&T Mobility as a case involving pre-emption and not the effective-vindication exception, the dissent ignores what that case established-that the FAA's command to enforce arbitration agreements trumps any interest in ensuring the prosecution of low-value claims. The latter interest, we said, is "unrelated" to the FAA. 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1752-1753. Accordingly, the FAA does, contrary to the dissent's assertion, see post, at 2309 - 2310, favor the absence of litigation when that is the consequence of a class-action waiver, since its " 'principal purpose' " is the enforcement of arbitration agreements according to their terms. 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1748 (quoting Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U.S. 468, 487, 109 S.Ct. 1248, 103 L.Ed.2d 488 (1989) ).
* * *
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
MR. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court.
In April 1971 the Federal Power Commission (FPC) promulgated its Order No. 431 requiring every jurisdictional pipeline to report to the FPC whether curtailment of its deliveries to customers would be necessary because of inadequate supply of natural gas. A pipeline anticipating the necessity for curtailment was required to file a revised tariff to control deliveries to all customers— industrial “direct sales” customers, purchasing gas for their own consumption, and “resale” customers, purchasing gas for distribution to ultimate consumers.
The principal question here is whether the proviso to § 1 (b) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 821,15 U. S. C. § 717, prohibits the FPC from applying its Order No. 431 to curtail direct-sales deliveries in times of natural gas shortage. Section 1 (b) provides:
“The provisions of this Act shall apply to the transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce, to the sale in interstate commerce of natural gas for resale for ultimate public consumption for domestic, commercial, industrial, or any other use, and to natural-gas companies engaged in such transportation or sale, but shall not apply to any other trans portation or sale of natural gas or to the local distribution of natural gas or to the facilities used for such distribution or to the production or gathering of natural gas.” (Emphasis supplied.)
A subsidiary question presented is whether the doctrine of primary jurisdiction obliged the federal courts in this case to defer to the FPC for an initial determination of FPC jurisdiction to certificate a particular pipeline delivery when a certification proceeding to determine that question was pending before the Commission.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the proviso of § 1 (b) prohibited application of FPC curtailment regulations to direct sales deliveries, and held, further, that neither that court nor the District Court was obliged to defer to the FPC’s pending certification proceeding. 456 F. 2d 326 (CA5 1972). We granted certiorari, 405 U. S. 973 (1972). We reverse.
I
Respondent Louisiana Power & Light Co. (LP&L) generates electricity at Sterlington-Electric Generating Station in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, and at Nine-Mile Point Generating Station in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The natural gas burned under LP&L’s boilers at both stations is purchased from United Gas Pipe Line Co. (United), a petitioner in No. 71-1040, under direct-sales contracts of long standing. The sales to Sterlington Station are sales of interstate gas, initially certificated by the FPC. Sales to Nine-Mile Point Station had been wholly intrastate gas delivered from United’s intrastate “Green System” when, in 1970, United diverted 2.6%. of the gas from its interstate “Black System” into the intrastate “Green System,” after which United sought FPC certification of the “Green System.” In 1970 also, United, from concern that its gas supply during the 1970-1971 heating season would fall short of demand, sought a declaratory order from the FPC to approve a proposed program of curtailment of natural gas deliveries to both its direct and resale customers. This proceeding culminated in agreement among affected customers under which FPC allowed United to carry out its program for the 1970-1971 winter.
When, however, United made a supplemental filing in February 1971, for a proposed curtailment program for the 1971 summer season, LP&L, in March 1971, filed this diversity action in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, alleging that the program was a breach of its contracts with United and asking injunctive relief against its implementation. LP&L also asked for a judgment declaring that the “Green System” was an intrastate system, deliveries from which did not require FPC certification. The FPC and United sought dismissal of the action on the ground that a prior decision by the District Court would be destructive of the FPC’s primary jurisdiction since the FPC was, in fact, asserting its jurisdiction over both issues at that time and was promulgating its Order No. 431, and United, in response to Order No. 431, was filing its third curtailment plan.
In opposition to the motions to dismiss in the District Court, LP&L argued that the FPC was without jurisdiction to authorize or approve curtailment programs affecting direct-sales deliveries and was also without jurisdiction to curtail deliveries to Nine-Mile Point Station because they were local and not interstate deliveries. On June 30, 1971, the District Court dismissed the action, holding that the FPC had jurisdiction of both curtailment and certification proceedings and that LP&L had to exhaust its administrative remedies in both, 332 F. Supp. 692 (1971). The Court of Appeals decision reversed this dismissal.
II
United is a “jurisdictional” pipeline purchasing gas from producers in Texas and Louisiana and supplying wholesalers, direct-sales customers, and other pipelines. United supplies ultimate consumers throughout the eastern half of the United States from Texas to Massachusetts with a peak-day commitment in the winter heating months totaling about 6,000,000 thousand cubic feet (Mcf).
In 1970, as part of a pattern of temporary and chronic natural gas shortages throughout the Nation, United found itself unable to meet all of its contract commitments during peak demand periods. Indeed, on days of greatest use, United expected to fall short by as much as 20% or more. In October 1970 United first promulgated a proposed delivery curtailment plan and sought a declaratory order from the FPC that the plan was consistent with United's obligations under its tariff and direct-sales contracts. Many of United’s contracts with its customers made some provision for curtailment in times of temporary shortage, but these terms were complex and were not identical in all contracts or in United’s tariff filings with the Commission. United’s proposed curtailment plan established a priority system of three groups, curtailed on the basis of end use. These three groups were, in order of the lowest priority and curtailed first, gas used for industrial purposes, including gas to generate electricity for industrial purposes; gas used to generate electricity consumed by domestic consumers; and gas used by domestic consumers. See United Gas Pipe Line Co., F. P. C. Op. No. 606, Oct. 5, 1971. The plan made no distinction between direct-sales customers and resale customers.
This plan was opposed by LP&L and others, primarily on the ground that the FPC had no jurisdiction to curtail deliveries under direct-sales contracts. While preserving their objections, all but one of United’s customers agreed to a modified plan to go into effect for the 1970-1971 winter season while the proceedings continued.
During this same season, many other pipelines reported serious shortages and applied to the FPC for assistance in effecting curtailment plans. In response, the FPC promulgated several emergency provisions for temporary measures to avoid major disruptions of power supplies. Orders Nos. 402, 35 Fed. Reg. 7511, and 402A, 35 Fed. Reg. 8927, authorized short-term purchases by pipelines facing shortages from other jurisdictional pipelines to ensure that storage fields were filled. Order No. 418, 35 Fed. Reg. 19173, authorized similar emergency purchases from producers without following usual procedures.
It was because these measures were found to be insufficient that the FPC promulgated Order No. 431, 36 Fed. Reg. 7505. The Order recommended that in filing the required tariff revisions, “ [consideration should be given to the curtailment of volumes equivalent to all interruptible sales and to the curtailment of large boiler fuel sales where alternate fuels are available.” Finally, Order No. 431 provided:
“Jurisdictional pipelines have the responsibility in the first instance to adopt a curtailment program by filing appropriate tariffs. Such tariffs, if approved by the Commission, will control in all respects notwithstanding inconsistent provisions in sales contracts, jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional, entered into prior to the date of the approval of the tariff.”
United’s revised tariff program filed in compliance with this order immediately became subject to the pending hearing for a declaratory order. On October 5, 1971, the FPC announced its interim decision, Op. No. 606, finding jurisdiction to effect a curtailment program for all customers, revising United’s latest filing slightly, and remanding other issues in the plan to a hearing examiner. On November 2, 1971, United’s plan, as modified, went into full effect. The appeal of LP&L and others from the FPC decision, Op. No. 606, is pending in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Also, in October 1970, based on the introduction of the interstate gas from its Black System, United sought certification under § 7 (c) for the continued operation of the portion of its pipeline facilities in Louisiana (the Green System) used to supply LP&L’s Nine-Mile Point generating station. LP&L opposed the application, alleging that the pipeline was constructed and operated to be wholly intrastate, and that United’s “illegal” introduction of a very small quantity of interstate gas did not cause the whole system to come under Commission jurisdiction.
On February 9, 1972, the Commission found in Op. No. 610 that the Green System was within its jurisdiction and thus required certification; it remanded the proceedings to a trial examiner to determine if the certificate should be granted under the “public convenience and necessity” standard of § 7.
The Court of Appeals’ reversal of the District Court on the curtailment issue rested on its view that under the Natural Gas Act.. FPC has no form of continuing certificate jurisdiction over direct sales to customers of interstate pipeline companies. It has the initial right to issue or veto a certificate of public convenience and necessity and it must give its approval to the abandonment of the use of the certificated facilities, but between the two functions the express exemption [in the proviso of § 1 (b)] of regulatory power over such consumptive sales bars agency intervention.” 456 F. 2d, at 338.
The Court of Appeals’ holding that United’s injection of interstate gas from its Black System into the theretofore intrastate Green System did not establish FPC jurisdiction to certificate the Green System, rested on its finding that the record showed that “the flow of gas from the Black system into the Green system in the case at bar is occasional and irregular, as well as minimal. The Green system, as an entire and separate unit, is physically located and functions entirely in Louisiana. Therefore, the undisputed facts show that the channel of constant flow is an intrastate and not an interstate channel. The regulation of the Green system is substantially and essentially a localized matter committed to Louisiana’s jurisdiction.” 456 F. 2d, at 339-340.
III
The Natural Gas Act of 1938 granted FPC broad powers “to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies.” FPC v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591, 610 (1944). See FPC v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 365 U. S. 1, 19 (1961); Sunray Mid-Continent Oil Co. v. FPC, 364 U. S. 137, 147 (1960). To that end, Congress “meant to create a comprehensive and effective regulatory scheme,” Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 332 U. S. 507, 520 (1947), of dual state and federal authority. Although federal jurisdiction was not to be exclusive, FPC regulation was to be broadly complementary to that reserved to the States, so that there would be no “gaps” for private interests to subvert the public welfare. This congressional blueprint has guided judicial interpretation of the broad language defining FPC jurisdiction, and
“when a dispute arises over whether a given transaction is within the scope of federal or state regulatory authority, we are not inclined to approach the problem negatively, thus raising the possibility that a ‘no man's land’ will be created. Compare Guss v. Utah Labor Board, 353 U. S. 1. That is to say, in a borderline case where congressional authority is not explicit we must ask whether state authority can practicably regulate a given area and, if we find that it cannot, then we are impelled to decide that federal authority governs.” FPC v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., supra, at 19-20.
This litigation poses the question whether FPC has authority to effect orderly curtailment plans involving both direct sales and sales for resale. LP&L insists that the FPC has no power to include direct sales in these plans. Transcontinental counsels inquiry into the necessary consequences of that contention in terms of the scope of federal and state regulatory authority in the premises.
Thirty-seven percent of United's total sales in 1970 were direct industrial sales. Under LP&L’s argument, this volume would be wholly exempt from any curtailment plan approved by the FPC and thus United’s resale customers would be forced to accept the entire burden of sharply reduced volumes while direct-sales customers received full contract service. The ultimate consumers thus affected include schools, hospitals, and homes completely dependent on a continued natural gas supply for heating and other domestic uses. These resale consumers could be curtailed by as much as 560,000 Mcf on cold days without dire consequences, but burdening them with the full curtailment volume would deprive them of up to 1,500,000 Mcf.
From a practical point of view, LP&L’s position may thus produce a seriously inequitable system of gas distribution. Many direct industrial users of gas require only “interruptible services,” which by the terms of their contracts are recognized to be of such minimal importance to the user that, upon the happening of certain events, the supply can be shut off on little or no notice. Nevertheless, the need for curtailment may not be sufficient to trigger these provisions of the contract and interruptible service customers may be able to demand full contract gas while resale consumers are being drastically curtailed. Many other direct industrial sales customers have alternative means available at little or no additional cost, yet under LP&L’s contention will be able to demand their contract volumes while homes, hospitals, and schools suffer from lack of adequate service.
Can state authority practicably regulate in this area to prevent this inequity and hardship? Insofar as state plans purport to curtail deliveries of interstate gas, Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553 (1923), is authority that such plans, when they operate to withdraw a large volume of gas from an established interstate current whereby it is supplied to customers in other States, would constitute a prohibited interference with interstate commerce. But even to the extent the States may constitutionally promulgate curtailment plans, the inevitable result would be varied regulatory programs of state courts and agencies, interpreting a countless number of different contracts and applying a variety of state agency rules. The conflicting results would necessarily produce allocations determined simply by the ability of each customer to pump its desired volume from a pipeline. Moreover, in some States, Louisiana for example, the state regulatory agency is forbidden to regulate direct-sales contracts. Besides, a state agency empowered to regulate these contracts would be obliged to regulate in the State, not the national interest. Cf. Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, supra. The unavoidable conflict between producing States and consuming States will create contradictory regulations that cannot possibly be equitably resolved by the courts. With these problems in mind, the desirability of uniform federal regulation is abundantly clear. Nevertheless, as the Court of Appeals emphasized, 456 F. 2d, at 335, a need for federal regulation does not establish FPC jurisdiction that Congress has not granted. We turn then to analysis of the statute to determine whether Congress withheld, as LP&L argues, authority from the FPC to apply its curtailment regulations to direct sales.
IV
In § 1 (b) of the Act, “[t]hree things and three only Congress drew within its own regulatory power, delegated by the Act to- its agent, the Federal Power Commission. These were: (1) the transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce; (2) its sale in interstate commerce for resale; and (3) natural gas companies engaged in such transportation or sale.” Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 332 U. S., at 516. Each of these is an independent grant of jurisdiction and, though the Act's application to “sales” is limited to sales of interstate gas' for resale, the Act applies to interstate • “transportation” regardless of whether the gas transported is ultimately sold retail or wholesale. FPC v. East Ohio Gas Co., 338 U. S. 464, 468 (1950).
LP&L argues that the proviso in § 1 (b) creates a complete exemption of direct sales from curtailment regulations. The answer is that the prohibition of the proviso of § 1 (b) withheld from FPC only rate-setting authority with respect to direct sales. Curtailment regulations are not rate-setting regulations but regulations of the “transportation” of natural gas and thus within FPC jurisdiction under the opening sentence of § 1 (b) that “[t]he provisions of this Act shall apply to the transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce-....” The Court of Appeals rejected that construction on the ground that under it the “transportation” jurisdiction would swallow up the proviso’s exemption for direct sales. We disagree.
The major impetus for the congressional grant of sales jurisdiction to the FPC was furnished by a Federal Trade Commission study of the pipeline industry in 1935-1936. The study showed that increasing concentration in the industry was producing vast economic power for the pipelines and a serious threat of unreasonably high prices for consumers. This threat was most acute in the case of sales for resale because wholesale distributors and their customers had little economic clout with which to obtain equitable prices from the pipelines. State power to regulate rates charged for interstate service to a customer in another State for resale was also thought, within this Court’s decisions, constitutionally to be outside the regulatory power of the States. Public Utilities Comm’n v. Attleboro Steam & Elec. Co., 273 U. S. 83 (1927); Missouri v. Kansas Gas Co., 265 U. S. 298 (1924).
In response to this report and pressures from state regulatory agencies, Congress enacted a federal “sales” jurisdiction in the Natural Gas Act, by which Congress granted rate-setting authority to the Commission over all interstate sales for resale. But as this Court, in Pennsylvania Gas Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 252 U. S. 23 (1920), had sustained state authority to regulate rates for “direct” sales, and, moreover, the need for federal authority here was not deemed acute, Congress withheld rate-setting jurisdiction over direct sales. That rate setting was the only subject matter covered by “sales” jurisdiction and the “direct sales” exception is clear from the legislative history of the proviso. The original phrasing of the proviso was:
“Provided, That nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the Commission to fix rates or charges for the sale of natural gas distributed locally in low-pressure mains or for the sale of natural gas for industrial use only.” Hearing on H. R. 11662 before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1936) (emphasis supplied).
The phrasing was changed and the words “to fix rates or charges” were subsequently deleted, but the House committee report confirms that the proviso as finally phrased was nevertheless meant to be restricted to rate setting. H. R. Rep. No. 709, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 4 (1937), states:
“It was urged in connection with earlier bills that there should be inserted at the end of this subsection a proviso as follows:
“ ‘Provided, That nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the Commission to fix the rates or charges to the public for the sale of natural gas distributed locally.’
“In order to avoid misunderstanding the committee thought it necessary to omit this proviso from the present bill for the following reasons, even though there is entire agreement with the intended policy which would have prompted its inclusion: First, it would have been surplusage if interpreted as it was intended to be interpreted, and, second, it would have been, in all likelihood, a source of confusion if interpreted in any other way. For example, it was felt that in the effort to find a reason for its inclusion it might have been argued that it exempted sales to a publicly owned distributing company, and such an exemption is not, of course, intended. It is believed that the purposes of this proviso, assuming the need for any such provision, are fully covered in the present provision by the language — ‘but shall not apply to any other... sales of natural gas.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.)
The author of the changed version, the General Solicitor of the National Association of Railroad and Utilities Commissioners, confirmed this interpretation. Hearing on H. R. 4008, before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 143.
Thus, Congress’ grant of sales jurisdiction as to sales for resale and the prohibition as to direct sales were meant to apply exclusively to rate setting, and in no wise limited the broad base of “transportation” jurisdiction granted the FPC. That head of jurisdiction plainly embraces regulation of the quantities of gas that pipelines may transport, for in that respect Congress created “a comprehensive and effective regulatory scheme,” Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 332 U. S., at 520, to “afford consumers a complete, permanent and effective bond of protection....” At lantic Refining Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 360 U. S. 378, 388 (1959).
“Therefore, when we are presented with an attempt by the federal authority to control a problem that is not, by its very nature, one with which state regulatory commissions can be expected to deal, the conclusion is irresistible that Congress desired regulation by federal authority rather than non-regulation.” FPC v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 365 U. S., at 28.
Comprehensive and equitable curtailment plans for gas transported in interstate commerce, as already mentioned, are practically beyond the competence of state regulatory agencies. Congress was also aware that Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553 (1923), casts serious doubt upon the constitutionality of state regulation of such plans. That decision was considered in the deliberations on the Natural Gas Act and was cited to the House Committee as a reason for federal regulation. Hearing on H. R. 11662 before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1936).
Finally, this Court has already stated its view that curtailment plans are aspects of FPC’s “transportation” and not its “sales” jurisdiction. In Panhandle Eastern, 332 U. S., at 523, we said:
“[T]he matter of interrupting service is one largely related... to transportation and thus within the jurisdiction of the Federal Power Commission to control, in accommodation of any conflicting interests among various states.”
y
Since curtailment programs fall within the FPC’s responsibilities under the head of its “transportation” jurisdiction, the Commission must possess broad powers to devise effective means to meet these responsibilities. FPC and other agencies created to protect the public interest must be free, “within the ambit of their statutory authority, to make the pragmatic adjustments which may be called for by particular circumstances.” FPC v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U. S. 575, 586 (1942). Section 16 of the Act assures the FPC the necessary degree of flexibility in providing that:
“The Commission shall have power to perform any and all acts, and to prescribe, issue, make, amend, and rescind such orders, rules, and regulations as it may find necessary or appropriate to carry out the provisions of this Act....” 15 U. S. C. § 717o.
In applying this section, we have held that “the width of administrative authority must be measured in part by the purposes for which it was conferred.... Surely the Commission’s broad responsibilities therefore demand a generous construction of its statutory authority.” Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U. S. 747, 776 (1968); see United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. FPC, 385 U. S. 83, 89-90 (1966).
The substantive standard governing FPC evaluation of curtailment plans is found in § 4 (b) of the Act:
“No natural-gas company shall, with respect to any transportation or sale of natural gas subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, (1) make or grant any undue preference or advantage to any person or subject any person to any undue prejudice or disadvantage, or (2) maintain any unreasonable difference in rates, charges, service, facilities, or in any other respect, either as between localities or as between classes of service.” 15 U. S. C. § 717c (b).
Two procedural mechanisms are available to enforce this antidiscriminatory provision of § 4(b). As to a tariff already on file and in effect, the FPC may proceed under §5 (a). The § 5 (a) procedure has substantial disadvantages, however, rendering it unsuitable for the evaluation of curtailment plans. The FPC must afford interested parties a full hearing on the reasonableness of the tariff before taking any remedial action, and, as we have observed, “the delay incident to determination in § 5 proceedings through which initial certificated rates [as well as “practices” and “contracts”] are reviewable appears nigh interminable.” Atlantic Refining Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 360 U. S., at 389. In addition a prescribed remedial order can have only prospective application. FPC has therefore chosen to process curtailment plans under §§ 4 (c), (d), and (e). Under these provisions, a pipeline's tariff amendments filed with the FPC go into effect in 30 days unless suspended by the Commission. If a filing is challenged or the FPC of its own motion deems it appropriate, it may suspend the amended tariff for up to five months, at the end of which time the amended tariff becomes effective pending the completion of hearings. In these hearings, the pipeline has the burden of proving that its plan is reasonable and fair.
Order No. 431 makes full use of the § 4 procedures. All pipelines facing shortages necessitating curtailment are required to file reasonable allocation schemes as amendments to their existing tariffs, or to state that the existing tariffs are adequate. When emergency or other conditions arise and it appears desirable in the public interest to place a plan into effect, the FPC may accept the filing, implement it immediately or suspend it, and employ the plan as a working guideline while hearings continue. In addition to the flexibility of this arrangement, the requirement that pipelines submit plans enables the FPC to utilize each pipeline’s unique knowledge of its customers’ needs, ability to substitute other fuel sources, and other relevant considerations.
The Court of Appeals held that, under our decision in FPC v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 365 U. S., at 17, FPC authority over direct-sales contracts is limited to a “veto power” to be exercised only in certification proceedings under § 7 (c) and abandonment proceedings under § 7 (b). We reject this argument on two grounds. First, Transcontinental dealt with FPC’s authority to consider direct-sales rates in certification proceedings. We there noted that under § 1 (b) FPC jurisdiction over rates was limited. The litigation here, unlike Transcontinental, does not involve rates and therefore the provision of § 1 (b) is wholly inapplicable. Secondly, Transcontinental dealt only with FPC "veto power” under § 7, and in no way limited FPC authority under § 4 (b) to prevent discrimination among a pipeline’s customers. Since § 4 (b) deals with “service,” the FPC may invoke it to deal with curtailment programs, whether or not it could also invoke § 7 for that purpose.
Amici have argued that permitting the pipeline’s tariff amendments to take effect despite contrary terms in existing contracts is inconsistent with our decision in United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Mobile Gas Service Corp., 350 U. S. 332 (1956). In that case, however, we dealt with an attempt by a pipeline unilaterally to effect a change in its contract terms by making a filing under § 4. In the present cause, the issue is whether the FPC, acting under the head of its transportation jurisdiction and its broad mandate under § 16, may order pipelines facing shortages to develop and submit rational curtailment arrangements. Our holding in Mobile Gas Service Corp. does not govern the decision of this issue since, as we observed in that case:
“[D] enying to natural gas companies the power unilaterally to change their contracts in no way impairs the regulatory powers of the Commission, for the contracts remain fully subject to the paramount power of the Commission to modify them when necessary in the public interest.” 350 U. S., at 344.
We conclude therefore that the FPC has the jurisdiction asserted here and that the Natural Gas Act fully authorizes the method chosen by the FPC for its exercise.
VI
In addition to holding that the proviso to § 1 (b) prohibited curtailment of gas delivered to the Nine-Mile Point Station, the Court of Appeals held that those deliveries were not regulable by the FPC because “the flow of gas from the Black system into the Green system... is occasional and irregular, as well as minimal,” and that “[t]he Green system, as an entire and separate unit, is physically located and functions entirely in Louisiana”; the court concluded that, for these reasons, “[t]he regulation of the Green system is substantially and essentially a localized matter committed to Louisiana’s jurisdiction.” 456 F. 2d, at 339-340. The Court of Appeals erred in deciding this question. The FPC had exercised its primary jurisdiction and was conducting proceedings to determine whether the Green System was subject to its jurisdiction. In that circumstance, the District Court and the Court of Appeals were obliged to defer to the FPC for the initial determination of its jurisdiction. See Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303 U. S. 41 (1938). The need to protect the primary authority of an agency to determine its own jurisdiction “is obviously greatest when the precise issue brought before a court is in the process of litigation through procedures originating in the [agency]. While the [agency’s] decision is not the last word, it must assuredly be the first.” Marine Engineers Beneficial Assn. v. Interlake S. S. Co., 370 U. S. 173, 185 (1962). Review of the FPC decision may proceed in due course pursuant to § 19 (b) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b). We see no need to make the same disposition as to the curtailment question since the Court of Appeals had Op. No. 606 before it and acted upon the opinion in reaching its decision.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Stewart took no part in the decision of these cases.
Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
A "jurisdictional” pipeline transports natural gas in interstate commerce and for that reason is subject to FPC certification jurisdiction. The “jurisdictional” label is also sometimes used to apply to sales, in which case it refers to interstate sales for resale, which are subject to Commission rate regulation.
FPC Staff Report No. 2, National Gas Supply and Demand 1971-1990 (1972):
“The emergence of a natural gas shortage during the past two years marks a historic turning point — the end of natural gas industry growth uninhibited by supply considerations. Not only has the Nation’s proven gas reserve inventory for the lower 48 states been shrinking for the past three years, but major pipeline companies and distributors in most parts of the country have been forced to refuse requests for additional gas service from large industrial customers and from many new customers. For practical short-term purposes we are confronted with the fact that current proven reserves in the lower 48 states, as reported by the American Gas Association, have dropped from 289.3 trillion cubic feet in 1967 to 259.6 in 1970, a 10.3 percent drop within a three-year period. Furthermore, approximately 95 percent of this proven reserve inventory is already committed to gas sales contracts and is therefore unavailable for sales to new customers or for increased volumes to old customers.” Id., at xi.
Demand for natural gas fluctuates sharply from season to season and from day to day. Nationally, peak days occur in winter heating months. For LP&L, however, the need for gas is greatest in the summer months, when air conditioning increases electricity consumption.
Many of the facts are taken from the recitals in the petitions for certiorari, which draw upon evidence presented before the FPC in the curtailment proceedings. LP&L has not challenged their accuracy except to argue that no significant gas shortage actually exists. Our decision in this case in no way limits LP&L’s freedom to argue its position as to the facts on the appeal pending in the Court of Appeals.
The Commission has authority to issue declaratory orders under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 554 (e).
The record in these cases does not contain all the contract terms dealing with curtailment of deliveries. United’s two contracts with LP&L under consideration in this litigation, however, indicate that the terms vary from year to year and customer to customer since these two contracts themselves establish slightly different priority systems. Moreover, LP&L informs us that its contracts had terms slightly different from those in most other direct-sales contracts.
The objecting party appealed the decision of the FPC and that case is now pending in the District of Columbia.
The petitions of the Solicitor General and United for review here of the FPC decision prior to judgment of the Court of Appeals were denied. 406 U. S. 973 (1972).
Section 7 (c) provides:
“No natural-gas company or person which will be a natural-gas company upon completion of any proposed construction or extension shall engage in the transportation or sale of natural gas, subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or undertake the construction or extension of any facilities therefor, or acquire or operate any such facilities or extensions thereof, unless there is in force with respect to such natural-gas company a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the Commission authorizing such acts or operations... 15 U. S. C. § 717f (c).
Argument was heard in the Fifth Circuit in November 1971, one month after the FPC decision in No. 606. The Court of Appeals decision was announced in January 1972, one month before the FPC decision in No. 610.
La. Const., Art. 6, § 4.
The conflict between producing and consuming States over state or federal regulatory authority is highlighted in the contrast between Louisiana’s amicus brief in this litigation and the statement of the Chairman of the New York Public Service Commission in another case. Louisiana, a producing State, submits:
“Historically, gas producing states have certain advantages over states which do not have their own gas supply. Their very proximity to the source of production attracts industries which use gas as the raw material without which their plants could not operate. The lower transportation costs of delivering gas to other industrial and commercial
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
For the second time this Term, we consider a constitutional challenge to the former Texas capital sentencing system. Like the condemned prisoner in Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461 (1993), the petitioner here claims that the Texas special issues system in effect until 1991 did not allow his jury to give adequate mitigating effect to evidence of his youth. Graham was a federal habeas corpus proceeding where the petitioner had to confront the rule of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), barring the application of new rules of law on federal habeas corpus. In part because the relief sought by Graham would have required a new rule within the meaning of Teague, we denied relief. The instant case comes to us on direct review of petitioner’s conviction and sentence, so we consider it without the constraints of Teague, though of course with the customary respect for the doctrine of stare decisis. Based upon our precedents, including much of the reasoning in Graham, we find the Texas procedures as applied in this case were consistent with the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
I
Petitioner, then 19 years of age, and his companion, Amanda Miles, decided to rob Allsup’s convenience store in Snyder, Texas, on March 23, 1986. After agreeing that there should be no witnesses to the crime, the pair went to the store to survey its layout and, in particular, to determine the number of employees working in the store that evening. They found that the only employee present during the predawn hours was a clerk, Jack Huddleston. Petitioner and Miles left the store to make their final plans.
They returned to Allsup’s a short time later. Petitioner, a handgun in his pocket, reentered the store with Miles. After waiting for other customers to leave, petitioner asked Huddleston whether the store had any orange juice in one gallon plastic jugs because there were none on the shelves. Saying he would check, Huddleston went to the store’s cooler. Petitioner followed Huddleston there, told Huddleston the store was being robbed, and ordered him to lie on the floor. After Huddleston complied with the order and placed his hands behind his head, petitioner shot him in the back of the neck, killing him. When petitioner emerged from the cooler, Miles had emptied the cash registers of about $160. They each grabbed a carton of cigarettes and fled.
In April 1986, a few weeks after this crime, petitioner was arrested for a subsequent robbery and attempted murder of a store clerk in Colorado City, Texas. He confessed to the murder of Jack Huddleston and the robbery of Allsup’s and was tried and convicted of capital murder. The homicide qualified as a capital offense under Texas law because petitioner intentionally or knowingly caused Huddleston’s death and the murder was carried out in the course of committing a robbery. Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 19.02(a)(1), 19.03(a)(2) (1989).
After the jury determined that petitioner was guilty of capital murder, a separate punishment phase of the proceedings was conducted in which petitioner’s sentence was determined. In conformity with the Texas capital sentencing statute then in effect, see Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(b) (Vernon 1981), the trial court instructed the jury that it was to answer two special issues:
“[(1)] Was the conduct of the Defendant, Dorsie Lee Johnson, Jr., that caused the death of the deceased, committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased or another would result?
“[(2)] Is there a probability that the Defendant, Dorsie Lee Johnson, Jr., would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?” App. 148-149.
The trial court made clear to the jury the consequences of its answers to the special issues:
“You are further instructed that if the jury returns affirmative or ‘yes’ answer [sic] to all the Issues submitted, this Court shall sentence the Defendant to death. If the jury returns a negative or ‘no’ answer to any Issue submitted, the Court shall sentence the Defendant to life in prison.” Id., at 146.
The jury was instructed not to consider or discuss the possibility of parole. Id., at 147. The trial court also instructed the jury as follows concerning its consideration of mitigating evidence:
“In determining each of these Issues, you may take into consideration all the evidence submitted to you in the trial of this case, whether aggravating or mitigating in nature, that is, all the evidence in the first part of the trial when you were called upon to determine the guilt or innocence of the Defendant and all the evidence, if any, in the second part of the trial wherein you are called upon to determine the answers to the Special Issues.” Ibid.
Although petitioner’s counsel filed various objections to the jury charge, there was no request that a more expansive instruction be given concerning any particular mitigating circumstance, including petitioner’s youth.
In anticipation of the trial court’s instructions, the State during the punishment phase of the proceedings presented numerous witnesses who testified to petitioner’s violent tendencies. The most serious evidence related to the April convenience store robbery in Colorado City. Witnesses testified that petitioner had shot that store clerk in the face, resulting in the victim’s permanent disfigurement and brain damage. Other witnesses testified that petitioner had fired two shots at a man outside a restaurant in Snyder only six days after the murder of Huddleston, and a sheriff’s deputy who worked in the jail where petitioner was being held testified that petitioner had threatened to “get” the deputy when he got out of jail.
Petitioner’s acts of violence were not limited to strangers. A longtime friend of petitioner, Beverly Johnson, testified that in early 1986 petitioner had hit her, thrown a large rock at her head, and pointed a gun at her on several occasions. Petitioner’s girlfriend, Paula Williams, reported that, after petitioner had become angry with her one afternoon in 1986, he threatened her with an axe. There were other incidents, of less gravity, before 1986. One of petitioner’s classmates testified that petitioner cut him with a piece of glass while they were in the seventh grade. Another classmate testified that petitioner also cut him with glass just a year later, and there was additional evidence presented that petitioner had stabbed a third classmate with a pencil.
The State established that the crimes committed in 1986 were not petitioner’s first experience with the criminal justice system. Petitioner had been convicted in 1985 of a store burglary in Waco, Texas. Petitioner twice violated the terms of probation for that offense by smoking marijuana. Petitioner was still on probation when he committed the Huddleston murder.
The defense presented petitioner’s father, Dorsie Johnson, Sr., as its only witness. The elder Johnson attributed his son’s criminal activities to his drug use and his youth. When asked by defense counsel whether his son at the age of 19 was “a real mature person,” petitioner’s father answered:
“No, no. Age of nineteen? No, sir. That, also, I find to be a foolish age. That’s a foolish age. They tend to want to be macho, built-up, trying to step into manhood. You’re not mature-lized for it.” Id., at 27.
At the close of his testimony, Johnson summarized the role that he thought youth had played in his son’s crime:
“[A]ll I can say is I still think that a kid eighteen or nineteen years old has an undeveloped mind, undeveloped sense of assembling not — I don’t say what is right or wrong, but the evaluation of it, how much, you know, that might be — well, he just don’t — he just don’t evaluate what is worth — what’s worth and what’s isn’t like he should like a thirty or thirty-five year old man would. He would take under consideration a lot of things that a younger person that age wouldn’t.” Id., at 47.
The father also testified that his son had been a regular churchgoer and his problems were attributable in large part to the death of his mother following a stroke in 1984 and the murder of his sister in 1985. Finally, the senior Johnson testified to his son’s remorse over the killing of Huddleston.
At the voir dire phase of the proceedings, during which more than 90 prospective jurors were questioned over the course of 15 days, petitioner’s counsel asked the venirepersons whether they believed that people were capable of change and whether the venirepersons had ever done things as youths that they would not do now. See, e. g., Tr. of Voir Dire in No. 5575 (132d Jud. Dist. Ct., Scurry County, Tex.), pp. 1526-1529 (Juror Swigert); id., at 1691-1692 (Juror Freeman); id., at 2366 (Juror Witte); id., at 2630-2632 (Juror Raborn). Petitioner’s counsel returned to this theme in his closing argument:
“The question — the real question, I think, is whether you believe that there is a possibility that he can change. You will remember that that was one thing every one of you told me you agreed — every one of you agreed with me that people can change. If you agree that people can change, then that means that Dorsie can change and that takes question two [regarding future dangerousness] out of the realm of probability and into possibility, you see, because if he can change, then it is no longer probable that he will do these things, but only possible that he can and will do these things, you see.
“If people couldn’t change, if you could say I know people cannot change, then you could say probably. But every one of you knows in your heart and in your mind that people can and people do change and Dorsie Johnson can change and, therefore, the answer to question two should be no.” App. 81.
Counsel also urged the jury to remember the testimony of petitioner’s father. Id., at 73-74.
The jury was instructed that the State bore the burden of proving each special issue beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 145. A unanimous jury found that the answer to both special issues was yes, and the trial court sentenced petitioner to death, as required by law. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(e) (Vernon 1981).
On appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence after rejecting petitioner’s seven allegations of error, none of which involved a challenge to the punishment-phase jury instructions. 773 S. W. 2d 322 (1989). Five days after that state court ruling, we issued our opinion in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989). Petitioner filed a motion for rehearing in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals arguing, among other points, that the special issues did not allow for adequate consideration of his youth. Citing Penry, petitioner claimed that a separate instruction should have been given that would have allowed the jury to consider petitioner’s age as a mitigating factor. Although petitioner had not requested such an instruction at trial and had not argued the point prior to the rehearing stage on appeal, no procedural bar was interposed. Instead, the Court of Criminal Appeals considered the argument on the merits and rejected it. After noting that it had already indicated in Lackey v. State, 819 S. W. 2d 111, 134 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989), that youth was relevant to the jury’s consideration of the second special issue, the court reasoned that “[i]f a juror believed that [petitioner’s] violent actions were a result of his youth, that same juror would naturally believe that [petitioner] would cease to behave violently as he grew older.” App. 180. The court concluded that “the jury was able to express a reasoned moral response to [petitioner's] mitigating evidence within the scope of the art. 37.071 instructions given to them by the trial court.” Id., at 180-181.
Petitioner filed a petition for certiorari, which we granted. 506 U. S. 1090 (1993).
II
A
This is the latest in a series of decisions in which the Court has explained the requirements imposed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments regarding consideration of mitigating circumstances by sentencers in capital cases. The earliest case in the decisional line is Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972). At the time of Furman, sentencing juries had almost complete discretion in determining whether a given defendant would be sentenced to death, resulting in a system in which there was “no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [death was] imposed from the many cases in which it [was] not.” Id., at 313 (White, J., concurring). Although no two Justices could agree on a single rationale, a majority of the Court in Furman concluded that this system was “cruel and unusual” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. The guiding principle that emerged from Furman was that States were required to channel the discretion of sentencing juries in order to avoid a system in which the death penalty would be imposed in a “wanto[n]” and “freakis[h]” manner. Id., at 310 (Stewart, J., concurring).
Four Terms after Furman, we decided five cases, in opinions issued on the same day, concerning the constitutionality of various capital sentencing systems. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242 (1976); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262 (1976); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280 (1976); Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U. S. 325 (1976). In the wake of Furman, at least 35 States had abandoned sentencing schemes that vested complete discretion in juries in favor of systems that either (i) “specified] the factors to be weighed and the procedures to be followed in deciding when to impose a capital sentence,” or (ii) “ma[de] the death penalty mandatory for certain crimes.” Gregg, supra, at 179-180 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). In the five cases, the controlling joint opinion of three Justices reaffirmed the principle of Furman that “discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.” 428 U. S., at 189; accord, Proffitt, supra, at 258 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.).
Based upon this principle, it might have been thought that statutes mandating imposition of the death penalty if a defendant was found guilty of certain crimes would be consistent with the Constitution. But the joint opinions of Justices Stewart, Powell, and Stevens indicated that there was a second principle, in some tension with the first, to be considered in assessing the constitutionality of a capital sentencing scheme. According to the three Justices, “consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense [is] a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.” Woodson, supra, at 304 (plurality opinion); accord, Gregg, supra, at 189-190, n. 38 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Jurek, supra, at 273-274 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Roberts, supra, at 333 (plurality opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Based upon this second principle, the Court struck down mandatory imposition of the death penalty for specified crimes as inconsistent with the requirements of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. See Woodson, supra, at 305; Roberts, supra, at 335-336.
Two Terms later, a plurality of the Court in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), refined the requirements related to the consideration of mitigating evidence by a capital sentences Unlike the mandatory schemes struck down in Woodson and Roberts in which all mitigating evidence was excluded, the Ohio system at issue in Lockett permitted a limited range of mitigating circumstances to be considered by the sentences The plurality nonetheless found this system to be unconstitutional, holding that “the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer... not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant’s character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death.” 438 U. S., at 604. A majority of the Court adopted the Lockett rule in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982); accord, Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393, 398-399 (1987); Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1, 4 (1986), and we have not altered the rule’s central requirement. “Lockett and its progeny stand only for the proposition that a State may not cut off in an absolute manner the presentation of mitigating evidence, either by statute or judicial instruction, or by limiting the inquiries to which it is relevant so severely that the evidence could never be part of the sentencing decision at all.” McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433, 456 (1990) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment); see also Graham, 506 U. S., at 475; Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 490-491 (1990).
Although Lockett and Eddings prevent a State from placing relevant mitigating evidence “beyond the effective reach of the sentencer,” Graham, supra, at 475, those cases and others in that decisional line do not bar a State from guiding the sentencer’s consideration of mitigating evidence. Indeed, we have held that “there is no... constitutional requirement of unfettered sentencing discretion in the jury, and States are free to structure and shape consideration of mitigating evidence ‘in an effort to achieve a more rational and equitable administration of the death penalty/” Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 377 (1990) (quoting Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U. S. 164, 181 (1988) (plurality opinion)); see also Saffle, supra, at 490.
B
The Texas law under which petitioner was sentenced has been the principal concern of four previous opinions in our Court. See Jurek v. Texas, supra; Franklin v. Lynaugh, supra; Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989); Graham, supra. As we have mentioned, Jurek was included in the group of five cases addressing the post-Furman statutes in 1976.
In Jurek, the joint opinion of Justices Stewart, Powell, and Stevens first noted that there was no constitutional deficiency in the means used to narrow the group of offenders subject to capital punishment, the statute having adopted five different classifications of murder for that purpose. See Jurek, 428 U. S., at 270-271. Turning to the mitigation side of the sentencing system, the three Justices said: “[T]he constitutionality of the Texas procedures turns on whether the enumerated [special issues] allow consideration of particularized mitigating factors.” Id., at 272. In assessing the constitutionality of the mitigation side of this scheme, the three Justices examined in detail only the second special issue, which asks whether “ ‘there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.’ ” Although the statute did not define these terms, the joint opinion noted that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had indicated that it would interpret the question in a manner that allowed the defendant to bring all relevant mitigating evidence to the jury’s attention:
“Tn determining the likelihood that the defendant would be a continuing threat to society, the jury could consider whether the defendant had a significant criminal record. It could consider the range and severity of his prior criminal conduct. It could further look to the age of the defendant and whether or not at the time of the commission of the offense he was acting under duress or under the domination of another. It could also consider whether the defendant was under an extreme form of mental or emotional pressure, something less, perhaps, than insanity, but more than the emotions of the average man, however inflamed, could withstand.’ [Jurek v. State,] 522 S. W. 2d [934], 939-940 [(Tex. Crim. App. 1975)].” Id., at 272-273.
The joint opinion determined that the Texas system satisfied the requirements of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments concerning the consideration of mitigating evidence: “By authorizing the defense to bring before the jury at the separate sentencing hearing whatever mitigating circumstances relating to the individual defendant can be adduced, Texas has ensured that the sentencing jury will have adequate guidance to enable it to perform its sentencing function.” Id., at 276. Three other Justices agreed that the Texas system satisfied constitutional requirements. See id., at 277 (White, J., concurring in judgment).
We next considered a constitutional challenge involving the Texas special issues in Franklin v. Lynaugh, supra. Although the defendant in that case recognized that we had upheld the constitutionality of the Texas system as a general matter in Jwrek, he claimed that the special issues did not allow the jury to give adequate weight to his mitigating evidence concerning his good prison disciplinary record and that the jury, therefore, should have been instructed that it could consider this mitigating evidence independent of the special issues. 487 U. S., at 171-172. A plurality of the Court rejected the defendant’s claim, holding that the second special issue provided an adequate vehicle for consideration of the defendant’s prison record as it bore on his character. Id., at 178. The plurality also noted that Jwrek foreclosed the defendant’s argument that the jury was still entitled to cast an “independent” vote against the death penalty even if it answered yes to the special issues. 487 U. S., at 180. The plurality concluded that, with its special issues system, Texas had guided the jury’s consideration of mitigating evidence while still providing for sufficient jury discretion. See id., at 182. Although Justice O’Connor expressed reservations about the Texas scheme for other cases, she agreed that the special issues had not inhibited the jury’s consideration of the defendant’s mitigating evidence in that case. See id., at 183-186 (opinion concurring in judgment).
The third case in which we considered the Texas statute is the pivotal one from petitioner’s point of view, for there we set aside a capital sentence because the Texas special issues did not allow for sufficient consideration of the defendant’s mitigating evidence. Penry v. Lynaugh, supra. In Penry, the condemned prisoner had presented mitigating evidence of his mental retardation and childhood abuse. We agreed that the jury instructions were too limited for the appropriate consideration of this mitigating evidence in light of Penry’s particular circumstances. We noted that “[t]he jury was never instructed that it could consider the evidence offered by Penry as mitigating evidence and that it could give mitigating effect to that evidence in imposing sentence.” 492 U. S., at 320. Absent any definition for the term “deliberately,” we could not “be sure that the jury was able to give effect to the mitigating evidence... in answering the first special issue,” id., at 323, so we turned to the second special issue, future dangerousness. The evidence in the case suggested that Penry’s mental retardation rendered him unable to learn from his mistakes. As a consequence, we decided the mitigating evidence was relevant to the second special issue “only as an aggravating factor because it suggests a ‘yes’ answer to the question of future dangerousness.” Ibid. The Court concluded that the trial court had erred in not instructing the jury that it could “consider and give effect to the mitigating evidence of Penry’s mental retardation and abused background by declining to impose the death penalty.” Id., at 328. The Court was most explicit in rejecting the dissent’s concern that Penry was seeking a new rule, in contravention of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989). Indeed, the Court characterized its holding in Penry as a straightforward application of our earlier rulings in Jurek, Lockett, and Eddings, making it clear that these cases can stand together with Penry. See Penry, 492 U. S., at 314-318.
We confirmed this limited view of Penry and its scope in Graham v. Collins. There we confronted a claim by a defendant that the Texas system had not allowed for adequate consideration of mitigating evidence concerning his youth, family background, and positive character traits. In rejecting the contention that Penry dictated a ruling in the defendant’s favor, we stated that Penry did not “effec[t] a sea change in this Court’s view of the constitutionality of the former Texas death penalty statute,” 506 U. S., at 474, and we noted that a contrary view of Penry would be inconsistent with the Penry Court’s conclusion that it was not creating a “new rule,” 506 U. S., at 474. We also did not accept the view that the Lockett and Eddings line of cases, upon which Penry rested, compelled a holding for the defendant in Graham:
“In those cases, the constitutional defect lay in the fact that relevant mitigating evidence was placed beyond the effective reach of the sentencer. In Lockett, Eddings, Skipper, and Hitchcock, the sentencer was precluded from even considering certain types of mitigating evidence. In Penry, the defendant’s evidence was placed before the sentencer but the sentencer had no reliable means of giving mitigating effect to that evidence. In this case, however, Graham’s mitigating evidence was not placed beyond the jury’s effective reach.” Graham, 506 U. S., at 475.
In addition, we held that Graham’s case differed from Penry in that “Graham’s evidence — unlike Penry’s — had mitigating relevance to the second special issue concerning his likely future dangerousness.” 506 U. S., at 475. We concluded that, even with the benefit of the subsequent Penry decision, reasonable jurists at the time of Graham’s sentencing “would [not] have deemed themselves compelled to accept Graham’s claim.” 506 U. S., at 477. Thus, we held that a ruling in favor of Graham would have required the impermissible application of a new rule under Teague. 506 U. S., at 477.
Ill
Today we are asked to take the step that would have been a new rule had we taken it in Graham. Like Graham, petitioner contends that the Texas sentencing system did not allow the jury to give adequate mitigating effect to the evidence of his youth. Unlike Graham, petitioner comes here on direct review, so Teague presents no bar to the rule he seeks. The force of stare decisis, though, which rests on considerations parallel in many respects to Teague, is applicable here. The interests of the State of Texas, and of the victims whose rights it must vindicate, ought not to be turned aside when the State relies upon an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment approved by this Court, absent demonstration that our earlier cases were themselves a misinterpretation of some constitutional command. See, e. g., Vasquez v. Hiller v. 474 U. S. 254, 265-266 (1986); Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 212 (1984).
There is no dispute that a defendant’s youth is a relevant mitigating circumstance that must be within the effective reach of a capital sentencing jury if a death sentence is to meet the requirements of Lockett and Eddings. See, e. g., Sumner v. Shuman, 483 U. S. 66, 81-82 (1987); Eddings, 455 U. S., at 115; Lockett, 438 U. S., at 608 (plurality opinion). Our cases recognize that “youth is more than a chronological fact. It is a time and condition of life when a person may be most susceptible to influence and to psychological damage.” Eddings, supra, at 115. A lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions. A sentencer in a capital case must be allowed to consider the mitigating qualities of youth in the course of its deliberations over the appropriate sentence.
The question presented here is whether the Texas special issues allowed adequate consideration of petitioner’s youth. An argument that youth can never be given proper mitigating force under the Texas scheme is inconsistent with our holdings in Jurek, Graham, and Penry itself. The standard against which we assess whether jury instructions satisfy the rule of Lockett and Eddings was set forth in Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370 (1990). There we held that a reviewing court must determine “whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevents the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence.” Id., at 380. Although the reasonable likelihood standard does not require that the defendant prove that it was more likely than not that the jury was prevented from giving effect to the evidence, the standard requires more than a mere possibility of such a bar. Ibid. In evaluating the instructions, we do not engage in a technical parsing of this language of the instructions, but instead approach the instructions in the same way that the jury would — with a “commonsense understanding of the instructions in the light of all that has taken place at the trial.” Id., at 381.
We decide that there is no reasonable likelihood that the jury would have found itself foreclosed from considering the relevant aspects of petitioner’s youth. Pursuant to the second special issue, the jury was instructed to decide whether there was “a probability that [petitioner] would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.” App. 149. The jury also was told that, in answering the special issues, it could consider all the mitigating evidence that had been presented during the guilt and punishment phases of petitioner’s trial. Id., at 147. Even on a cold record, one cannot be unmoved by the testimony of petitioner’s father urging that his son’s actions were due in large part to his youth. It strains credulity to suppose that the jury would have viewed the evidence of petitioner’s youth as outside its effective reach in answering the second special issue. The relevance of youth as a mitigating factor derives from the fact that the signature qualities of youth are transient; as individuals mature, the impetuousness and recklessness that may dominate in younger years can subside. We believe that there is ample room in the assessment of future dangerousness for a juror to take account of the difficulties of youth as a mitigating force in the sentencing determination. As we recognized in Graham, the fact that a juror might view the evidence of youth as aggravating, as opposed to mitigating, does not mean that the rule of Lockett is violated. Graham, 506 U. S., at 475-476. As long as the mitigating evidence is within “the effective reach of the sentencer,” the requirements of the Eighth Amendment are satisfied. Ibid.
That the jury had a meaningful basis to consider the relevant mitigating qualities of petitioner’s youth is what distinguishes this case from Penry. In Penry, there was expert medical testimony that the defendant was mentally retarded and that his condition prevented him from learning from experience. 492 U. S., at 308-309. Although the evidence of the mental illness fell short of providing Penry a defense to prosecution for his crimes, the Court held that the second special issue did not allow the jury to give mitigating effect to this evidence. Penry’s condition left him unable to learn from his mistakes, and the Court reasoned that the only logical manner in which the evidence of his mental retardation could be considered within the future dangerousness inquiry was as an aggravating factor. Id., at 323. Penry remains the law and must be given a fair reading. The evidence of petitioner’s youth, however, falls outside Penry’s ambit. Unlike Penry’s mental retardation, which rendered him unable to learn from his mistakes, the ill effects of youth that a defendant may experience are subject to change and, as a result, are readily comprehended as a mitigating factor in consideration of the second special issue.
Petitioner does not contest that the evidence of youth could be given some effect under the second special issue. Instead, petitioner argues that the forward-looking perspective of the future dangerousness inquiry did not allow the jury to take account of how petitioner’s youth bore upon his personal culpability for the murder he committed. According to petitioner, “[a] prediction of future behavior is not the same thing as an assessment of moral culpability for a crime already committed.” Brief for Petitioner 38. Contrary to petitioner’s suggestion, however, this forward-looking inquiry is not independent of an assessment of personal culpability. It is both logical and fair for the jury to make its determination of a defendant’s future dangerousness by asking the extent to which youth influenced the defendant’s conduct. See Skipper, 476 U. S., at 5 (“Consideration of a defendant’s past conduct as indicative of his probable future behavior is an inevitable and not undesirable element of criminal sentencing”). If any jurors believed that the transient qualities of petitioner’s youth made him less culpable for the murder, there is no reasonable likelihood that those jurors would have deemed themselves foreclosed from considering that in evaluating petitioner’s future dangerousness. It is true that Texas has structured consideration of the relevant qualities of petitioner’s youth, but in so doing, the State still “allow[s] the jury to give effect to [this] mitigating evidence in making the sentencing decision.” Saffle, 494 U. S., at 491. Although Texas might have provided other vehicles for consideration of petitioner’s youth, no additional instruction beyond that given as to future dangerousness was required in order for the jury to be able to consider the mitigating qualities of youth presented to it.
In a related argument, petitioner, quoting a portion of our decision in Penry, supra, at 328, claims that the jurors were not able to make a “reasoned moral response” to the evidence of petitioner’s youth because the second special issue called for a narrow factual inquiry into future dangerousness. We, however, have previously interpreted the Texas special issues system as requiring jurors to “exercise a range of judgment and discretion.” Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S. 38, 46 (1980). This view accords with a “commonsense understanding” of how the jurors were likely to view their instructions and to implement the charge that they were entitled to consider all mitigating evidence from both the trial and sentencing phases. Boyde, 494 U. S., at 381. The crucial term employed in the second special issue — “continuing threat to society” — affords the jury room for independent judgment in reaching its decision. Indeed, we cannot forget that “a Texas capital jury deliberating over the Special Issues is aware of the consequences of its answers, and is likely to weigh mitigating evidence as it formulates these answers in a manner similar to that employed by capital juries in ‘pure
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves the scope of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, grounded in the Fifth Amendment and made binding against the States by the Fourteenth. The precise question is whether, despite this constitutional privilege, a prosecutor may use a person’s legislatively immunized grand jury testimony to impeach his credibility as a testifying defendant in a criminal trial.
I
In the early 1970’s, Joseph Portash was Mayor of Manchester Township, Executive Director of the Pinelands Environmental Council, and a member of both the Ocean County Board of Freeholders and the Manchester Municipal Utilities Authority in New Jersey. In November 1974, after a lengthy investigation, a state grand jury subpoenaed Portash. He expressed an intention to claim his privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. The prosecutors and Portash’s lawyers then agreed that, if Portash testified before the grand jury, neither his statements nor any evidence derived from them could, under New Jersey law, be used in subsequent criminal proceedings (except in prosecutions for perjury or false swearing) , After Portash’s testimony, the parties tried to come to an agreement to avoid a criminal prosecution against Portash, but no bargain was reached. In April 1975, Portash was indicted for misconduct in office and extortion by a public official.
Before trial, defense counsel sought to obtain a ruling from the trial judge that no use of the immunized grand jury testimony would be permitted. The judge refused to rule that the prosecution could not use this testimony for purposes of impeachment. After the completion of the State’s case, defense counsel renewed his request for a ruling by the trial judge as to the use of the grand jury testimony. There followed an extended colloquy, and the judge finally ruled that if Portash testified and gave an answer on direct or cross-examination which was materially inconsistent with his grand jury testimony, the prosecutor could use that testimony in his cross-examination of Portash. Defense counsel then stated that, because of this ruling, he would advise his client not to take the stand. Portash did not testify, and the jury ultimately found him guilty on one of the two counts.
The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the conviction. 151 N. J. Super. 200, 376 A. 2d 950 .(1977). That court held that the Constitution requires that the immunity granted by the New Jersey statute must be at least coextensive with the privilege afforded by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. To confer such protection, the court reasoned, the grant of immunity must “leave defendant and the State in the position each would have occupied had defendant’s claim of privilege [before the grand jury] been honored.” Id., at 205, 376 A. 2d, at 953. Use of the immunized grand jury testimony to impeach a defendant at his trial, it held, did not meet this test. Because Portash’s decision not to testify was based upon the trial court’s erroneous ruling to the contrary, the Appellate Division reversed the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial. The New Jersey Supreme Court denied the State’s petition for certification of an appeal. 75 N. J. 597, 384 A. 2d 827 (1978). We granted certiorari. 436 U. S. 955.
II
New Jersey presents two questions. First, it argues that Portash cannot properly invoke the privilege against compulsory incrimination because he did not take the witness stand and, as a result, his immunized grand jury testimony was never used against him. Second, it urges that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not prohibit the use of immunized grand jury testimony to impeach materially inconsistent statements made at trial.
A
The State contends that the issue presented by Portash is abstract and hypothetical because he did not, in fact, become a witness. Portash could have taken the stand, testified, objected to the prosecution’s use of the immunized testimony to impeach him, and appealed any subsequent conviction. Absent that, the State would have us hold that the constitutional question was not and is not presented. This argument must be rejected. First, it is clear that although the trial judge was concerned about making a ruling before specific questions were asked, he did rule on the merits of the constitutional question:
“THE COURT: Well, this is what the Court was concerned with and still is and I thought the Court had straightened it out previously, the witness taking the stand and testifying as to something and then have counsel saying didn’t you say before the grand jury such and such.
“MR. WILBERT [defense counsel]: That’s the problem that we have. We don’t know whether he’s going to be able to use that or not, your Honor, especially if he didn’t touch that area in his examination—
“THE COURT: Mr. Wilbert, suppose your client takes the stand and he testifies that I worked for Donald Safran and suppose he testified before the grand jury I never worked for Donald Safran?
“MR. WILBERT: Inconsistency and under your Honor’s ruling that can be used in this case.
“THE COURT: No doubt about it.
“MR. WILBERT: Your Honor, I would submit it could be used over my objection, of course.
“THE COURT: You have a standing objection with respect to the use at all of the grand jury testimony.” (Emphasis added.) App. 223a.
Second, the New Jersey appellate court necessarily concluded that the federal constitutional question had been properly presented, because it ruled in Portash’s favor on the merits. See Raley v. Ohio, 360 U. S. 423, 435-437; cf. Jenkins v. Georgia, 418 U. S. 153, 157; Coleman v. Alabama, 377 U. S. 129, 133; Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 360-361; Manhattan Life Ins. Co. v. Cohen, 234 U. S. 123, 134.
Moreover, there is nothing in federal law to prohibit New Jersey from following such a procedure, or, so long as the “case or controversy” requirement of Art. Ill is met, to foreclose our consideration of the substantive constitutional issue now that the New Jersey courts have decided it. This is made clear by a case decided by this Court in 1972, Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U. S. 605. There the Court held unconstitutional a Tennessee statutory requirement that a defendant in a criminal case had to be his own first witness if he was to take the stand at all. The Court held that such a requirement unconstitutionally penalized a defendant’s right to remain silent, since a defendant could remain silent immediately after the close of the State’s case only at the cost of never testifying in his own defense. Although Brooks had not testified, the Tennessee court considered the constitutional validity of the state statute, and so did this Court. Because the rule imposed a penalty on the right to remain silent, the Court found that his constitutional rights had been infringed even though he had never taken the stand. Id., at 611 n. 6.
In Brooks the Court held that the defendant’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated because, in order to assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent after the prosecution’s case in chief had been presented, the defendant would have had to pay a penalty. He could never testify. Here, as in Brooks, federal law does not insist that New Jersey was wrong in not requiring Portash to take the witness stand in order to raise his constitutional claim.
B
In both Great Britain and in what later became the United States, immunity statutes, like the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, predate the adoption of the Constitution. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 445 n. 13, 446 n. 14. This Court first considered a constitutional challenge to an immunity statute in Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547. The witness in that case had refused to testify before a federal grand jury in spite of a grant of immunity under the relevant federal statute. The Court overturned his contempt conviction. It construed the statute to permit the use of evidence derived from his immunized testimony. The witness was held to have validly asserted his privilege because “legislation cannot abridge a constitutional privilege, and . . . it cannot replace or supply one, at least unless it is so broad as to have the same extent in scope and effect.” Id., at 585. See also Brown v. United States, 359 U. S. 41; Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422; Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591. After the holding in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, that the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is also contained in the Fourteenth Amendment, this rule is necessarily applicable to state immunity statutes as well. Cf. Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52.
Language in Counselman and its progeny was read by some to require that the witness must be immune from prosecution for the transaction his testimony concerned. Indeed, the federal statutes subsequently upheld by the Court granted such transactional immunity. Brown v. United States, supra; Ullman v. United States, supra; Heike v. United States, 227 U. S. 131; Brown v. Walker, supra. The adoption of Pub. L. 91-452 in 1970 marked a change in federal immunity legislation from the provision of transactional immunity to the provision of what is known as “use” immunity. 18 U. S. C §§ 6001, 6002. This immunity, similar to that provided by the New Jersey statute in this case, protects the witness from the use of his compelled testimony and any information derived from it. In Kastigar v. United States, supra, the Court upheld that statute against a challenge that mere use immunity is not coextensive with the Fifth Amendment’s privilege.
“The privilege has never been construed to mean that one who invokes it cannot subsequently be prosecuted. Its sole concern is to afford protection against being 'forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of “penalties affixed to . . . criminal acts.” ’ Immunity from the use of compelled testimony, as well as evidence derived directly and indirectly therefrom, affords this protection. It prohibits the prosecutorial authorities from using the compelled testimony in any respect, and it therefore insures that the testimony cannot lead to the infliction of criminal penalties on the witness.” 406 U. S., at 453. (Emphasis in original; footnote omitted.)
Against this broad statement of the necessary constitutional scope of testimonial immunity, the State asks us to weigh Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, and Oregon v. Hass, 420 U. S. 714. Those cases involved the use of statements, con-cededly taken in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, to impeach a defendant’s testimony at trial. In both eases the Court weighed the incremental deterrence of police illegality against the strong policy against countenancing perjury. In the balance, use of the incriminating statements for impeachment purposes prevailed. The State asks that we apply the same reasoning to this case. It points out that the interest in preventing perjury is just as strongly involved, and that the statements made to the grand jury are at least as reliable as those made by the defendants in Harris and Hass.
But the State has overlooked a crucial distinction between those cases and this one. In Harris and Hass the Court expressly noted that the defendant made “no claim that the statements made to the police were coerced or involuntary,” Harris v. New York, supra, at 224; Oregon v. Hass, supra, at 722-723. That recognition was central to the decisions in those cases.
The Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments provide that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” As we reaffirmed last Term, a defendant’s compelled statements, as opposed to statements taken in violation of Miranda, may not be put to any testimonial use whatever against him in a criminal trial. “But any criminal trial use against a defendant of his involuntary statement is a denial of due process of law.” (Emphasis in original.) Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 398.
Testimony given in response to a grant of legislative immunity is the essence of coerced testimony. In such cases there is no question whether physical or psychological pressures overrode the defendant’s will; the witness is told to talk or face the government’s coercive sanctions, notably, a conviction for contempt. The information given in response to a grant of immunity may well be more reliable than information beaten from a helpless defendant, but it is no less compelled. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments provide a privilege against compelled self-incrimination, not merely against unreliable self-incrimination. Balancing of interests was thought to be necessary in Harris and Hass when the attempt to deter unlawful police conduct collided with the need to prevent perjury. Here, by contrast, we deal with the constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination in its most pristine form. Balancing, therefore, is not simply unnecessary. It is impermissible.
The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, correctly ruled that a person’s testimony before a grand jury under a grant of immunity cannot constitutionally be used to impeach him when he is a defendant in a later criminal trial. Accordingly, the judgment is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
At that time a New Jersey statute provided as follows:
“If any public employee testifies before any court, grand jury or the State Commission of Investigation, such testimony and the- evidence derived therefrom shall not be used against such public employee in a subsequent criminal proceeding under the laws of this State; provided that no such public employee shall be exempt from prosecution or punishment for perjury committed while so testifying.” New Jersey Public Employees Immunity Statute, N. J. Stat. Ann. § 2A:81-17.2a2 (West 1976).
Portash has not contended that the indictment was based on information disclosed by or “derived” from his immunized testimony. Before trial he did move for dismissal of the indictment on two grounds. First, he argued that the course of dealings between himself and the prosecution established an agreement that he would not be prosecuted so long as he cooperated with the State. Second, he contended that he had impermis-sibly been forced to incriminate himself by providing certain employment records to the grand jury. The trial court rejected both arguments; neither is urged here.
We read the state-court opinion as resting its judgment unambiguously and exclusively on the Federal Constitution. The court said:
“The immunity device, however, will only be deemed a sufficient answer to a claim of privilege if the scope of immunity afforded is commensurate in all respects with the privilege against self-incrimination which it replaces. United. States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 346 . . . (1974); Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 459 . . . (1972).” 151 N. J. Super., at 205, 376 A. 2d, at 953.
Both Calandra and Kastigar were, of course, federal constitutional decisions. The court discussed several other federal cases in the course of its opinion, and nowhere indicated any reliance on principles of state constitutional or common law.
Lefkowitz v. Newsome, 420 U. S. 283, was another case where provisions of state law allowed federal review that may not otherwise have been available. There, New York law allowed a defendant to appeal defeat of a motion to suppress even though he later pleaded guilty. The Court held that because the State recognized such a procedure, a state prisoner who had pleaded guilty could assert his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claim in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, even though federal habeas corpus relief would not generally have been available to one who had pleaded guilty.
A similar situation existed in Wardius v. Oregon, 412 U. S. 470. The Court held in that case that state notice-of-alibi requirements could be enforced only if the State provided reciprocal discovery rights for the defendant. The defendant in that case had not given a notice of alibi. The State argued that he could not assert his constitutional claim, because he should have given his notice of alibi and then argued that the State had to grant him reciprocal discovery. The Court rejected that argument, and held that he need not give notice to raise his constitutional claim.
The Murphy ease dealt with the problem of dual sovereignty. The issue was whether a State could grant constitutionally sufficient immunity if another jurisdiction could use the immunized testimony in a prosecution. The Court proceeded on the premise that a State is required to provide at least use immunity, and held that such immunity would have to be honored by the Federal Government. See Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, 455-459.
See Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1, 6 n. 4, for a list of the federal statutes that provided transactional immunity.
The Court in both the Harris and Hass cases relied on Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62, a case in which the Court held that the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule does not prevent the use of unconstitutionally seized evidence to impeach a defendant’s credibility.
We express no view as to whether possibly truthful immunized testimony may be used in a subsequent false-declarations prosecution premised on an inconsistency between that testimony and later, nonimmunized, testimony. That question will be presented in Dunn v. United States, No. 77-6949, cert. granted, 439 U. S. 1045.
There is discussion in the briefs of the parties regarding the admissibility of statements made by Portash during pre-indictment negotiations with the state prosecutors. We do not understand the opinion of the state appellate court to have dealt with this issue, and nothing said in this opinion bears on it.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we must decide whether certain professional expenses incurred by a target corporation in the course of a friendly takeover are deductible by that corporation as “ordinary and necessary” business expenses under § 162(a) of the Internal Revenue Code.
I
Most of the relevant facts are stipulated. See App. 12, 149. Petitioner INDOPCO, Inc., formerly named National Starch and Chemical Corporation and hereinafter referred to as National Starch, is a Delaware corporation that manufactures and sells adhesives, starches, and specialty chemical products. In October 1977, representatives of Unilever United States, Inc., also a Delaware corporation (Unilever), expressed interest in acquiring National Starch, which was one of its suppliers, through a friendly transaction. National Starch at the time had outstanding over 6,563,000 common shares held by approximately 3,700 shareholders. The stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Frank and Anna Greenwall were the corporation’s largest shareholders and owned approximately 14.5% of the common. The Greenwalls, getting along in years and concerned about their estate plans, indicated that they would transfer their shares to Unilever only if a transaction tax free for them could be arranged.
Lawyers representing both sides devised a “reverse subsidiary cash merger” that they felt would satisfy the Green-walls’ concerns. Two new entities would be created — National Starch and Chemical Holding Corp. (Holding), a subsidiary of Unilever, and NSC Merger, Inc., a subsidiary of Holding that would have only a transitory existence. In an exchange specifically designed to be tax free under § 351 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U. S. C. §351, Holding would exchange one share of its nonvoting preferred stock for each share of National Starch common that it received from National Starch shareholders. Any National Starch common that was not so exchanged would be converted into cash in a merger of NSC Merger, Inc., into National Starch.
In November 1977, National Starch’s directors were formally advised of Unilever’s interest and the proposed transaction. At that time, Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates, National Starch’s counsel, told the directors that under Delaware law they had a fiduciary duty to ensure that the proposed transaction would be fair to the shareholders. National Starch thereupon engaged the investment banking firm of Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., to evaluate its shares, to render a fairness opinion, and generally to assist in the event of the emergence of a hostile tender offer.
Although Unilever originally had suggested a price between $65 and $70 per share, negotiations resulted in a final offer of $73.50 per share, a figure Morgan Stanley found to be fair. Following approval by National Starch’s board and the issuance of a favorable private ruling from the Internal Revenue Service that the transaction would be tax free under § 351 for those National Starch shareholders who exchanged their stock for Holding preferred, the transaction was consummated in August 1978.
Morgan Stanley charged National Starch a fee of $2,200,000, along with $7,586 for out-of-pocket expenses and $18,000 for legal fees. The Debevoise firm charged National Starch $490,000, along with $15,069 for out-of-pocket expenses. National Starch also incurred expenses aggregating $150,962 for miscellaneous items — such as accounting, printing, proxy solicitation, and Securities and Exchange Commission fees — in connection with the transaction. No issue is raised as to the propriety or reasonableness of these charges.
On its federal income tax return for its short taxable year ended August 15, 1978, National Starch claimed a deduction for the $2,225,586 paid to Morgan Stanley, but did not deduct the $505,069 paid to Debevoise or the other expenses. Upon audit, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue disallowed the claimed deduction and issued a notice of deficiency. Petitioner sought redetermination in the United States Tax Court, asserting, however, not only the right to deduct the investment banking fees and expenses but, as well, the legal and miscellaneous expenses incurred.
The Tax Court, in an unreviewed decision, ruled that the expenditures were capital in nature and therefore not deductible under § 162(a) in the 1978 return as “ordinary and necessary expenses.” National Starch and Chemical Corp. v. Commissioner, 93 T. C. 67 (1989). The court based its holding primarily on the long-term benefits that accrued to National Starch from the Unilever acquisition. Id., at 75. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed, upholding the Tax Court’s findings that “both Unilever’s enormous resources and the possibility of synergy arising from the transaction served the long-term betterment of National Starch.” National Starch & Chemical Corp. v. Commissioner, 918 F. 2d 426, 432-433 (1990). In so doing, the Court of Appeals rejected National Starch’s contention that, because the disputed expenses did not “create or enhance ... a separate and distinct additional asset,” see Commissioner v. Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn., 403 U. S. 345, 354 (1971), they could not be capitalized and therefore were deductible under § 162(a). 918 F. 2d, at 428-431. We granted certiorari to resolve a perceived conflict on the issue among the Courts of Appeals. 500 U. S. 914 (1991).
II
Section 162(a) of the Internal Revenue Code allows the deduction of “all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business.” 26 U. S. C. § 162(a). In contrast, §263 of the Code allows no deduction for a capital expenditure — an “amount paid out for new buildings or for permanent improvements or betterments made to increase the value of any property or estate.” § 263(a)(1). The primary effect of characterizing a payment as either a business expense or a capital expenditure concerns the timing of the taxpayer’s cost recovery: While business expenses are currently deductible, a capital expenditure usually is amortized and depreciated over the life of the relevant asset, or, where no specific asset or useful life can be ascertained, is deducted upon dissolution of the enterprise. See 26 U. S. C. §§ 167(a) and 336(a); Treas. Reg. § 1.167(a), 26 CFR § 1.167(a) (1991). Through provisions such as these, the Code endeavors to match expenses with the revenues of the taxable period to which they are properly attributable, thereby resulting in a more accurate calculation of net income for tax purposes. See, e. g., Commissioner v. Idaho Power Co., 418 U. S. 1, 16 (1974); Ellis Banking Corp. v. Commissioner, 688 F. 2d 1376, 1379 (CA11 1982), cert. denied, 463 U. S. 1207 (1983).
In exploring the relationship between deductions and capital expenditures, this Court has noted the “familiar rule” that “an income tax deduction is a matter of legislative grace and that the burden of clearly showing the right to the claimed deduction is on the taxpayer.” Interstate Transit Lines v. Commissioner, 319 U. S. 590, 593 (1943); Deputy v. Du Pont, 308 U. S. 488, 493 (1940); New Colonial Ice Co. v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 435, 440 (1934). The notion that deductions are exceptions to the norm of capitalization finds support in various aspects of the Code. Deductions are specifically enumerated and thus are subject to disallowance in favor of capitalization. See §§161 and 261. Nondeductible capital expenditures, by contrast, are not exhaustively enumerated in the Code; rather than providing a “complete list of nondeductible expenditures,” Lincoln Savings, 403 U. S., at 358, § 263 serves as a general means of distinguishing capital expenditures from current expenses. See Commissioner v. Idaho Power Co., 418 U. S., at 16. For these reasons, deductions are strictly construed and allowed only “as there is a clear provision therefor.” New Colonial Ice Co. v. Helvering, 292 U. S., at 440; Deputy v. Du Pont, 308 U. S., at 493.
The Court also has examined the interrelationship between the Code’s business expense and capital expenditure provisions. In so doing, it has had occasion to parse § 162(a) and explore certain of its requirements. For example, in Lincoln Savings, we determined that, to qualify for deduction under § 162(a), “an item must (1) be ‘paid or incurred during the taxable year,’ (2) be for ‘carrying on any trade or business,’ (3) be an ‘expense,’ (4) be a ‘necessary’ expense, and (5) be an ‘ordinary’ expense.” 403 U. S., at 352. See also Commissioner v. Tellier, 383 U. S. 687, 689 (1966) (the term “necessary” imposes “only the minimal requirement that the expense be ‘appropriate and helpful’ for ‘the development of the [taxpayer’s] business,’” quoting Welch v. Helvering, 290 U. S. 111, 113 (1933)); Deputy v. Du Pont, 308 U. S., at 495 (to qualify as “ordinary,” the expense must relate to a transaction “of common or frequent occurrence in the type of business involved”)- The Court has recognized, however, that the “decisive distinctions” between current ex-, penses and capital expenditures “are those of degree and not of kind,” Welch v. Helvering, 290 U. S., at 114, and that because each case “turns on its special facts,” Deputy v. Du Pont, 308 U. S., at 496, the cases sometimes appear difficult to harmonize. See Welch v. Helvering, 290 U. S., at 116.
National Starch contends that the decision in Lincoln Savings changed these familiar backdrops and announced an exclusive test for identifying capital expenditures, a test in which “creation or enhancement of an asset” is a prerequisite to capitalization, and deductibility under § 162(a) is the rule rather than the exception. Brief for Petitioner 16. We do not agree, for we conclude that National Starch has overread Lincoln Savings.
In Lincoln Savings, we were asked to decide whether certain premiums, required by federal statute to be paid by a savings and loan association to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), were ordinary and necessary expenses under § 162(a), as Lincoln Savings argued and the Court of Appeals had held, or capital expenditures under §263, as the Commissioner contended. We found that the “additional” premiums, the purpose of which was to provide FSLIC with a secondary reserve fund in which each insured institution retained a pro rata interest recoverable in certain situations, “serv[e] to create or enhance for Lincoln what is essentially a separate and distinct additional asset.” 403 U. S., at 364. “[A]s an inevitable consequence,” we concluded, “the payment is capital in nature and not an expense, let alone an ordinary expense, deductible under § 162(a).” Ibid.
Lincoln Savings stands for the simple proposition that a taxpayer’s expenditure that “serves to create or enhance ... a separate and distinct” asset should be capitalized under § 263. It by no means follows, however, that only expenditures that create or enhance separate and distinct assets are to be capitalized under § 263. We had no occasion in Lincoln Savings to consider the tax treatment of expenditures that, unlike the additional premiums at issue there, did not create or enhance a specific asset, and thus the case cannot be read to preclude capitalization in other circumstances. In short, Lincoln Savings holds that the creation of a separate and distinct asset well may be a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition to classification as a capital expenditure. See General Bancshares Corp. v. Commissioner, 326 F. 2d 712, 716 (CA8) (although expenditures may not “resul[t] in the acquisition or increase of a corporate asset,... these expenditures are not, because of that fact, deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses”), cert. denied, 379 U. S. 832 (1964).
Nor does our statement in Lincoln Savings, 403 U. S., at 354, that “the presence of an ensuing benefit that may have some future aspect is not controlling” prohibit reliance on future benefit as a means of distinguishing an ordinary business expense from a capital expenditure. Although the mere presence of an incidental future benefit — “some future aspect” — may not warrant capitalization, ja .taxpayer’s realization of benefits beyond the year in which the expenditure is incurred is undeniably important in determining whether the appropriate tax treatment is immediate deduction or capitalization. See United States v. Mississippi Chemical Corp., 405 U. S. 298, 310 (1972) (expense that “is of value in more than one taxable year” is a nondeductible capital expenditure); Central Texas Savings & Loan Assn. v. United States, 731 F. 2d 1181, 1183 (CA5 1984) (“While the period of the benefits may not be controlling in all cases, it nonetheless remains a prominent, if not predominant, characteristic of a capital item”). Indeed, the text of the Code’s capitalization provision, § 263(a)(1), which refers to “permanent improvements or betterments,” itself envisions an inquiry into the duration and extent of the benefits realized by the taxpayer.
III
In applying the foregoing principles to the specific expenditures at issue in this case, we conclude that National Starch has not demonstrated that the investment banking, legal, and other costs it incurred in connection with Unilever’s acquisition of its shares are deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses under § 162(a).
Although petitioner attempts to dismiss the benefits that accrued to National Starch from the Unilever acquisition as “entirely speculative” or “merely incidental,” Brief for Petitioner 39-40, the Tax Court’s and the Court of Appeals’ findings that the transaction produced significant benefits to National Starch that extended beyond the tax year in question are amply supported by the record. For example, in commenting on the merger with Unilever, National Starch’s 1978 “Progress Report” observed that the company would “benefit greatly from the availability of Unilever’s enormous resources, especially in the area of basic technology.” App. 43. See also id., at 46 (Unilever “provides new opportunities and resources”). Morgan Stanley’s report to the National Starch board concerning the fairness to shareholders of a possible business combination with Unilever noted that National Starch management “feels that some synergy may exist with the Unilever organization given a) the nature of the Unilever chemical, paper, plastics and packaging operations . . . and b) the strong consumer products orientation of Unilever United States, Inc.” Id., at 77-78.
In addition to these anticipated resource-related benefits, National Starch obtained benefits through its transformation from a publicly held, freestanding corporation into a wholly owned subsidiary of Unilever. The Court of Appeals noted that National Starch management viewed the transaction as “'swapping approximately 3500 shareholders for one.’” 918 F. 2d, at 427; see also App. 223. Following Unilever’s acquisition of National Starch’s outstanding shares, National Starch was no longer subject to what even it terms the “substantial” shareholder-relations expenses a publicly traded corporation incurs, including reporting and disclosure obligations, proxy battles, and derivative suits. Brief for Petitioner 24. The acquisition also allowed National Starch, in the interests of administrative convenience and simplicity, to eliminate previously authorized but unissued shares of preferred and to reduce the total number of authorized shares of common from 8,000,000 to 1,000. See 93 T. C., at 74.
Courts long have recognized that expenses such as these, “ ‘incurred for the purpose of changing the corporate structure for the benefit of future operations are not ordinary and necessary business expenses.’” General Bancshares Corp. v. Commissioner, 326 F. 2d, at 715 (quoting Farmers Union Corp. v. Commissioner, 300 F. 2d 197, 200 (CA9), cert. denied, 371 U. S. 861 (1962)). See also B. Bittker & J. Eustice, Federal Income Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders 5-33 to 5-36 (5th ed. 1987) (describing “well-established rule” that expenses incurred in reorganizing or restructur-. ing corporate entity are not deductible under § 162(a)). Deductions for professional expenses thus have been disallowed in a wide variety of cases concerning changes in corporate structure. Although support for these decisions can be found in the specific terms of § 162(a), which require that deductible expenses be “ordinary and necessary” and incurred “in carrying on any trade or business,” courts more frequently have characterized an expenditure as capital in nature because “the purpose for which the expenditure is made has to do with the corporation’s operations and betterment, sometimes with a continuing capital asset, for the duration of its existence or for the indefinite future or for a time somewhat longer than the current taxable year.” General Bancshares Corp. v. Commissioner, 326 F. 2d, at 715. See also Mills Estate, Inc. v. Commissioner, 206 F. 2d 244, 246 (CA2 1953). The rationale behind these decisions applies equally to the professional charges at issue in this case.
IV
The expenses that National Starch incurred in Unilever’s friendly takeover do not qualify for deduction as “ordinary and necessary” business expenses under § 162(a). The fact that the expenditures do not create or enhance a separate and distinct additional asset is not controlling; the acquisition-related expenses bear the indicia of capital expenditures and are to be treated as such.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Unilever is a holding company. Its then principal subsidiaries were Lever Brothers Co. and Thomas 'J. Lipton, Inc.
Approximately 21% of National Starch common was exchanged for Holding preferred. The remaining 79% was exchanged for cash. App. 14.
Compare the Third Circuit’s opinion, 918 F. 2d, at 430, with NCNB Corp. v. United States, 684 F. 2d 285, 293-294 (CA4 1982) (bank expenditures for expansion-related planning reports, feasibility studies, and regulatory applications did not “create or enhance separate and identifiable assets,” and therefore were ordinary and necessary expenses under § 162(a)), and Briarcliff Candy Corp. v. Commissioner, 475 F. 2d 776, 782 (CA2 1973) (suggesting that Lincoln Savings “brought about a radical shift in emphasis,” making capitalization dependent on whether the expenditure creates or enhances a separate and distinct additional asset). See also Central Texas Savings & Loan Assn. v. United States, 731 F. 2d 1181, 1184 (CA5 1984) (inquiring whether establishment of new branches “creates a separate and distinct additional asset” so that capitalization is the proper tax treatment).
See also Johnson, The Expenditures Incurred by the Target Corporation in an Acquisitive Reorganization are Dividends to the Shareholders, 53 Tax Notes 463, 478 (1991) (noting the importance of a “strong law of capitalization” to the tax system).
See, e. g., Commissioner v. Idaho Power Co., 418 U. S. 1 (1974) (equipment depreciation allocable to construction of capital facilities is to be capitalized); United States v. Mississippi Chemical Corp., 405 U. S. 298 (1972) (cooperatives’ required purchases of stock in Bank for Cooperatives are not currently deductible); Commissioner v. Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn., 403 U. S. 345 (1971) (additional premiums paid by bank to federal insurers are capital expenditures); Woodward v. Commissioner, 397 U. S. 572 (1970) (legal, accounting, and appraisal expenses incurred in purchasing minority stock interest are capital expenditures); United States v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 397 U. S. 580 (1970) (consulting, legal, and other professional fees incurred by acquiring firm in minority stock appraisal proceeding are capital expenditures); Commissioner v. Tellier, 383 U. S. 687 (1966) (legal expenses incurred in defending against securities fraud charges are deductible under § 162(a)); Commissioner v. Heininger, 320 U. S. 467 (1943) (legal expenses incurred in disputing adverse postal designation are deductible as ordinary and necessary expenses); Interstate Transit Lines v. Commissioner, 319 U. S. 590 (1943) (payment by parent company to cover subsidiary’s operating deficit is not deductible as a business expense); Deputy v. Du Pont, 308 U. S. 488 (1940) (expenses incurred by shareholder in helping executives of company acquire stock are not deductible); Helvering v. Winmill, 305 U. S. 79 (1938) (brokerage commissions are capital expenditures); Welch v. Helvering, 290 U. S. 111 (1933) (payments of former employer’s debts are capital expenditures).
Petitioner contends that, absent a separate-and-distinct-asset requirement for capitalization, a taxpayer will have no “principled basis” upon which to differentiate business expenses from capital expenditures. Brief for Petitioner 37-41. We note, however, that grounding tax status on the existence of an asset would be unlikely to produce the bright-line rule that petitioner desires, given that the notion of an “asset” is itself flexible and amorphous. See Johnson, 53 Tax Notes, at 477-478.
See, e. g., McCrory Corp. v. United States, 651 F. 2d 828 (CA2 1981) (statutory merger under 26 U. S. C. §368(a)(1)(A)); Bilar Tool & Die Corp. v. Commissioner, 530 F. 2d 708 (CA6 1976) (division of corporation into two parts); E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. United States, 432 F. 2d 1052 (CA3 1970) (creation of new subsidiary to hold assets of prior joint venture); General Bancshares Corp. v. Commissioner, 326 F. 2d 712, 715 (CA8) (stock dividends), cert. denied, 379 U. S. 832 (1964); Mills Estate, Inc. v. Commissioner, 206 F. 2d 244 (CA2 1953) (recapitalization).
See, e. g., Motion Picture Capital Corp. v. Commissioner, 80 F. 2d 872, 873-874 (CA2 1936) (recognizing that expenses may be “ordinary and necessary” to corporate merger, and that mergers may be “ordinary and necessary business occurrences,” but declining to find that merger is part of “ordinary and necessary business activities,” and concluding that expenses are therefore not deductible); Greenstein, The Deductibility of Takeover Costs After National. Starch, 69 Taxes 48, 49 (1991) (expenses incurred to facilitate transfer of business ownership do not satisfy the “carrying on [a] trade or business” requirement of § 162(a)).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part IV.
In the summer of 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced an immigration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That program allows certain unauthorized aliens who entered the United States as children to apply for a two-year forbearance of removal. Those granted such relief are also eligible for work authorization and various federal benefits. Some 700,000 aliens have availed themselves of this opportunity.
Five years later, the Attorney General advised DHS to rescind DACA, based on his conclusion that it was unlawful. The Department's Acting Secretary issued a memorandum terminating the program on that basis. The termination was challenged by affected individuals and third parties who alleged, among other things, that the Acting Secretary had violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to adequately address important factors bearing on her decision. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the Acting Secretary did violate the APA, and that the rescission must be vacated.
I
A
In June 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a memorandum announcing an immigration relief program for "certain young people who were brought to this country as children." App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 18-587, p. 97a (App. to Pet. for Cert.). Known as DACA, the program applies to childhood arrivals who were under age 31 in 2012; have continuously resided here since 2007; are current students, have completed high school, or are honorably discharged veterans; have not been convicted of any serious crimes; and do not threaten national security or public safety. Id., at 98a. DHS concluded that individuals who meet these criteria warrant favorable treatment under the immigration laws because they "lacked the intent to violate the law," are "productive" contributors to our society, and "know only this country as home." Id., at 98a-99a.
"[T]o prevent [these] low priority individuals from being removed from the United States," the DACA Memorandum instructs Immigration and Customs Enforcement to "exercise prosecutorial discretion[ ] on an individual basis... by deferring action for a period of two years, subject to renewal." Id., at 100a. In addition, it directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to "accept applications to determine whether these individuals qualify for work authorization during this period of deferred action," id., at 101a, as permitted under regulations long predating DACA's creation, see 8 CFR § 274a.12(c)(14) (2012) (permitting work authorization for deferred action recipients who establish "economic necessity"); 46 Fed. Reg. 25080-25081 (1981) (similar). Pursuant to other regulations, deferred action recipients are considered "lawfully present" for purposes of, and therefore eligible to receive, Social Security and Medicare benefits. See 8 CFR § 1.3(a)(4)(vi) ; 42 CFR § 417.422(h) (2012).
In November 2014, two years after DACA was promulgated, DHS issued a memorandum announcing that it would expand DACA eligibility by removing the age cap, shifting the date-of-entry requirement from 2007 to 2010, and extending the deferred action and work authorization period to three years. App. to Pet. for Cert. 106a-107a. In the same memorandum, DHS created a new, related program known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. That program would have authorized deferred action for up to 4.3 million parents whose children were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. These parents were to enjoy the same forbearance, work eligibility, and other benefits as DACA recipients.
Before the DAPA Memorandum was implemented, 26 States, led by Texas, filed suit in the Southern District of Texas. The States contended that DAPA and the DACA expansion violated the APA's notice and comment requirement, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and the Executive's duty under the Take Care Clause of the Constitution. The District Court found that the States were likely to succeed on the merits of at least one of their claims and entered a nationwide preliminary injunction barring implementation of both DAPA and the DACA expansion. See Texas v. United States, 86 F.Supp.3d 591, 677-678 (2015).
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction. Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 188 (2015). In opposing the injunction, the Government argued that the DAPA Memorandum reflected an unreviewable exercise of the Government's enforcement discretion. The Fifth Circuit majority disagreed. It reasoned that the deferred action described in the DAPA Memorandum was "much more than nonenforcement: It would affirmatively confer 'lawful presence' and associated benefits on a class of unlawfully present aliens." Id., at 166. From this, the majority concluded that the creation of the DAPA program was not an unreviewable action "committed to agency discretion by law." Id., at 169 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2) ).
The majority then upheld the injunction on two grounds. It first concluded the States were likely to succeed on their procedural claim that the DAPA Memorandum was a substantive rule that was required to undergo notice and comment. It then held that the APA required DAPA to be set aside because the program was "manifestly contrary" to the INA, which "expressly and carefully provides legal designations allowing defined classes" to "receive the benefits" associated with "lawful presence" and to qualify for work authorization, 809 F.3d at 179-181, 186 (internal quotation marks omitted). Judge King dissented.
This Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit's judgment by an equally divided vote, which meant that no opinion was issued. United States v. Texas, 579 U.S. ----, 136 S.Ct. 2271, 195 L.Ed.2d 638 (2016) (per curiam ). For the next year, litigation over DAPA and the DACA expansion continued in the Southern District of Texas, while implementation of those policies remained enjoined.
Then, in June 2017, following a change in Presidential administrations, DHS rescinded the DAPA Memorandum. In explaining that decision, DHS cited the preliminary injunction and ongoing litigation in Texas, the fact that DAPA had never taken effect, and the new administration's immigration enforcement priorities.
Three months later, in September 2017, Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine C. Duke, "advis[ing]" that DHS "should rescind" DACA as well. App. 877. Citing the Fifth Circuit's opinion and this Court's equally divided affirmance, the Attorney General concluded that DACA shared the "same legal... defects that the courts recognized as to DAPA" and was "likely" to meet a similar fate. Id., at 878. "In light of the costs and burdens" that a rescission would "impose[ ] on DHS," the Attorney General urged DHS to "consider an orderly and efficient wind-down process." Ibid.
The next day, Duke acted on the Attorney General's advice. In her decision memorandum, Duke summarized the history of the DACA and DAPA programs, the Fifth Circuit opinion and ensuing affirmance, and the contents of the Attorney General's letter. App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a-117a. "Taking into consideration the Supreme Court's and the Fifth Circuit's rulings" and the "letter from the Attorney General," she concluded that the "DACA program should be terminated." Id., at 117a.
Duke then detailed how the program would be wound down: No new applications would be accepted, but DHS would entertain applications for two-year renewals from DACA recipients whose benefits were set to expire within six months. For all other DACA recipients, previously issued grants of deferred action and work authorization would not be revoked but would expire on their own terms, with no prospect for renewal. Id., at 117a-118a.
B
Within days of Acting Secretary Duke's rescission announcement, multiple groups of plaintiffs ranging from individual DACA recipients and States to the Regents of the University of California and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People challenged her decision in the U.S. District Courts for the Northern District of California (Regents, No. 18-587), the Eastern District of New York (Batalla Vidal, No. 18-589), and the District of Columbia (NAACP, No. 18-588). The relevant claims are that the rescission was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA and that it infringed the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
All three District Courts ruled for the plaintiffs, albeit at different stages of the proceedings. In doing so, each court rejected the Government's threshold arguments that the claims were unreviewable under the APA and that the INA deprived the court of jurisdiction. 298 F.Supp.3d 209, 223-224, 234-235 (DDC 2018) ; 279 F.Supp.3d 1011, 1029-1033 (ND Cal. 2018) ; 295 F.Supp.3d 127, 150, 153-154 (EDNY 2017).
In Regents and Batalla Vidal, the District Courts held that the equal protection claims were adequately alleged. 298 F.Supp.3d 1304, 1315 (ND Cal. 2018) ; 291 F.Supp.3d 260, 279 (EDNY 2018). Those courts also entered coextensive nationwide preliminary injunctions, based on the conclusion that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the rescission was arbitrary and capricious. These injunctions did not require DHS to accept new applications, but did order the agency to allow DACA recipients to "renew their enrollments." 279 F.Supp.3d at 1048 ; see 279 F.Supp.3d 401, 437 (EDNY 2018).
In NAACP, the D. C. District Court took a different course. In April 2018, it deferred ruling on the equal protection challenge but granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs on their APA claim, holding that Acting Secretary Duke's "conclusory statements were insufficient to explain the change in [the agency's] view of DACA's lawfulness." 298 F.Supp.3d at 243. The District Court stayed its order for 90 days to permit DHS to "reissue a memorandum rescinding DACA, this time providing a fuller explanation for the determination that the program lacks statutory and constitutional authority." Id., at 245.
Two months later, Duke's successor, Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen, responded via memorandum. App. to Pet. for Cert. 120a-126a. She explained that, "[h]aving considered the Duke memorandum," she "decline[d] to disturb" the rescission. Id., at 121a. Secretary Nielsen went on to articulate her "understanding" of Duke's memorandum, identifying three reasons why, in Nielsen's estimation, "the decision to rescind the DACA policy was, and remains, sound." Ibid. First, she reiterated that, "as the Attorney General concluded, the DACA policy was contrary to law." Id., at 122a. Second, she added that, regardless, the agency had "serious doubts about [DACA's] legality" and, for law enforcement reasons, wanted to avoid "legally questionable" policies. Id., at 123a. Third, she identified multiple policy reasons for rescinding DACA, including (1) the belief that any class-based immigration relief should come from Congress, not through executive non-enforcement; (2) DHS's preference for exercising prosecutorial discretion on "a truly individualized, case-by-case basis"; and (3) the importance of "project[ing] a message" that immigration laws would be enforced against all classes and categories of aliens. Id., at 123a-124a. In her final paragraph, Secretary Nielsen acknowledged the "asserted reliance interests" in DACA's continuation but concluded that they did not "outweigh the questionable legality of the DACA policy and the other reasons" for the rescission discussed in her memorandum. Id., at 125a.
The Government asked the D. C. District Court to revise its prior order in light of the reasons provided by Secretary Nielsen, but the court declined. In the court's view, the new memorandum, which "fail[ed] to elaborate meaningfully" on the agency's illegality rationale, still did not provide an adequate explanation for the September 2017 rescission. 315 F.Supp.3d 457, 460, 473-474 (2018).
The Government appealed the various District Court decisions to the Second, Ninth, and D. C. Circuits, respectively. In November 2018, while those appeals were pending, the Government simultaneously filed three petitions for certiorari before judgment. After the Ninth Circuit affirmed the nationwide injunction in Regents, see 908 F.3d 476 (2018), but before rulings from the other two Circuits, we granted the petitions and consolidated the cases for argument. 588 U.S. ----, 139 S.Ct. 2779, 204 L.Ed.2d 1156 (2019). The issues raised here are (1) whether the APA claims are reviewable, (2) if so, whether the rescission was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA, and (3) whether the plaintiffs have stated an equal protection claim.
II
The dispute before the Court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so.
The APA "sets forth the procedures by which federal agencies are accountable to the public and their actions subject to review by the courts." Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 796, 112 S.Ct. 2767, 120 L.Ed.2d 636 (1992). It requires agencies to engage in "reasoned decisionmaking," Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743, 750, 135 S.Ct. 2699, 192 L.Ed.2d 674 (2015) (internal quotation marks omitted), and directs that agency actions be "set aside" if they are "arbitrary" or "capricious," 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Under this "narrow standard of review,... a court is not to substitute its judgment for that of the agency," FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502, 513, 129 S.Ct. 1800, 173 L.Ed.2d 738 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted), but instead to assess only whether the decision was "based on a consideration of the relevant factors and whether there has been a clear error of judgment," Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 416, 91 S.Ct. 814, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971).
But before determining whether the rescission was arbitrary and capricious, we must first address the Government's contentions that DHS's decision is unreviewable under the APA and outside this Court's jurisdiction.
A
The APA establishes a "basic presumption of judicial review [for] one'suffering legal wrong because of agency action.' " Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 140, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967) (quoting § 702 ). That presumption can be rebutted by a showing that the relevant statute "preclude[s]" review, § 701(a)(1), or that the "agency action is committed to agency discretion by law," § 701(a)(2). The latter exception is at issue here.
To "honor the presumption of review, we have read the exception in § 701(a)(2) quite narrowly," Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Serv., 586 U.S. ----, ----, 139 S.Ct. 361, 370, 202 L.Ed.2d 269 (2018), confining it to those rare "administrative decision[s] traditionally left to agency discretion," Lincoln v. Vigil, 508 U.S. 182, 191, 113 S.Ct. 2024, 124 L.Ed.2d 101 (1993). This limited category of unreviewable actions includes an agency's decision not to institute enforcement proceedings, Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 831-832, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985), and it is on that exception that the Government primarily relies.
In Chaney, several death-row inmates petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take enforcement action against two States to prevent their use of certain drugs for lethal injection. The Court held that the FDA's denial of that petition was presumptively unreviewable in light of the well-established "tradition" that "an agency's decision not to prosecute or enforce" is "generally committed to an agency's absolute discretion." Id., at 831, 105 S.Ct. 1649. We identified a constellation of reasons that underpin this tradition. To start, a non-enforcement decision "often involves a complicated balancing of a number of factors which are peculiarly within [the agency's] expertise," such as "whether the particular enforcement action requested best fits the agency's overall policies." Ibid. The decision also mirrors, "to some extent," a prosecutor's decision not to indict, which has "long been regarded as the special province of the Executive Branch." Id., at 832, 105 S.Ct. 1649. And, as a practical matter, "when an agency refuses to act" there is no action to "provide[ ] a focus for judicial review." Ibid.
The Government contends that a general non-enforcement policy is equivalent to the individual non-enforcement decision at issue in Chaney. In each case, the Government argues, the agency must balance factors peculiarly within its expertise, and does so in a manner akin to a criminal prosecutor. Building on that premise, the Government argues that the rescission of a non-enforcement policy is no different-for purposes of reviewability-from the adoption of that policy. While the rescission may lead to increased enforcement, it does not, by itself, constitute a particular enforcement action. Applying this logic to the facts here, the Government submits that DACA is a non-enforcement policy and that its rescission is therefore unreviewable.
But we need not test this chain of reasoning because DACA is not simply a non-enforcement policy. For starters, the DACA Memorandum did not merely "refus[e] to institute proceedings" against a particular entity or even a particular class. Ibid. Instead, it directed USCIS to "establish a clear and efficient process" for identifying individuals who met the enumerated criteria. App. to Pet. for Cert. 100a. Based on this directive, USCIS solicited applications from eligible aliens, instituted a standardized review process, and sent formal notices indicating whether the alien would receive the two-year forbearance. These proceedings are effectively "adjudicat[ions]." Id., at 117a. And the result of these adjudications-DHS's decision to "grant deferred action," Brief for Petitioners 45-is an "affirmative act of approval," the very opposite of a "refus[al] to act," Chaney, 470 U.S. at 831-832, 105 S.Ct. 1649. In short, the DACA Memorandum does not announce a passive non-enforcement policy; it created a program for conferring affirmative immigration relief. The creation of that program-and its rescission-is an "action [that] provides a focus for judicial review." Id., at 832, 105 S.Ct. 1649.
The benefits attendant to deferred action provide further confirmation that DACA is more than simply a non-enforcement policy. As described above, by virtue of receiving deferred action, the 700,000 DACA recipients may request work authorization and are eligible for Social Security and Medicare. See supra, at 1901. Unlike an agency's refusal to take requested enforcement action, access to these types of benefits is an interest "courts often are called upon to protect." Chaney, 470 U.S. at 832, 105 S.Ct. 1649. See also Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U.S. 20, 124 S.Ct. 376, 157 L.Ed.2d 333 (2003) (reviewing eligibility determination for Social Security benefits).
Because the DACA program is more than a non-enforcement policy, its rescission is subject to review under the APA.
B
The Government also invokes two jurisdictional provisions of the INA as independent bars to review. Neither applies.
Section 1252(b)(9) bars review of claims arising from "action[s]" or "proceeding[s] brought to remove an alien." 66 Stat. 209, as amended, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9). That targeted language is not aimed at this sort of case. As we have said before, § 1252(b)(9) "does not present a jurisdictional bar" where those bringing suit "are not asking for review of an order of removal," "the decision... to seek removal," or "the process by which... removability will be determined." Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 138 S.Ct. 830, 841, 200 L.Ed.2d 122 (2018) (plurality opinion); id., at ----, 138 S.Ct., at 875-876 (BREYER, J., dissenting). And it is certainly not a bar where, as here, the parties are not challenging any removal proceedings.
Section 1252(g) is similarly narrow. That provision limits review of cases "arising from" decisions "to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders." § 1252(g). We have previously rejected as "implausible" the Government's suggestion that § 1252(g) covers "all claims arising from deportation proceedings" or imposes "a general jurisdictional limitation." Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 482, 119 S.Ct. 936, 142 L.Ed.2d 940 (1999). The rescission, which revokes a deferred action program with associated benefits, is not a decision to "commence proceedings," much less to "adjudicate" a case or "execute" a removal order.
With these preliminary arguments out of the way, we proceed to the merits.
III
A
Deciding whether agency action was adequately explained requires, first, knowing where to look for the agency's explanation. The natural starting point here is the explanation provided by Acting Secretary Duke when she announced the rescission in September 2017. But the Government urges us to go on and consider the June 2018 memorandum submitted by Secretary Nielsen as well. That memo was prepared after the D. C. District Court vacated the Duke rescission and gave DHS an opportunity to "reissue a memorandum rescinding DACA, this time providing a fuller explanation for the determination that the program lacks statutory and constitutional authority." 298 F.Supp.3d at 245. According to the Government, the Nielsen Memorandum is properly before us because it was invited by the District Court and reflects the views of the Secretary of Homeland Security-the official responsible for immigration policy. Respondents disagree, arguing that the Nielsen Memorandum, issued nine months after the rescission, impermissibly asserts prudential and policy reasons not relied upon by Duke.
It is a "foundational principle of administrative law" that judicial review of agency action is limited to "the grounds that the agency invoked when it took the action." Michigan, 576 U.S. at 758, 135 S.Ct. 2699. If those grounds are inadequate, a court may remand for the agency to do one of two things: First, the agency can offer "a fuller explanation of the agency's reasoning at the time of the agency action."
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v. LTV Corp., 496 U.S. 633, 654, 110 S.Ct. 2668, 110 L.Ed.2d 579 (1990) (emphasis added). See also Alpharma, Inc. v. Leavitt, 460 F.3d 1, 5-6 (CADC 2006) (Garland, J.) (permitting an agency to provide an "amplified articulation" of a prior "conclusory" observation (internal quotation marks omitted)). This route has important limitations. When an agency's initial explanation "indicate[s] the determinative reason for the final action taken," the agency may elaborate later on that reason (or reasons) but may not provide new ones. Camp v. Pitts, 411 U.S. 138, 143, 93 S.Ct. 1241, 36 L.Ed.2d 106 (1973) (per curiam ). Alternatively, the agency can "deal with the problem afresh" by taking new agency action. SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 201, 67 S.Ct. 1760, 91 L.Ed. 1995 (1947) ( Chenery II ). An agency taking this route is not limited to its prior reasons but must comply with the procedural requirements for new agency action.
The District Court's remand thus presented DHS with a choice: rest on the Duke Memorandum while elaborating on its prior reasoning, or issue a new rescission bolstered by new reasons absent from the Duke Memorandum. Secretary Nielsen took the first path. Rather than making a new decision, she "decline[d] to disturb the Duke memorandum's rescission" and instead "provide[d] further explanation" for that action. App. to Pet. for Cert. 121a. Indeed, the Government's subsequent request for reconsideration described the Nielsen Memorandum as "additional explanation for [Duke's] decision" and asked the District Court to "leave in place [Duke's] September 5, 2017 decision to rescind the DACA policy." Motion to Revise Order in No. 17-cv-1907 etc. (D DC), pp. 2, 19. Contrary to the position of the Government before this Court, and of Justice KAVANAUGH in dissent, post, at 1933 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part), the Nielsen Memorandum was by its own terms not a new rule implementing a new policy.
Because Secretary Nielsen chose to elaborate on the reasons for the initial rescission rather than take new administrative action, she was limited to the agency's original reasons, and her explanation "must be viewed critically" to ensure that the rescission is not upheld on the basis of impermissible "post hoc rationalization." Overton Park, 401 U.S. at 420, 91 S.Ct. 814. But despite purporting to explain the Duke Memorandum, Secretary Nielsen's reasoning bears little relationship to that of her predecessor. Acting Secretary Duke rested the rescission on the conclusion that DACA is unlawful. Period. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 117a. By contrast, Secretary Nielsen's new memorandum offered three "separate and independently sufficient reasons" for the rescission, id., at 122a, only the first of which is the conclusion that DACA is illegal.
Her second reason is that DACA is, at minimum, legally questionable and should be terminated to maintain public confidence in the rule of law and avoid burdensome litigation. No such justification can be found in the Duke Memorandum. Legal uncertainty is, of course, related to illegality. But the two justifications are meaningfully distinct, especially in this context. While an agency might, for one reason or another, choose to do nothing in the face of uncertainty, illegality presumably requires remedial action of some sort.
The policy reasons that Secretary Nielsen cites as a third basis for the rescission are also nowhere to be found in the Duke Memorandum. That document makes no mention of a preference for legislative fixes, the superiority of case-by-case decisionmaking, the importance of sending a message of robust enforcement, or any other policy consideration. Nor are these points included in the legal analysis from the Fifth Circuit and the Attorney General. They can be viewed only as impermissible post hoc rationalizations and thus are not properly before us.
The Government, echoed by Justice KAVANAUGH, protests that requiring a new decision before considering Nielsen's new justifications would be "an idle and useless formality." NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S. 759, 766, n. 6, 89 S.Ct. 1426, 22 L.Ed.2d 709 (1969) (plurality opinion). See also post, at 1934. Procedural requirements can often seem such. But here the rule serves important values of administrative law. Requiring a new decision before considering new reasons promotes "agency accountability," Bowen v. American Hospital Assn., 476 U.S. 610, 643, 106 S.Ct. 2101, 90 L.Ed.2d 584 (1986), by ensuring that parties and the public can respond fully and in a timely manner to an agency's exercise of authority. Considering only contemporaneous explanations for agency action also instills confidence that the reasons given are not simply "convenient litigating position[s]." Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U.S. 142, 155, 132 S.Ct. 2156, 183 L.Ed.2d 153 (2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). Permitting agencies to invoke belated justifications, on the other hand, can upset "the orderly functioning of the process of review," SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94, 63 S.Ct. 454, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943), forcing both litigants and courts to chase a moving target. Each of these values would be markedly undermined were we to allow DHS to rely on reasons offered nine months after Duke announced the rescission and after three different courts had identified flaws in the original explanation.
Justice KAVANAUGH asserts that this "foundational principle of administrative law," Michigan, 576 U.S. at 758, 135 S.Ct. 2699, actually limits only what lawyers may argue, not what agencies may do. Post, at 1934. While it is true that the Court has often rejected justifications belatedly advanced by advocates, we refer to this as a prohibition on post hoc rationalizations, not advocate rationalizations, because the problem is the timing, not the speaker. The functional reasons for requiring contemporaneous explanations apply with equal force regardless whether post hoc justifications are raised in court by those appearing on behalf of the agency or by agency officials themselves. See American Textile Mfrs. Institute, Inc. v. Donovan, 452 U.S. 490, 539, 101 S.Ct. 2478, 69 L.Ed.2d 185 (1981) ("[T]he post hoc rationalizations of the agency... cannot serve as a sufficient predicate for agency action."); Overton Park, 401 U.S. at 419, 91 S.Ct. 814 (rejecting "litigation affidavits" from agency officials as "merely 'post hoc'rationalizations").
Justice Holmes famously wrote that "[m]en must turn square corners when they deal with the Government." Rock Island, A. & L. R. Co. v. United States, 254 U.S. 141, 143, 41 S.Ct. 55, 65 L.Ed. 188 (1920). But it is also true, particularly when so much is at stake, that "the Government should turn square corners in dealing with the people." St. Regis Paper Co. v. United States, 368 U.S. 208, 229, 82 S.Ct. 289, 7 L.Ed.2d 240 (1961) (Black, J., dissenting). The basic rule here is clear: An agency must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted. This is not the case for cutting corners to allow DHS to rely upon reasons absent from its original decision.
B
We turn, finally, to whether DHS's decision to rescind DACA was arbitrary and capricious. As noted earlier, Acting Secretary Duke's justification for the rescission was succinct: "Taking into consideration" the Fifth Circuit's conclusion that DAPA was unlawful because it conferred benefits in violation of the INA, and the Attorney General's conclusion that DACA was unlawful for the same reason, she concluded-without elaboration-that the "DACA program should be terminated." App. to Pet. for Cert. 117a.
Respondents maintain that this explanation is deficient for three reasons. Their first and second arguments work in tandem, claiming that the Duke Memorandum does not adequately explain the conclusion that DACA is unlawful, and that this conclusion is, in any event, wrong. While those arguments carried the day in the lower courts, in our view they overlook an important constraint on Acting Secretary Duke's decisionmaking authority-she was bound by the Attorney General's legal determination.
The same statutory provision that establishes the Secretary of Homeland Security's authority to administer and enforce immigration laws limits that authority, specifying that, with respect to "all questions of law," the determinations of the Attorney General "shall be controlling." 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(1). Respondents are aware of this constraint. Indeed they emphasized the point in the reviewability sections of their briefs. But in their merits arguments, respondents never addressed whether or how this unique statutory provision might affect our review. They did not discuss whether Duke was required to explain a legal conclusion that was not hers to make. Nor did they discuss whether the current suits challenging Duke's rescission decision, which everyone agrees was within her legal authority under the INA, are proper vehicles for attacking the Attorney General's legal conclusion.
Because of these gaps in respondents' briefing, we do not evaluate the claims challenging the explanation and correctness of the illegality conclusion. Instead we focus our attention on respondents' third argument-that Acting Secretary Duke "failed to consider... important aspect[s] of the problem" before her. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983).
Whether DACA is illegal is, of course, a legal determination, and therefore a question for the Attorney General. But deciding how best to address a finding of illegality moving forward can involve important policy choices, especially when the finding concerns a program with the breadth of DACA. Those policy choices are for DHS.
Acting Secretary Duke plainly exercised such discretionary authority in winding down the program. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 117a-118a (listing the Acting Secretary's decisions on eight transition issues).
Among other things, she specified that those DACA recipients whose benefits were set to expire within six months were eligible for two-year renewals. Ibid.
But Duke did not appear to appreciate the full scope of her discretion, which picked up where the
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The writs of certiorari are dismissed as improvidently granted.
Mr. Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases are here on petitions for certiorari and raise one identical question.
These are suits brought in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Lum’s, one of the respondents in the Lehman Bros. petition, is a Florida corporation with headquarters in Miami. Each W the three petitions, which we consolidated for oral argument, involves shareholders’ derivative suits naming Lum’s and others as defendants; and the basis of federal jurisdiction is diversity of citizenship, 28 "U. S. C. § 1332 (a)(1), about which there is no dispute.
The complaints allege that Chasen, president of Lum’s, called Simon, a representative of Lehman Bros., and told him about disappointing projections of Lum’s earnings, estimates that were confidential, not public. Simon is said to have told an emplayeé of IDS about them. On the next day, it is alleged that the IDS defendants sold 83,000 shares of Lum’s on the New York Stock Exchange for about $17.50 per share. Later that day the exchanges halted trading in Lum’s stock and on the next trading day it opened at $14 per share, the public being told that the. projected earnings Would be “substantially lower” than anticipated. The theory of the complaints was that Chasen was a fiduciary but used the inside information along with others for profit áhd that Chasen. and his group áre liable to Lum’s for their unlawful profits.
Lehman and Simon defended on the ground that the IDS sale was not made through them and that neither one benefited from the sales. Nonetheless plaintiffs claimed that Chasen and the other defendants were liable under Diamond v. Oreamuno, 24 N. Y. 2d 494, 248 N. E. 2d 910 (1969). Diamond proceeds on the theory that “inside” information Of an officer or director of a corporation is an asset of the corporation which had been acquired by th. insiders as fiduciaries, of the company and misappropl ted in violation of trust.
The District Court, looked to the choice-of-law rules of the State of New York, Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co., 313 U. S. 487 (1941) , and held that the law of the State of incorporation'.governs the existence and extent of corporate fiduciary, obligations, as well, as the'liability for violation of them.- - Diamond. did, indeed, so indicate, 24 N. Y. 2d, at 503-504, 248 N. E. 2d, at 915.
-ThéFDistrict Court in examining'Florida law concluded' that, although the highest court in Florida;, has -.not considered the question, several district courts off appeal indicate that a complaint which fails to allege both wrongful gets and damage to the corporation must be dismissed. The District Court went on to consider whether If Florida followed the Diamond- rationale, defendants would be liable. It concluded that the present complaints go beyoijid Diamond, as Chasen, the only fiduciary of Lum’s involved in the suits, never sold any of his holdings on the basis of inside information. The other defendants were not fiduciaries of Lum’s. The’ District Court accordingly dismissed the complaints, 335 F. Supp. 329 (1971).
The Court of Appeals by a divided vote reversed the District Court. 478 F. 2d 817 (CA2 1973). While the Court of Appeals held that Florida law was controlling, it found none that was decisive. So it then turned to the law of other jurisdictions, particularly that of New York, to see if Florida “would probably” interpret Diamond to make it applicable here. The Court of Appeals concluded that the defendants had engaged with Chasen “to misuse corporate property,” id., at 822, and that the theory. of Diamond reaches that situation, “viewing ,the case as the Florida court would probably view it.” Ibid. There were emanations from other Florida decisions that made the majority oh the Court of Appeals feel that' Florida would follow that reading of Diamond. Such a construction of Diamond, the Court of Appeals said, would have “the prophylactic effect of providing a disincentive to insider trading.” Id., at 823. And so it would. Yet under the regime of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), a State can make just the opposite her law, providing there is no overriding federal rule which pre-empts state law by reason of federal curbs on trading in the stream of commerce.
The, dissenter on the Court of Appeals. urged that that court certify the state-law question to the Florida Supreme Court as is provided in Fla. Stat. Ann. § 25.031 and its Appellate Rule 4.61. 478 F. 2d, at 828. That path-is open to this Court and to any court of appeals of the United States. We have, indeed, used it before as have courts of appeals.
Moreover when state law does not make the certification procedure available, a federal court not infrequently will stay, its hand, remitting the parties to the state court to resolve the controlling state law on which the federal rule may turn. Kaiser Steel Corp. v. W. S. Ranch Co., 391 U. S. 593 (1968). Numerous applications of that practice are reviewed in Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U. S. 228 (1943), which teaches that the mere difficulty in- ascertaining local law is no excuse for remitting the parties to a state tribunal for the start of another lawsuit. We do not suggest that where there is doubt as to local law and where the certification procedure is available, resort to it is obligatory. It does, of course, in the long run save timé, energy, and resources and helps build a cooperative judicial federalism.' Its use in a given case rests in the sound discretion of the federal court.
Here resort to it would seem particularly appropriate in view of the novelty of the question and the great unsettlement, of Florida law, Florida being a distant State. When federal judges in New York attempt to predict uncertain Florida law, they act, 3s we have referred to ourselves on this Court in matters of state law, as “oufc siders” lacking the common exposure to local law .which comes from sitting in the jurisdiction.
“Reading the Texas statutes and the Texas decisions as outsiders without special competence in Téxas law, wé would have little confidence in our independent judgment regarding the application of that law to the present situation. The lower court did deny, that the Texas statutes sustained the Commission’s assertion of power. And this represents the view of an able and experienced circuit judge of the circuit which includes Texas and of two capable district judges trained in Texas law.” Railroad Comm’n v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496, 499 (1941).
See also MacGregor v. State Mutual Life Assur. Co.; 315 U. S. 280, 281 (1942); Reitz v. Mealey, 314 U. S..33, 39 (1941).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated arid the cases are remanded so that that court may reconsider whether the controlling issue of Florida law should be certified to the Florida Supreme Court pursuant to Rule 4.61 of the Florida Appellate Rules.
So ordered.
Investors Diversified Services, Inc., Investor^ Variable Payment Fund, Inc., and IDS New Dimensions Fund, Inc., were defendants in the Schein case. Of those, only. Investors Diversified Services, Inc., is a defendant in the other derivative action brought by Gregorio. The dismissal of the third derivative action (GiLdenhorn) was not pursued on appeal.
One Sit and one Jundt, defendants alleged to be employees of IDS, Inc., were dismissed from the case by the District Court for lack of personal jurisdiction. There was no appeal from that' dismissal.
E. g., Palma v. Zerbey, 189 So. 2d 510, 511 (Fla. App. 1966).
The District Court also held that whether Chasen would be liable not for profiting himself from the inside information but for revealing it to' others could not be reached as Chasen, a nonresident of New York, had not been properly served.
See, e. g., Quinn v. Phipps, 93 Fla. 805, 113 So. 419 (1927).
Aldrich v. Aldrich, 375 U. S. 249 (1963); Dresner v. City of Tallahassee, 375 U. S. 136 (1963).
Trail Builders Supply Co. v. Reagan, 430 F. 2d 828 (CA5 1970); Gaston v. Pittman, 413 F. 2d 1031 (CA5 1969); Martinez v. Rodriquez, 410 F. 2d 729 (CA5 1969); Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 409 F. 2d 32 (CA5 1969), rev’d on other grounds, 398 U. S. 375 (1970); Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 394 F. 2d 656 (CA5 1968); Life Ins. Co. of Virginia v. Shifflet, 380 F. 2d, 375 (CA5 1967); Green v. American Tobacco Co., 325 F. 2d 673 (CA5 1963); Sun Insurance Office v. Clay, 319 F. 2d 505 (CA5 1963) The Fifth Circúit’s willingness to certify is in part a product of frequent state court repudiation of its interpretations of state law. See the cases summarized in United Services Life Ins. Co. v. Delaney, 328 F. 2d 483, 486-487 (CA5 1964) (Brown, C. J., concurring).
Certification procedures are available in several States, including Colorado, Colo. Appellate Rule 21.1 (1970); Hawaii, Haw. Rev. Stat. §602-06 (1969); Louisiana, La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13:72.1 (Supp. 1973); Maine, Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 4, §57 (1964); Maryland, Md. Ann. Code, Art. 26, § 161 (Supp. 1973); Massachusetts, Mass. Sup. Jud. Ct. Rule 3:21 (1973); Montana, Mont. Sup. Ct. Rule 1 (1973); New Hampshire, N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §490 App. R. 20 (Supp. 1973); and Washington, Wash. Rev. Code Ann. §§ 2.60.010-2.60.030 (Supp. 1972).
See Wright, The Federal Courts and the Natiire and Quality of State Law, 13 Wayne L. Rev. 317 (1967); Kurland, Toward a Co-Operative Judicial Federalism: The Federal Court Abstention Doctrine, 24 F. R. D. 481 (1960); Note, Inter-Jurisdictional Certification: Beyond Abstention Toward Cooperative Judicial Federalism, 111 U. Pa. L. Rev. 344 (1963); Note, Florida’s Interjurisdietional Certification:- A Reexamination To Promote Expanded National Use, 22 U. Fla. L. Rev. 21 (1969).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
AMENDED DECREE
It Is Ordered, Adjudged, and Decreed as Follows:
. 1. Luna Bar, depicted in Mississippi’s Exhibits 1 and 2, constituting, respectively, Appendix A and part of Appendix B to the Special Master’s report, and appended hereto and hereby made a part of this decree, came into existence by accretion to Carter Point and is, and was, a part of the State of Mississippi.
2. The boundary line between the State of Mississippi and the State of Arkansas in the areas between the upstream and the downstream ends of Tarpley Cut-off is as follows:
“That part of the abandoned bed of the Mississippi River between the upstream end of the Tarpley Cutoff and the downstream end of Tarpley Cut-off as defined and identified in Mississippi’s said Exhibit 2, being a plat prepared by Austin B. Smith. The above described State boundary line being more particularly described as follows, to-wit:
“Beginning at the head of Tarpley Cut-off Channel at Point P-36 as shown on said Smith’s Mississippi Exhibit P-2 at Latitude 33°26,24" and Longitude 91°06'46";
“thence west to Point P-1, Lat. 33°26'25" and Long. 91°07/30";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-2, Lat. 33°26'0.0" and Long. 91°07'56" ;
“thence southwesterly to Point P-3, Lat. 33°25'47" and Long. 91°08'17" ;
“thence southwesterly to Point P-4, Lat. 33°25'40" and Long. 91°08'42";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-5, Lat. 33°25'36" and Long. 91°09'0.0";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-6, Lat. 33°25'30" and Long. 91°09'29";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-7, Lat. 33°25'25" and Long. 91°10'0.0";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-8, Lat. 33°25'21" and Long. 91°10'28";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-9, Lat. 33°25/16" and Long. 91°11'0.0";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-10, Lat. 33°25'10" and Long. 91°11'29";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-11, Lat. 33°25'06" and Long. 91°11'46";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-12, Lat. 33°25'00" and Long. 91°12'04";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-13, Lat. 33°24'52" and Long. 91° 12'17";
“thence southwesterly to Point P-14, Lat. 33°24'46" and Long. 91°12'23";
“thence southward to Point P-15, Lat. 33°24'37" and Long. 91°12'28";
“thence southward to Point P-16, Lat. 33°24'23" and Long. 91° 12'32";
“thence southward to Point P-17, Lat. 33°24'11.5" and Long. 91°12'30";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-18, Lat. 33°24'0.0" and Long. 91°12'21";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-19, Lat. 33°23'44.5" and Long. 91°12'0.0";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-20, Lat. 33°23'37" and Long. 91°11'49.5";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-21, Lat. 33°23'06" and Long. 91°11'0.0";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-22, Lat. 33°23'0.0" and Long. 91°10'48";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-23, Lat. 33°22'54" and Long. 91°10/34";
“thence southeasterly to Point P-24, Lat. 33°22'49" and Long. 91°10'18";
“thence eastward to Point P-25, Lat. 33°22'48" and Long. 91°10'10";
“thence eastward to Point P-26, Lat. 33°22'47" and Long. 91°10'0.0";
“thence eastward to Point P-27, Lat. 33°22'43.5" and Long. 91°09'14.5";
“thence eastward to Point P-28, Lat. 33°22'44" and Long. 91°09'0.0";
“thence northeasterly to Point P-29, Lat. 33°22'46.5" and Long. 91o08'45";
“thence northeasterly to Point P-30, Lat. 33°22'53" and Long. 91°08'24/' ;
“thence northeasterly to Point P-31, Lat. 33°23'0.0" and Long. 91°08'04.5";
“thence northeasterly to Point P-32, Lat. 33°23'01.5" and Long. 91o08'0.0'';
“thence northeasterly to Point P-33, Lat. 33°23,09.5,/ and Long. 91°07'40";
“thence northeasterly to Point P-34, Lat. 33°23r13" and Long. 91°07'31";
“thence northeasterly to Point P-35, Lat. 33°23'25" and Long. 91°06/39,/ at the foot of Tarpley Cut-off Channel”;
3. The costs of this suit, including the expenses of the Special Master and the printing of his report, have been paid out of the fund made up of equal contributions by the State of Mississippi and the State of Arkansas and said fund has been sufficient to defray all said expenses to the date of the issuance of the report. Any costs and expenses that may be incurred beyond the amount so contributed by the respective litigants shall be borne by the State of Arkansas.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
The Report of the Special Master is received and ordered filed.
This matter comes before this Court on Stipulation by each of the parties hereto: the State of South Dakota, by and through its Attorney General, Mark Meierhenry; the State of Nebraska, by and through its Attorney General, Paul L. Douglas;, the Intervenors, by and through themselves and their attorney, Everett A. Bogue.
FINDINGS AND DECREE
It Is The Finding of This Court That:
1. The parties have concluded that it is in the best interest of each of them to avoid litigation and multiple exercises of sovereignty and jurisdiction, encourage the optimum beneficial use of the river, its facilities and its waters, and remove all causes of controversy between said parties with respect to the location of the boundary between the States and, therefore, to settle and to terminate this dispute by agreement and compromise and submission of the boundary between the State of South Dakota and the State of Nebraska with respect to Rush Island in the future to a Joint State Boundary Commission.
2. In the furtherance of the best interests of each of the parties, it is agreed that that land known as “Elk/Rush Island,” subject of this lawsuit, is now, and has been, within the boundary of the State of Nebraska and subject to its jurisdiction.
3. The State of South Dakota has agreed to cede to the Intervenors any right or title it may have in the subject property known as “Elk/Rush Island,” more fully described in Appendix A attached to the Stipulation; and the State of South Dakota specifically recognizes the Judgment of the District Court of Cedar County, Nebraska, dated November 7, 1958, which quieted title to the above identified land in Clyde Gill and others, predecessors of the Intervenors, which action can be found in the records of Cedar County District Court of Nebraska, Case No. 5628, Docket 24, Page 13.
4. The State of South Dakota has further agreed to dismiss an action to quiet title filed in the Circuit Court of Yankton, South Dakota, regarding this subject property.
5. The States of Nebraska and South Dakota have agreed to submit the determination of future boundary changes with regard to “Elk/Rush Island” but not to the title to the premises therein, to a Joint State Boundary Commission appointed by the elected officials of these respective States for the Commission’s determination from the date of that determination forth.
It Is, Therefore, Ordered, Adjudged and Decreed that pursuant to the above Stipulations and Findings:
1. That the land known as “Elk/Rush Island,” the subject of this litigation, be and the same is within the boundary of the State of Nebraska, and subject to its jurisdiction;
2. That the State of South Dakota hereby cedes to the Intervenors any right or title it may have to the subject property known as “Elk/Rush Island” as more fully described in Appendix A attached hereto;
3. That the States of Nebraska and South Dakota will submit the determination of the future boundary changes, if any, with regard to “Elk/Rush Island,” but not to the title of the premises thereto, to a Joint State Boundary Commission appointed by the elected officials of these respective States for the Commission’s determination from the date of that determination forth;
4. That the State of South Dakota and the State of Nebraska will proceed to effectuate any and all other requirements agreed to in the Stipulation to the extent that conditions and circumstances permit; and
5. Each party shall bear its own costs.
APPENDIX A
Rush Island in the Missouri River, said island being a part of Sections 5, 6 and 7, Township 33, Range 1, East, Cedar County, Nebraska, according to the original Government Survey and which is more fully and particularly described in the Surveyor’s record No. 5, Page 70 as follows: Commencing at the Section corner of Sections 7 and 8, in Township 33, Range 1, East, Cedar County, Nebraska, as is located by the survey recorded in Surveyor’s Record, Volume 4, page 29 of the records of Cedar County, Nebraska, thence running due north from this corner 5060 feet to the point of beginning, thence running 710 feet north 81 degrees east, thence 805 feet north 68 degrees east, thence 942 feet north 59 degrees east, thence 326 feet north 88 degrees east, thence 874 feet north 84 degrees east, thence 362 feet south 54 degrees east, thence 305 feet north 58 degrees east, thence 1140 feet north 65 degrees east, thence 1315 feet north 5 degrees east, thence 805 feet north 60 degrees west, thence 1800 feet north 69 degrees west, thence 1225 feet north 72 degrees west, thence 2080 feet north 79 degrees west, thence 1390 feet north 57 degrees west, thence 1160 feet north 86 degrees west, thence 582 feet south 84 degrees west, thence 1090 feet south 55 degrees west, thence 1980 feet south 89 degrees west, thence 688 feet south 47 degrees west, thence 1400 feet south 20 degrees west, thence 1415 feet south 55 degrees west, thence 865 feet south 78 degrees east, thence 588 feet south 87 degrees east, thence 2220 feet south 72 degrees east, thence 2530 feet south 78 degrees east, thence 1890 feet south 62 degrees east, thence 425 feet south 71 degrees east to the point of beginning, containing 994 acres more or less, all in Township 33, Range 1 East in Cedar County, Nebraska, and that intervenors are the record owners thereof.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
El Paso Natural Gas Co. is an interstate natural gas pipeline company that delivers gas at the Arizona-California border to three California distribution companies. The present controversy concerns gas to be purchased by it in Texas from Lo-Vaca Gathering Co. and Houston Pipe Line Co. Under Lo-Vaca’& contract gas produced in Texas is to be delivered to a subsidiary of El Paso’S at a Texas point for delivery, into its pipeline. The contract contains the following two clauses:
“All of the gas to be purchased by El Paso from Gatherer [Lo-Vaca] under this agreement shall be used by El Paso solely as fuel in El Paso’s compressors, treating plants, boilers, camps and other facilities locátéd outside of the State of Texas. It is understood, however, that said gas will be commingled with other gas being transported in El Paso’s pipe fine system.”
“It is the intent and understanding of the parties hereto that the sale of natural gas hereof is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Power Commission because this sale is not for resale.”
This “restricted use” agreement provides for a Separate metering of the contract volumes prior to their delivery info El Paso’s system. El Paso will meter the. gas used for fuel purposes in its New Mexico and Arizona facilities to make certain this amount invariably exceeds the volumes of gas taken from Lo-Vaca under this agreement.
El Paso and Houston made a similar contract containing a similar “restricted use” provision by which El Paso covenants that this Houston gas will be consumed by El Paso solely as fuel in its Texas operations or in another Texas plant. This contract, like the other one, also provides for metering the volume of gas delivered in Texas; and it includes a covenant by El Paso that the Texas uses will &t all times exceed the amounts supplied by Houston.
In spite of these "restricted use” covenants it is conceded that the gas sold by Lo-Vaca and Houston to El Paso will flow in a commingled stream with gas from other sources and that at least a portion of the gas will in fact be resold out of Texas.
The Federal Power Commission asserted jurisdiction over these sales as sales in interstate commerce “for resale,” as that term is used in § 1 (b) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 821, 15 U. S. C. § 717 (1958 ed.). 26 F. P. C. 606, rehearing denied, id., at 840. The Court of
Appeals reversed, one judge dissenting. 323 F. 2d 190. The case is here on a writ of certiorari. 377 U. S. 951.
We said in Connecticut Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 324 U. S. 515, 529, “Federal jurisdiction was to follow the flow of electric energy, an engineering and scientific, rather than a legalistic or governmental, test.” And that is the test we have followed under both the Federal Power Act and the Natural Gas Act, except as Congress itself has substituted a so-called legal Standard for the technological one. Id., at 530-531. In Interstate Natural Gas Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 331 U. S. 682, 687, we considered the anatomy of the pipeline system to discover the channel of the constant flow; again in Federal Power Comm’n v. East Ohio Gas Co., 338 U. S. 464, 467; and most recently in Federal Power Comm’n v. Southern Cal. Edison Co., 376 U. S. 205, 209, n. 5. The result of our decisions is to make the sale of gas which crosses a state line at any stage of its movement from wellhead to ultimate consumption “in interstate commerce” within the meaning of the Act.
Attempts have been made by one convention or another to convert a local transaction into one of interstate commerce (Sprout v. South Bend, 277 U. S. 163; Superior Oil Co. v. Mississippi, 280 U. S. 390) or to make a segment of interstate commerce appear to be only intrastate (Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. Settle, 260 U. S. 166). But those attempts have failed. Similarly, we conclude that when it comes to the question what gas is for “resale” the present contracts should not be able to change the jurisdictional result.
The fact that a substantial part of the gas will be resold, in our view, invokes federal jurisdiction at the outset over the entire transaction. Were suppliers of gas and pipeline companies free to allocate by contract gas from a particular source to a particular use, havoc would be raised with the federal regulatory scheme, as it was construed arid applied in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672. A pipeline would then be able to discriminate in favor of its “nonjurisdictional” customers. Moreover, a pipeline compariy by a contract clause could immunize a particular supplier from the reach of federal regulation as defined by Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, supra. There would be created in those and in other ways an “attractive gap” in the federal regulatory scheme (Federal Power Comm’n v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 365 U. S. 1, 28) which the producing States might have little incentive to close, since the gap would often involve either lower costs to intrastate customers or else merely higher pipeline costs which ultimately would be reflected in rates paid by consumers in other States. Whether cases could be conjured up where in spite of original commingling there might be a separate so-called nonjurisdictional transaction of a precise amount of gas not-for-resale within the meaning of the Act is a question we need not reach.
Finally it is said that the Commission should draw the appropriate lines between “jurisdictional'’ and “nonjuris-dictional” sales through the use of its rule-making power. But we cannot say. that the ádjüdicatory process is not an appropriate method, for drawing the line case-by-case (United States v. Public Utilities Comm’n, 345 U. S. 295) as in a,''host of other administrative determinations. The Commission has acted responsibly in this situation and its decision must be upheld.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice White took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Section 1 (b) of the Act provides:
“The provisions of this Act shall apply to the transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce, to the sale in interstate commerce of natural gas for resale for ultimate public consumption for domestic, commercial, industrial, or any other use, and to natural-gas companies engaged in such transportation or sale, but shall not apply to any other transportation or sale of natural gas or to the local distribution of natural gas or to the facilities used for such distribution or to the production or gathering of natural gas.”
Section 2 (7) of the Act reads as follows:
“When used in this Act, unless the context otherwise requires—
“(7) ‘Interstate commerce’ means commerce between any point in a State and any point outside thereof, or between points within the same State but through any place outside thereof, but only insofar as such commerce takes place within the United States.”
The Commission’s Report, .Statistics of Natural Gas Companies— 1962, shows that the 40 major natural gas pipeline companies consumed more than $85,000,000 worth of gas in operating their facilities (principally compressor stations), p. xviii. This represents almost 4% of the total gas-purcháse-costs of those companies. The Commission therefore points out in its brief that pipeline companies, merely by using “restricted use” controls, could without changing their actual operations create a substantial unregulated market for the benefit of particular producers. .
Our reference in Federal Power Comm’n v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp., 365 U. S. 1, 4, to “direct” sales of gas to industrial users as nonjurisdictional sales is not dispositive of the present issue. For the Commission had refused a certificate for transportation of the gas because from the standpoint of conservation it considered the end use as boiler fuel to be inferior. Whether the Commissi on had authority to assert jurisdiction over .the so-called “direct” sale because it was “for resale” as a result of its commingling with other gas was not in issue.
Cf. United States v. Public Utilities Comm’n, 345 U. S. 295, 317-318; City of Hastings v. Federal Power Comm’n, 221 F. 2d 31.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
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Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a controversy as to the power of the Federal Trade Commission to require corporations to file reports showing how they have complied with a decree of the Court of Appeals enforcing the Commission’s cease and desist order, in addition to those reports required by the decree itself.
Proceedings under § 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act culminated in a Commission order requiring respondents Morton Salt Company and International Salt Company, together with eighteen other salt producers and a trade association, to cease and desist from stated practices in connection with the pricing, producing and marketing of salt. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the order with modifications and commanded compliance. 134 F. 2d 354. The decree directed that reports of the manner of compliance be filed with the Commission within ninety days, but it reserved jurisdiction “to enter such further orders herein from time to time as may become necessary effectively to enforce compliance in every respect with this decree and to prevent evasion thereof.” The decree expressly was “without prejudice to the right of the United States, as provided in Section 5 (1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, to prosecute suits to recover civil penalties for violations of the said modified order to cease and desist hereby affirmed, and without prejudice to the right of the Federal Trade Commission to initiate contempt proceedings for violations of this decree.” The reports of compliance were subsequently filed and accepted, and there the matter appears to have rested for a little upwards of four years.
On September 2, 1947, the Commission ordered additional and highly particularized reports to show continuing compliance with the decree. This was done without application to the court, was not authorized by any provision of its decree, and is not provided for in § 5 of the statute under which the Commission’s original cease and desist order had issued. The new order recited that it was issued on the Commission’s own motion pursuant to its published Rule of Practice No. XXVI and the authority granted by subsections (a) and (b) of § 6 of the Trade Commission Act. It ordered these and other parties restrained by the earlier decree to file within thirty days “additional reports showing in detail the manner and form in which they have been, and are now, complying with said modified order to cease and desist and said decree.” It demanded of each producer a “complete statement” of the “prices, terms, and conditions of sale of salt, together with books or compilations of freight rates used in calculating delivered prices, price lists and price announcements distributed, published or employed in marketing salt from and after January 1, 1944.” From the Salt Producers Association it required information as to its activities and services. The Association and some of the producers reported satisfactorily. These two respondents did not. Instead, each informed the Commission in general terms that it had complied with the decree in the manner previously reported, but that it doubted the Commission’s jurisdiction to require further reports and declined to supply the particulars demanded. Neither asked any hearing or made objection to the scope of the order.
The Commission next gave respondents notices asserting their default and calling attention to penalties provided in § 10 of the Act. Neither respondent asked any hearing on the notice of default. These suits were then commenced in the name of the United States in District Court under §§ 9 and 10 of the Trade Commission Act, asking mandatory injunctions commanding respondents to report as directed, together with judgment against each for $100 per day while default continued. Respondents answered. Both sides moved for summary judgments. The court found no dispute as to material facts and dismissed the complaints for want of jurisdiction. 80 F. Supp. 419. The Court of Appeals, by divided vote, affirmed. 174 F. 2d 703. We granted certiorari, 338 U. S. 857, because the case involved issues of some importance to enforcement of the Act and of court decrees under it and under other Acts which provide similar methods to enforce orders of administrative bodies.
The Government’s suits and the Commission’s order are challenged upon a variety of grounds, not all of which were considered by the Court of Appeals. They include contentions that (1) the order constitutes an interference with the decree and an invasion of the powers of the Court of Appeals; (2) the Commission’s Rule XXVI is ultra vires and violates the Federal Administrative Procedure Act, 60 Stat. 237, 5 U. S. C. §§ 1001 et seq.; (3) the procedure is unauthorized by those sections of the Act on which it is based; (4) it is novel and arbitrary and violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. For reasons given, we reject each of these contentions.
I. Invasion of Court of Appeals Jurisdiction.
The respondents’ case and the decision below are rested heavily on this argument that the Commission is invading the province of the judiciary. The Court of Appeals held that the Commission’s order of September 2, 1947, represented an unauthorized attempt to enforce that court’s decree. It pointed out that the statute had made the court’s own jurisdiction of the proceeding “exclusive” and its own decree final. It considered that “every vestige of jurisdiction” over that subject was “firmly and exclusively lodged in [the] Court of Appeals.” It noted that it had required filing of only the original compliance reports, and that it had protected its jurisdiction by reserving power to enter further orders necessary to enforce compliance and prevent evasion. It thought that the effect of the Commission’s proceedings was to assert “such jurisdiction to reside elsewhere.”
It seems conceded, however, that some power or duty, independently of the decree, must still have resided in the Commission. Certainly entry of the court decree did not wholly relieve the Commission of responsibility for its enforcement. The decree recognized that. It left to the Commission the right and hence the responsibility “to initiate contempt proceedings for the violation of this decree.” This must have contemplated that the Commission could obtain accurate information from time to time on which to base a responsible conclusion that there was or was not cause for such a proceeding. The decree also required the original report showing the manner and form of each respondent’s compliance to be filed, not with the court but with the Commission. Presumably the Commission was expected to scrutinize it and, if insufficient on its face, to reject it and move the court to take notice of the default. And the duty likewise was left upon the Commission to move the court if any respondent made a false report. The duty would appear to be the same if a temporary compliance were truly reported but conduct resumed which would violate the decree. In addition, the Trade Commission has a continuing duty to prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce. That responsibility as to all within the coverage of the Act is not suspended or exhausted as to any violator whose guilt is once established.
If the Commission had petitioned the court itself to order additional reports of compliance, it could properly have been required to present some evidence of probable violation to overcome the “presumption of legality,” of innocence, and of obedience to the law which respondents here urge. Courts hesitate to alter or supplement their decrees except the need be proved as well as asserted. Evidence the Commission did not have; it had at most a suspicion, or let us say a curiosity as to whether respondents’ reported reformation in business methods was an abiding one.
Must the decree, after a single report of compliance, rest upon respondents’ honor unless evidence of a violation fortuitously comes to the Commission? May not the Commission, in view of its residual duty of enforcement, affirmatively satisfy itself that the decree is being observed? Whether this usurps the courts’ own function is, we think, answered by consideration of the fundamental relationship between the courts and administrative bodies.
The Trade Commission Act is one of several in which Congress, to make its policy effective, has relied upon the initiative of administrative officials and the flexibility of the administrative process. Its agencies are provided with staffs to institute proceedings and to follow up decrees and police their obedience. While that process at times is adversary, it also at times is inquisitorial. These agencies are expected to ascertain when and against whom proceedings should be set in motion and to take the lead in following through to effective results. It is expected that this combination of duty and power always will result in earnest and eager action but it is feared that it may sometimes result in harsh and overzealous action.
To protect against mistaken or arbitrary orders, judicial review is provided. Its function is dispassionate and disinterested adjudication, unmixed with any concern as to the success of either prosecution or defense. Courts are not expected to start wheels moving or to follow up judgments. Courts neither have, nor need, sleuths to dig up evidence, staffs to analyze reports, or personnel to prepare prosecutions for contempts. Indeed, while some situations force the judge to pass on contempt issues which he himself raises, it is to be regretted whenever a court in any sense must become prosecutor. Those occasions should not be needlessly multiplied by denying investigative and prosecutive powers to other lawful agencies.
The court in this case advisedly left it to the Commission to receive the report of compliance and to institute any contempt proceedings. This was in harmony with our system. When the process of adjudication is complete, all judgments are handed over to the litigant or executive officers, such as the sheriff or marshal, to execute. Steps which the litigant or executive department lawfully takes for their enforcement are a vindication rather than a usurpation of the court’s power. In the case before us, it is true that the Commission’s cease and desist order was merged in the court’s decree; but the court neither assumed to itself nor denied to the Commission that agency’s duty to inform itself and protect commerce against continued or renewed unlawful practice.
This case illustrates the difference between the judicial function and the function the Commission is attempting to perform. The respondents argue that since the Commission made no charge of violation either of the decree or the statute, it is engaged in a mere “fishing expedition” to see if it can turn up evidence of guilt. We will assume for the argument that this is so. Courts have often disapproved the employment of the judicial process in such an enterprise. Federal judicial power itself extends only to adjudication of cases and controversies and it is natural that its investigative powers should be jealously confined to these ends. The judicial subpoena power not only is subject to specific constitutional limitations, which also apply to administrative orders, such as those against self-incrimination, unreasonable search and seizure, and due process of law, but also is subject to those limitations inherent in the body that issues them because of the provisions of the Judiciary Article of the Constitution.
We must not disguise the fact that sometimes, especially early in the history of the federal administrative tribunal, the courts were persuaded to engraft judicial limitations upon the administrative process. The courts could not go fishing, and so it followed neither could anyone else. Administrative investigations fell before the colorful and nostalgic slogan “no fishing expeditions.” It must not be forgotten that the administrative process and its agencies are relative newcomers in the field of law and that it has taken and will continue to take experience and trial and error to fit this process into our system of judicature. More recent views have been more tolerant of it than those which underlay many older decisions. Compare Jones v. Securities & Exchange Comm’n, 298 U. S. 1, with United States v. Morgan, 307 U. S. 183, 191.
The only power that is involved here is the power to get information from those who best can give it and who are most interested in not doing so. Because judicial power is reluctant if not unable to summon evidence until it is shown to be relevant to issues in litigation, it does not follow that an administrative agency charged with seeing that the laws are enforced may not have and exercise powers of original inquiry. It has a power of inquisition, if one chooses to call it that, which is not derived from the judicial function. It is more analogous to the Grand Jury, which does not depend on a case or controversy for power to get evidence but can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not. When investigative and accusatory duties are delegated by statute to an administrative body, it, too, may take steps to inform itself as to whether there is probable violation of the law.
Of course, the Commission cannot intrude upon or usurp the court’s function of adjudication. The decree is always what the court makes it; the court’s jurisdiction to review is and remains exclusive, its judgment final. What the Commission has done, however, is not to modify but to follow up this decree. It has not asked this report in the name of the court, or in reliance upon judicial powers, but in reliance upon its own law-enforcing powers.
That Congress did not regard it as a judicial function to investigate compliance with court decrees, at least initially, is shown by its action as to other antitrust decrees. Section 6 (c) of the Act under consideration specifically authorizes the Commission, on its own initiative and without leave of court, to investigate compliance with final decrees in cases prosecuted by the Attorney General and not involving the Commission as a party. Congress obviously deemed it a function of the Commission, rather than of the courts, to probe compliance with such decrees, even when it had no part in obtaining them. It surely was not because of fear it would involve collision with the judicial function that Congress omitted express authorization for the Commission to follow up decrees in its own cases. Express grant of power would only seem necessary as to decrees in which the Commission had no other interest.
Whether the Commission has invaded any private right of respondents, we consider under later rubrics. Our only concern under the present heading is whether the Commission’s order infringes prerogatives of the court. We hold it does not.
II. Violation op the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Administrative Procedure Act was framed against a background of rapid expansion of the administrative process as a check upon administrators whose zeal might otherwise have carried them to excesses not contemplated in legislation creating their offices. It created safeguards even narrower than the constitutional ones, against arbitrary official encroachment on private rights.
Thus § 3 (a) of the Act requires every agency to which it applies, which includes the Federal Trade Commission, to publish in the Federal Register certain statements of its rules, organization and procedure, “including the nature and requirements of all formal or informal procedures available,” and adds that, “No person shall in any manner be required to resort to organization or procedure not so published.” In addition § 6 (b) proscribes any requirement of a report or other investigative demand “in any manner or for any purpose except as authorized by law.”
Principally on the basis of these two sections respondents contend that the current order cannot be enforced except in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Have the respondents been ordered to comply with procedure of which they were not put on notice by publication in the Federal Register? And to the extent that the procedure had been defined and published, was it authorized by law?
The pertinent provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act became effective September 11, 1946. On December 11, 1946, the Federal Trade Commission published in the Federal Register its Rules of Practice, 11 Fed. Reg. 14233-14239. The Commission’s Rule XXVI, id., 14237, republished without change in 12 Fed. Reg. 5444, 5448, sets the time limit for filing initial reports of compliance with Commission orders and asserts the Commission’s right to require, within its sound discretion, the filing of further compliance reports thereafter. In § 7.12 of its Statement of Organization, Procedures, and Functions, 12 Fed. Reg. 5450, 5452, the Commission restated its right to require by order “such supplemental reports of compliance as it considers warranted,” and defined the contents of such a report.
We conclude that the Commission’s published Rule XXVI announced the right it claims in this case to demand of a party against whom an enforcement decree has been entered that it “file with the Commission, from time to time thereafter, further reports in writing, setting forth in detail the manner and form in which they are complying with said order....” Taken together with the Commission’s Statement of Organization, Procedures, and Functions, supra, if indeed not by itself, Rule XXVI amply met the requirements of § 3 (a) of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Respondents hardly challenge this conclusion. Theirs is the more subtle argument that requirement of supplemental reports following court enforcement of a Commission order is unauthorized by statute and ultra vires, so that no valid notice of Rule XXVI had been or could be given, as required by § 3 (a) of the Administrative Procedure Act. Also, it is said to be in direct violation of § 6 (b) of that Act. This leads to the question of statutory authority for the order to report, a question we must determine even apart from consideration of the Administrative Procedure Act. Accordingly we turn to the Federal Trade Commission Act itself to see whether it contains statutory authority for the Commission’s Rule XXVI, as well as for its order here sought to be enforced, issued, as it was, pursuant to the procedures proclaimed in that Rule. If we find such statutory authority, we must conclude that the objections under the Administrative Procedure Act are taken in vain.
III. Statutory Authority to Require Reports.
The Court of Appeals found the Commission to be without statutory authority to require additional reports as to compliance. Section 6 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, it thought, could not be invoked in connection with a decree sought and entered pursuant to § 5, which sections the court regarded as insulated from each other and directed to wholly different situations. Section 6, so it was held, authorized requirement only of “special reports” supplemental to “annual reports” and could not be authority for requiring special reports supplemental to a report of compliance required by court decree in a § 5 case.
At the root of this position lies the elaborate and plausible argument of respondents that §§ 5 and 6 of the Act set up self-sufficient, independent and exclusive procedures for dealing with different matters and that therefore neither section can be supported or aided by the other. Respondents also say that the present use of the asserted power is novel and unprecedented in Commission practice and introduces a new method of investigating compliance. Respondents are not without statements by the Commission or its officials, dicta from judicial opinions, views of text writers and facts of legislative history which give some support to this theory. But this Court never before has been called upon to deal consciously and squarely with the subject.
The fact that powers long have been unexercised well may call for close scrutiny as to whether they exist; but if granted, they are not lost by being allowed to lie dormant, any more than nonexistent powers can be prescripted by an unchallenged exercise. We know that unquestioned powers are sometimes unexercised from lack of funds, motives of expediency, or the competition of more immediately important concerns. We find no basis for holding that any power ever granted to the Trade Commission has been forfeited by nonuser.
The Commission’s organic Act, § 5, comprehensively provides substantive and procedural rules for checking unfair methods of competition. The procedure is complete from complaint and service of process through final order, court review, and enforcement proceedings to recover penalties which are not those here sued for. This entire subject of unfair competition, it is true, came into the bill late in its legislative history and dealt with a commercial evil quite different from the target of prior antitrust laws. It is to be noted, however, that although complete otherwise, this section confers no power to investigate this or any other matter. That power, without which all others would be vain, must be found in other sections of the Act. The Commission, for power to investigate compliance with a § 5 order, has turned to § 6, which authorizes it to require certain reports but is not expressly applicable to a § 5 case. Respondents say it might better have turned to § 9, which authorizes it to send investigators to examine their books, copy documents and issue subpoenas, and which is expressly applicable to § 5 proceedings.
Section 6, on which the Commission relies, adds, among other things and with exceptions not material, the power “to investigate from time to time the organization, business, conduct, practices, and management of any corporation engaged in commerce,... and its relation to other corporations and to individuals, associations, and partnerships.” It also authorizes the Commission “to require, by general or special orders, corporations engaged in commerce... to file with the commission in such form as the commission may prescribe annual or special, or both annual and special, reports or answers in writing to specific questions, furnishing to the commission such information as it may require as to the organization, business, conduct, practices, management, and relation to other corporations, partnerships, and individuals of the respective corporations filing such reports or answers in writing.”
To one informed of no fact apart from this text, it would appear to grant ample power to order the reports here in question. Respondents are in the class subject to inquiry, the call is for what appears to be a special report and the matter to be reported would seem to be as to business conduct and practices about which the Commission is authorized to inquire. But respondents advance several arguments to persuade us that this seemingly comprehensive power is subject to limitations not evident in the text.
Respondents derive from legislative history their contention that Congress divided the duties and powers of the Commission into two separate categories, one in § 6 merely re-enacting the old powers of investigation and publicity in antitrust matters — “essentially a mere continuance of the former powers of the old Bureau of Corporations.” The other was a new unfair-competition power, self-contained and sealed off in § 5. It is argued that the reports set forth in § 6 can be required only “in support of general economic surveys and not in aid of enforcement proceedings under... section 5.”
While we find a good deal which would warrant our concluding that § 6 was framed with the pre-existing antitrust laws in mind, and in the expectation that the information procured would be chiefly useful in reports to the President, the Congress, or the Attorney General, we find nothing that would deny its use for any purpose within the duties of the Commission, including a § 5 proceeding. A construction of such an Act that would allow information to be obtained for only a part of a Commission’s functions and would require the Commission to pursue the rest of its duties as if the information did not exist would be unusual, to say the least. The information was such as the Commission was authorized to obtain and we think it could be required for use in determining whether there had been proper compliance with the court’s decree in a § 5 case.
It is argued, however, and the court below has agreed, that the “special report” authorized by statute does not embrace the one here asked as to the method of compliance with the decree. We find nothing in the legislative history that would justify so limiting the meaning of special reports, or holding that the report here asked is not such a one. The very House Committee Report (H. R. Rep. No. 533, 63d Cong., 2d Sess.) which the court below thought sustained respondents’ contention, we read in its context to support the Commission. kSpeaking of what became this section, the Report said, “The commission, under this section, may also require such special reports as it may deem advisable. By this means, if the ordinary data furnished by a corporation in its annual reports does not adequately disclose its organization, financial condition, business practices, or relation to other corporations, there can be obtained by a special report such additional information as the commission may deem necessary.” Id., at p. 4. An annual report of a corporation is a recurrent and relatively standardized affair. The special report was used to enable the Commission to elicit any information beyond the ordinary data of a routine annual report. If the report asked here is not a special report, we would be hard put to define one.
Nor does the fact that § 5 applies to individuals, partnerships, and corporations, while §§ 6 (b) and 10 apply only to corporations, lead us to conclude that the Act must not be read as an integrated whole. The argument that, because the reporting and penalty provisions of the latter extend only to corporations they must not be invoked to implement, as against corporations, a § 5 proceeding which contemplates action against persons and partnerships as well, would have force were there not sound reason for more drastic powers to compel disclosure from corporations than from natural persons. What the former may be compelled to disclose without objection the latter may withhold, or reveal only after exacting the price of immunity from prosecution. Corporations not only have no constitutional immunity from self-incrimination, but the disparity between artificial and natural persons is so significant that differing treatment can rarely be urged as an objection to a particular construction of a statute. Moreover, Congress may have considered that the volume or proportion of unincorporated business or the relatively small size of individually owned enterprises, or even a lesser capacity and disposition to resist made it possible to omit persons from duties and penalties imposed on artificial combinations of capital.
We conclude that the authority of the Commission under § 6 to require special reports of corporations includes special reports of the manner in which they are complying with decrees enforcing § 5 cease and desist orders.
IV. Rights Under Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
The Commission’s order is criticized upon grounds that the order transgresses the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment’s due process of law clause.
It is unnecessary here to examine the question of whether a corporation is entitled to the protection of the Fourth Amendment. Cf. Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U. S. 186. Although the “right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,” Brandeis, J., dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 471, at 478, is not confined literally to searches and seizures as such, but extends as well to the orderly taking under compulsion of process, Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, 70, neither incorporated nor unincorporated associations can plead an unqualified right to conduct their affairs in secret. Hale v. Henkel, supra; United States v. White, 322 U. S. 694.
While they may and should have protection from unlawful demands made in the name of public investigation, cf. Federal Trade Comm’n v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298, corporations can claim no equality with individuals in the enjoyment of a right to privacy. Cf. United States v. White, supra. They are endowed with public attributes. They have a collective impact upon society, from which they derive the privilege of acting as artificial entities. The Federal Government allows them the privilege of engaging in interstate commerce. Favors from government often carry with them an enhanced measure of regulation. Cf. Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 338 U. S. 232; Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U. S. 192; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 323 U. S. 210; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, at 129. Even if one were to regard the request for information in this case as caused by nothing more than official curiosity, nevertheless law-enforcing agencies have a legitimate right to satisfy themselves that corporate behavior is consistent with the law and the public interest.
Of course a governmental investigation into corporate matters may be of such a sweeping nature and so unrelated to the matter properly under inquiry as to exceed the investigatory power. Federal Trade Comm’n v. American Tobacco Co., supra. But it is sufficient if the inquiry is within the authority of the agency, the demand is not tqo indefinite and the information sought is reasonably relevant. “The gist of the protection is in the requirement, expressed in terms, that the disclosure sought shall not be unreasonable.” Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U. S. 186, 208. Nothing on the face of the Commission’s order transgressed these bounds.
Nor do we consider whether, for reasons peculiar to these cases not apparent on the face of the orders, these limits are transgressed. Such questions are not presented by the procedure followed by respondents. Before the courts will hold an order seeking information reports to be arbitrarily excessive, they may expect the supplicant to have made reasonable efforts before the Commission itself to obtain reasonable conditions. Neither respondent raised objection to the order’s sweep, nor asked any modification, clarification or interpretation of it. Both challenged, instead, power to issue it. Their position was that the Commission had no more authority to issue a reasonable order than an unreasonable one. That, too, was the defense to this action in the court below.
Of course, there are limits to what, in the name of reports, the Commission may demand. Just what these limits are we do not attempt to define in the abstract. But it is safe to say that they would stop the Commission considerably short of the extravagant example used by one of the respondents of what it fears if we sustain this order — that the Commission may require reports from automobile companies which include filing automobiles. In this case we doubt that we should read the order as respondents ask to require shipment of extensive files or gifts of expensive books. This is not a necessary reading certainly, and other parties to the decree seem to have been able to satisfy its requirements.
If respondents had objected to the terms of the order, they would have presented or at least offered to present evidence concerning any records required and the cost of their books, matters which now rest on mere assertions in their briefs. The Commission would have had opportunity to disclaim any inadvertent excesses or to justify their demands in the record. We think these respondents could have obtained any reasonable modifications necessary, but, if not, at least could have made a record that would convince us of the measure of their grievance rather than ask us to assume it.
It is argued that if we sustain this use of § 6, the power will be unconfined and its arbitrary exercise subject to no judicial review or control, unless and until the Government brings suit, as here, for penalties. The Government, it is said, may delay such action while ruinous penalties accumulate and defendant runs the risk that his defenses will not be sustained. However, we are not prepared to say that courts would be powerless if after an effort to clarify or modify such an order it still is considered to be so arbitrary as to be unlawful and the Government pursues a policy of accumulating penalties while avoiding a judicial test by refusing to bring action to recover them. Since we do not think this record presents the question, we do not undertake to determine whether the Declaratory Judgment Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, or general equitable powers of the courts would afford a remedy if there were shown to be a wrong, or what the consequences would be if no chance is given for a test of reasonable objections to such an order. Cf. Oklahoma Operating Co. v. Love, 252 U. S. 331. It is enough to say that, in upholding this order upon this record, we are not to be understood as holding such orders exempt from judicial examination or as extending a license to exact as reports what would not reasonably be comprehended within that term as used by Congress in the context of this Act.
The judgment accordingly is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Minton took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
The Federal Trade Commission was established, under the Federal Trade Commission Act, 38 Stat. 717, as amended 52 Stat. 111, 1028, 15 U. S. C. §§ 41 et seq., to prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in interstate commerce by certain persons, partnerships or corporations. Under § 5 (b) of that Act the Commission is empowered and directed, following suitable hearing and determination, to order that those found guilty of such practices cease and desist therefrom; and under §§ 5 (c) and 5 (d) exclusive jurisdiction to affirm, enforce, modify, or set aside such orders is placed in the appropriate Court of Appeals, whose judgment and decree are final except insofar as they may be subject to review here. Civil penalties for violations of cease and desist orders are provided for, § 5 (l), to be recovered in civil actions brought by the United States. Under §§ 6 (a) and 6 (b) of the Act, the Commission is authorized to compile information concerning, and to investigate, the organization, business, conduct, practices, and management of any corporation within its jurisdiction, and to require any such corporation to file “annual or special, or both annual and special, reports or answers in writing to specific questions,” concerning such information. For the purposes of the Act, the Commission is empowered, in § 9, to examine and copy documentary evidence of any corporation being investigated or proceeded against, and to require attendance of witnesses and production of all such documentary evidence. The same section also gives District Courts jurisdiction to compel compliance with the subpoena as well as other provisions of the Act or any order of the Commission made in pursuance thereof. And, finally, in § 10, it is provided that, “If any corporation required by this Act to file any annual or special report shall fail so to do within the time fixed by the commission for filing the same, and such failure shall continue for thirty days after notice of such default, the corporation shall forfeit to the United States the sum of $100 for each and every day of the continuance of such failure, which forfeiture... shall be recoverable in a civil suit in the name of the United States....” The present action was brought to compel the filing of reports ordered by the Commission and for money judgment under § 10 for respondents’ default to do so.
See note 4, infra.
For example, one of the respondents frankly states: “...At no time has this respondent attempted to argue that it was immune to investigation by the Federal Trade Commission simply by virtue of the original case having come within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals. This respondent assumes that in some manner or other the Commission can, if it chooses, continue to police the compliance of this respondent by appropriate investigatory procedures. Whether or not the appropriate procedure is (a) by petitioning the Court of Appeals for permission to investigate the respondent with a view to possible contempt or Section 5 (1) proceedings, (b) by an assertion of a right of investigation under Section 9, even though it be an investigation supplemental to a Court of Appeals decree, or (c) by an assertion of an alleged inherent right of investigation under Section 5, is a matter of law not at issue in this case, and it represents an issue as to which this respondent at the moment is completely indifferent....”
Ҥ 2.26 Reports showing compliance with orders and with stipulations. (a) In every case where an order to cease and desist is issued by the Commission for the purpose of preventing violations of law and in every instance where the Commission approves and accepts a stipulation in which a party agrees to cease and desist from the unlawful methods, acts or practices involved, the respondents named in such orders and the parties so stipulating shall file with the Commission, within sixty days of the service of such order and within sixty days of the approval of such stipulation, a report, in writing, setting forth in detail the manner and form in which they have complied with said order or with said stipulation; Provided, however, That if within the said sixty (60) day period respondent shall file petition for review in a circuit court of appeals, the time for filing report of compliance will begin to run de novo from the final judicial determination....
“(b) Within its sound discretion, the Commission may require any respondent upon whom such order has been served and any party entering into such stipulation, to file with the Commission, from time to time thereafter, further reports in writing, setting forth in detail the manner and form in which
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employment discrimination against “any individual” based on that individual’s “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Pub. L. 88-352, §704, 78 Stat. 257, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(a). A separate section of the Act—its antiretaliation provision—prohibits an employer from “discriminat[ing] against” an employee or job applicant because that individual “opposed any practice” made unlawful by Title VII or “made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in” a Title VII proceeding or investigation. § 2000e-3(a).
The Courts of Appeals have come to different conclusions about the scope of the Act’s antiretaliation provision, particularly the reach of its phrase “discriminate against.” Does that provision confine actionable retaliation to activity that affects the terms and conditions of employment? And how harmful must the adverse actions be to fall within its scope?
We conclude that the antiretaliation provision does not confine the actions and harms it forbids to those that are related to employment or occur at the workplace. We also conclude that the provision covers those (and only those) employer actions that would have been materially adverse to a reasonable employee or job applicant. In the present context that means that the employer’s actions must be harmful to the point that they could well dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.
I
A
This case arises out of actions that supervisors at petitioner Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Company took against respondent Sheila White, the only woman working in the Maintenance of Way department at Burlington’s Tennessee Yard. In June 1997, Burlington’s roadmaster, Marvin Brown, interviewed White and expressed interest in her previous experience operating forklifts. Burlington hired White as a “track laborer,” a job that involves removing and replacing track components, transporting track material, cutting brush, and clearing litter and cargo spillage from the right-of-way. Soon after White arrived on the job, a co-worker who had previously operated the forklift chose to assume other responsibilities. Brown immediately assigned White to operate the forklift. While she also performed some of the other track laborer tasks, operating the forklift was White’s primary responsibility.
In September 1997, White complained to Burlington officials that her immediate supervisor, Bill Joiner, had repeatedly told her that women should not be working in the Maintenance of Way department. Joiner, White said, had also made insulting and inappropriate remarks to her in front of her male colleagues. After an internal investigation, Burlington suspended Joiner for 10 days and ordered him to attend a sexual-harassment training session.
On September 26, Brown told White about Joiner’s discipline. At the same time, he told White that he was removing her from forklift duty and assigning her to perform only standard track laborer tasks. Brown explained that the reassignment reflected co-workers’ complaints that, in fairness, a “‘more senior man’” should have the “less arduous and cleaner job” of forklift operator. 364 F. 3d 789, 792 (CA6 2004) (case below).
On October 10, White filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission). She claimed that the reassignment of her duties amounted to unlawful gender-based discrimination and retaliation for her having earlier complained about Joiner. In early December, White filed a second retaliation charge with the Commission, claiming that Brown had placed her under surveillance and was monitoring her daily activities. That charge was mailed to Brown on December 8.
A few days later, White and her immediate supervisor, Percy Sharkey, disagreed about which truck should transport White from one location to another. The specific facts of the disagreement are in dispute, but the upshot is that Sharkey told Brown later that afternoon that White had been insubordinate. Brown immediately suspended White without pay. White invoked internal grievance procedures. Those procedures led Burlington to conclude that White had not been insubordinate. Burlington reinstated White to her position and awarded her backpay for the 37 days she was suspended. White filed an additional retaliation charge with the EEOC based on the suspension.
B
After exhausting administrative remedies, White filed this Title VII action against Burlington in federal court. As relevant here, she claimed that Burlington’s actions—(1) changing her job responsibilities, and (2) suspending her for 37 days without pay—amounted to unlawful retaliation in violation of Title VIL §2000e~3(a). A jury found in White’s favor on both of these claims. It awarded her $43,500 in compensatory damages, including $3,250 in medical expenses. The District Court denied Burlington’s post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 50(b).
Initially, a divided Sixth Circuit panel reversed the judgment and found in Burlington’s favor on the retaliation claims. 310 F. 3d 443 (2002). The full Court of Appeals vacated the panel’s decision, however, and heard the matter en banc. The court then affirmed the District Court’s judgment in White’s favor on both retaliation claims. While all members of the en banc court voted to uphold the District Court’s judgment, they differed as to the proper standard to apply. Compare 364 F. 3d, at 795-800, with id., at 809 (Clay, J., concurring).
II
Title VIPs antiretaliation provision forbids employer actions that “discriminate against” an employee (or job applicant) because he has “opposed” a practice that Title VII forbids or has “made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in” a Title VII “investigation, proceeding, or hearing.” §2000e-3(a). No one doubts that the term “discriminate against” refers to distinctions or differences in treatment that injure protected individuals. See Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Ed., 544 U. S. 167, 174 (2005); Price Water- house v. Hopkins, 490 U. S. 228, 244 (1989) (plurality opinion); see also 4 Oxford English Dictionary 758 (2d ed. 1989) (def. 3b). But different Circuits have come to different conclusions about whether the challenged action has to be employment or workplace related and about how harmful that action must be to constitute retaliation.
Some Circuits have insisted upon a close relationship between the retaliatory action and employment. The Sixth Circuit majority in this case, for example, said that a plaintiff must show an “adverse employment action,” which it defined as a “materially adverse change in the terms and conditions” of employment. 364 F. 3d, at 795 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Sixth Circuit has thus joined those Courts of Appeals that apply the same standard for retaliation that they apply to a substantive discrimination offense, holding that the challenged action must “resul[t] in an adverse effect on the ‘terms, conditions, or benefits’ of employment.” Von Gunten v. Maryland, 243 F. 3d 858, 866 (CA4 2001); see Robinson v. Pittsburgh, 120 F. 3d 1286, 1300 (CA3 1997). The Fifth and the Eighth Circuits have adopted a more restrictive approach. They employ an “ultimate employment decision” standard, which limits actionable retaliatory conduct to acts “ ‘such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, and compensating.’” Mattern v. Eastman Kodak Co., 104 F. 3d 702, 707 (CA5 1997); see Manning v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 127 F. 3d 686, 692 (CA8 1997).
Other Circuits have not so limited the scope of the provision. The Seventh and the District of Columbia Circuits have said that the plaintiff must show that the “employer’s challenged action would have been material to a reasonable employee,” which in contexts like the present one means that it would likely have “dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.” Washington v. Illinois Dept. of Revenue, 420 F. 3d 658, 662 (CA7 2005); see Rochon v. Gonzales, 438 F. 3d 1211, 1217-1218 (CADC 2006). And the Ninth Circuit, following EEOC guidance, has said that the plaintiff must simply establish “‘adverse treatment that is based on a retaliatory motive and is reasonably likely to deter the charging party or others from engaging in protected activity.’” Ray v. Henderson, 217 F. 3d 1234, 1242-1243 (2000). The concurring judges below would have applied this last mentioned standard. 364 F. 3d, at 809 (opinion of Clay, J.).
We granted certiorari to resolve this disagreement. To do so requires us to decide whether Title VIPs antiretaliation provision forbids only those employer actions and resulting harms that are related to employment or the workplace. And we must characterize how harmful an act of retaliatory discrimination must be in order to fall within the provision’s scope.
A
Petitioner and the Solicitor General both argue that the Sixth Circuit is correct to require a link between the challenged retaliatory action and the terms, conditions, or status of employment. They note that Title VIPs substantive anti-discrimination provision protects an individual only from employment-related discrimination. They add that the anti-retaliation provision should be read in pari materia with the antidiscrimination provision. And they conclude that the employer actions prohibited by the antiretaliation provision should similarly be limited to conduct that “affects the employee’s ‘compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.’” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13 (quoting § 2000e-2(a)(l)); see Brief for Petitioner 13 (same).
We cannot agree. The language of the substantive provision differs from that of the antiretaliation provision in important ways. Section 703(a) sets forth Title VIPs core antidiscrimination provision in the following terms:
“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—
“(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
“(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e-2(a) (emphasis added).
Section 704(a) sets forth Title VII’s antiretaliation provision in the following terms:
“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to discriminate against any of his employees or applicants for employment... because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice by this subchapter, or because he has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this subchapter.” § 2000e-3(a) (emphasis added).
The italicized words in the substantive provision—“hire,” “discharge,” “compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,” “employment opportunities,” and “status as an employee”—explicitly limit the scope of that provision to actions that affect employment or alter the conditions of the workplace. No such limiting words appear in the antiretaliation provision. Given these linguistic differences, the question here is not whether identical or similar words should be read in pari materia to mean the same thing. See, e. g., Pasquantino v. United States, 544 U. S. 349, 355, n. 2 (2005); McFarland v. Scott, 512 U. S. 849, 858 (1994); Sullivan v. Everhart, 494 U. S. 83, 92 (1990). Rather, the question is whether Congress intended its different words to make a legal difference. We normally presume that, where words differ as they differ here, “ ‘Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.’ ” Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983).
There is strong reason to believe that Congress intended the differences that its language suggests, for the two provisions differ not only in language but in purpose as well. The antidiscrimination provision seeks a workplace where individuals are not discriminated against because of their racial, ethnic, religious, or gender-based status. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792, 800-801 (1973). The antiretaliation provision seeks to secure that primary objective by preventing an employer from interfering (through retaliation) with an employee’s efforts to secure or advance enforcement of the Act’s basic guarantees. The substantive provision seeks to prevent injury to individuals based on who they are, i. e., their status. The antiretaliation provision seeks to prevent harm to individuals based on what they do, i. e., their conduct.
To secure the first objective, Congress did not need to prohibit anything other than employment-related discrimination. The substantive provision’s basic objective of “equality of employment opportunities” and the elimination of practices that tend to bring about “stratified job environments,” id., at 800, would be achieved were all employment-related discrimination miraculously eliminated.
But one cannot secure the second objective by focusing only upon employer actions and harm that concern employment and the workplace. Were all such actions and harms eliminated, the antiretaliation provision’s objective would not be achieved. An employer can effectively retaliate against an employee by taking actions not directly related to his employment or by causing him harm outside the workplace. See, e. g., Rochon, 438 F. 3d, at 1213 (Federal Bureau of Investigation retaliation against employee “took the form of the FBI’s refusal, contrary to policy, to investigate death threats a federal prisoner made against [the agent] and his wife”); Berry v. Stevinson Chevrolet, 74 F. 3d 980, 984, 986 (CA10 1996) (finding actionable retaliation where employer filed false criminal charges against former employee who complained about discrimination). A provision limited to employment-related actions would not deter the many forms that effective retaliation can take. Hence, such a limited construction would fail to fully achieve the antiretaliation provision’s “primary purpose,” namely, “Maintaining unfettered access to statutory remedial mechanisms.” Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U. S. 337, 346 (1997).
Thus, purpose reinforces what language already indicates, namely, that the antiretaliation provision, unlike the substantive provision, is not limited to discriminatory actions that affect the terms and conditions of employment. Cf. Wachovia Bank, N. A. v. Schmidt, 546 U. S. 303, 319 (2006) (rejecting statutory construction that would “[t]rea[t] venue and subject-matter jurisdiction prescriptions as in pari materia” because doing so would “o ver loo [k] the discrete offices of those concepts”).
Our precedent does not compel a contrary conclusion. Indeed, we have found no case in this Court that offers petitioner or the United States significant support. Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U. S. 742 (1998), as petitioner notes, speaks of a Title VII requirement that violations involve “tangible employment action” such as “hiring, firing, failing to promote, reassignment with significantly different responsibilities, or a decision causing a significant change in benefits.” Id., at 761. But Ellerth does so only to “identify a class of [hostile work environment] cases” in which an employer should be held vicariously liable (without an affirmative defense) for the acts of supervisors. Id., at 760; see also Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders, 542 U. S. 129, 143 (2004) (explaining holdings in Ellerth and Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U. S. 775 (1998), as dividing hostile work environment claims into two categories, one in which the employer is strictly liable because a tangible employment action is taken and one in which the employer can make an affirmative defense). Ellerth did not discuss the scope of the general antidiscrimination provision. See 524 U. S., at 761 (using “concept of a tangible employment action [that] appears in numerous cases in the Courts of Appeals” only “for resolution of the vicarious liability issue”). And Ellerth did not mention Title VII’s antiretaliation provision at all. At most, Ellerth sets forth a standard that petitioner and the Solicitor General believe the antiretaliation provision ought to contain. But it does not compel acceptance of their view.
Nor can we find significant support for their view in the EEOC’s interpretations of the provision. We concede that the EEOC stated in its 1991 and 1988 Compliance Manuals that the antiretaliation provision is limited to “adverse employment-related action.” 2 EEOC Compliance Manual § 614.1(d), p. 614-5 (1991) (hereinafter EEOC 1991 Manual); EEOC Compliance Manual § 614.1(d), p. 614-5 (1988) (hereinafter EEOC 1988 Manual). But in those same manuals the EEOC lists the “[e]ssential [elements” of a retaliation claim along with language suggesting a broader interpretation. EEOC 1991 Manual § 614.3(d), pp. 614-8 to 614-9 (complainant must show “that (s)he was in some manner subjected to adverse treatment by the respondent because of the protest or opposition”); EEOC 1988 Manual § 614.3(d), pp. 614-8 to 614-9 (same).
Moreover, both before and after publication of the 1991 and 1988 manuals, the EEOC similarly expressed a broad interpretation of the antiretaliation provision. Compare EEOC Interpretive Manual, Reference Manual to Title VII Law for Compliance Personnel §491.2 (1972) (hereinafter 1972 Reference Manual) (§ 704(a) “is intended to provide ‘exceptionally broad protection’ for protestors of discriminatory employment practices”), with 2 EEOC Compliance Manual § 8, p. 8-13 (1998) (hereinafter EEOC 1998 Manual), available at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/retal.html (as visited June 20, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file) (§ 704(a) “prohibits] any adverse treatment that is based on a retaliatory motive and is reasonably likely to deter the charging party or others from engaging in protected activity”). And the EEOC 1998 Manual, which offers the Commission’s only direct statement on the question of whether the antiretaliation provision is limited to the same employment-related activity covered by the antidiscrimination provision, answers that question in the negative—directly contrary to petitioner’s reading of the Act. Ibid.
Finally, we do not accept petitioner’s and the Solicitor General’s view that it is “anomalous” to read the statute to provide broader protection for victims of retaliation than for those whom Title VII primarily seeks to protect, namely, victims of race-based, ethnic-based, religion-based, or gender-based discrimination. Brief for Petitioner 17; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 14-15. Congress has provided similar kinds of protection from retaliation in comparable statutes without any judicial suggestion that those provisions are limited to the conduct prohibited by the primary substantive provisions. The National Labor Relations Act, to which this Court has “drawn analogies ... in other Title VII contexts,” Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U. S. 69, 76, n. 8 (1984), provides an illustrative example. Compare 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3) (substantive provision prohibiting employer “discrimination in regard to ... any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization”) with § 158(a)(4) (retaliation provision making it unlawful for an employer to “discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he has filed charges or given testimony under this subchapter”); see also Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731, 740 (1983) (construing antiretaliation provision to “prohibit] a wide variety of employer conduct that is intended to restrain, or that has the likely effect of restraining, employees in the exercise of protected activities,” including the retaliatory filing of a lawsuit against an employee); NLRB v. Scrivener, 405 U. S. 117, 121-122 (1972) (purpose of the anti-retaliation provision is to ensure that employees are “ ‘completely free from coercion against reporting’” unlawful practices).
In any event, as we have explained, differences in the purpose of the two provisions remove any perceived “anomaly,” for they justify this difference of interpretation. See supra, at 63-64. Title VII depends for its enforcement upon the cooperation of employees who are willing to file complaints and act as witnesses. “Plainly, effective enforcement could thus only be expected if employees felt free to approach officials with their grievances.” Mitchell v. Robert DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U. S. 288, 292 (1960). Interpreting the antiretaliation provision to provide broad protection from retaliation helps ensure the cooperation upon which accomplishment of the Act’s primary objective depends.
For these reasons, we conclude that Title VII’s substantive provision and its antiretaliation provision are not coterminous. The scope of the antiretaliation provision extends beyond workplace-related or employment-related retaliatory acts and harm. We therefore reject the standards applied in the Courts of Appeals that have treated the antiretaliation provision as forbidding the same conduct prohibited by the antidiscrimination provision and that have limited actionable retaliation to so-called “ultimate employment decisions.” See supra, at 60.
B
The antiretaliation provision protects an individual not from all retaliation, but from retaliation that produces an injury or harm. As we have explained, the Courts of Appeals have used differing language to describe the level of seriousness to which this harm must rise before it becomes actionable retaliation. We agree with the formulation set forth by the Seventh and the District of Columbia Circuits. In our view, a plaintiff must show that a reasonable employee would have found the challenged action materially adverse, “which in this context means it well might have ‘dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination.’ ” Rochon, 438 F. 3d, at 1219 (quoting Washington, 420 F. 3d, at 662).
We speak of material adversity because we believe it is important to separate significant from trivial harms. Title VII, we have said, does not set forth “a general civility code for the American workplace.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 80 (1998); see Faragher, 524 U. S., at 788 (judicial standards for sexual harassment must “filter out complaints attacking ‘the ordinary tribulations of the workplace, such as the sporadic use of abusive language, gender-related jokes, and occasional teasing’”). An employee’s decision to report discriminatory behavior cannot immunize that employee from those petty slights or minor annoyances that often take place at work and that all employees experience. See 1 B. Lindemann & P. Grossman, Employment Discrimination Law 669 (3d ed. 1996) (noting that “courts have held that personality conflicts at work that generate antipathy” and “‘snubbing’ by supervisors and co-workers” are not actionable under § 704(a)). The anti-retaliation provision seeks to prevent employer interference with “unfettered access” to Title VII’s remedial mechanisms. Robinson, 519 U. S., at 346. It does so by prohibiting employer actions that are likely “to deter victims of discrimination from complaining to the EEOC,” the courts, and their employers. Ibid. And normally petty slights, minor annoyances, and simple lack of good manners will not create such deterrence. See 2 EEOC 1998 Manual § 8, p. 8-13.
We refer to reactions of a reasonable employee because we believe that the provision’s standard for judging harm must be objective. An objective standard is judicially administrable. It avoids the uncertainties and unfair discrepancies that can plague a judicial effort to determine a plaintiff’s unusual subjective feelings. We have emphasized the need for objective standards in other Title VII contexts, and those same concerns animate our decision here. See, e. g., Suders, 542 U. S., at 141 (constructive discharge doctrine); Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U. S. 17, 21 (1993) (hostile work environment doctrine).
We phrase the standard in general terms because the significance of any given act of retaliation will often depend upon the particular circumstances. Context matters. “The real social impact of workplace behavior often depends on a constellation of surrounding circumstances, expectations, and relationships which are not fully captured by a simple recitation of the words used or the physical acts performed.” Oncale, supra, at 81-82. A schedule change in an employee’s work schedule may make little difference to many workers, but may matter enormously to a young mother with school-age children. Cf., e. g., Washington, supra, at 662 (finding flex-time schedule critical to employee with disabled child). A supervisor’s refusal to invite an employee to lunch is normally trivial, a nonactionable petty slight. But to retaliate by excluding an employee from a weekly training lunch that contributes significantly to the employee’s professional advancement might well deter a reasonable employee from complaining about discrimination. See 2 EEOC 1998 Manual § 8, p. 8-14. Hence, a legal standard that speaks in general terms rather than specific prohibited acts is preferable, for an “act that would be immaterial in some situations is material in others.” Washington, supra, at 661.
Finally, we note that contrary to the claim of the concurrence, this standard does not require a reviewing court or jury to consider “the nature of the discrimination that led to the filing of the charge.” Post, at 78 (Alito, J., concurring in judgment). Rather, the standard is tied to the challenged retaliatory act, not the underlying conduct that forms the basis of the Title VII complaint. By focusing on the materiality of the challenged action and the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position, we believe this standard will screen out trivial conduct while effectively capturing those acts that are likely to dissuade employees from complaining or assisting in complaints about discrimination.
Ill
Applying this standard to the facts of this case, we believe that there was a sufficient evidentiary basis to support the jury’s verdict on White’s retaliation claim. See Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U. S. 133, 150-151 (2000). The jury found that two of Burlington’s actions amounted to retaliation: the reassignment of White from forklift duty to standard track laborer tasks and the 37-day suspension without pay.
Burlington does not question the jury’s determination that the motivation for these acts was retaliatory. But it does question the statutory significance of the harm these acts caused. The District Court instructed the jury to determine whether respondent “suffered a materially adverse change in the terms or conditions of her employment,” App. 63, and the Sixth Circuit upheld the jury’s finding based on that same stringent interpretation of the antiretaliation provision (the interpretation that limits §704 to the same employment-related conduct forbidden by § 703). Our holding today makes clear that the jury was not required to find that the challenged actions were related to the terms or conditions of employment. And insofar as the jury also found that the actions were “materially adverse,” its findings are adequately supported.
First, Burlington argues that a reassignment of duties cannot constitute retaliatory discrimination where, as here, both the former and present duties fall within the same job description. Brief for Petitioner 24-25. We do not see why that is so. Almost every job category involves some responsibilities and duties that are less desirable than others. Common sense suggests that one good way to discourage an employee such as White from bringing discrimination charges would be to insist that she spend more time performing the more arduous duties and less time performing those that are easier or more agreeable. That is presumably why the EEOC has consistently found “[Retaliatory work assignments” to be a classic and “widely recognized” example of “forbidden retaliation.” 2 EEOC 1991 Manual § 614.7, pp. 614-31 to 614-32; see also 1972 Reference Manual § 495.2 (noting Commission decision involving an employer’s ordering an employee “to do an unpleasant work assignment in retaliation” for filing racial discrimination complaint); Dec. No. 74-77, CCH EEOC Decisions (1983) ¶ 6417 (1974) (“Employers have been enjoined” under Title VII “from imposing unpleasant work assignments upon an employee for filing charges”).
To be sure, reassignment of job duties is not automatically actionable. Whether a particular reassignment is materially adverse depends upon the circumstances of the particular case, and “should be judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position, considering ‘all the circumstances.’” Oncale, 523 U. S., at 81. But. here, the jury had before it considerable evidence that the track laborer duties were “by all accounts more arduous and dirtier”; that the “forklift operator position required more qualifications, which is an indication of prestige”; and that “the forklift operator position was objectively considered a better job and the male employees resented White for occupying it.” 364 F. 3d, at 803 (internal quotation marks omitted). Based on this record, a jury could reasonably conclude that the reassignment of responsibilities would have been materially adverse to a reasonable employee.
Second, Burlington argues that the 37-day suspension without pay lacked statutory significance because Burlington ultimately reinstated White with backpay. Burlington says that “it defies reason to believe that Congress would have considered a rescinded investigatory suspension with full back pay” to be unlawful, particularly because Title VII, throughout much of its history, provided no relief in an equitable action for victims in White’s position. Brief for Petitioner 36.
We do not find Burlington’s last mentioned reference to the nature of Title VII’s remedies convincing. After all, throughout its history, Title VII has provided for injunctions to “bar like discrimination in the future,” Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 418 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted), an important form of relief. Pub. L. 88-352, § 706(g), 78 Stat. 261, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(g). And we have no reason to believe that a court could not have issued an injunction where an employer suspended an employee for retaliatory purposes, even if that employer later provided backpay. In any event, Congress amended Title VII in 1991 to permit victims of intentional discrimination to recover compensatory (as White received here) and punitive damages, concluding that the additional remedies were necessary to “‘help make victims whole.’” West v. Gibson, 527 U. S. 212, 219 (1999) (citing H. R. Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 1, pp. 64-65 (1991)); see 42 U. S. C. §§ 1981a(a)(1), (b). We would undermine the significance of that congressional judgment were we to conclude that employers could avoid liability in these circumstances. .
Neither do we find convincing any claim of insufficient evidence. White did receive backpay. But White and her family had to live for 37 days without income. They did not know during that time whether or when White could return to work. Many reasonable employees would find a month without a paycheck to be a serious hardship. And White described to the jury the physical and emotional hardship that 37 days of having “no income, no money” in fact caused. Brief for Respondent 4, n. 13 (“ ‘That was the worst Christmas I had out of my life. No income, no money, and that made all of us feel bad.... I got very depressed’ ”). Indeed, she obtained medical treatment for her emotional distress. A reasonable employee facing the choice between retaining her job (and paycheck) and filing a discrimination complaint might well choose the former. That is to say, an indefinite suspension without pay could well act as a deterrent, even if the suspended employee eventually received backpay. Cf. Mitchell, 361 U. S., at 292 (“[I]t needs no argument to show that fear of economic retaliation might often operate to induce aggrieved employees quietly to accept substandard conditions”). Thus, the jury’s conclusion that the 37-day suspension without pay was materially adverse was a reasonable one.
IV
For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
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Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Isbrandtsen Co., Inc., filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review, under 5 U. S. C. § 1034, an order of the Federal Maritime Board approving a rate system proposed by the Japan-Atlantic and Gulf Freight Conference (the Conference). Under the proposed system a shipper would pay less than regular freight rates for the same service if he signs an exclusive-patronage contract with the Conference. Contract rates would be set at levels 9% percent below noncontract rates. The Court of. Appeals set aside the Board’s order on the ground that this system of dual rates was illegal per se under § 14 of the Shipping Act, 1916, 39 Stat. 733, as amended, 46 U. S. C. § 812 Third. We granted certiorari. 353 U. S. 908.
The Conference is a voluntary association of 17 common carriers by water serving the inbound trade from Japan, Korea, and Okinawa to ports on the United States Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Five of the carriers are American lines, eight are Japanese, and four are of other nationalities. The Conference presently operates under a Board-approved Conference Agreement made in 1934. Prior to World War II, the Conference had no direct liner competition and little tramp competition.
After the war, Isbrandtsen entered the trade as the sole non-Conference line maintaining a regular berth service in the Japan-Atlantic trade. From 1947 to early 1949, Isbrandtsen operated from Japan to Atlantic Coast ports via the Suez Canal. Since 1949 Isbrandtsen has operated an approximately fortnightly service from Japan to United States Atlantic Coast ports via the Panama Canal as part of its Eastbound, Round-the-World Service.
Although Conference membership is open to any common carrier regularly operating in the trade, Isbrandtsen has refused to join. Isbrandtsen’s practice, between 1947 and March 12, 1953, was to maintain rates at approximately 10 percent below the corresponding Conference rates. The general understanding of shippers and carriers in the trade was that Isbrandtsen underquoted Conference rates by 10 percent. This practice of undercutting Conference rates during the years 1950, 1951, and 1952, captured for Isbrandtsen 30 percent of the total cargo in the trade although Isbrandtsen provided only 11 percent of the sailings.
Since outbound tonnage from the United States exceeds the inbound tonnage, the Japan-Atlantic and Gulf trade is presently overtonnaged, and both Isbrandtsen and Conference vessels have had substantial unused cargo space after loading cargoes in Japan. Total sailings in the trade rose from 109 in 1949 to more than 300.in 1953. (Cf. note 6.) The re-entry of the Japanese lines in the trade after World War II, four in 1951 and four in 1952, greatly contributed to the excess of tonnage. For the years 1951, 1952, and the first 6 months of 1953, the Japanese lines carried approximately 15 percent, 49 percent, and 66 percent, respectively, of the trade’s total liner cargo. For the years 1950, 1951, 1952, and the first 6 months of 1953, American flag lines, including Isbrandtsen but excluding two others, carried 53 percent, 46 percent, 34 percent, and 21 percent respectively.
When, in late 1952, Isbrandtsen announced a plan to increase sailings from two to three or four sailings a month, the Conference foresaw a further increase in Isbrandtsen’s participation which, because of the nationalistic preference of Japanese shippers, would probably be at the expense of the non-Japanese Conference lines. To meet this outside competition the Conference first attempted, in November of 1952, a 10-percent reduction in rates, but Isbrandtsen answered with a reduction of its rates 10 percent under the Conference rates.
On December 24, 1952, the Conference proposed the dual-rate system and filed its plan with the Board as required by the Board’s General Order 76, 46 CFR § 236.3, which permitted proposed rate changes to become effective after 30 days unless postponed by the Board on its own motion or on the protest of interested persons. Protests were filed by Isbrandtsen and the Department of Justice. The Secretary of Agriculture intervened as an interested commercial shipper opposed to the proposal. On January 21, 1953, the Board ordered a hearing on the protests but refused, pending the Board’s determination, to suspend operations of the dual-rate system. Isbrandtsen, therefore, filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for a stay of the Board’s order insofar as it authorized the Conference to institute the dual-rate system. The court announced on February 3, 1953, that the Board’s order would be stayed and the stay was entered on March 23, 1953.
The Conference response to the stay was to open rates to allow each line to fix its own rates. At a meeting on March 12, 1953, the Conference voted to open Conference rates on 10 of the major commodities moving in the trade. The action was primarily directed at Isbrandt-sen’s competition; the Board found that “it was hoped that the rate war would lead to Isbrandtsen’s joining the Conference or to the institution of the dual rate system or other system.” On succeeding dates in the spring of that year, the Conference opened rates on most of the major items in the trade. In the resulting rate war, the level of rates dropped to about 80 percent and later to about 30 percent to 40 percent of the pre-March 12 rates. In some instances, rates fell below handling costs. Isbrandtsen attempted to keep on a competitive basis in the rate war but, when pegging of minimum rates in May did not improve its position, in July it set its rates at 50 percent of the pre-March 12 Conference rates. Since that date, Isbrandtsen has carried little cargo in the trade. Meanwhile the Board proceeded with the hearing and issued its report on December 14, 1955, followed on December 21, 1955, and January 11, 1956, by orders approving the proposed dual-rate system. The question for our decision is whether the Court of Appeals correctly set aside the Board’s orders.
It has long been almost universal practice for American and foreign steamship lines engaging in ocean commerce to operate under conference arrangements and agreements. At least by 1913 it was recognized that such agreements might run counter to the policy of the antitrust laws; several cases were pending against foreign and domestic water carriers for alleged violations of the Sherman Act. The House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the 62d Congress, of which committee Representative J. W. Alexander was Chairman, undertook an exhaustive inquiry into the practices of shipping conferences. The work of this Committee is set forth in two volumes of hearings, a volume of diplomatic and consular reports, and a fourth volume containing the Committee’s report, known as the Alexander Report. Contemporaneously a British inquiry was conducted by the Royal Commission on Shipping Rings. The Royal Commission’s report was available to the House Committee and was considered by it in formulating recommended legislation. See Hearings, at 369.
Both inquiries brought to light a number of predatory practices by shipping conferences designed to give the conferences monopolies upon particular trades by forestalling outside competition and driving out all outsiders attempting to compete. The crudest form of predatory practice was the fighting ship. The conference would select a suitable steamer from among its lines to sail on the same days and between the same ports as the nonmember vessel, reducing the regular rates low enough to capture the trade from the outsider. The expenses and losses from the lower rates were shared by the members of the conference. The competitor by this means was caused to exhaust its resources and withdraw from competition.
More sophisticated practices depended upon a tie between the conference and the shipper. The most widely used tie, because the most effective, was the system of deferred rebates. Under this system a shipper signed a contract with the conference exclusively to patronize its steamers, and if he did so during the contract term, and for a designated period thereafter, a rebate of a certain percentage of his freight payments was made to him at the end of the latter period. In this way, the shipper was under constant obligation to give his patronage exclusively to the conference lines or suffer the loss of the rebate, which often amounted to a considerable sum.
But the Alexander Committee also found evidence of other predatory practices. Shippers who patronized outside competitors were denied accommodations for future shipments even at full rates of freight, or were discriminated against in the matter of lighterage and other services. Outside competition was also met by dual-rate contracts, by contracts with large shippers at lower rates for volume shipments, and by contracts with American railroads giving conference vessels preference in the handling of cargoes at the docks, and delivering through shipments of freight to conference vessels. Report, at 287-293.
The Alexander Committee recommended against a flat prohibition of shipping combinations because it found that the restoration of unrestricted competition among carriers would operate against the public interest by depriving American shippers of desirable advantages of conference arrangements honestly and fairly conducted. The Committee mentioned advantages such as “greater regularity and frequency of service, stability and uniformity of rates, economy in the cost of service, better distribution of sailings, maintenance of American and European rates to foreign markets on a parity, and equal treatment of shippers through the elimination of secret arrangements and underhanded methods of discrimination.” Id., at 416. The Committee believed that these advantages could be preserved “only by permitting the several lines in any given trade to cooperate through some form of rate and pooling arrangement under Government supervision and control,” ibid., and further “that the disadvantages and abuses connected with steamship agreements and conferences as now conducted are inherent, and can only be eliminated by effective government control; and it is such control that the Committee recommends as the means of preserving to American exporters and importers the advantages enumerated, and of preventing the abuses complained of.” Id., at 418.
In passing the Shipping Act of 1916, 39 Stat. 728, 733, as amended, 46 U. S. C. § 812 Third, Congress followed the basic recommendations of the Alexander Committee. The Act does not forbid shipping conferences in foreign commerce but requires all conference agreements covering the subjects mentioned in § 15 to be submitted for Board approval. No power to fix rates is granted to the Board. Subject to familiar limitations, the power vested in the Board is to approve agreements not found to be unjustly or unfairly discriminatory in violation of §§16 and 17 or otherwise in violation of the Act. Approved agreements are exempted from the antitrust laws.
But it must be emphasized that the freedom allowed conference members to agree upon terms of competition subject to Board approval is limited to the freedom to agree upon terms regulating competition among themselves. The Congress in § 14 has flatly prohibited practices of conferences which have the purpose and effect of stifling the competition of independent carriers. Thus the deferred-rebate system (§14 First) and the fighting ship (§14 Second) are specifically outlawed. Similarly, § 14 Third prohibits another practice, common in 1913: to “[rjetaliate against any shipper by refusing . . . space accommodations when such are available . . that prohibition, moreover, is enlarged to condemn retaliation not only when taken “because such shipper has patronized any other carrier” but also when taken because the shipper “has filed a complaint charging unfair treatment, or for any other reason.” (Emphasis added.)
But in addition to these specifically proscribed abuses, Congress, as previously noted, was aware that other devices — some known but not so widely used, and others that might be contrived — might be employed to achieve the same results. Therefore, coordinate with these three clauses aimed at specific practices, a fourth category, couched in general language, was added: “resort to other discriminating or unfair methods . . . In the context of § 14 this clause must be construed as constituting a catchall clause by which Congress meant to prohibit other devices not specifically enumerated but similar in purpose and effect to those barred by § 14 First, Second, and the “retaliate” clause of § 14 Third.
The reason the “resort to” clause was added to the statute as an independent prohibition of practices designed to stifle outside competition is revealed in the Alexander Report. From information contained in the Report of the British Royal Commission and a communication from a major New York carrier organization, the Alexander Committee was aware that the outlawing of the deferred-rebate system would lead conferences to adopt a contract system to accomplish the same result. The British Royal Commission believed that ties to shippers were justified and that the abuses of the deferred-rebate system should be tolerated in the interest of achieving a strong conference system. Hearings, 369-381. However, the Alexander Committee, and the Congress in adopting the Committee’s proposals, reached a different conclusion. Congress was unwilling to tolerate methods involving ties between conferences and shippers designed to stifle independent carrier competition. Thus Congress struck the balance by allowing conference arrangements passing muster under §§ 15, 16, and 17 limiting competition among the conference members while flatly outlawing conference practices designed to destroy the competition of independent carriers. Ties to shippers not designed to have the effect of stifling outside competition are not made unlawful. Whether a particular tie is designed to have the effect of stifling outside competition is a question for the Board in the first instance to determine.
Since the Board found that the dual-rate contract of the Conference was “a necessary competitive measure to offset the effect of non-conference competition” required “to meet the competition of Isbrandtsen in order to obtain for its members a greater participation in the cargo moving in this trade,” it follows that the contract was a “resort to other discriminating or unfair methods” to stifle outside competition in violation of § 14 Third.
The Board argues, however, that Congress, although aware of the use of such contracts, did not specifically outlaw them and therefore implicitly approved them. But the contracts called to the attention of Congress bear little resemblance to the contracts here in question. Those joint contracts were described by the Alexander Committee as follows:
“Such contracts are made for the account of all the lines in the agreement, each carrying its proportion of the contract freight as tendered from time to time. The contracting lines agree to furnish steamers at regular intervals and the shipper agrees to confine all shipments to conference steamers, and to announce the quantity of cargo to be shipped in ample time to allow for the proper supply of tonnage. The rates on such contracts are less than those specified in the regular tariff, but the lines generally pursue a policy of giving the small shipper the same contract rates as the large shippers, i. e. are willing at all times to contract with all shippers on the same terms.” Report, at 290.
These contracts were very similar to ordinary requirements contracts. They obligated all members of the Conference to furnish steamers at regular intervals and at rates effective for a reasonably long period, sometimes a year. The shipper was thus assured of the stability of service and rates which were of paramount importance to him. Moreover, a breach of the contract subjected the shipper to ordinary damages.
By contrast, the dual-rate contracts here require the carriers to carry the shipper’s cargo only “so far as their regular services are available”; rates are “subject to reasonable increase” within two calendar months plus the unexpired portion of the month after notice of increase is given; “[e]ach Member of the Conference is responsible for its own part only in this Agreement”; the agreement is terminable by either party on three months’ notice; and for a breach, “the Shipper shall pay as liquidated damages to the Carriers fifty percentum (50%) of the amount of freight which the Shipper would have paid had such shipment been made in a vessel of the Carriers at the Contract rate currently in effect.” Until payment of the liquidated damages the shipper is denied the reduced rate, and if he violates the agreement more than once in 12 months, he suffers cancellation of the agreement and the denial of another until all liquidated damages have been paid in full. Thus under this agreement not only is there no guarantee of services and rates for a reasonably long period, but the liquidated-damages provision bears a strong resemblance to the feature which Congress particularly objected to in the outlawed deferred-rebate system. Certainly the coercive force of having to pay so large a sum of liquidated damages ties the shipper to the Conference almost as firmly as the prospect of losing the rebate. It would be anomalous for Congress to strike down deferred rebates and at the same time fail to strike down dual-rate contracts having the same objectionable purpose and effect. Events have proved the accuracy of the prediction that the outlawing of the deferred-rebate system would lead conferences to adopt a contract system, as here, specially designed to accomplish the same result.
It is urged that our construction “produces a flat and unqualified prohibition of any discrimination by a carrier for any reason” and converts the rest of the statute into surplusage. But that argument overlooks the revealed congressional purpose in § 14 Third. That purpose, as we have said, was to outlaw practices in addition to those specifically prohibited elsewhere in the section when such practices are used to stifle the competition of independent carriers. The characterizations “unjustly discriminatory” and “unjustly prejudicial” found in other sections (§§ 15, 16 and 17) imply a congressional intent to allow some latitude in practices dealt with by those sections, but the practices outlawed by the “resort to” clause of § 14 Third take their gloss from the abuses specifically proscribed by the section; that is, they are confined to practices designed to stifle outside competition.
Petitioners argue that our construction of § 14 Third is foreclosed by this Court’s decisions in United States Navigation Co. v. Cunard S. S. Co., 284 U. S. 474, and Far East Conference v. United States, 342 U. S. 570. A reading of those opinions immediately refutes any suggestion either that this issue was expressly decided in those cases or that our holding here is not fully consistent with the disposition of those cases. In Cunará the petitioner had filed a complaint in the District Court alleging that respondents had conspired to maintain “a general tariff rate and a lower contract rate, the latter to be made available only to shippers who agree to confine their shipments to the lines of respondents.” 284 U. S., at 479. The differentials were alleged to be unrelated to volume or regularity of shipments, but to be wholly arbitrary and unreasonable and designed “for the purpose of coercing shippers to deal exclusively with respondents and refrain from shipping by the vessels of petitioner, and thus exclude it entirely from the carrying trade between the United States and Great Britain.” Id., at 480. An injunction was sought under the Sherman and Clayton Acts. The Court held that the questions raised by this complaint were within the primary jurisdiction of the Shipping Board and therefore the courts could not entertain the suit until the Board had considered the matter. In Far East Conference the Court similarly held that the Board’s primary jurisdiction' precluded the United States from bringing antitrust proceedings against a shipping-conference maintaining dual rates.
The Board and the Conference argue that, if the Court in these earlier cases had thought that § 14 Third in anyway makes dual rates per se illegal and thus not within the power of the Board to authorize, it would not have found it necessary to require that the Board first pass upon the claims. But in the Cunará case the Court said:
“Whether a given agreement among such carriers should be held to contravene the act may depend upon a consideration of economic relations, of facts peculiar to the business or its history, of competitive conditions in respect of the shipping of foreign countries, and of other relevant circumstances, generally unfamiliar to a judicial tribunal, but well understood by an administrative body especially trained and experienced in the intricate and technical facts and usages of the shipping trade; and with which that body, consequently, is better able to deal.” 284 U. S., at 485.
Similarly, in the Far East Conference case:
“The Court [in Cunará] thus applied a principle, now firmly established, that in cases raising issues of fact not within the conventional experience of judges or cases requiring the exercise of administrative discretion, agencies created by Congress for regulating the subject matter should not be passed over. This is so even though the facts after they have been appraiseá by specializeá competence serve as a premise for legal consequences to be juáicially áefmeá. Uniformity and consistency in the regulation of business entrusted to a particular agency are secured, and the limited functions of review by the judiciary are more rationally exercised, by preliminary resort for ascertaining and interpreting the circumstances underlying legal issues to agencies that are better equipped than courts by specialization, by insight gained through experience, and by more flexible procedure.” 342 U. S., at 574-575. (Emphasis added.)
It is, therefore, very clear that these cases, while holding that the Board had primary jurisdiction to hear the case in the first instance, did not signify that the statute left the Board free to approve or disapprove the agreements under attack. Rather, those cases recognized that in certain kinds of litigation practical considerations dictate a division of functions between court and agency under which the latter makes a preliminary, comprehensive investigation of all the facts, analyzes them, and applies to them the statutory scheme as it is construed. Compare Denver Union Stock Yard Co. v. Producers Livestock Marketing Assn., ante, p. 282. It is recognized that the courts, while retaining the final authority to expound the statute, should avail themselves of the aid implicit in the agency’s superiority in gathering the relevant facts and in marshaling them into a meaningful pattern. Cases are not decided, nor the law appropriately understood, apart from an informed and particularized insight into the factual circumstances of the controversy under litigation.
Thus the Court’s action in Cunará and Far East Conference is to be taken as a deferral of what might come to be the ultimate question — the construction of § 14 Third — rather than an implicit holding that the Board could properly approve the practices there involved. The holding that the Board had primary jurisdiction, in short, was a device to prepare the way, if the litigation should take its ultimate course, for a more informed and precise determination by the Court of the scope and meaning of the statute as applied to those particular circumstances. To have held otherwise would, necessarily, involve the Court in comparatively abstract exposition.
This consideration, moreover, is particularly compelling in light of our present holding. Since, as we hold, § 14 Third strikes down dual-rate systems only where they are employed as predatory devices, then precise findings by the Board as to a particular system’s intent and effect would become essential to a judicial determination of the system’s validity under the statute. In neither Cunará nor Far East Conference did the Court have the assistance of such findings on which to base a determination of validity. We conclude, therefore, that the present holding is not foreclosed by these two cases.
Finally, petitioners argue that this Court should not construe the Shipping Act in such a way as to overturn the Board’s consistent interpretation. “[T]he rulings, interpretations and opinions of the [particular agency] . . . , while not controlling upon the courts by reason of their authority, do constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance. The weight of such a judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power
to persuade, if lacking power to control.” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140. But we are here confronted with a statute whose administration has been shifted several times from one agency to another, and it is by no means clear that the Board and its predecessors have taken uniform and consistent positions in regard to the validity of dual-rate systems under § 14 Third. See Isbrandtsen Co. v. United States, 96 F. Supp. 883, 889-891. In view of the fact that in the present case the dual-rate system was instituted for the purpose of curtailing Isbrandtsen’s competition, thus becoming a device made illegal by Congress in § 14 Third, we need not give controlling weight to the various treatments of dual rates by the Board under different circumstances.
Affirmed.
4 F. M. B. 706. The Federal Maritime Board and its predecessors are hereinafter referred to as “the Board.” Its predecessors were the United States Shipping Board (1916 to 1933); the United States Shipping Board Bureau in the Department of Commerce (1933 to 1936); and the United States Maritime Commission (1936 to 1950).
The Federal Maritime Board was named a respondent in Is-brandtsen’s petition. The United States was also named as statutory respondent pursuant to 5 U. S. C. § 1034 but, appearing by the Department of Justice, joined Isbrandtsen in attacking the Board order. The Secretary of Agriculture intervened and joined in the Justice Department's brief. The Conference intervened by leave of the court. The same parties are before this Court.
99 U. S. App. D. C. 312, 239 F. 2d 933.
Section 14 provides:
“No common carrier by water shall, directly or indirectly, in respect to the transportation by water of passengers or property between a port of a State, Territory, District, or possession of the United States and any other such port or a port of a foreign country — ■
“First. Pay or allow, or enter into any combination, agreement, or understanding, express or implied, to pay or allow a deferred rebate to any shipper. The term ‘deferred rebate’ in this chapter means a return of any portion of the freight money by a carrier to any shipper as a consideration for the giving of all or any portion of his shipments to the same or any other carrier, or for any other purpose, the payment of which is deferred beyond the completion of the service for which it is paid, and is made only if, during both the period for which computed and the period of deferment, the shipper has complied with the terms of the rebate agreement or arrangement.
“Second. Use a fighting ship either separately or in conjunction with any other carrier, through agreement or otherwise. The term ‘fighting ship’ in this chapter means a vessel used in a particular trade by a carrier or group of carriers for the purpose of excluding, preventing, or reducing competition by driving another carrier out of said trade.
“Third. Retaliate against any shipper by refusing, or threatening to refuse, space accommodations when such are available, or resort to other discriminating or unfair methods, because such shipper has patronized any other carrier or has filed a complaint charging unfair treatment, or for any other reason.
“Fourth. Make any unfair or unjustly discriminatory contract with any shipper based on the volume of freight offered, or unfairly treat or unjustly discriminate against any shipper in the matter of (a) cargo space accommodations or other facilities, due regard being had for the proper loading of the vessel and the available tonnage; (b) the loading and landing of freight in proper condition; or (c) the adjustment and settlement of claims.
“Any carrier who violates any provision of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $25,000 for each offense.”
Isbrandtsen’s vessels are not equipped with refrigerated space or silkrooms, as are many of the Conference vessels, and do not compete for cargoes requiring these facilities.
The comparative sailings and carryings are indicated in the following table:
On January 21, 1954, the Court of Appeals handed down its final decision holding that § 15 of the Shipping Act required the Board to hold a hearing on the proposed dual-rate system before approval. 93 U. S. App. D. C. 293, 211 F. 2d 51.
The Board did modify the exclusive-patronage contracts to delete from their coverage refrigerated cargoes for which Isbrandtsen did not compete.
Proceedings of the House Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries in the Investigation of Shipping Combinations under House Resolution 587, Hearings, 62d Cong. (Hereinafter “Hearings.”)
H. R. Doc. No. 805, 63d Cong., 2d Sess. (Hereinafter “Report.”)
H. R. Rep. No. 659, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. 27; see S. Rep. No. 689, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. 7. The Alexander Report was submitted in 1914 to the 63d Congress and a bill to carry out its recommendations was introduced but not passed. H. R. 17328, 63d Cong., 2d Sess. In the following Congress substantially the same bill was reintroduced, H. R. 15455, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., and became the Shipping Act of 1916.
Section 15 provides:
“Every common carrier by water, or other person subject to this chapter, shall file immediately with the Federal Maritime Board a true copy, or, if oral, a true and complete memorandum, of every agreement, with another such carrier or other person subject to this chapter, or modification or cancellation thereof, to which it may be a party or conform in whole or in part, fixing or regulating transportation rates or fares; giving or receiving special rates, accommodations, or other special privileges or advantages; controlling, regulating, preventing, or destroying competition; pooling or apportioning earnings, losses, or traffic; allotting ports or restricting or otherwise regulating the number and character of sailings between ports; limiting or regulating in any way the volume or character of freight or passenger traffic to be carried; or in any manner providing for an exclusive, preferential, or cooperative working arrangement. The term 'agreement’ in this section includes understandings, conferences, and other arrangements.
“The Board may by order disapprove, cancel, or modify any agreement, or any modification or cancellation thereof, whether or not previously approved by it, that it finds to be unjustly discriminatory or unfair as between carriers, shippers, exporters, importers, or ports, or between exporters from the United States and their foreign competitors or to operate to the detriment of the commerce of the United States, or to be in violation of this chapter, and shall approve all other agreements, modifications, or cancellations.
“Every agreement, modification, or cancellation lawful under this section shall be excepted from the provisions of [the Antitrust Acts] . . . .” 39 Stat. 733, as amended, 46 U. S. C. § 814.
Both the section which became § 14 Third and the section which became § 15, as originally proposed, used the language “discriminating or unfair.” H. R. 17328, 63d Cong., 2d Sess. The bill which became the Shipping Act, H. R. 15455, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., substituted “unjustly discriminatory or unfair” in § 15 but left untouched “discriminating or unfair” in § 14 Third.
The Board estimated that Isbrandtsen would lose approximately two-thirds of its 1952 volume. “. . . [I]t [is] probable that Is-brandtsen will retain 10 percent or more of the cargo moving in the trade as against the 26 percent carried by it in 1952 . . . .” 4 F. M. B. 706, 737, 1956 Am. Mar. Cas. 414, 451.
The Court of Appeals made a partial application of the rule of ejusdem generis and related the “resort to” clause to retaliation, holding the dual-rate contract or suit was retaliatory and within the ban of the section. The Board urges that the Court of Appeals did not carry the rule of ejusdem generis far enough, that by carrying the rule “a hand’s breadth farther” and also relating- — and limiting— the “resort to” clause to the refusal of space accommodations and similar services to shippers, the dual-rate contract falls without the prohibition because the contract is concerned only with charges for services and not with denial of services. We do not believe that these constructions can be reconciled with the language of the statute or the scope of the congressional plan.
Certainly it must be assumed that the Court would refrain from settling sub silentio an issue of such obvious importance and difficulty plainly requiring a clearly expressed disposition.
Petitioners’ reliance on Swayne & Hoyt, Ltd., v. United States, 300 U. S. 297, is similarly misplaced. In that case the Court upheld the administrative determination that a dual-rate system gave an “undue or unreasonable preference or advantage” under § 16 of the Shipping Act. Because the Court sustained the finding as supported by substantial evidence it did not need to reach the more contentious problem of whether that particular contract was illegal under § 14 Third.
Compare, e. g., Eden Mining Co. v. Bluefields Fruit & S. S. Co., 1 U. S. S. B. 41, and Contract Routing Restrictions, 2 U. S. M. C. 220, 226-227, with W. T. Rawleigh Co. v. Stoomvart, 1 U. S. S. B. 285, 290.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether a student may sue a private university for damages under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983 (1994 ed., Supp. V), to enforce provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA or Act), 88 Stat. 571, 20 U. S. C. § 1232g, which prohibit the federal funding of educational institutions that have a policy or practice of releasing education records to unauthorized persons. We hold such an action foreclosed because the relevant provisions of FERPA create no personal rights to enforce under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 (1994 ed., Supp. V).
Respondent John Doe is a former undergraduate in the School of Education at Gonzaga University, a private university in Spokane, Washington. He planned to graduate and teach at a Washington public elementary school. Washington at the time required all of its new teachers to obtain an affidavit of good moral character from a dean of their graduating college or university. In October 1998, Roberta League, Gonzaga’s “teacher certification specialist,” overheard one student tell another that respondent engaged in acts of sexual misconduct against Jane Doe, a female undergraduate. League launched an investigation and contacted the state agency responsible for teacher certification, identifying respondent by name and discussing the allegations against him. Respondent did not learn of the investigation, or that information about him had been disclosed, until March 1994, when he was told by League and others that he would not receive the affidavit required for certification as a Washington schoolteacher.
Respondent then sued Gonzaga and League (petitioners) in state court. He alleged violations of Washington tort and contract law, as well as a pendent violation of § 1983 for the release of personal information to an “unauthorized person” in violation of FERPA. A jury found for respondent on all counts, awarding him $1,155,000, including $150,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages on the FERPA claim.
The Washington Court of Appeals reversed in relevant part, concluding that FERPA does not create individual rights and thus cannot be enforced under § 1983. 99 Wash. App. 338, 992 P. 2d 545 (2000). The Washington Supreme Court reversed that decision, and ordered the FERPA damages reinstated. 143 Wash. 2d 687, 24 P. 3d 390 (2001). The court acknowledged that “FERPA itself does not give rise to a private cause of action,” but reasoned that FERPA’s nondisclosure provision “gives rise to a federal right enforceable under section 1983.” Id., at 707-708, 24 P. 3d, at 400.
Like the Washington Supreme Court and the State Court of Appeals below, other state and federal courts have divided on the question of FERPA’s enforceability under §1983. The fact that all of these courts have relied on the same set of opinions from this Court suggests that our opinions in this area may not be models of clarity. We therefore granted certiorari, 534 U. S. 1103 (2002), to resolve the conflict among the lower courts and in the process resolve any ambiguity in our own opinions.
Congress enacted FERPA under its spending power to condition the receipt of federal funds on certain requirements relating to the access and disclosure of student educational records. The Act directs the Secretary of Education to withhold federal funds from any public or private “educational agency or institution” that fails to comply with these conditions. As relevant here, the Act provides:
“No funds shall be made available under any applicable program to any educational agency or institution which has a policy or practice of permitting the release of education records (or personally identifiable information contained therein . . .) of students without the written consent of their parents to any individual, agency, or organization.” 20 U. S. C. § 1232g(b)(l).
The Act directs the Secretary of Education to enforce this and other of the Act’s spending conditions. § 1232g(f). The Secretary is required to establish an office and review board within the Department of Education for “investigating, processing, reviewing, and adjudicating violations of [the Act].” § 1232g(g). Funds may be terminated only if the Secretary determines that a recipient institution “is failing to comply substantially with any requirement of [the Act]” and that such compliance “cannot be secured by voluntary means.” §§ 1234c(a), 1232g(f).
Respondent contends that this statutory regime confers upon any student enrolled at a covered school or institution a federal right, enforceable in suits for damages under § 1983, not to have “education records” disclosed to unauthorized persons without the student’s express written consent. But we have never before held, and decline to do so here, that spending legislation drafted in terms resembling those of FERPA can confer enforceable rights.
In Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1 (1980), six years after Congress enacted FERPA, we recognized for the first time that §1983 actions may be brought against state actors to enforce rights created by federal statutes as well as by the Constitution. There we held that plaintiffs could recover payments wrongfully withheld by a state agency in violation of the Social Security Act. Id., at 4. A year later, in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1 (1981), we rejected a claim that the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975 conferred enforceable rights, saying:
“In legislation enacted pursuant to the spending power, the typical remedy for state noncompliance with federally imposed conditions is not a private cause of action for noncompliance but rather action by the Federal Government to terminate funds to the State." Id., at 28.
We made clear that unless Congress “speak[s] with a clear voice,” and manifests an “unambiguous” intent to confer individual rights, federal funding provisions provide no basis for private enforcement by § 1983. Id., at .17, 28, and n. 21.
Since Pennhurst, only twice have we found spending legislation to give rise to enforceable rights. In Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, 479 U. S. 418 (1987), we allowed a § 1983 suit by tenants to recover past overcharges under a rent-ceiling provision of the Public Housing Act, on the ground that the provision unambiguously conferred “a mandatory [benefit] focusing on the individual family and its income.” Id., at 430. The key to our inquiry was that Congress spoke in terms that “could not be clearer,” ibid., and conferred entitlements “sufficiently specific and definite to qualify as enforceable rights under Penn-hurst.,” Id., at 432. Also significant was that the federal agency charged with administering the Public Housing Act “ha[d] never provided a procedure by which tenants could complain to it about the alleged failures [of state welfare agencies] to abide by [the Act’s rent-ceiling provision].” Id., at 426.
Three years later, in Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Assn., 496 U. S. 498 (1990), we allowed a § 1983 suit brought by health care providers to enforce a reimbursement provision of the Medicaid Act, on the ground that the provision, much like the rent-ceiling provision in Wright, explicitly conferred specific monetary entitlements upon the plaintiffs. Congress left no doubt of its intent for private enforcement, we said, because the provision required States to pay an “objective” monetary entitlement to individual health care providers, with no sufficient administrative means of enforcing the requirement against States that failed to comply. 496 U. S., at 522-523.
Our more recent decisions, however, have rejected attempts to infer enforceable rights from Spending Clause statutes. In Suter v. Artist M., 503 U. S. 347 (1992), the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 required States receiving funds for adoption assistance to have a “plan” to make “reasonable efforts” to keep children out of foster homes. A class of parents and children sought to enforce this requirement against state officials under § 1983, claiming that no such efforts had been made. We read the Act “in the light shed by Pennhurst,” id., at 358, and found no basis for the suit, saying:
“Careful examination of the language... does not unambiguously confer an enforceable right upon the Act’s beneficiaries. The term ‘reasonable efforts’ in this context is at least as plausibly read to impose only a rather generalized duty on the State, to be enforced not by private individuals, but by the Secretary in the manner [of reducing or eliminating payments].” Id., at 363.
Since the Act conferred no specific, individually enforceable rights, there was no basis for private enforcement, even by a class of the statute’s principal beneficiaries. Id., at 357.
Similarly, in Blessing v. Freestone, 520 U. S. 329 (1997), Title IV-D of the Social Security Act required States receiving federal child-welfare funds to “substantially comply” with requirements designed to ensure timely payment of child support. Five Arizona mothers invoked § 1983 against state officials on grounds that state child-welfare agencies consistently failed to meet these requirements. We found no basis for the suit, saying:
“Far from creating an individual entitlement to services, the standard is simply a yardstick for the Secretary to measure the systemwide performance of a State’s Title IV-D program. Thus, the Secretary must look to the aggregate services provided by the State, not to whether the needs of any particular person have been satisfied.” Id., at 343 (emphases in original).
Because the provision focused on “the aggregate services provided by the State,” rather than “the needs of any particular person,” it conferred no individual rights and thus could not be enforced by § 1983. We emphasized: “[T]o seek redress through § 1983,... a plaintiff must assert the violation of a federal right, not merely a violation of federal law.” Id., at 340 (emphases in original).
Respondent reads this line of cases to establish a relatively loose standard for finding rights enforceable by § 1983. He claims that a federal statute confers such rights so long as Congress intended that the statute “benefit” putative plaintiffs. Brief for Respondent 40-46. He further contends that a more “rigorous” inquiry would conflate the standard for inferring a private right of action under § 1983 with the standard for inferring a private right of action directly from the statute itself, which he admits would not exist under FERPA. Id., at 41-43. As authority, respondent points to Blessing and Wilder, which, he says, used the term “benefit” to define the sort of statutory interest enforceable by § 1983. See Blessing, supra, at 340-341 (“Congress must have intended that the provision in question benefit the plaintiff”); Wilder, supra, at 509 (same).
Some language in our opinions might be read to suggest that something less than an unambiguously conferred right is enforceable by § 1983. Blessing, for example, set forth three “factors” to guide judicial inquiry into whether or not a statute confers a right: “Congress must have intended that the provision in question benefit the plaintiff,” “the plaintiff must demonstrate that the right assertedly protected by the statute is not so ‘vague and amorphous’ that its enforcement would strain judicial competence,” and “the provision giving rise to the asserted right must be couched in mandatory, rather than precatory, terms.” 520 U. S., at 340-341. In the same paragraph, however, Blessing emphasizes that it is only violations of rights, not laws, which give rise to § 1983 actions. Id., at 340. This confusion has led some courts to interpret Blessing as allowing plaintiffs to enforce a statute under § 1983 so long as the plaintiff falls within the general zone of interest that the statute is intended to protect; something less than what is required for a statute to create rights enforceable directly from the statute itself under an implied private right of action. Fueling this uncertainty is the notion that our implied private right of action cases have no bearing on the standards for discerning whether a statute creates rights enforceable by § 1983. Wilder appears to support this notion, 496 U. S., at 508-509, n. 9, while Suter, 503 U. S., at 363-364, and Pennhurst, 451 U. S., at 28, n. 21, appear to disavow it.
We now reject the notion that our cases permit anything short of an unambiguously conferred right to support a cause of action brought under §1983. Section 1983 provides a remedy only for the deprivation of “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States. Accordingly, it is rights, not the broader or vaguer “benefits” or “interests,” that may be enforced under the authority of that section. This being so, we further reject the notion that our implied right of action cases are separate and distinct from our §1983 cases. To the contrary, our implied right of action cases should guide the determination of whether a statute confers rights enforceable under § 1983.
We have recognized that whether a statutory violation may be enforced through § 1983 “is a different inquiry than that involved in determining whether a private right of action can be implied from a particular statute.” Wilder, supra, at 508, n. 9. But the inquiries overlap in one meaningful respect — in either case we must first determine whether Congress intended to create a federal right. Thus we have held that “[t]he question whether Congress ... intended to create a private right of action [is] definitively answered in the negative” where a “statute by its terms grants no private rights to any identifiable class.” Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 576 (1979). For a statute to create such private rights, its text must be “phrased in terms of the persons benefited.” Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 692, n. 13 (1979). We have recognized, for example, that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 create individual rights because those statutes are phrased “with an unmistakable focus on the benefited class.” Id., at 691 (emphasis added). But even where a statute is phrased in such explicit rights-creating terms, a plaintiff suing under an implied right of action still must show that the statute manifests an intent “to create not just a private right but also a private remedy.” Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S. 275, 286 (2001) (emphases added).
Plaintiffs suing under §1983 do not have the burden of showing an intent to create a private remedy because § 1983 generally supplies a remedy for the vindication of rights secured by federal statutes. See supra, at 279-281. Once a plaintiff demonstrates that a statute confers an individual right, the right is presumptively enforceable by § 1983. But the initial inquiry — determining whether a statute confers any right at all — is no different from the initial inquiry in an implied right of action case, the express purpose of which is to determine whether or not a statute “confer[s] rights on a particular class of persons.” California v. Sierra Club, 451 U. S. 287, 294 (1981). This makes obvious sense, since § 1983 merely provides a mechanism for enforcing individual rights “secured” elsewhere, i. e., rights independently “secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States. “[0]ne cannot go into court and claim a ‘violation of §1983’ — for § 1983 by itself does not protect anyone against anything.” Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U. S. 600, 617 (1979).
A court’s role in discerning whether personal rights exist in the § 1983 context should therefore not differ from its role in discerning whether personal rights exist in the implied right of action context. Compare Golden State Transit Corp. v. Los Angeles, 493 U. S. 103, 107-108, n. 4 (1989) (“[A] claim based on a statutory violation is enforceable under §1983 only when the statute creates ‘rights, privileges, or immunities’ in the particular plaintiff”), with Cannon, supra, at 690, n. 13 (statute is enforceable under implied right only where Congress “explicitly conferred a right directly on a class of persons that included the plaintiff in the case”). Both inquiries simply require a determination as to whether or not Congress intended to confer individual rights upon a class of beneficiaries. Compare Wright, 479 U. S., at 423 (statute must be “intended to rise to the level of an enforceable right”), with Alexander v. Sandoval, supra, at 289 (statute must evince “congressional intent to create new rights”); and California v. Sierra Club, supra, at 294 (“The question is not simply who would benefit from the Act, but whether Congress intended to confer federal rights upon those beneficiaries” (citing Cannon, supra, at 690-693, n. 13)). Accordingly, where the text and structure of a statute provide no indication that Congress intends to create new individual rights, there is no basis for a private suit, whether under § 1983 or under an implied right of action.
Justice Stevens disagrees with this conclusion principally because separation-of-powers concerns are, in his view, more pronounced in the implied right of action context as opposed to the § 1983 context. Post, at 300-301 (dissenting opinion) (citing Wilder, 496 U. S., at 509, n. 9). But we fail to see how relations between the branches are served by having courts apply a multifactor balancing test to pick and choose which federal requirements may be enforced by §1983 and which may not. Nor are separation-of-powers concerns within the Federal Government the only guideposts in this sort of analysis. See Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U. S. 58, 65 (1989) (“[I]f Congress intends to alter the ‘usual constitutional balance between the States and the Federal Government,’ it must make its intention to do so ‘unmistakably clear in the language of the statute’ ” (quoting Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 242 (1985); citing Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 99 (1984))).
With this principle in mind, there is no question that FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions fail to confer enforceable rights. To begin with, the provisions entirely lack the sort of “rights-creating” language critical to showing the requisite congressional intent to create new rights. Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S., at 288-289; Cannon, 441 U. S., at 690, n. 13. Unlike the individually focused terminology of Titles VI and IX (“No person ... shall... be subjected to discrimination”), FERPA’s provisions speak only to the Secretary of Education, directing that “[n]o binds shall be made available” to any “educational agency or institution” which has a prohibited “policy or practice.” 20 U. S. C. § 1232g(b)(l). This focus is two steps removed from the interests of individual students and parents and clearly does not confer the sort of “individual entitlement” that is enforceable under § 1983. Blessing, 520 U. S., at 343 (emphasis in original). As we said in Cannon:
“There would be far less reason to infer a private remedy in favor of individual persons if Congress, instead of drafting Title IX with an unmistakable focus on the benefited class, had written it simply as a ban on discriminatory conduct by recipients of federal funds or as a prohibition against the disbursement of public funds to educational institutions engaged in discriminatory practices.” 441 U. S., at 690-693.
See also Alexander v. Sandoval, supra, at 289 (“Statutes that focus on the person regulated rather than the individuals protected create ‘no implication of an intent to confer rights on a particular class of persons’ ” (quoting California v. Sierra Club, supra, at 294)).
FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions further speak only in terms of institutional policy and practice, not individual instances of disclosure. See §§ 1232g(b)(l)-(2) (prohibiting the funding of “any educational agency or institution which has a policy or practice of permitting the release of education records” (emphasis added)). Therefore, as in Blessing, they have an “aggregate” focus, 520 U. S., at 343, they are not concerned with “whether the needs of any particular person have been satisfied,” ibid., and they cannot “give rise to individual rights,” id., at 344. Recipient institutions can further avoid termination of funding so long as they “comply substantially” with the Act’s requirements. §1234c(a). This, too, is not unlike Blessing, which found that Title IV-D failed to support a § 1983 suit in part because it only required “substantial compliance” with federal regulations. 520 U. S., at 335, 343. Respondent directs our attention to subsection (b)(2), but the text and structure of subsections (b)(1) and (b)(2) are essentially the same. In each provision the reference to individual consent is in the context of describing the type of “policy or practice” that triggers a funding prohibition. For reasons expressed repeatedly in our prior cases, however, such provisions cannot make out the requisite congressional intent to confer individual rights enforceable by § 1983.
Our conclusion that FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions fail to confer enforceable rights is buttressed by the mechanism that Congress chose to provide for enforcing those provisions. Congress expressly authorized the Secretary of Education to “deal with violations” of the Act, § 1232g(f) (emphasis added), and required the Secretary to “establish or designate [a] review board” for investigating and adjudicating such violations, §1232g(g). Pursuant to these provisions, the Secretary created the Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO) “to act as the Review Board required under the Act [and] to enforce the Act with respect to all applicable programs.” 34 CFR §§ 99.60(a) and (b) (2001). The FPCO permits students and parents who suspect a violation of the Act to file individual written complaints. § 99.63. If a complaint is timely and contains required information, the FPCO will initiate an investigation, §§ 99.64(a)-(b), notify the.educational institution of the charge, § 99.65(a), and request a written response, § 99.65. If a violation is found, the FPCO distributes a notice of factual findings and a “statement of the specific steps that the agency or institution must take to comply” with FERPA. §§ 99.66(b) and (c)(1). These administrative procedures squarely distinguish this case from Wright and Wilder, where an aggrieved individual lacked any federal review mechanism, see supra, at 280-281, and further counsel against our finding a congressional intent to create individually enforceable private rights.
Congress finally provided that “[e]xcept for the conduct of hearings, none of the functions of the Secretary under this section shall be carried out in any of the regional offices” of the Department Of Education. 20 U. S. C. § 1232g(g). This centralized review provision was added just four months after FERPA’s enactment due to “concern that regionalizing the enforcement of [FERPA] may lead to multiple interpretations of it, and possibly work a hardship on parents, students, and institutions.” 120 Cong. Rec. 39863 (1974) (joint statement). Cf. Wright, 479 U. S., at 426 (“Congress’ aim was to provide a decentralized . . . administrative process” (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)). It is implausible to presume that the same Congress nonetheless intended private suits to be brought before thousands of federal- and state-court judges, which could only result in the sort of “multiple interpretations” the Act explicitly sought to avoid.
In sum, if Congress wishes to create new rights enforceable under § 1983, it must do so in clear and unambiguous terms — no less and no more than what is required for Congress to create new rights enforceable under an implied private right of action. FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions contain no rights-creating language, they have an aggregate, not individual, focus, and they serve primarily to direct the Secretary of Education’s distribution of public funds to educational institutions. They therefore create no rights enforceable under § 1983. Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The Washington Court of Appeals and the Washington Supreme Court found petitioners to have acted “under color of state law” for purposes of § 1983 when they disclosed respondent’s personal information to state officials in connection with state-law teacher certification requirements. 143 Wash. 2d 687, 710-711, 24 P. 3d 390, 401-402 (2001). Although the petition for certiorari challenged this holding, we agreed to review only the question posed in the first paragraph of this opinion, a question reserved in Owasso Independent School Dist. No. I-011 v. Falvo, 534 U. S. 426, 430-431 (2002). We therefore assume without deciding that the relevant disclosures occurred under color of state law.
Compare Gundlach v. Reinstein, 924 F. Supp. 684, 692 (ED Pa. 1996) (FERPA confers no enforceable rights because it contains “no unambiguous intention on the part of the Congress to permit the invocation of § 1983 to redress an individual release of records”), aff’d, 114 F. 3d 1172 (CA3 1997); and Meury v. Eagle-Union Community School Corp., 714 N. E. 2d 233, 239 (Ind. Ct. App. 1999) (same), with Falvo v. Owasso Independent School Dist. No. I — Oil, 233 F. 3d 1203, 1210 (CA10 2000) (concluding that release of records in “violation of FERPA is actionable under... § 1983”), rev’d on other grounds, 534 U. S. 426 (2002); and Brown v. Oneonta, 106 F. 3d 1125, 1131-1132 (CA2 1997) (same).
Title VI provides: “No person in the United States shall... be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” on the basis of race, color, or national origin. 78 Stat. 252, 42 U. S. C. § 2000d (1994 ed.) (emphasis added). Title IX provides: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex,... be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 86 Stat. 373, 20 U. S. C. § 1681(a) (emphasis added). Where a statute does not include this sort of explicit “right- or duty-creating language,” we rarely impute to Congress an intent to create a private right of action. See Cannon, 441 U. S., at 690, n. 13 (listing provisions); Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S. 275, 288 (2001) (existence or absence of rights-creating language is critical to the Court’s inquiry).
The State may rebut this presumption by showing that Congress “specifically foreclosed a remedy under § 1983.” Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S. 992, 1004-1005, n. 9 (1984). The State’s burden is to demonstrate that Congress shut the door to private enforcement either expressly, through “specifie evidence from the statute itself,” Wright v. Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, 479 U. S. 418, 423 (1987), or “impliedly, by creating a comprehensive enforcement scheme that is incompatible with individual enforcement under § 1983,” Blessing v. Freestone, 520 U. S. 329, 341 (1997). See also Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 U. S. 1, 20 (1981). These questions do not arise in this case due to our conclusion that FERPA confers no individual rights and thus cannot give rise to a presumption of enforceability under § 1983.
This case illustrates the point well. Justice Stevens would conclude that Congress intended FERPA’s nondisclosure provisions to confer individual rights on millions of school students from kindergarten through graduate school without having ever said so explicitly. This conclusion entails a judicial assumption, with no basis in statutory text, that Congress intended to set itself resolutely against a tradition of deference to state and local school officials, e. g., Falvo, 534 U. S., at 435 (rejecting proposed interpretation of FERPA because “[w]e doubt Congress meant to intervene in this drastic fashion with traditional state functions”); Regents of Univ. of Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U. S. 214, 226 (1985) (noting tradition of “reluctance to trench on the prerogatives of state and local educational institutions”), by subjecting them to private suits for money damages whenever they fail to comply with a federal funding condition.
Subsection (b)(2) provides in relevant part:
“No funds shall be made available under any applicable program to any educational agency or institution which , has a policy or practice of releasing, or providing access to, any personally identifiable information in education records other than directory information ... unless—
“(A) there is written consent from the student’s parents specifying records to be released, the reasons for such release, and to whom, and with a copy of the records to be released to the student’s parents and the student if desired by the parents.” 20 U. S. C. § 1232g(b)(2)(A).
Respondent invokes this provision to assert the very awkward “individualized right to withhold consent and prevent the unauthorized release of personally identifiable information in education records by an educational institution that has a policy or practice of releasing, or providing access to, such information.” Brief for Respondent 14.. That is a far cry from the sort of individualized, concrete monetary entitlement found enforceable in Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1 (1980), Wright, and Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Assn., 496 U. S. 498 (1990). See supra, at 279-281.
Justice Stevens would have us look to other provisions in FERPA that use the term “rights” to define the obligations of educational institutions that receive federal funds. See post, at 293-294,296. He then suggests that any reference to “rights,” even as a shorthand means of describing standards and procedures imposed on funding recipients, should give rise to a statute’s enforceability under § 1983. Ibid. This argument was rejected in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 18-20 (1981) (no presumption of enforceability merely because a statute “speaks in terms of ‘rights’ ”), and it is particularly misplaced here since Congress enacted FERPA years before Thiboutot declared that statutes can ever give rise to rights enforceable by § 1983.
We need not determine whether FERPA’s procedures are “sufficiently comprehensive” to offer an independent basis for precluding private enforcement, Middlesex County Sewerage Authority, 453 U. S., at 20, due to our finding that FERPA creates no private right to enforce.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | E | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case we must decide whether exclusivity provisions in state workers’ compensation laws bar migrant workers from availing themselves of a private right of action under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA), 96 Stat. 2583, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 1801 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. V). We hold that they do not.
I
Respondents, migrant farmworkers employed by petitioner Adams Fruit Company, Inc., suffered severe injuries in an automobile accident while they traveled to work in Adams Fruit’s van. As a result of their injuries, respondents received benefits pursuant to Florida workers’ compensation law. They thereafter filed suit against Adams Fruit in Federal District Court, alleging that their injuries were attributable in part to Adams Fruit’s intentional violations of AWPA’s motor vehicle safety provisions, 29 U. S. C. § 1841(b)(1)(A) (1982 ed.), and accompanying regulations, 29 CFR § 500.105 (1989). Respondents maintained that the van in which they were transported was inadequate to support the vehicle’s weight; that the total number of persons in the van exceeded its seating capacity; that a seat was not provided for each passenger; that the van was overloaded; that the seats in the van were not equipped with seat belts; and that Adams Fruit committed these violations intentionally. Respondents sought actual and statutory damages pursuant to AWPA’s private right of action provision, 29 U. S. C. §1854 (1982 ed.).
Adams Fruit moved for summary judgment on the ground that Florida law provides that its workers’ compensation remedy “shall be exclusive and in place of all other liability of such employer to . . . the employee,” Fla. Stat. §440.11 (1989), and that respondents’ receipt of workers’ compensation benefits therefore precluded them from recovering damages under AWPA for the same injuries. In support of its position, Adams Fruit maintained that Congress did not, in creating a private right of action for migrant workers, intend to pre-empt or interfere with the operation of state workers’ compensation schemes, including their exclusivity provisions. The District Court granted petitioner’s motion, relying on the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Roman v. Sunny Slope Farms, Inc., 817 F. 2d 1116, 1118 (1987). The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding that an exclusivity provision in a state workers’ compensation law does not bar a private suit under AWPA. 867 F. 2d 1305, 1311 (1989). We granted certiorari to resolve this split in authority, 493 U. S. 808 (1989), and now affirm.
II
Section 504 of AWPA establishes a private right of action for aggrieved migrant workers against agricultural employers and provides for actual and statutory damages in cases of intentional violations. Resolution of petitioner’s claim that AWPA’s private right of action is withdrawn where state law establishes workers’ compensation as an exclusive remedy depends on two doctrinally related issues. First we must decide whether, as a matter of statutory construction, AWPA permits migrant workers to pursue federal remedies under such circumstances. Second, if AWPA permits simultaneous recovery under federal and state law, we must determine whether, under pre-emption principles, AWPA precludes giving effect to state exclusivity provisions that purport to withdraw federal remedies. In either case, the issue turns on the language of the statute and, where the language is not dispositive, on the intent of Congress as revealed in the history and purposes of the statutory scheme. See, e. g., Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 108 (1980) (“[T]he starting point for interpreting a statute is the language of the statute itself”); Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 95 (1983) (“[I]n deciding whether a federal law pre-empts a state statute, our task is to ascertain Congress’ intent in enacting the federal statute at issue”). As a general rule of statutory construction, where the terms of a statute are unambiguous, judicial inquiry is complete. See, e. g., Rubin v. United States, 449 U. S. 424, 430 (1981). Pre-emption “is compelled whether Congress’ command is explicitly stated in the statute’s language or implicitly contained in its structure and purpose.” Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 525 (1977).
A
The enforcement provisions of AWPA that establish a private right of action for “[a]ny person aggrieved by a violation” of the Act’s provisions or accompanying regulations, 29 U. S. C. § 1854(a) (1982 ed.), in no way intimate that the availability of that right is affected by state workers’ compensation law. Adams Fruit nevertheless contends that the language of AWPA’s enforcement provisions is not dispositive because other provisions of the statute reflect congressional intent to withdraw private rights of action where state workers’ compensation is available.
Adams Fruit’s argument focuses on § 1841, which concerns motor vehicle safety. Subsections (a) and (b) of § 1841 establish minimum standards, licensing, and insurance requirements to help secure safe transportation for migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. As part of these protections, subsection (b)(1)(C) requires each agricultural employer to “have an insurance policy or a liability bond . . . which insures the agricultural employer . . . against liability for damage to persons or property arising from the ownership, operation, or the causing to be operated, of any vehicle used to transport any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker.” Subsection (c) waives this insurance requirement where an agricultural employer “is the employer of any migrant or seasonal agricultural worker for purposes of a State workers’ compensation law.” In such cases, “[n]o insurance policy or liability bond [is] required of the employer” if the migrant workers are transported solely under circumstances for which there is coverage under such state law.
Adams Fruit maintains that Congress’ decision to permit agricultural employers to satisfy AWPA’s insurance policy and liability bond requirements through their state workers’ compensation insurance reflects an intent to preclude AWPA liability for bodily injury where employers have obtained coverage under state law. In Adams Fruit’s view, it would be incongruous for Congress explicitly to waive insurance coverage requirements where workers’ compensation is available and at the same time to allow migrant workers to seek cumulative remedies under workers’ compensation laws and AWPA. So construed, Adams Fruit argues, the statute creates a trap for the unwary agricultural employer, who reasonably could have expected the waiver of insurance requirements to reflect a waiver of liability as well.
Adams Fruit’s argument is unpersuasive because it rests on the extraordinary and unjustified proposition that congressional intent regarding private enforcement of AWPA is best discerned through a meaning alleged to be implicit in AWPA’s motor vehicle safety provisions rather than the explicit language of AWPA’s enforcement provisions. AWPA’s motor vehicle safety provisions appear in Title IV of the Act, entitled “Further Protections for Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers,” whereas AWPA’s provision for a private right of action appears in Title V, part A, labeled “Enforcement Provisions.” Moreover, Congress’ sole express limitation on the availability of relief is found in AWPA’s enforcement provisions. See § 1854(c)(2) (authorizing a court, “[i]n determining the amount of damages to be awarded ... , to consider whether an attempt was made to resolve the issues in dispute before the resort to litigation”). Had Congress intended to limit further the availability of AWPA relief based on the adequacy of state workers’ compensation remedies, it would have made that purpose clear in the enforcement provisions of AWPA. Petitioner’s argument, which relies on provisions far removed from Congress’ express authorization of a federal remedy, is inconsistent with basic principles of statutory construction that require giving effect to the meaning and placement of the words chosen by Congress. See Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803, 813 (1989).
Adams Fruit’s argument is also flawed in that the insurance waiver provision is not inconsistent with the availability of overlapping remedies under workers’ compensation laws and AWPA. It is true that, in accordance with § 1841(c)(l)’s waiver of insurance requirements, an agricultural employer will not be in violation of ÁWPA if it fails to obtain insurance sufficient to cover its potential liability as long as the employer maintains insurance under state workers’ compensation law. But the possibility of underinsurance is also present where an employer is not enrolled in a workers’ compensation plan. AWPA limits the insurance that agricultural employers must carry, 29 U. S. C. § 1841(b)(3) (1982 ed.); if a claim exceeds the required coverage, an employer is nonetheless liable for the whole claim. § 1854(c)(1) (authorizing damages “up to and including an amount equal to the amount of actual damages”); see also 128 Cong. Rec. 32463 (1982) (“[F]ull actual damages [are to] be awarded in every case”). In this respect, AWPA does not differ from other mandatory insurance regimes that require a minimum level of coverage without establishing an absolute limit on liability. Thus, Congress’ decisions to allow workers’ compensation insurance to satisfy §1841(b)’s minimum coverage requirements on the one hand, and to afford migrant workers federal and state remedies that may exceed such coverage on the other, are not incompatible; indeed, the decisions are consistent with AWPA’s treatment of agricultural employers who are not exempted from § 1841(b)’s insurance and bond requirements.
We likewise reject petitioner’s contention that, where Congress authorizes a private right of action to vindicate a federal right, we should assume that Congress has conditioned that right on the unavailability of a state remedy. Indeed, we have stated that “it is to be assumed when Congress enacts a statute that it does not intend to make its application dependent on state law.” NLRB v. Natural Gas Utility District of Hawkins County, 402 U. S. 600, 603 (1971) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Congress may choose to establish state remedies as adequate alternatives to federal relief, but federal rights should be regarded as supplementing state-created rights unless otherwise indicated. See, e. g., Gomez v. Toledo, 446 U. S. 635, 639 (1980) (construing 42 U. S. C. § 1983); Tennessee C., I. & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U. S. 590, 597 (1944) (construing Fair Labor Standards Act).
Cases in which this Court has harmonized federal statutes that provide overlapping federal remedies, see, e. g., United States v. Demko, 385 U. S. 149 (1966), are not to the contrary. In Demko, this Court held that the existence of a comprehensive federal scheme for compensating injured prisoners precluded supplemental recovery under the Federal Tort Claims Act. A finding that a specific federal remedy trumps a more general federal remedy may be appropriate in certain circumstances, but that conclusion is a far cry from a presumption that a general state remedy invariably trumps a specific federal one.
Accordingly, the plain meaning of the statute’s language indicates that AWPA’s private right of action is unaffected by the availability of remedies under state workers’ compensation law.
B
Adams Fruit also contends that Congress did not intend to pre-empt States from establishing their workers’ compensation schemes as the exclusive mechanism to redress injuries to migrant workers. In support of this position, Adams Fruit points'to 29 U. S. C. § 1871 (1982 ed.), which provides that the statute “is intended to supplement State law, and compliance with this chapter shall not excuse any person from compliance with appropriate State law and regulation.” On the basis of this provision, Adams Fruit argues that this Court must give effect to the exclusivity provision in Florida’s statute, which it construes as withdrawing AWPA’s private right of action.
We disagree that Florida’s exclusivity provision is intended to preclude federal remedies. Neither the Florida Legislature nor the Florida courts have declared such a purpose; indeed, to the limited extent that the Florida Supreme Court has expressed a view regarding the extraterritorial scope of the exclusivity provision, it has stated the opposite. See Byrd v. Richardson-Greenshields Securities, Inc., 552 So. 2d 1099, 1102 (1989) (refusing to frustrate federal and state sexual harassment policies through “blind adherence to the exclusivity rule of the workers’ compensation statute alone” and expressing its commitment “not [to] apply the exclusivity rule in a manner that effectively abrogates the policies of other law”). We therefore decline petitioner’s invitation to construe Florida law so as to create a conflict between federal and state legislation.
Even if Florida’s provision were directed at federal law, § 1871 does not mandate displacement of the federal remedy. Although that section permits States to supplement AWPA’s remedial scheme, it cannot be viewed as authorizing States to replace or supersede its remedies. Nor are we persuaded by petitioner’s claim that Congress intended to preserve the particular balance state workers’ compensation statutes generally strike between assurance of compensation on the one hand and limited and exclusive liability for the employer on the other. Whatever the merits of this characterization of the purposes of workers’ compensation, the point is off target. That congressional authorization of a federal remedy may affect the balance struck in state regulatory schemes does not suggest that Congress intended its remedial provisions to be effective only in certain States. Federal legislation applies in all States, and in cases of conflict between federal law and the policies purportedly underlying some state regulatory schemes, the scope of federal law is not curtailed.
More generally, we refuse to adopt Adams Fruit’s “reverse” pre-emption principle that would authorize States to withdraw federal remedies by establishing state remedies as exclusive. Such provisions cannot be viewed as permissible interstitial regulation in the service of, or at least neutral with respect to, the purposes of the federal scheme. Cf. Mackey v. Lanier Collections Agency & Service, Inc., 486 U. S. 825, 834-838 (1988) (where federal law does not establish an enforcement mechanism for collecting ERISA judgments, state mechanisms not pre-empted); Robertson v. Wegmann, 436 U. S. 584, 594 (1978) (application of state survivorship rule to 42 U. S. C. § 1983 is not pre-empted because rule does not impair federally secured right). Rather, they directly conflict with the purposes of the federal statute.
Accordingly, we find that AWPA pre-empts state law to the limited extent that it does not permit States to supplant, rather than to supplement, AWPA’s remedial scheme.
C
Adams Fruit argues that, in the absence of any explicit congressional statement regarding the pre-emptive scope of AWPA, this Court should defer to the Department of Labor’s position that “[w]here a State workers’ compensation law is applicable and coverage is provided for a migrant or seasonal agricultural worker by the employer, the workers’ compensation benefits are the exclusive remedy for loss under this Act in the case of bodily injury or death.” 29 CFR §500.122(b) (1989).
As an initial matter, we reject petitioner’s view that AWPA’s failure to speak directly to the pre-emption of state exclusivity provisions creates a statutory “gap” within the meaning of Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843 (1984), that Congress intended the Department of Labor to fill. A “gap” is not created in a statutory scheme merely because a statute does not restate the truism that States may not pre-empt federal law.
Moreover, even if AWPA’s language establishing a private right of action is ambiguous, we need not defer to the Secretary of Labor’s view of the scope of § 1854 because Congress has expressly established the Judiciary and not the Department of Labor as the adjudicator of private rights of action arising under the statute. A precondition to deference under Chevron is a congressional delegation of administrative authority. Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U. S. 204, 208 (1988). See also NLRB v. Food and Commercial Workers, 484 U. S. 112, 123 (1987) (Chevron review of agency interpretations of statutes applies only to regulations “promulgated pursuant to congressional authority”); Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 152, 177 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (rejecting Chevron deference where the statute “is not administered by any agency but by the courts”); cf. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 97 (1983) (refusing to sanction “ ‘unauthorized assumption by an agency of major policy decisions’” (quoting American Ship Building Co. v. NLRB, 380 U. S. 300, 318 (1965)). No such delegation regarding AWPA’s enforcement provisions is evident in the statute. Rather, Congress established an enforcement scheme independent of the Executive and provided aggrieved farmworkers with direct recourse to federal court where their rights under the statute are violated. Under such circumstances, it would be inappropriate to consult executive interpretations of § 1854 to resolve ambiguities surrounding the scope of AWPA’s judicially enforceable remedy.
Congress clearly envisioned, indeed expressly mandated, a role for the Department of Labor in administering the statute by requiring the Secretary to promulgate standards implementing AWPA’s motor vehicle provisions. § 1841(d). This delegation, however, does not empower the Secretary to regulate the scope of the judicial power vested by the statute. Although agency determinations within the scope of delegated authority are entitled to deference, it is fundamental “that an agency may not bootstrap itself into an area in which it has no jurisdiction.” Federal Maritime Comm’n v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U. S. 726, 745 (1973); SEC v. Sloan, 436 U. S. 103, 119 (1978) (same); cf. Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United States, 434 U. S. 275, 288, n. 5 (1978) (rejecting “Administrator’s unexplained exercise of supposed authority”). Accordingly, the Secretary’s conclusion that workers’ compensation benefits, where available, provide the exclusive remedy for violations of AWPA is not entitled to Chevron deference.
Ill
Our review of the language and structure of AWPA leads us to conclude that ÁWPA does not establish workers’ compensation benefits as an exclusive remedy under § 1854, even where state workers’ compensation schemes purport to establish their benefits as exclusive of all other relief. Accordingly, the decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Section 1854(a) provides:
“Any person aggrieved by a violation of this chapter or any regulation under this chapter by a farm labor contractor, agricultural employer, agricultural association, or other person may file suit in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy and without regard to the citizenship of the parties and without regard to exhaustion of any alternative administrative remedies provided herein.”
Section 1854(c)(1) provides:
“If the court finds that the respondent has intentionally violated any provision of this chapter or any regulation under this chapter, it may award damages up to and including an amount equal to the amount of actual damages, or statutory damages of up to $500 per plaintiff per violation, or other equitable relief . . . .”
In other statutes, Congress has expressed clearly its intent to limit the availability of a federal remedy where a claimant has received workers’ compensation benefits related to the same injury. See, e. g., 56 Stat. 1032, 42 U. S. C. § 1705(a) (1982 ed.) (providing that “[n]o benefits shall be paid or furnished under [the War Hazards Compensation Act] for injury or death to any person who recovers or receives workmen’s compensation benefits for the same injury or death under . . . the law of any State”).
For similar reasons, we reject Adams Fruit’s claim that the refusal to exempt employers from AWPA liability where they have obtained workers’ compensation coverage upsets employers’ reasonable expectations regarding liability. Because the insurance requirements of § 1841 establish a floor of coverage rather than a ceiling of liability, employers’ expectations to the contrary are unreasonable. Moreover, to the extent that Adams Fruit’s argument rests on equitable considerations, no inequity occurs where, as here, a predicate for liability is an intentional violation of the law. See 29 U. S. C. § 1854(c)(1) (1982 ed.).
The States of California and Texas and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — appearing as amici curiae for respondents — have urged this Court to affirm the decision below. Each “has a provision in its state workers’ compensation statute making workers’ recovery for personal injuries under the state workers’ insurance system the exclusive mechanism for personal injury compensation,” and each declares an interest in “prevent[ing] its principal statutory mechanism for the recompense of injured migrant workers from being transmuted into a contraption destroying federal protection for those same workers.” Brief for Texas et al. as Amici Curiae 1-2.
We agree with the court below that an award of actual damages under AWPA may be offset in light of a farmworker’s receipt of benefits under state workers’ compensation law.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | J | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether a court, in determining an award of reasonable attorney’s fees under § 7002(e) of the Solid Waste Disposal Act (SWDA), 90 Stat. 2826, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 6972(e), or § 505(d) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act (CWA)), 86 Stat. 889, as amended, 33 U. S. C. § 1365(d), may enhance the fee award above the “lodestar” amount in order to reflect the fact that the party’s attorneys were retained on a contingent-fee basis and thus assumed the risk of receiving no payment at all for their services. Although different fee-shifting statutes are involved, the question is essentially identical to the one we addressed, but did not resolve, in Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, 483 U. S. 711 (1987) (Delaware Valley II).
I
Respondent Ernest Dague, Sr. (whom we will refer to in place of all the respondents), owns land in Vermont adjacent to a landfill that was owned and operated by petitioner city of Burlington. Represented by attorneys retained on a contingent-fee basis, he sued Burlington over its operation of the landfill. The District Court ruled, inter alia, that Burlington had violated provisions of the SWDA and the CWA, and ordered Burlington to close the landfill by January 1,1990. It also determined that Dague was a “substantially prevailing party” entitled to an award of attorney’s fees under the Acts, see 42 U. S. C. § 6972(e); 33 U. S. C. § 1365(d). 732 F. Supp. 458 (Vt. 1989).
In calculating the attorney’s fees award, the District Court first found reasonable the figures advanced by Dague for his attorneys’ hourly rates and for the number of hours expended by them, producing a resulting “lodestar” attorney’s fee of $198,027.50. (What our cases have termed the “lodestar” is “the product of reasonable hours times a reasonable rate,” Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, 478 U. S. 546, 565 (1986) (Delaware Valley I).) Addressing Dague’s request for a contingency enhancement, the court looked to Circuit precedent, which provided that “‘the rationale that should guide the court’s discretion is whether “[w]ithout the possibility of a fee enhancement. . . competent counsel might refuse to represent [environmental] clients thereby denying them effective access to the courts.”’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 131-132 (quoting Friends of the Earth v. Eastman Kodak Co., 834 F. 2d 295, 298 (CA2 1987), in turn quoting Lewis v. Coughlin, 801 F. 2d 570, 576 (CA2 1986)).. Following this guidance, the court declared that Dague’s “risk of not prevailing was substantial” and that “absent an opportunity for enhancement, [Dague] would have faced substantial difficulty in obtaining counsel of reasonable skill and competence in this complicated field of law.” It concluded that “a 25% enhancement is appropriate, but anything more would be a windfall to the attorneys.” It therefore enhanced the lodestar amount by 25% — $49,506.87. App. to Pet. for Cert. 133, 134.
The Court of Appeals affirmed in all respects. Reviewing the various opinions in Delaware Valley II, the court concluded that the issue whether and when a contingency enhancement is warranted remained open, and expressly disagreed with the position taken by some Courts of Appeals that the concurrence in Delaware Valley II was controlling. The court stated that the District Court had correctly relied on Circuit precedent, and, holding that the District Court’s findings were not clearly erroneous, it upheld the 25% contingency enhancement. 935 F. 2d 1343, 1359-1360 (CA2 1991). We granted certiorari only with respect to the propriety of the contingency enhancement. 502 U. S. 1071 (1992).
I — i
We first provide some background to the issue before us. Fees for legal services in litigation may be either “certain” or “contingent” (or some hybrid of the two). A fee is certain if it is payable without regard to the outcome of the suit; it is contingent if the obligation to pay depends on a particular result’s being obtained. Under the most common • contingent-fee contract for litigation, the attorney receives no payment for his services if his client loses. Under this arrangement, the attorney bears a contingent risk of nonpayment that is the inverse of the case’s prospects of success: if his client has an 80% chance of winning, the attorney’s contingent risk is 20%.
In Delaware Valley II, we reversed a judgment that had affirmed enhancement of a fee award to reflect the contingent risk of nonpayment. In the process, we addressed whether the typical federal fee-shifting statute (there, § 304(d) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U. S. C. § 7604(d)) permits an attorney’s fees award to be enhanced on account of contingency. In the principal opinion, Justice White, joined on this point by three other Justices, determined that such enhancement is not permitted. 483 U. S., at 723-727. Justice O’Connor, in an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, concluded that no enhancement for contingency is appropriate “unless the applicant can establish that without an adjustment for risk the prevailing party would have faced substantial difficulties in finding counsel in the local or other relevant market,” id., at 733 (internal quotation marks omitted), and that any enhancement “must be based on the difference in market treatment of contingent fee cases as a class, rather than on an assessment of the ‘riskiness’ of any particular case,” id., at 731 (emphasis in original). Justice Blackmun’s dissenting opinion, joined by three other Justices, concluded that enhancement for contingency is always statutorily required. Id., at 737-742,754.
We turn again to this same issue.
t — 4
Section 7002(e) of the SWDA and § 505(d) of the CWA authorize a court to “award costs of litigation (including rea~ sonable attorney ,.. fees)” to a “prevailing or substantially prevailing party.” 42 U. S. C. § 6972(e) (emphasis added); 33 U. S. C. § 1365(d) (emphasis added). This language is similar to that of many other federal fee-shifting statutes, see, e. g., 42 U. S. C. §§ 1988,2000e-5(k), 7604(d); our case law construing what is a “reasonable” fee applies uniformly to all of them. Flight Attendants v. Zipes, 491 U. S. 754, 758, n. 2 (1989).
The “lodestar” figure has, as its name suggests, become the guiding light of our fee-shifting jurisprudence. We have established a “strong presumption” that the lodestar represents the “reasonable” fee, Delaware Valley I, supra, at 565, and have placed upon the fee applicant who seeks more than that the burden of showing that “such an adjustment is necessary to the determination of a reasonable fee.” Blum v. Stenson, 465 U. S. 886, 898 (1984) (emphasis added). The Court of Appeals held, and Dague argues here, that a “reasonable” fee for attorneys who have been retained on a contingency-fee basis must go beyond the lodestar, to compensate for risk of loss and of consequent nonpayment. Fee-shifting statutes should be construed, he contends, to replicate the economic incentives that operate in the private legal market, where attorneys working on a contingency-fee basis can be expected to charge some premium over their ordinary hourly rates. Petitioner Burlington argues, by contrast, that the lodestar fee may not be enhanced for contingency.
We note at the outset that an enhancement for contingency would likely duplicate in substantial part factors already subsumed in the lodestar. The risk of loss in a particular case (and, therefore, the attorney’s contingent risk) is the product of two factors: (1) the legal and factual merits of the claim, and (2) the difficulty of establishing those merits. The second factor, however, is ordinarily reflected in the lodestar — either in the higher number of hours expended to overcome the difficulty, or in the higher hourly rate of the attorney skilled and experienced enough to do so. Blum, supra, at 898-899. Taking account of it again through lodestar enhancement amounts to double counting. Delaware Valley II, 483 U. S., at 726-727 (plurality opinion).
The first factor (relative merits of the claim) is not reflected in the lodestar, but there are good reasons why it should play no part in the calculation of the award. It is, of course, a factor that always exists (no claim has a 100% chance of success), so that computation of the lodestar would never end the court’s inquiry in contingent-fee cases. See id., at 740 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). Moreover, the consequence of awarding contingency enhancement to take account of this “merits” factor would be to provide attorneys with the same incentive to bring relatively meritless claims as relatively meritorious ones. Assume, for example, two claims, one with underlying merit of 20%, the other of 80%. Absent any contingency enhancement, a contingent-fee attorney would prefer to take the latter, since he is four times more likely to be paid. But with a contingency enhancement, this preference will disappear: the enhancement for the 20% claim would be a multiplier of 5 (100/20), which is quadruple the 1.25 multiplier (100/80) that would attach to the 80% claim. Thus, enhancement for the contingency risk posed by each case would encourage meritorious claims to be brought, but only at the social cost of indiscriminately encouraging nonmeritorious claims to be brought as well. We think that an unlikely objective of the “reasonable fees” provisions. “These statutes were not designed as a form of economic relief to improve the financial lot of lawyers.” Delaware Valley I, 478 U. S., at 565.
Instead of enhancement based upon the contingency risk posed by each case, Dague urges that we adopt the approach set forth in the Delaware Valley II concurrence. We decline to do so, first and foremost because we do not see how it can intelligibly be applied. On the one hand, it would require the party seeking contingency enhancement to “establish that without the adjustment for risk [he] ‘would have faced substantial difficulties in finding counsel in the local or other relevant market/” 488 U. S., at 733. On the other hand, it would forbid enhancement based “on an assessment of the ‘riskiness’ of any particular case.”' Id., at 731; see id., at 734 (no enhancement “based on ‘legal’ risks or risks peculiar to the case”). But since the predominant reason that a contingent-fee claimant has difficulty finding counsel in any legal market where the winner’s attorney’s fees will be paid by the loser is that attorneys view his case as too risky (i. e., too unlikely to succeed), these two propositions, as a practical matter, collide. See King v. Palmer, 292 U. S. App. D. C. 362, 371, 950 F. 2d 771, 780 (1991) (en banc), cert. pending sub nom. King v. Ridley, No. 91-1370.
A second difficulty with the approach taken by the concurrence in Delaware Valley II is that it would base the contingency enhancement on “the difference in market treatment of contingent fee cases as a class.” 483 U. S., at 731 (emphasis in original). To begin with, for a very large proportion of contingency-fee cases — those seeking not monetary damages but injunctive or other equitable relief — there is no “market treatment.” Such eases scarcely exist, except to the extent Congress has created an artificial “market” for them by fee shifting — and looking to that “market” for the meaning of fee shifting is obviously circular. Our decrees would follow the “market,” which in turn is based on our decrees. See King v. Palmer, 285 U. S. App. D. C. 68, 76, 906 F. 2d 762, 770 (1990) (Williams, J., concurring) (“I see the judicial judgment as defining the market, not vice versa”), vacated, 292 U. S. App. D. C. 362, 950 F. 2d 771 (1991), cert. pending sub nom. King v. Ridley, No. 91-1370. But even apart from that difficulty, any approach that applies uniform treatment to the entire class of contingent-fee cases, or to any conceivable subject-matter-based subclass, cannot possibly achieve the supposed goal of mirroring market incentives. As discussed above, the contingent risk of a case (and hence the difficulty of getting contingent-fee lawyers to take it) depends principally upon its particular merits. Contingency enhancement calculated on any class-wide basis, therefore, guarantees at best (leaving aside the double-counting problem described earlier) that those cases within the class that have the class-average chance of success will be compensated according to what the “market” requires to produce the services, and that all cases having above-class-average chance of success will be overcompensated.
Looking beyond the Delaware Valley II concurrence’s approach, we perceive no other basis, fairly derivable from the fee-shifting statutes, by which contingency enhancement, if adopted, could be restricted to fewer than all contingent-fee cases. And we see a number of reasons for concluding that no contingency enhancement whatever is compatible with the fee-shifting statutes at issue. First, just as the statutory language limiting fees to prevailing (or substantially prevailing) parties bars a prevailing plaintiff from recovering fees relating to claims on which he lost, Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424 (1988), so should it bar a prevailing plaintiff from recovering for the risk of loss. See Delaware Valley II, supra, at 719-720, 724-725 (principal opinion). An attorney operating on a contingency-fee basis pools the risks presented by his various cases: cases that turn out to be successful pay for the time he gambled on those that did not. To award a contingency enhancement under a fee-shifting statute would in effect pay for the attorney’s time (or anticipated time) in cases where his client does not prevail.
Second, both before and since Delaware Valley II, “we have generally turned away from the contingent-fee model” — which would make the fee award a percentage of the value of the relief awarded in the primary action — “to the lodestar model.” Venegas v. Mitchell, 495 U. S. 82, 87 (1990). We have done so, it must be noted, even though the lodestar model often (perhaps, generally) results in a larger fee award than the contingent-fee model. See, e. g., Report of the Federal Courts Study Committee 104 (Apr. 2, 1990) (lodestar method may “give lawyers incentives to run up hours unnecessarily, which can lead to overeompensation”). For example, in Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U. S. 87 (1989), we held that the lodestar governed, even though it produced a fee that substantially exceeded the amount provided in the contingent-fee agreement between plaintiff and his counsel (which was self-evidently an amount adequate to attract the needed legal services). Id., at 96. Contingency enhancement is a feature inherent in the contingent-fee model (since attorneys factor in the particular risks of a case in negotiating their fee and in deciding whether to accept the case). To engraft this feature onto the lodestar model would be to concoct a hybrid scheme that resorts to the contingent-fee model to increase a fee award but not to reduce it. Contingency enhancement is therefore not consistent with our general rejection of the contingent-fee model for fee awards, nor is it necessary to the determination of a reasonable fee.
And finally, the interest in ready administrability that has underlain our adoption of the lodestar approach, see, e. g., Hensley, 461 U. S., at 433, and the related interest in avoiding burdensome satellite litigation (the fee application “should not result in a second major litigation,” id., at 437), counsel strongly against adoption of contingency enhancement. Contingency enhancement would make the setting of fees more complex and arbitrary, hence more unpredictable, and hence more litigable. It is neither necessary nor even possible for application of the fee-shifting statutes to mimic the intricacies of the fee-paying market in every respect. See Delaware Valley I, 478 U. S., at 565.
* * *
Adopting the position set forth in Justice White s opinion in Delaware Valley II, 483 U. S., at 715-727, we hold that enhancement for contingency is not permitted under the fee-shifting statutes at issue. We reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment insofar as it affirmed the 25% enhancement of the lodestar.
It is so ordered.
Contrary to Justice Blackmun’s understanding, post, at 572, there is no reason in theory why the contingent-fee model could not apply to relief other than damages; where injunctive relief is obtained, for example, the fee award would simply be a percentage of the value of the injunctive relief There would be, to be sure, severe problems of administration in determining the value of injunctive relief, but such problems simply highlight why we have rejected the contingent-fee model in favor of the lodestar model.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | F | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari in these cases to answer two questions. First, whether petitioners committed extortion within the meaning of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951. Second, whether respondents, as private litigants, may obtain injunctive relief in a civil action pursuant to 18 U. S. C. §1964 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). We hold that petitioners did not commit extortion because they did not “obtain” property from respondents as required by the Hobbs Act. We further hold that our determination with respect to extortion under the Hobbs Act renders insufficient the other bases or predicate acts of racketeering supporting the jury’s conclusion that petitioners violated RICO. Therefore, we reverse without reaching the question of the availability of private injunctive relief under § 1964(c) of RICO.
We once again address questions arising from litigation between petitioners, a coalition of antiabortion groups called the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN), Joseph Scheidler, and other individuals and organizations that oppose legal abortion, and respondents, the National Organization for Women, Inc. (NOW), a national nonprofit organization that supports the legal availability of abortion, and two health care centers that perform abortions. Our earlier decision provides a substantial description of the factual and procedural history of this litigation, see National Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 510 U. S. 249 (1994), and so we recount only those details necessary to address the questions here presented.
In 1986, respondents sued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging, inter alia, that petitioners violated RICO’s §§ 1962(a), (c), and (d). They claimed that petitioners, all of whom were associated with PLAN, the alleged racketeering enterprise, were members of a nationwide conspiracy to “shut down” abortion clinics through a pattern of racketeering activity that included acts of extortion in violation of the Hobbs Act.
The District Court dismissed respondents’ RICO claims for failure to allege that the predicate acts of racketeering or the racketeering enterprise were economically motivated. See National Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 765 F. Supp. 937 (ND Ill. 1991). The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that dismissal. See National Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 968 F. 2d 612 (1992). We granted certiorari and reversed, concluding that RICO does not require proof that either the racketeering enterprise or the predicate acts of racketeering were motivated by an economic purpose. See Scheidler, 510 U. S., at 256-262. The case was remanded to the District Court for further proceedings.
After a 7-week trial, a six-member jury concluded that petitioners violated the civil provisions of RICO. By answering a series of special interrogatory questions, the jury found, inter alia, that petitioners’ alleged “pattern of racketeering activity” included 21 violations of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951; 25 violations of state extortion law; 25 instances of attempting or conspiring to commit either federal or state extortion; 28 violations of the Travel Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1952; and 23 instances of attempting to violate the Travel Act. The jury awarded $31,455.64 to respondent, the National Women’s Health Organization of Delaware, Inc., and $54,471.28 to the National Women’s Health Organization of Summit, Inc. These damages were trebled pursuant to § 1964(e). Additionally, the District Court entered a permanent nationwide injunction prohibiting petitioners from obstructing access to the clinics, trespassing on clinic property, damaging clinic property, or using violence or threats of violence against the clinics, their employees, or their patients.
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed in relevant part. The Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ contention that the things respondents claimed were “obtained” — the class women’s right to seek medical services from the clinics, the clinic doctors’ rights to perform their jobs, and the clinics’ rights to provide medical services and otherwise conduct their business — were not “property” for purposes of the Hobbs Act. The court explained that it had “repeatedly held that intangible property such as the right to conduct a business can be considered ‘property’ under the Hobbs Act.” 267 F. 3d 687, 709 (2001). Likewise, the Court of Appeals dismissed petitioners’ claim that even if “property” was involved, petitioners did not “obtain” that property; they merely forced respondents to part with it. Again relying on Circuit precedent, the court held that “ ‘as a legal matter, an extortionist can violate the Hobbs Act without either seeking or receiving money or anything else. A loss to, or interference with the rights of, the victim is all that is required.’” Ibid. (quoting United States v. Stillo, 57 F. 3d 553, 559 (CA7 1995)). Finally, the Court of Appeals upheld the issuance of the nationwide injunction, finding that private plaintiffs are entitled to obtain injunctive relief under § 1964(c) of RICO. We granted certiorari, 535 U. S. 1016 (2002), and now reverse.
We first address the question whether petitioners’ actions constituted extortion in violation of the Hobbs Act. That Act defines extortion as “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongfiil use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” 18 U. S. C. § 1951(b)(2). Petitioners allege that the jury’s verdict and the Court of Appeals’ decision upholding the verdict represent a vast and unwarranted expansion of extortion under the Hobbs Act. They say that the decisions below “rea[d] the requirement of ‘obtaining’ completely out of the statute” and conflict with the proper understanding of property for purposes of the Hobbs Act. Brief for Petitioners Joseph Scheidler et al. in No. 01-1118, pp. 11-13.
Respondents, throughout the course of this litigation, have asserted, as the jury instructions at the trial reflected, that petitioners committed extortion under the Hobbs Act by using or threatening to use force, violence, or fear to cause respondents “to give up” property rights, namely, “a woman’s right to seek medical services from a clinic, the right of the doctors, nurses or other clinic staff to perform their jobs, and the right of the clinics to provide medical services free from wrongful threats, violence, coercion and fear.” Jury Instruction No. 24, App. 136. Perhaps recognizing the apparent difficulty in reconciling either its position (that “giving] up” these alleged property rights is sufficient) or the Court of Appeals’ holding (that “interfering] with such rights” is sufficient) with the requirement that petitioners “obtained] . . . property from” them, respondents have shifted the thrust of their theory. 267 F. 3d, at 709. Respondents now assert that petitioners violated the Hobbs Act by “seeking to get control of the use and disposition of respondents’ property.” Brief for Respondents 24. They argue that because the right to control the use and disposition of an asset is property, petitioners, who interfered with, and in some instances completely disrupted, the ability of the clinics to function, obtained or attempted to obtain respondents’ property.
The United States offers a view similar to that of respondents, asserting that “where the property at issue is a business’s intangible right to exercise exclusive control over the use of its assets, [a] defendant obtains that property by obtaining control over the use of those assets.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22. Although the Government acknowledges that the jury’s finding of extortion may have been improperly based on the conclusion that petitioners deprived respondents of a liberty interest, it maintains that under its theory of liability, petitioners committed extortion.
We need not now trace what are the outer boundaries of extortion liability under the Hobbs Act, so that liability might be based on obtaining something as intangible as another’s right to exercise exclusive control over the use of a party’s business assets. Our decisions in United States v. Green, 350 U. S. 415, 420 (1956) (explaining that “extortion ... in no way depends upon having a direct benefit conferred on the person who obtains the property”), and Carpenter v. United States, 484 U. S. 19, 27 (1987) (finding that confidential business information constitutes “property” for purposes of the federal mail fraud statute), do not require such a result. Whatever the outer boundaries may be, the effort to characterize petitioners’ actions here as an “obtaining of property from” respondents is well beyond them. Such a result would be an unwarranted expansion of the meaning of that phrase.
Absent contrary direction from Congress, we begin our interpretation of statutory language with the general presumption that a statutory term has its common-law meaning. See Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 592 (1990); Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952). At common law, extortion was a property offense committed by a public official who took “any money or thing of value” that was not due to him under the pretense that he was entitled to such property by virtue of his office. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 141 (1765); 3 R. Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure § 1393, pp. 790-791 (1957). In 1946, Congress enacted the Hobbs Act, which explicitly “expanded the common-law definition of extortion to include acts by private individuals.” Evans v. United States, 504 U. S. 255, 261 (1992) (emphasis deleted). While the Hobbs Act expanded the scope of common-law extortion to include private individuals, the statutory language retained the requirement that property must be “obtained.” See 18 U.S. C. § 1951(b)(2).
Congress used two sources of law as models in formulating the Hobbs Act: the Penal Code of New York and the Field Code, a 19th-century model penal code. See Evans, supra, at 261-262, n. 9. Both the New York statute and the Field Code defined extortion as “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right.” 4 Commissioners of the Code, Proposed Penal Code of the State of New York §613 (1865) (reprint 1998) (Field Code); N. Y. Penal Law §850 (1909). The Field Code explained that extortion was one of four property crimes, along with robbery, larceny, and embezzlement, that included “the criminal acquisition of... property.” §584 note, p. 210. New York case law before the enactment of the Hobbs Act demonstrates that this “obtaining of property” requirement included both a deprivation and acquisition of property. See, e. g., People v. Ryan, 232 N. Y. 234, 236, 133 N. E. 572, 573 (1921) (explaining that an intent “to extort” requires an accompanying intent to “gain money or property”); People v. Weinseimer, 117 App. Div. 603, 616, 102 N. Y. S. 579, 588 (1907) (noting that in an extortion prosecution, the issue that must be decided is whether the accused “receive[d] [money] from the complainant”).
We too have recognized that the “obtaining” requirement of extortion under New York law entailed both a deprivation and acquisition of property. See United States v. Enmons, 410 U. S. 396, 406, n. 16 (1973) (noting that “[j]udicial construction of the New York statute” demonstrated that “extortion requires an intent ‘to obtain that which in justice and equity the party is not entitled to receive’ ” (quoting People v. Cuddihy, 151 Misc. 318, 324, 271 N. Y. S. 450, 456 (1934))). Most importantly, we have construed the extortion provision of the Hobbs Act at issue in these eases to require not only the deprivation but also the acquisition of property. See, e. g., Enmons, supra, at 400 (Extortion under the Hobbs Act requires a “‘wrongful’ taking of . . . property” (emphasis added)). With this understanding of the Hobbs Act’s requirement that a person must “obtain” property from another party to commit extortion, we turn to the facts of these cases.
There is no dispute in these cases that petitioners interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights. Likewise, petitioners’ counsel readily acknowledged at oral argument that aspects of his clients’ conduct were criminal. But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of “shutting down” a clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not “obtain” respondents’ property. Petitioners may have deprived or sought to deprive respondents of their alleged property right of exclusive control of their business assets, but they did not acquire any such property. Petitioners neither pursued nor received “something of value from” respondents that they could exercise, transfer, or sell. United States v. Nardello, 393 U. S. 286, 290 (1969). To conclude that such actions constituted extortion would effectively discard the statutory requirement that property must be obtained from another, replacing it instead with the notion that merely interfering with or depriving someone of property is sufficient to constitute extortion.
Eliminating the requirement that property must be obtained to constitute extortion would not only conflict with the express requirement of the Hobbs Act, it would also eliminate the recognized distinction between extortion and the separate crime of coercion — a distinction that is implicated in these cases. The crime of coercion, which more accurately describes the nature of petitioners’ actions, involves the use of force or threat of force to restrict another’s freedom of action. Coercion’s origin is statutory, and it was clearly defined in the New York Penal Code as a separate, and lesser, offense than extortion when Congress turned to New York law in drafting the Hobbs Act. New York case law applying the coercion statute before the passage of the Hobbs Act involved the prosecution of individuals who, like petitioners, employed threats and acts of force and violence to dictate and restrict the actions and decisions of businesses. See, e.g., People v. Ginsberg, 262 N. Y. 556, 188 N. E. 62 (1933) (affirming convictions for coercion where defendant used threatened and actual property damage to compel the owner of a drug store to become a member of a local trade association and to remove price advertisements for specific merchandise from his store’s windows); People v. Scotti, 266 N. Y. 480, 195 N. E. 162 (1934) (affirming conviction for coercion where defendants used threatened and actual force to compel a manufacturer to enter into an agreement with a labor union of which the defendants were members); People v. Kaplan, 240 App. Div. 72, 269 N. Y. S. 161 (1934) (affirming convictions for coercion where defendants, members of a labor union, used threatened and actual physical violence to compel other members of the union to drop lawsuits challenging the manner in which defendants were handling the union’s finances).
With this distinction between extortion and coercion clearly drawn in New York law prior to 1946, Congress’ decision to include extortion as a violation of the Hobbs Act and omit coercion is significant assistance to our interpretation of the breadth of the extortion provision. This assistance is amplified by other evidence of Congress’ awareness of the difference between these two distinct crimes. In 1934, Congress formulated the Anti-Racketeering Act, ch. 569, 48 Stat. 979. This Act, which was the predecessor to the Hobbs Act, targeted, as its name suggests, racketeering activities that affected interstate commerce, including both extortion and coercion as defined under New York law. Accordingly, the Act contained both a section explicitly prohibiting coercion and a section prohibiting the offense of extortion as defined by the Field Code and New York Penal Code. See ch. 569, §§ 2(a) and 2(b).
Several years after the enactment of the Anti-Racketeering Act, this Court decided United States v. Teamsters, 315 U. S. 521 (1942). In Teamsters, this Court construed an exception provided in the Anti-Racketeering Act for the payment of wages by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee to find that the Act “did not cover the actions of union truckdrivers who exacted money by threats or violence from out-of-town drivers in return for undesired and often unutilized services.” United States v. Culbert, 435 U. S. 371, 377 (1978) (citing Teamsters, supra). “Congressional disapproval of this decision was swift,” and the Hobbs Act was subsequently enacted to supersede the Anti-Racketeering Act and reverse the result in Teamsters. Enmons, 410 U. S., at 402, and n. 8. The Act prohibited interference with commerce by “robbery or extortion” but, as explained above, did not mention coercion.
This omission of coercion is particularly significant in light of the fact that after Teamsters, a “paramount congressional concern” in drafting the Hobbs Act “was to be clear about what conduct was prohibited.” Culbert, supra, at 378. Accordingly, the Act “carefully defines its key terms, such as ‘robbery,’ ‘extortion,’ and ‘commerce.’ ” 435 U. S., at 373. Thus, while coercion and extortion certainly overlap to the extent that extortion necessarily involves the use of coercive conduct to obtain property, there has been and continues to be a recognized difference between these two crimes, see, e. g., ALI, Model Penal Code and Commentaries §§ 212.5, 223.4 (1980) (hereinafter Model Penal Code), and we find it evident that this distinction was not lost on Congress in formulating the Hobbs Act.
We have said that the words of the Hobbs Act “do not lend themselves to restrictive interpretation” because they “ ‘manifest]... a purpose to use all the constitutional power Congress has to punish interference with interstate commerce by extortion, robbery or physical violence.’” Culbert, supra, at 373 (quoting Stirone v. United States, 361 U. S. 212, 215 (1960)). We have also said, construing the Hobbs Act in Enmons, supra, at 411:
“Even if the language and history of the Act were less clear than we have found them to be, the Act could not properly be expanded as the Government suggests — for two related reasons. First, this being a criminal statute, it must be strictly construed, and any ambiguity must be resolved in favor of lenity” (citations omitted).
We think that these two seemingly antithetical statements can be reconciled. Culbert refused to adopt the view that Congress had not exercised the full extent of its commerce power in prohibiting extortion which “affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce.” But there is no contention by petitioners here that their acts did not affect interstate commerce. Their argument is that their acts did not amount to the crime of extortion as set forth in the Act, so the rule of lenity referred to in Enmons may apply to their case quite consistently with the statement in Culbert. “[W]hen there are two rational readings of a criminal statute, one harsher than the other, we are to choose the harsher only when Congress has spoken in clear and definite language.” McNally v. United States, 483 U. S. 350, 359-360 (1987). If the distinction between extortion and coercion, which we find controls these cases, is to be abandoned, such a significant expansion of the law’s coverage must come from Congress, and not from the courts.
Because we find that petitioners did not obtain or attempt to obtain property from respondents, we conclude that there was no basis upon which to find that they committed extortion under the Hobbs Act.
The jury also found that petitioners had committed extortion under various state-law extortion statutes, a separate RICO predicate offense. Petitioners challenged the jury instructions as to these on appeal, but the Court of Appeals held that any error was harmless, because the Hobbs Act verdicts were sufficient to support the relief awarded. Respondents argue in this Court that state extortion offenses do not have to be identical to Hobbs Act extortion to be predicate offenses supporting a RICO violation. They concede, however, that for a state offense to be an “act or threat involving . . . extortion, . . . which is chargeable under State law,” as RICO requires, see 18 U. S. C. § 1961(1), the conduct must be capable of being generically classified as extortionate. Brief for Respondents 33-34. They further agree that such “generic” extortion is defined as “ ‘obtaining something of value from another with his consent induced by the wrongful use of force, fear, or threats.’ ” Id., at 34 (quoting Nardello, 393 U. S., at 290).
This concession is in accord with our decisions in Nardello and Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575 (1990). In Nardello, we held that the Travel Act’s prohibition, 18 U. S. C. § 1952(b)(2), against ‘‘extortion ... in violation of the laws of the State in which committed or of the United States” applies to extortionate conduct classified by a state penal code as blackmail rather than extortion. We determined that if an act prohibited under state law fell within a generic definition of extortion, for which we relied on the Model Penal Code’s definition of “obtaining something of value from another with his consent induced by the wrongful use of force, fear, or threats,” it would constitute a violation of the Travel Act’s prohibition regardless of the State’s label for that unlawful act. - See Nardello, supra, at 296 (explaining that regardless of Pennsylvania’s labeling defendants’ acts as blackmail and not extortion, defendants violated the Travel Act because “the indictment encompasses a type of activity generally known as extortionate since money was to be obtained from the victim by virtue of fear and threats of exposure”). In Taylor, relying in part on Nardello, we concluded that in including “burglary” as a violent crime in 18 U. S. C. §924(e)’s sentencing enhancement provision for felons’ possessing firearms, Congress meant “burglary” in “the generic sense in which the term is now used in the criminal codes of most States.” 495 U. S., at 598. Accordingly, where as here the Model Penal Code and a majority of States recognize the crime of extortion as requiring a party to obtain or to seek to obtain property, as the Hobbs Act requires, the state extortion offense for purposes of RICO must have a similar requirement.
Because petitioners did not obtain or attempt to obtain respondents’ property, both the state extortion claims and the claim of attempting or conspiring to commit state extortion were fatally flawed. The 23 violations of the Travel Act and 23 acts of attempting to violate the Travel Act also fail. These acts were committed in furtherance of allegedly extortionate conduct. But we have already determined that petitioners did not commit or attempt to commit extortion.
Because all of the predicate acts supporting the jury’s finding of a RICO violation must be reversed, the judgment that petitioners violated RICO must also be reversed. Without an underlying RICO violation, the injunction issued by the District Court must necessarily be vacated. We therefore need not address the second question presented— whether a private plaintiff in a civil RICO action is entitled to injunctive relief under 18 U. S. C. § 1964.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly
Reversed.
The other petitioners include Andrew Scholberg, Timothy Murphy, and Operation Rescue.
NOW represents a certified class of all NOW members and nonmembers who have used or would use the services of an abortion clinic in the United States. The two clinics, the National Women’s Health Organization of Summit, Inc., and the National Women’s Health Organization of Delaware, Inc., represent a class of all clinics in the United States at which abortions are provided.
The Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951(a), provides that “[w]hoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
The instruction given to the jury regarding extortion under the Hobbs Act provided that “[plaintiffs have alleged that the defendant and others associated with PLAN committed acts that violate federal law prohibiting extortion. In order to show that extortion has been committed in violation of federal law, the plaintiffs must show that the defendant or someone else associated with PLAN knowingly, willfully, and 'wrongfully used actual or threatened force, violence or fear to cause women, clinic doctors, nurses or other staff, or the clinics themselves to give up a ‘property right.’” Jury Instruction No. 24, App. 136.
The Solicitor General agreed at oral argument that even if we accept the Government’s view as to extortion under the Hobbs Act, the cases must be remanded because the generalized jury instruction regarding federal extortion included a woman’s right to seek medical services as a property right petitioners could extort from respondents; a right he acknowledged is more accurately characterized as an individual liberty interest. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30-31.
Accordingly, the dissent is mistaken to suggest that our decision reaches, much less rejects, lower court decisions such as United States v. Tropiano, 418 F. 2d 1069, 1076 (1969), in which the Second Circuit concluded that the intangible right to solicit refuse collection accounts “constituted property within the Hobbs Act definition.”
Representative Hobbs explicitly stated that the term extortion was “based on the New York law.” 89 Cong. Rec. 3227 (1943).
The dissent endorses the opinion of the Court of Appeals in United States v. Arena, 180 F. 3d 380 (CA2 1999), to reach a more expansive definition of “obtain” than is found in the cases just cited. The Court of Appeals quoted part of a dictionary definition of the word “obtain” in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 180 F. 3d, at 394. The full text of the definition reads “to gain or attain possession or disposal of.” That court then resorted to the dictionary definition of “disposal,” which includes “the regulation of the fate ... of something.” Surely if the rule of lenity, which we have held applicable to the Hobbs Act, see infra, at 408, means anything, it means that the familiar meaning of the word “obtain”— to gain possession of — should be preferred to the vague and obscure “to attain regulation of the fate of.”
“Question: But are we talking about actions that constitute the commission of some kind of criminal offense in the process?
“Mk. Englert: Oh, yes. Trespass.
“Question: Yes, and other things, destruction of property and so forth, I suppose.
“Mr. Englert: Oh, yes_
“Question: I mean, we’re not talking about conduct that is lawful here.
“Mr. Englert: We are not talking about extortion, but we are talking about some things that could be punished much less severely. It has never been disputed in this case . .. that there were trespasses.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 8-9.
New York Penal Law § 530 (1909), Coercing another person a misdemeanor, provided: “A person who with a view to compel another person to do or to abstain from doing an act which such other person has a legal right to do or to abstain from doing, wrongfully and unlawfully,
“1. Uses violence or inflicts injury upon such other person or his family, or a member thereof, or upon his property or threatens such violence or injury; or,
“2. Deprives any such person of any tool, implement or clothing or hinders him in the use thereof; or,
“3. Uses or attempts the intimidation of such person by threats or force,
“Is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
A subcommittee of the Commerce Committee, known as the Copeland Subcommittee, employed a working definition of “racketeering,” which included organized conspiracies to “commit the crimes of extortion or coercion, or attempts to commit extortion or coercion, within the definition of these crimes found in the penal law of the State of New York and other jurisdictions.” S. Rep. No. 1189, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1937); United States v. Culbert, 435 U. S. 371, 375-376 (1978).
As we reported in Culbert, supra, at 378: “Indeed, many Congressmen praised the [Hobbs Act] because it set out with more precision the conduct that was being made criminal. As Representative Hobbs noted, the words robbery and extortion ‘have been construed a thousand times by the courts. Everybody knows what they mean’ ” (quoting 91 Cong. Rec. 11912 (1945)).
Under the Model Penal Code §223.4, Comment 1, pp. 201-202, extortion requires that one “obtains [the] property of another” using threat as “the method employed to deprive the victim of his property.” This “obtaining” is further explained as “ ‘bringing] about a transfer or purported transfer of a legal interest in the property, whether to the obtainer or another.’” Id., §223.3, Comment 2, at 182. Coercion, on the other hand, is defined as making “specified categories of threats . . . with the purpose of unlawfully restricting another’s freedom of action to his detriment.” Id., §212.5, Comment 2, at 264.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | E | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1944 Congress authorized the construction of a dam and reservoir on the Roanoke River in Virginia and North Carolina. For purposes of that project the Government acquired by condemnation a flowage easement over 1840 acres of fast lands adjacent to the Dan River, a navigable tributary of the Roanoke. This 1840-acre tract was part of a 7400-acre estate. The respondent owned a perpetual and exclusive flowage easement over 1540 acres within the easement taken by the Government. The only question presented by this case concerns the compensation awarded to the respondent for the destruction of its easement.
The respondent’s easement had been. purchased from the owner of the estate and had been conveyed to the respondent’s predecessors in title by various deeds over a period of many years, beginning in 1907. Along with the easement the fee owner had also expressly granted by deed the release of all claims for damage to the residue of the estate resulting from the exercise of rights under the easement.
In 1951, after extended negotiations, the owner of the estate agreed to convey to the Government a flowage easement over the 1840-acre tract in return for the payment of one dollar. This agreement was expressly made subject to “such water,-flowage, riparian and other rights, if any,” as the respondent owned in the tract. The agreement also provided that the Government could elect to acquire its easement by a condemnation proceeding, in which event the agreed consideration of one dollar would be “the full amount of the award of just compensation inclusive of interest.” Exercising this election, the Government instituted condemnation proceedings in the District Court to acquire a flowage easement over the 1840 acres in question, depositing one dollar as the estimated just compensation for the property to be taken. The fee owner acknowledged the settlement contract previously made and agreed to the one dollar compensation. The respondent, whose easement was to be destroyed, intervened in the proceedings to contest “the issue of just compensation.”
The District Court made a substantial award to the respondent as compensation for the taking of its flowage easement. The judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, on the authority of that court’s decision in United States v. Twin City Power Co., 215 F. 2d 592. 218 F. 2d 524. After the judgment in the Twin City case was reversed by this Court, 350 U. S. 222, we vacated the judgment in this litigation and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for further consideration in the light, of our Twin City decision. 350 U. S. 956. The Court of Appeals in turn remanded the case to the District Court with instructions that, in computing the amount of compensation to be awarded for the taking of the respondent’s easement, there should be eliminated “any element of value arising from the availability of the land for water power purposes due to its being situate on a navigable stream.” 235 F. 2d 327, 330, rehearing denied 237 F. 2d 165.
On remand the District Court proceeded in accordance with these directions. Commissioners were appointed and given detailed instructions to follow in computing the compensation to be awarded the respondent. These instructions included an explicit direction to exclude from the computation any element of value arising from the availability of the land for water power purposes attributable to its location on a navigable stream. The Commissioners found that, under the criteria imposed by the court, the value of the respondent’s easement was $65,520. The district judge accepted these findings, and in accordance with them awarded the respondent that sum. On appeal the judgment was affirmed. 270 F. 2d 707.
We granted certiorari to consider the Government’s claim that the respondent’s easement had no compen-sable value when appropriated by the United States. 362 U. S. 947. For the reasons that follow we reject that argument in the extreme form it has been presented, but we have concluded that the judgment must nonetheless be set aside for a redetermination of the compensation award.
It is indisputable, as the Government acknowledges, that a flowage easement is “property” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. See United States v. Welch, 217 U. S. 333; Panhandle Co. v. Highway Comm’n, 294 U. S. 613, 618; Western Union Tel. Co. v. Penn. R. Co., 195 U. S. 540, 570. Similarly, there can be no question that the Government’s destruction of that easement would ordinarily constitute a taking of property within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. See Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 13 Wall. 166, 181; United States v. Cress, 243 U. S. 316, 327-329; United States v. Kansas City Ins. Co., 339 U. S. 799, 809-811. Nevertheless, it is argued that the Government cannot be required to pay compensation for the destruction of the easement in the present case because the easement was subject to the overriding navigational servitude of the United States.
This navigational servitude — sometimes referred to as a “dominant servitude,” Federal Power Comm’n v. Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., 347 U. S. 239, 249, or a “superior navigation easement,” United States v. Grand River Dam Authority, 363 U. S. 229, 231 — is the privilege to appropriate without compensation which attaches to the exercise of the “power of the government to control and regulate navigable waters in the interest of commerce.” United States v. Commodore Park, 324 U. S. 386, 390. The power “is a dominant one which can be asserted to the exclusion of any competing or conflicting one.” United States v. Twin City Power Co., 350 U. S. 222, 224-225; United States v. Willow River Co., 324 U. S. 499, 510. A classic description of the scope of the power and of the privilege attending its exercise is to be found in the Court’s opinion in United States v. Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. Co.:
“The dominant power of the federal Government, as has been repeatedly held, extends to the entire bed of a stream, which includes the lands below ordinary high-water mark. The exercise of the power within these, limits is not an invasion of any private property right in such lands for which the United States must make compensation. [Citing cases.] The damage sustained results not from a taking of the riparian owner’s property in the stream bed, but from the lawful exercise of a power to which that property has always been subject.” 312 U. S. 592, 596-597.
Since the privilege or servitude only encompasses the exercise of this federal power with respect to the stream itself and the lands beneath and within its high-water mark, the Government must compensate for any taking of fast lands which results from the exercise of the power. This was the rationale of United States v. Kansas City Ins. Co., 339 U. S. 799, where the Court held that when a navigable stream was raised by the Government to its ordinary high-water mark and maintained continuously at that level in the interest of navigation, the Government was liable “for the effects of that change [in the water level] upon private property beyond the bed of the stream.” 339 U. S., at 800-801. See also United States v. Willow River Co., 324 U. S. 499, 509.
But though the Government’s navigational privilege does not extend to lands beyond the high-water mark of the stream, the privilege does affect the measure of damages when such land is taken. In United States v. Twin City Power Co., 350 U. S. 222, we held that the compensation awarded for the taking of fast lands should not include the value of the land as a site for hydroelectric power operations. It was pointed out that such value, derived from the location of the land, is attributable in the end to the flow of the stream — over which the Government has exclusive dominion. 350 U. S., at 225-227. Thus, just as the navigational privilege permits the Government to reduce the value of riparian lands by denying the riparian owner access to the stream without compensation for his loss, United States v. Commodore Park, 324 U. S. 386, 390-391; Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U. S. 141, 162-165; Gibson v. United States, 166 U. S. 269, 276,-it also permits the Government to disregard the value arising from this same fact of riparian location in compensating the owner when fast lands are appropriated.
The Government’s argument is that the rationale of Twin City makes payment of any compensation for the destruction of the respondent’s easement unnecessary in the present case. This argument is based on the theory that the respondent’s easement had no value save in conjunction with water power development. The respondent acknowledges that the courts below were correct in excluding any value of the easement derived from the availability of the land for water power purposes. It argues, however, that the easement had other value, derived from uses of the land not dependent upon the flow of the stream. If the easement did have such value, then the Government must compensate for the easement’s destruction under the rule of Kansas City Ins. Co., supra, since the easement was a property right in fast lands. The basic issue is thus whether the respondent’s easement might be found to have value other than in connection with the flow of the stream.
We think such a finding might be warranted. The evidence was that the highest and best use of the servient land (unconnected with riparian uses) was for agriculture, timber and grazing purposes. The respondent had an exclusive and perpetual property right to destroy those uses and the value which they created. This right was an attribute of a transferable, commercial easement with intrinsic value. It ■ had been acquired for a valuable consideration. It had a marketability roughly commensurate with the marketability of the subservient fee. Only an adventurous purchaser would have acquired the underlying fee interest in the 1540-acre tract for any purpose whatever, without also purchasing the easement.
If easements to flood fast lands were worthless as a matter of law when taken by the United States, it would follow that when the Government took such an easement from the owner of an unencumbered tract of land, the Government would have to pay the owner nothing. That is not the law. United States v. Kansas City Ins. Co., 339 U. S. 799. The Government itself acknowledges that it must pay such a landowner for the value of the property which does not stem from the flow of the stream, the value based upon the nonriparian uses of the property.
It follows that the Government must likewise compensate the easement owner for. that aspect of the easement’s value which is attributable not to water power, but to the depreciative impact of the easement upon the nonriparian uses of the property. The valuation of an easement upon the basis of its destructive impact upon other uses of the servient fee is a universally accepted method of determining its worth. See, e. g., Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 253; Karlson v. United States, 82 F. 2d 330, 337; Jahr, Eminent Domain, 252 and n. 6 (collecting cases); 4 Nichols, Eminent Domain, § 12.41 [2], n. 27 (collecting cases) (1951 ed.); 1 Orgel, Valuation under Eminent Domain, § 106, at 454 (2d ed.); Saxon, Appraising Flowage Easements, 24 Appraisal Journal 490, 494.
But the Government contends that the market value of the easement to those interested in developing the nonriparian uses of the fee can be ignored. It is claimed that, despite the general principle of indemnification underlying the Fifth Amendment, see Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 255, no compensation should be allowed for this value because it represents the “destructive function” of the easement. Cf. Roberts v. New York, 295 U. S. 264, 283. It is argued that equitable principles prohibit compensation for such valúe. But equity works the other way. At the very least, the Government’s argument would mean, in a case like this one, that compensation could be denied the fee owner because he had already conveyed the flowage easement, cf. United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 U. S. 256, 265-266, and denied the owner of the easement because it was valueless' against condemnation by the United States. The Government would thus destroy the entire property interest in fast lands without compensation. “The word 'just’ in the Fifth Amendment evokes ideas of 'fairness’ and 'equity’ . . . .” United State v. Commodities Corp., 339 U. S. 121, 124; see Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States, 148 U. S. 312, 324-326. The result contended for by the Government would hardly comport with those standards. The District Court and the Court of Appeals were correct in holding that a flowage easement over fast lands adjoining a navigable stream is property which cannot be appropriated without compensating the owner.
The remaining question is whether the District Court’s method of determining the amount of compensation to be awarded was correct. The court was clearly right in excluding all value attributable to the riparian location of the land. United States v. Twin City Power Co., 350 U. S. 222. There can be no quarrel either with the court’s procedure ' in directing the Commissioners to appraise first the easement taken by the Government, and then to apportion its value between the respondent and the owner of the subservient fee. United States v. Dunnington, 146 U. S. 338, 343-345, 350-354. And the court adopted an acceptable method of appraisal, indeed the conventional method, in valuing what was acquired by the Government by taking the difference between the value of the property before and after the Government’s easement was imposed. See Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 253. For these reasons we think that the court followed an entirely acceptable procedure in valuing the totality of what was appropriated by the Government.
In apportioning the respondent’s share of this value, however, we think that the court erred. The court apparently was of the view that the subservient fee interest in the 1540 acres was without value, and accordingly awarded to the respondent the entire value of what the Government appropriated in that acreage. The respondent was thus compensated as though it were the owner, not of an easement, but of an unencumbered fee, as the Court of Appeals recognized. 270 F. 2d, a,t 712. The record does not support such an apportionment.
The guiding principle of just compensation is reimbursement to the owner for the property interest taken. “He is entitled to be put in as good a position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken. He must be made whole but is not entitled to more.” Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 255. In many cases this principle can readily be served by the ascertainment of fair market value — “what a willing buyer would pay in cash to a willing seller.” United States v. Miller, 317 U. S. 369, 374. See United States v. Commodities Corp., 339 U. S. 121, 123; United States v. Cors, 337 U. S. 325, 333. But this is not an absolute standard nor an exclusive method of valuation. See United States v. Commodities Corp., supra, at 123; United States v. Cors, supra, at 332; United States v. Miller, supra, at 374-375; United States v. Toronto Nav. Co., 338 U. S. 396.
The record in the present case, as might be expected, contains no evidence of a market in flowage easements of the type here involved. In the absence of such evidence, the court valued the flowage easement as the equivalent of the value of the servient lands for agricultural, forestry, or grazing use. The court thus ascribed a maximum value to the respondent’s easement, a value not supported by the record.
We think the correct approach to the problem of valuation in a case of this kind was formulated by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Augusta Power Co. v. United States, 278 F. 2d 1. The basic issues in that case were virtually indistinguishable from those presented here. We are content to adopt the language of Judge Rives’ opinion with respect to the standard to be followed in valuing flowage easements of this character:
“If [the] Power Company had been successful in assembling the necessary lands, and in securing approval of the Federal Power Commission, and thereafter had actually exercised its easements by permanently flooding the lands, their value for agricultural and forestry purposes would have been destroyed. If, with that status, the United States had condemned the lands, the compensation due would be payable to [the] Power Company. That compensation would not include the hydroelectric power value, but it would embrace [the Power Company’s] property right to destroy the value of the lands for agricultural and forestry purposes.
“At the other extreme, if factors such as difficulty of assemblage of all necessary lands, the increasing economic advantage of steam plants over hydroelectric plants, the need for additional power in the particular area, etc., had made it certain that the flowage easements would never be exercised by the . . . Power Company or its assigns, excluding the United States, then such compensation as might be due would be payable to the owners of the fee title and nothing to the . . . Power Company.
“Between the two extremes just illustrated, the respective values of the fee and of the easement would fluctuate from time to time depending on the probability or improbability of actual exercise of the easement by the . . . Power Company or its assigns. If all interested parties were before the Court, the maximum which the United States would be required to pay would be the value of the lands, not including their value for hydroelectric power purposes. That is, however, a maximum, and not necessarily the measure of what the United States would have to pay under any and all circumstances. . . .
“. . . It seems to us that the maximum compensation payable for the flowage easement under any conceivable circumstances is so much of the value of the lands for agricultural and forestry purposes and for any other uses, not including hydroelectric power value, as the easement owner has a right to destroy or depreciate. That maximum is more simply expressed in the criterion adopted by the Commission, i. e., ‘the difference in the value of the land with and without the flowage easement.’ Subject to that maximum, the actual measure of compensation payable for the flowage easement is the value of the easement to its owner. ‘The question is, What has the owner lost? not, What has the taker gained?’ 1 Orgel on Valuation Under Eminent Domain, p. 352.” Augusta Power Co. v. United States, 278 F. 2d 1, 4-5. (Footnotes omitted.)
In a word, the value of the easement is the nonriparian value of the servient land discounted by the improbability of the easement’s exercise. It is to be emphasized that in assessing this improbability, no weight should be given to the prospect of governmental appropriation. The value of the easement must be neither enhanced nor diminished by the special need which the Government, had for it. United States v. Cors, 337 U. S. 325, 332-334; United States v. Miller, 317 U. S. 369; Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 261; United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Co., 229 U. S. 53, 76. The court must exclude any depreciation in value caused by the prospective taking once the Government “was committed” to the project. United States v. Miller, supra, at 376-377; see United States v. Cors, supra, at 332. Accordingly, the impact of that event upon the likelihood of actual exercise of the easement cannot be considered. As one writer has pointed out, “[i]t would be manifestly unjust to permit a public authority to depreciate property values by a threat ... [of the construction of a government project] and then to take advantage of this depression in the price which it must pay for the property” when eventually condemned. 1 Orgel, Valuation under Eminent Domain, § 105, at 447 (2d ed.); see Congressional School of Aeronautics v. State Roads Comm’n, 218 Md. 236, 249-250, 146 A. 2d 558, 565.
The judgment is vacated, and the case remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The record indicates that the owner was willing to accept this nominal amount because of her interest in developing the balance of the estate as a wild game preserve, a use which presumably would be enhanced by a contiguous artificial lake.
The detailed instructions were otherwise based upon a traditional method of valuing what the Government appropriated, i. e., the difference in the value of the servient land before and after the Government’s easement was imposed.
The owner of the fee, having agreed to convey her interest for one dollar, would, of course, not receive any larger amount apportioned to her interest. See Albrecht v. United States, 329 U. S. 599.
In determining the value of the Government’s easement, the court assumed its proportions to be limited to 1540 acres, rather than to the 1840 acres actually taken. This was entirely permissible. Since the owner of the fee was making no claim, the only objective of the proceedings in the District Court was to determine the amount of compensation to be awarded the respondent. It was quite logical, therefore, to appraise only that part of the Government’s easement which coincided with the respondent’s property interest, and thereafter to apportion to the respondent its share of what was taken by that much of the Government’s appropriation.
The court did not err, however, in including in the award to the respondent an amount for damages to the residue of the estate. The respondent was the record owner of the right to damage the residue, a right which the owner had expressly conveyed by separate deed for a valuable consideration. This was a property right in the residue, measurable by a monetary award to cover damages to the same. The amount of this portion of the award would depend upon the probability of the respondent’s easement being exercised. See accompanying text, infra.
In that case the Government had also argued upon the basis of our Twin City decision, that a private flowage easement over fast lands is valueless as a matter of law when taken by the Government for navigational purposes. The argument was unambiguously rejected: “Very clearly, the United States is in error when it claims . . . that it ‘has a dominant servitude which it can exercise in its discretion and without compensation.’ ” 278 F. 2d, at 4.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | D | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In cases where an applicant for federal habeas relief is not barred from obtaining an evidentiary hearing by 28 U. S. C. § 2254(e)(2), the decision to grant such a hearing rests in the discretion of the district court. Here, the District Court determined that respondent could not make out a colorable claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and therefore was not entitled to an evidentiary hearing. It did so after reviewing the state-court record and expanding the record to include additional evidence offered by respondent. The Court of Appeals held that the District Court abused its discretion in refusing to grant the hearing. We hold that it did not.
I
Respondent Jeffrey Landrigan was convicted in Oklahoma of second-degree murder in 1982. In 1986, while in custody for that murder, Landrigan repeatedly stabbed another inmate and was subsequently convicted of assault and battery with a deadly weapon. Three years later, Landrigan escaped from prison and murdered Chester Dean Dyer in Arizona.
An Arizona jury found Landrigan guilty of theft, second-degree burglary, and felony murder for having caused the victim’s death in the course of a burglary. At sentencing, Landrigan’s counsel attempted to present the testimony of Landrigan’s ex-wife and birth mother as mitigating evidence. But at Landrigan’s request, both women refused to testify. When the trial judge asked why the witnesses refused, Landrigan’s counsel responded that “it’s at my client’s wishes.” App. to Pet. for Cert. D-3. Counsel explained that he had “advised [Landrigan] very strongly that I think it’s very much against his interests to take that particular position.” Ibid. The court then questioned Landrigan:
“THE COURT: Mr. Landrigan, have you instructed your lawyer that you do not wish for him to bring any mitigating circumstances to my attention?
“THE DEFENDANT: Yeah.
“THE COURT: Do you know what that means?
“THE DEFENDANT: Yeah.
“THE COURT: Mr. Landrigan, are there mitigating circumstances I should be aware of?
“THE DEFENDANT: Not as far as I’m concerned.” Id., at D-3 to D-4.
Still not satisfied, the trial judge directly asked the witnesses to testify. Both refused. The judge then asked counsel to make a proffer of the witnesses’ testimony. Counsel attempted to explain that the witnesses would testify that Landrigan’s birth mother used drugs and alcohol (including while she was pregnant with Landrigan), that Landrigan abused drugs and alcohol, and that Landrigan had been a good father.
But Landrigan would have none of it. When counsel tried to explain that Landrigan had worked in a legitimate job to provide for his family, Landrigan interrupted and stated, “If I wanted this to be heard, I’d have my wife say it.” Id., at D-6. Landrigan then explained that he was not only working but also “doing robberies supporting my family.” Id., at D-7. When counsel characterized Landrigan’s first murder as having elements of self-defense, Landrigan interrupted and clarified: “He didn’t grab me. I stabbed him.” Id., at D-9. Responding to counsel’s statement implying that the prison stabbing involved self-defense because the assaulted inmate knew Landrigan’s first murder victim, Landrigan interrupted to clarify that the inmate was not acquainted with his first victim, but just “a guy I got in an argument with. I stabbed him 14 times. It was lucky he lived.” Ibid.
At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, the judge asked Landrigan if he had anything to say. Landrigan made a brief statement that concluded, “I think if you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on. I’m ready for it.” Id., at D-16.
The trial judge found two statutory aggravating circumstances: that Landrigan murdered Dyer in expectation of pecuniary gain and that Landrigan was previously convicted of two felonies involving the use or threat of violence on another person. Id., at D-23. In addition, the judge found two nonstatutory mitigating circumstances: that Landrigan’s family loved him and an absence of premeditation. Ibid. Finally, the trial judge stated that she considered Landrigan “a person who has no scruples and no regard for human life and human beings.” Ibid. Based on these findings, the court sentenced Landrigan to death. On direct appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously affirmed Landrigan’s sentence and conviction. In addressing an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim not relevant here, the court noted that Landrigan had stated his “desire not to have mitigating evidence presented in his behalf.” State v. Landrigan, 176 Ariz. 1, 8, 859 P. 2d 111, 118 (1993).
On January 31, 1995, Landrigan filed a petition for state postconviction relief and alleged his counsel’s “fail[ure] to explore additional grounds for arguing mitigation evidence.” App. to Pet. for Cert. F-3 (internal quotation marks omitted). Specifically, Landrigan maintained that his counsel should have investigated the “biological component” of his violent behavior by interviewing his biological father and other relatives. Id., at E-2. In addition, Landrigan stated that his biological father could confirm that his biological mother used drugs and alcohol while pregnant with Landrigan. Ibid.
The Arizona postconviction court, presided over by the same judge who tried and sentenced Landrigan, rejected Landrigan’s claim. The court found that “[Landrigan] instructed his attorney not to present any evidence at the sentencing hearing, [so] it is difficult to comprehend how [Landrigan] can claim counsel should have presented other evidence at sentencing.” Id., at F-4. Noting Landrigan’s contention that he “ ‘would have cooperated’ ” had other mitigating evidence been presented, the court concluded that Landrigan’s “statements at sentencing belie his new-found sense of cooperation.” Ibid. Describing Landrigan’s claim as “frivolous,” id., at F-5, the court declined to hold an evidentiary hearing and dismissed Landrigan’s petition. The Arizona Supreme Court denied Landrigan’s petition for review on June 19, 1996.
Landrigan then filed a federal habeas application under §2254. The District Court determined, after “expand[ing] the record to include . . . evidence of [Landrigan’s] troubled background, his history of drug and alcohol abuse, and his family’s history of criminal behavior,” id., at C-22, that Landrigan could not demonstrate that he was prejudiced by any error his counsel may have made. Because Landrigan could not make out even a “colorable” ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, id., at C-46, the District Court refused to grant him an evidentiary hearing.
On appeal, a unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, but the full court granted rehearing en banc, Landrigan v. Stewart, 397 F. 3d 1235 (2005), and reversed. The en banc Court of Appeals held that Landrigan was entitled to an evidentiary hearing because he raised a “colorable claim” that his counsel’s performance fell below the standard required by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984). 441 F. 3d 638, 650 (2006). With respect to counsel’s performance, the Ninth Circuit found that he “did little to prepare for the sentencing aspect of the case,” id., at 643, and that investigation would have revealed a wealth of mitigating evidence, including the family’s history of drug and alcohol abuse and propensity for violence.
Turning to prejudice, the court held the Arizona post-conviction court’s determination that Landrigan refused to permit his counsel to present any mitigating evidence was “an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts.’” Id., at 647 (quoting 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(2)). The Court of Appeals found that when Landrigan stated that he did not want his counsel to present any mitigating evidence, he was clearly referring only to the evidence his attorney was about to introduce — that of his ex-wife and birth mother. 441 F. 3d, at 646. The court further held that, even if Landrigan intended to forgo the presentation of all mitigation evidence, such a “last-minute decision cannot excuse his counsel’s failure to conduct an adequate investigation prior to the sen-tenting.” Id., at 647. In conclusion, the court found “a reasonable probability that, if Landrigan’s allegations are true, the sentencing judge would have reached a different conclusion.” Id., at 650. The court therefore remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing.
We granted certiorari, 548 U. S. 941 (2006), and now reverse.
II
Prior to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, the decision to grant an evidentiary hearing was generally left to the sound discretion of district courts. Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 463-464 (1953); see also Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293, 313 (1963). That basic rule has not changed. See 28 U. S. C. § 2254, Rule 8(a) (“[T]he judge must review the answer [and] any transcripts and records of state-court proceedings ... to determine whether an evidentiary hearing is warranted”).
AEDPA, however, changed the standards for granting federal habeas relief. Under AEDPA, Congress prohibited federal courts from granting habeas relief unless a state court’s adjudication of a claim “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” § 2254(d)(1), or the relevant state-court decision “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding,” § 2254(d)(2). The question under AEDPA is not whether a federal court believes the state court’s determination was incorrect but whether that determination was unreasonable — a substantially higher threshold. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362,410 (2000). AEDPA also requires federal habeas courts to presume the correctness of state courts’ factual findings unless applicants rebut this presumption with “clear and convincing evidence.” § 2254(e)(1).
In deciding whether to grant an evidentiary hearing, a federal court must consider whether such a hearing could enable an applicant to prove the petition's factual allegations, which, if true, would entitle the applicant to federal habeas relief. See, e.g., Mayes v. Gibson, 210 F. 3d 1284, 1287 (CA10 2000). Because the deferential standards prescribed by §2254 control whether to grant habeas relief, a federal court must take into account those standards in deciding whether an evidentiary hearing is appropriate. See id., at 1287-1288 (“Whether [an applicant’s] allegations, if proven, would entitle him to habeas relief is a question governed by [AEDPA]”).
It follows that if the record refutes the applicant’s factual allegations or otherwise precludes habeas relief, a district court is not required to hold an evidentiary hearing. The Ninth Circuit has recognized this point in other cases, holding that “an evidentiary hearing is not required on issues that can be resolved by reference to the state court record.” Totten v. Merkle, 137 F. 3d 1172, 1176 (1998) (emphasis deleted) (affirming the denial of an evidentiary hearing where the applicant’s factual allegations “fl[ew] in the face of logic in light of... [the applicant’s] deliberate acts which are easily discernible from the record”). This approach is not unique to the Ninth Circuit. See Anderson v. Attorney General of Kan., 425 F. 3d 853, 858-859 (CA10 2005) (holding that no evidentiary hearing is required if the applicant’s allegations are contravened by the existing record); cf. Clark v. Johnson, 202 F. 3d 760, 767 (CA5 2000) (holding that no hearing is required when the applicant has failed to present clear and convincing evidence to rebut a state court’s factual findings); Campbell v. Vaughn, 209 F. 3d 280, 290 (CA3 2000) (same).
This principle accords with AEDPA’s acknowledged purpose of “reduc[ing] delays in the execution of state and federal criminal sentences.” Woodford v. Garceau, 538 U. S. 202, 206 (2003) (citing Williams v. Taylor, supra, at 386 (opinion of Stevens, J.) (“Congress wished to curb delays, to prevent ‘retrials’ on federal habeas, and to give effect to state convictions to the extent possible under law”)). If district courts were required to allow federal habeas applicants to develop even the most insubstantial factual allegations in evidentiary hearings, district courts would be forced to reopen factual disputes that were conclusively resolved in the state courts. With these standards in mind, we turn to the facts of this case.
Ill
For several reasons, the Court of Appeals believed that Landrigan might be entitled to federal habeas relief and that the District Court, therefore, abused its discretion by denying Landrigan an evidentiary hearing. To the contrary, the District Court was well within its discretion to determine that, even with the benefit of an evidentiary hearing, Landrigan could not develop a factual record that would entitle him to habeas relief.
A
The Court of Appeals first addressed the State’s contention that Landrigan instructed his counsel not to offer any mitigating evidence. If Landrigan issued such an instruction, counsel’s failure to investigate further could not have been prejudicial under Strickland. The Court of Appeals rejected the findings of “the Arizona Supreme Court (on direct appeal) and the Arizona Superior Court (on habeas review)” that Landrigan instructed his counsel not to introduce any mitigating evidence. 441 F. 3d, at 646. According to the Ninth Circuit, those findings took Landrigan’s colloquy with the sentencing court out of context in a manner that “amounts to an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts/” Id., at 647 (quoting 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(2)).
Upon review of record material and the transcripts from the state courts, we disagree. As a threshold matter, the language of the colloquy plainly indicates that Landrigan informed his counsel not to present any mitigating evidence. When the Arizona trial judge asked Landrigan if he had instructed his lawyer not to present mitigating evidence, Landrigan responded affirmatively. Likewise, when asked if there was any relevant mitigating evidence, Landrigan answered, “Not as far as I’m concerned.” App. to Pet. for Cert. D-4. These statements establish that the Arizona postconviction court’s determination of the facts was reasonable. And it is worth noting, again, that the judge presiding on postconviction review was ideally situated to make this assessment because she is the same judge who sentenced Landrigan and discussed these issues with him.
Notwithstanding the plainness of these statements, the Court of Appeals concluded that they referred to only the specific testimony that counsel planned to offer — that of Landrigan’s ex-wife and birth mother. The Court of Appeals further concluded that Landrigan, due to counsel’s failure to investigate, could not have known about the mitigating evidence he now wants to explore. The record conclusively dispels that interpretation. First, Landrigan’s birth mother would have offered testimony that overlaps with the evidence Landrigan now wants to present. For example, Landrigan wants to present evidence from his biological father that would “confirm [his biological mother’s] alcohol and drug use during her pregnancy.” Id., at E-2. But the record shows that counsel planned to call Landrigan’s birth mother to testify about her “drug us[e] during her pregnancy,” id., at D-10, and the possible effects of such drug use. Second, Landrigan interrupted repeatedly when counsel tried to proffer anything that could have been considered mitigating. He even refused to allow his attorney to proffer that he had worked a regular job at one point. Id., at D-6, D-7. This behavior confirms what is plain from the transcript of the colloquy: that Landrigan would have undermined the presentation of any mitigating evidence that his attorney might have uncovered.
On the record before us, the Arizona court’s determination that Landrigan refused to allow the presentation of any mitigating evidence was a reasonable determination of the facts. In this regard, we agree with the initial Court of Appeals panel that reviewed this case:
“In the constellation of refusals to have mitigating evidence presented . . . this case is surely a bright star. No other case could illuminate the state of the client’s mind and the nature of counsel’s dilemma quite as brightly as this one. No flashes of insight could be more fulgurous than those which this record supplies.” Landrigan v. Stewart, 272 F. 3d 1221, 1226 (CA9 2001).
Because the Arizona postconviction court reasonably determined that Landrigan “instructed his attorney not to bring any mitigation to the attention of the [sentencing] court,” App. to Pet. for Cert. F-4, it was not an abuse of discretion for the District Court to conclude that Landrigan could not overcome § 2254(d)(2)’s bar to granting federal habeas relief. The District Court was entitled to conclude that regardless of what information counsel might have uncovered in his investigation, Landrigan would have interrupted and refused to allow his counsel to present any such evidence. Accordingly, the District Court could conclude that because of his established recalcitrance, Landrigan could not demonstrate prejudice under Strickland even if granted an evidentiary hearing.
B
The Court of Appeals offered two alternative reasons for holding that Landrigan’s inability to make a showing of prejudice under Strickland did not bar any potential habeas relief and, thus, an evidentiary hearing.
1
The Court of Appeals held that, even if Landrigan did not want any mitigating evidence presented, the Arizona courts’ determination that Landrigan’s claims were “ ‘frivolous’ and ‘meritless’ was an unreasonable application of United States Supreme Court precedent.” 441 F. 3d, at 647 (citing 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1)). This holding was founded on the belief, derived from Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510 (2003), that “Landrigan’s apparently last-minute decision cannot excuse his counsel’s failure to conduct an adequate investigation prior to the sentencing.” 441 F. 3d, at 647.
Neither Wiggins nor Strickland addresses a situation in which a client interferes with counsel’s efforts to present mitigating evidence to a sentencing court. Wiggins, supra, at 523 (“[W]e focus on whether the investigation supporting counsel’s decision not to introduce mitigating evidence of Wiggins’ background was itself reasonable” (emphasis added and deleted)). Indeed, we have never addressed a situation like this. In Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U. S. 374, 381 (2005), on which the Court of Appeals also relied, the defendant refused to assist in the development of a mitigation case, but did not inform the court that he did not want mitigating evidence presented. In short, at the time of the Arizona post-conviction court’s decision, it was not objectively unreasonable for that court to conclude that a defendant who refused to allow the presentation of any mitigating evidence could not establish Strickland prejudice based on his counsel’s failure to investigate further possible mitigating evidence.
2
The Court of Appeals also stated that the record does not indicate that Landrigan’s decision not to present mitigating evidence was “informed and knowing,” 441 F. 3d, at 647, and that “[t]he trial court’s dialogue with Landrigan tells us little about his understanding of the consequences of his decision,” ibid. We have never imposed an “informed and knowing” requirement upon a defendant’s decision not to introduce evidence. Cf., e. g., Iowa v. Tovar, 541 U. S. 77, 88 (2004) (explaining that waiver of the right to counsel must be knowing and intelligent). Even assuming, however, that an “informed and knowing” requirement exists in this case, Landrigan cannot benefit from it, for three reasons.
First, Landrigan never presented this claim to the Arizona courts. Rather, he argued that he would have complied had other evidence been offered. Thus, Landrigan failed to develop this claim properly before the Arizona courts, and § 2254(e)(2) therefore barred the District Court from granting an evidentiary hearing on that basis.
Second, in Landrigan’s presence, his counsel told the sentencing court that he had carefully explained to Landrigan the importance of mitigating evidence, “especially concerning the fact that the State is seeking the death penalty.” App. to Pet. for Cert. D-3. Counsel also told the court that he had explained to Landrigan that as counsel, he had a duty to disclose “any and all mitigating factors ... to th[e] [c]ourt for consideration regarding the sentencing.” Ibid. In light of Landrigan’s demonstrated propensity for interjecting himself into the proceedings, it is doubtful that Landrigan would have sat idly by while his counsel lied about having previously discussed these issues with him. And as Landrigan’s counsel conceded at oral argument before this Court, we have never required a specific colloquy to ensure that a defendant knowingly and intelligently refused to present mitigating evidence. Tr. of Oral Arg. 26.
Third, the Court of Appeals overlooked Landrigan’s final statement to the sentencing court: “I think if you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on. I’m ready for it.” App. to Pet. for Cert. B-16. It is apparent from this statement that Landrigan clearly understood the consequences of telling the judge that, “as far as [he was] concerned,” there were no mitigating circumstances of which she should be aware. Id., at D-4.
IV
Finally, the Court of Appeals erred in rejecting the District Court’s finding that the poor quality of Landrigan’s alleged mitigating evidence prevented him from making “a colorable claim” of prejudice. Id., at C-46. As summarized by the Court of Appeals, Landrigan wanted to introduce as mitigation evidence
“[that] he was exposed to alcohol and drugs in útero, which may have resulted in cognitive and behavioral deficiencies consistent with fetal alcohol syndrome. He was abandoned by his birth mother and suffered abandonment and attachment issues, as well as other behavioral problems throughout his childhood.
“His adoptive mother was also an alcoholic, and Landrigan’s own alcohol and substance abuse began at an early age. Based on his biological family’s history of violence, Landrigan claims he may also have been genetically predisposed to violence.” 441 F. 3d, at 649.
As explained above, all but the last sentence refer to information that Landrigan’s birth mother and ex-wife could have offered if Landrigan had allowed them to testify. Indeed, the state postconviction court had much of this evidence before it by way of counsel’s proffer. App. to Pet. for Cert. D-21. The District Court could reasonably conclude that any additional evidence would have made no difference in the sentencing.
In sum, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Landrigan could not establish prejudice based on his counsel’s failure to present the evidence he now wishes to offer. Landrigan’s mitigation evidence was weak, and the postconviction court was well acquainted with Landrigan’s exceedingly violent past and had seen first hand his belligerent behavior. Again, it is difficult to improve upon the initial Court of Appeals panel’s conclusion:
“The prospect was chilling; before he was 30 years of age, Landrigan had murdered one man, repeatedly stabbed another one, escaped from prison, and within two months murdered still another man. As the Arizona Supreme Court so aptly put it when dealing with one of Landrigan’s other claims, ‘[i]n his comments [to the sentencing judge], defendant not only failed to show remorse or offer mitigating evidence, but he flaunted his menacing behavior.’ On this record, assuring the court that genetics made him the way he is could not have been very helpful. There was no prejudice.” 272 F. 3d, at 1229 (citations and footnote omitted).
V
The Court of Appeals erred in holding that the District Court abused its discretion in declining to grant Landrigan an evidentiary hearing. Even assuming the truth of all the facts Landrigan sought to prove at the evidentiary hearing, he still could not be granted federal habeas relief because the state courts’ factual determination that Landrigan would not have allowed counsel to present any mitigating evidence at sentencing is not an unreasonable determination of the facts under § 2254(d)(2), and the mitigating evidence he seeks to introduce would not have changed the result. In such circumstances, a District Court has discretion to deny an evidentiary hearing. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Although not at issue here, AEDPA generally prohibits federal habeas courts from granting evidentiary hearings when applicants have failed to develop the factual bases for their claims in state courts. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(e)(2).
Indeed, the Court of Appeals below, recognizing this point, applied § 2254(d)(2) to reject certain of the Arizona court’s factual findings that established a hearing would be futile.
Landrigan made this argument for the first time in a motion for rehearing from the denial of his postconviction petition. Under Arizona law, a defendant cannot raise new claims in a motion for rehearing. State v. Byers, 126 Ariz. 139, 142, 613 P. 2d 299, 302 (App. 1980), overruled on other grounds, State v. Pope, 130 Ariz. 253, 635 P. 2d 846 (1981).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 242(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified as 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a), provides for judicial review of a final Government order directing the removal of an alien from this country. See 66 Stat. 163, as amended, 8 U. S. C. § 1101 et seq. A subdivision of that section limits the scope of that review where the removal rests upon the fact that the alien has committed certain crimes, including aggravated felonies and controlled substance offenses. § 1252(a)(2)(C). Another subdivision, § 1252(a)(2)(D), which we shall call the Limited Review Provision, says that in such instances courts may consider only "constitutional claims or questions of law." The question that these two consolidated cases present is whether the phrase "questions of law" in the Provision includes the application of a legal standard to undisputed or established facts. We believe that it does.
I
The two petitioners before us, Pedro Pablo Guerrero-Lasprilla and Ruben Ovalles, are aliens who lived in the United States. Each committed a drug crime and consequently became removable. App. 33; Record in No. 18-1015, p. 66. In 1998, an Immigration Judge ordered Guerrero-Lasprilla removed. Record in No. 18-776, p. 137. In 2004, the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered Ovalles removed, reversing a decision by an Immigration Judge. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 18-1015, pp. 32a-35a. Both removal orders became administratively final, and both petitioners left the country.
Several months after their removal orders became final, each petitioner's window for filing a timely motion to reopen his removal proceedings closed. That is because the Immigration and Nationality Act permits a person one motion to reopen, "a form of procedural relief that asks the Board to change its decision in light of newly discovered evidence or a change in circumstances." Dada v. Mukasey, 554 U.S. 1, 12, 14, 128 S.Ct. 2307, 171 L.Ed.2d 178 (2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). But the motion must usually be filed "within 90 days of the date of entry of a final administrative order of removal." 8 U. S. C. § 1229a(c)(7)(C)(i).
Nonetheless, Guerrero-Lasprilla (in 2016) and Ovalles (in 2017) asked the Board to reopen their removal proceedings. Recognizing that the 90-day time limit had long since passed, both petitioners argued that the time limit should be equitably tolled. Both petitioners, who had become eligible for discretionary relief due to various judicial and Board decisions years after their removal, rested their claim for equitable tolling on Lugo-Resendez v. Lynch, 831 F.3d 337 (CA5 2016). In that case, the Fifth Circuit had held that the 90-day time limit could be "equitably tolled." Id., at 344. Guerrero-Lasprilla filed his motion to reopen a month after Lugo-Resendez was decided. App. 5. Ovalles filed his motion to reopen eight months after the decision. Id., at 35. The Board denied both petitioners' requests for equitable tolling, concluding, inter alia, that they had failed to demonstrate the requisite due diligence. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 18-1015, at 6a; App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 18-776, p. 12a.
Guerrero-Lasprilla and Ovalles each asked the Fifth Circuit to review the Board's decision. See 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(1) ; 28 U. S. C. § 2342 ; Reyes Mata v. Lynch, 576 U. S. 143, 147, 135 S.Ct. 2150, 192 L.Ed.2d 225 (2015) ("[C]ircuit courts have jurisdiction when an alien appeals from the Board's denial of a motion to reopen a removal proceeding"). The Fifth Circuit denied their requests for review, concluding in both cases that "whether an alien acted diligently in attempting to reopen removal proceedings for purposes of equitable tolling is a factual question." Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Sessions, 737 Fed.Appx. 230, 231 (2018) (per curiam ); Ovalles v. Sessions, 741 Fed.Appx. 259, 261 (2018) (per curiam ). And, given the Limited Review Provision, it "lack[ed] jurisdiction" to review those "factual" claims. 737 Fed.Appx. at 231 ; 741 Fed.Appx. at 261.
Both petitioners claim that the underlying facts were not in dispute, and they asked us to grant certiorari in order to determine whether their claims that the Board incorrectly applied the equitable tolling due diligence standard to the "undisputed" (or established) facts is a "question of law," which the Limited Review Provision authorizes courts of appeals to consider. We agreed to do so.
II
The Limited Review Provision provides that, in this kind of immigration case (involving aliens who are removable for having committed certain crimes), a court of appeals may consider only "constitutional claims or questions of law." 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(2)(D). The issue before us is, as we have said, whether the statutory phrase "questions of law" includes the application of a legal standard to undisputed or established facts. If so, the Fifth Circuit erred in holding that it "lack[ed] jurisdiction" to consider the petitioners' claims of due diligence for equitable tolling purposes. We conclude that the phrase "questions of law" does include this type of review, and the Court of Appeals was wrong to hold the contrary.
A
Consider the statute's language. Nothing in that language precludes the conclusion that Congress used the term "questions of law" to refer to the application of a legal standard to settled facts. Indeed, we have at times referred to the question whether a given set of facts meets a particular legal standard as presenting a legal inquiry. Do the facts alleged in a complaint, taken as true, state a claim for relief under the applicable legal standard? See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6) ; Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 326, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989) (" Rule 12(b)(6) authorizes a court to dismiss a claim on the basis of a dispositive issue of law"). Did a Government official's alleged conduct violate clearly established law? See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 528, n. 9, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) ("[T]he appealable issue is a purely legal one: whether the facts alleged... support a claim of violation of clearly established law"); cf. Nelson v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 312 U.S. 373, 376, 61 S.Ct. 593, 85 L.Ed. 897 (1941) ("The effect of admitted facts is a question of law"). Even the dissent concedes that we have sometimes referred to mixed questions as raising a legal inquiry. See post, at 1074 - 1075 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). While that judicial usage alone does not tell us what Congress meant by the statutory term "questions of law," it does indicate that the term can reasonably encompass questions about whether settled facts satisfy a legal standard.
We have sometimes referred to such a question, which has both factual and legal elements, as a "mixed question of law and fact." See, e.g., U. S. Bank N. A. v. Village at Lakeridge, LLC, 583 U. S. ----, ----, 138 S.Ct. 960, 966, 200 L.Ed.2d 218 (2018) ("[W]hether the historical facts found satisfy the legal test chosen" is a "so-called'mixed question' of law and fact" (citing Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 289, n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982) )). And we have often used the phrase "mixed questions" in determining the proper standard for appellate review of a district, bankruptcy, or agency decision that applies a legal standard to underlying facts. The answer to the "proper standard" question may turn on practical considerations, such as whether the question primarily "require[s] courts to expound on the law, particularly by amplifying or elaborating on a broad legal standard" (often calling for review de novo ), or rather "immerse[s] courts in case-specific factual issues" (often calling for deferential review). Village at Lakeridge, 583 U. S., at ----, 138 S.Ct., at 967. But these cases present no such question involving the standard of review. And, in any event, nothing in those cases forecloses the conclusion that the application of law to settled facts can be encompassed within the statutory phrase "questions of law." Nor is there anything in the language of the statute that suggests that "questions of law" excludes the application of law to settled facts.
B
The Government, respondent here, argues to the contrary. Namely, the Government claims that Congress intended to exclude from judicial review all mixed questions. We do not agree. Rather, a longstanding presumption, the statutory context, and the statute's history all support the conclusion that the application of law to undisputed or established facts is a "questio[n] of law" within the meaning of § 1252(a)(2)(D).
1
Consider first "a familiar principle of statutory construction: the presumption favoring judicial review of administrative action." Kucana v. Holder, 558 U.S. 233, 251, 130 S.Ct. 827, 175 L.Ed.2d 694 (2010). Under that "well-settled" and "strong presumption," McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U.S. 479, 496, 498, 111 S.Ct. 888, 112 L.Ed.2d 1005 (1991), when a statutory provision "is reasonably susceptible to divergent interpretation, we adopt the reading that accords with traditional understandings and basic principles: that executive determinations generally are subject to judicial review." Kucana, 558 U.S. at 251, 130 S.Ct. 827 (quoting Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 434, 115 S.Ct. 2227, 132 L.Ed.2d 375 (1995) ; internal quotation marks omitted); see McNary, 498 U.S. at 496, 111 S.Ct. 888 ("[G]iven [that] presumption..., it is most unlikely that Congress intended to foreclose all forms of meaningful judicial review"). The presumption can only be overcome by "clear and convincing evidence" of congressional intent to preclude judicial review. Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc., 509 U.S. 43, 64, 113 S.Ct. 2485, 125 L.Ed.2d 38 (1993) (quoting Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 141, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967) ; internal quotation marks omitted); see Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, 579 U. S. ----, ---- - ----, 136 S.Ct. 2131, 2140-2141, 195 L.Ed.2d 423 (2016).
We have "consistently applied" the presumption of reviewability to immigration statutes. Kucana, 558 U.S. at 251, 130 S.Ct. 827. And we see no reason to make an exception here. The dissent's "doubts" about the presumption, see post, at 1076 - 1078, do not undermine our recognition that it is a "well-settled" principle of statutory construction, McNary, 498 U.S. at 496, 111 S.Ct. 888. Notably, even the Government does not dispute the soundness of the presumption or its applicability here. See Brief for Respondent 47-48 (arguing only that the presumption is overcome).
As discussed above, we can reasonably interpret the statutory term "questions of law" to encompass the application of law to undisputed facts. See supra, at 1068 - 1069. And as we explain further below, infra, at 1073, interpreting the Limited Review Provision to exclude mixed questions would effectively foreclose judicial review of the Board's determinations so long as it announced the correct legal standard. The resulting barrier to meaningful judicial review is thus a strong indication, given the presumption, that "questions of law" does indeed include the application of law to established facts. That is particularly so given that the statutory context and history point to the same result.
2
Consider next the Limited Review Provision's immediate statutory context. That context belies the Government and the dissent's claim that "questions of law" refers only to "pure" questions and necessarily excludes the application of law to settled facts. See Brief for Respondent 19-26; post, at 1074 - 1076. The Limited Review Provision forms part of § 1252, namely, § 1252(a)(2)(D). The same statutory section contains a provision, § 1252(b)(9), which we have called a " 'zipper clause.' " INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 313, 121 S.Ct. 2271, 150 L.Ed.2d 347 (2001). We have explained that Congress intended the zipper clause to "consolidate judicial review of immigration proceedings into one action in the court of appeals." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The zipper clause reads in part as follows:
"Judicial review of all questions of law and fact, including interpretation and application of constitutional and statutory provisions, arising from any action taken... to remove an alien from the United States under this subchapter shall be available only in judicial review of a final order under this section." § 1252(b)(9) (emphasis added).
Because it is meant to consolidate judicial review, the zipper clause must encompass mixed questions. Indeed, the clause by its very language includes the "application of [a] statutory provisio[n]." Ibid.
The zipper clause accordingly makes clear that Congress understood the statutory term "questions of law and fact" to include the application of law to facts. Reread the zipper clause: It uses the terms "[ (1) ] questions of law and [ (2) ] fact, including " the "application of " statutes, i.e., the application of law to fact. Ibid. (emphasis added). Thus, there are three possibilities: Congress either used (1) "questions of law," (2) "fact," or (3) the combination of both terms to encompass mixed questions. Even the Government does not argue that Congress used "questions of fact" alone to cover mixed questions. Congress thus either meant the term "questions of law" alone to include mixed questions, or it used both "questions of law" and questions of "fact" to encompass mixed questions. The latter interpretation at the very least disproves the Government's argument that Congress consistently uses a three-part typology, referring to mixed questions separately from questions of law or questions of fact (such that "questions of law" cannot include mixed questions). See Brief for Respondent 21; see also post, at 1074 - 1075 (arguing that this Court has often used that three-part typology and thus "questions of law" must exclude mixed questions). And the former interpretation directly supports the conclusion that "questions of law" includes mixed questions. That interpretation gives "questions of law" the same meaning across both provisions. Notably, when Congress enacted the Limited Review Provision, it added language to the end of the zipper clause (following the language quoted above) to clarify that, except as provided elsewhere in § 1252, " 'no court shall have jurisdiction' " to "'review... such questions of law or fact.' " § 106, 119 Stat. 311. There is thus every reason to think that Congress used the phrase "questions of law" to have the same meaning in both provisions.
3
Consider also the Limited Review Provision's statutory history and the relevant precedent. The parties agree that Congress enacted the Limited Review Provision in response to this Court's decision in St. Cyr. See Brief for Respondent 16, 27-31; Brief for Petitioners 31-33. In that case, the Court evaluated the effect of various allegedly jurisdiction-stripping provisions, including the predecessor to § 1252(a)(2)(C). That predecessor (which today is modified by the Limited Review Provision) essentially barred judicial review of removal orders based on an alien's commission of certain crimes. See St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 298, 311, 121 S.Ct. 2271 (citing § 1252(a)(2)(C) (1994 ed., Supp. V)). This Court interpreted that predecessor and the other purportedly jurisdiction-stripping provisions as not barring (i.e., as permitting) review in habeas corpus proceedings, to avoid the serious constitutional questions that would be raised by a contrary interpretation. See St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 299-305, 314, 121 S.Ct. 2271.
In doing so, the Court suggested that the Constitution, at a minimum, protected the writ of habeas corpus " 'as it existed in 1789.' " Id., at 300-301, 121 S.Ct. 2271. The Court then noted the kinds of review that were traditionally available in a habeas proceeding, which included "detentions based on errors of law, including the erroneous application or interpretation of statutes." Id., at 302, 121 S.Ct. 2271 (emphasis added). And it supported this view by citing cases from the 18th and early 19th centuries. See id., at 302-303, and nn. 18-23, 121 S.Ct. 2271. English cases consistently demonstrate that the "erroneous application... of statutes" includes the misapplication of a legal standard to the facts of a particular case. See, e.g., Hollingshead's Case, 1 Salk. 351, 91 Eng. Rep. 307 (K. B. 1702); King v. Nathan, 2 Str. 880, 93 Eng. Rep. 914 (K. B. 1724); King v. Rudd, 1 Cowp. 331, 334-337, 98 Eng. Rep. 1114, 1116-1117 (K. B. 1775); King v. Pedley, 1 Leach 325, 326, 168 Eng. Rep. 265, 266 (1784). The Court ultimately made clear that "Congress could, without raising any constitutional questions, provide an adequate substitute [for habeas review] through the courts of appeals." St. Cyr., 533 U.S. at 314, n. 38, 121 S.Ct. 2271.
Congress took up this suggestion. It made clear that the limits on judicial review in various provisions of § 1252 included habeas review, and it consolidated virtually all review of removal orders in one proceeding in the courts of appeals. See § 106(a), 119 Stat. 310-311 (inserting specific references to 28 U. S. C. § 2241 and " 'any other habeas corpus provision' "). At the same time, Congress added the Limited Review Provision, which permits judicial review of " 'constitutional claims or questions of law,' " the words directly before us now. 119 Stat. 310.
This statutory history strongly suggests that Congress added the words before us because it sought an "adequate substitute" for habeas in view of St. Cyr's guidance. See supra, at 1071. If so, then the words "questions of law" in the Limited Review Provision must include the misapplication of a legal standard to undisputed facts, for otherwise review would not include an element that St. Cyr said was traditionally reviewable in habeas.
We reach the same conclusion through reference to lower court precedent. After we decided St. Cyr, numerous Courts of Appeals held that habeas review included review of the application of law to undisputed facts. See Cadet v. Bulger, 377 F.3d 1173, 1184 (CA11 2004) ("[W]e hold that the scope of habeas review available in [ 28 U. S. C.] § 2241 petitions by aliens challenging removal orders... includes... errors of law, including both statutory interpretations and application of law to undisputed facts or adjudicated facts"); Ogbudimkpa v. Ashcroft, 342 F.3d 207, 222 (CA3 2003) (same); Mu-Xing Wang v. Ashcroft, 320 F.3d 130, 143 (CA2 2003) (same); Singh v. Ashcroft, 351 F.3d 435, 441-442 (CA9 2003) ("[O]ther courts have rejected the Government's argument that only 'purely legal questions of statutory interpretation' permit the exercise of habeas jurisdiction.... We agree with those rulings"). We normally assume that Congress is "aware of relevant judicial precedent" when it enacts a new statute. Merck & Co. v. Reynolds, 559 U.S. 633, 648, 130 S.Ct. 1784, 176 L.Ed.2d 582 (2010). Thus, we should assume that Congress, aware of this precedent (and wishing to substitute review in the courts of appeals for habeas review), would have intended the phrase "questions of law" to include the application of a legal standard to established or undisputed facts.
Those who deem legislative history a useful interpretive tool will find that the congressional history of the Limited Review Provision supports this analysis. The House Conference Report refers to St. Cyr and adds that Congress' amendments are designed to "provide an 'adequate and effective' alternative to habeas corpus" in the courts of appeals. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 109-72, p. 175 (2005) (citing St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 314, n. 38, 121 S.Ct. 2271 ). The Report adds that the amendments "would not change the scope of review that criminal aliens currently receive." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 109-72, at 175. And as we know, that "scope of review" included review of decisions applying a legal standard to undisputed or established facts. That is what this Court, in St. Cyr, had said was traditionally available in habeas; and it was how courts of appeals then determined the scope of habeas review. Notably, the legislative history indicates that Congress was well aware of the state of the law in the courts of appeals in light of St. Cyr. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 109-72, at 174 (discussing issues on which the Courts of Appeals agreed and those on which they had split after St. Cyr ). The statutory history and precedent, as well as the legislative history, thus support the conclusion that the statutory term "questions of law" includes the application of a legal standard to established facts.
III
The Government makes two significant arguments that we have not yet discussed. First, it points out that § 1252(a)(2)(C) forbids (subject to the Limited Review Provision) review of a removal order based on an alien's commission of certain crimes. If the words "questions of law" include "mixed questions," then for such aliens, the Limited Review Provision excludes only (or primarily) agency fact-finding from review. But if Congress intended no more than that, then why, the Government asks, did it not just say so directly rather than eliminate judicial review and then restore it for "constitutional claims or questions of law?" Brief for Respondent 49-50.
One answer to this question is that the Limited Review Provision applies to more of the statute than the immediately preceding subparagraph. See § 1252(a)(2)(D) (applying notwithstanding "subparagraph (B) or (C), or in any other provision of this chapter (other than this section)"). Another answer is that Congress did not write the Limited Review Provision on a blank slate. Rather, subparagraph (C) initially forbade judicial review, and Congress then simply wrote another subparagraph reflecting our description in St. Cyr of the review traditionally available in habeas (or a substitute for habeas in the courts of appeals). See supra, at 1070 - 1072. That statutory history also illustrates why the dissent errs in relying so significantly on language in subparagraph (C) proscribing judicial review. See post, at 1075 - 1076, 1078 (referring to the "sweeping" and "broad" language of subparagraph (C)). A broad and sweeping reading of subparagraph (C) was precisely what this Court rejected in St. Cyr, and Congress enacted subparagraph (D) in response to that opinion. Subparagraph (C)-constrained as it is by subparagraph (D)-must thus be read in that context.
Second, the Government argues that our interpretation will undercut Congress' efforts to severely limit and streamline judicial review of an order removing aliens convicted of certain crimes. See Brief for Respondent 29-30; see also post, at 1079, n. 5 (noting that the legislative history indicates that Congress intended to streamline removal proceedings by limiting judicial review). The Limited Review Provision, however, will still forbid appeals of factual determinations-an important category in the removal context. And that Provision, taken together with other contemporaneous amendments to § 1252, does streamline judicial review relative to the post- St. Cyr regime, by significantly curtailing habeas proceedings in district courts.
More than that, the Government's interpretation is itself difficult to reconcile with the Provision's basic purpose of providing an adequate substitute for habeas review. That interpretation would forbid review of any Board decision applying a properly stated legal standard, irrespective of how mistaken that application might be. By reciting the standard correctly, the Board would be free to apply it in a manner directly contrary to well-established law. The Government, recognizing the extreme results of its interpretation, suggested at oral argument that the courts of appeals might still be able to review certain "categori[es]" of applications, such as whether someone being in a coma always, sometimes, or never requires equitable tolling. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 38. The Government, however, left the nature and rationale of this approach unclear. The approach does not overcome the problem we have just raised, and seems difficult to reconcile with the language and purposes of the statute.
* * *
For these reasons, we reverse the Fifth Circuit's "jurisdictional" decisions, vacate its judgments, and remand these cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE ALITO joins as to all but Part II-A-1, dissenting.
We granted certiorari to decide whether a denial of equitable tolling for lack of due diligence is reviewable as a "question of law" under 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(2)(D). Not content with resolving that narrow question, the Court categorically proclaims that federal courts may review immigration judges' applications of any legal standard to established facts in criminal aliens' removal proceedings. Ante, at 1067. In doing so, the majority effectively nullifies a jurisdiction-stripping statute, expanding the scope of judicial review well past the boundaries set by Congress. Because this arrogation of authority flouts both the text and structure of the statute, I respectfully dissent.
I
Under § 1252(a)(2)(C), "[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory),... no court shall have jurisdiction to review any final order of removal against an alien who is removable by reason of having committed [certain] criminal offense[s]." This broad jurisdiction-stripping provision is known as the "criminal-alien bar." The only exceptions to the provision's otherwise all-encompassing language are found in § 1252(a)(2)(D), which states that "[n]othing in subparagraph... (C)... shall be construed as precluding review of constitutional claims or questions of law." Thus, under the criminal-alien bar, any claim that neither is constitutional nor raises a question of law is unreviewable. Because petitioners raise no constitutional claim and due diligence in the equitable-tolling context is not a "question of law," their claims are unreviewable.
A
Equitable tolling's due-diligence requirement presents a mixed question of law and fact. A litigant will qualify for equitable tolling only if he "has pursued his rights diligently but some extraordinary circumstance prevents him from bringing a timely action." Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez, 572 U.S. 1, 10, 134 S.Ct. 1224, 188 L.Ed.2d 200 (2014). To determine whether a litigant has exercised due diligence, judges must conduct what this Court has characterized as an " 'equitable, often fact-intensive' " inquiry, considering "in detail" the unique facts of each case to decide whether a litigant's efforts were reasonable in light of his circumstances. Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 653-654, 130 S.Ct. 2549, 177 L.Ed.2d 130 (2010) (BREYER, J., for the Court). In other words, courts ask "whether the historical facts found satisfy the legal test," which, as this Court recently (and unanimously) recognized, is a quintessential "'mixed question' of law and fact." U. S. Bank N. A. v. Village at Lakeridge, LLC, 583 U. S. ----, ----, 138 S.Ct. 960, 966, 200 L.Ed.2d 218 (2018) (quoting Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 289, n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982) ); but see ante, at 1068 - 1069.
B
The text of § 1252(a)(2)(D) authorizes courts to review only "constitutional claims or questions of law." It does not refer to mixed questions of law and fact, and cannot be divined to do so. As the statute's plain language and structure demonstrate, "questions of law" cannot reasonably be read to include mixed questions.
Although the statute does not define "questions of law," longstanding historical practice indicates that the phrase does not encompass mixed questions of law and fact. For well over a century, this Court has recognized questions of law, questions of fact, and mixed questions of law and fact as three discrete categories. See, e.g., Pullman-Standard, supra, at 288, 102 S.Ct. 1781 (distinguishing between a "question of law," a "mixed question of law and fact," and a "pure question of fact"); Ross v. Day, 232 U.S. 110, 116, 34 S.Ct. 233, 58 L.Ed. 528 (1914) (distinguishing between "a mere question of law" and "a mixed question of law and fact"); Bates & Guild Co. v. Payne, 194 U.S. 106, 109, 24 S.Ct. 595, 48 L.Ed. 894 (1904) (distinguishing between "mixed questions of law and fact" and questions "of law alone"); Jewell v. Knight, 123 U.S. 426, 432, 8 S.Ct. 193, 31 L.Ed. 190 (1887) (distinguishing between "questions of law only," "questions of fact," and questions "of mixed law and fact"); Republican River Bridge Co. v. Kansas Pacific R. Co., 92 U.S. 315, 318-319, 23 L.Ed. 515 (1876) (distinguishing between a "mixed question of law and fact," a "law question," and a "fact [question]"). A leading civil procedure treatise at the time of § 1252(a)(2)(D)'s enactment confirms this understanding. See 9A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §§ 2588 - 2589 (2d ed. 1995) (distinguishing between conclusions and questions of law, and "mixed questions of law and fact").
The majority resists this conclusion by pointing to cases in which the Court has characterized mixed questions as either legal or factual. But this occasional emphasis on either law or fact does not change the reality that many questions include both. This Court sometimes uses these two categories because "[m]ixed questions are not all alike" and, in certain contexts, this Court must distinguish between them by determining whether they present primarily legal or primarily factual inquiries. Village at Lakeridge, supra, 583 U.S., at ---- - ----, 138 S.Ct., at 966-968 (whether a creditor is a nonstatutory insider presents a factual inquiry); see also Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 326, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989) (whether a complaint fails to state a claim presents a legal inquiry).
The Court often uses these labels in contexts that lend themselves to a fact/law dichotomy. For example, it asks whether a question is primarily legal or primarily factual when it needs to determine the appropriate standard of appellate review. See, e.g., Village at Lakeridge, supra, 583 U.S., at ---- - ----, 138 S.Ct., at 967-968. A similar dichotomy arises when the Court considers whether an issue is one for the judge or jury. See, e.g., United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 512, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995) ("the application-of-legal-standard-to-fact sort of question..., commonly called a'mixed question of law and fact,' has typically been resolved by juries" as a fact issue).
But these considerations are irrelevant in the context of a statutory judicial-review provision such as § 1252(a)(2), which contains text that refers only to "questions of law." The federal appellate judges who review claims under this provision are competent to review legal, factual, and mixed questions alike; their authority is constrained only by the statutory text. Our task, therefore, is simply to interpret the words of the statute, which invoke no forced dichotomy because Congress could have easily included mixed questions in the text if it wanted to do
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The writ is dismissed as improvidently granted.
Mr. Justice Douglas dissents from the dismissal of the writ.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
PER CURIAM.
The Court considers for the second time the Ninth Circuit's determination that respondent stockholders' complaint states a claim against petitioner fiduciaries for breach of the duty of prudence. The first time, the Court vacated and remanded in light of Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, 573 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 2459, 189 L.Ed.2d 457 (2014), a case which set forth the standards for stating a claim for breach of the duty of prudence against fiduciaries who manage employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). On remand, the Ninth Circuit reiterated its conclusion that the complaint states such a claim. The Court now reverses and remands.
The stockholders are former employees of Amgen Inc. and its subsidiary Amgen Manufacturing, Limited, who participated in plans that qualified under 29 U.S.C. § 1107(d)(3)(A) as eligible individual account plans. Like ESOPs, these plans offer ownership in employer stock as an option to employees. The parties agree that the decision in Fifth Third is fully applicable to the plans at issue here. See 788 F.3d 916, 935 (C.A.9 2014).
All of the plans had holdings in the Amgen Common Stock Fund (composed, unsurprisingly, of Amgen common stock) during the relevant period. The value of Amgen stock fell, and in 2007, the stockholders filed a class action against petitioner fiduciaries alleging that they had breached their fiduciary duties, including the duty of prudence, under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq. The District Court granted the fiduciaries' motion to dismiss, and the Ninth Circuit reversed, Harris v. Amgen, Inc., 738 F.3d 1026 (2013). The fiduciaries sought certiorari.
While that petition was pending, this Court issued a decision that concerned the duty of prudence owed by ERISA fiduciaries who administer ESOPs. That decision, Fifth Third , held that such ERISA fiduciaries are not entitled to a presumption of prudence but are "subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, except that they need not diversify the fund's assets." 573 U.S., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2463.
Notwithstanding the lack of a presumption of prudence, Fifth Third noted that "Congress sought to encourage the creation of" employee stock-ownership plans, id., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2470, a purpose that the decision recognized may come into tension with ERISA's general duty of prudence. Moreover, ESOP fiduciaries confront unique challenges given "the potential for conflict" that arises when fiduciaries are alleged to have imprudently "fail [ed] to act on inside information they had about the value of the employer's stock." Id., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2469. Fifth Third therefore laid out standards to help "divide the plausible sheep from the meritless goats," id., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2470 :
"To state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence on the basis of inside information, a plaintiff must plausibly allege an alternative action that the defendant could have taken that would have been consistent with the securities laws and that a prudent fiduciary in the same circumstances would not have viewed as more likely to harm the fund than to help it." Id., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2472.
It further clarified that courts should determine whether the complaint itself states a claim satisfying that liability standard:
"[L]ower courts faced with such claims should also consider whether the complaint has plausibly alleged that a prudent fiduciary in the defendant's position could not have concluded that stopping purchases-which the market might take as a sign that insider fiduciaries viewed the employer's stock as a bad investment-or publicly disclosing negative information would do more harm than good to the fund by causing a drop in the stock price and a concomitant drop in the value of the stock already held by the fund." Id., at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2473 (emphasis added).
In the matter that is once again before the Court here, following the issuance of Fifth Third , the Court granted the fiduciaries' first petition for a writ of certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with that decision. Amgen Inc. v. Harris, 576 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 2870, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (2014). On remand, the Ninth Circuit reversed again the dismissal of the complaint and denied the fiduciaries' petition for rehearing en banc. See 788 F.3d 916. The fiduciaries once more sought certiorari.
The Court now holds that the Ninth Circuit failed to properly evaluate the complaint. That court explained that its previous opinion (that is, the one it issued before Fifth Third was decided) "had already assumed" the standards for ERISA fiduciary liability laid out by this Court in Fifth Third . 788 F.3d, at 940. And it reasoned that the complaint at issue here satisfies those standards because when "the federal securities laws require disclosure of material information," it is "quite plausible" that removing the Amgen Common Stock Fund "from the list of investment options" would not "caus[e] undue harm to plan participants." Id., at 937-938. The Ninth Circuit, however, failed to assess whether the complaint in its current form "has plausibly alleged" that a prudent fiduciary in the same position "could not have concluded" that the alternative action "would do more harm than good." Fifth Third, supra, at ----, 134 S.Ct., at 2463.
The Ninth Circuit's proposition that removing the Amgen Common Stock Fund from the list of investment options was an alternative action that could plausibly have satisfied Fifth Third 's standards may be true. If so, the facts and allegations supporting that proposition should appear in the stockholders' complaint. Having examined the complaint, the Court has not found sufficient facts and allegations to state a claim for breach of the duty of prudence.
Although the Ninth Circuit did not correctly apply Fifth Third , the stockholders are the masters of their complaint. The Court leaves to the District Court in the first instance whether the stockholders may amend it in order to adequately plead a claim for breach of the duty of prudence guided by the standards provided in Fifth Third .
The petition for certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we once again consider a citizenship requirement imposed by a State on those seeking to fill certain governmental offices. California Gov’t Code Ann. § 1031(a) (West 1980) requires “public officers or employees declared by law to be peace officers” to be citizens of the United States. California Penal Code Ann. §830.5 (West Supp. 1981) provides that probation officers and deputy probation officers are “peace officers.” A three-judge District Court of the Central District of California held the California requirement unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to the appellees, who sought positions as Deputy Probation Officers. 490 F. Supp. 984.
I
Appellees were, at the time the complaint was filed, lawfully admitted permanent resident aliens living in Los Ange-les County, Cal. Each applied unsuccessfully for positions as Deputy Probation Officers with the Los Angeles County Probation Department. With respect to two of the three appellees, the parties stipulated that the failure to obtain the positions sought was the result of the statutory citizenship requirement.
Appellees filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California challenging the constitutionality of the citizenship requirement under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U. S. C. §§1981 and 1983. Named as defendants were certain individual county officials, in their official capacity, and the County of Los Angeles.
Appellees alleged unconstitutional discrimination against aliens, impermissible infringement upon their constitutional right to travel, and unconstitutional interference with Congress’ plenary power to regulate aliens. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as attorney’s fees and damages for two of the plaintiffs. A three-judge court was properly convened. 28 U. S. C. §§2281 (1970 ed.), 2284.
In February 1977, the District Court concluded that the statutory citizenship requirement was unconstitutional both on its face and as applied. Chavez-Salido v. Cabell, 427 F. Supp. 158. That decision rested entirely on appellees’ arguments under the Equal Protection Clause; it did not reach the right to travel and federal pre-emption claims. This Court vacated and remanded that judgment for further consideration in light of Foley v. Connelie, 435 U. S. 291 (1978), which upheld a New York statute requiring state troopers to be United States citizens. County of Los Angeles v. Chavez-Salido, 436 U. S. 901 (1978). On remand, the District Court reconsidered its previous position in light of both Foley, supra, and Ambach v. Norwich, 441 U. S. 68 (1979), which held that a State may refuse to employ as elementary and secondary school teachers aliens who are eligible for United States citizenship but fail to seek naturalization. With Judge Curtis dissenting, the court found its prior views still valid and convincing. It, therefore, came to the identical conclusion that the California statutory scheme was constitutionally invalid both facially and as applied.
We noted probable jurisdiction, 450 U. S. 978 (1981), and now reverse.
II
Over the years, this Court has many times considered state classifications dealing with aliens. See, e. g., Ambach v. Norwich, supra; Nyquist v. Mauclet, 432 U. S. 1 (1977); Foley v. Connelie, supra; Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U. S. 572 (1976); In re Griffiths, 413 U. S. 717 (1973); Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634 (1973); Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971); Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410 (1948); Crane v. New York, 239 U. S. 195 (1915); Heim v. McCall, 239 U. S. 175 (1915); Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33 (1915); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886). As we have noted before, those cases “have not formed an unwavering line over the years.” Ambach v. Norwich, supra, at 72. But to say that the decisions do not fall into a neat pattern is not to say that they fall into no pattern. In fact, they illustrate a not unusual characteristic of legal development: broad principles are articulated, narrowed when applied to new contexts, and finally replaced when the distinctions they rely upon are no longer tenable.
In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, supra, the Court held both that resident aliens fall within the protection of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the State could not deny to aliens the right to carry on a “harmless and useful occupation” available to citizens. Although Yick Wo proclaimed that hostility toward aliens was not a permissible ground for a discriminatory classification, it dealt only with a situation in which government had actively intervened in the sphere of private employment. In a series of later cases it became clear that Yick Wo did not mean that the State had to be strictly neutral as between aliens and citizens: The Court continued to uphold the right of the State to withhold from aliens public benefits and public resources. Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U. S. 197 (1923) (ownership of land); Heim v. McCall, supra (employment on public works projects); Patsone v. Pennsylvania, 232 U. S. 138 (1914) (taking of wild game).
This distinction between government distribution of public resources and intervention in the private market was clearly established as the principle by which state regulations of aliens were to be evaluated in Truax v. Raich, supra, which struck down a state statute requiring all employers of more than five workers to employ “not less than eighty (80) per cent qualified electors or native born citizens of the United States:”
“The discrimination defined by the act does not pertain to the regulation or distribution of the public domain, or of the common property or resources of the people of the State, the enjoyment of which may be limited to its citizens as against both aliens and citizens of other States.” Id., at 39-40. of the State from making a living by fishing in the ocean off its shores while permitting all others to do so.” Id., at 421.
This public/private distinction, the “special public interest” doctrine, see Graham v. Richardson, supra, at 372, 374; Sugarman v. Dougall, supra, at 643, 644, was challenged in Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, supra, which held that California could not bar lawfully resident aliens from obtaining commercial fishing licenses:
“To whatever extent the fish in the three-mile belt off California may be ‘capable of ownership’ by California, we think that ‘ownership’ is inadequate to justify California in excluding any or all aliens who are lawful residents
As the principle governing analysis of state classifications of aliens, who are lawful residents, the distinction was further eroded in Graham v. Richardson, supra, which read Takahashi as “casting] doubt on the continuing validity of the special public-interest doctrine in all contexts,” 403 U. S., at 374, and held that a State could not distinguish between lawfully resident aliens and citizens in the distribution of welfare benefits. Returning to Yick Wo’s holding that lawfully present aliens fall within the protection of the Equal Protection Clause and citing the more recent theory of a two-tiered equal protection scrutiny, Graham implied that there would be very few — if any — areas in which a State could legitimately distinguish between its citizens and lawfully resident aliens:
“Aliens as a class are a prime example of a 'discrete and insular’ minority ... for whom . . . heightened judicial solicitude is appropriate. Accordingly, it was said in Takahashi, 334 U. S., at 420, that ‘the power of a state to apply its laws exclusively to its alien inhabitants as a class is confined within narrow limits.’” 403 U. S., at 372.
The cases through Graham dealt for the most part with attempts by the States to retain certain economic benefits exclusively for citizens. Since Graham, the Court has confronted claims distinguishing between the economic and sovereign functions of government. This distinction has been supported by the argument that although citizenship is not a relevant ground for the distribution of economic benefits, it is a relevant ground for determining membership in the political community. “We recognize a State’s interest in establishing its own form of government, and in limiting participation in that government to those who are within ‘the basic conception of a political community.’” Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S., at 642. While not retreating from the position that restrictions on lawfully resident aliens that primarily affect economic interests are subject to heightened judicial scrutiny, ibid,.; In re Griffiths, supra; Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, supra, we have concluded that strict scrutiny is out of place when the restriction primarily serves a political function: “[0]ur scrutiny will not be so demanding where we deal with matters resting firmly within a State’s constitutional prerogatives [and] constitutional responsibility for the establishment and operation of its own government, as well as the qualifications of an appropriately designated class of public office holders.” Sugarman v. Dougall, supra, at 648. We have thus “not abandoned the general principle that some state functions are so bound up with the operation of the State as a governmental entity as to permit the exclusion from those functions of all persons who have not become part of the process of self-government.” Ambach v. Norwich, 441 U. S., at 73-74. And in those areas the State’s exclusion of aliens need not “clear the high hurdle of ‘strict scrutiny,’ because [that] would ‘obliterate all the distinctions between citizens and aliens, and thus depreciate the historic value of citizenship.’” Foley v. Connelie, 435 U. S., at 295 (citation omitted).
The exclusion of aliens from basic governmental processes is not a deficiency in the democratic system but a necessary consequence of the community’s process of political self-definition. Self-government, whether direct or through representatives, begins by defining the scope of the community of the governed and thus of the governors as well: Aliens are by definition those outside of this community. Judicial incursions in this area may interfere with those aspects of democratic self-government that are most essential to it. This distinction between the economic and political functions of government has, therefore, replaced the old public/private distinction. Although this distinction rests on firmer foundations than the old public/private distinction, it may be difficult to apply in particular cases.
Sugarman advised that a claim that a particular restriction on legally resident aliens serves political and not economic goals is to be evaluated in a two-step process. First, the specificity of the classification will be examined: a classification that is substantially overinclusive or underinclusive tends to undercut the governmental claim that the classification serves legitimate political ends. The classification in Sugarman itself — all members of the competitive civil service — could not support the claim that it was an element in “the State’s broad power to define its political community,” 41B U. S., at 643, because it indiscriminately swept in menial occupations, while leaving out some of the State’s most important political functions. Second, even if the classification is sufficiently tailored, it may be applied in the particular case only to “persons holding state elective or important nonelec-tive executive, legislative, and judicial positions,” those officers who “participate directly in the formulation, execution, or review of broad public policy” and hence “perform functions that go to the heart of representative government.” Id., at 647. We must therefore inquire whether the “position in question . . . involves discretionary decisionmaking, or execution of policy, which substantially affects members of the political community.” Foley v. Connelie, supra, at 296.
The restriction at issue in this case passes both of the Su-garman tests.
Ill
Appellees argue, and the District Court agreed, that Cal. Gov’t Code Ann. § 1031(a) (West 1980), which requires all state “peace officers” to be citizens, is unconstitutionally overinclusive: “Section 1031(a) is void as a law requiring citizenship which ‘sweeps too broadly.’” 490 F. Supp., at 986. The District Court failed to articulate any standard in reaching this conclusion. Rather, it relied wholly on its belief that of the more than 70 positions included within the statutory classification of “peace officer,” some undefined number of them “cannot be considered members of the political community no matter how liberally that category is viewed.” Id., at 987. The District Court’s entire argument on this point consisted of just one sentence: “There appears to be no justification whatever for excluding aliens, even those who have applied for citizenship, from holding public employment as cemetery sextons, furniture and bedding inspectors, livestock identification inspectors, and toll service employees.” Id., at 986. In believing this sufficient, the District Court applied a standard of review far stricter than that approved in Sugarman and later cases.
We need not hold that the District Court was wrong in concluding that citizenship may not be required of toll-service employees, cemetery sextons, and inspectors to hold that the District Court was wrong in striking down the statute on its face. The District Court assumed that if the statute was overinclusive at all, it could not stand. This is not the proper standard. Rather, the inquiry is whether the restriction reaches so far and is so broad and haphazard as to belie the State’s claim that it is only attempting to ensure that an important function of government be in the hands of those having the “fundamental legal bond of citizenship.” Ambach v. Norwich, 441 U. S., at 75. Under this standard, the classifications used need not be precise; there need only be a substantial fit. Our examination of the California scheme convinces us that it is sufficiently tailored to withstand a facial challenge.
The general requirements, including citizenship, for all California peace officers are found in Cal. Gov’t Code Ann. § 1031 (West 1980). That section, however, does not designate any particular official as a peace officer; rather, Cal. Penal Code Ann. §830 (West Supp. 1981) lists the specific occupations that fall within the general category of “peace officer.”. Even a casual reading of the Penal Code makes clear that the unifying character of all categories of peace officers is their law enforcement function. Specific categories are defined by either their geographical jurisdiction or the specific substantive laws they have the responsibility to enforce. Thus, not surprisingly, the first categories listed include police officers at the county, city, and district levels. §830.1. This is followed by various categories of police power authorized by the State: e. g., highway patrol officers, the state police, and members of the California National Guard when ordered into active service. §830.2. After this, the statute includes a long list of particular officers with responsibility for enforcement of different substantive areas of the law: e. g., individuals charged with enforcement of the alcoholic beverage laws, the food and drug laws, fire laws, and the horse racing laws. § 830.3. Finally, there are several catchall provisions that include some officers with narrow geographic responsibilities — e. g., park rangers, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District police, harbor police, community college police, security officers of municipal utility districts, and security officers employed in government buildings — and some with narrow “clientele” — e. g., welfare-fraud or child-support investigators, correctional officers, parole and probation officers. §§830.31-830.6.
Although some of these categories may have only a tenuous connection to traditional police functions of law enforcement, the questionable classifications are comparatively few in number. The general law enforcement character of all California “peace officers” is underscored by the fact that all have the power to make arrests, §836, and all receive a course of training in the exercise of their respective arrest powers and in the use of firearms. § 832. Foley made clear that a State may limit the exercise of the sovereign’s coercive police powers over the members of the community to citizens. The California statutes at issue here are an attempt to do just that. They are sufficiently tailored in light of that aim to pass the lower level of scrutiny we articulated as the appropriate equal protection standard for such an exercise of sovereign power in Sugarman.
> hH
The District Court also held that the citizenship requirement was invalid as applied to the positions at issue here— deputy probation officers. In reaching this conclusion, it focused too narrowly on a comparison of the characteristics and functions of probation officers with those of the state troopers at issue in Foley and the teachers in Ambach. Foley and Ambach did not describe the outer limits of permissible citizenship requirements. For example, although both of those cases emphasized the communitywide responsibilities of teachers and police, there was no suggestion that judges, who deal only with a narrow subclass of the community, cannot be subject to a citizenship requirement. See Sugarman, 413 U. S., at 647. Similarly, although both Foley and Ambach emphasized the unsupervised discretion that must be exercised by the teacher and the police officer in the performance of their duties, neither case suggested that jurors, who act under a very specific set of instructions, could not be required to be citizens. See Perkins v. Smith, 370 F. Supp. 134 (Md 1974), summarily aff d, 426 U. S. 913 (1976). Definition of the important sovereign functions of the political community is necessarily the primary responsibility of the representative branches of government, subject to limited judicial review.
Looking at the functions of California probation officers, we conclude that they, like the state troopers involved in Foley, sufficiently partake of the sovereign’s power to exercise coercive force over the individual that they may be limited to citizens. Although the range of individuals over whom probation officers exercise supervisory authority is limited, the powers of the probation officer are broad with respect to those over whom they exercise that authority. The probation officer has the power both to arrest, Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§830.5, 836, 1203.2 (West Supp. 1981); Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. § 131.4 (West 1954); and to release those over whom he has jurisdiction. Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 1203.1a (West Supp. 1981). He has the power and the responsibility to supervise probationers and insure that all the conditions of probation are met and that the probationer accomplishes a successful reintegration into the community. Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 1203.1 (West Supp. 1981). With respect to juveniles, the probation officer has the responsibility to determine whether to release or detain offenders, Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code Ann. § 628 (West Supp. 1981), and whether to institute judicial proceedings or take other supervisory steps over the minor. §§630, 653-654. In carrying out these responsibilities the probation officer necessarily has a great deal of discretion that, just like that of the police officer and the teacher, must be exercised, in the first instance, without direct supervision:
“Because the probation or parole officer’s function is not so much to compel conformance to a strict code of behavior as to supervise a course of rehabilitation, he has been entrusted traditionally with broad discretion to judge the progress of rehabilitation in individual cases, and has been armed with the power to recommend or even to declare revocation.” Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 784 (1973).
One need not take an overly idealistic view of the educational functions of the probation officer during this period to recognize that the probation officer acts as an extension of the judiciary’s authority to set the conditions under which particular individuals will lead their lives and of the executive’s authority to coerce obedience to those conditions. From the perspective of the probationer, his probation officer may personify the State’s sovereign powers; from the perspective of the larger community, the probation officer may symbolize the political community’s control over, and thus responsibility for, those who have been found to have violated the norms of social order. From both of these perspectives, a citizenship requirement may seem an appropriate limitation on those who would exercise and, therefore, symbolize this power of the political community over those who fall within its jurisdiction.
Therefore, the judgment of the District Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
One of the appellees, Chavez-Salido, subsequently became a citizen. By that time, however, there were no longer any openings for the job he had previously been denied on the grounds of his noncitizenship. Appel-lees, at the time they applied for the positions in question, were all lawfully present, resident aliens. Therefore, we do not consider, and intimate no opinion about, any limits the Constitution may place upon state action directed at aliens who are here without the permission of the Federal Government or who, if legally here, are not residents of the State.
Under the California statute, the kinds of responsibilities of deputy probation officers are the same as those of probation officers and both are considered “peace officers.” Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 830-5 (West Supp. 1981). This opinion, therefore, will refer simply to “probation officers” in discussing the positions at issue.
The third appellee, Bohorquez, claimed only that he failed to appeal a test score that disqualified him, because he had been informed that without citizenship an appeal would be useless. As relief in this suit, Bohorquez sought only an opportunity to take a new examination.
Although the individual defendants did not contest the jurisdiction of the federal court, the county did. In their complaint, appellees waived any claim against the county under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 — the complaint was filed before this Court’s decision in Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U. S. 658 (1978), which held that such an action could be brought against a county. Appellees argued, and the District Court agreed, that they did have a claim against the county directly under the Fourteenth Amendment and under 42 U. S. C. § 1981, with jurisdiction in the Federal District Court under 28 U. S. C. § 1331(a) because there was more than $10,000 in controversy. In its second opinion, the District Court readopted its earlier jurisdictional holdings and declined to release appellees from their previous waiver of a possible claim against the county under § 1983. Given our resolution of the merits and because jurisdiction over the individual defendants is clear, we need not evaluate or otherwise accept the District Court’s jurisdictional findings with respect to the county.
Congress has since limited the availability of three-judge courts, The Three-Judge Court Amendments of 1976, Pub. L. 94-381, 90 Stat. 1119. This case, however, is not affected by those changes, which do not apply to actions commenced before the date of the new statute’s enactment.
At times the dissent seems to imply that our cases do not establish a two-tiered standard of review — e. g., “[Sugarman] did not condone a looser standard for review of classifications barring aliens from ‘political jobs.’ ” Post, at 453. At other times, however, the dissent explicitly refers to the “Sugarman exception” as requiring “[l]ess demanding scrutiny ... for statutes deriving from ‘a State’s historical power to exclude aliens from participation in its democratic political institutions.’ ” Post, at 456.
The full quotation from Sugarman is as follows:
“ ‘[E]ach State has the power to prescribe the qualifications of its officers and the manner in which they shall be chosen.’ Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, 143 U. S. 135, 161 (1892). See Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1, 41 (1849); Pope v. Williams, 193 U. S. 621, 632-633 (1904). Such power inheres in the State by virtue of its obligation, already noted above, ‘to preserve the basic conception of a political community.’ Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S., at 344. And this power and responsibility of the State applies, not only to the qualifications of voters, but also to persons holding state elective or important noneleetive executive, legislative, and judicial positions, for officers who ‘participate directly in the formulation, execution, or review of broad public policy perform functions that go to the heart of representative government.’” 413 U. S., at 647.
This language is far reaching and no limits on it were suggested by Sugar-man itself: almost every governmental official can be understood as participating in the execution of broad public policies. The limits on this category within which citizenship is relevant to the political community are not easily defined, but our cases since Sugarman—Foley v. Connelie, 435 U. S. 291 (1978), and Ambach v. Norwich, 441 U. S. 68 (1979)— suggest that this Court will not look to the breadth of policy judgments required of a particular employee. Rather, the Court will look to the importance of the function as a factor giving substance to the concept of democratic self-government.
Both the District Court and the parties mistakenly refer to this argument as one based on the constitutional doctrine of “overbreadth.” “Overbreadth” is a doctrine of standing applicable in certain First Amendment cases and under which litigants may assert the rights of others not presently before the court. See Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 611-615 (1973). Appellees do not claim to be asserting the constitutional rights of others; rather, they claim that California denies them the equal protection of the laws because the restriction is so overinclusive that it destroys the State’s asserted justification.
It is worth noting, however, that of the categories mentioned by the District Court, toll-service employees, inspectors of the Bureau of Livestock, and cemetery sextons were all eliminated from coverage by amendments to Cal. Penal Code Ann. §830.4 (West Supp. 1981), passed in 1980. 1980 Cal. Stats., ch. 1340, p. 4724, § 12, effective Sept. 30, 1980.
The dissent specifically questions only four positions. Post, at 455, n. 7. Three of these — Dental Board Inspectors, Parks and Recreation Department employees, and voluntary fire wardens — are designated “peace officers” only when their “primary duty” is law enforcement. See Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§ 830.3(b), (c), (j) (West Supp. 1980).
The dissent accuses the Court of holding that the law enforcement character of some of the covered positions justifies application of the citizenship restriction to unrelated positions. Post, at 455. We indicate no opinion as to whether noncitizen applicants for other positions could successfully challenge the statute as applied to them.
Appellees also argue that the statute is facially invalid because it is im-permissibly underinelusive. The District Court did not consider this contention, and the only argument advanced by appellees in support of this claim is that California fails to impose a citizenship requirement upon its public school teachers. Brief for Appellees 29. At various points, the dissent also relies upon the alleged underinclusiveness of the statute.
Although there is some language in Sugarman indicating that such an argument is appropriate, 413 U. S., at 640, 642, and that a statutory exclusion of aliens from a particular form of public employment will be evaluated in light of the entire framework of public employment positions open and closed to aliens, clearly our subsequent cases have not adopted that position. Thus, in both Foley and Ambach only the specific governmental functions directly at issue were considered. Underinclusiveness arguments were relevant in Sugarman because there the classification involved — the competitive civil service — swept in a wide variety of governmental functions. Such a sweeping and apparently indiscriminate categorization raises legitimate questions of arbitrariness that are not raised when the State limits a particular and important governmental function — e. g., coercive police power — to citizens. When we deal with such a specific category, underinclusiveness arguments are relevant only within the category: Are there, for example, individuals who exercise the State’s coercive police power that are not required to be citizens? In this respect, the California statutory scheme is not substantially underinelusive: Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 830.7 (West Supp. 1981) lists only two categories of positions which have the power to arrest but are not “peace officers” — and therefore are not subject to the citizenship requirement — security officers at institutions of higher education and certain individuals designated by a cemetery authority.
Measuring the scope of community contacts is more difficult than it may appear. Although the probation officer has responsibility for only a relatively small part of the community, in exercising that responsibility the probation officer necessarily comes in contact with a much broader section of the community. His supervisory responsibilities will bring him into contact with many of those with whom those under his supervision must interact — e. g., employers, teachers, landlords, and family. In this respect he is very much like a policeman, who exercises his coercive authority over a small class of individuals, but carries out his responsibilities through interactions with a much larger segment of the community.
Thus we do not find compelling the statistics presented by amicus Service Employees International Union, and cited by appellees at oral argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 40, which indicate that because of a growing caseload, the time a probation officer has to spend with any individual offender may be minimal.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Officials of the Bureau of Land Management stand accused of harassment and intimidation aimed at extracting an easement across private property. The questions here are whether the landowner has either a private action for damages of the sort recognized in Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), or a claim against the officials in their individual capacities under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U. S. C. §§ 1961-1968 (2000 ed. and Supp. IV). We hold that neither action is available.
I
A
Plaintiff-respondent Frank Robbins owns and operates the High Island Ranch, a commercial guest resort in Hot Springs County, Wyoming, stretching across some 40 miles of territory. The ranch is a patchwork of mostly contiguous land parcels intermingled with tracts belonging to other private owners, the State of Wyoming, and the National Government. Its natural resources include wildlife and mineral deposits, and its mountainous western portion, called the upper Rock Creek area, is a place of great natural beauty. In response to persistent requests by environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts, the Bureau tried to induce the ranch’s previous owner, George Nelson, to grant an easement for publie use over South Fork Owl Creek Road, which runs through the ranch and serves as a main route to the upper Rock Creek area. For a while, Nelson refused from fear that the public would disrupt his guests’ activities, but shortly after agreeing to sell the property to Robbins, in March 1994, Nelson signed a nonexclusive deed of easement giving the United States the right to use and maintain the road along a stretch of his property. In return, the Bureau agreed to rent Nelson a right-of-way to maintain a different section of the road as it runs across federal property and connects otherwise isolated parts of Robbins’s holdings.
In May 1994, Nelson conveyed the ranch to Robbins, who continued to graze cattle and run guest cattle drives in reliance on grazing permits and a Special Recreation Use Permit (SRUP) issued by the Bureau. But Robbins knew nothing about Nelson’s grant of the easement across South Fork Owl Creek Road, which the Bureau had failed to record, and upon recording his warranty deed in Hot Springs County, Robbins took title to the ranch free of the easement, by operation of Wyoming law. See Wyo. Stat. Ann. -§34-1-120 (2005).
When the Bureau’s employee Joseph Vessels discovered, in June 1994, that the Bureau’s inaction had cost it the easement, he telephoned Robbins and demanded an easement to replace Nelson’s. Robbins refused but indicated he would consider granting one in return for something. In a later meeting, Vessels allegedly told Robbins that “‘the Federal Government does not negotiate,’” and talks broke down. Brief for Respondent 5. Robbins says that over the next several years the defendant-petitioners (hereinafter defendants), who are current and former employees of the Bureau, carried on a campaign of harassment and intimidation aimed at forcing him to regrant the lost easement.
B
Robbins concedes that any single one of the offensive and sometimes illegal actions by the Bureau’s officials might have been brushed aside as a small imposition, but says that in the aggregate the campaign against him amounted to coercion to extract the easement and should be redressed collectively. The substance of Robbins’s claim, and the degree to which existing remedies available to him were adequate, can be understood and assessed only by getting down to the details, which add up to a long recitation.
In the summer of 1994, after the fruitless telephone conversation in June, Vessels wrote to Robbins for permission to survey his land in the area of the desired easement. Robbins said no, that it would be a waste of time for the Bureau to do a survey without first reaching agreement with him. Vessels went ahead with a survey anyway, trespassed on Robbins’s land, and later boasted about it to Robbins. Not surprisingly, given the lack of damage to his property, Robbins did not file a trespass complaint in response.
Mutual animosity grew, however, and one Bureau employee, Edward Parodi, was told by his superiors to “look closer” and “investigate harder” for possible trespasses and other permit violations by Robbins. App. 128-129. Parodi also heard colleagues make certain disparaging remarks about Robbins, such as referring to him as “the rich SOB from Alabama [who] got [the Ranch].” Id., at 121. Parodi became convinced that the Bureau had mistreated Robbins and described its conduct as “the volcanic point” in his decision to retire. Id., at 133.
Vessels and his supervisor, defendant Charles Wilkie, continued to demand the easement, under threat to cancel the reciprocal maintenance right-of-way that Nelson had negotiated. When Robbins would not budge, the Bureau canceled the right-of-way, citing Robbins’s refusal to grant the desired easement and failure even to pay the rental fee. Robbins did not appeal the cancellation to the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) or seek judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 702.
In August 1995, Robbins brought his cattle to a water source on property belonging to his neighbor, LaVonne Pennoyer. An altercation ensued, and Pennoyer struck Robbins with her truck while he was riding a horse. PlaintiffAppellee’s Supp. App. in No. 04-8016 (CA10), pp. 676-681 (hereinafter CA10 App.); 9 Record, PI. Exh. 2, pp. 164-166; 10 id., PI. Exh. 35a, at 102-108. Defendant Gene Leone fielded a call from Pennoyer regarding the incident, encouraged her to contact the sheriff, and himself placed calls to the sheriff suggesting that Robbins be charged with trespass. After the incident, Parodi claims that Leone told him: “ ‘I think I finally got a way to get [Robbins’s] permits and get him out of business.’” App. 125,126.
In October 1995, the Bureau claimed various permit violations and changed the High Island Ranch’s 5-year SRUP to a SRUP subject to annual renewal. According to Robbins, losing the 5-year SRUP disrupted his guest ranching business, owing to the resulting uncertainty about permission to conduct cattle drives. Robbins declined to seek administrative review, however, in part because Bureau officials told him that the process would be lengthy and that his permit would be suspended until the IBLA reached a decision.
Beginning in 1996, defendants brought administrative charges against Robbins for trespass and other land-use violations. Robbins claimed some charges were false, and others unfairly selective enforcement, and he took all of them to be an effort to retaliate for refusing the Bureau’s continuing demands for the easement. He contested a number of these charges, but not all of them, administratively.
In the spring of 1997, the South Fork Owl Greek Road, the only way to reach the portions of the ranch in the Rock Creek area, became impassable. When the Bureau refused to repair the section of road across federal land, Robbins took matters into his own hands and fixed the public road himself, even though the Bureau had refused permission. The Bureau fined Robbins for trespass, but offered to settle the charge and entertain an application to renew the old maintenance right-of-way. Instead, Robbins appealed to the IBLA, which found that Robbins had admitted the unauthorized repairs when he sent the Bureau a bill for reimbursement. The Board upheld the fine, In re Robbins, 146 I. B. L. A. 213 (1998), and rejected Robbins’s claim that the Bureau was trying to “ ‘blackmail’ ” him into providing the easement; it said that “[t]he record effectively shows... intransigence was the tactic of Robbins, not [the] BLM.” Id., at 219. Robbins did not seek judicial review of the IBLA’s decision.
In July 1997, defendant Teryl Shryack and a colleague entered Robbins’s property, claiming the terms of a fence easement as authority. Robbins accused Shryack of unlawful entry, tore up the written instrument, and ordered her off his property. Later that month, after a meeting about trespass issues with Bureau officials, Michael Miller, a Bureau law enforcement officer, questioned Robbins without advance notice and without counsel about the incident with Shryack. The upshot was a charge with two counts of knowingly and forcibly impeding and interfering with a federal employee, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 111 (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), a crime with a penalty of up to one year in prison. A jury acquitted Robbins in December, after deliberating less than 30 minutes. United States v. Robbins, 179 F. 3d 1268, 1269 (CA10 1999). According to a news story, the jurors “were appalled at the actions of the government” and one said that “Robbins could not have been railroaded any worse... if he worked for the Union Pacific.” CA10 App. 852. Robbins then moved for attorney’s fees under the Hyde Amendment, § 617, 111 Stat. 2519, note following 18 U. S. C. §3006A, arguing that the position of the United States was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith. The trial judge denied the motion, and Robbins appealed too late. See 179 F. 3d, at 1269-1270.
In 1998, Robbins brought the lawsuit now before us, though there was further vexation to come. In June 1999, the Bureau denied Robbins’s application to renew his annual SRUP, based on an accumulation of land-use penalties levied against him. Robbins appealed, the IBLA affirmed, In re Robbins, 154 I. B. L. A. 93 (2000), and Robbins did not seek judicial review. Then, in August, the Bureau revoked the grazing permit for High Island Ranch, claiming that Robbins had violated its terms when he kept Bureau officials from passing over his property to reach public lands. Robbins appealed to the IBLA, which stayed the revocation pending resolution of the appeal. Order in Robbins v. Bureau of Land Management, IBLA 2000-12 (Nov. 10, 1999), CA10 App. 1020.
The stay held for several years, despite periodic friction. Without a SRUP, Robbins was forced to redirect his guest cattle drives away from federal land and through a mountain pass with unmarked property boundaries. In August 2000, Vessels and defendants Darrell Barnes and Miller tried to catch Robbins trespassing in driving cattle over a corner of land administered by the Bureau. From a nearby hilltop, they videotaped ranch guests during the drive, even while the guests sought privacy to relieve themselves. That afternoon, Robbins alleges, Barnes and Miller broke into his guest lodge, left trash inside, and departed without closing the lodge gates.
The next summer, defendant David Wallace spoke with Preston Smith, an employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who manages lands along the High Island Ranch’s southern border, and pressured him to impound Robbins’s cattle. Smith told Robbins, but did nothing more.
Finally, in January 2003, tension actually cooled to the point that Robbins and the Bureau entered into a settlement agreement that, among other things, established a procedure for informal resolution of future grazing disputes and stayed 16 pending administrative appeals with a view to their ultimate dismissal, provided that Robbins did not violate certain Bureau regulations for a 2-year period. The settlement came apart, however, in January 2004, when the Bureau began formal trespass proceedings against Robbins and unilaterally voided the settlement agreement. Robbins tried to enforce the agreement in federal court, but a District Court denied relief in a decision affirmed by the Court of Appeals in February 2006. Robbins v. Bureau of Land Management, 438 F. 3d 1074 (CA10).
C
In this lawsuit (brought, as we said, in 1998), Robbins asks for compensatory and punitive damages as well as declaratory and injunctive relief. Although he originally included the United States as a defendant, he voluntarily dismissed the Government, and pressed forward with a RICO claim charging defendants with repeatedly trying to extort an easement from him, as well as a similarly grounded Bivens claim that defendants violated his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss on qualified immunity and failure to state a claim, which the District Court granted, holding that Robbins inadequately pleaded damages under RICO and that the APA and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U. S. C. § 1846, were effective alternative remedies that precluded Bivens relief. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed on both grounds, 300 F. 3d 1208, 1211 (2002), although it specified that Bivens relief was available only for those “constitutional violations committed by individual federal employees unrelated to final agency action,” 300 F. 3d, at 1212.
On remand, defendants again moved to dismiss on qualified immunity. As to the RICO claim, the District Court denied the motion; as to Bivens, it dismissed what Robbins called the Fourth Amendment claim for malicious prosecution and those under the Fifth Amendment for due process violations, but it declined to dismiss the Fifth Amendment claim of retaliation for the exercise of Robbins’s right to exclude the Government from his property and to refuse any grant of a property interest without compensation. After limited discovery, defendants again moved for summary judgment on qualified immunity. The District Court adhered to its earlier denial.
This time, the Court of Appeals affirmed, after dealing with collateral order jurisdiction to consider an interlocutory appeal of the denial of qualified immunity, 433 F. 3d 755, 761 (2006) (citing Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 530 (1985)). It held that Robbins had a clearly established right to be free from retaliation for exercising his Fifth Amendment right to exclude the Government from his private property, 433 F. 3d, at 765-767, and it explained that Robbins could go forward with the RICO claim because Government employees who “engag[e] in lawful actions with an intent to extort a right-of-way from [a landowner] rather than with an intent to merely carry out their regulatory duties” commit extortion under Wyoming law and within the meaning of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951, 433 F. 3d, at 768. The Court of Appeals rejected the defense based on a claim of the Government’s legal entitlement to demand the disputed easement: “if an official obtains property that he has lawful authority to obtain, but does so in a wrongful manner, his conduct constitutes extortion under the Hobbs Act.” Id., at 769. Finally, the Court of Appeals said again that “Robbins’[s] allegations involving individual action unrelated to final agency action are permitted under Bivens.” Id., at 772. The appeals court declined defendants’ request “to determine which allegations remain and which are precluded,” however, because defendants had not asked the District Court to sort them out. Ibid.
We granted certiorari, 549 U. S. 1075 (2006), and now reverse.
II
The first question is whether to devise a new Bivens damages action for retaliating against the exercise of ownership rights, in addition to the discrete administrative and judicial remedies available to a landowner like Robbins in dealing with the Government’s employees. Bivens, 403 U. S. 388, held that the victim of a Fourth Amendment violation by federal officers had a claim for damages, and in the years following we have recognized two more nonstatutory damages remedies, the first for employment discrimination in violation of the Due Process Clause, Davis v. Passman, 442 U. S. 228 (1979), and the second for an Eighth Amendment violation by prison officials, Carlson v. Green, 446 U. S. 14 (1980). But we have also held that any freestanding damages remedy for a claimed constitutional violation has to represent a judgment about the best way to implement a constitutional guarantee; it is not an automatic entitlement no matter what other means there may be to vindicate a protected interest, and in most instances we have found a Bivens remedy unjustified. We have accordingly held against applying the Bivens model to claims of First Amendment violations by federal employers, Bush v. Lucas, 462 U. S. 367 (1983), harm to military personnel through activity incident to service, United States v. Stanley, 483 U. S. 669 (1987); Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U. S. 296 (1983), and wrongful denials of Social Security disability benefits, Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U. S. 412 (1988). We have seen no case for extending Bivens to claims against federal agencies, FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U. S. 471 (1994), or against private prisons, Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U. S. 61 (2001).
Whatever the ultimate conclusion, however, our consideration of a Bivens request follows a familiar sequence, and on the assumption that a constitutionally recognized interest is adversely affected by the actions of federal employees, the decision whether to recognize a Bivens remedy may require two steps. In the first place, there is the question whether any alternative, existing process for protecting the interest amounts to a convincing reason for the Judicial Branch to refrain from providing a new and freestanding remedy in damages. Bush, supra, at 378. But even in the absence of an alternative, a Bivens remedy is a subject of judgment: “the federal courts must make the kind of remedial determination that is appropriate for a common-law tribunal, paying particular heed, however, to any special factors counselling hesitation before authorizing a new kind of federal litigation.” Bush, supra, at 378.
A
In this factually plentiful case, assessing the significance of any alternative remedies at step one has to begin by categorizing the difficulties Robbins experienced in dealing with the Bureau. We think they can be separated into four main groups: torts or tort-like injuries inflicted on him, charges brought against him, unfavorable agency actions, and offensive behavior by Bureau employees falling outside those three categories.
Tortious harm inflicted on him includes Vessels’s unauthorized survey of the terrain of the desired easement and the illegal entry into the lodge, and in each instance, Robbins had a civil remedy in damages for trespass. Understandably, he brought no such action after learning about the survey, which was doubtless annoying but not physically damaging. For the incident at the lodge, he chose not to pursue a tort remedy, though there is no question that one was available to him if he could prove his allegations. Cf. Correctional Services Corp., supra, at 72-73 (considering availability of state tort remedies in refusing to recognize a Bivens remedy).
The charges brought against Robbins include a series of administrative claims for trespass and other land-use violations, a fine for the unauthorized road repair in 1997, and the two criminal charges that same year. Robbins had the opportunity to contest all of the administrative charges; he did fight some (but not all) of the various land-use and trespass citations, and he challenged the road repair fine as far as the IBLA, though he did not take advantage of judicial review when he lost in that tribunal. **8 He exercised his right to jury trial on the criminal complaints, and although the rapid acquittal tended to support his charge of baseless action by the prosecution (egged on by Bureau employees), the federal judge who presided at the trial did not think the Government’s case thin enough to justify awarding attorney’s fees, and Robbins’s appeal from that decision was late. See Robbins, 179 F. 3d, at 1269-1270. The trial judge’s denial of fees may reflect facts that dissuaded Robbins from bringing a state-law action for malicious prosecution, though it is also possible that a remedy would have been unavailable against federal officials, see Blake v. Rupe, 651 P. 2d 1096, 1107 (Wyo. 1982) (“Malicious prosecution is not an action available against a law enforcement official”). ****6 For each charge, in any event, Robbins had some procedure to defend and make good on his position. He took advantage of some opportunities, and let others pass; although he had mixed success, he had the means to be heard.
The more conventional agency action included the 1995 cancellation of the right-of-way in Robbins’s favor (originally given in return for the unrecorded easement for the Government’s benefit); the 1995 decision to reduce the SRUP from five years to one; the termination of the SRUP in 1999; and the revocation of the grazing permit that same year. Each time, the Bureau claimed that Robbins was at fault, and for each claim, administrative review was available, subject to ultimate judicial review under the APA. Robbins took no appeal from the 1995 decisions, stopped after losing an IBLA appeal of the SRUP denial, and obtained a stay from the IBLA of the Bureau’s revocation of the grazing permit.
Three events elude classification. The 1995 incident in which Robbins’s horse was struck primarily involved Robbins and his neighbor, not the Bureau, and the sheriff never brought criminal charges. The videotaping of ranch guests during the 2000 drive, while no doubt thoroughly irritating and bad for business, may not have been unlawful, depending, among other things, upon the location on public or private land of the people photographed. C£ Restatement (Second) of Torts §652B (1976) (defining tort of intrusion upon seclusion). Even if a tort was committed, it is unclear whether Robbins, rather than his guests, would be the proper plaintiff, or whether the tort should be chargeable against the Government (as distinct from employees) under the FTCA, cf. Carlson, 446 U. S., at 19-20 (holding that FTCA and Bivens remedies were “parallel, complementary causes of action” and that the availability of the former did not preempt the latter). The significance of Wallace’s 2001 attempt to pressure Smith into impounding Robbins’s cattle is likewise up in the air. The legitimacy of any impoundment that might have occurred would presumably have depended on where particular cattle were on the patchwork of private and public lands, and in any event, Smith never impounded any.
In sum, Robbins has an administrative, and ultimately a judicial, process for vindicating virtually all of his complaints. He suffered no charges of wrongdoing on his own part without an opportunity to defend himself (and, in the ease of the criminal charges, to recoup the consequent expense, though a judge found his claim wanting). And final agency action, as in canceling permits, for example, was open to administrative and judicial review, as the Court of Appeals realized, 433 F. 3d, at 772.
This state of the law gives Robbins no intuitively meritorious case for recognizing a new constitutional cause of action, but neither does it plainly answer no to the question whether he should have it. Like the combination of public and private land ownership around the ranch, the forums of defense and redress open to Robbins are a patchwork, an assemblage of state and federal, administrative and judicial benches applying regulations, statutes, and common law rules. It would be hard to infer that Congress expected the Judiciary to stay its Bivens hand, but equally hard to extract any clear lesson that Bivens ought to spawn a new claim. Compare Bush, 462 U. S., at 388 (refusing to create a Bivens remedy when faced with “an elaborate remedial system that has been constructed step by step, with careful attention to conflicting policy considerations”); and Schweiker, 487 U. S., at 426 (“Congress chose specific forms and levels of protection for the rights of persons affected”), with Bivens, 403 U. S., at 397 (finding “no explicit congressional declaration that persons injured [in this way] may not recover money damages from the agents, but must instead be remitted to another remedy, equally effective in the view of Congress”).
B
This, then, is a case for Bivens step two, for weighing reasons for and against the creation of a new cause of action, the way common law judges have always done. See Bush, supra, at 378. Here, the competing arguments boil down to one on a side: from Robbins, the inadequacy of discrete, incident-by-incident remedies; and from the Government and its employees, the difficulty of defining limits to legitimate zeal on the public’s behalf in situations where hard bargaining is to be expected in the back-and-forth between public and private interests that the Government’s employees engage in every day.
1
As we said, when the incidents are examined one by one, Robbins’s situation does not call for creating a constitutional cause of action for want of other means of vindication, so he is unlike the plaintiffs in cases recognizing freestanding claims: Davis had no other remedy, Bivens himself was not thought to have an effective one, and in Carlson the plaintiff had none against Government officials. Davis, 442 U. S., at 245 (“For Davis, as for Bivens, ‘it is damages or nothing’ ” (quoting Bivens, supra, at 410 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment))); Carlson, supra, at 23 (“[W]e cannot hold that Congress relegated respondent exclusively to the FTCA remedy” against the Government).
But Robbins’s argument for a remedy that looks at the course of dealing as a whole, not simply as so many individual incidents, has the force of the metaphor Robbins invokes, “death by a thousand cuts.” Brief for Respondent 40. It is one thing to be threatened with the loss of grazing rights,. or to be prosecuted, or to have one’s lodge broken into, but something else to be subjected to this in combination over a period of six years, by a series of public officials bent on making life difficult. Agency appeals, lawsuits, and criminal defense take money, and endless battling depletes the spirit along with the purse. The whole here is greater than the sum of its parts.
2
On the other side of the ledger there is a difficulty in defining a workable cause of action. Robbins describes the wrong here as retaliation for standing on his right as a property owner to keep the Government out (by refusing a free replacement for the right-of-way it had lost), and the mention of retaliation brings with it a tailwind of support from our longstanding recognition that the Government may not retaliate for exercising First Amendment speech rights, see Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U. S. 378 (1987), or certain others of constitutional rank, see, e.g., Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70 (1973) (Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination); United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570 (1968) (Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury).
But on closer look, the claim against the Bureau’s employees fails to fit the prior retaliation cases. Those cases turn on an allegation of impermissible purpose and motivation; an employee who spoke out on matters of public concern and then was fired, for example, would need to “prove that the conduct at issue was constitutionally protected, and that it was a substantial or motivating factor in the termination.” Board of Comm’rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr, 518 U. S. 668, 675 (1996). In its defense, the Government may respond that the firing had nothing to do with the protected speech, or that “it would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.” Ibid. In short, the outcome turns on “what for” questions: what was the Government’s purpose in firing him and would he have been fired anyway? Questions like these have definite answers, and we have established methods for identifying the presence of an illicit reason (in competition with others), not only in retaliation cases but on claims of discrimination based on race or other characteristics. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792 (1973).
But a Bivens case by Robbins could not be resolved merely by answering a “what for” question or two. All agree that the Bureau’s employees intended to convince Robbins to grant an easement. But unlike punishing someone for speaking out against the Government, trying to induce someone to grant an easement for public use is a perfectly legitimate purpose: as a landowner, the Government may have, and in this instance does have, a valid interest in getting access to neighboring lands. The “what for” question thus has a ready answer in terms of lawful conduct.
Robbins’s challenge, therefore, is not to the object the Government seeks to achieve, and for the most part his argument is not that the means the Government used were necessarily illegitimate; rather, he says that defendants simply demanded too much and went too far. But as soon as Robbins’s claim is framed this way, the line-drawing difficulties it creates are immediately apparent. A “too much” kind of liability standard (if standard at all) can never be as reliable a guide to conduct and to any subsequent liability as a “what for” standard, and that reason counts against recognizing freestanding liability in a case like this.
The impossibility of fitting Robbins’s claim into the simple “what for” framework is demonstrated, repeatedly, by recalling the various actions he complains about. Most of them, such as strictly enforcing rules against trespass or conditions on grazing permits, are legitimate tactics designed to improve the Government’s negotiating position. Just as a private landowner, when frustrated at a neighbor’s stubbornness in refusing an easement, may press charges of trespass every time a cow wanders across the property line or call the authorities to report every land-use violation, the Government too may stand firm on its rights and use its power to protect public property interests. Though Robbins protests that the Government was trying to extract the easement for free instead of negotiating, that line is slippery even in this case; the Government was not offering to buy the easement, but it did have valuable things to offer in exchange, like continued. permission for Robbins to use Government land on favorable terms (at least to the degree that the terms of a permit were subject to discretion).
It is true that the Government is no ordinary landowner, with its immense economic power, its role as trustee for the public, its right to cater to particular segments of the public (like the recreational users who would take advantage of the right-of-way to get to remote tracts), and its wide discretion to bring enforcement actions. But in many ways, the Government deals with its neighbors as one owner among the rest (albeit a powerful one). Each may seek benefits from the others, and each may refuse to deal with the others by insisting on valuable consideration for anything in return. And as a potential contracting party, each neighbor is entitled to drive a hard bargain, as even Robbins acknowledges, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 31-32. That, after all, is what Robbins did by flatly refusing to regrant the easement without further recompense, and that is what the defendant employees did on behalf of the Government. So long as they had authority to withhold or withdraw permission to use Government land and to enforce the trespass and land-use rules (as the IBLA confirmed that they did have at least most of the time), they were within their rights to make it plain that Robbins’s willingness to give the easement would determine how complaisant they would be about his trespasses on public land, when they had discretion to enforce the law to the letter.
Robbins does make a few allegations, like the unauthorized survey and the unlawful entry into the lodge, that charge defendants with illegal action plainly going beyond hard bargaining. If those were the only coercive acts charged, Robbins could avoid the “too much” problem by fairly describing the Government behavior alleged as illegality in attempting to obtain a property interest for nothing, but that is not a fair summary of the body of allegations before us, according to which defendants’ improper exercise of the Government’s “regulatory powers” is essential to the claim. Brief for Respondent 21. (Of course, even in that simpler case, the tort or torts by Government employees would be so clearly actionable under the general law that it would furnish only the weakest argument for recognizing a generally available constitutional tort.) Rather, the bulk of Robbins’s charges go to actions that, on their own, fall within the Government’s enforcement power.
It would not answer the concerns just expressed to change conceptual gears and consider the more abstract concept of liability for retaliatory or undue pressure on a property owner for standing firm on property rights; looking at the claim that way would not eliminate the problem of degree, and it would raise a further reason to balk at recognizing a Bivens claim. For at this high level of generality, a Bivens action to redress retaliation against those who resist Government impositions on their property rights would invite claims in every sphere of legitimate governmental action affecting property interests, from negotiating tax claim settlements to enforcing Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations. Exercising any governmental authority affecting the value or enjoyment of property interests would fall within the Bivens regime, and across this enormous swath of potential litigation would hover the difficulty of devising a “too much” standard that could guide an employee’s conduct and a judicial factfinder’s conclusion.
The point here is not to deny that Government employees sometimes overreach, for of course they do, and they may have done so here if all the allegations are true. The point is the reasonable fear that a general Bivens cure would be worse than the disease.
C
In sum, defendants were acting in the name of the Bureau, which had the authority to grant (and had given) Robbins some use of public lands under its control and wanted a right-of-way in return. Defendants bargained hard by capitalizing on their discretionary authority and Robbins’s violations of various permit terms, though truculence was apparent on both sides. One of the defendants, at least, clearly crossed the line into impermissible conduct in breaking into Robbins’s lodge, although it is not clear from the record that any other action by defendants was more serious than garden-variety trespass, and the Government has successfully defended every decision to eliminate Robbins’s permission to use public lands in the ways he had previously enjoyed. Robbins had ready at hand a wide variety of administrative and judicial remedies to redress his injuries. The proposal, nonetheless, to create a new Bivens remedy to redress such injuries collectively on a theory of retaliation for exercising his property right to exclude, or on a general theory of unjustifiably burdening his rights as a property owner, raises a serious difficulty of devising a workable cause of action. A judicial standard to identify illegitimate pressure going beyond legitimately hard bargaining would be endlessly knotty to work out, and a general provision for tortlike liability when Government employees are unduly zealous in pressing a governmental interest affecting property would invite an onslaught of Bivens actions.
We think accordingly that any damages remedy for actions by Government employees who push too hard for the Government’s benefit may come better, if at all, through legislation. “Congress is in a far better position than a court to evaluate the impact of a new species of litigation” against those who act on the public’s behalf. Bush, 462 U. S., at 389. And Congress can tailor any remedy to the problem perceived, thus lessening the risk of raising a tide of suits threatening legitimate initiative on the part of the Government’s employees. Ibid. (“[Congress] may inform itself through fact
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
We granted certiorari in this case, 549 U. S. 1092 (2006), to decide whether the Court of Appeals had exceeded its authority under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1) by setting aside a capital sentence on the ground that the prosecutor’s closing statement was “unfairly inflammatory.” Weaver v. Bowersox, 438 F. 3d 832, 841 (CA8 2006). Our primary concern was whether the Court of Appeals’ application of the more stringent standard of review mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, was consistent with our interpretation of that statute. Cf. Carey v. Musladin, 549 U. S. 70 (2006). We are now aware of circumstances that persuade us that dismissal of the writ is the appropriate manner in which to dispose of this case.
The argument made by the prosecutor in this case was essentially the same as the argument that he made in two other cases — one of which involved respondent’s codefendant. See Shurn v. Delo, 177 F. 3d 662, 666 (CA8 1999); Newlon v. Armontrout, 693 F. Supp. 799 (WD Mo. 1988), aff’d, 885 F. 2d 1328 (CA8 1989). In each of those cases, the defendant received a death sentence. Also in each case, the defendant filed a petition seeking federal habeas relief before AEDPA’s effective date. Federal habeas relief was granted in all three cases. The State does not question the propriety of relief in the other two cases because it was clear at the time, as it is now, that AEDPA did not apply to either of them.
Respondent argues, for the following reasons, that AEDPA should not govern his case either. Like the defendants in Newlon and Shurn, respondent filed his federal habeas petition before the effective date of AEDPA. Instead of considering respondent’s claims, however, the District Court sua sponte stayed the habeas proceedings, noting that respondent had indicated his intention to file a petition for writ of certiorari seeking this Court’s review of the state courts’ denial of postconviction relief. Though the District Court recognized that respondent was not required to seek certiorari from this Court, it concluded that, if “a state prisoner chooses to pursue writ of certiorari, he must first exhaust that remedy before filing a federal habeas corpus petition.” App. to Brief for National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae 15. Thus, the District Court put respondent to a choice: He could forgo filing a petition for certiorari, or his habeas petition would be dismissed.
Respondent moved for reconsideration and for the appointment of counsel. The District Court denied both motions, reiterating its view that if respondent sought certiorari, his federal habeas petition would be premature. When respondent notified the District Court that a petition for certiorari had been filed, the court made good on its promise: It dismissed respondent’s habeas petition “without prejudice” to his refiling “following exhaustion of his state proceedings.” Id., at 13. Though respondent had filed his habeas petition before AEDPA took effect, the District Court dismissed his petition after the statute was in force.
Still without an attorney, respondent requested a certificate of appealability from the District Court. The court denied the request, opining that reasonable jurists could not disagree with the dismissal of respondent’s petition. Id., at 5-6. Respondent also filed a notice of appeal, which the Court of Appeals construed as a request for a certificate of appealability and rejected.
Respondent refiled his habeas petition after this Court denied review of his state postconviction proceedings. The Eighth Circuit eventually concluded that, because respondent’s petition was filed after AEDPA’s effective date, his claims must be evaluated under that statute’s strict standard of review. See Weaver v. Bowersox, 241 F. 3d 1024, 1029 (2001).
Our recent decision in Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U. S. 327 (2007), conclusively establishes that the District Court was wrong to conclude that, if respondent chose to seek certiorari, he had to exhaust that remedy before filing a federal habeas petition. Lawrence clarified that “[s]tate review ends when the state courts have finally resolved an application for state postconviction relief” — even if a prisoner files a certiorari petition. Id., at 332; see also id., at 332-333 (“[W]e have said that state prisoners need not petition for certiorari to exhaust state remedies” (citing Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 435-438 (1963))). Thus, respondent’s habeas petition, which was fully exhausted when filed, did not become unexhausted upon his decision to seek certiorari. Because the petition was not premature, the District Court had no cause to dismiss it.
Whether this unusual procedural history leads to the conclusion, as respondent eolorably contends, that the AEDPA standard is simply inapplicable to this case, is a question we find unnecessary to resolve. Regardless of the answer to that question, we find it appropriate to exercise our discretion to prevent these three virtually identically situated litigants from being treated in a needlessly disparate manner, simply because the District Court erroneously dismissed respondent’s pre-AEDPA petition.
Accordingly, the writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
It is so ordered.
Respondent did not seek rehearing or rehearing en banc in the Court of Appeals, nor did he file a petition for writ of certiorari from the denial of the certificate of appealability. Pursuit of either would almost certainly have been futile.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice THOMASdelivered the opinion of the Court.
The employer in this case required its employees, warehouse workers who retrieved inventory and packaged it for shipment, to undergo an antitheft security screening before leaving the warehouse each day. The question presented is whether the employees' time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing those security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq.,as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, § 251 et seq.We hold that the time is not compensable. We therefore reverse the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
I
Petitioner Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., provides warehouse staffing to Amazon.com throughout the United States. Respondents Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro worked as hourly employees of Integrity Staffing at warehouses in Las Vegas and Fenley, Nevada, respectively. As warehouse employees, they retrieved products from the shelves and packaged those products for delivery to Amazon customers.
Integrity Staffing required its employees to undergo a security screening before leaving the warehouse at the end of each day. During this screening, employees removed items such as wallets, keys, and belts from their persons and passed through metal detectors.
In 2010, Busk and Castro filed a putative class action against Integrity Staffing on behalf of similarly situated employees in the Nevada warehouses for alleged violations of the FLSA and Nevada labor laws. As relevant here, the employees alleged that they were entitled to compensation under the FLSA for the time spent waiting to undergo and actually undergoing the security screenings. They alleged that such time amounted to roughly 25 minutes each day and that it could have been reduced to a de minimisamount by adding more security screeners or by staggering the termination of shifts so that employees could flow through the checkpoint more quickly. They also alleged that the screenings were conducted "to prevent employee theft" and thus occurred "solely for the benefit of the employers and their customers." App. 19, 21.
The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, holding that the time spent waiting for and undergoing the security screenings was not compensable under the FLSA. It explained that, because the screenings occurred after the regular work shift, the employees could state a claim for compensation only if the screenings were an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities they were employed to perform. The District Court held that these screenings were not integral and indispensable but instead fell into a noncompensable category of postliminary activities.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. 713 F.3d 525 (2013). The Court of Appeals asserted that postshift activities that would ordinarily be classified as noncompensable postliminary activities are nevertheless compensable as integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities if those postshift activities are necessary to the principal work performed and done for the benefit of the employer. Id.,at 530. Accepting as true the allegation that Integrity Staffing required the security screenings to prevent employee theft, the Court of Appeals concluded that the screenings were "necessary" to the employees' primary work as warehouse employees and done for Integrity Staffing's benefit. Id.,at 531.
We granted certiorari, 571 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 1490, 188 L.Ed.2d 374 (2014), and now reverse.
II
A
Enacted in 1938, the FLSA established a minimum wage and overtime compensation for each hour worked in excess of 40 hours in each workweek. §§ 6(a)(1), 7(a)(3), 52 Stat. 1062-1063. An employer who violated these provisions could be held civilly liable for backpay, liquidated damages, and attorney's fees. § 16, id.,at 1069.
But the FLSA did not define "work" or "workweek," and this Court interpreted those terms broadly. It defined "work" as "physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer and his business." Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123,321 U.S. 590, 598, 64 S.Ct. 698, 88 L.Ed. 949 (1944). Similarly, it defined "the statutory workweek" to "includ[e] all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer's premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace." Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.,328 U.S. 680, 690-691, 66 S.Ct. 1187, 90 L.Ed. 1515 (1946). Applying these expansive definitions, the Court found compensable the time spent traveling between mine portals and underground work areas, Tennessee Coal, supra, at 598, 64 S.Ct. 698, and the time spent walking from timeclocks to work benches, Anderson, supra,at 691-692, 66 S.Ct. 1187.
These decisions provoked a flood of litigation. In the six months following this Court's decision in Anderson,unions and employees filed more than 1,500 lawsuits under the FLSA. S.Rep. No. 37, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 2-3 (1947). These suits sought nearly $6 billion in back pay and liquidated damages for various preshift and postshift activities. Ibid.
Congress responded swiftly. It found that the FLSA had "been interpreted judicially in disregard of long-established customs, practices, and contracts between employers and employees, thereby creating wholly unexpected liabilities, immense in amount and retroactive in operation, upon employers." 29 U.S.C. § 251(a). Declaring the situation to be an "emergency," Congress found that, if such interpretations "were permitted to stand, ... the payment of such liabilities would bring about financial ruin of many employers" and "employees would receive windfall payments ... for activities performed by them without any expectation of reward beyond that included in their agreed rates of pay." §§ 251(a)-(b).
Congress met this emergency with the Portal-to-Portal Act. The Portal-to-Portal Act exempted employers from liability for future claims based on two categories of work-related activities as follows:
"(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) [which covers work compensable by contract or custom], no employer shall be subject to any liability or punishment under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, ... on account of the failure of such employer ... to pay an employee overtime compensation, for or on account of any of the following activities of such employee engaged in on or after the date of the enactment of this Act-
"(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform, and
"(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities,
"which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases, such principal activity or activities." § 4, 61 Stat. 86-87 (codified at 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)).
At issue here is the exemption for "activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities."
B
This Court has consistently interpreted "the term 'principal activity or activities' [to] embrac[e] all activities which are an 'integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.' " IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez,546 U.S. 21, 29-30, 126 S.Ct. 514, 163 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005)(quoting Steiner v. Mitchell,350 U.S. 247, 252-253, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956)). Our prior opinions used those words in their ordinary sense. The word "integral" means "[b]elonging to or making up an integral whole; constituent, component; spec[ifically] necessary to the completeness or integrity of the whole; forming an intrinsic portion or element, as distinguished from an adjunct or appendage." 5 Oxford English Dictionary 366 (1933) (OED); accord, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae20 (Brief for United States); see also Webster's New International Dictionary 1290 (2d ed. 1954) (Webster's Second) ("[e]ssential to completeness; constituent, as a part"). And, when used to describe a duty, "indispensable" means a duty "[t]hat cannot be dispensed with, remitted, set aside, disregarded, or neglected." 5 OED 219; accord, Brief for United States 19; see also Webster's Second 1267 ("[n]ot capable of being dispensed with, set aside, neglected, or pronounced nonobligatory"). An activity is therefore integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities. As we describe below, this definition, as applied in these circumstances, is consistent with the Department of Labor's regulations.
Our precedents have identified several activities that satisfy this test. For example, we have held compensable the time battery-plant employees spent showering and changing clothes because the chemicals in the plant were "toxic to human beings" and the employer conceded that "the clothes-changing and showering activities of the employees [were] indispensable to the performance of their productive work and integrally related thereto." Steiner, supra, at 249, 251, 76 S.Ct. 330. And we have held compensable the time meatpacker employees spent sharpening their knives because dull knives would "slow down production" on the assembly line, "affect the appearance of the meat as well as the quality of the hides," "cause waste," and lead to "accidents." Mitchell v. King Packing Co.,350 U.S. 260, 262, 76 S.Ct. 337, 100 L.Ed. 282 (1956). By contrast, we have held noncompensable the time poultry-plant employees spent waiting to don protective gear because such waiting was "two steps removed from the productive activity on the assembly line." IBP,supra,at 42, 126 S.Ct. 514.
The Department of Labor's regulations are consistent with this approach. See 29 CFR § 790.8(b) (2013)("The term 'principal activities' includes all activities which are an integral part of a principal activity"); § 790.8(c)("Among the activities included as an integral part of a principal activity are those closely related activities which are indispensable to its performance"). As an illustration, those regulations explain that the time spent by an employee in a chemical plant changing clothes would be compensable if he "c[ould not] perform his principal activities without putting on certain clothes" but would not be compensable if "changing clothes [were] merely a convenience to the employee and not directly related to his principal activities." See § 790.8(c). As the regulations explain, "when performed under the conditions normally present," activities including "checking in and out and waiting in line to do so, changing clothes, washing up or showering, and waiting in line to receive pay checks" are " 'preliminary' " or " 'postliminary' " activities. § 790.7(g).
III
A
The security screenings at issue here are noncompensable postliminary activities. To begin with, the screenings were not the "principal activity or activities which [the] employee is employed to perform." 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(1). Integrity Staffing did not employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment to Amazon customers.
The security screenings also were not "integral and indispensable" to the employees' duties as warehouse workers. As explained above, an activity is not integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities unless it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform those activities. The screenings were not an intrinsic element of retrieving products from warehouse shelves or packaging them for shipment. And Integrity Staffing could have eliminated the screenings altogether without impairing the employees' ability to complete their work.
The Solicitor General, adopting the position of the Department of Labor, agrees that these screenings were noncompensable postliminary activities. See Brief for United States 10. That view is fully consistent with an Opinion Letter the Department issued in 1951. The letter found noncompensable a preshift security search of employees in a rocket-powder plant " 'for matches, spark producing devices such as cigarette lighters, and other items which have a direct bearing on the safety of the employees,' " as well as a postshift security search of the employees done " 'for the purpose of preventing theft.' " Opinion Letter from Dept. of Labor, Wage and Hour Div., to Dept. of Army, Office of Chief of Ordnance (Apr. 18, 1951), pp. 1-2 (available in Clerk of Court's case file). The Department drew no distinction between the searches conducted for the safety of the employees and those conducted for the purpose of preventing theft-neither were compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act.
B
The Court of Appeals erred by focusing on whether an employer requireda particular activity. The integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform. See, e.g., IBP, 546 U.S., at 42, 126 S.Ct. 514;Mitchell,supra,at 262, 76 S.Ct. 337; Steiner,350 U.S., at 249-251, 76 S.Ct. 330; see also 29 CFR § 790.8(a)(explaining that the term "principal activities" was "considered sufficiently broad to embrace within its terms such activities as are indispensable to the performance of productive work" (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added)); § 790.8(c)("Among the activities included as an integral part of a principal activity are those closely related activities which are indispensable to its performance" (emphasis added)).
If the test could be satisfied merely by the fact that an employer required an activity, it would sweep into "principal activities" the very activities that the Portal-to-Portal Act was designed to address. The employer in Anderson,for instance, required its employees to walk "from a timeclock near the factory gate to a workstation" so that they could "begin their work," "but it is indisputable that the Portal-to-Portal Act evinces Congress' intent to repudiate Anderson's holding that such walking time was compensable under the FLSA." IBP,supra,at 41, 126 S.Ct. 514. A test that turns on whether the activity is for the benefit of the employer is similarly overbroad.
Finally, we reject the employees' argument that time spent waiting to undergo the security screenings is compensable under the FLSA because Integrity Staffing could have reduced that time to a de minimisamount. The fact that an employer could conceivably reduce the time spent by employees on any preliminary or postliminary activity does not change the nature of the activity or its relationship to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform. These arguments are properly presented to the employer at the bargaining table, see 29 U.S.C. § 254(b)(1), not to a court in an FLSA claim.
* * *
We hold that an activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform-and thus compensable under the FLSA-if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities. Because the employees' time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing Integrity Staffing's security screenings does not meet these criteria, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
Justice SOTOMAYOR, with whom Justice KAGANjoins, concurring.
I concur in the Court's opinion, and write separately only to explain my understanding of the standards the Court applies.
The Court reaches two critical conclusions. First, the Court confirms that compensable " 'principal' " activities " 'includ[e] ... those closely related activities which are indispensable to [a principal activity's] performance,' " ante,at 518 (quoting 29 CFR § 790.8(c)(2013)), and holds that the required security screenings here were not "integral and indispensable" to another principal activity the employees were employed to perform, ante,at 518. I agree. As both Department of Labor regulations and our precedent make clear, an activity is "indispensable" to another, principal activity only when an employee could not dispense with it without impairing his ability to perform the principal activity safely and effectively. Thus, although a battery plant worker might, for example, perform his principal activities without donning proper protective gear, he could not do so safely, see Steiner v. Mitchell,350 U.S. 247, 250-253, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956); likewise, a butcher might be able to cut meat without having sharpened his knives, but he could not do so effectively, see Mitchell v. King Packing Co.,350 U.S. 260, 262-263, 76 S.Ct. 337, 100 L.Ed. 282 (1956); accord, 29 CFR § 790.8(c). Here, by contrast, the security screenings were not "integral and indispensable" to the employees' other principal activities in this sense. The screenings may, as the Ninth Circuit observed below, have been in some way related to the work that the employees performed in the warehouse, see 713 F.3d 525, 531 (2013), but the employees could skip the screenings altogether without the safety or effectiveness of their principal activities being substantially impaired, see ante,at 518.
Second, the Court holds also that the screenings were not themselves " 'principal ... activities' " the employees were " 'employed to perform.' " Ibid.(quoting 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(1)). On this point, I understand the Court's analysis to turn on its conclusion that undergoing security screenings was not itself work of consequence that the employees performed for their employer. See ante,at 518. Again, I agree. As the statute's use of the words "preliminary" and "postliminary" suggests, § 254(a)(2), and as our precedents make clear, the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 is primarily concerned with defining the beginning and end of the workday. See IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez,546 U.S. 21, 34-37, 126 S.Ct. 514, 163 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005). It distinguishes between activities that are essentially part of the ingress and egress process, on the one hand, and activities that constitute the actual "work of consequence performed for an employer," on the other hand. 29 CFR § 790.8(a); see also ibid.(clarifying that a principal activity need not predominate over other activities, and that an employee could be employed to perform multiple principal activities). The security screenings at issue here fall on the "preliminary ... or postliminary" side of this line. 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(2). The searches were part of the process by which the employees egressed their place of work, akin to checking in and out and waiting in line to do so-activities that Congress clearly deemed to be preliminary or postliminary. See S.Rep. No. 48, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 47 (1947); 29 CFR § 790.7(g). Indeed, as the Court observes, the Department of Labor reached the very same conclusion regarding similar security screenings shortly after the Portal-to-Portal Act was adopted, see ante,at 518 - 519, and we owe deference to that determination, see Christensen v. Harris County,529 U.S. 576, 587, 120 S.Ct. 1655, 146 L.Ed.2d 621 (2000).
Because I understand the Court's opinion to be consistent with the foregoing, I join it.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case brings before us for review the applicability of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, to employees allegedly engaged in commerce or the production of goods for commerce on a leasehold of the United States, located on the Crown Colony of Bermuda.
The leasehold, a military base, was obtained by the United States through a lease executed by the British Government. This lease was the result of negotiations adequately summarized for consideration by the letters of the Marquess of Lothian, the British Ambassador to the United States, of date September 2, 1940; the reply of Mr. Cordell Hull, then our Secretary of State, of the same date; and the Agreement of March 27, 1941, between the two nations to further effectuate the declarations of the Ambassador in his letter.
The Fair Labor Standards Act covers commerce “among the several States or from any State to any place outside thereof.” State means “any State of the United States or the District of Columbia or any Territory or possession of the United States.” § 3 (b) and (c) of the Act.
Certain employees of contractors who had contracts for work for the United States on the Bermuda base brought this suit under § 16 (b) of the Act for recovery of unpaid overtime compensation ¿nd damages, claimed to be due them for the employer’s violation of § 7, requiring overtime compensation. We do not enter into any consideration of the employees’ right to recover if the Fair Labor Standards Act is applicable to employment on the Bermuda base, for the complaint was dismissed on defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the ground that the applicability depended upon the “sovereign jurisdiction of the United States,” that the executive and legislative branches of the Government had indicated that such leased areas were not under our sovereign jurisdiction and that this was a political question outside of judicial power. Connell v. Vermilya-Brown Co., 73 F. Supp. 860. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, holding that the Act applied to the Bermuda base, reversed this judgment and remanded the case to the District Court for further proceedings on the merits. 164 F. 2d 924. Our affirmance of this judgment approves that disposition of the appeal.
On account of the obvious importance of the case from the standpoint of administration, in view of the number of leased areas occupied by the United States, we granted certiorari. 333 U. S. 859.
(1) We shall consider first our power to explore the problem as to whether the Fair Labor Standards Act covers this leased area. Or, to phrase it differently, is this a political question beyond the competence of courts to decide? Cf. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433, 450; Colegrove v. Creen, 328 U. S. 549, 552. There is nothing that indicates to us that this Court should refuse to decide a controversy between litigants because the geographical coverage of this statute is involved. Recognizing that the determination of sovereignty over an area is for the legislative and executive departments, Jones v. United States, 137 U. S. 202, does not debar courts from examining the status resulting from prior action. De Lima v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 1; Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U. S. 652. We have no occasion for this opinion to differ from the view as to sovereignty expressed “for the Secretary of State” by The Legal Adviser of the Department in his letter of January 30, 1948, to the Attorney General in relation to further legal steps in the present controversy after the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It was there stated:
“The arrangements under which the leased bases were acquired from Great Britain did not and were not intended to transfer sovereignty over the leased areas from Great Britain to the United States.”
Nothing in this opinion is intended to intimate that we have any different view from that expressed for the Secretary of State. In the light of the statement of the Department of State, we predicate our views on the issue presented upon the postulate that the leased area is under the sovereignty of Great Britain and that it is not territory of the United States in a political sense, that is, a part of its national domain.
(2) We have no doubt that Congress has power, in certain situations, to regulate the actions of our citizens outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States whether or not the act punished occurred within the territory of a foreign nation. This was established as to crimes directly affecting the Government in United States v. Bowman, 260 U. S. 94. This Court there pointed out, p. 102, that clearly such legislation concerning our citizens could not offend the dignity or right of sovereignty of another nation. See Blackmer v. United States, 284 U. S. 421, 437; Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S. 69, 73, 78. A jortiori civil controls may apply, we think, to liabilities created by statutory regulation of labor contracts, even if aliens may be involved, where the incidents regulated occur on areas under the control, though not within the territorial jurisdiction or sovereignty, of the nation enacting the legislation. This is implicitly conceded by all parties. This power is placed specifically in Congress by virtue of the authorization for “needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” Constitution, Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2. It does not depend upon sovereignty in the political or any sense over the territory. So the Administrator of the Wage-Hour Division has issued a statement of general policy or interpretation that directs all officers and agencies of his division to apply this Act to the Canal Zone, admittedly territory over which we do not have sovereignty. 29 C. F. R., 1947 Supp., pp. 4392-93.
(3) In this view of the relationship of our government to a leased area, the terms of this particular lease become important. Reference, note 1, supra, has been made to the United States Statutes where the title documents are readily available. It is unnecessary to print them here in full. In the margin are extracts that indicate their meaning as to the control intended to be granted. Under this agreement we have no doubt that the United States is authorized by the lessor to provide for maximum hours and minimum wages for employers and employees within the area, and the question of whether the Fair Labor Standards Act applies is one of statutory construction, not legislative power.
(4) At the time of the enactment of the Act, June 25, 1938, the United States had no leased base in Bermuda. This country did have a lease from the Republic of Cuba of an area at Guantanamo Bay for a coaling or naval station “for the time required for the purposes of coaling and naval stations.” The United States was granted by the Cuban lease substantially the same rights as it has in the Bermuda lease. The time limits of the grant were redefined on June 9, 1934, as extending until agreement for abrogation or unilateral abandonment by the United States. A similar arrangement existed in regard to the Panama Canal Zone. Further, in the Philippine Independence Acts of January 17, 1933, and March 24, 1934, provisions existed looking toward the retention of military and other bases in the Philippine Islands. 47 Stat. 761, §§ 5 and 10; 48 Stat. 456, §§ 5 and 10. A Convention between the governments of Nicaragua and the United States of America, proclaimed June 24, 1916, 39 Stat. 1661, gave the United States for 99 years “sovereign authority” over certain islands in the Caribbean Sea. None of these international arrangements were discussed in reports or the debates concerning the scope of the Fair Labor Standards Act. After the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act and during World War II, a number of bases for military operations were leased by the United States not only on territory of the British Commonwealth of Nations but on that of other sovereignties also. The provisions of these leases paralleled in many respects the Bermuda lease.
Neither this lack of specific reference in the legislative history to leased areas, however, nor the fact that the particular Bermuda base was acquired after the passage of the Act seems to us decisive of its coverage. “The reach of the act is not sustained or opposed by the fact that it is sought to bring new situations under its terms.” The Sherman Act of 1890, a date when we had no insular possessions, was held by its use of the word “Territory” in its § 3 to be applicable in Puerto Rico, a dependency acquired by the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The answer as to the scope of the Wage-Hour Act lies in the purpose of Congress in defining its reach.
(5) The point of statutory construction for our determination is as to whether the word “possession,” used by Congress to bound the geographical coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, fixes the limits of the Act’s scope so as to include the Bermuda base. The word “possession” is not a word of art, descriptive of a recognized geographical or governmental entity. What was said of “territories” in the Shell Co. case, 302 U. S. 253, at 258, is applicable:
“Words generally have different shades of meaning, and are to be construed if reasonably possible to effectuate the intent of the lawmakers; and this meaning in particular instances is to be arrived at not only by a consideration of the words themselves, but by considering, as well, the context, the purposes of the law, and the circumstances under which the words were employed.”
The word “possession” has been employed in a number of statutes both before and since the Fair Labor Standards Act to describe the areas to which various congressional statutes apply. We do not find that these examples sufficiently outline the meaning of the word to furnish a definition that would include or exclude this base. While the general purpose of the Congress in the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act is clear, no such definite indication of the purpose to include or exclude leased areas, such as the Bermuda base, in the word “possession” appears. We cannot even say, “We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before.” Under such circumstances, our duty as a Court is to construe the word “possession” as our judgment instructs us the lawmakers, within constitutional limits, would have done had they acted at the time of the legislation with the present situation in mind.
The word “possession” in the Act includes far-off islands whose economy differs markedly from our own. Thus the employees of Puerto Rico, Guam, the guano islands, Samoa and the Virgin Islands have the protection of the Act. See 29 C. F. R., 1947 Supp., 4393. Since drastic change in local economy was not a deterrent in these instances, there is no reason for saying that the wage-hour provisions of the Act were not intended to bring these minimum changes into the labor market of the bases. Since its passage of the Act, Congress has extended the coverage of the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act to the bases acquired since January 1, 1940, and to Guantanamo Bay. When one reads the comprehensive definition of the reach of the Fair Labor Standards Act, it is difficult to formulate a boundary to its coverage short of areas over which the power of Congress extends, by our sovereignty or by voluntary grant of the authority by the sovereign lessor to legislate upon maximum hours and minimum wages. Under the terms of the lease, we feel sure that the House of Assembly of Bermuda would not also undertake legislation similar to our Fair Labor Standards Act to control labor relations on the base. Since citizens of this country would be numerous among employees on the bases, the natural legislative impulse would be to give these employees the same protection that was given those similarly employed on the islands of the Pacific.
Under subdivisions 2 and 3, supra, we have pointed out that the power rests in Congress under our Constitution and the provisions of the lease to regulate labor relations on the base. We have also pointed out that it is a matter of statutory interpretation as to whether or not statutes are effective beyond the limits of national sovereignty. It depends upon the purpose of the statute. Where as here the purpose is to regulate labor relations in an area vital to our national life, it seems reasonable to interpret its provisions to have force where the nation has sole power, rather than to limit the coverage to sovereignty. Such an interpretation is consonant with the Administrator’s inclusion of the Panama Canal Zone within the meaning of “possession.”
We think these facts indicate an intention on the part of Congress in its use of the word “possession” to have the Act apply to employer-employee relationships on foreign territory under lease for bases. Such a construction seems to us to carry out the remedial enactment in accord with the purpose of Congress.
Affirmed.
55 Stat. 1560, 1572, 1576, 1590.
Those documents are published in Department of State publication No. 1726, Executive Agreement Series 235.
No due process question arises from this extension of legislation over such controlled areas such as was considered to bar state action concerning contracts made and to be performed beyond the boundaries of a state. Cf. Home Ins. Co. v. Dick, 281 U. S. 397, 407, with Alaska Packers Assn. v. Comm’n, 294 U. S. 532, 541.
Cf. Ashwander v. T. V. A., 297 U. S. 288, 330, et seq.
55 Stat. 1560:
Article I, “(1) The United States shall have all the rights, power and authority within the Leased Areas which are necessary for the establishment, use, operation and defence thereof, or appropriate for their control, . . .”
Article XI, “ (4) It is understood that a Leased Area is not a part of the territory of the United States for the purpose of coastwise shipping laws so as to exclude British vessels from trade between the United States and the Leased Areas.” P. 1565.
Article XIII, “(1) The immigration laws of the Territory shall not operate or apply so as to prevent admission into the Territory, for the purposes of this Agreement, of any member of the United States Forces posted to a Leased Area or any person (not being a national of a Power at war with His Majesty the King) employed by, or under a contract with, the Government of the United States in connection with the construction, maintenance, operation or de-fence of the Bases in the Territory; but suitable arrangements will be made by the United States to enable such persons to be readily identified and their status to be established.” P. 1565.
Article XIV, “(1) No import, excise, consumption or other tax, duty or impost shall be charged on—
“(c) goods consigned to the United States Authorities for the use of institutions under Government control known as Post Exchanges, Ships’ Service Stores, Commissary Stores or Service Clubs, or for sale thereat to members of the United States forces, or civilian employees of the United States being nationals of the United States and employed in connection with the Bases, or members of their families resident with them and not engaged in any business or occupation in the Territory; ” P.1566.
Article XXIX, “During the continuance of any Lease, no laws of the Territory which would derogate from or prejudice any of the rights conferred on the United States by the Lease or by this Agreement shall be applicable within the Leased Area, save with the concurrence of the United States.” P. 1570.
There are also articles arranging for postal facilities and tax exemptions.
1 Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements (S. Doc. No. 357, 61st Cong., 2d Sess.) 359:
“While on the one hand the United States recognizes the continuance of the rdtimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water, on the other hand the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United States of said areas under the terms of this agreement the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas with the right to acquire (under conditions to be hereafter agreed upon by the two Governments) for the public purposes of the United States any land or other property therein by purchase or by exercise of eminent domain with full compensation to the owners thereof.”
Id., 361. See Joint Resolution No. 24, April 20, 1898, on the recognition of the independence of Cuba, 30 Stat. 738; the Act of March 2, 1901, in fulfillment thereof, 31 Stat. 898, Art. VII; Treaty with Cuba proclaimed June 9, 1934, 48 Stat. 1682, 1683, Art. III.
Isthmian Canal Convention, 33 Stat. 2234:
“The United States of America and the Republic of Panama being desirous to insure the construction of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the Congress of the United States of America having passed an act approved June 28, 1902, in furtherance of that object, by which the President of the United States is authorized to acquire within a reasonable time the control of the necessary territory of the Republic of Colombia, and the sovereignty of such territory being actually vested in the Republic of Panama, the high contracting parties have resolved for that purpose to conclude a convention and have accordingly appointed as their plenipotentiaries, —”
Id., 2235:
“Article III.
“The Republic of Panama grants to the United States all the rights, power and authority within the zone mentioned and described in Article II of this agreement and within the limits of all auxiliary lands and waters mentioned and described in said Article II which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory within which said lands and waters are located to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority.”
Through the Joint Resolution of June 29, 1944, 58 Stat. 625, these provisions were effectuated in leases for 99 years by an agreement of March 14, 1947. 61 Stat. 2834, Treaties and International Acts No. 1611. The rights of control over the areas obtained by the United States from the Republic of the Philippines are quite similar to those obtained over the Bermuda base.
The power of control over leased areas obtained by the United States through the above leases is not greater than that ordinarily exercised by sovereign lessees of foreign territory. See 34 American Journal of International Law 703; Lawrence, Principles of International Law (6th ed., 1915) 175; H. R. Doc. No. 1, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 386; Oppenheim’s International Law (6th ed. by Lauterpacht, 1947) 412-14. Oppenheim contains numerous illustrations of leases by an owner-state to a foreign power. His views upon the leases of the bases herein referred to correspond to that of our Department of State and to the postulate as to sovereignty stated in this opinion.
E. g., 55 Stat. 1245, Executive Agreement Series 204 (Greenland); 56 Stat. 1621, Executive Agreement Series 275 (Liberia).
Browder v. United States, 312 U. S. 335, 339; Barr v. United States, 324 U. S. 83, 90.
Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U. S. 253, 257.
Federal Employers' Liability Act, 35 Stat. 65, § 2, 45 U. S. C. § 52 (1908) (“Every common carrier by railroad in the Territories, the District of Columbia, the Panama Canal Zone, or other possessions of the United States . . . .”);
Neutrality Act, 40 Stat. 231, § 1, 18 U. S. C. § 39 (1917) (“The term ‘United States’ . . . includes the Canal Zone and all territory and waters, continental or insular, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”);
Bank Conservation Act, 48 Stat. 2, § 202, 12 U. S. C. § 202 (1933) (“. . . the term ‘State’ means any State, Territory, or possession of the United States, and the Canal Zone.”) ;
Federal Communications Act, 48 Stat. 1064, 1065, §3(g), as amended, 47 U. S. C. § 153 (g) (1934) (“ ‘United States’ means the several States and Territories, the District of Columbia, and the possessions of the United States, but does not include the Canal Zone.”);
Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 52 Stat. 1040, § 201 (a), 21 U. S. C. § 321 (a) (1938) (“The term ‘Territory’ means any Territory or possession of the United States, including the District of Columbia and excluding the Canal Zone.”);
Federal Firearms Act, 52 Stat. 1250, § 1 (2), as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 901 (2) (1938) (“The term ‘interstate or foreign commerce’ means commerce between any State, Territory or possession (not including the Canal Zone), or the District of Columbia, and any place outside thereof; . . .”);
Investment Company Act, 54 Stat. 795, § 2 (a) (37), as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 80a-2 (37) (1940) (“‘State’ means any State of the United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands, or any other possession of the United States.”);
Nationality Act, 54 Stat. 1137, § 101 (e), 8 U. S. C. § 501 (e) (1940) (“The term ‘outlying possessions’ means all territory . . . over which the United States exercises rights of sovereignty, except the Canal Zone.”);
War Damage Corporation Act, 56 Stat. 174, 176,'§ 2, 15 U. S. C. § 606b-2 (a) (1942) (“Such protection shall be applicable only (1) to such property situated in the United States (including the several States and the District of Columbia), the Philippine Islands, the Canal Zone, the Territories and possessions of the United States, and in such other places as may be determined by the President to be under the dominion and control of the United States . . . .”).
The War Damage Corporation Act and the Defense Base Act, 56 Stat. 1035, 42 U. S. C. § 1651 (1942), infra, note 16, use terms different from “possession” to describe these leased areas. When these acts were passed, however, the problems posed by the bases were specifically considered by Congress. Hearings on H. R. 6382, House of Representatives, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 27; 88 Cong. Rec. 1851. Thus they afford no touchstone as to the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act, where such problems were not specifically considered.
United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 115:
“The motive and purpose of the present regulation are plainly to make effective the Congressional conception of public policy that interstate commerce should not be made the instrument of competition in the distribution of goods produced under substandard labor conditions, which competition is injurious to the commerce and to the states from and to which the commerce flows.”
Substandard conditions included excessive hours of labor. Overnight Motor Co. v. Missel, 316 U. S. 572, 577.
Johnson v. United, States, 163 F. 30, 32.
When Congress dealt with coverage in the National Labor Relations Act, enacted July 5, 1935, 49 Stat. 449, 450, it used a narrower definition of commerce, one restricted to States and Territories. That has been held to cover Puerto Rico but we are not advised of any application to the bases. Cf. Labor Board v. Gonzalez Padin Co., 161 F. 2d 353.
Defense Base Act, 56 Stat. 1035, 42 U. S. C. § 1651 (1942). This act extends the coverage of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act to “any employee engaged in any employment—
“(1) at any military, air, or naval base acquired after January 1, 1940, by the United States from any foreign government; or-
“(2) upon any lands occupied or used by the United States for military or naval purposes in any Territory or possession outside the continental United States (including Alaska; the Philippine Islands; the United States Naval Operating Base, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and the Canal Zone);....”
This extension was necessary because of the prior limited language of the Act which covered injuries “occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States,” the term “United States” being defined to mean “the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia, including the territorial waters thereof.” 44 Stat. 1424, 33 U. S. C. §§ 902,903.
It will be noted that Guantanamo Bay and the Canal Zone were included in the lists as “possessions.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case, as in Missouri v. Frye, ante, p. 134, also decided today, a criminal defendant seeks a remedy when inadequate assistance of counsel caused nonacceptance of a plea offer and further proceedings led to a less favorable outcome. In Frye, defense counsel did not inform the defendant of the plea offer; and after the offer lapsed the defendant still pleaded guilty, but on more severe terms. Here, the favorable plea offer was reported to the client but, on advice of counsel, was rejected. In Frye, there was a later guilty plea. Here, after the plea offer had been rejected, there was a full and fair trial before a jury. After a guilty verdict, the defendant received a sentence harsher than that offered in the rejected plea bargain. The instant case comes to the Court with the concession that counsel’s advice with respect to the plea offer fell below the standard of adequate assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.
I
On the evening of March 25, 2003, respondent pointed a gun toward Kali Mundy’s head and fired. From the record, it is unclear why respondent did this, and at trial it was sug-gested that he might have acted either in self-defense or in defense of another person. In any event the shot missed and Mundy fled. Respondent followed in pursuit, firing repeatedly. Mundy was shot in her buttock, hip, and abdomen but survived the assault.
Respondent was charged under Michigan law with assault • with intent to murder, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony, misdemeanor possession of marijuana, and for being a habitual offender. On two occasions, the prosecution offered to dismiss some of the charges and to recommend a sentence of 51 to 85 months for the remaining charges, in exchange for a guilty plea. In a communication with the court respondent admitted guilt and expressed a willingness to accept the offer. Respondent, however, later rejected the offer on both occasions, allegedly after his attorney convinced him that the prosecution would be unable to establish his intent to murder Mundy because she had been shot below the waist. On the first day of trial the prosecution offered a significantly less favorable plea deal, which respondent again rejected. After trial, respondent was convicted on all counts and received a mandatory minimum sentence of 185 to 360 months’ imprisonment.
In a so-called Ginther hearing before the state trial court, see People v. Ginther, 390 Mich. 436, 212 N. W. 2d 922 (1973), respondent argued his attorney’s advice to reject the plea constituted ineffective assistance. The trial judge rejected the claim, and the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. People v. Cooper, No. 250583 (Mar. 15, 2005) (per curiam), App. to Pet. for Cert. 44a, 2005 WL 599740. The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on the ground that respondent knowingly and intelligently rejected two plea offers and chose to go to trial. The Michigan Supreme Court denied respondent’s application for leave to file an appeal. People v. Cooper, 474 Mich. 905, 705 N. W. 2d 118 (2005) (table).
Respondent then filed a petition for federal habeas relief under 28 U. S. C. § 2254, renewing his ineffective-assistanee-of-counsel claim. After finding, as required by the Antiter-rorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), that the Michigan Court of Appeals had unreasonably applied the constitutional standards for effective assistance of counsel laid out in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), and Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52 (1985), the District Court granted a conditional writ. No. 06-11068 (ED Mich., Mar. 26, 2009), App. to Pet. for Cert. 41a-42a, 2009 WL 817712, *10. To remedy the violation, the District Court ordered “specific performance of [respondent’s] original plea agreement, for a minimum sentence in the range of fifty-one to eighty-five months.” Id., at *9, App. to Pet. for Cert. 41a.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed, 376 Fed. Appx. 563 (2010), finding “[e]ven full deference under AEDPA cannot salvage the state court’s decision,” id., at 569. Applying Strickland, the Court of Appeals found that respondent’s attorney had provided deficient performance by informing respondent of “an incorrect legal rule,” 376 Fed. Appx., at 570-571, and that respondent suffered prejudice because he “lost out on an opportunity to plead guilty and receive the lower sentence that was offered to him,” id., at 573. This Court granted certiorari. 562 U. S. 1127 (2011).
II
A
Defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel, a right that extends to the plea-bargaining process. Frye, ante, at 144; see also Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U. S. 356, 364 (2010); Hill, supra, at 57. During plea negotiations defendants are “entitled to the effective assistance of competent counsel.” McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 771 (1970). In Hill, the Court held “the two-part Strickland v. Washing ton test applies to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel.” 474 U. S., at 58. The performance prong of Strickland requires a defendant to show “ That counsel’s representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.’” 474 U. S., at 57 (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S., at 688). In this case all parties agree the performance of respondent’s counsel was deficient when he advised respondent to reject the plea offer on the grounds he could not be convicted at trial. In light of this concession, it is unnecessary for this Court to explore the issue.
The question for this Court is how to apply Strickland’s prejudice test where ineffective assistance results in a rejection of the plea offer and the defendant is convicted at the ensuing trial.
B
To establish Strickland prejudice a defendant must “show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Id., at 694. In the context of pleas a defendant must show the outcome of the plea process would have been different with competent advice. See Frye, ante, at 148 (noting that Strickland’s inquiry, as applied to advice with respect to plea bargains, turns on “whether The result of the proceeding would have been different’ ” (quoting Strickland, supra, at 694)); see also Hill, 474 U. S., at 59 (“The ... ‘prejudice ... ’ requirement... focuses on whether counsel’s constitutionally ineffective performance affected the outcome of the plea process”). In Hill, when evaluating the petitioner’s claim that ineffective assistance led to the improvident acceptance of a guilty plea, the Court required the petitioner to show “that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, [the defendant] would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.” Ibid.
In contrast to Hill, here the ineffective advice led not to an offer’s acceptance but to its rejection. Having to stand trial, not choosing to waive it, is the prejudice alleged. In these circumstances a defendant must show that but for the ineffective advice of counsel there is a reasonable probability that the plea offer would have been presented to the court (i. e., that the defendant would have accepted the plea and the prosecution would not have withdrawn it in light of intervening circumstances), that the court would have accepted its terms, and that the conviction or sentence, or both, under the offer’s terms would have been less severe than under the judgment and sentence that in fact were imposed. Here, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with that test for Strickland prejudice in the context of a rejected plea bargain. This is consistent with the test adopted and applied by other appellate courts without demonstrated difficulties or systemic disruptions. See 376 Fed. Appx., at 571-573; see also, e. g., United States v. Rodriguez Rodriguez, 929 F. 2d 747, 753, n. 1 (CA1 1991) (per curiam); United States v. Gordon, 156 F. 3d 376, 380-381 (CA2 1998) (per curiam); United States v. Day, 969 F. 2d 39, 43-45 (CA3 1992); Beckham v. Wainwright, 639 F. 2d 262, 267 (CA5 1981); Julian v. Bartley, 495 F. 3d 487, 498-500 (CA7 2007); Wanatee v. Ault, 259 F. 3d 700, 703-704 (CA8 2001); Nunes v. Mueller, 350 F. 3d 1045, 1052-1053 (CA9 2003); Williams v. Jones, 571 F. 3d 1086, 1094-1095 (CA10 2009) (per curiam); United States v. Gaviria, 116 F. 3d 1498, 1512-1514 (CADC 1997) (per curiam).
Petitioner and the Solicitor General propose a different, far more narrow, view of the Sixth Amendment. They contend there can be no finding of Strickland prejudice arising 'from plea bargaining if the defendant is later convicted at a fair trial. The three reasons petitioner and the Solicitor General offer for their approach are unpersuasive.
First, petitioner and the Solicitor 'General claim that the sole purpose of the Sixth Amendment is to protect the. right to a fair trial. Errors before trial, they argue, are not cognizable under the Sixth Amendment unless they affect the fairness of the trial itself. See Brief for Petitioner 12-21; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 10-12. The Sixth Amendment, however, is not so narrow in its reach. Cf. Frye, ante, at 148 (holding that a defendant can show prejudice under Strickland even absent a showing that the deficient performance precluded him from going to trial). The Sixth Amendment requires effective assistance of counsel at critical stages of a criminal proceeding. Its protections are not designed simply to protect the trial, even though “counsel’s absence [in these stages] may derogate from the accused’s right to a fair trial.” United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 226 (1967). The constitutional guarantee applies to pretrial critical stages that are part of the whole course of a criminal proceeding, a proceeding in which defendants cannot be presumed to make critical decisions without counsel’s advice. This is consistent, too, with the rule that defendants have a right to effective assistance of counsel on appeal, even though that cannot in any way be characterized as part of the trial. See, e. g., Halbert v. Michigan, 545 U. S. 605 (2005); Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U. S. 387 (1985). The precedents also establish that there exists a right to counsel during sentencing in both noncapital, see Glover v. United States, 531 U. S. 198, 203-204 (2001); Mempa v. Rhay, 389 U. S. 128 (1967), and capital cases, see Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510, 538 (2003). Even though sentencing does not concern the defendant’s guilt or innocence, ineffective assistance of counsel during a sentencing hearing can result in Strickland prejudice because “any amount of [additional] jail time has Sixth Amendment significance.” Glover, supra, at 203.
The Court, moreover, has not followed a rigid rule that an otherwise fair trial remedies errors not occurring at the trial itself. It has inquired instead whether the trial cured the particular error at issue. Thus, in Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254 (1986), the deliberate exclusion of all African-Americans from a grand jury was prejudicial because a defendant may have been tried on charges that would not have been brought at all by a properly constituted grand jury. Id., at 263; see Ballard v. United States, 329 U. S. 187, 195 (1946) (dismissing an indictment returned by a grand jury from which women were excluded); see also Stirone v. United States, 361 U. S. 212, 218-219 (1960) (reversing a defendant’s conviction because the jury may have based its verdict on acts not charged in the indictment). By contrast, in United States v. Mechanik, 475 U. S. 66 (1986), the complained-of error was a violation of a grand jury rule meant to ensure probable cause existed to believe a defendant was guilty. A subsequent trial, resulting in a verdict of guilt, cured this error. See id., at 72-73.
In the instant case respondent went to trial rather than accept a plea deal, and it is conceded this was the result of ineffective assistance during the plea negotiation process. Respondent received a more severe sentence at trial, one 3½ times more severe than he likely would have received by pleading guilty. Far from curing the error, the trial caused the injury from the error. Even if the trial itself is free from constitutional flaw, the defendant who goes to trial instead of taking a more favorable plea may be prejudiced from either a conviction on more serious counts or the imposition of a more severe sentence.
Second, petitioner claims this Court refined Strickland’s prejudice analysis in Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U. S. 364 (1993), to add an additional requirement that the defendant show that ineffective assistance of counsel led to his being denied a substantive or procedural right. Brief for Petitioner 12-13. The Court has rejected the argument that Fretwell modified Strickland before and does so again now. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 391 (2000) (“The Virginia Supreme Court erred in holding that our decision in Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U. S. 364 (1993), modified or in some way supplanted the rule set down in Strickland”)-, see also Glover, supra, at 203 (“The Court explained last Term [in Williams] that our holding in Lockhart does not supplant the Strickland analysis”).
Fretwell could not show Strickland prejudice resulting from his attorney’s failure to object to the use of a sentencing factor the Eighth Circuit had erroneously (and temporarily) found to be impermissible. Fretwell, 506 U. S., at 373. Because the objection upon which his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim was premised was meritless, Fretwell could not demonstrate an error entitling him to relief. The case presented the “unusual circumstance where the defendant attempts to demonstrate prejudice based on considerations that, as a matter of law, ought not inform the inquiry.” Ibid. (O’Connor, J., concurring). See also ibid, (recognizing “[t]he determinative question — whether there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different — remains unchanged” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). It is for this same reason a defendant cannot show prejudice based on counsel’s refusal to present perjured testimony, even if such testimony might have affected the outcome of the case. See Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U. S. 157, 175 (1986) (holding first that counsel’s refusal to present peijured testimony breached no professional duty and second that it cannot establish prejudice under Strickland).
Both Fretwell and Nix are instructive in that they demonstrate “there are also situations in which it would be unjust to characterize the likelihood of a different outcome as legitimate ‘prejudice,’” Williams, supra, at 391-392, because defendants would receive a windfall as a result of the application of an incorrect legal principle or a defense strategy outside the law. Here, however, the injured client seeks relief from counsel’s failure to meet a valid legal standard, not from counsel’s refusal to violate it. He maintains that, absent ineffective counsel, he would have accepted a plea offer for a sentence the prosecution evidently deemed consistent with the sound administration of criminal justice. The favorable sentence that eluded.the defendant in the criminal proceeding appears to be the sentence he or others in his position would have received in the ordinary course, absent the failings of counsel. See Bibas, Regulating the Plea-Bargaining Market: From Caveat Emptor to Consumer Protection, 99 Cal. L. Rev. 1117, 1138 (2011) (“The expected post-trial sentence is imposed in only a few percent of cases. It is like the sticker price for cars: only an ignorant, ill-advised consumer would view full price as the norm and anything'less as a bargain”); see also Frye, ante, at 143-144. If a plea bargain has been offered, a defendant has the right to effective assistance of counsel in considering whether to accept it. If that right is denied, prejudice can be shown if loss of the plea opportunity led to a trial resulting in a conviction on more serious charges or the imposition of a more severe sentence.
It is, of course, true that defendants have “no right to be offered a plea . . . nor a federal right that the judge accept it.” Frye, ante, at 148. In the circumstances here, that is beside the point. If no plea offer is made, or a plea deal is accepted by the defendant but rejected by the judge, the issue raised here simply does not arise. Much the same reasoning guides cases that find criminal defendants have a right to effective assistance of counsel in direct appeals even though the Constitution does not require States to provide a system of appellate review at all. See Evitts, 469 U. S. 387; see also Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353 (1963). As in those cases, “when a State opts to act in a field where its action has significant discretionary elements, it must nonetheless act in accord with the dictates of the Constitution.” Evitts, supra, at 401.
Third, petitioner seeks to preserve the conviction obtained by the State by arguing that the purpose of the Sixth Amendment is to ensure “the reliability of [a] conviction following trial.” Brief for Petitioner 13. This argument, too, fails to comprehend the full scope of the Sixth Amendment’s protections; and it is refuted by precedent. Strickland recognized “[t]he benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.” 466 U. S., at 686. The goal of a just result is not divorced from the reliability of a conviction, see United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S. 648, 658 (1984); but here the question is not the fairness or reliability of the trial but the fairness and regularity of the processes that preceded it, which caused the defendant to lose benefits he would have received in the ordinary course but for counsel’s ineffective assistance.
There are instances, furthermore, where a reliable trial does not foreclose relief when counsel has failed to assert rights that may have altered the outcome. In Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U. S. 365 (1986), the Court held that an attorney’s failure to timely move to suppress evidence during trial could be grounds for federal habeas relief. The Court rejected the suggestion that the “failure to make a timely request for the exclusion of illegally seized evidence” could not be the basis for a Sixth Amendment violation because the evidence “is ‘typically reliable and often the most probative information bearing on the guilt or innocence of the defendant.’” Id., at 379 (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 490 (1976)). “The constitutional rights of criminal defendants,” the Court observed, “are granted to the innocent and the guilty alike. Consequently, we decline to hold either that the guarantee of effective assistance of counsel belongs solely to the innocent or that it attaches only to matters affecting the determination of actual guilt.” 477 U. S., at 380. The same logic applies here. The fact that respondent is guilty does not meán he was not entitled by the Sixth Amendment to effective assistance or that he suffered no prejudice from his attorney’s deficient performance during plea bargaining.
In the end, petitioner’s three arguments amount to one general contention: A fair trial wipes clean any deficient performance by defense counsel during plea bargaining. That position ignores the reality that criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials. Ninety-seven percent of federal convictions and ninety-four percent of state convictions are the result of guilty pleas. See Frye, ante, at 143-144. As explained in Frye, the right to adequate assistance of counsel cannot be defined or enforced without taking account of the central role plea bargaining plays in securing convictions and determining sentences. Ibid. (“[I]t is insufficient simply to point to the guarantee of a fair trial as a backstop that inoculates any errors in the pretrial process”).
C
Even if a defendant shows ineffective assistance of counsel has caused the rejection of a plea leading to a trial and a more severe sentence; there is the question of what constitutes an appropriate remedy. That question must now be addressed.
Sixth Amendment remedies should be “tailored to the injury suffered from the constitutional violation and should not unnecessarily infringe on competing interests.” United States v. Morrison, 449 U. S. 361, 364 (1981). Thus, a remedy must “neutralize the taint” of a constitutional violation, id., at 365, while at the same time not grant a windfall to the defendant or needlessly squander the considerable resources the State properly invested in the criminal prosecution, see Mechanik, 475 U. S., at 72 (“The reversal of a conviction entails substantial social costs: it forces jurors, witnesses, courts, the prosecution, and the defendants to expend further time, energy, and other resources to repeat a trial that has already once taken place; victims may be asked to relive their disturbing experiences”).
The specific injury suffered by defendants who decline a plea offer as a result of ineffective assistance of counsel and then receive a greater sentence as a result of trial can come in at least one of two forms. In some cases, the sole advantage a defendant would have received under the plea is a lesser sentence. This is typieally the case when the charges that would have been admitted as part of the plea bargain are the same as the charges the defendant was convicted of after trial. In this situation the court may conduct an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the defendant has shown a reasonable probability that but for counsel’s errors he would have accepted the plea. If the showing is made, the court may exercise discretion in determining whether the defendant should receive the term of imprisonment the government offered in the plea, the sentence he received at trial, or something in between.
In some situations it may be that resentencing alone will not be full redress for the constitutional injury. If, for example, an offer was for a guilty plea to a count or counts less serious than the ones for which a defendant was convicted after trial, or if a mandatory sentence confines a judge’s sentencing discretion after trial, a resentencing based on the conviction at trial may not suffice. See, e. g., Williams, 571 F. 3d, at 1088; Riggs v. Fairman, 399 F. 3d 1179, 1181 (CA9-2005). In these circumstances, the proper exercise of discretion to remedy the constitutional injury may be to require the prosecution to reoffer the plea proposal. Once this has occurred, the judge can then exercise discretion in deciding whether to vacate the conviction from trial and accept the plea or leave the conviction undisturbed.
In implementing a remedy in both of these situations, the trial court must weigh various factors; and the boundaries of proper discretion need not be defined here. Principles elaborated over time in decisions of state and federal courts, and in statutes and rules, will serve to give more complete guidance as to the factors that should bear upon the exercise of the judge’s discretion. At this point, however, it suffices to note two considerations that are of relevance.
First, a court may take account of a defendant’s earlier expressed willingness, or unwillingness, to accept responsibility for his or her actions. Second, it is not necessary here to decide as a constitutional rule that a judge is required to prescind (that is to say disregard) any information concerning the crime that was discovered after the plea offer was made. The time continuum makes it difficult to restore the defendant and the prosecution to the precise positions they occupied prior to the rejection of the plea offer, but that baseline can be consulted in finding a remedy that does not require the prosecution to incur the expense of conducting a new trial.
Petitioner argues that implementing a remedy here will open the floodgátes to litigation by defendants seeking to unsettle their convictions. See Brief for Petitioner 20. Petitioner’s concern is misplaced. Courts have recognized claims of this sort for over 30 years, see supra, at 164, and yet there is no indication that the system is overwhelmed by these types of suits or that deferidants are receiving windfalls as a result of strategically timed Strickland claims. See also Padilla, 559 U. S., at 371 (“We confronted a similar ‘floodgates’ concern in Hill,” but a “flood did not follow in that decision’s wake”). In addition, the “prosecution and the trial courts may adopt some measures to help ensure against late, frivolous, or fabricated claims after a later, less advantageous plea offer has been accepted or after a trial leading to conviction.” Frye, ante, at 146. See also ante, at 146-147 (listing procedures currently used by various States). This, too, will help ensure against meritless claims.
H-1 H-1
The standards for ineffective assistance of counsel when a defendant rejects a plea offer and goes to trial must now be applied to this case. Respondent brings a federal collateral challenge to a state-court conviction. Under AEDPA, a federal court may not grant a petition for a writ of habeas corpus unless the state court’s adjudication on the merits was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1). A decision is contrary to clearly established law if the state court “applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court] cases.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S., at 405 (opinion for the Court by O’Connor, J.). . The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit could not determine whether the Michigan Court of Appeals addressed respondent’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim or, if it did, “what the court decided, or even whether the correct legal rule was identified.” 376 Fed. Appx., at 568-569.
The state court’s decision may not be quite so opaque as the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit thought, yet the federal court was correct to note that AEDPA does not present a bar to granting respondent relief. That is because the Michigan Court of Appeals identified respondent’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim but failed to apply Strickland to assess it. Rather than applying Strickland, the state court simply found that respondent’s rejection of the plea was knowing and voluntary. 2005 ,WL 599740, *1, App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a. An inquiry into whether the rejection of a plea is knowing and voluntary, however, is not the correct means by which to address a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. See Hill, 474 U. S., at 57 (applying Strickland to assess a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel arising out of the plea negotiation process). After stating the incorrect standard, moreover, the state court then made an irrelevant observation about counsel’s performance at trial and mischaracterized respondent’s claim as a complaint that his attorney did not obtain a more favorable plea bargain. By failing to apply Strickland to assess the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim respondent raised, the state court’s adjudication was contrary to clearly established federal law. And in that circumstance the federal courts in this habeas action can determine the principles necessary to grant relief. See Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U. S. 930, 948 (2007).
Respondent has satisfied Strickland’s two-part test. Regarding performance, perhaps it could be accepted that it is unclear whether respondent’s counsel believed respondent could not be convicted for assault with intent to murder as a matter of law because the shots hit Mundy below the waist, or whether he simply thought this would be a persuasive argument to make to the jury to show lack of specific intent. And, as the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit suggested, an erroneous strategic prediction about the outcome of a trial is not necessarily deficient performance. Here, however, the fact of deficient performance has been conceded by all parties. The case comes to us on that assumption, so there is no need to address this question.
As to prejudice, respondent has shown that but for counsel’s deficient performance there is a reasonable probability he and the trial court would have accepted the guilty plea. See 376 Fed. Appx., at 571-572. In addition, as a result of not accepting the plea and being convicted at trial, respondent received a minimum sentence 3½ times greater than he would have received under the plea. The standard for ineffective assistance under Strickland has thus been satisfied.
As a remedy, the District Court ordered specific performance of the original plea agreement. The correct remedy in these circumstances, however, is to order the State to reoffer the plea agreement. Presuming respondent accepts the offer, the state trial court can then exercise its discretion in determining whether to vacate the convictions and resen-tence respondent pursuant to the plea agreement, to vacate only some of the convictions and resentence respondent accordingly, or to leave the convictions ánd sentence from trial undisturbed. See Mich. Ct. Rule 6.302(C)(3) (2011) ("If there is a plea agreement and its terms provide for the defendant’s plea to be made in exchange for a specific sentence disposition or a prosecutorial sentence recommendation, the court may . . . reject the agreement”). Today’s decision leaves open to the trial court how best to exercise that discretion in all the circumstances of the case.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Certiorari was granted in this case on October 9, 1967. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is vacated and the case is remanded to the District Court of New Jersey for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Petitioner sought federal habeas corpus on the ground, among others, that prior to his state trial, the assistant prosecutor who handled the prosecution concealed the existence of a promise or agreement to recommend a specific sentence or leniency for an accomplice who testified as a State’s witness against petitioner. The District Court rejected the claim without a hearing and upon its examination of the trial record, the record upon a motion for new trial, and the decision of the Supreme Court of New Jersey at 43 N. J. 209, 203 A. 2d 177. However, subsequent to the entry of the judgment of the Court of Appeals on April 7, 1967, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, on July 5, 1967, in a state post-conviction proceeding brought by petitioner’s co-defendant Taylor, under N. J. Rev. R. 3:10A, granted Taylor a new trial after a trial court hearing on similar allegations. State v. Taylor, 49 N. J. 440, 231 A. 2d 212. In that circumstance the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the case is remanded to the District Court for reconsideration of petitioner's claim in light of the action of the Supreme Court of New Jersey in State v. Taylor. The District Court’s reconsideration may include whether petitioner should be required first to exhaust any remedy which may be available in the state courts.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The petition for certiorari is granted. Petitioner’s conviction is vacated and the case is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In proceedings before the Court of Appeals pursuant to our previous remand, Levine v. United States, 383 U. S. 266, the Court of Appeals granted petitioner’s co-defendant Levine a new trial based upon a disclosure by the Government that, after the return of the indictment, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored conversations between Levine and Levine’s attorney. But the Court of Appeals denied petitioner’s motion for the same relief or, alternatively, for a remand to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he was prejudiced by the monitoring; the Court of Appeals stated, however, that the motion was denied “without prejudice to such application by him to the District Court as may be appropriate.” In the circumstances of this case, and in light of the acknowledgment of the Solicitor General in his brief in opposition that “the F. B. I. logs pertaining to the monitored conversations” are available, we think the Court of Appeals erred in denying petitioner’s alternative motion for an evidentiary hearing in the District Court. We therefore vacate petitioner’s conviction and remand to the District Court with direction to afford petitioner such an evidentiary hearing. Depending upon its findings, the District Court will either reinstate the conviction or order a new trial, as may be appropriate. See United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 242.
Vacated and remanded.
Mr. Justice Black dissents.
Mr. Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
A longstanding civil rights law, first enacted just after the Civil War, provides that “[a]ll persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts... as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Rev. Stat. § 1977, 42 U. S. C. § 1981(a). The basic question before us is whether the provision encompasses a complaint of retaliation against a person who has complained about a violation of another person’s contract-related “right.” We conclude that it does.
I
The case before us arises out of a claim by respondent, Hedrick G. Humphries, a former assistant manager of a Cracker Barrel restaurant, that CBOCS West, Inc. (Cracker Barrel’s owner), dismissed him (1) because of racial bias (Humphries is a black man) and (2) because he had complained to managers that a fellow assistant manager had dismissed another black employee, Venus Green, for race-based reasons. Humphries timely filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5, and received a “right to sue” letter. He then filed a complaint in Federal District Court charging that CBOCS’ actions violated both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., and the older “equal contract rights” provision here at issue, §1981. The District Court dismissed Humphries’ Title VII claims for failure to pay necessary filing fees on a timely basis. It then granted CBOCS’ motion for summary judgment on Humphries’ two § 1981 claims. Humphries appealed.
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled against Humphries and upheld the District Court’s grant of summary judgment in respect to his direct discrimination claim. But it ruled in Humphries’ favor and remanded for a trial in respect to his § 1981 retaliation claim. In doing so, the Court of Appeals rejected CBOCS’ argument that § 1981 did not encompass a claim of retaliation. 474 F. 3d 387 (2007). CBOCS sought certiorari, asking us to consider this last-mentioned legal question. And we agreed to do so. See 551 U. S. 1189 (2007).
II
The question before us is whether § 1981 encompasses retaliation claims. We conclude that it does. And because our conclusion rests in significant part upon principles of stare decisis, we begin by examining the pertinent interpretive history.
A
The Court first considered a comparable question in 1969, in Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 396 U. S. 229. The case arose under Rev. Stat. § 1978,42 U. S. C. § 1982, a statutory provision that Congress enacted just after the Civil War, along with § 1981, to protect the rights of black citizens. The provision was similar to § 1981 except that it focused, not upon rights to make and to enforce contracts, but rights related to the ownership of property. The statute provides that “[a]ll citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” § 1982.
Paul E. Sullivan, a white man, had rented his house to T. R. Freeman, Jr., a black man. He had also assigned Freeman a membership share in a corporation, which permitted the owner to use a private park that the corporation controlled. Because of Freeman’s race, the corporation, Little Hunting Park, Inc., refused to approve the share assignment. And, when Sullivan protested, the association expelled Sullivan and took away his membership shares.
Sullivan sued Little Hunting Park, claiming that its actions violated §1982. The Court upheld Sullivan’s claim. It found that the corporation’s refusal “to approve the assignment of the membership share... was clearly an interference with Freeman’s [the black lessee’s] right to ‘lease.’” 396 U. S., at 237. It added that Sullivan, the white lessor, “has standing to maintain this action,” ibid., because, as the Court had previously said, “the white owner is at times ‘the only effective adversary’ of the unlawful restrictive covenant.” Ibid, (quoting Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249 (1953)). The Court noted that to permit the corporation to punish Sullivan “for trying to vindicate the rights of minorities protected by § 1982” would give “impetus to the perpetuation of racial restrictions on property.” 396 U. S., at 237. And this Court has made clear that Sullivan stands for the proposition that § 1982 encompasses retaliation claims. See Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Ed., 544 U. S. 167,176 (2005) (“[I]n Sullivan we interpreted a general prohibition on racial discrimination [in §1982] to cover retaliation against those who advocate the rights of groups protected by that prohibition”).
While the Sullivan decision interpreted § 1982, our precedents have long construed §§1981 and 1982 similarly. In Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160,173 (1976), the Court considered whether § 1981 prohibits private acts of discrimination. Citing Sullivan, along with Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409 (1968), and Tillman v. Wheaton-Haven Recreation Assn., Inc., 410 U. S. 431 (1973), the Court reasoned that this case law “necessarily requires the conclusion that § 1981, like § 1982, reaches private conduct.” 427 U. S., at 173. See also id., at 187 (Powell, J., concurring) (“Although [Sullivan and Jones] involved §1982, rather than § 1981,1 agree that their considered holdings with respect to the purpose and meaning of § 1982 necessarily apply to both statutes in view of their common derivation”); id., at 190 (Stevens, J., concurring) (“[I]t would be most incongruous to give those two sections [1981 and 1982] a fundamentally different construction”). See also Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, 481 U. S. 615, 617-618 (1987) (applying to § 1982 the discussion and holding of Saint Francis College v. AlKhazraji, 481 U. S. 604, 609-613 (1987), a case interpreting §1981).
As indicated in Runyon, the Court has construed §§ 1981 and 1982 alike because it has recognized the sister statutes’ common language, origin, and purposes. Like § 1981, § 1982 traces its origin to §1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27. See General Building Contractors Assn., Inc. v. Pennsylvania, 458 U. S. 375, 383-384 (1982) (noting shared historical roots of the two provisions); Tillman, supra, at 439-440 (same). Like § 1981, § 1982 represents an immediately post-Civil War legislative effort to guarantee the then newly freed slaves the same legal rights that other citizens enjoy. See General Building Contractors Assn., supra, at 388 (noting strong purposive connection between the two provisions). Like §1981, §1982 uses broad language that says “[a]ll citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens....” Compare § 1981’s language set forth above, supra, at 445. See Jones, supra, at 441, n. 78 (noting the close parallel language of the two provisions). Indeed, § 1982 differs from § 1981 only in that it refers, not to the “right... to make and enforce contracts,” 42 U. S. C. § 1981(a), but to the “right... to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property,” § 1982.
In light of these precedents, it is not surprising that following Sullivan, federal appeals courts concluded, on the basis of Sullivan or its reasoning, that § 1981 encompassed retaliation claims. See, e. g., Choudhury v. Polytechnic Inst, of N. Y, 735 F. 2d 38, 42-43 (CA2 1984); Goff v. Continental Oil Co., 678 F. 2d 593, 598-599 (CA5 1982), overruled, Carter v. South Central Bell, 912 F. 2d 832 (1990); Winston v. Lear-Siegler, Inc., 558 F. 2d 1266, 1270 (CA6 1977).
In 1989, 20 years after Sullivan, this Court in Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, significantly limited the scope of § 1981. The Court focused upon § 1981’s words “to make and enforce contracts” and interpreted the phrase narrowly. It wrote that the statutory phrase did not apply to “conduct by the employer after the contract relation has been established, including breach of the terms of the contract or imposition of discriminatory working conditions.” Id., at 177 (emphasis added). The Court added that the word “enforce” does not apply to post-contract-formation conduct unless the discrimination at issue “infects the legal process in ways that prevent one from enforcing contract rights.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Thus §1981 did not encompass the claim of a black employee who charged that her employer had violated her employment contract by harassing her and failing to promote her, all because of her race. Ibid.
Since victims of an employer’s retaliation will often have opposed discriminatory conduct taking place after the formation of the employment contract, Patterson’s holding, for a brief time, seems in practice to have foreclosed retaliation claims. With one exception, we have found no federal court of appeals decision between the time we decided Patterson and 1991 that permitted a § 1981 retaliation claim to proceed. See, e. g., Walker v. South Central Bell Tel. Co., 904 F. 2d 275, 276 (CA5 1990) (per curiam); Overby v. Chevron USA, Inc., 884 F. 2d 470, 473 (CA9 1989); Sherman v. Burke Contracting, Inc., 891 F. 2d 1527, 1534-1535 (CA11 1990) (per curiam). See also Malhotra v. Cotter & Co., 885 F. 2d 1305, 1312-1314 (CA7 1989) (questioning without deciding the viability of retaliation claims under §1981 after Patterson). But see Hicks v. Brown Group, Inc., 902 F. 2d 630, 635-638 (CA8 1990) (allowing a claim for discriminatory discharge to proceed under § 1981), vacated and remanded, 499 U. S. 914 (1991) (ordering reconsideration in light of what became the Eighth Circuit’s en banc opinion in Taggart v. Jefferson Cty. Child Support Enforcement Unit, 935 F. 2d 947 (1991), which held that racially discriminatory discharge claims under § 1981 are barred).
In 1991, however, Congress weighed in on the matter. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991,105 Stat. 1071, with the design to supersede Patterson. Jones v. R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 541 U. S. 369, 383 (2004). Insofar as is relevant here, the new law changed 42 U. S. C. § 1981 by reenacting the former provision, designating it as § 1981(a), and adding a new subsection, (b), which, says:
“ ‘Make and enforce contracts’ defined
“For purposes of this section, the term ‘make and enforce contracts’ includes the making, performance, modification, and termination of contracts, and the enjoyment of all benefits, privileges, terms, and conditions of the contractual relationship.”
An accompanying Senate Report pointed out that the amendment superseded Patterson by adding a new subsection (b) that would “reaffirm that the right ‘to make and enforce contracts’ includes the enjoyment of all benefits, privileges, terms and conditions of the contractual relationship.” S. Rep. No. 101-315, p. 6 (1990). Among other things, it would “ensure that Americans may not be harassed, fired or otherwise discriminated against in contracts because of their race.” Ibid, (emphasis added). An accompanying House Report said that in “cutting back the scope of the rights to ‘make’ and ‘enforce’ contracts[,] Patterson... has been interpreted to eliminate retaliation claims that the courts had previously recognized under section 1981.” H. R. Rep. No. 102-40, pt. 1, pp. 92-93, n. 92 (1991). It added that the protections that subsection (b) provided, in “the context of employment discrimination... would include, but not be limited to, claims of harassment, discharge, demotion, promotion, transfer, retaliation, and hiring.” Id., at 92 (emphasis added). It also said that the new law “would restore rights to sue for such retaliatory conduct.” Id., at 93, n. 92.
After enactment of the new law, the Federal Courts of Appeals again reached a broad consensus that §1981, as amended, encompasses retaliation claims. See, e.g., Hawkins v. 1115 Legal Serv. Care, 163 F. 3d 684, 693 (CA2 1998); Aleman v. Chugach Support Servs., Inc., 485 F. 3d 206, 213-214 (CA4 2007); Foley v. University of Houston System, 355 F. 3d 333, 338-339 (CA5 2003); Johnson v. University of Cincinnati, 215 F. 3d 561, 575-576 (CA6 2000); 474 F. 3d, at 403 (case below); Manatt v. Bank of America, NA, 339 F. 3d 792, 800-801, and n. 11 (CA9 2003); Andrews v. Lakeshore Rehabilitation Hospital, 140 F. 3d 1405, 1411-1413 (CA11 1998).
The upshot is this: (1) In 1969, Sullivan, as interpreted by Jackson, recognized that § 1982 encompasses a retaliation action; (2) this Court has long interpreted §§ 1981 and 1982 alike; (3) in 1989, Patterson, without mention of retaliation, narrowed § 1981 by excluding from its scope conduct, namely, post-contract-formation conduct, where retaliation would most likely be found; but in 1991, Congress enacted legislation that superseded Patterson and explicitly defined the scope of §1981 to include post-contract-formation conduct; and (4) since 1991, the lower courts have uniformly interpreted § 1981 as encompassing retaliation actions.
C
Sullivan, as interpreted and relied upon by Jackson, as well as the long line of related cases where we construe §§ 1981 and 1982 similarly, lead us to conclude that the view that § 1981 encompasses retaliation claims is indeed well embedded in the law. That being so, considerations of stare decisis strongly support our adherence to that view. And those considerations impose a considerable burden upon those who would seek a different interpretation that would necessarily unsettle many Court precedents. See, e. g., Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transp., 483 U. S. 468, 494-495 (1987) (plurality opinion) (describing importance of stare decisis)-, Patterson, 491 U. S., at 172 (considerations of stare decisis “have special force in the area of statutory interpretation”); John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 139 (2008) (same).
Ill
In our view, CBOCS’ several arguments, taken separately or together, cannot justify a departure from what we have just described as the well-embedded interpretation of § 1981. First, CBOCS points to the plain text of § 1981 — a text that says that “[a]ll persons... shall have the same right... to make and enforce contracts... as is enjoyed by white citizens.” 42 U. S. C. § 1981(a) (emphasis added). CBOCS adds that, insofar as Humphries complains of retaliation, he is complaining of a retaliatory action that the employer would have taken against him whether he was black or white, and there is no way to construe this text to cover that kind of deprivation. Thus the text’s language, CBOCS concludes, simply “does not provide for a cause of action based on retaliation.” Brief for Petitioner 8.
We agree with CBOCS that the statute’s language does not expressly refer to the claim of an individual (black or white) who suffers retaliation because he has tried to help a different individual, suffering direct racial discrimination, secure his § 1981 rights. But that fact alone is not sufficient to carry the day. After all, this Court has long held that the statutory text of § 1981’s sister statute, § 1982, provides protection from retaliation for reasons related to the enforcement of the express statutory right. See supra, at 447.
Moreover, the Court has recently read another broadly worded civil rights statute, namely, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 373, as amended, 20 U. S. C. §1681 et seq., as including an antiretaliation remedy. In 2005 in Jackson, the Court considered whether statutory language prohibiting “discrimination [on the basis of sex] under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” § 1681(a), encompassed claims of retaliation for complaints about sex discrimination. 544 U. S., at 173-174. Despite the fact that Title IX does not use the word “retaliation,” the Court held in Jackson that the statute’s language encompassed such a claim, in part because: (1) “Congress enacted Title IX just three years after Sullivan was decided”; (2) it is “ ‘realistic to presume that Congress was thoroughly familiar’ ” with Sullivan; and (3) Congress consequently “ ‘expected its enactment’ ” of Title IX “ ‘to be interpreted in conformity with’ ” Sullivan. 544 U. S., at 176. The Court in Jackson explicitly rejected the arguments the dissent advances here — that Sullivan was merely a standing case, see post, at 464-467 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Compare Jackson, 544 U. S., at 176, n. 1 (“Sullivan’s holding was not so limited. It plainly held that the white owner could maintain his own private cause of action under § 1982 if he could show that he was ‘punished for trying to vindicate the rights of minorities’” (emphasis in original)), with id., at 194 (Thomas, J., dissenting).
Regardless, the linguistic argument that CBOCS makes was apparent at the time the Court decided Sullivan. See 396 U. S., at 241 (Harlan, J., dissenting) (noting the construction of § 1982 in Jones, 392 U. S. 409, was “in no way required by [the statute’s] language” — one of the bases of Justice Harlan’s dissent in Jones — and further contending that the Court in Sullivan had gone “yet beyond” Jones). And we believe it is too late in the day in effect to overturn the holding in that case (nor does CBOCS ask us to do so) on the basis of a linguistic argument that was apparent, and which the Court did not embrace at that time.
Second, CBOCS argues that Congress, in 1991 when it reenacted §1981 with amendments, intended the reenacted statute not to cover retaliation. CBOCS rests this conclusion primarily upon the fact that Congress did not include an explicit antiretaliation provision or the word “retaliation” in the new statutory language — although Congress has included explicit antiretaliation language in other civil rights statutes. See, e. g., National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(4); Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. § 215(a)(3); Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-3(a); Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U. S. C. § 623(d); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U. S. C. §§ 12203(a)-(b); Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 29 U. S. C. §2615.
We believe, however, that the circumstances to which CBOCS points find a far more plausible explanation in the fact that, given Sullivan and the new statutory language nullifying Patterson, there was no need for Congress to include explicit language about retaliation. After all, the 1991 amendments themselves make clear that Congress intended to supersede the result in Patterson and embrace pre-Patterson law. And pre-Patterson law included Sullivan. See Part II, supra. Nothing in the statute’s text or in the surrounding circumstances suggests any congressional effort to supersede Sullivan or the interpretation that courts have subsequently given that case. To the contrary, the amendments’ history indicates that Congress intended to restore that interpretation. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 102-40, at 92 (noting that § 1981(b) in the “context of employment discrimination... would include... claims of... retaliation”).
Third, CBOCS points out that §1981, if applied to employment-related retaliation actions, would overlap with Title VII. It adds that Title VII requires that those who invoke its remedial powers satisfy certain procedural and administrative requirements that §1981 does not contain. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(e)(l) (charge of discrimination must be brought before EEOC within 180 days of the discriminatory act); §2000e-5(f)(l) (suit must be filed within 90 days of obtaining an EEOC right-to-sue letter). And CBOCS says that permitting a §1981 retaliation action would allow a retaliation plaintiff to circumvent Title VII’s “specific administrative and procedural mechanisms,” thereby undermining their effectiveness. Brief for Petitioner 25.
This argument, however, proves too much. Precisely the same kind of Title VII/§ 1981 “overlap” and potential circumvention exists in respect to employment-related direct discrimination. Yet Congress explicitly created the overlap in respect to direct employment discrimination. Nor is it obvious how we can interpret §1981 to avoid employment-related overlap without eviscerating §1981 in respect to %o%-employment contracts where no such overlap exists.
Regardless, we have previously acknowledged a “necessary overlap” between Title VII and § 1981. Patterson, 491 U. S., at 181. We have added that the “remedies available under Title VII and under §1981, although related, and although directed to most of the same ends, are separate, distinct, and independent.” Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454,461 (1975). We have pointed out that Title VII provides important administrative remedies and other benefits that § 1981 lacks. See id., at 457-458 (detailing the benefits of Title VII to those aggrieved by race-based employment discrimination). And we have concluded that “Title VII was designed to supplement, rather than supplant, existing laws and institutions relating to employment discrimination.” Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U. S. 36, 48-49 (1974). In a word, we have previously held that the “overlap” reflects congressional design. See ibid. We have no reason to reach a different conclusion in this case.
Fourth, CBOCS says it finds support for its position in two of our recent cases, Burlington N. & S. F. R. Co. v. White, 548 U. S. 53 (2006), and Domino’s Pizza, Inc. v. McDonald, 546 U. S. 470 (2006). In Burlington, a Title VII case, we distinguished between discrimination that harms individuals because of “who they are, i. e., their status,” for example, as women or as black persons, and discrimination that harms “individuals based on what they do, i. e., their conduct,” for example, whistle-blowing that leads to retaliation. 548 U. S., at 63. CBOCS says that we should draw a similar distinction here and conclude that § 1981 only encompasses status-based discrimination. In Burlington, however, we used the status/conduct distinction to help explain why Congress might have wanted its explicit Title VII antiretaliation provision to sweep more broadly (i. e., to include conduct outside the workplace) than its substantive Title VII (status-based) antidiscrimination provision. Burlington did not suggest that Congress must separate the two in all events.
The dissent argues that the distinction made in Burlington is meaningful here because it purportedly “underscores the fact that status-based discrimination and conduct-based retaliation are distinct harms that call for tailored legislative treatment. ” Post, at 462. The Court’s construction of a general ban on discrimination such as that contained in § 1981 to cover retaliation claims, the dissent continues, would somehow render the separate antiretaliation provisions in other statutes “superfluous.” Ibid. But the Court in Burlington did not find that Title VII’s antiretaliation provision was redundant; it found that the provision had a broader reach than the statute’s substantive provision. And in any case, we have held that “legislative enactments in this area have long evinced a general intent to accord parallel or overlapping remedies against discrimination.” Alexander, supra, at 47. See Great American Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Novotny, 442 U. S. 366, 377 (1979) (“[S]ubstantive rights conferred in the 19th century [civil rights Acts] were not withdrawn, sub silentio, by the subsequent passage of the modern statutes”). Accordingly, the Court has accepted overlap between a number of civil rights statutes. See ibid, (discussing interrelation of fair housing provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and § 1982; between § 1981 and Title VII). See also supra, at 455 (any overlap in reach between § 1981 and Title VII, the statute at issue in Burlington, is by congressional design).
CBOCS highlights the second case, Domino’s Pizza, along with Patterson, and cites Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975), and Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U. S. 522 (1987) (per curiam), to show that this Court now follows an approach to statutory interpretation that emphasizes text. And that newer approach, CBOCS claims, should lead us to revisit the holding in Sullivan, an older case, where the Court placed less weight upon the textual language itself. But even were we to posit for argument’s sake that changes in interpretive approach take place from time to time, we could not agree that the existence of such a change would justify reexamination of well-established prior law. Principles of stare decisis, after all, demand respect for precedent whether judicial methods of interpretation change or stay the same. Were that not so, those principles would fail to achieve the legal stability that they seek and upon which the rule of law depends. See, e. g., John R. Sand & Gravel Co., 552 U. S., at 139.
IV
We conclude that considerations of stare decisis strongly support our adherence to Sullivan and the long line of related cases where we interpret §§1981 and 1982 similarly. CBOCS’ arguments do not convince us to the contrary. We consequently hold that 42 U. S. C. § 1981 encompasses claims of retaliation. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Scalia joins, dissenting.
The Court holds that the private right of action it has implied under Rev. Stat. § 1977, 42 U. S. C. § 1981, encompasses claims of retaliation. Because the Court’s holding has no basis in the text of § 1981 and is not justified by principles of stare decisis, I respectfully dissent.
I
It is unexceptional in our case law that “ ‘[statutory construction must begin with the language employed by Congress and the assumption that the ordinary meaning of that language accurately expresses the legislative purpose.’” Engine Mfrs. Assn. v. South Coast Air Quality Management Dist., 541 U. S. 246, 252 (2004) (quoting Park ’N Fly, Inc. v. Dollar Park & Fly, Inc., 469 U. S. 189, 194 (1985)). Today, that rule is honored in the breach: The Court’s analysis of the statutory text does not appear until Part III of its opinion, and then only as a potential reason to depart from the interpretation the Court has already concluded, on other grounds, must “carry the day.” Ante, at 452. Unlike the Court, I think it best to begin, as we usually do, with the text of the statute. Section 1981(a) provides:
“All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”
Section 1981(a) thus guarantees “[a]ll persons... the same right... to make and enforce contracts... as is enjoyed by white citizens.” It is difficult to see where one finds a cause of action for retaliation in this language. On its face, § 1981(a) is a straightforward ban on racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts. Not surprisingly, that is how the Court has always construed it. See, e. g., Domino’s Pizza, Inc. v. McDonald, 546 U. S. 470, 476 (2006) (“Section 1981 offers relief when racial discrimination blocks the creation of a contractual relationship, as well as when racial discrimination impairs an existing contractual relationship”); Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 171 (1989) (“[Section] 1981 'prohibits racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts’” (quoting Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160, 168 (1976))); Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454,459 (1975) (Section 1981 “on its face relates primarily to racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts”).
Respondent nonetheless contends that “[t]he terms of section 1981 are significantly different, and broader, than a simple prohibition against discrimination.” Brief for Respondent 15. It is true that § 1981(a), which was enacted shortly after the Civil War, does not use the modern statutory formulation prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of race.” But that is the clear import of its terms. Contrary to respondent’s contention, nothing in § 1981 evinces a “concer[n] with protecting individuals 'based on what they do,’ ” as opposed to “ ‘preventing] injury to individuals based on who they are.’ ” Ibid, (quoting Burlington N. & S. F. R. Co. v. White, 548 U. S. 53, 63 (2006)). Nor does § 1981 “affirmatively guarante[e]” freestanding “rights to engage in particular conduct.” Brief for Respondent 16. Rather, § 1981 is an equal-rights provision. See Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U. S. 780, 791 (1966) (“Congress intended to protect a limited category of rights, specifically defined in terms of racial equality”). The statute assumes that “white citizens” enjoy certain rights and requires that those rights be extended equally to “[a]ll persons,” regardless of their race. That is to say, it prohibits discrimination based on race.
Retaliation is not discrimination based on race. When an individual is subjected to reprisal because he has complained about racial discrimination, the injury he suffers is not on account of his race; rather, it is the result of his conduct. The Court recognized this commonsense distinction just two years ago in Burlington when it explained that Title VII’s antidiscrimination provision “seeks to prevent injury to individuals based on who they are, i. e., their status,” whereas its “antiretaliation provision seeks to prevent harm to individuals based on what they do, i. e., their conduct.” 548 U. S., at 63. This distinction is sound, and it reflects the fact that a claim of retaliation is both logically and factually distinct from a claim of discrimination — logically because retaliation based on conduct and discrimination based on status are mutually exclusive categories, and factually because a claim of retaliation does not depend on proof that any status-based discrimination actually occurred. Consider, for example, an employer who fires any employee who complains of race discrimination, regardless of the employee’s race. Such an employer is undoubtedly guilty of retaliation, but he has not discriminated on the basis of anyone’s race. Because the employer treats all employees — black and white — the same, he does not deny any employee “the same right... to make and enforce contracts... as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
The Court apparently believes that the status/conduct distinction is not relevant here because this case, unlike Burlington, does not require us to determine whether § 1981’s supposed prohibition on retaliation “sweep[s] more broadly” than its antidiscrimination prohibition. Ante, at 456. That is nonsense. Although, as the Court notes, we used the status/conduct distinction in Burlington to explain why Title VII’s antiretaliation provision must sweep more broadly than its antidiscrimination provision in order to achieve its purpose, 548 U. S., at 63-64, it does not follow that the distinction between status and conduct is irrelevant here. To the contrary, Burlington underscores the fact that status-based discrimination and conduct-based retaliation are distinct harms that call for tailored legislative treatment. That is why Congress, in Title VII and a host of other statutes, has enacted separate provisions prohibiting discrimination and retaliation. See Brief for Petitioner 17-18 (
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, the Court held that the Sherman Act was not violated by state action displacing competition in the marketing of raisins. In this case we must decide whether the Parker rationale immunizes private action which has been approved by a State and which must be continued while the state approval remains effective.
The Michigan Public Service Commission pervasively regulates the distribution of electricity within the State and also has given its approval to a marketing practice which has a substantial impact on the otherwise unregulated business of distributing electric light bulbs. Assuming, arguendo, that the approved practice has unreasonably restrained trade in the light-bulb market, the District Court and the Court of Appeals held, on the authority of Parker, that the Commission’s approval exempted the practice from the federal antitrust laws. Because we questioned the applicability of Parker to this situation, we granted certiorari, 423 U. S. 821. We now reverse.
Petitioner, a retail druggist selling light bulbs, claims that respondent is using its monopoly power in the distribution of electricity to restrain competition in the sale of bulbs in violation of the Sherman Act. Discovery and argument in connection with defendant’s motion for summary judgment were limited by stipulation to the issue raised by the Commission’s approval of respondent’s light-bulb-exchange program. We state only the facts pertinent to that issue and assume, without opining, that without such approval an antitrust violation would exist. To the extent that the facts are disputed, we must resolve doubts in favor of the petitioner since summary judgment was entered against him. We first describe respondent’s “lamp exchange program,” we next discuss the holding in Parker v. Brown, and then we consider whether that holding should be extended to cover this case. Finally, we comment briefly on additional authorities on which respondent relies.
I
Respondent, the Detroit Edison Co., distributes electricity and electric light bulbs to about five million people in southeastern Michigan. In this marketing area, respondent is the sole supplier of electricity, and supplies consumers with almost 50% of the standard-size light bulbs they use most frequently. Customers are billed for the electricity they consume, but pay no separate charge for light bulbs. Respondent’s rates, including the omission of any separate charge for bulbs, have been approved by the Michigan Public Service Commission, and may not be changed without the Commission’s approval. Respondent must, therefore, continue its lamp-exchange program until it files a new tariff and that new tariff is approved by the Commission.
Respondent, or a predecessor, has been following the practice of providing limited amounts of light bulbs to its customers without additional charge since 1886. In 1909 the State of Michigan began regulation of electric utilities. In 1916 the Michigan Public Service Commission first approved a tariff filed by respondent setting forth the lamp-supply program. Thereafter, the Commission’s approval of respondent’s tariffs has included implicit approval of the lamp-exchange program. In 1964 the Commission also approved respondent’s decision to eliminate the program for large commercial customers. The elimination of the service for such customers became effective as part of a general rate reduction for those customers.
In 1972 respondent provided its residential customers with 18,564,381 bulbs at a cost of $2,835,000. In its accounting to the Michigan Public Service Commission, respondent included this amount as a portion of its cost of providing service to its customers. Respondent’s accounting records reflect no direct profit as a result of the distribution of bulbs. The purpose of the program, according to respondent’s executives, is to increase the consumption of electricity. The effect of the program, according to petitioner, is to foreclose competition in a substantial segment of the light-bulb market.
The distribution of electricity in Michigan is pervasively regulated by the Michigan Public Service Commission. A Michigan statute vests the Commission with “complete power and jurisdiction to regulate all public utilities in the state....” The statute confers express power on the Commission “to regulate all rates, fares, fees, charges, services, rules, conditions of service, and all other matters pertaining to the formation, operation, or direction of such public utilities.” Respondent advises us that the heart of the Commission’s function is to regulate the “ 'furnishing... [of] electricity for the production of light, heat or power....’”
The distribution of electric light bulbs in Michigan is unregulated. The statute creating the Commission contains no direct reference to light bulbs. Nor, as far as we have been advised, does any other Michigan statute authorize the regulation of that business. Neither the Michigan Legislature, nor the Commission, has ever made any specific investigation of the desirability of a lamp-exchange program or of its possible effect on competition in the light-bulb market. Other utilities regulated by the Michigan Public Service Commission do not follow the practice of providing bulbs to their customers at no additional charge. The Commission’s approval of respondent’s decision to maintain such a program does not, therefore, implement any statewide policy relating to light bulbs. We infer that the State’s policy is neutral on the question whether a utility should, or should not, have such a program.
Although there is no statute, Commission rule, or policy which would prevent respondent from abandoning the program merely by filing a new tariff providing for a proper adjustment in its rates, it is nevertheless apparent that while the existing tariff remains in effect, respondent may not abandon the program without violating a Commission order, and therefore without violating state law. It has, therefore, been permitted by the Commission to carry out the program, and also is required to continue to do so until an appropriate filing has been made and has received the approval of the Commission.
Petitioner has not named any public official as a party to this litigation and has made no claim that any representative of the State of Michigan has acted unlawfully.
II
In Parker v. Brown the Court considered whether the Sherman Act applied to state action. The way the Sherman Act question was presented and argued in that case sheds significant light on the character of the state-action concept embraced by the Parker holding.
The plaintiff, Brown, was a producer and packer of raisins; the defendants were the California Director of Agriculture and other public officials charged by California statute with responsibility for administering a program for the marketing of the 1940 crop of raisins. The express purpose of the program was to restrict competition among the growers and maintain prices in the distribution of raisins to packers. Nevertheless, in the District Court, Brown did not argue that the defendants had violated the Sherman Act. He sought an injunction against the enforcement of the program on the theory that it interfered with his constitutional right to engage in interstate commerce. Because he was attacking the constitutionality of a California statute and regulations having statewide applicability, a three-judge District Court was convened. With one judge dissenting, the District Court held that the program violated the Commerce Clause and granted injunctive relief.
The defendant state officials took a direct appeal to this Court. Probable jurisdiction was noted on April 6, 1942, and the Court heard oral argument on the Commerce Clause issue on May 5, 1942. In the meantime, on April 27, 1942, the Court held that the State of Georgia is a “person” within the meaning of § 7 of the Sherman Act and therefore entitled to maintain an action for treble damages. Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159.
Presumably because the Court was then concerned with the relationship between the sovereign States and the antitrust laws, it immediately set Parker v. Brown for reargument and, on its own motion, requested the Solicitor General of the United States to file a brief as amicus curiae and directed the parties to discuss the question whether the California statute was rendered invalid by the Sherman Act.
In his supplemental brief the Attorney General of California advanced three arguments against using the Sherman Act as a basis for upholding the injunction entered by the District Court. He contended (1) that even though a State is a “person” entitled to maintain a treble-damage action as a plaintiff, Congress never intended to subject a sovereign State to the provisions of the Sherman Act; (2) that the California program did not, in any event, violate the federal statute; and (3) that since no evidence or argument pertaining to the Sherman Act had been offered or considered in the District Court, the injunction should not be sustained on an antitrust theory.
In his brief for the United States as amicus curiae, the Solicitor General did not take issue with the appellants' first argument. He contended that the California program was inconsistent with the policy of the Sherman Act, but expressly disclaimed any argument that the State of California or its officials had violated federal law. Later in his brief the Solicitor General drew an important distinction between economic action taken by the State itself and private action taken pursuant to a state statute permitting or requiring individuals to engage in conduct prohibited by the Sherman Act. The Solicitor General contended that the private conduct would clearly be illegal but recognized that a different problem existed with respect to the State itself. It was the latter problem that was presented in the Parker case.
This Court set aside the injunction entered by the District Court. In the portion of his opinion for the Court discussing the Sherman Act issue, Mr. Chief Justice Stone addressed only the first of the three arguments advanced by the California Attorney General. The Court held that even though comparable programs organized by private persons would be illegal, the action taken by state officials pursuant to express legislative command did not violate the Sherman Act.
This narrow holding made it unnecessary for the Court to agree or to disagree with the Solicitor General’s view that a state statute permitting or requiring private conduct prohibited by federal law “would clearly be void.” The Court’s narrow holding also avoided any question about the applicability of the antitrust laws to private action taken under color of state law.
Unquestionably the term “state action” may be used broadly to encompass individual action supported to some extent by state law or custom. Such a broad use of the term, which is familiar in civil rights litigation, is not, however, what Mr. Chief Justice Stone described in his Parker opinion. He carefully selected language which plainly limited the Court’s holding to official action taken by state officials.
In this case, unlike Parker, the only defendant is a private utility. No public officials or agencies are named as parties and there is no claim that any state action violated the antitrust laws. Conversely, in Parker there was no claim that any private citizen or company had violated the law. The only Sherman Act issue decided was whether the sovereign State itself, which had been held to be a person within the meaning of § 7 of the statute, was also subject to its prohibitions. Since the case now before us does not call into question the legality of any act of the State of Michigan or any of its officials or agents, it is not controlled by the Parker decision.
Ill
In this case we are asked to hold that, private conduct required by state law is exempt fromthe ShermarTWct. Two quite different reasons might support such a rule. First, if a private citizen has done nothing~mbfe than obey the command of his state sovereign, it would be unjust to conclude that he has thereby offended federal law. Second, if the State is already,regula.ting^an area of the economy, it is arguable that Congress did not intend to superimpose the antitrust laws as an additional, and perhaps conflicting, regulatory mechanism. We consider these two reasons separately.
We may assume, arguendo, that it would be unacoeptable ever to impose statutory liability^ on a party who had done nothing more than obey a state command'. Such an assumption would" not decide this case, if, indeed, it would decide any actual case. For typically cases of this kind involve a blend of private and public decisionmaking. The Court has already decided that state authorization, approval. encouragement. or participation in restrictive private conduct confers no antitrust immunity. And in Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., 341 U. S. 384, the Court invalidated the plaintiff’s entire resale price maintenance program even though it was effective throughout the State only because the Louisiana statute imposed a direct restraint on retailers who had not signed fair trade agreements.
In each of these cases the initiation and enforcement of the program under attack involved a mixture of private and public decisionmaking. In each case, notwithstanding the state participation in the decision, the private party exercised sufficient freedom of choice to enable the Court to conclude that he should be held responsible for the consequences of his decision.
The case before us also discloses a program which is the product of a decision in which both the respondent and the Commission participated. Respondent could not maintain the lamp-exchange program without the approval of the Commission, and now may not abandon it without such approval. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the option to have, or not to have, such a program is primarily respondent’s, not the Commission’s. Indeed, respondent initiated the program years before the regulatory agency was even created. There is nothing unjust in a conclusion that respondent’s participation in the decision is sufficiently significant to require that its conduct implementing the decision, like comparable conduct by unregulated businesses, conform to applicable federal law. Accordingly, even though there may be cases in which the State’s participation in a decision is so dominant that it would be unfair to hold a private party responsible for his conduct in implementing it, this record discloses no such unfairness.
Apart from the question of fairness to the individual who must conform not only to state regulation but to the federal antitrust laws as well, we must consider whether Congress intended to superimpose antitrust standards on conduct already being regulated under a different standard. Amici curiae forcefully contend that the competitive standard imposed by antitrust legislation is fundamentally inconsistent with the "public interest” standard widely enforced by regulatory agencies, and that the essential teaching of Parker v. Brown is that the federal antitrust laws should not be applied in areas of the economy pervasively regulated by state agencies.
There are at least three reasons why this argument is unacceptable. First, merely because certain conduct may be subject both to state regulation and to the federal antitrust laws does not necessarily mean that it must satisfy inconsistent standards; second, even assuming inconsistency, we could not accept the view that the federal interest must inevitably be subordinated to the State's; and finally, even if we were to assume that Congress did not intend the antitrust laws to apply to areas of the economy primarily regulated by a State, that assumption would not foreclose the enforcement of the antitrust laws in an essentially unregulated area such as the market for electric light bulbs.
Unquestionably there are examples of economic regulation in which the very purpose of the government control is to avoid the consequences of unrestrained competition. Agricultural marketing programs, such as that involved in Parker, were of that character. But all economic regulation does not necessarily suppress competition. On the contrary, public utility regulation typically assumes that the private firm is a natural monopoly and that public controls are necessary to protect the consumer from exploitation. There is no logical inconsistency between requiring such a firm to meet regulatory criteria insofar as it is exercising its natural monopoly powers and also to comply with antitrust standards to the extent that it engages in business activity in competitive areas of the economy. Thus, Michigan’s regulation of respondent’s distribution of electricity poses no necessary conflict with a federal requirement that respondent’s activities in competitive markets satisfy antitrust standards.
The mere possibility of conflict between state regulatory policy and federal antitrust policy is an insufficient basis for implying an exemption from the federal antitrust laws. Congress could hardly have intended state regulatory agencies to have broader power than federal agencies to exempt private conduct from the antitrust laws. Therefore, assuming that there are situations in which the existence of state regulation should give rise to an implied exemption, the standards for ascertaining the existence and scope of such an exemption surely must be at least as severe as those applied to federal regulatory legislation.
The Court has consistently refused to find that regulation gave rise to an implied exemption without first determining that exemption was necessary in order to make the regulatory Act work, “and even then only to the minimum extent necessary.”
The application of that standard to this case inexorably requires rejection of respondent's claim. For Michigan's regulatory scheme does not conflict with federal antitrust policy and, conversely, if the federal antitrust laws should be construed to outlaw respondent’s light-bulb-exchange program, there is no reason to believe that Michigan’s regulation of its electric utilities will no longer be able to function effectively. Regardless of the outcome of this case, Michigan’s interest in regulating its utilities’ distribution of electricity will be almost entirely unimpaired.
We conclude that neither Michigan’s approval of the tariff filed by respondent, nor the fact that the lamp-exchange program may not be terminated until a new tariff is filed, is a sufficient basis for implying an exemption from the federal antitrust laws for that program.
IV
The dissenting opinion voices the legitimate concern that violation of the antitrust laws by regulated companies may give rise to “massive treble damage liabilities.” This is an oft-repeated criticism of the inevitably imprecise language of the Sherman Act and of the consequent difficulty in predicting with certainty its application to various specific fact situations. The far-reaching value of this basic part of our law, however, has enabled it to withstand such criticism in the past.
The concern about treble-damage liability has arguable relevance to this case in two ways. If the hazard of violating the antitrust laws were enhanced by the fact of regulation, or if a regulated company had engaged in anticompetitive conduct in reliance on a justified understanding that such conduct was immune from the antitrust laws, a concern with the punitive aspects of the treble-damage remedy would be appropriate. But neither of those circumstances is present in this case.
When regulation merely takes the form of approval of a tariff proposed by the company, it surely has not increased the company’s risk of violating the law. The respondent utility maintained its lamp-exchange program both before and after it was regulated. The approval of the program by the Michigan Commission provided the company with an arguable defense to the antitrust charge, but did not increase its exposure to liability.
Nor can the utility fairly claim that it was led to believe that its conduct was exempt from the federal antitrust laws. A claim of immunity or exemption is in the nature of an affirmative defense to conduct which is otherwise assumed to be unlawful. This Court has never sustained a claim that otherwise unlawful private conduct is exempt from the antitrust laws because it was permitted or required by state law.
In the Court’s most recent consideration of this subject, it described the defendant’s claim with pointed precision as “this so-called state-action exemption.” Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U. S. 773, 788. The Court then explained that the question whether the anti-competitive activity had been required by the State acting as sovereign was the “threshold inquiry” in determining whether it was state action of the type the Sherman Act was not meant to-proscribe. Certainly that careful use of language could not have been read as a guarantee that compliance with any state requirement would automatically confer federal antitrust immunity.
The dissenting opinion in this case makes much of the obvious fact that Parker v. Brown implicitly held that California’s raisin-marketing program was not a violation of the Sherman Act. That is, of course, perfectly true. But the only way the legality of any program may be tested under the Sherman Act is by determining whether the persons who administer it have acted lawfully. The federal statute proscribes the conduct of persons, not programs, and the narrow holding in Parker concerned only the legality of the conduct of the state officials charged by law with the responsibility for administering California’s program. What sort of charge might have been made against the various private persons who engaged in a variety of different activities implementing that program is unknown and unknowable because no such charges were made. Even if the state program had been held unlawful, such a holding would not necessarily have supported a claim that private individuals who had merely conformed their conduct to an invalid program had thereby violated the Sherman Act. Unless and until a court answered that question, there would be no occasion to consider an affirmative defense of immunity or exemption.
Nor could respondent justifiably rely on either the holding in Eastern R. Conf. v. Noerr Motors, 365 U. S. 127, or the reference in that opinion to Parker. The holding in Noerr was that the concerted activities of the railroad defendants in opposing legislation favorable to the plaintiff motor carriers was not prohibited by the Sherman Act. The case did not involve any question of either liability or exemption for private action taken in compliance with state law.
Moreover, nothing in the Noerr opinion implies that the mere fact that a state regulatory agency may approve a proposal included in a tariff, and thereby require that the proposal be implemented until a revised tariff is filed and approved, is a sufficient reason for conferring antitrust immunity on the proposed conduct. The passage quoted in the dissent, post, at 622, sets up an assumed dichotomy between a restraint imposed by governmental action, as contrasted with one imposed by private action, and then cites United States v. Rock Royal Co-op., 307 U. S. 533, and Parker for the conclusion that the former does not violate the Sherman Act. That passing reference to Parker sheds no light on the significance of state action which amounts to little more than approval of a private proposal. It surely does not qualify the categorical statement in Parker that “a state does not give immunity to those who violate the Sherman Act by authorizing them to violate it, or by declaring that their action is lawful.” 317 U. S., at 351. Yet the dissent would allow every state agency to grant precisely that immunity by merely including a direction to engage in the proposed conduct in an approval order.
Mr. Justice Stewart’s separate opinion possesses a virtue which ours does not. It announces a simple rule that can easily be applied in any case in which a state regulatory agency approves a proposal and orders a regulated company to comply with it. No matter what the impact of the proposal on interstate commerce, and no matter how peripheral or casual the State’s interests may be in permitting it to go into effect, the state act would confer immunity from treble-damages liability. Such a rule is supported by the wholesome interest in simplicity in the regulation of a complex economy. In our judgment, however, that interest is heavily outweighed by the fact that such a rule may give a host of state regulatory agencies broad power to grant exemptions from an important federal law for reasons wholly unrelated either to federal policy or even to any necessary significant state interest. Although it is tempting to try to fashion a rule which would govern the decision of the liability issue and the damages issue in all future cases presenting state-action issues, we believe the Court should adhere to its settled policy of giving concrete meaning to the general language of the Sherman Act by a process of case-by-case adjudication of specific controversies.
Since the District Court has not yet addressed the question whether the complaint alleged a violation of the antitrust laws, the case is remanded for a determination of that question and for such other proceedings as may be appropriate.
Reversed and remanded.
Parts II and IY of this opinion are joined only by Mr. Justice BrenNAN, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice Marshall.
392 F. Supp. 1110 (ED Mich. 1974).
513 F. 2d 630 (CA6 1975).
Petitioner’s complaint asserts that respondent’s light-bulb-exchange program violates § 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U. S. C. § 2, and § 3 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 14. In his brief in this Court, petitioner has also argued that the program constitutes unlawful tying violative of § 1 of the Sherman Act. The complaint seeks treble damages and an injunction permanently enjoining respondent from requiring the purchase of bulbs in connection with the sale of electrical energy. The complaint purports to be filed on behalf of all persons similarly situated, but the record contains no indication that the plaintiff moved for a class determination pursuant to Fed. Rule Civ. Proe. 23 (c).
Respondent does not distribute fluorescent lights or high-intensity discharge lamps; if bulbs of those types were included, respondent’s share of the market would only be about 23%.
Under respondent’s practice, new residential customers are provided with bulbs in “such quantities as may be needed” for all of their permanent fixtures; thereafter, respondent replaces residential customers’ burned out light bulbs in proportion to their estimated use of electricity for lighting. The customer incurs no direct charge for such bulbs at the time they are furnished to him, but normally turns in any bumed-out bulbs to obtain a new supply.
See Mich. Comp. Laws §§ 460.551, 460.559 (1970).
Apparently many commercial customers use relatively large quantities of fluorescent fighting and therefore have less interest in the bulb-exchange program.
Of this amount, $2,363,328 was paid to the three principal manufacturers of bulbs from whom respondent made its purchases; the other $471,672 represented costs incurred in the use of respondent’s personnel and facilities in carrying out the program.
According to respondent the effect of the program is to save consumers about $3 million a year, since the bulbs they now receive at a cost of $2,835,000 would cost them about $6 million in the retail market.
Mich. Comp. Laws § 460.6 (1970).
See Brief for Respondent 11; Mich. Comp. Laws §460.501 (1970).
“The California Agricultural Prorate Act authorizes the establishment, through action of state officials, of programs for the marketing of agricultural commodities produced in the state, so as to restrict competition among the growers and maintain prices in the distribution of their commodities to packers. The declared purpose of the Act is to ‘conserve the agricultural wealth of the State’ and to ‘prevent economic waste in the marketing of agricultural products’ of the state.” 317 U. S., at 346.
“The declared objective of the California Act is to prevent excessive supplies of agricultural commodities from ‘adversely affecting’ the market, and although the statute speaks in terms of ‘economic stability’ and ‘agricultural waste’ rather than of price, the evident purpose and effect of the regulation is to 'conserve agricultural wealth of the state’ by raising and maintaining prices, but ‘without permitting unreasonable profits to producers.’ § 10.” Id., at 355.
Title 28 U. S. C. § 2281 has been consistently read by this Court as authorizing a three-judge court only when the state statute which is sought to be enjoined is of a general and statewide application. Moody v. Flowers, 387 U. S. 97, 101.
Article I, § 8, cl. 3, of the United States Constitution provides:
“Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes....”
The Court also asked the parties to consider whether the Agricultural Adjustment Act, as amended, or any other Act of Congress, invalidated the California program. The supplemental briefs noted that the California program had been adopted with the collaboration of officials of the United States Department of Agriculture, and had been aided by loans from the Commodity Credit Corporation recommended by the Secretary of Agriculture. These facts were emphasized in portions of Mr. Chief Justice Stone’s opinion discussing the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Commerce Clause, see 317 U. S., at 357, 358-359, 368, but were not mentioned in connection with the Court’s discussion of the Sherman Act.
The first order entered in the Supreme Court Journal on Monday, May 11, 1942, provided:
“No. 1040. W. B. Parker, Director of Agriculture, et al., appellants, v. Porter L. Brown. This cause is restored to the docket for reargument on October 12 next. In their briefs and on the oral argument counsel for the parties are requested to discuss the questions whether the state statute involved is rendered' invalid by the action of Congress in passing the Sherman Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act as amended, or any other Act of Congress. The Solicitor General is requested to file a brief as amicus curiae and, if he so desires, to participate in the oral argument.” Journal, O. T. 1941, p. 252.
The Honorable Earl Warren, later Chief Justice of the United States.
In the index to his supplemental brief, the California Attorney General outlined his discussion of the Sherman Act in these words:
“The Sherman Anti-Trust law and the California raisin program. 35
“1. Is a state subject to the Sherman Act?. 35
"2. Does the state seasonal program for raisins violate the provisions of the Sherman Act?. 48
“(a) The Sherman Act is circumscribed by the rule of reason. 53
“ (b) Federal legislation as exempting state program from anti-trust laws.'. 60
“3. May the California raisin program be enjoined in the present action?. 64”
At p. 59 of its brief, the Government stated:
“The Sherman Act does not in terms define its scope in so far as it applies to the activities of state governments. But nothing in the Act precludes its application to programs sponsored by the states. Sections 1 and 2 prohibit unlawful conduct by 'persons/ and the word 'person/ as defined in Section 7, in some connections at least, may include a state. Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159.
“But the question we face here is not whether California or its officials have violated the Sherman Act, but whether the state program interferes with the accomplishment of the objectives of the federal statute.”
At p. 63 of its brief, the Government stated:
“A state statute permitting, or requiring, dealers in a commodity to combine so as to limit the supply or raise the price of a subject of interstate commerce would clearly be void. The question here is whether a state may itself undertake to control the supply and price of a commodity shipped in interstate commerce or otherwise restrain interstate competition through a mandatory regulation.”
“But it is plain that the prorate program here was never intended to operate by force of individual agreement or combina^ tion. It derived its authority and its efficacy from the legislative command of the state and was not intended to operate or become effective without that command. We find nothing in the language of the Sherman Act or in its history which suggests that its purpose was to restrain a state or its officers or agents from activities directed by its legislature. In a dual system of government in which, under the Constitution, the states are sovereign, save only as Congress may constitutionally subtract from their authority, an unexpressed purpose to nullify a state’s control over its officers and agents is not lightly to be attributed to Congress.
“The Sherman Act makes no mention of the state as such, and gives no hint that it was intended to restrain state action or official action directed by a state.
“There is no suggestion of a purpose to restrain state action in the Act’s legislative history. The sponsor of the bill which was ultimately enacted as the Sherman Act declared that it prevented only ‘business combinations.’ 21 Cong, Rec. 2562, 2457; see also [id.,] at 2459, 2461. That its purpose was to suppress combinations to restrain competition and attempts to monopolize by individuals and corporations, abundantly appears from its législative history.
“The state in adopting and enforcing the prorate program made no contract or agreement and entered into no conspiracy in restraint of trade or to establish monopoly but, as sovereign, imposed the restraint as an act of government which the Sherman Act did not undertake to prohibit. Olsen v. Smith, 195 U. S. 332, 344-[3]45; cf. Lowenstein v. Evans, 69 F. 908, 910.” 317 U. S., at 350-352.
See n. 15, supra.
See Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 172-187; Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 188-234 (BreNNAN, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
In his three-page discussion of the Sherman Act issue in Parker v. Brown, Mr. Chief Justice Stone made 13 references to the fact that state action was involved. Each time his language was carefully chosen to apply only to official action, as opposed to private action approved, supported, or even directed by the State. Thus, his references were to (1) “the legislative command of the state,” and (2) “a state or its officers or agents from activities directed by its legislature,” 317 U. S., at 350; and to (3) “a state’s control over its officers and agents,” (4) “the state as such,” (5) “state action or official action directed by a state,” and (6) “state action,” id., at 351; and to (7) “the state command to the Commission and to the program committee,” (8) “state action,” (9) “the state which has created the'machinery for establishing the prorate pro-gam,” (10) “it is the state, acting through the Commission, which adopts the program...,” (11) “[t]he state itself exercises its legislative authority,” (12) “[t]he state in adopting and enforcing the prorate program...,” and finally (13) “as sovereign, imposed the restraint as an act of government...,” id., at 352.
The cumulative effect of these carefully drafted references unequivocally differentiates between official action, on the one hand, and individual action (even when commanded by the State), on the other hand.
Indeed, in Parker v. Brown itself, there was significant private participation in the formulation and effectuation of the proration program. As the Court pointed out, approval of the program upon referendum by a prescribed number of producers was one of the conditions for effectuating the program. See ibid.
“It cannot be said that any State may give a corporation, created under its_ laws, authority to restrain interstate or international commerce against the will of the nation as lawfully expressed by Congress.” Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 346.
In the Parker opinion itself, the Court pointed out that a State does not give immunity to those who violate the Sherman Act “by declaring that their action is lawful.” 317 U. S., at 351.
“Respondents’ arguments, at most, constitute the contention that their activities complemented the objective of the ethical codes. In our view that is not state action for Sherman Act purposes. It is not enough that, as the County Bar puts it, anticompetitive conduct is 'prompted’ by state action; rather, anticompetitive activities must be compelled by direction of the State acting as a sovereign,” Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U. S. 773, 791.
See Continental Co. v. Union Carbide, 370 U. S. 690; cf. also Union Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 313 U. S. 450, cited in Parker v. Brown, supra, at 352.
Thus, although the private decision to enforce a statewide fair trade program was not only approved by the State, but actually would have been ineffective without the statutory command to non-signers to adhere to the prices set by the plaintiff, the rationale of Parker v. Brown did not immunize the restraint. Quite the contrary, in his opinion for the Court Mr. Justice Douglas cited Parker for the proposition that private conduct was forbidden by the Sherman Act even though the State had compelled retailers to follow a parallel price policy. He said: “Therefore, when a state compels retailers to follow a parallel price policy, it demands private conduct which the Sherman Act forbids. See Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, 350.” 341 U. S. at 389.
We recently described an analogous exercise of a public utility's power to malee business decisions subject to Commission approval in Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U. S. 345:
“The nature of governmental regulation of private utilities is such that a utility may frequently be required by the
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Petitioner Central State University challenges a ruling of the Ohio Supreme Court striking down on equal protection grounds a state law requiring public universities to develop standards for professors’ instructional workloads and exempting those standards from collective bargaining. We grant the petition and reverse the judgment of the Ohio Supreme Court.
In an effort to address the decline in the amount of time that public university professors devoted to teaching as opposed to researching, the State of Ohio enacted Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3345.45 (1997). This provision provides in relevant part:
“On or before January 1, 1994, the Ohio board of regents jointly with all state universities ... shall develop standards for instructional workloads for full-time and part-time faculty in keeping with the universities’ missions and with special emphasis on the undergraduate learning experience....
“On or before June 30,1994, the board of trustees of each state university shall take formal aetion to adopt a faculty workload policy consistent with the standards developed under this section. Notwithstanding [other provisions making faculty workload at public universities a proper subject for collective bargaining], the policies adopted under this section are not appropriate subjects for collective bargaining. Notwithstanding [these collective-bargaining provisions], any policy adopted under this section by a board of trustees prevails over any conflicting provisions of any collective bargaining agreement between an employees organization and that board of trustees.”
In 1994, petitioner Central State University adopted a workload policy pursuant to § 8345.45 and notified respondent, the certified collective-bargaining agent for Central State’s professors, that it would not bargain over the issue of faculty workload. Respondent subsequently filed a complaint in Ohio state court for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that §3345.45 created a class of public employees not entitled to bargain regarding their workload and that this classification violated the Equal Protection Clauses of the Ohio and United States Constitutions.
By a divided vote, respondent that §3345.45 deprived public university professors the equal protection of the laws. See 83 Ohio St. 3d 229, 699 N. E. 2d 463 (1998). The court acknowledged that Ohio’s purpose in enacting the statute was legitimate and that all legislative enactments enjoy a strong presumption of constitutionality. Id., at 234-235, 699 N. E. 2d, at 468-469. Nonetheless, the court held that §3345’s collective-bargaining exemption bore no rational relationship to the State’s interest in correcting the imbalance between research and teaching at its public universities. See id., at 236-239, 699 N. E. 2d, at 469-470. The State had argued that achieving uniformity, consistency, and equity in faculty workload was necessary to recapture the decline in teaching, and that collective bargaining produced variation in workloads across universities in departments having the same academic mission. Id., at 236, 699 N. E. 2d, at 469. Reviewing evidence that the State had submitted in support of this contention, the Ohio Supreme Court held that “there is not a shred of evidence in the entire record which links collective bargaining with the decline in teaching over the last decade, or in any way purports to establish that collective bargaining contributed in the slightest to the lost faculty time devoted to undergraduate teaching.” Ibid. Based on this determination, the court concluded that the State had failed to show “any rational basis for singling out university faculty members as the only public employees . . . precluded from bargaining over their workload.” Id., at 237, 699 N. E. 2d, at 470.
The dissenting justices pointed out that the majority’s methodology and conclusion conflicted with this Court’s standards for rational-basis review of equal protection challenges. See id., at 238-241, 699 N. E. 2d, at 471-472. In their view, “that collective bargaining has not caused the decline in teaching proves nothing in assessing whether the faculty workload standards imposed pursuant to R. C. 3345.45 legitimately relate to that statute’s purpose of restoring losses in undergraduate teaching activity.” Id., at 238, 699 N. E. 2d, at 471 (emphasis in original). The majority’s review of the State’s evidence was therefore “inconsequential” to the only question in the case: whether the challenged legislative action was arbitrary or irrational. See id., at 239-242, 699 N. E. 2d, at 472-473. Answering this question, the dissent concluded that imposing uniform workload standards via the exemption “is not an irrational means of effecting an increasing in teaching activity. In fact, it was probably the most direct means of accomplishing that objective available to the General Assembly.” Id., at 241, 699 N. E. 2d, at 473.
agree the Ohio Supreme Court’s holding cannot be reconciled with the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. We have repeatedly held that “a classification neither involving fundamental rights nor proceeding along suspect lines... cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 319-321 (1993) (citations omitted); FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U. S. 307, 313-314 (1993); Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U. S. 1, 11 (1992). The legislative classification created by §3345.45 passes this test. One of the statute’s objectives was to increase the time spent by faculty in the classroom; the imposition of a faculty workload policy not subject to collective bargaining was an entirely rational step to accomplish this objective. The legislature could quite reasonably have concluded that the policy animating the law would have been undercut and likely varied if it were subject to collective bargaining. The State, in effect, decided that the attainment of this goal was more important than the system of collective bargaining that had previously included university professors. See Vance v. Bradley, 440 U. S. 93 (1979) (upholding a similar enactment of Congress providing that federal employees covered by the Foreign Service retirement system, but not those covered by the Civil Service retirement system, would be required to retire at age 60).
The fact that the show that collective bargaining in the past had lead to the decline in classroom time for faculty does not detract from the rationality of the legislative decision. See Heller, supra, at 320 (“A State ... has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification”). The legislature wanted a uniform workload policy to be in place by a certain date. It could properly conclude that collective bargaining about that policy in the future would interfere with the attainment of this end. Under our precedent, this is sufficient to sustain the exclusion of university professors from the otherwise general collective-bargaining scheme for public employees.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
As part of the same bill codified at §3345, the Ohio General Assembly also enacted uncodified legislation providing that the Board of Regents shall work with state universities "to ensure that no later than [the] fall term 1994, a minimum ten percent increase in statewide undergraduate teaching activity be achieved to restore the reductions experienced over the past decade. Notwithstanding section 3345.46 of the Revised Code, any collective bargaining agreement in effect on the effective date of this act shall continue in effect until its expiration date.” Amended Substitute House Bill No. 152, §84.14, 145 Ohio Laws 4539 (effective July 1,1993).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Minton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question we have here is whether a closed-shop contract, entered into and performed in good faith, and valid in the state where made, protects an employer from a charge of unfair labor practices under the National Labor Relations Act.
Petitioner was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have violated §§ 8 (1) and 8 (3) of the Act. On petition for review and cross-petition of the Board for enforcement of its order, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit entered a decree enforcing the Board’s order. We granted certiorari limited to the question of the construction of § 8 (3) of the Act in relation to this case, i. e., to examine the applicability of the so-called Rutland Court doctrine, here applied by the Board. The doctrine has been approved in the Second, Third, and Ninth Circuits, but disapproved in the Seventh Circuit.
At the period of time in question in 1945, petitioner company was engaged in producing glycerin for war purposes. Petitioner has no record of antiunion or anti-organizational activities. Its employees were first organized and represented in 1936 by a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. In 1938 the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, became the representative of petitioner’s employees. On July 9, 1941, the C. I. O. entered into a collective bargaining contract with petitioner which contained a closed-shop provision in these words:
“Section 3. The Employer agrees that when new employees are to be hired to do any work covered by Section One (1), they shall be hired thru the offices of the Union, provided that the Union shall be able to furnish competent workers for work required. In the event the union is unable to furnish competent workers, the Employer may hire from outside sources, provided that employees so hired shall make application for membership in the Union within fifteen (15) days of their employment. The employees covered by this agreement shall be members in good standing of the Union and the Employer shall employ no workers other than members of the Union subject to conditions herein above prescribed. In the hiring of new help (for the warehouses), they shall be hired through the offices of the Warehouse Union, Local 1-6, I. L. W. U.”
This contract was entered into in good faith by the parties and served as a foundation for amicable labor relations for over four years. It was of indefinite duration. On July 24, 1945, the C. I. O. and petitioner entered into a supplemental agreement that their contract of July 9, 1941, “shall remain in full force and effect” pending approval of certain agreed-upon items, other than the closed-shop provision, by the War Labor Board. In the instant proceedings, the closed-shop contract, as extended by the supplemental agreement, was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have been made in compliance with the proviso of § 8 (3) of the Act.
On July 26, 1945, shortly after the making of the supplemental agreement, open agitation for a change of bargaining representative began. On July 31 an unauthorized strike occurred which was participated in by a substantial majority of the employees and lasted two and one-half days, although the C. I. O. had pledged its membership not to strike during wartime. A group of employees formed an independent organization which later sought to affiliate with the A. F. of L. There was much propagandizing among the employees and warnings were issued by the C. I. O. that its members would be disciplined for rival union activity, and would if disciplined be discharged from their jobs under the closed-shop contract with petitioner.
Altogether some 37 employees were suspended and expelled by the C. I. O. for their activities in behalf of the A. F. of L. union during the fight between the two unions for control, and because of their participation in the strike contrary to C. I. O. policy. These suspended and expelled employees were discharged by petitioner, with the advice of counsel, upon demand by the C. I. O. The ground of the demand was that they were no longer “members in good standing” of the C. I. O. as required by the closed-shop contract. Petitioner knew, as the Board found, that the discharge of these employees was demanded by the C. I. O. because of their rival union activity.
On October 16 the C. I. O. won an election held by the Board to determine the bargaining representative of petitioner’s employees, and the open hostilities were substantially concluded.
Petitioner was charged with violation of § 8 (1) and § 8 (3) of the Act and found guilty thereof by the Board for having carried out the terms of the closed-shop contract at the request of the bargaining representative. The Board ordered petitioner to restore the employees discharged at the request of the C. I. O. to their former positions without loss of seniority and pay. It is this order which the Court of Appeals decreed should be enforced and that is here for review.
There is no question but that the discharges had the effect of interfering with the employees’ right, given by § 7 of the Act, to self-organization and to collective bargaining through representatives of their own choosing. Nor is there any question but that the discharges had the effect of discriminating, contrary to the prohibition of § 8 (3), in the tenure of the employees. It is petitioner’s contention that such interference and discrimination are taken out of the category of unfair labor practices where the employees are discharged in good faith, pursuant to an employer’s obligations under a valid closed-shop contract entered into in good faith with the authorized representative of the employees, as permitted by the proviso contained in § 8 (3) of the Act. The Board admits that petitioner’s contention is supported by the proviso in § 8 (3) but says that a contract of indefinite duration such as the one in the instant case is subject to the doctrine of Rutland Court Owners, Inc., 44 N. L. R. B. 587, 46 N. L. R. B. 1040. In the Rutland Court case the Board determined that an employer is not permitted to discharge employees pursuant to a closed-shop contract, even though the contract is valid under the proviso to § 8 (3), when, to the employer’s knowledge, the discharge is requested by the union for the purpose of eliminating employees who have sought to change bargaining representatives at a period when it is appropriate for the employees to seek a redetermination of representatives. The reason for this holding by the Board will be presently discussed. The doctrine as applied to the facts in this case is stated in the Board’s brief as follows:
“The Board found the closed-shop agreement to have been validly entered into in conformity with the proviso to Section 8 (3) of the Act. The Board concluded, however, that, by virtue of the indefinite term of the contract, which had run for more than four years, the employees undertook to oust the C. I. O. as their bargaining representative at a period during which it was appropriate to seek a redetermination of representatives.”
The Board contends that therefore the contract no longer protected petitioner.
We take it from this conclusion of the Board that there is no dispute as to the validity of the closed-shop contract as far as the Act is concerned. In Algoma P. & V. Co. v. Wisconsin Empl. Rel. Bd., 336 U. S. 301, it was held that nothing in the Act precludes a state from prohibiting closed-shop contracts in whole or in part. We therefore also look to the law of the state where the closed-shop contract was made, here California, to determine its validity. We think it is clear, and do not understand the Board to contend otherwise, that the closed-shop contract was valid under California law. Shafer v. Registered Pharmacists Union Local 1172, 16 Cal. 2d 379, 106 P. 2d 403; Park & Tilford Import Corp. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Etc., Local 848, 27 Cal. 2d 599, 165 P. 2d 891; James v. Marinship Corp., 25 Cal. 2d 721, 155 P. 2d 329. In the Marinship case, supra, at 736, the California Supreme Court explicitly recognized that a union may expel persons who “have interests inimical to the union” because of “the right of the union to reject or expel persons who refuse to abide by any reasonable regulation or lawful policy adopted by the union.” See also Davis v. Int. Alliance of Stage Employees, 60 Cal. App. 2d 713, 715, 141 P. 2d 486, 487-488, where it is stated that under California law, “An organization has the natural right of self preservation, and may with propriety expel members who show their disloyalty by joining a rival organization.” The contract was valid under the Act and under state law.
The claimed impotency of the contract as a defense here rests not upon any provision of the Act of Congress or of state law or the terms of the contract, but upon a policy declared by the Board. That policy has for its avowed purpose the solution of what the Board conceives to be an anomalous situation, in that § 7 guarantees employees the right to select freely their representative for collective bargaining, while the proviso to § 8 (3) permits a closed-shop contract with inherent possibilities for invasion of the right guaranteed by § 7. The solution arrived at in the Rutland Court case, and urged here, is that the Board may not give full effect to the proviso of § 8 (3) because to do so would permit circumvention of § 7. We turn to this contention.
One of the oldest techniques in the art of collective bargaining is the closed shop. It protects the integrity of the union and provides stability to labor relations. To achieve stability of labor relations was the primary objective of Congress in enacting the National Labor Relations Act. Congress knew that a closed shop would interfere with freedom of employees to organize in another union and would, if used, lead inevitably to discrimination in tenure of employment. Nevertheless, with full realization that there was a limitation by the proviso of § 8 (3) upon the freedom of § 7, Congress inserted the proviso of § 8 (3). It is not necessary for us to justify the policy of Congress. It is enough that we find it in the statute. That policy cannot be defeated by the Board’s policy, which would make an unfair labor practice out of that which is authorized by the Act. The Board cannot ignore the plain provisions of a valid contract made in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the statute and reform it to conform to the Board’s idea of correct policy. To sustain the Board’s contention would be to permit the Board under the guise of administration to put limitations in the statute not placed there by Congress. In reality whatever interference or discrimination was present here came not from the employer, but from fellow-employees of the dischargees. Shorn of embellishment, the Board’s policy makes interference and discrimination by fellow-employees an unfair labor practice of the employer. Yet the legislative history conclusively shows that Congress, by rejecting the proposed Tydings amendment to the Act, refused to word § 7 so as to hamper coercion of employees by fellow-employees. The emasculation of the contract pressed for by the Board in order to achieve that which Congress refused to enact into law cannot be sustained.
It must be remembered that this is a contest primarily between labor unions for control. It is quite reasonable to suppose that Congress thought it conducive to stability of labor relations that parties be required to live up to a valid closed-shop contract made voluntarily with the recognized bargaining representative, regardless of internal disruptions growing out of agitation for a change in bargaining representative. In the instant case the employees exercised their right to choose their bargaining representative. The representative bound them to a valid contract. The contract was lived under for four years and was subsisting at the period of time in question. It was made and carried out in good faith by petitioner, who cannot be held guilty of an unfair labor practice by administrative amendment of the statute. We reject the application of the so-called Rutland Court doctrine.
Nothing that this Court said in Wallace Corp. v. Labor Board, 323 U. S. 248, supports the Board’s position here. In that case this Court said:
“It was as much a deprivation of the rights of these minority employees for the company discriminatorily to discharge them in collaboration with Independent as it would have been had the company done it alone. To permit it to do so by indirection, through the medium of a 'union’ of its own creation, would be to sanction a readily contrived mechanism for evasion of the Act.” 323 U. S. at 256.
There the independent union was found to be a company-supported union, and the employer was found guilty of an unfair labor practice for supporting it. While the proviso to § 8 (3) permits a closed-shop contract, it does not permit one made with a union “established, maintained, or assisted by any action defined in this Act as an unfair labor practice.” So the Court concluded in the Wallace Corp. case that: “The Board therefore is authorized by the Act to order disestablishment of such unions and to order an employer to renounce such contracts.” 323 U. S. at 251. Thus the Wallace Corp. case does not deal with the scope of protection afforded an employer by a valid closed-shop contract, because there was not and could not have been a valid closed-shop contract in that case.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, with directions to the Board to dismiss the complaint.
Reversed.
49 Stat. 449 et seq., 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq.
Matter of Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company, 70 N. L. R. B. 1202.
171 F. 2d 956.
337 U. S. 913.
Matter of Rutland Court Owners, Inc., 44 N. L. R. B. 587, 46 N. L. R. B. 1040.
Labor Board v. Geraldine Novelty Co., 173 F. 2d 14; Colonie Fibre Co. v. Labor Board, 163 F. 2d 65; Labor Board v. American White Cross Laboratories, 160 F. 2d 75.
Labor Board v. Public Service Transport Co., 177 F. 2d 119.
Labor Board v. Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co., 171 F. 2d 956; Local 2880 v. Labor Board, 158 F. 2d 365, certiorari granted, 331 U. S. 798, certiorari dismissed on motion of petitioner, 332 U. S. 845.
Aluminum Co. v. Labor Board, 159 F. 2d 523; Lewis Meier & Co. v. Labor Board, 21 L. R. R. M. 2093 (Nov. 1947).
“Sec. 8. It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer—
. . . . .
“(3) By discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization: Provided, That nothing in this Act, ... or in any code or agreement approved or prescribed thereunder, or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude an employer from making an agreement with a labor organization (not established, maintained, or assisted by any action defined in this Act as an unfair labor practice) to require as a condition of employment membership therein, if such labor organization is the representative of the employees as provided in section 9 (a), in the appropriate collective bargaining unit covered by such agreement when made.” 49 Stat. 452, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (3).
This election was thereafter set aside by the Board, upon objections filed by the A. F. of L., on the ground that the employer’s discharge of employees at the request of the C. I. O. prevented the result of the election from being truly representative of the employees’ wishes.
Supra, n. 10.
See Peterson, American Labor Unions, p. 1 (1945). Rev. Jerome L. Toner in The Closed Shop in the American Labor Movement, published under auspices of The Catholic University of America, Studies in Economics, vol. 5, 1941, traces the principle of the closed shop to the English guild system, the forerunner of the American union movement, p. 16 et seq. In America the desire of workers for closed-shop conditions antedates the American Revolution and even unionism. Id. at 22, 58 et seq.
49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151; S. Rep. No. 573, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1935); H. R. Rep. Nos. 969, 972, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 6 (1935); H. R. Rep. No. 1147, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 8 (1935).
See statement of Senator Wagner: Hearings before Senate Committee on Education and Labor on S. 195, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 47 (1935); Statement of Mr. Millis, id. at 179-180; and the Senate and House Reports accompanying the bill: S. Rep. No. 573, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 16 (1935); H. R. Rep. No. 1147, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 15-17 (1935).
During consideration of the bill on the Senate floor, Senator Tydings proposed to amend it by adding to § 7 the words, “free from coercion or intimidation from any source.” In the debate which followed it became clear that the amendment would deal with employee-against-employee relations, while the bill was designed to deal only with employee-employer relations, and the amendment was defeated. See 79 Cong. Rec. 7653-7658, 7675.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Congress has provided that “[a]ny officer of the customs may at any time go on board of any vessel... at any place in the United States . . . and examine the manifest and other documents and papers . . . and to this end may hail and stop such vessel . . . and use all necessary force to compel compliance.” 46 Stat. 747, as amended, 19 U. S. C. § 1581(a). We are asked to decide whether the Fourth Amendment is offended when customs officials, acting pursuant to this statute and without any suspicion of wrongdoing, board for inspection of documents a vessel that is located in waters providing ready access to the open sea.
Near midday on March 6, 1980, customs officers, accompanied by Louisiana state policemen, were patrolling the Calca-sieu River Ship Channel, some 18 miles inland from the gulf coast, when they sighted the Henry Morgan II, a 40-foot sailboat, anchored facing east on the west side of the channel. The Calcasieu River Ship Channel is a north-south waterway connecting the Gulf of Mexico with Lake Charles, Louisiana. Lake Charles, located in the southwestern corner of Louisiana, is a designated Customs Port of Entry in the Houston, Texas Region. While there is access to the channel from Louisiana’s Calcasieu Lake, the channel is a separate thoroughfare to the west of the lake which all vessels moving between Lake Charles and the open sea of the Gulf must traverse.
Shortly after sighting the sailboat, the officers also observed a large freighter moving north in the channel. The freighter was creating a huge wake and as it passed the Henry Morgan II the wake caused the smaller vessel to rock violently from side to side. The patrol boat then approached the sailboat from the port side and passed behind its stern. On the stern the name of the vessel, the “Henry Morgan II,” was displayed along with its home port, “Basilea.” The officers sighted one man, respondent Hamparian, on deck. Officer Wilkins twice asked if the sailboat and crew were all right. Hamparian shrugged his shoulders in an unresponsive manner.
Officer Wilkins, accompanied by Officer Dougherty of the Louisiana State Police, then boarded the Henry Morgan II and asked to see the vessel’s documentation. Hamparian handed Officer Wilkins what appeared to be a request to change the registration of a ship from Swiss registry to French registry, written in French and dated February 6, 1980. It subsequently was discovered that the home port designation of “Basilea” was Latin for Basel, Switzerland; the vessel was, however, of French registry.
While examining the document, Officer Wilkins smelled what he thought to be burning marihuana. Looking through an open hatch, Wilkins observed burlap-wrapped bales that proved to be marihuana. Respondent Villamonte-Marquez was on a sleeping bag atop of the bales. Wilkins arrested both Hamparian and Villamonte-Marquez and gave them Miranda warnings. A subsequent search revealed some 5,800 pounds of marihuana on the Henry Morgan II, stored in almost every conceivable place including the forward, mid, and aft cabins, and under the seats in the open part of the vessel.
A jury found respondents guilty of conspiring to import marihuana in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 963, importing marihuana in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 952(a), conspiring to possess marihuana with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 846, and possessing marihuana with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1). The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment of conviction, finding that the officers’ boarding of the Henry Morgan II “was not reasonable under the fourth amendment” because the boarding occurred in the absence of “a reasonable suspicion of a law violation.” 652 F. 2d 481, 488 (1981). Because of a conflict among the Circuits and the importance of the question presented as it affects the enforcement of customs laws, we granted certiorari. 457 U. S. 1104 (1982). We now reverse.
In 1790 the First Congress enacted a comprehensive statute “to provide more effectually for the collection of the duties imposed by law on goods, wares and merchandise imported into the United States, and on the tonnage of ships or vessels.” Act of Aug. 4, 1790, 1 Stat. 145. Section 31 of that Act provided in pertinent part as follows:
“That it shall be lawful for all collectors, naval officers, surveyors, inspectors, and the officers of the revenue cutters herein after mentioned, to go on board of ships or vessels in any part of the United States, or within four leagues of the coast thereof, if bound to the United States, whether in or out of their respective districts, for the purposes of demanding the manifests aforesaid, and of examining and searching the said ships or vessels . . . .” 1 Stat. 164.
This statute appears to be the lineal ancestor of the provision of present law upon which the Government relies to sustain the boarding of the vessel in this case. Title 19 U. S. C. § 1581(a) provides that “[a]ny officer of the customs may at any time go on board of any vessel ... at any place in the United States or within the customs waters . . . and examine the manifest and other documents and papers . . . .”
The Government insists that the language of the statute clearly authorized the boarding of the vessel in this case. The respondents do not seriously dispute this contention, but contend that even though authorized by statute the boarding here violated the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures contained in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We of course agree with respondents’ argument that “no Act of Congress can authorize a violation of the Constitution.” Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266, 272 (1973). But we also agree with the Government’s contention that the enactment of this statute by the same Congress that promulgated the constitutional Amendments that ultimately became the Bill of Rights gives the statute an impressive historical pedigree. United States v. Ramsey, 431 U. S. 606 (1977). As long ago as the decision in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886), this Court said:
“The seizure of stolen goods is authorized by the common law . . . and the like seizures have been authorized by our own revenue acts from the commencement of the government. The first statute passed by Congress to regulate the collection of duties, the act of July 31, 1789, 1 Stat. 29, 43, contains provisions to this effect. As this Act was passed by the same Congress which proposed for adoption the original amendments to the Constitution, it is clear that the members of that body did not regard searches and seizures of this kind as ‘unreasonable,’ and they are not embraced within the prohibition of the amendment.” Id., at 623 (emphasis supplied; footnote omitted).
In holding that the boarding of the vessel without articula-ble suspicion violated the Fourth Amendment, the Court of Appeals relied on several of its own decisions and on our decision in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873 (1975), where we said:
“Except at the border and its functional equivalents, officers on roving patrol may stop vehicles only if they are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicles contain aliens who may be illegally in the country.” Id., at 884.
We think that two later decisions also bear on the question before us.
In United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543 (1976), we upheld the authority of the Border Patrol to maintain permanent checkpoints at or near intersections of important roads leading away from the border at which a vehicle would be stopped for brief questioning of its occupants “even though there is no reason to believe the particular vehicle contains illegal aliens.” Id., at 545. Distinguishing our holding in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, we said:
“A requirement that stops on major routes inland always be based on reasonable suspicion would be impractical because the flow of traffic tends to be too heavy to allow the particularized study of a given car that would enable it to be identified as a possible carrier of illegal aliens. In particular, such a requirement would largely eliminate any deterrent to the conduct of well-disguised smuggling operations, even though smugglers are known to use these highways regularly.” 428 U. S., at 557.
Three Terms later we held in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648 (1979), that “persons in automobiles on public roadways may not for that reason alone have their travel and privacy interfered with at the unbridled discretion of police officers.” Id., at 663. We added that alternative methods, such as spot checks that involve less intrusion, or questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops, would just as readily accomplish the State’s objectives in furthering compliance with auto registration and safety laws.
Our focus in this area of Fourth Amendment law has been on the question of the “reasonableness” of the type of governmental intrusion involved. “Thus, the permissibility of a particular law enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” Delaware v. Prouse, supra, at 654. See also Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523 (1967); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968); Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433 (1973); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra. It seems clear that if the customs officers in this case had stopped an automobile on a public highway near the border, rather than a vessel in a ship channel, the stop would have run afoul of the Fourth Amendment because of the absence of articulable suspicion. See United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra. But under the overarching principle of “reasonableness” embodied in the Fourth Amendment, we think that the important factual differences between vessels located in waters offering ready access to the open sea and automobiles on principal thoroughfares in the border area are sufficient to require a different result here.
The difference in outcome between the roving patrol stop in Brignoni-Ponce, supra, and the fixed checkpoint stop in Martinez-Fuerte, supra, was due in part to what the Court deemed the less intrusive and less awesome nature of fixed checkpoint stops when compared to roving patrol stops. And the preference for roadblocks as opposed to random spot checks expressed in Delaware v. Prouse, supra, reflects a like concern. But no reasonable claim can be made that permanent checkpoints would be practical on waters such as these where vessels can move in any direction at any time and need not follow established “avenues” as automobiles must do. Customs officials do not have as a practical alternative the option of spotting all vessels which might have come from the open sea and herding them into one or more canals or straits in order to make fixed checkpoint stops. Smuggling and illegal importation of aliens by land may, and undoubtedly usually does, take place away from fixed checkpoints or ports of entry, but much of it is at least along a finite number of identifiable roads. But while eventually maritime commerce on the inland waters of the United States may funnel into rivers, canals, and the like, which are more analogous to roads and make a “roadblock” approach more feasible, such is not the case in waters providing ready access to the seaward border, beyond which is only the open sea.
Respondents have asserted that permanent checkpoints could be established at various ports. But vessels having ready access to the open sea need never come to harbor. Should the captain want to avoid the authorities at port, he could carry on his activity by anchoring at some obscure location on the shoreline, or, as may have been planned in this case, the captain could transfer his cargo from one vessel to another. In cases involving such endeavors as fishing or water exploration, the crew of the vessel can complete its mission without any assistance.
Quite apart from the aforementioned differences between waterborne vessels and automobiles traveling on highways, the documentation requirements with respect to vessels are significantly different from the system of vehicle licensing that prevails generally throughout the United States. A police officer patrolling a highway can often tell merely by observing a vehicle’s license plate and other outward markings whether the vehicle is currently in compliance with the requirements of state law. See Delaware v. Prouse, supra, at 660-661. No comparable “license plates” or “stickers” are issued by the United States or by States to vessels. Both of the required exterior markings on documented vessels — the name and hailing port — as well as the numerals displayed by undocumented American boats, are marked on the vessel at the instance of the owner. Furthermore, in cases like this one where the vessel is of foreign registry it carries only the markings required by its home port. Here those markings indicated that the vessel was of Swiss registry, while in actuality it carried French documentation papers.
The panoply of statutes and regulations governing maritime documentation are likewise more extensive and more complex than the typical state requirements for vehicle licensing; only some of the papers required need explicit mention here to illustrate the point. All American vessels of at least five tons and used for commercial purposes must have a “certificate of documentation.” In addition, vessels engaged in certain trades must obtain special licenses. While pleasure vessels of this size are not required to be documented, they are eligible for federal registration. See 46 U. S. C. § 65 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. V). Many of these vessels must also submit to periodic inspection by the Coast Guard and a “certificate of inspection” must be kept on the vessel at all times. 46 U. S. C. §§399, 400. Smaller American vessels cannot be issued federal documentation papers, but under federal law each such vessel with propulsion machinery must have a state-issued number displayed on a “certificate of number” that must be available for inspection at all times. 46 U. S. C. § 1470. Vessels not required to carry federal documentation papers also may be required to carry a state-issued safety certificate. 46 U. S. C. § 1471.
While foreign vessels are not required to carry federal documentation papers, they are required to have a “manifest,” which must be delivered to customs officials immediately upon arrival in this country. 19 U. S. C. § 1439. If a foreign vessel wants to visit more than one customs district, it must obtain a “permit to proceed” at its first port of call, with the exception that a foreign yacht need not obtain such a permit if it has been issued a “cruising license.” 46 U. S. C. § 313; 19 U. S. C. § 1435. Any vessel departing American waters for a foreign port must deliver its “manifest” to Customs and obtain clearance. 46 U. S. C. § 91.
These documentation laws serve the public interest in many obvious ways and respondents do not suggest that the public interest is less than substantially furthered by enforcement of these laws. They are the linchpin for regulation of participation in certain trades, such as fishing, salvaging, towing, and dredging, as well as areas in which trade is sanctioned, and for enforcement of various environmental laws. The documentation laws play a vital role in the collection of customs duties and tonnage duties. They allow for regulation of imports and exports assisting, for example, Government officials in the prevention of entry into this country of controlled substances, illegal aliens, prohibited medicines, adulterated foods, dangerous chemicals, prohibited agricultural products, diseased or prohibited animals, and illegal weapons and explosives. These interests are, of course, most substantial in areas such as the ship channel in this case, which connects the open sea with a Customs Port of Entry. Cf. United States v. Ramsey, 431 U. S. 606 (1977). Requests to check certificates of inspection play an obvious role in ensuring safety on American waterways. While inspection of a vessel’s documents might not always conclusively establish compliance with United States shipping laws, more often than not it will.
While the need to make document checks is great, the resultant intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests is quite limited. While it does intrude on one’s ability to make “ ‘free passage without interruption,”’ United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S., at 557-558 (quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 154 (1925)), it involves only a brief detention where officials come on board, visit public areas of the vessel, and inspect documents. Cf. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 880. “Neither the [vessel] nor its occupants are searched, and visual inspection of the [vessel] is limited to what can be seen without a search.” United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at 558. Any interference with interests protected by the Fourth Amendment is, of course, intrusive to some degree. But in this case, the interference created only a modest intrusion.
We briefly recapitulate the reasons, set forth above in greater detail, which lead us to conclude that the Government’s boarding of the Henry Morgan II did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In a lineal ancestor to the statute at issue here the First Congress clearly authorized the sus-picionless boarding of vessels, reflecting its view that such boardings are not contrary to the Fourth Amendment; this gives the statute before us an impressive historical pedigree. Random stops without any articulable suspicion of vehicles away from the border are not permissible under the Fourth Amendment, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra; Dela ware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648 (1979), but stops at fixed checkpoints or at roadblocks are. Ibid. The nature of waterborne commerce in waters providing ready access to the open sea is sufficiently different from the nature of vehicular traffic on highways as to make possible alternatives to the sort of “stop” made in this case less likely to accomplish the obviously essential governmental purposes involved. The system of prescribed outward markings used by States for vehicle registration is also significantly different from the system of external markings on vessels, and the extent and type of documentation required by federal law is a good deal more variable and more complex than are the state vehicle registration laws. The nature of the governmental interest in assuring compliance with documentation requirements, particularly in waters where the need to deter or apprehend smugglers is great, is substantial; the type of intrusion made in this case, while not minimal, is limited.
All of these factors lead us to conclude that the action of the customs officers in stopping and boarding the Henry Morgan II was “reasonable,” and was therefore consistent with the Fourth Amendment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
See also 46 U. S. C. § 277 (provides similar authority for “[a]ny officer concerned in the collection of the revenue”). Cf. 14 U. S. C. § 89(a); 19 U. S. C. § 1581(b).
Section 1581(a) provides customs officials with authority beyond boarding for document inspections. In this case, however, we are concerned only with the more narrow issue.
Respondents briefly argue that we should not reach even this question. Relying on United States v. Sarmiento-Rozo, 592 F. 2d 1318 (CA5 1979), respondents contend that this case is moot because they have been deported and, subsequent to the issuance of the mandate by the Court of Appeals reversing their convictions, the indictments against them were dismissed. Sarmiento-Rozo provides some authority for respondents’ argument; nevertheless, we reject the contention.
The Government has sought review of the Court of Appeals’ decision reversing respondents’ convictions. Ordinarily our reversal of that decision would reinstate the judgment of conviction and the sentence entered by the District Court. See United States v. Morrison, 429 U. S. 1, 3 (1976) (per curiam). The fact that the Government did not obtain a stay, thus permitting issuance of the mandate of the Court of Appeals, would not change the effect of our reversal. See Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Flowers, 330 U. S. 464, 467 (1947); Carr v. Zaja, 283 U. S. 52 (1931). Under our reasoning in Mancusi v. Stubbs, 408 U. S. 204, 205-207 (1972), the absence of an indictment does not require a contrary conclusion. Further, it is settled law that the preliminary steps in a criminal proceeding are “merged” into a sentence once the defendant is convicted and sentenced. See Parr v. United States, 351 U. S. 513, 518-519 (1956); Berman v. United States, 302 U. S. 211 (1937). Upon respondents’ conviction and sentence, the indictment that was returned against them was merged into their convictions and sentences, thus making unnecessary a separate reinstatement of the original indictment.
That respondents have been deported likewise does not remove the controversy involved. Following a reversal of the Court of Appeals, there would be a possibility that respondents could be extradited and imprisoned for their crimes, or if respondents manage to re-enter this country on their own they would be subject to arrest and imprisonment for these convictions. See United States v. Campos-Serrano, 404 U. S. 293, 294, n. 2 (1971). In addition, as a collateral consequence of the convictions, the Government could bar any attempt by respondents to voluntarily re-enter this country. 8 U. S. C. § 1182(a)(9). See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 108, n. 3 (1977) (per curiam); Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 53-57 (1968).
The dissent’s discussion of mootness places heavy reliance on this Court’s decision in Ex parte Bain, 121 U. S. 1 (1887), and a hypothetical example in a civil proceeding between Peter and David. Post, at 594-598, and n. 1. Ex parte Bain was long ago limited to its facts by Salinger v. United States, 272 U. S. 542 (1926), where the Court said:
“In the case of Ex parte Bain, 121 U. S. 1, on which the accused relies, there was an actual amendment or alteration of the indictment to avoid an adverse ruling on demurrer, and the trial was on the amended charge without a resubmission to a grand jury. The principle on which the decision proceeded is not broader than the situation to which it was applied.” Id., at 549 (emphasis added).
In the present case, there is no doubt whatever that a valid indictment was returned by the grand jury, the case was tried on that indictment, and, unlike the dissent's hypothetical civil analogy, a judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32 was entered on the jury verdict of guilty. At this juncture, for reasons explained above, the indictment vvas merged into the judgment, and a successful effort on the part of the Government to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals would have the effect of reinstating the judgment of conviction.
There is no issue in this case concerning the activities of the officers once they boarded the Henry Morgan II. The only question presented to this Court concerns the validity of the suspicionless boarding of the vessel for a document inspection.
Respondents, however, contend in the alternative that because the customs officers were accompanied by a Louisiana state policeman, and were following an informant’s tip that a vessel in the ship channel was thought to be carrying marihuana, they may not rely on the statute authorizing boarding for inspection of the vessel's documentation. This line of reasoning was rejected in a similar situation in Scott v. United States, 436 U. S. 128, 135-139 (1978), and we again reject it. Acceptance of respondents’ argument would lead to the incongruous result criticized by Judge Campbell in his opinion in United States v. Arra, 630 F. 2d 836, 846 (CA1 1980): “We would see little logic in sanctioning such examinations of ordinary, unsus-pect vessels but forbidding them in the case of suspected smugglers.”
Relying on the words “bound to the United States” in the 1790 statute and this Court’s decision in Maul v. United States, 274 U. S. 501 (1927), the dissent contends that the Act of Aug. 4, 1790, § 31,1 Stat. 164, did not grant any authority to board a vessel found in domestic waters. Post, at 600-601, n. 7. The dissent misreads the statute and the Maul decision. As noted, § 31 of the 1790 Act provides for the boarding of vessels found “in any part of the United States, or within four leagues of the coast thereof, if bound to the United States.” (Emphasis supplied.) The dissent completely ignores that part of the statute which reads “in any part of the United States.” Furthermore, the phrase “if bound to the United States” obviously qualifies only the phrase “within four leagues of the coast.” It would make no sense whatsoever to say that the statute authorizes the boarding of vessels found in “any part of the United States” only so long as such vessels are “bound to the United States.” The dissent also says that because § 48 of the Act of Aug. 4,1790, authorized some searches without regard to location, it must be read as the only provision in the Act that allows boardings in domestic waters. Post, at 600-601, n. 7. Again the dissent misreads the statutory scheme. Section 48 expressly applies only to seizures of “goods, wares or merchandise subject to duty” and thought to be concealed on “any ship or vessel” or “any particular dwelling-house, store, building or other place.” Unlike § 31, § 48 does not purport to deal with boardings for inspection of documents. In short, the two sections are concerned with different matters and nothing in one can be read to limit the other.
The dissent’s reliance on the concurring opinion of Justice Brandéis in Maul seriously misreads that concurrence. Where the dissent says that the concurrence “recognized” that it was only in 1922 that Congress purported to authorize suspicionless boardings of vessels not “bound to the United States,” the dissent’s reading of Justice Brandéis’ language is imprecise, to say the least. Observing that the 1922 amendments made two changes in the statutory law, he described one of them in these terms: “Unlike the earlier statutes, it did not limit to inbound vessels the right to board and search.” 274 U. S., at 529. Thus Congress in 1922 allowed searches to be made within four leagues of the coast of any vessel, whether inbound or not. But this change in no way altered the separate provision in the same sentence of the 1922 statute retaining the authority to “go on board of any vessel or vehicle at any place in the United States
Nor is anything in the Court’s opinion in Maul to the contrary. The Court was asked to decide whether the Coast Guard was authorized to seize an American vessel “on the high seas more than twelve miles from the coast.” Id., at 503. In tracing the history of statutory authorization for “seizures made on the high seas,” id., at 504, the Court properly noted that when acting pursuant to the Act of Aug. 4, 1790, and its pre-1922 descendants, such seizures were authorized only for inbound vessels within the 12-mile limit, id., at 505-506. The Court determined, however, that the Act of Mar. 2, 1799, § 70,1 Stat. 678, authorized the seizure of American vessels beyond the 12-mile limit where the Coast Guard was acting pursuant to “any [law] respecting the revenue.” Nothing in the Maul decision even remotely purported to apply to the boarding of vessels in domestic waters.
The dissent maintains that in lieu of the type of stop made in this case, it would be possible to enforce documentation laws by requiring vessels to display identification markings more similar to automobile “license plates” and for the Coast Guard to maintain extensive records on shore that can be referred to by radio. Even assuming that these alternatives are feasible, Congress has chosen a different method. So long as the method chosen by Congress is constitutional, then it matters not that alternative methods exist. Cf. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 447 (1973).
Respondents suggest that even if the public interest is great in stopping commercial vessels, it is not so with “pleasure boats.” The difficulties with such line-drawing are exemplified by this case. Respondents assert that they were in a “pleasure boat,” yet they proved to be involved in a highly lucrative commercial trade.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) entitles litigants in federal court to a stay of any action that is “referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing.” 9 U. S. C. § 3. Section 16(a)(1)(A), in turn, allows an appeal from “an order... refusing a stay of any action under section 3.” We address in this case whether appellate courts have jurisdiction under § 16(a) to review denials of stays requested by litigants who were not parties to the relevant arbitration agreement, and whether §3 can ever mandate a stay in such circumstances.
I
Respondents Wayne Carlisle, James Bushman, and Gary Strassel set out to minimize their taxes from the 1999 sale of their construction-equipment company. Arthur Andersen LLP, a firm that had long served as their company’s accountant, auditor, and tax adviser, introduced them to Bricolage Capital, LLC, which in turn referred them for legal advice to Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP. According to respondents, these advisers recommended a “leveraged option strategy” tax shelter designed to create illusory losses through foreign-currency-exchange options. As a part of the scheme, respondents invested in various stock warrants through newly created limited liability companies (LLCs), which are also respondents in this case. The respondent LLCs entered into investment-management agreements with Bricolage, specifying that “[a]ny controversy arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the br[ea]ch thereof, shall be settled by arbitration conducted in New York, New York in accordance with the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association.” App. 80-81, 99-100, 118-119.
As with all that seems too good to be true, a controversy did indeed arise. The warrants respondents purchased turned out to be almost entirely worthless, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) determined in August 2000 that the “leveraged option strategy” scheme was an illegal tax shelter. The IRS initially offered conditional amnesty to taxpayers who had used such arrangements, but petitioners failed to inform respondents of that option. Respondents ultimately entered into a settlement program in which they paid the IRS all taxes, penalties, and interest owed.
Respondents filed this diversity suit in the Eastern District of Kentucky against Bricolage, Arthur Andersen, and others (all except Bricolage and its employees hereinafter referred to as petitioners), alleging fraud, civil conspiracy, malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. Petitioners moved to stay the action, invoking §3 of the FA A and arguing that the principles of equitable estoppel demanded that respondents arbitrate their claims under their investment agreements with Bricolage. The District Court denied the motions.
Petitioners filed an interlocutory appeal, which the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Carlisle v. Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP, 521 F. 3d 597, 602 (2008). We granted certiorari, 555 U. S. 1010 (2008).
II
Ordinarily, courts of appeals have jurisdiction only over “final decisions” of district courts. 28 U. S. C. § 1291. The FAA, however, makes an exception to that finality requirement, providing that “[a]n appeal may be taken from ... an order... refusing a stay of any action under section 3 of this title.” 9 U. S. C. § 16(a)(1)(A). By that provision’s clear and unambiguous terms, any litigant who asks for a stay under §3 is entitled to an immediate appeal from denial of that motion — regardless of whether the litigant is in fact eligible for a stay. Because each petitioner in this case explicitly asked for a stay pursuant to § 3, App. 52,54,63,65, the Sixth Circuit had jurisdiction to review the District Court’s denial.
The courts that have declined jurisdiction over § 3 appeals of the sort at issue here have done so by conflating the jurisdictional question with the merits of the appeal. They reason that because stay motions premised on equitable estoppel seek to expand (rather than simply vindicate) agreements, they are not cognizable under §§3 and 4, and therefore the relevant motions are not actually “under” those provisions. See, in addition to the opinion below, 521 F. 3d, at 602, DSMC Inc. v. Convera Corp., 349 F. 3d 679, 682-685 (CADC 2003); In re Universal Serv. Fund Tel. Billing Practice Litigation v. Sprint Communications Co., 428 F. 3d 940, 944-945 (CA10 2005). The dissent makes this step explicit, by reading the appellate jurisdictional provision of § 16 as “calling for a look-through” to the substantive provisions of §3. Post, at 634. Jurisdiction over the appeal, however, “must be determined by focusing upon the category of order appealed from, rather than upon the strength of the grounds for reversing the order.” Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U. S. 299, 311 (1996). The jurisdictional statute here unambiguously makes the underlying merits irrelevant, for even utter frivolousness of the underlying request for a § 3 stay cannot turn a denial into something other than “[a]n order ... refusing a stay of any action under section 3.” 9 U. S. C. § 16(a).
Respondents argue that this reading of § 16(a) will produce a long parade of horribles, enmeshing courts in fact-intensive jurisdictional inquiries and permitting frivolous interlocutory appeals. Even if these objections could surmount the plain language of the statute, we would not be persuaded. Determination of whether § 3 was invoked in a denied stay request is immeasurably more simple and less factbound than the threshold determination respondents would replace it with: whether the litigant was a party to the contract (an especially difficult question when the written agreement is not signed). It is more appropriate to grapple with that merits question after the court has accepted jurisdiction over the case. Second, there are ways of minimising the impact of abusive appeals. Appellate courts can streamline the disposition of meritless claims and even authorize the district court’s retention of jurisdiction when an appeal is certified as frivolous. See Behrens, supra, at 310-311. And, of course, those inclined to file dilatory appeals must be given pause by courts’ authority to “award just damages and single or double costs to the appellee” whenever an appeal is “frivolous.” Fed. Rule App. Proc. 38.
Ill
Even if the Court of Appeals were correct that it had no jurisdiction over meritless appeals, its ground for finding this appeal meritless was in error. We take the trouble to address that alternative ground, since if the Court of Appeals is correct on the merits point we will have awarded petitioners a remarkably hollow victory. We consider, therefore, the Sixth Circuit’s underlying determination that those who are not parties to a written arbitration agreement are categorically ineligible for relief.
Section 2 — the FAA’s substantive mandate — makes written arbitration agreements “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of a contract.” That provision creates substantive federal law regarding the enforceability of arbitration agreements, requiring courts “to place such agreements upon the same footing as other contracts.” Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 478 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 3, in turn, allows litigants already in federal court to invoke agreements made enforceable by § 2. That provision requires the court, “on application of one of the parties,” to stay the action if it involves an “issue referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing.” 9 U.S. C. §3.
Neither provision purports to alter background principles of state contract law regarding the scope of agreements (including the question of who is bound by them). Indeed § 2 explicitly retains an external body of law governing revocation (such grounds “as exist at law or in equity”). And we think §3 adds no substantive restriction to §2’s enforceability mandate. “[S]tate law,” therefore, is applicable to determine which contracts are binding under §2 and enforceable under § 3 “if that law arose to govern issues concerning the validity, revocability, and enforceability of contracts generally.” Perry v. Thomas, 482 U. S. 483, 493, n. 9 (1987). See also First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U. S. 938, 944 (1995). Because “traditional principles” of state law allow a contract to be enforced by or against nonparties to the contract through “assumption, piercing the corporate veil, alter ego, incorporation by reference, third-party beneficiary theories, waiver and estoppel,” 21 R. Lord, Williston on Contracts § 57:19, p. 183 (4th ed. 2001), the Sixth Circuit’s holding that nonparties to a contract are categorically barred from § 3 relief was error.
Respondents argue that, as a matter of federal law, claims to arbitration by nonparties are not “referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing,” 9 U. S. C. § 3 (emphasis added), because they “seek to bind a signatory to an arbitral obligation beyond that signatory’s strictly contractual obligation to arbitrate,” Brief for Respondents 26. Perhaps that would be true if §3 mandated stays only for disputes between parties to a written arbitration agreement. But that is not what the statute says. It says that stays are required if the claims are “referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing.” If a written arbitration provision is made enforceable against (or for the benefit of) a third party under state contract law, the statute’s terms are fulfilled.
Respondents’ final fallback consists of reliance upon dicta in our opinions, such as the statement that “arbitration . . . is a way to resolve those disputes — but only those disputes— that the parties have agreed to submit to arbitration,” First Options, supra, at 943, and the statement that “[i]t goes without saying that a contract cannot bind a nonparty,” EEOC v. Waffle House, Inc., 534 U. S. 279, 294 (2002). The former statement pertained to issues parties agreed to arbitrate, and the latter referred to an entity (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) which obviously had no third-party obligations under the contract in question. Neither these nor any of our other cases have presented for decision the question whether arbitration agreements that are otherwise enforceable by (or against) third parties trigger protection under the FAA.
Respondents may be correct in saying that courts’ application of equitable estoppel to impose an arbitration agreement upon strangers to the contract has been “somewhat loose.” Brief for Respondents 27, n. 15. But we need not decide here whether the relevant state contract law recognizes equitable estoppel as a ground for enforcing contracts against third parties, what standard it would apply, and whether petitioners would be entitled to relief under it. These questions have not been briefed before us and can be addressed on remand. It suffices to say that no federal law bars the State from allowing petitioners to enforce the arbitration agreement against respondents and that § 3 would require a stay in this case if it did.
* * *
We hold that the Sixth Circuit had jurisdiction to review the denial of petitioners’ requests for a §3 stay and that a litigant who was not a party to the relevant arbitration agreement may invoke § 3 if the relevant state contract law allows him to enforce the agreement. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Souter, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
Section 16 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) authorizes an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a motion under § 3 to stay a district-court action pending arbitration. The question is whether it opens the door to such an appeal at the behest of one who has not signed a written arbitration agreement. Based on the longstanding congressional policy limiting interlocutory appeals, I think the better reading of the statutory provisions disallows such an appeal, and I therefore respectfully dissent.
Section 16(a) of the FAA provides that “[a]n appeal may be taken from ... an order... refusing a stay of any action under section 3 of this title.” 9 U. S. C. § 16(a). The Court says that any litigant who asks for and is denied a § 3 stay is entitled to an immediate appeal. Ante, at 627. The majority’s assumption is that “under section 3” is merely a labeling requirement, without substantive import, but this fails to read § 16 in light of the “firm congressional policy against interlocutory or ‘piecemeal’ appeals.” Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651, 656 (1977).
The right of appeal is “a creature of statute,” ibid., and Congress has granted the federal courts of appeals jurisdiction to review “final decisions,” 28 U. S. C. § 1291. “This insistence on finality and prohibition of piecemeal review discourage undue litigiousness and leaden-footed administration of justice.” DiBella v. United States, 369 U. S. 121, 124 (1962). Congress has, however, “recognized the need of exceptions for interlocutory orders in certain types of proceedings where the damage of error unreviewed before the judgment is definitive and complete ... has been deemed greater than the disruption caused by intermediate appeal.” Ibid. Section 16 functions as one such exception, but departures from “the dominant rule in federal appellate practice,” 9 J. Moore, J. Lucas, & B. Ward, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 110.06 (2d ed. 1996), are extraordinary interruptions to the normal process of litigation and ought to be limited carefully.
An obvious way to limit the seope of such an extraordinary interruption would be to read the § 16 requirement that the stay have been denied “under section 3” as calling for a look-through to the provisions of §3, and to read §3 itself as offering a stay only to signatories of an arbitration agreement. It is perfectly true that in general a third-party beneficiary can enforce a contract, but this is a weak premise for inferring an intent to allow third parties to obtain a § 3 stay and take a § 16 appeal. While it is hornbook contract law that third parties may enforce contracts for their benefit as a matter of course, interlocutory appeals are a matter of limited grace. Because it would therefore seem strange to assume that Congress meant to grant the right to appeal a § 3 stay denial to anyone as peripheral to the core agreement as a nonsignatory, it follows that Congress probably intended to limit those able to seek a § 3 stay.
Asking whether a §3 movant is a signatory provides a bright-line rule with predictable results to aid courts in determining jurisdiction over § 16 interlocutory appeals. And that rule has the further virtue of mitigating the risk of intentional delay by savvy parties who seek to frustrate litigation by gaming the system. Why not move for a §3 stay? If granted, arbitration will be mandated, and if denied, a lengthy appeal may wear down the opponent. The majority contends, ante, at 629, that “there are ways of minimizing the impact of abusive appeals.” Yes, but the sanctions suggested apply to the frivolous, not to the farfetched; and as the majority’s opinion concludes, such an attenuated claim of equitable estoppel as petitioners raise here falls well short of the sanctionable.
Because petitioners were not parties to the written arbitration agreement, I would hold they could not move to stay the District Court proceedings under §3, with the consequence that the Court of Appeals would have no jurisdiction under §16 to entertain their appeal. I would accordingly affirm the judgment of the Sixth Circuit.
Also named in the suit were two employees of Bricolage (Andrew Beer and Samyak Veera); Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP; William Bricker (the lawyer respondents worked with at the law firm); Prism Connectivity Ventures, LLC (the entity from whom the worthless warrants were purchased); Integrated Capital Associates, Ine. (a prior owner of the worthless warrants who had also been a client of the law firm); and Intercontinental Pacific Group, Inc. (a firm with the same principals as Integrated Capital Associates).
Bricolage also moved for a stay under §3, but it filed for bankruptcy while its motion was pending, and the District Court denied the motion as moot.
Federal courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction when an asserted federal claim is “‘so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of merit as not to involve a federal controversy.’ ” Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998) (quoting Oneida Indian Nation of N. Y. v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S. 661, 666 (1974)). Respondents have not relied upon this line of cases as an alternative rationale for rejection of jurisdiction, and there are good reasons for treating subject-matter jurisdiction differently, in that respect, from the appellate jurisdiction here conferred. A frivolous federal claim, if sufficient to confer jurisdiction, would give the court power to hear related state-law claims, see 28 U. S. C. §1367; no such collateral consequences are at issue here. And while an insubstantial federal claim can be said not to “axis[e] under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States,” § 1331, insubstantiality of the merits can hardly convert a judge’s “order ... refusing a stay” into an “order ... refusing” something else. But we need not resolve this question today.
Respondents do not contest that the term “parties” in §3 refers to parties to the litigation rather than parties to the contract. The adjacent provision, which explicitly refers to the “subject matter of a suit arising out of the controversy between the parties,” 9 U. S. C. §4, unambiguously refers to adversaries in the action, and “identical words and phrases within the same statute should normally be given the same meaning,” Powerex Corp. v. Reliant Energy Services, Inc., 551 U. S. 224, 232 (2007). Even without benefit of that canon, we would not be disposed to believe that the statute allows a party to the contract who is not a party to the litigation to apply for a stay of the proceeding.
We have said many times that federal law requires that “questions of arbitrability ... be addressed with a healthy regard for the federal policy favoring arbitration.” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1983). Whatever the meaning of this vague prescription, it cannot possibly require the disregard of state law permitting arbitration by or against nonparties to the written arbitration agreement.
We thus reject the dissent’s contention that contract law’s longstanding endorsement of third-party enforcement is “a weak premise for inferring an intent to allow third parties to obtain a § 3 stay,” post, at 634. It seems to us not weak at all, in light of the terms of the statute. There is no doubt that, where state law permits it, a third-party claim is “referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing.” It is not our role to conform an unambiguous statute to what we think “Congress probably intended,” ibid.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
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Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a question of statutory interpretation. Petitioners contend that the Court of Appeals and the District Court misconstrued the requirements imposed by Congress upon States which receive federal funds under the Education of the Handicapped Act. We agree and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
The Education of the Handicapped Act (Act), 84 Stat. 175, as amended, 20 U. S. C. § 1401 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. IV), provides federal money to assist state and local agencies in educating handicapped children, and conditions such funding upon a State’s compliance with extensive goals and procedures. The Act represents an ambitious federal effort to promote the education of handicapped children, and was passed in response to Congress’ perception that a majority of handicapped children in the United States “were either totally excluded from schools or [were] sitting idly in regular classrooms awaiting the time when they were old enough to ‘drop out.’” H. R. Rep. No. 94-332, p. 2 (1975) (H. R. Rep.). The Act’s.evolution and major provisions shed light on the question of statutory interpretation which is at the heart of this case.
Congress first addressed the problem of educating the handicapped in 1966 when it amended the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to establish a grant program “for the purpose of assisting the States in the initiation, expansion, and improvement of programs and projects... for the education of handicapped children.” Pub. L. 89-750, § 161, 80 Stat. 1204. That program was repealed in 1970 by the Education of the Handicapped Act, Pub. L. 91-230, 84 Stat. 175, Part B of which established a grant program similar in purpose to the repealed legislation. Neither the 1966 nor the 1970 legislation contained specific guidelines for state use of the grant money; both were aimed primarily at stimulating the States to develop educational resources and to train personnel for educating the handicapped.
Dissatisfied with the progress being made under these earlier enactments, and spurred by two District Court decisions holding that handicapped children should be given access to a public education, Congress in 1974 greatly increased federal funding for education of the handicapped and for the first time required recipient States to adopt “a goal of providing full educational opportunities to all handicapped children.” Pub. L. 93-380, 88 Stat. 579, 583 (1974 statute). The 1974 statute was recognized as an interim measure only, adopted “in order to give the Congress an additional year in which to study what if any additional Federal assistance [was] required to enable the States to meet the needs of handicapped children.” H. R. Rep., at 4. The ensuing year of study produced the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975.
In order to qualify for federal financial assistance under the Act, a State must demonstrate that it “has in effect a policy that assures all handicapped children the right to a free appropriate public education.” 20 U. S. C. §1412(1). That policy must be reflected in a state plan submitted to and approved by the Secretary of Education, § 1413, which describes in detail the goals, programs, and timetables under which the State intends to educate handicapped children within its borders. §§ 1412, 1413. States receiving money under the Act must provide education to the handicapped by priority, first “to handicapped children who are not receiving an education” and second “to handicapped children... with the most severe handicaps who are receiving an inadequate education,” § 1412(3), and “to the maximum extent appropriate” must educate handicapped children “with children who are not handicapped.” § 1412(5). The Act broadly defines “handicapped children” to include “mentally retarded, hard of hearing, deaf, speech impaired, visually handicapped, seriously emotionally disturbed, orthopedically impaired, [and] other health impaired children, [and] children with specific learning disabilities.” § 1401(1).
The “free appropriate public education” required by the Act is tailored to the unique needs of the handicapped child by means of an “individualized educational program” (IEP). § 1401(18). The IEP, which is prepared at a meeting between a qualified representative of the local educational agency, the child’s teacher, the child’s parents or guardian, and, where appropriate, the child, consists of a written document containing
“(A) a statement of the present levels of educational performance of such child, (B) a statement of annual goals, including short-term instructional objectives, (C) a statement of the specific educational services to be provided to such child, and the extent to which such child will be able to participate in regular educational programs, (D) the projected date for initiation and anticipated duration of such services, and (E) appropriate objective criteria and evaluation procedures and schedules for determining, on at least an annual basis, whether instructional objectives are being achieved.” § 1401(19).
Local or regional educational agencies must review, and where appropriate revise, each child’s IEP at least annually. § 1414(a)(5). See also § 1413(a)(ll).
In addition to the state plan and the IEP already described, the Act imposes extensive procedural requirements upon States receiving federal funds under its provisions. Parents or guardians of handicapped children must be notified of any proposed change in “the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child or the provision of a free appropriate public education to such child,” and must be permitted to bring a complaint about “any matter relating to” such evaluation and education. §§ 1415(b)(1)(D) and (E). Complaints brought by parents or guardians must be resolved at “an impartial due process hearing,” and appeal to the state educational agency must be provided if the initial hearing is held at the local or regional level. §§ 1415(b)(2) and (c). Thereafter, “[a]ny party aggrieved by the findings and decision” of the state administrative hearing has “the right to bring a civil action with respect to the complaint... in any State court of competent jurisdiction or in a district court of the United States without regard to the amount in controversy.” § 1415(e)(2).
Thus, although the Act leaves to the States the primary responsibility for developing and executing educational programs for handicapped children, it imposes significant requirements to be followed in the discharge of that responsibility. Compliance is assured by provisions permitting the withholding of federal funds upon determination that a participating state or local agency has failed to satisfy the requirements of the Act, §§ 1414(b)(2)(A), 1416, and by the provision for judicial review. At present, all States except New Mexico receive federal funds under the portions of the Act at issue today. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 2,
II
This case arose in connection with the education of Amy Rowley, a deaf student at the Furnace Woods School in the Hendrick Hudson Central School District, Peekskill, N. Y. Amy has minimal residual hearing and is an excellent lipreader. During the year before she began attending Furnace Woods, a meeting between her parents and school administrators resulted in a decision to place her in a regular kindergarten class in order to determine what supplemental services would be necessary to her education. Several members of the school administration prepared for Amy's arrival by attending a course in sign-language interpretation, and a teletype machine was installed in the principal's office to facilitate communication with her parents who are also deaf. At the end of the trial period it was determined that Amy should remain in the kindergarten class, but that she should be provided with an FM hearing aid which would amplify words spoken into a -wireless receiver by the teacher or fellow students during certain classroom activities. Amy successfully completed her kindergarten year.
As required by the Act, an IEP was prepared for Amy during the fall of her first-grade year. The IEP provided that Amy should be educated in a regular classroom at Furnace Woods, should continue to use the FM hearing aid, and should receive instruction from a tutor for the deaf for one hour each day and from a speech therapist for three hours each week. The Rowleys agreed with parts of the IEP but insisted that Amy also be provided a qualified sign-language interpreter in all her academic classes in lieu of the assistance proposed in other parts of the IEP. Such an interpreter had been placed in Amy’s kindergarten class for a 2-week experimental period, but the interpreter had reported that Amy did not need his services at that time. The school administrators likewise concluded that Amy did not need such an interpreter in her first-grade classroom. They reached this conclusion after consulting the school district’s Committee on the Handicapped, which had received expert evidence from Amy’s parents on the importance of a sign-language interpreter, received testimony from Amy’s teacher and other persons familiar with her academic and social progress, and visited a class for the deaf.
When their request for an interpreter was denied, the Rowleys demanded and received a hearing before an independent examiner. After receiving evidence from both sides, the examiner agreed with the administrators’ determination that an interpreter was not necessary because “Amy was achieving educationally, academically, and socially” without such assistance. App. to Pet. for Cert. F-22. The examiner’s decision was affirmed on appeal by the New York Commissioner of Education on the basis of substantial evidence in the record. Id., at E-4. Pursuant to the Act’s provision for judicial review, the Rowleys then brought an action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the administrators’ denial of the sign-language interpreter constituted a denial of the “free appropriate public education” guaranteed by the Act.
The District Court found that Amy “is a remarkably well-adjusted child” who interacts and communicates well with her classmates and has “developed an extraordinary rapport” with her teachers. 483 F. Supp. 528, 531 (1980). It also found that “she performs better than the average child in her class and is advancing easily from grade to grade,” id., at 534, but “that she understands considerably less of what goes on in class than she could if she were not deaf” and thus “is not learning as much, or performing as well academically, as she would without her handicap,” id., at 532. This disparity between Amy’s achievement and her potential led the court to decide that she was not receiving a “free appropriate pub-lie education,” which the court defined as “an opportunity to achieve [her] full potential commensurate with the opportunity provided to other children.” Id., at 534. According to the District Court, such a standard “requires that the potential of the handicapped child be measured and compared to his or her performance, and that the resulting differential or ‘shortfall’ be compared to the shortfall experienced by non-handicapped children.” Ibid. The District Court’s definition arose from its assumption that the responsibility for “giv[ing] content to the requirement of an ‘appropriate education’ ” had “been left entirely to the [federal] courts and the hearing officers.” Id., at 533.
A divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed. The Court of Appeals “agree[d] with the [District [C]ourt’s conclusions of law,” and held that its “findings of fact [were] not clearly erroneous.” 632 F. 2d 945, 947 (1980).
We granted certiorari to review the lower courts’ interpretation of the Act. 454 U. S. 961 (1981). Such review requires us to consider two questions: What is meant by the Act’s requirement of a “free appropriate public education”? And what is the role of state and federal courts in exercising the review granted by 20 U. S. C. §1415? We consider these questions separately.
III
A
This is the first case in which this Court has been called upon to interpret any provision of the Act. As noted previously, the District Court and the Court of Appeals concluded that “[t]he Act itself does not define ‘appropriate education,’” 483 F. Supp., at 533, but leaves “to the courts and the hearing officers” the responsibility of “giv[ing] content to the requirement of an‘appropriate education.’” Ibid. See also 632 F. 2d, at 947. Petitioners contend that the definition of the phrase “free appropriate public education” used by the courts below overlooks the definition of that phrase actually found in the Act. Respondents agree that the Act defines “free appropriate public education,” but contend that the statutory definition is not “functional” and thus “offers judges no guidance in their consideration of controversies involving ‘the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child or the provision of a free appropriate public education.’” Brief for Respondents 28. The United States, appearing as amicus curiae on behalf of respondents, states that “[ajlthough the Act includes definitions of a ‘free appropriate public education’ and other related terms, the statutory definitions do not adequately explain what is meant by ‘appropriate.’ ” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13.
We are loath to conclude that Congress failed to offer any assistance in defining the meaning of the principal substantive phrase used in the Act. It is beyond dispute that, contrary to the conclusions of the courts below, the Act does expressly define “free appropriate public education”:
“The term ‘free appropriate public education’ means special education and related services which (A) have been provided at public expense, under public supervision and direction, and without charge, (B) meet the standards of the State educational agency, (C) include an appropriate preschool, elementary, or secondary school education in the State involved, and (D) are provided in conformity with the individualized education program required under section 1414(a)(5) of this title.” § 1401(18) (emphasis added).
“Special education,” as referred to in this definition, means “specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents or guardians, to meet the unique needs of a handicapped child, including classroom instruction, instruction in physical education, home instruction, and instruction in hospitals and institutions.” §1401(16). “Related services” are defined as “transportation, and such developmental, corrective, and other supportive services... as may be required to assist a handicapped child to benefit from special education.” §1401(17).
Like many statutory definitions, this one tends toward the cryptic rather than the comprehensive, but that is scarcely a reason for abandoning the quest for legislative intent. Whether or not the definition is a “functional” one, as respondents contend it is not, it is the principal tool which Congress has given us for parsing the critical phrase of the Act. We think more must be made of it than either respondents or the United States seems willing to admit.
According to the definitions contained in the Act, a “free appropriate public education” consists of educational instruction specially designed to meet the unique needs of the handicapped child, supported by such services as are necessary to permit the child “to benefit” from the instruction. Almost as a checklist for adequacy under the Act, the definition also requires that such instruction and services be provided at public expense and under public supervision, meet the State’s educational standards, approximate the grade levels used in the State’s regular education, and comport with the child’s IEP. Thus, if personalized instruction is being provided with sufficient supportive services to permit the child to benefit from the instruction, and the other items on the definitional checklist are satisfied, the child is receiving a “free appropriate public education” as defined by the Act.
Other portions of the statute also shed light upon congressional intent. Congress found that of the roughly eight million handicapped children in the United States at the time of enactment, one million were “excluded entirely from the public school system” and more than half were receiving an inappropriate education. 89 Stat. 774, note following § 1401. In addition, as mentioned in Part I, the Act requires States to extend educational services first to those children who are receiving no education and second to those children who are receiving an “inadequate education.” §1412(3). When these express statutory findings and priorities are read together with the Act’s extensive procedural requirements and its definition of “free appropriate public education,” the face of the statute evinces a congressional intent to bring previously excluded handicapped children into the public education systems of the States and to require the States to adopt procedures which would result in individualized consideration of and instruction for each child.
Noticeably absent from the language of the statute is any substantive standard prescribing the level of education to be accorded handicapped children. Certainly the language of the statute contains no requirement like the one imposed by the lower courts — that States maximize the potential of handicapped children “commensurate with the opportunity provided to other children.” 483 F. Supp., at 534. That standard was expounded by the District Court without reference to the statutory definitions or even to the legislative history of the Act. Although we find the statutory definition of “free appropriate public education” to be helpful in our interpretation of the Act, there remains the question of whether the legislative history indicates a congressional intent that such education meet some additional substantive standard. For an answer, we turn to that history.
B
(i)
As suggested in Part I, federal support for education of the handicapped is a fairly recent development. Before passage of the Act some States had passed laws to improve the educational services afforded handicapped children, but many of these children were excluded completely from any form of public education or were left to fend for themselves in classrooms designed for education of their nonhandicapped peers. As previously noted, the House Report begins by emphasizing this exclusion and misplacement, noting that millions of handicapped children “were either totally excluded from schools or [were] sitting idly in regular classrooms awaiting the time when they were old enough to ‘drop out.’” H. R. Rep., at 2. See also S. Rep., at 8. One of the Act’s two principal sponsors in the Senate urged its passage in similar terms:
“While much progress has been made in the last few years, we can take no solace in that progress until all handicapped children are, in fact, receiving an education. The most recent statistics provided by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped estimate that... 1.75 million handicapped children do not receive any educational services, and 2.5 million handicapped children are not receiving an appropriate education.” 121 Cong. Rec. 19486 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Williams).
This concern, stressed repeatedly throughout the legislative history, confirms the impression conveyed by the language of the statute: By passing the Act, Congress sought primarily to make public education available to handicapped children. But in seeking to provide such access to public education, Congress did not impose upon the States any greater substantive educational standard than would be necessary to make such access meaningful. Indeed, Congress expressly “recognize[d] that in many instances the process of providing special education and related services to handicapped children is not guaranteed to produce any particular outcome.” S. Rep., at 11. Thus, the intent of the Act was more to open the door of public education to handicapped children on appropriate terms than to guarantee any particular level of education once inside.
Both the House and the Senate Reports attribute the impetus for the Act and its predecessors to two federal-court judgments rendered in 1971 and 1972. As the Senate Report states, passage of the Act “followed a series of landmark court cases establishing in law the right to education for all handicapped children.” S. Rep., at 6. The first case, Pennsylvania Assn. for Retarded Children v. Commonwealth, 334 F. Supp. 1257 (ED Pa. 1971) and 343 F. Supp. 279 (1972) (PARC), was a suit on behalf of retarded children challenging the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute which acted to exclude them from public education and training. The case ended in a consent decree which enjoined the State from “denying] to any mentally retarded child access to a free public program of education and training.” 334 F. Supp., at 1258 (emphasis added).
PARC was followed by Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, 348 F. Supp. 866 (DC 1972), a case in which the plaintiff handicapped children had been excluded from the District of Columbia public schools. The court’s judgment, quoted in S. Rep., at 6, provided that
“no [handicapped] child eligible for a publicly supported education in the District of Columbia public schools shall be excluded from a regular school assignment by a Rule, policy, or practice of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia or its agents unless such child is provided (a) adequate alternative educational services suited to the child’s needs, which may include special education or tuition grants, and (b) a constitutionally adequate prior hearing and periodic review of the child’s status, progress, and the adequacy of any educational alternative.” 348 F. Supp., at 878 (emphasis added).
Mills and PARC both held that handicapped children must be given access to an adequate, publicly supported education. Neither case purports to require any particular substantive level of education. Rather, like the language of the Act, the cases set forth extensive procedures to be followed in formulating personalized educational programs for handicapped children. See 848 F. Supp., at 878-883; 334 F. Supp., at 1258-1267. The fact that both PARC and Mills are discussed at length in the legislative Reports suggests that the principles which they established are the principles which, to a significant extent, guided the drafters of the Act. Indeed, immediately after discussing these cases the Senate Report describes the 1974 statute as having “incorporated the major principles of the right to education cases.” S. Rep., at 8. Those principles in turn became the basis of the Act, which itself was designed to effectuate the purposes of the 1974 statute. H. R. Rep., at 5.
That the Act imposes no clear obligation upon recipient States beyond the requirement that handicapped children receive some form of specialized education is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that Congress, in explaining the need for the Act, equated an “appropriate education” to the receipt of some specialized educational services. The Senate Report states: “[T]he most recent statistics provided by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped estimate that of the more than 8 million children... with handicapping conditions requiring special education and related services, only 3.9 million such children are receiving an appropriate education.” S. Rep., at 8. This statement, which reveals Congress’ view that 3.9 million handicapped children were “receiving an appropriate education” in 1975, is followed immediately in the Senate Report by a table showing that 3.9 million handicapped children were “served” in 1975 and a slightly larger number were “unserved.” A similar statement and table appear in the House Report. H. R. Rep., at 11-12.
It is evident from the legislative history that the characterization of handicapped children as “served” referred to children who were receiving some form of specialized educational services from the States, and that the characterization of children as “unserved” referred to those who were receiving no specialized educational services. For example, a letter sent to the United States Commissioner of Education by the House Committee on Education and Labor, signed by two key sponsors of the Act in the House, asked the Commissioner to identify the number of handicapped “children served” in each State. The letter asked for statistics on the number of children “being served” in various types of “special education program[s]” and the number of children who were not “receiving educational services.” Hearings on S. 6 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 205-207 (1975). Similarly, Senator Randolph, one of the Act’s principal sponsors in the Senate, noted that roughly one-half of the handicapped children in the United States “are receiving special educational services.” Id., at 1. By characterizing the 3.9 million handicapped children who were “served” as children who were “receiving an appropriate education,” the Senate and House Reports unmistakably disclose Congress’ perception of the type of education required by the Act: an “appropriate education” is provided when personalized educational services are provided.
(Ü)
Respondents contend that “the goal of the Act is to provide each handicapped child with an equal educational opportunity.” Brief for Respondents 35. We think, however, that the requirement that a State provide specialized educational services to handicapped children generates no additional requirement that the services so provided be sufficient to maximize each child’s potential “commensurate with the opportunity provided other children.” Respondents and the United States correctly note that Congress sought “to provide assistance to the States in carrying out their responsibilities under... the Constitution of the United States to provide equal protection of the laws.” S. Rep., at 13. But we do not think that such statements imply a congressional intent to achieve strict equality of opportunity or services.
The educational opportunities provided by our public school systems undoubtedly differ from student to student, depending upon a myriad of factors that might affect a particular student’s ability to assimilate information presented in the classroom. The requirement that States provide “equal” educational opportunities would thus seem to present an entirely unworkable standard requiring impossible measurements and comparisons. Similarly, furnishing handicapped children with only such services as are available to nonhandicapped children would in all probability fall short of the statutory requirement of “free appropriate public education”; to require, on the other hand, the furnishing of every special service necessary to maximize each handicapped child’s potential is, we think, further than Congress intended to go. Thus to speak in terms of “equal” services in one instance gives less than what is required by the Act and in another instance more. The theme of the Act is “free appropriate public education,” a phrase which is too complex to be captured by the word “equal” whether one is speaking of opportunities or services.
The legislative conception of the requirements of equal protection was undoubtedly informed by the two District Court decisions referred to above. But cases such as Mills and PARC held simply that handicapped children may not be excluded entirely from public education. In Mills, the District Court said:
“If sufficient funds are not available to finance all of the services and programs that are needed and desirable in the system then the available funds must be expended equitably in such a manner that no child is entirely excluded from a publicly supported education consistent with his needs and ability to benefit therefrom.” 348 F. Supp., at 876.
The PARC court used similar language, saying “[i]t is the commonwealth’s obligation to place each mentally retarded child in a free, public program of education and training appropriate to the child’s capacity....” 334 F. Supp., at 1260. The right of access to free public education enunciated by these cases is significantly different from any notion of absolute equality of opportunity regardless of capacity. To the extent that Congress might have looked further than these cases which are mentioned in the legislative history, at the time of enactment of the Act this Court had held at least twice that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not require States to expend equal financial resources on the education of each child. San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1 (1973); McInnis v. Shapiro, 293 F. Supp. 327 (ND Ill. 1968), aff’d sub nom. McInnis v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 322 (1969).
In explaining the need for federal legislation, the House Report noted that “no congressional legislation has required a precise guarantee for handicapped children, i. e. a basic floor of opportunity that would bring into compliance all school districts with the constitutional right of equal protection with respect to handicapped children.” H. R. Rep., at 14. Assuming that the Act was designed to fill the need identified in the House Report — that is, to provide a “basic floor of opportunity” consistent with equal protection — neither the Act nor its history persuasively demonstrates that Congress thought that equal protection required anything more than equal access. Therefore, Congress’ desire to provide specialized educational services, even in furtherance of “equality,” cannot be read as imposing any particular substantive educational standard upon the States.
The District Court and the Court of Appeals thus erred when they held that the Act requires New York to maximize the potential of each handicapped child commensurate with the opportunity provided nonhandicapped children. Desirable though that goal might be, it is not the standard that Congress imposed upon States which receive funding under the Act. Rather, Congress sought primarily to identify and evaluate handicapped children, and to provide them with access to a free public education.
(iii)
Implicit in the congressional purpose of providing access to a “free appropriate public education” is the requirement that the education to which access is provided be sufficient to confer some educational benefit upon the handicapped child. It would do little good for Congress to spend millions of dollars in providing access to a public education only to have the handicapped child receive no benefit from that education. The statutory definition of “free appropriate public education,” in addition to requiring that States provide each child with “specially designed instruction,” expressly requires the provision of “such... supportive services... as may be required to assist a handicapped child to benefit from special education.” § 1401(17) (emphasis added). We therefore conclude that the “basic floor of opportunity” provided by the Act consists of access to specialized instruction and related services which are individually designed to provide educational benefit to the handicapped child.
The determination of when handicapped children are receiving sufficient educational benefits to satisfy the requirements of the Act presents a more difficult problem. The Act requires participating States to educate a wide spectrum of handicapped children, from the marginally hearing-impaired to the profoundly retarded and palsied. It is clear that the benefits obtainable by children at one end of the spectrum will*differ dramatically from those obtainable by children at the other end, with infinite variations in between. One child may have little difficulty competing successfully in an academic setting with nonhandicapped children while another child may encounter great difficulty in acquiring even the most basic of self-maintenance skills. We do not attempt today to establish any one test for determining the adequacy of educational benefits conferred upon all children covered by the Act. Because in this case we are presented with a handicapped child who is receiving substantial specialized instruction and related services, and who is performing above average in the regular classrooms of a public school system, we confine our analysis to that situation.
The Act requires participating States to educate handicapped children with nonhandicapped children whenever possible. When that “mainstreaming” preference of the Act has been met and a child is being educated in the regular classrooms of a public school system, the system itself monitors the educational progress of the child. Regular examinations are administered, grades are awarded, and yearly advancement to higher grade levels is permitted for those children who attain an adequate knowledge of the course material. The grading and advancement system thus constitutes an important factor in determining educational benefit. Children who graduate from our public school systems are considered by our society to have been “educated” at least to the grade level they have completed, and access to an “education” for handicapped children is precisely what Congress sought to provide in the Act.
C
When the language of the Act and its legislative history are considered together, the requirements imposed by Congress become tolerably clear. Insofar as a State is required to provide a handicapped child with a “free appropriate public education,” we hold that it satisfies this requirement by providing personalized instruction with sufficient support services to permit the child to benefit educationally from that instruction. Such instruction and services must be provided at public expense, must meet the State’s educational standards, must approximate the grade levels used in the State’s regular education, and must comport with the child’s IEP. In addition, the IEP, and therefore the personalized instruction, should be formulated in accordance with the requirements of the Act and, if the child is being educated in the regular classrooms of the public education system, should be reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve passing marks and advance from grade to grade.
IV
A
As mentioned in Part I, the Act permits “[a]ny party aggrieved by the findings and decision” of the state administrative hearings “to bring a civil action” in “any State court of competent jurisdiction or in a district court of the United States without regard to the amount in controversy.” § 1415(e)(2). The complaint, and therefore the civil action, may concern “any matter relating to the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education to such child.” § 1415(b)(1)(E). In reviewing the complaint, the Act provides that a court “shall receive the record of the [state] administrative proceedings, shall hear additional evidence at the request of a party, and, basing its decision on the preponderance of the evidence, shall grant such relief as the court determines is appropriate.” § 1415(e)(2).
The parties disagree sharply over the meaning of these provisions, petitioners contending that courts are given only limited authority to review for state compliance with the Act’s procedural requirements and no power to review the substance of the state program, and respondents contending that the Act requires courts to exercise de novo review over state educational decisions and policies. We find petitioners’ contention unpersuasive, for Congress expressly rejected provisions that would have so severely restricted the role of reviewing courts. In substituting the current language of the statute for language that would have made state administrative findings conclusive if supported by substantial evidence, the Conference Committee explained that courts were to make “independent decisions] based on a preponderance of the evidence.” S. Conf. Rep. No. 94-455, p. 50 (1975). See also 121 Cong. Rec. 37416 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Williams).
But although we find that this grant of authority is broader than claimed by petitioners, we think the fact that it is found in § 1415, which is entitled “Procedural safeguards,” is not without significance. When the elaborate and highly specific procedural safeguards embodied in § 1415 are contrasted with the general and somewhat imprecise substantive admonitions contained in the Act, we think that the importance Congress attached to these procedural safeguards cannot be gainsaid. It seems to us no exaggeration to say that Congress placed every bit as much emphasis upon compliance with procedures giving parents and guardians a large measure of participation at every stage of the administrative process, see, e. g., §§ 1415(a)-(d), as it did upon the measurement of the resulting IEP against a substantive standard. We think that the congressional emphasis upon full participation of concerned parties throughout the development of the IEP, as well as the requirements that state and local plans be submitted to the Secretary for approval, demonstrates the legislative conviction that adequate compliance with the procedures prescribed would in most cases assure much if not all of what Congress wished in the way of substantive content in an IEP.
Thus the provision that a reviewing court base its decision on the “preponderance of the evidence” is by no means an invitation to the courts to substitute their own notions of sound educational policy for those of the school authorities which they review. The very importance which Congress has attached to compliance with certain procedures in the preparation of an IEP would be frustrated if a court were permitted simply to set state decisions at nought. The fact that § 1415(e) requires that the reviewing court “receive the records of the [state] administrative proceedings” carries with it the implied requirement that due weight shall be given to these proceedings. And we find nothing in
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
As originally enacted, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 required every employer to pay each of his employees “engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce” a certain minimum hourly wage, and to pay at a higher rate for work in excess of a certain maximum number of hours per week. The Act defined the term “employer” so as to exclude “the United States or any State or political subdivision of a State . ...” This case involves the constitutionality of two sets of amendments to the original enactment.
In 1961, Congress changed the basis of employee coverage: instead of extending protection to employees individually connected to interstate commerce, the Act now covers all employees of any “enterprise” engaged in commerce or production for commerce, provided the enterprise also falls within certain listed categories. In 1966, Congress added to the list of categories the following:
“(4) is engaged in the operation of a hospital, an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, the mentally ill or defective who reside on the premises of such institution, a school for the mentally or physically handicapped or gifted children, an elementary or secondary school, or an institution of higher education (regardless of whether or not such hospital, institution, or school is public or private or operated for profit or not for profit).”
At the same time, Congress modified the definition of “employer” so as to remove the exemption of the States and their political subdivisions with respect to employees of hospitals, institutions, and schools.
The State of Maryland, since joined by 27 other States and one school district, brought this action against the Secretary of Labor to enjoin enforcement of the Act insofar as it now applies to schools and hospitals -operated by the States or their subdivisions. The plaintiffs made four contentions. They argued that the expansion of coverage through the “enterprise concept” was beyond the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause. They contended that coverage of state-operated hospitals and schools was also beyond the commerce power. They asserted that the remedial provisions of the Act, if applied to the States, would conflict with the Eleventh Amendment. Finally, they urged that even if their constitutional arguments were rejected, the court should declare that schools and hospitals, as enterprises, do not have the statutorily required relationship to interstate commerce.
A three-judge district court, convened pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2282, declined to issue a declaratory judgment or an injunction. Three opinions were written. Judges Winter and Thomsen, constituting the majority, concluded for different reasons that the adoption of the “enterprise concept” of coverage and the extension of coverage to state institutions could not be said, on the face of the Act, to exceed Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. Both declined to consider the Eleventh Amendment and statutory contentions. Judge Northrop dissented, concluding that the amendments exceeded the commerce power because they transgressed the sovereignty of the States.
We noted probable jurisdiction of the plaintiffs’ appeal, 389 U. S. 1031. For reasons to follow, we affirm the judgment of the District Court.
I.
We turn first to the adoption in 1961 of the “enterprise concept.” Whereas the Act originally extended to every employee “who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce,” it now protects every employee who “is employed in an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce.” Such an enterprise is defined as one which, along with other qualifications, “has employees engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce ....” Thus the effect of the 1961 change was to extend protection to the fellow employees of any employee who would have been protected by the original Act, but not to enlarge the class of employers subject to the Act.
In United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, this Court found the original Act a legitimate exercise of congressional power to regulate commerce among the States. Appellants accept the Darby decision, but contend that the extension of protection to fellow employees of those originally covered exceeds the commerce power. We conclude, to the contrary, that the constitutionality of the “enterprise concept” is settled by the reasoning of Darby itself and is independently established by principles stated in other cases.
Darby involved employees who were engaged in producing goods for commerce. Their employer contended that since manufacturing is itself an intrastate activity, Congress had no power to regulate the wages and hours of manufacturing employees. The first step in the Court’s answer was clear: “[Congress may] by appropriate legislation regulate intrastate activities where they have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.”
The next step was to discover whether such a “substantial effect” existed. Congress had found that substandard wages and excessive hours, when imposed on employees of a company shipping goods into other States, gave the exporting company an advantage over companies in the importing States. Having so found, Congress decided as a matter of policy that such an advantage in interstate competition was an “unfair” one, and one that had the additional undesirable effect of driving down labor conditions in the importing States. This Court was of course concerned only with the finding of a substantial effect on interstate competition, and not with the consequent policy decisions. In accepting the congressional finding, the Court followed principles of judicial review only recently rearticulated in Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294, 303-304:
"Of course, the mere fact that Congress has said when particular activity shall be deemed to affect commerce does not preclude further examination by this Court. But where we find that the legislators . . . have a rational basis for finding a chosen regulatory scheme necessary to the protection of commerce, our investigation is at an end.”
There was obviously a “rational basis” for the logical inference that the pay and hours of production employees affect a company’s competitive position.
The logical inference does not stop with production employees. When a company does an interstate business, its competition with companies elsewhere is affected by all its significant labor costs, not merely by the wages and hours of those employees who have physical contact with the goods in question. Consequently, it is not surprising that this Court has already explicitly recognized that Congress’ original choice to extend the Act only to certain employees of interstate enterprises was not constitutionally compelled; rather, Congress decided, at that time, “not to enter areas which it might have occupied [under the commerce power].” Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U. S. 517, 522.
The “enterprise concept” is also supported by a wholly different line of analysis. In the original Act, Congress stated its finding that substandard labor conditions tended to lead to labor disputes and strikes, and that when such strife disrupted businesses involved in interstate commerce, the flow of goods in commerce was itself affected. Congress therefore chose to promote labor peace by regulation of subject matter, wages, and hours, out of which disputes frequently arise. This objective is particularly relevant where, as here, the enterprises in question are significant importers of goods from other States.
Although the Court did not examine this second objective in Darby, other cases have found a “rational basis” for statutes regulating labor conditions in order to protect interstate commerce from labor strife. The National Labor Relations Act had been passed because
“[t]he denial by employers of the right of employees to organize and the refusal by employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining lead to strikes and other forms of industrial strife or unrest, which have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce . . . .”
In Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin, 301 U. S. 1, this Court held that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was within the commerce power. The essence of the decision was contained in two propositions: “the stoppage of those [respondent’s] operations by industrial strife would have a most serious effect upon interstate commerce,” id., at 41; and “[experience has abundantly-demonstrated that the recognition of the right of employees to self-organization and to have representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of collective bargaining is often an essential condition of industrial peace.” Id., at 42.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, including the present “enterprise” definition of coverage, may also be supported by two propositions. One is identical with the first proposition supporting the NLRA: strife disrupting an enterprise involved in commerce may disrupt commerce. The other is parallel to the second proposition supporting the NLRA: there is a basis in logic and experience for the conclusion that substandard labor conditions among any group of employees, whether or not they are personally engaged in commerce or production, may lead to strife disrupting an entire enterprise.
Whether the “enterprise concept” is defended on the “competition” theory or on the “labor dispute” theory, it is true that labor conditions in businesses having only a few employees engaged in commerce or production may not affect commerce very much or very often. Appellants therefore contend that defining covered enterprises in terms of their employees is sometimes to permit “the tail to wag the dog.” However, while Congress has in some instances left to the courts or to administrative agencies the task of determining whether commerce is affected in a particular instance, Darby itself recognized the power of Congress instead to declare that an entire class of activities affects commerce. The only question for the courts is then whether the class is “within the reach of the federal power.” The contention that in Commerce Clause cases the courts have power to excise, as trivial, individual instances falling within a rationally defined class of activities has been put entirely to rest. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 127-128; Polish Alliance v. Labor Board, 322 U. S. 643, 648; Katzenbach v. McClung, supra, at 301. The class of employers subject to the Act was not enlarged by the addition of the enterprise concept. The definition of that class is as rational now as it was when Darby was decided.
II.
Appellants’ second contention is that the commerce power does not afford a constitutional basis for extension of the Act to schools and hospitals operated by the States or their subdivisions. Since the argument is made in terms of interference with “sovereign state functions,” it is important to note exactly what the Act does. Although it applies to “employees,” the Act specifically exempts any “employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity (including any employee employed in the capacity of academic administrative personnel or teacher in elementary or secondary schools) . ...” We assume, as did the District Court, that medical personnel are likewise excluded from coverage under the general language. The Act establishes only a minimum wage and a maximum limit of hours unless overtime wages are paid, and does not otherwise affect the way in which school and hospital duties are performed. Thus appellants’ characterization of the question in this case as whether Congress may, under the guise of the commerce power, tell the States how to perform medical and educational functions is not factually accurate. Congress has “interfered with” these state functions only to the extent of providing that when a State employs people in performing such functions it is subject to the same restrictions as a wide range of other employers whose activities affect commerce, including privately operated schools and hospitals.
It is clear that labor conditions in schools and hospitals can affect commerce. The facts stipulated in this case indicate that such institutions are major users of goods imported from other States. For example:
“In the current fiscal year an estimated $38.3 billion will be spent by State and local public educational institutions in the United States. In the fiscal year 1965, these same authorities spent $3.9 billion operating public hospitals. . . .
“For Maryland, which was stipulated to be typical of the plaintiff States, 87% of the $8 million spent for supplies and equipment by its public school system during the fiscal year 1965 represented direct interstate purchases. Over 55% of the $576,000 spent for drugs, x-ray supplies and equipment and hospital beds by the University of Maryland Hospital and seven other state hospitals were out-of-state purchases.”
Similar figures were supplied for other States. Strikes and work stoppages involving employees of schools and hospitals, events which unfortunately are not infrequent, obviously interrupt and burden this flow of goods across state lines. It is therefore clear that a “rational basis” exists for congressional action prescribing minimum labor standards for schools and hospitals, as for other importing enterprises.
Indeed, appellants do not contend that labor conditions in all schools and hospitals are without the reach of the commerce power, but only that the Act may not be constitutionally applied to state-operated institutions because that power must yield to state sovereignty in the performance of governmental functions. This argument simply is not tenable. There is no general
“doctrine implied in the Federal Constitution that ‘the two governments, national and state, are each to exercise its powers so as not to interfere with the free and full exercise of the powers of the other/ ” Case v. Bowles, 327 U. S. 92, 101.
In the first place, it is clear that the Federal Government, when acting within a delegated power, may override countervailing state interests whether these be described as “governmental” or “proprietary” in character. As long ago as Sanitary District v. United States, 266 U. S. 405, the Court put to rest the contention that state concerns might constitutionally “outweigh” the importance of an otherwise valid federal statute regulating commerce. Congress had imposed statutory limits on the diversion of water from Lake Michigan. A unanimous Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, declared that the sanitary district’s alleged need for more water than federal law allowed was “irrelevant” because federal power over commerce is “superior to that of the States to provide for the welfare or necessities of their inhabitants.” Id., at 426. See Oklahoma v. Atkinson Co., 313 U. S. 508.
There remains, of course, the question whether any particular statute is an “otherwise valid regulation of commerce.” This Court has always recognized that the power to regulate commerce, though broad indeed, has limits. Mr. Chief Justice Marshall paused to recognize those limits in the course of the opinion that first staked out the vast expanse of federal authority over the economic life of the new Nation. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 194-195. Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, speaking only one Term after he delivered the opinion for the Court in Jones & Laughlin, supra, put the matter thus:
“The subject of federal power is still ‘commerce,’ and not all commerce but commerce with foreign nations and among the several States. The expansion of enterprise has vastly increased the interests of interstate commerce but the constitutional differentiation still obtains.” Santa Cruz Co. v. Labor Board, 303 U. S. 453, 466.
The Court has ample power to prevent what the appellants purport to fear, “the utter destruction of the State as a sovereign political entity.”
But while the commerce power has limits, valid general regulations of commerce do not cease to be regulations of commerce because a State is involved. If a State is engaging in economic activities that are validly regulated by the Federal Government when engaged in by private persons, the State too may be forced to conform its activities to federal regulation. This was settled by the unanimous decision in United States v. California, 297 U. S. 175. The question was whether a railroad, operated by the State, and entirely within the State, as a nonprofit venture for the purpose of facilitating transportation at a port, was nevertheless subject, like other railroads, to the Safety Appliance Act. The Court first held that although the railroad operated only between points in California, it was within the reach of federal regulation of interstate rail transportation. 297 U. S., at 181-183. The Court then proceeded to consider the claim that the State “is not subject to the federal Safety Appliance Act/’ and reasoned as follows:
“[W]e think it unimportant to say whether the state conducts its railroad in its 'sovereign’ or in its 'private’ capacity. That in operating its railroad it is acting within a power reserved to the states cannot be doubted. The only question we need consider is whether the exercise of that power, in whatever capacity, must be in subordination to the power to regulate interstate commerce, which has been granted specifically to the national government. The sovereign power of the states is necessarily diminished to the extent of the grants of power to the federal government in the Constitution.
"[W]e look to the activities in which the states have traditionally engaged as marking the boundary of the restriction upon the federal taxing power. But there is no such limitation upon the plenary power to regulate commerce. The state can no more deny the power if its exercise has been authorized by Congress than can an individual.” 297 U. S., at 183-185 (citations omitted).
See also Board of Trustees v. United States, 289 U. S. 48, where the Court rejected a claim of “state sovereignty” and held that a state university that imported scientific apparatus from abroad could be made to pay import duties imposed pursuant to the power over foreign commerce.
The principle of United States v. California is controlling here. Appellants’ argument that the statute involved there was somewhat more directly and obviously a regulation of “commerce,” and that the state activity involved there was less central to state sovereignty, misses the mark. This Court has examined and will continue to examine federal statutes to determine whether there is a rational basis for regarding them as regulations of commerce among the States. But it will not carve up the commerce power to protect enterprises indistinguishable in their effect on commerce from private businesses, simply because those enterprises happen to be run by the States for the benefit of their citizens.
III.
Appellants raise two further issues, both of which the District Court found it inappropriate to explore fully in a declaratory judgment proceeding. We agree. In each case we conclude that no showing has been made that warrants declaratory or injunctive relief. In neither instance, however, do we mean to preclude future consideration on the facts of individual cases.
The first question is whether the Act violates the States' sovereign immunity from suit guaranteed by the Eleventh Amendment. The Act provides as follows:
“Any employer who violates the provisions of section 206 [wages] or section 207 [hours] of this title shall be liable to the employee or employees affected in the amount of their unpaid minimum wages, or their unpaid overtime compensation as the case may be, and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages. Action to recover such liability may be maintained in any court of competent jurisdiction . . . 29 U. S. C. § 216 (b).
The Act also provides for suits by the Secretary of Labor to recover unpaid minimum wages or overtime compensation, 29 U. S. C. § 216 (c) and for injunctive relief against violations, 29 U. S. C. § 217.
Percolating through each of these provisions for relief are interests of the United States and problems of immunity, agency, and consent to suit. Cf. Parden v. Terminal R. Co., 377 U. S. 184. The constitutionality of applying the substantive requirements of the Act to the States is not, in our view, affected by the possibility that one or more of the remedies the Act provides might not be available when a State is the employer-defendant. Particularly in light of the Act's “separability” provision, 29 U. S. C. § 219, we see no reason to strike down otherwise valid portions of the Act simply because other portions might not be constitutional as applied to hypothetical future cases. At the same time, we decline to be drawn into an abstract discussion of the numerous complex issues that might arise in connection with the Act’s various remedial provisions. They are almost impossible and most unnecessary to resolve in advance of particular facts, stated claims, and identified plaintiffs and defendants. Questions of state immunity are therefore reserved for appropriate future cases.
Appellants’ remaining contention presents similar problems. In order to be covered by the Act, an employer hospital or school must in fact have
“employees engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, including employees handling, selling, or otherwise working on goods that have been moved in or produced for commerce by any person . . . .” 29 U. S. C. § 203 (s) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
Appellants ask us to declare that hospitals and schools simply have no such employees. The word “goods” is elsewhere defined to exclude “goods after their delivery into' the actual physical possession of the ultimate consumer thereof other than a producer, manufacturer, or processor thereof.” 29 U. S. C. § 203 (i). Appellants contend that hospitals and schools are the ultimate consumers of the out-of-state products they buy, and hence none of their employees handles “goods” in the statutory sense.
We think the District Court was correct in declining to decide, in the abstract and in general, whether schools and hospitals have employees engaged in commerce or production. Such institutions, as a whole, obviously purchase a vast range of out-of-state commodities. These are put to a wide variety of uses, presumably ranging from physical incorporation of building materials into hospital and school structures, to over-the-counter sale for cash to patients, visitors, students, and teachers. Whether particular institutions have employees handling goods in commerce, cf. Walling v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 317 U. S. 564, may be considered as occasion requires.
The judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
52 Stat. 1060.
§§ 6 (a), 7 (a), 52 Stat. 1062, 1063.
§ 3 (d), 52 Stat. 1060.
The minimum wage requirement, 29 U. S. C. §206 (1964 ed., Supp. II), now reads as follows: “(a) Every employer shall pay to each of his employees who in any workweek is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or is employed in an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, wages at the following rates ...” The maximum hours requirement, 29 U. S. C. §207 (1964 ed., Supp. II), now contains a similar definition of covered employees. The term "enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce” is defined by 29 U. S. C. §203 (s) (1964 ed., Supp. II) to mean “an enterprise which has employees engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, including employees handling, selling, or otherwise working on goods that have been moved in or produced for commerce by any person, and which — [falls in any one of four listed categories] . . . .”
80 Stat. 832, 29 U. S. C. § 203 (s) (4) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
80 Stat. 831, 29 U. S. C. § 203 (d) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
29 U. S. C. §§216 (b), 216 (c), 217.
269 F. Supp. 826.
29 U. S. C. §§ 206 (a), 207 (a) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
29 U. S. C. § 203 (s) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
312 U. S., at 119. The Act prohibited both the interstate transportation of goods produced under substandard labor conditions, and the maintenance of such conditions themselves. The first prohibition, a restraint on commerce itself, was upheld against the contention that its real motive or purpose was to regulate manufacturing. The language quoted in the text answered a challenge to the second prohibition.
Section 2 of the Act, 52 Stat. 1060, 29 U. S. C. § 202, reads in part as follows:
“The Congress hereby finds that the existence, in industries engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, of labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers (1) causes commerce and the channels and instru-mentalities of commerce to be used to spread and perpetuate such labor conditions among the workers of the several States; (2) burdens commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce; (3) constitutes an unfair method of competition in commerce . . . .”
In Katzenbach v. McClung, it appeared that Congress had undertaken extensive investigation of the commercial need for the statute there involved. A major contention of the appellants in the present case is that the legislative history of the amendments now before us lays no factual predicate for extensions of the original Act. To the extent that this is true, it is quite irrelevant. The original Act stated Congress’ findings and purposes as of 1938. Subsequent extensions of coverage were presumably based on similar findings and purposes with respect to the areas newly covered. We are not concerned with the manner in which Congress reached its factual conclusions.
Section 2, 29 U. S. C. § 202, declares in part that the existence of substandard labor conditions “leads to labor disputes burdening and obstructing commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce.”
See infra, at 194-195.
49 Stat. 449, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq.
§ 1, 49 Stat. 449.
312 U. S., at 120-121.
Ibid.
29 U. S. C. § 213 (1) (1964 ed., Supp. II).
See 269 F. Supp., at 832 (opinion of Judge Winter).
In the court below, Judge Thomsen was troubled by the application of the overtime provisions to school and hospital personnel, who may have different arrangements for hours of work than employees of other enterprises. 269 F. Supp., at 851. Congress indicated its attention to this problem in 29 U. S. C. § 207 (1964 ed., Supp. II), which provides special means of computing hospital overtime. That this provision may seem to some inadequate, and that no similar provision was made in the case of schools, are matters outside judicial cognizance. The Act’s overtime provisions apply to a wide range of enterprises, with differing patterns of worktime; they were intended to change some of those patterns. It is not for the courts to decide that such changes as may be required are beneficial in the case of some industries and harmful in others.
269 F. Supp., at 833 (opinion of Judge Winter).
See ibid.
See U. S. Department of Labor, Summary Release, Work Stoppages Involving Government Employees, 1966.
Both under the present Act and the National Labor Relations Act, numerous cases have held that the engagement of an enterprise in interstate commerce may consist of importation. E. g., Wirtz v. Hardin & Co., 253 F. Supp. 579, aff’d, 359 F. 2d 792 (FLSA); N. L. R. B. v. Baker Hotel, 311 F. 2d 528 (NLRA).
The dissent suggests that by use of an “enterprise concept” such as that we have upheld here, Congress could under today’s decision declare a whole State an “enterprise” affecting commerce and take over its budgeting activities. This reflects, we think, a misreading of the Act, of Wickard v. Filburn, supra, and of our decision.. The Act’s definition of “enterprise” reads in part as follows:
“ ‘Enterprise’ means the related activities performed (either through unified operation or common control) by any person or persons for a common business purpose . . . but shall not include the related activities performed for such enterprise by an independent contractor . . . .” 29 U. S. C. §203(r).
We uphold the enterprise concept on the explicit premise that an “enterprise” is a set of operations whose activities in commerce would all be expected to be affected by the wages and hours of any group of employees, which is what Congress obviously intended. So defined, the term is quite cognizant of limitations on the commerce power. Neither here nor in Wickard has the Court declared that Congress may use a relatively trivial impact on commerce as an excuse for broad general regulation of state or private activities. The Court has said only that where a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence.
Nor is it relevant that Congress originally chose to exempt all state enterprises and later partially removed that exemption. Congress was as free to include state activities within the general regulation at a later date as it would have been to omit the exemption in the first place.
“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part IV.
When a federal employee is sued for a wrongful or negli-. gent act, the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988 (commonly known as the Westfall Act) empowers the Attorney General to certify that the employee “was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the claim arose... 28 U. S. C. §2679(d)(1). Upon certification, the employee is dismissed from the action and the United States is substituted as defendant. The case then falls under the governance of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), ch. 753, 60 Stat. 812,842. Generally, such cases unfold much as cases do against other employers who concede respondeat superior liability. If, however, an exception to the FTCA shields the United States from suit, the plaintiff may be left without a tort action against any party.
This case is illustrative. The Attorney General certified that an allegedly negligent employee “was acting within the scope of his... employment” at the time of the episode in suit. Once brought into the case as a defendant, however, the United States asserted immunity, because the incident giving rise to the claim occurred abroad and the FTCA excepts “[a]ny claim arising in a foreign country.” 28 U. S. C. §2680(k). Endeavoring to redeem their lawsuit, plaintiffs (petitioners here) sought court review of the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification, for if the employee was acting outside the scope of his employment, the plaintiffs’ tort action could proceed against him. The lower courts held the certification unreviewable. We reverse that determination and hold that the scope-of-employment certification is reviewable in court.
J — I
Shortly before midnight on January 18, 1991, m Barranquilla, Colombia, a car driven by respondent Dirk A. La-magno, a special agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), collided with petitioners’ car. Petitioners, who are citizens of Colombia, allege that La-magno was intoxicated and that his passenger, an unidentified woman, was not a federal employee.
Informed that diplomatic immunity shielded Lamagno from suit in Colombia, petitioners filed a diversity action against him in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the district where Lamagno resided. Alleging that Lamagno’s negligent driving caused the accident, petitioners sought compensation for physical injuries and property damage. In response, the local United States Attorney, acting pursuant to the Westfall Act, certified on behalf of the Attorney General that Lamagno was acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the accident. The certification, as is customary, stated no reasons for the U. S. Attorney’s scope-of-employment determination.
In the Westfall Act, Congress instructed:
“Upon certification by the Attorney General that the defendant employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the claim arose, any civil action or proceeding commenced upon such claim in a United States district court shall be deemed an action against the United States under the provisions of this title and all references thereto, and the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant.” § 2679(d)(1).
Thus, absent judicial review and court rejection of the certification, Lamagno would be released from the litigation; furthermore, he could not again be pursued in any damages action arising from the “same subject matter.” § 2679(b)(1). Replacing Lamagno, the United States would become sole defendant.
Ordinarily, scope-of-employment certifications occasion no contest. While the certification relieves the employee of responsibility, plaintiffs will confront instead a financially reliable defendant. But in this case, substitution of the United States would cause the demise of the action: Petitioners’ claims “ar[ose] in a foreign country,” FTCA, 28 U. S. C. §2680(k), and thus fell within an exception to the FTCA’s waiver of the United States’ sovereign immunity. See § 2679(d)(4) (upon certification, the action “shall proceed in the same manner as any action against the United States... and shall be subject to the limitations and exceptions applicable to those actions”). Nor would the immunity of the United States allow petitioners to bring Lamagno back into the action. See United States v. Smith, 499 U. S. 160 (1991).
To keep their action against Lamagno alive, and to avoid the fatal consequences of unrecallable substitution of the United States as the party defendant, petitioners asked the District Court to review the certification. Petitioners maintained that Lamagno was acting outside the scope of his employment at the time of the accident; certification to the contrary, they argued, was groundless and untrustworthy. Following Circuit precedent, Johnson v. Carter, 983 F. 2d 1316 (CA4) (en banc), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 812 (1993), the District Court held the certification unreviewable, substituted the United States for Lamagno, and dismissed petitioners’ suit. App. 7-9. In an unadorned order, the Fourth Circuit affirmed. 23 F. 3d 402 (1994).
The Circuits divide sharply on this issue. Parting from the Fourth Circuit, most of the Courts of Appeals have held certification by the Attorney General or her delegate amenable to court review. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict, 513 U. S. 998 (1994), and we now reverse the Fourth Circuit’s judgment.
II
A
We encounter in this ease the familiar questions: where is the line to be drawn; and who decides. Congress has firmly answered the first question. “Scope of employment” sets the line. See § 2679(b)(1); United States v. Smith, 499 U. S. 160 (1991). If Lamagno is inside that line, he is not subject to petitioners’ suit; if he is outside the line, he is personally answerable. The sole question, then, is who decides on which side of the line the case falls: the local United States Attorney, unreviewably or, when that official’s decision is contested, the court. Congress did not address this precise issue unambiguously, if at all. As the division in the lower courts and in this Court shows, the Westfall Act is, on the “who decides” question we confront, open to divergent interpretation.
Two considerations weigh heavily in our analysis, and we state them at the outset. First, the Attorney General herself urges review, mindful that in cases of the kind petitioners present, the incentive of her delegate to certify is marked. Second, when a Government official’s determination of a fact or circumstance — for example, “scope of employment” — is dispositive of a court controversy, federal courts generally do not hold the determination unreviewable. Instead, federal judges traditionally proceed from the “strong presumption that Congress intends judicial review.” Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 670 (1986); see id., at 670-673; Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 140 (1967). Chief Justice Marshall long ago captured the essential idea:
“It would excite some surprise if, in a government of laws and of principle, furnished with a department whose appropriate duty it is to decide questions of right, not only between individuals, but between the government and individuals; a ministerial officer might, at his discretion, issue this powerful process... leaving to [the claimant] no remedy, no appeal to the laws of his country, if he should believe the claim to be unjust. But this anomaly does not exist; this imputation cannot be cast on the legislature of the United States.” United States v. Nourse, 9 Pet. 8, 28-29 (1835).
Accordingly, we have stated time and again that judicial review of executive action “will not be cut off unless there is persuasive reason to believe that such was the purpose of Congress.” Abbott Laboratories, 387 U. S., at 140 (citing cases). No persuasive reason for restricting access to judicial review is discernible from the statutory fog we confront here.
B
Congress, when it composed the Westfall Act, legislated against a backdrop of judicial review. Courts routinely reviewed the local United States Attorney’s scope-of-employment certification under the Westfall Act’s statutory predecessor, the Federal Drivers Act, Pub. L. 87-258, § 1, 75 Stat. 539 (previously codified as 28 U. S. C. § 2679(d) (1982 ed.)). Similar to the Westfall Act but narrower in scope, the Drivers Act made the FTCA the exclusive remedy for motor vehicle accidents involving federal employees acting within the scope of their employment. 75 Stat. 539 (previously codified at 28 U. S. C. § 2679(b) (1982 ed.)). The Drivers Act, like the Westfall Act, had a certification scheme, though it applied only to cases brought in state court. Once the Attorney General or his delegate certified that the defendant driver was acting within the scope of employment, the case was removed to federal court and the United States was substituted as defendant. But the removal and substitution were subject to the federal court’s control; a court determination that the driver was acting outside the scope of his employment would restore the case to its original status. See, e. g., McGowan v. Williams, 623 F. 2d 1239, 1242 (CA7 1980); Seiden v. United States, 537 F. 2d 867, 870 (CA6 1976); Levin v. Taylor, 464 F. 2d 770, 771 (CADC 1972).
When Congress wrote the Westfall Act, which covers federal employees generally and not just federal drivers, the legislators had one purpose firmly in mind. That purpose surely was not to make the Attorney General’s delegate the final arbiter of “scope-of-employment” contests. Instead, Congress sought to override Westfall v. Erwin, 484 U. S. 292 (1988). In Westfall, we held that, to gain immunity from suit for a common-law tort, a federal employee would have to show (1) that he was acting within the scope of his employment, and (2) that he was performing a discretionary function. Id., at 299. Congress reacted quickly to delete the “discretionary function” requirement, finding it an unwarranted judicial imposition, one that had “created an immediate crisis involving the prospect of personal liability and the threat of protracted personal tort litigation for the entire Federal workforce.” § 2(a)(5), 102 Stat. 4563.
The Westfall Act trained on this objective: to “return Federal employees to the status they held prior to the Westfall decision.” H. R. Rep. No. 100-700, p. 4 (1988). Congress was notably concerned with the significance of the scope-of-employment inquiry — that is, it wanted the employee’s personal immunity to turn on that question alone. See §2(b), 102 Stat. 4564 (purpose of Westfall Act is to “protect Federal employees from personal liability for common law torts committed within the scope of their employment”). But nothing tied to the purpose of the legislation shows that Congress meant the Westfall Act to commit the critical “scope-of-employment” inquiry to the unreviewable judgment of the Attorney General or her delegate, and thus to alter fundamentally the answer to the “who decides” question.
C
Construction of the Westfall Act as Lamagno urges — to deny to federal courts authority to review the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification — would oblige us to attribute to Congress two highly anomalous commands. Not only would we have to accept that Congress, by its silence, authorized the Attorney General’s delegate to make determinations of the kind at issue without any judicial check. At least equally perplexing, the proposed reading would cast Article III judges in the role of petty functionaries, persons required to enter as a court judgment an executive officer’s decision, but stripped of capacity to evaluate independently whether the executive’s decision is correct.
r — 1
In the typical case, by certifying that an employee was acting within the scope of his employment, the Attorney General enables the tort plaintiff to maintain a claim for relief under the FTCA, a claim against the financially reliable United States. In such a case, the United States, by certifying, is acting against its financial interest, exposing itself to liability as would any other employer at common law who admits that an employee acted within the scope of his employment. See Restatement (Second) of Agency §219 (1958).
.The situation alters radically, however, in the unusual case — like the one before us — that involves an exception to the FTCA. When the United States retains immunity from suit, certification disarms plaintiffs. They may not proceed against the United States, nor may they pursue the employee shielded by the certificátion. Smith, 499 U. S., at 166-167. In such a case, the certification surely does not qualify as a declaration against the Government’s interest: it does not expose the United States to liability, and it shields a federal employee from liability.
But that is not all. The impetus to certify becomes overwhelming in a case like this one, as the Attorney General, in siding with petitioners, no doubt comprehends. If the local United States Attorney, to whom the Attorney General has delegated responsibility, refuses certification, the employee can make a federal case of the matter by alleging a wrongful failure to certify. See § 2679(d)(3). The federal employee’s claim is one the United States Attorney has no incentive to oppose for the very reason the dissent suggests, see post, at 448-449: Win or lose, the United States retains its immunity; hence, were the United States to litigate “scope of employment” against its own employee — thereby consuming the local United States Attorney’s precious litigation resources— it would be litigating solely for the benefit of the plaintiff. Inevitably, the United States Attorney will feel a strong tug to certify, even when the merits are cloudy, and thereby “do a favor,” post, at 448, both for the employee and for the United States as well, at a cost borne solely, and perhaps quite unfairly, by the plaintiff.
The argument for unreviewability in such an instance runs up against a mainstay of our system of government. Madison spoke precisely to the point:
“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time....” The Federalist No. 10, p. 79 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961).
See In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136 (1956) (“[0]ur system of law has always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness. To this end no man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome.”); Spencer v. Lapsley, 20 How. 264, 266 (1858) (recognizing statute accords with this maxim); see also Publius Syrus, Moral Sayings 51 (D. Lyman transí. 1856) (“No one should be judge in his own cause.”); B. Pascal, Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules 182 (0. Wight transí. 1859) (“It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.”); 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *91 (“[I]t is unreasonable that any man should determine his own quarrel.”).
In sum, under Lamagno’s reading of the congressional product at issue, whenever the case falls within an exception to the FTCA, the Attorney General sits as an unreviewable “judge in her own cause”; she can block petitioners’ way to a tort action in court, at no cost to the federal treasury, while avoiding litigation in which the United States has no incentive to engage, and incidentally enhancing the morale — or at least sparing the purse — of federal employees. The United States, as we have noted, disavows this extraordinary, conspicuously self-serving interpretation. See supra, at 424, and n. 4. Recognizing that a United States Attorney, in cases of this order, is hardly positioned to act impartially, the Attorney General reads the law to allow judicial review.
2
If Congress made the Attorney General’s delegate sole judge, despite the apparent conflict of interest, then Congress correspondingly assigned to the federal court only rubber-stamp work. Upon certification in a case such as this one, the United States would automatically become the defendant and, just as automatically, the case would be dismissed. The key question presented — scope of employment — however contestable in fact, would receive no judicial audience. The court could do no more, and no less, than convert the executive’s scarcely disinterested decision into a court judgment. This strange course becomes all the more surreal when one adds to the scene the absence of an obligation on the part of the Attorney General’s delegate to conduct a fair proceeding, indeed, any proceeding. She need not give the plaintiff an opportunity to speak to the “scope” question, or even notice that she is considering the question. Nor need she give any explanation for her action.
Congress may be free to establish a compensation scheme that operates without court participation. Cf. 21 U. S. C. §904 (authorizing executive settlement of tort claims that “arise in a foreign country in connection with the operations of the [DEA] abroad”). But that is a matter quite different from instructing a court automatically to enter a judgment pursuant to a decision the court has no authority to evaluate. Cf. United States v, Klein, 13 Wall. 128, 146 (1872) (Congress may not “prescribe rules of decision to the Judicial Department of the government in cases pending before it”). We resist ascribing to Congress an intention to place courts in this untenable position.
Ill
We return now, in more detail, to the statutory language to determine whether it overcomes the presumption favoring judicial review, the tradition of court review of scope certifications, and the anomalies attending foreclosure of review.
The certification, removal, and substitution provisions of the Westfall Act, 28 U. S. C. §§2679(d)(l)-(3), work together to assure that, when scope of employment is in controversy, that matter, key to the application of the FTCA, may be resolved in federal court. To that end, the Act specifically allows employees whose certification requests have been denied by the Attorney General, to contest the denial in court. § 2679(d)(3). If the action was initiated by the tort plaintiff in state court, the Attorney General, on the defendant-employee’s petition, is to enter the case and may remove it to the federal court so that the scope determination can be made in the federal forum. Ibid.
When the Attorney General has granted certification, if the case is already in federal court (as is this case, because of the parties’ diverse citizenship), the United States will be substituted as the party defendant. § 2679(d)(1). If the case was initiated by the tort plaintiff in state court, the Attorney General is to remove it to the federal court, where, as in a case that originated in the federal forum, the United States will be substituted as the party defendant. § 2679(d)(2).
The statute next instructs that the “certification of the Attorney General shall conclusively establish scope of office or employment for purposes of removal.” Ibid, (emphasis added). The meaning of that instruction, in the view of petitioners and the Attorney General, is just what the emphasized words import. Congress spoke in discrete sentences in § 2679(d)(2) first of removal, then of substitution. Next, Congress made the Attorney General’s certificate conclusive solely for purposes of removal, and notably not for purposes of substitution. It follows, petitioners and the Attorney General conclude, that the scope-of-employment judgment determinative of substitution can and properly should be checked by the court, i. e., the Attorney General’s scarcely disinterested certification on that matter is by statute made the first, but not the final word.
Lamagno’s construction does not draw on the “certification... shall [be conclusive]... for purposes of removal” language of § 2679(d)(2). Instead, Lamagno emphasizes the word “shall” in the statement: “Upon certification by the Attorney General... any civil action or proceeding... shall be deemed an action against the United States..., and the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant.” § 2679(d)(1) (emphasis added). Any doubt as to the commanding force of the word “shall,” Lamagno urges, is dispelled by this further feature: the Westfall Act’s predecessor, the Federal Drivers Act, provided for court review of “scope-of-employment” certifications at the tort plaintiff’s behest. Not only does the Westfall Act fail to provide for certification challenges by tort plaintiffs, Lamagno underscores, but the Act prominently provides for court review of refusals to certify at the behest of defending employees. See § 2679(d)(3). Congress, in Lamagno’s view, thus plainly intended the one-sided review, i. e., a court check at the call of the defending employee, but no check at the tort plaintiff’s call.
We recognize that both sides have tendered plausible constructions of a text most interpreters have found far from clear. See, e. g., McHugh v. University of Vermont, 966 F. 2d 67, 72 (CA2 1992) (“[T]he text of the Westfall Act, viewed as a whole, is ambiguous.”); Arbour v. Jenkins, 903 F. 2d 416, 421 (CA6 1990) (“[T]he scope certification provisions of the Westfall Act as a whole... [are] ambiguous regarding the reviewability of the Attorney General’s scope certification.”). Indeed, the United States initially took the position that the local United States Attorney’s scope-of-employment certifications are conclusive and unreviewable but, on further consideration, changed its position. See Brief for United States 14, n. 4. Because the statute is reasonably susceptible to divergent interpretation, we adopt the reading that accords with traditional understandings and basic principles: that executive determinations generally are subject to judicial review and that mechanical judgments are not the kind federal courts are set up to render. Under our reading, the Attorney General’s certification that a federal employee was acting within the scope of his employment — a certification the executive official, in cases of the kind at issue, has a compelling interest to grant — does not conclusively establish as correct the substitution of the United States as defendant in place of the employee.
> HH
Treating the Attorney General’s certification as conclusive for purposes of removal but not for purposes of substitution, amicus ultimately argues, “raise[s] a potentially serious Article III problem.” Brief for Michael K. Kellogg as Amicus Curiae 29. If the certification is rejected, because the federal court concludes that the employee acted outside the scope of his employment, and if the tort plaintiff and the employee resubstituted as defendant are not of diverse citizenship, amicus urges, then the federal court will be left with a case without a federal question to support the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. This last-pressed argument by amicus largely drives the dissent. See post, at 440-443.
This case itself, we note, presents not even the specter of an Article III problem. The case was initially instituted in federal court; it was not removed from a state court. The parties’ diverse citizenship gave petitioners an entirely secure basis for filing in federal court.
In any event, we do not think the Article III problem ami-cus describes is a grave one. There may no longer be a federal question once the federal employee is resubstituted as defendant, but in the category of cases amicus hypothesizes, there was a nonfrivolous federal question, certified by the local United States Attorney, when the case was removed to federal court. At that time, the United States was the defendant, and the action was thus under the FTCA. Whether the employee was acting within the scope of his federal employment is a significant federal question — and the Westfall Act was designed to assure that this question could be aired in a federal forum. See supra, at 430-432. Because a case under the Westfall Act thus “raises [a] questio[n] of substantive federal law at the very outset,” it “clearly ‘arises under’ federal law, as that term is used in Art. III.” Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 493 (1983).
In adjudicating the scope-of-federal-employment question “at the very outset,” the court inevitably will confront facts relevant to the alleged misconduct, matters that bear on the state tort claims against the employee. Cf. Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715, 725 (1966) (approving exercise of pendent jurisdiction when federal and state claims have “a common nucleus of operative fact” and would “ordinarily be expected to [be tried] all in one judicial proceeding”). “[C]on-siderations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants,” id., at 726, make it reasonable and proper for the federal forum to proceed beyond the federal question to final judgment once it has invested time and resources on the initial scope-of-employment contest.
If, in preserving judicial review of scope-of-employment certifications, Congress “approach[ed] the limit” of federal-court jurisdiction, see post, at 441 — and we do not believe it did — we find the exercise of federal-court authority involved here less ominous than the consequences of declaring certifications of the kind at issue uncontestable: The local United States Attorney, whose conflict of interest is apparent, would be authorized to make final and binding decisions insulating both the United States and federal employees like Lamagno from liability while depriving plaintiffs of potentially meritorious tort claims. The Attorney General, having weighed the competing considerations, does not read the statute to confer on her such extraordinary authority. Nor should we assume that Congress meant federal courts to accept cases only to stamp them “Dismissed” on an interested executive official’s unchallengeable representation. The statute is fairly construed to allow petitioners to present to the District Court their objections to the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification, and we hold that construction the more persuasive one.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Petitioners also filed an administrative claim with the DEA pursuant to 84 Stat. 1284, as amended, 21 U. S. C. § 904, which authorizes settlement of tort claims that “arise in a foreign country in connection with the operations of the [DEA] abroad.” The DEA referred the claim to the Department of Justice, which has not yet made a final administrative decision on that claim. As read by the Fourth Circuit, § 904 contains no express or implied provision for judicial review. App. 15.
The certification read:
“I, Richard Cullen, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, acting pursuant to the provisions of 28 U. S. C. § 2679, and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Appendix to 28 C.F.R. § 15.3 (1991), hereby certify that I have investigated the circumstances of the incident upon which the plaintiffs’] claim is based. On the basis of the information now available with respect to the allegations of the complaint, I hereby certify that defendant Dirk A. Lamagno was acting within the scope of his employment as an employee of the United States of America at the time of the incident giving rise to the above entitled action.” App. 1-2.
Compare Johnson v. Carter, 983 F. 2d 1316 (CA4) (en banc), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 812 (1993); Garcia v. United States, 22 F. 3d 609, suggestion for rehearing en banc granted, 22 F. 3d 612 (CA5 1994); Aviles v. Lutz, 887 F. 2d 1046, 1048-1049 (CA10 1989) (certification not reviewable), with Nasuti v. Scannell, 906 F. 2d 802, 812-814 (CA1 1990); McHugh v. University of Vermont, 966 F. 2d 67, 71-75 (CA2 1992); Melo v. Hafer, 912 F. 2d 628, 639-642 (CA3 1990), aff’d on other grounds, 502 U. S. 21 (1991); Arbour v. Jenkins, 903 F. 2d 416, 421 (CA6 1990); Hamrick v. Franklin, 931 F. 2d 1209 (CA7), cert. denied, 602 U. S. 869 (1991); Brown v. Armstrong, 949 F. 2d 1007, 1010-1011 (CA8 1991); Meridian Int’l Logistics, Inc. v. United States, 939 F. 2d 740, 744-745 (CA9 1991); S. J.& W. Ranch, Inc. v. Lehtinen, 913 F. 2d 1538, 1543 (1990), modified, 924 F. 2d 1655 (CA11), cert. denied, 602 U. S. 813 (1991); Kimbro v. Velten, 30 F. 3d 1501 (CADC 1994), cert. pending, No. 94-6703 (certification reviewable).
The United States, in accord with petitioners, reads the Westfall Act to allow a plaintiff to challenge the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification. We therefore invited Michael K. Kellogg to brief and argue this case, as amicus curiae, in support of the judgment below. 513 U. S. 1010 (1994). Mr. Kellogg accepted the appointment and has well fulfilled his assigned responsibility.
Several of the FTCA’s 13 exceptions are for cases in which other compensatory regimes afford relief. Kosak v. United States, 465 U. S. 848, 858 (1984) (one rationale for exceptions is “not extending the coverage of the [FTCA] to suits for which adequate remedies were already available”). See, e. g., § 2680(c) (excluding “[a]ny claim arising in respect of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty”); § 2680(d) (excluding “[a]ny claim for which a remedy is provided by” the Public Vessels Act, “relating to claims or suits in admiralty against the United States”); § 2680(e) (excluding “[a]ny claim arising out of an act or omission of any employee of the Government in administering the provisions of” the Trading with the Enemy Act); 2 L. Jayson, Handling Federal Tort Claims: Administrative and Judicial Remedies 13-8,13-25,13-43 to 13-44 (1995) (explaining these exclusions as cases in which other remedies are available).
To the reality of an executive decisionmaker with scant incentive to act impartially, and a court used to rubber-stamp that decisionmaker’s judgment, the dissent can only reply that these are “rare cases.” Post, at 447. But this dispute centers solely on cases fitting the description “rare.” See supra, at 422. It is hardly an answer to say that, in other cases, indeed in the great bulk of cases, court offices are not misused.
Section 2679(d) provides in pertinent part:
“(1) Upon certification by the Attorney General that the defendant employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the claim arose, any civil action or proceeding commenced upon such claim in a United States district court shall be deemed an action against the United States under the provisions of this title and all references thereto, and the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant.
“(2) Upon certification by the Attorney General that the defendant employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the claim arose, any civil action or proceeding commenced upon such claim in a State court shall be removed without bond at any time before trial by the Attorney General to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place in which the action or proceeding is pending. Such action or proceeding shall be deemed to be an action or proceeding brought against the United States under the provisions of this title and all references thereto, and the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant. This certification of the Attorney General shall conclusively establish scope of office or employment for purposes of removal.
“(3) In the event that the Attorney General has refused to certify scope of office or employment under this section, the employee may at any time before trial petition the court to find and certify that the employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment. Upon such certification by the court, such action or proceeding shall be deemed to be an action or proceeding brought against the United States under the provisions of this title and all references thereto, and the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant. A copy of the petition shall be served upon the United States in accordance with the provisions of Rule 4(d)(4) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the event the petition is filed in a civil action or proceeding pending in a State court, the action or proceeding may be removed without bond by the Attorney General to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place in which it is pending. If, in considering the petition, the district court determines that the employee was not acting within the scope of his office or employment, the action or proceeding shall be remanded to the State court.”
In fact, under Lamagno’s construction, this provision has no work to do, because Congress would have had no cause to insulate removal from challenge. If certification cannot be overturned, as Lamagno urges, then a firm basis for federal jurisdiction is ever present — the United States is a party, and the FTCA governs the case.
Though “shall” generally means “must,” legal writers sometimes use, or misuse, “shall” to mean “should,” “will,” or even “may.” See D. Mellin-koff, Mellinkoff’s Dictionary of American Legal Usage 402-403 (1992) (“shall” and “may” are “frequently treated as synonyms” and their meaning depends on context); B. Garner, Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 939 (2d ed. 1995) (“[C]ourts in virtually every English-speaking jurisdiction have held — by necessity — that shall means may in some contexts, and vice versa.”). For example, certain of the Federal Rules
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White delivered
the opinion of the Court.
Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 2, makes it an offense for any person to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States . . . .” The jury in this case returned a verdict finding that petitioners had monopolized, attempted to monopolize, and/or conspired to monopolize. The District Court entered a judgment ruling that petitioners had violated §2, and the Court of Appeals affirmed on the ground that petitioners had attempted to monopolize. The issue we have before us is whether the District Court and the Court of Appeals correctly defined the elements of that offense.
h-I
Sorbothane is a patented elastic polymer whose shock-absorbing characteristics make it usefiil in a variety of medical, athletic, and equestrian products. BTR, Inc. (BTR), owns the patent rights to sorbothane, and its wholly owned subsidiaries manufacture the product in the United States and Britain. Hamilton-Kent Manufacturing Company (Hamilton-Kent) and Sorbothane, Inc. (S. I.), were at all relevant times owned by BTR. S. I. was formed in 1982 to take over Hamilton-Kent’s sorbothane business. App. to Pet. for Cert. A3. Respondents Shirley and Larry McQuillan, doing business as Sorboturf Enterprises, were regional distributors of sorbothane products from 1981 to 1983. Petitioner Spectrum Sports, Inc. (Spectrum), was also a distributor of sorbothane products. Petitioner Kenneth B. Leighton, Jr., is a co-owner of Spectrum. Ibid. Kenneth Leighton, Jr., is the son of Kenneth Leighton, Sr., the president of Hamilton-Kent and S. I. at all relevant times.
In 1980, respondents Shirley and Larry McQuillan signed a letter of intent with Hamilton-Kent, which then owned all manufacturing and distribution rights to sorbothane. The letter of intent granted the McQuillans exclusive rights to purchase sorbothane for use in equestrian products. Respondents were designing a horseshoe pad using sorbothane.
In 1981, Hamilton-Kent decided to establish five regional distributorships for sorbothane. Respondents were selected to be distributors of all sorbothane products, including medical products and shoe inserts, in the Southwest. Spectrum was selected as distributor for another region. Id., at A4-A5.
In January 1982, Hamilton-Kent shifted responsibility for selling medical products from five regional distributors to a single national distributor. In April 1982, Hamilton-Kent told respondents that it wanted them to relinquish their athletic shoe distributorship as a condition for retaining the right to develop and distribute equestrian products. As of May 1982, BTR had moved the sorbothane business from Hamilton-Kent to S. I. Id., at A6. In May, the marketing manager of S. I. again made clear that respondents had to sell their athletic distributorship to keep their equestrian distribution rights. At a meeting scheduled to discuss the sale of respondents’ athletic distributorship to petitioner Leighton, Jr., Leighton, Jr., informed Shirley McQuillan'that if she did not come to agreement with him she would be “'looking for work.'” Id., at A6. Respondents refused to sell and continued to distribute athletic shoe inserts.
In the fall of 1982, Leighton, Sr., informed respondents that another concern had been appointed as the national equestrian distributor, and that they were “no longer involved in equestrian products.” Id., at A7. In January 1983, S. I. began marketing through a national distributor a sorbothane horseshoe pad allegedly indistinguishable from the one designed by respondents. Ibid. In August 1983, S. I. informed respondents that it would no longer accept their orders. Ibid. Spectrum thereupon became national distributor of sorbothane athletic shoe inserts. Pet. for Cert. 6. Respondents sought to obtain sorbothane from the BTR’s British subsidiary, but were informed by that subsidiary that it would not sell sorbothane in the United States. Respondents’ business failed. App. to Pet. for Cert. A8.
Respondents sued petitioners seeking damages for alleged violations of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1 and 2, §3 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, 15 U. S. C. § 14, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U. S. C. § 1962, and two provisions of California business law. Respondents also alleged fraud, breach of oral contract, interference with prospective business advantage, bad-faith denial of the existence of an oral contract, and conversion.
The case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict against one or more of the defendants on each of the 11 alleged violations on which it was to return a verdict. All of the defendants were found to have violated §2 by, in the words of the verdict sheet, “monopolizing, attempting to monopolize, and/or conspiring to monopolize.” App. 410. Petitioners were also found to have violated civil RICO and the California unfair practices law, but not § 1 of the Sherman Act. The jury awarded $1,743,000 in compensatory damages on each of the violations found to have occurred. This amount was trebled under § 4 of the Clayton Act. The District Court also awarded nearly $1 million in attorney’s fees and denied motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment in an unpublished opinion. Judgt. order reported at 907 F. 2d 154 (1990). The court expressly ruled that the trial court had properly instructed the jury on the Sherman Act claims and found that the evidence supported the liability verdicts as well as the damages awards on these claims. The court then affirmed the judgment of the District Court, finding it unnecessary to rule on challenges to other violations found by the jury. App. to Pet. for Cert. A28. On the § 2 issue that petitioners present here, the Court of Appeals, noting that the jury had found that petitioners had violated §2 without specifying whether they had monopolized, attempted to monopolize, or conspired to monopolize, held that the verdict would stand if the evidence supported any one of the three possible violations of § 2. Id., at A15. The court went on to conclude that a case of attempted monopolization had been established. The court rejected petitioners’ argument that attempted monopolization had not been established because respondents had failed to prove that petitioners had a specific intent to monopolize a relevant market. The court also held that in order to show that respondents’ attempt to monopolize was likely to succeed it was not necessary to present evidence of the relevant market or of the defendants’ market power. In so doing, the Ninth Circuit relied on Lessig v. Tidewater Oil Co., 327 F. 2d 459 (CA9), cert. denied, 377 U. S. 993 (1964), and its progeny. App. to Pet. for Cert. A18-A19. The Court of Appeals noted that these cases, in dealing with attempt to monopolize claims, had ruled that “if evidence of unfair or predatory conduct is presented, it may satisfy both the specific intent and dangerous probability elements of the offense, without any proof of relevant market or the defendant’s marketpower [sic]. ” Id., at A19. If, however, there is insufficient evidence of unfair or predatory conduct, there must be a showing of “relevant market or the defendant’s marketpower [sic].” Ibid. The court went on to find:
“There is sufficient evidence from which the jury could conclude that the S. I. Group and Spectrum Group engaged in unfair or predatory conduct and thus inferred that they had the specific intent and the dangerous probability of success and, therefore, McQuillan did not have to prove relevant market or the defendant’s marketing power.” Id., at A21.
The decision below, and the Lessig line of decisions on which it relies, conflicts with holdings of courts in other Circuits. Every other Court of Appeals has indicated that proving an attempt to monopolize requires proof of a dangerous probability of monopolization of a relevant market. We granted certiorari, 503 U. S. 958 (1992), to resolve this conflict among the Circuits. We reverse.
II
While § 1 of the Sherman Act forbids contracts or conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce, § 2 addresses the actions of single firms that monopolize or attempt to monopolize, as well as conspiracies and combinations to monopolize. Section 2 does not define the elements of the offense of attempted monopolization. Nor is there much guidance to be had in the scant legislative history of that provision, which was added late in the legislative process. See 1 E. Kintner, Legislative History of the Federal Antitrust Laws and Related Statutes 23-25 (1978); 3 R Areeda & D. Turner, Antitrust Law ¶ 617, pp. 39-41 (1978). The legislative history does indicate that much of the interpretation of the necessarily broad principles of the Act was to be left for the courts in particular cases. See, e. g., 21 Cong. Rec. 2460 (1890) (statement of Sen. Sherman). See also 1 Kintner, supra, at 19; 3 Areeda & Turner, supra, ¶ 617, at 40.
This Court first addressed the meaning of attempt to monopolize under § 2 in Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375 (1905). The Court’s opinion, written by Justice Holmes, contained the following passage:
“Where acts are not sufficient in themselves to produce a result which the law seeks to prevent — for instance, the monopoly — but require further acts in addition to the mere forces of nature to bring that result to pass, an intent to bring it to pass is necessary in order to produce a dangerous probability that it will happen. Commonwealth v. Peaslee, 177 Massachusetts 267, 272 [59 N. E. 55, 56 (1901)]. But when that intent and the consequent dangerous probability exist, this statute, like many others and like the common law in some cases, directs itself against that dangerous probability as well as against the completed result.” Id., at 396.
The Court went on to explain, however, that not every act done with intent to produce an unlawful result constitutes an attempt. “It is a question of proximity and degree.” Id., at 402. Swift thus indicated that intent is necessary, but alone is not sufficient, to establish the dangerous probability of success that is the object of § 2’s prohibition of attempts.
The Court’s decisions since Swift have reflected the view that the plaintiff charging attempted monopolization must prove a dangerous probability of actual monopolization, which has generally required a definition of the relevant market and examination of market power. In Walker Process Equipment, Inc. v. Food Machinery & Chemical Corp., 382 U. S. 172, 177 (1965), we found that enforcement of a fraudulently obtained patent claim could violate the Sherman Act. We stated that, to establish monopolization or attempt to monopolize under § 2 of the Sherman Act, it would be necessary to appraise the exclusionary power of the illegal patent claim in terms of the relevant market for the product involved. Ibid. The reason was that “[without a definition of that market there is no way to measure [the defendant’s] ability to lessen or destroy competition.” Ibid.
Similarly, this Court reaffirmed in Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U. S. 752 (1984), that “Congress authorized Sherman Act scrutiny of single firms only when they pose a danger of monopolization. Judging unilateral conduct in this manner reduces the risk that the antitrust laws will dampen the competitive zeal of a single aggressive entrepreneur.” Id., at 768. Thus, the conduct of a single firm, governed by §2, “is unlawful only when it threatens actual monopolization.” Id., at 767. See also Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, 342 U. S. 143, 154 (1951); United States v. Griffith, 334 U. S. 100, 105-106 (1948); American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U. S. 781, 785 (1946).
The Courts of Appeals other than the Ninth Circuit have followed this approach. Consistent with our cases, it is generally required that to demonstrate attempted monopolization a plaintiff must prove (1) that the defendant has engaged in predatory or anticompetitive conduct with (2) a specific intent to monopolize and (3) a dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power. See 3 Areeda & Turner, supra, ¶ 820, at 312. In order to determine whether there is a dangerous probability of monopolization, courts have found it necessary to consider the relevant market and the defendant’s ability to lessen or destroy competition in that market.
Notwithstanding the array of authority contrary to Lessig, the Court of Appeals in this case reaffirmed its prior holdings; indeed, it did not mention either this Court’s decisions discussed above or the many decisions of other Courts of Appeals reaching contrary results. Respondents urge us to affirm the decision below. We are not at all inclined, however, to embrace Lessig's interpretation of §2, for there is little, if any, support for it in the statute or the case law, and the notion that proof of unfair or predatory conduct alone is sufficient to make out the offense of attempted monopolization is contrary to the purpose and policy of the Sherman Act.
The Lessig opinion claimed support from the language of §2, which prohibits attempts to monopolize “any part” of commerce, and therefore forbids attempts to monopolize any appreciable segment of interstate sales of the relevant product. See United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U. S. 218, 226 (1947). The “any part” clause, however, applies to charges of monopolization as well as to attempts to monopolize, and it is beyond doubt that the former requires proof of market power in a relevant market. United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U. S. 563, 570-571 (1966); United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 351 U. S. 377, 404 (1956).
In support of its determination that an inference of dangerous probability was permissible from a showing of intent, the Lessig opinion cited, and added emphasis to, this Court’s reference in its opinion in Swift to “ ‘intent and the consequent dangerous probability.’ ” 327 F. 2d, at 474, n. 46, quoting 196 U. S., at 396. But any question whether dangerous probability of success requires proof of more than intent alone should have been removed by the subsequent passage in Swift which stated that “not every act that may be done with intent to produce an unlawful result. . . constitutes an attempt. It is a question of proximity and degree.” Id., at 402.
The Lessig court also relied on a footnote in Du Pont & Co., supra, at 395, n. 23, for the proposition that when the charge is attempt to monopolize, the relevant market is “not in issue.” That footnote, which appeared in analysis of the relevant market issue in Du Pont, rejected the Government’s reliance on several cases, noting that “the scope of the market was not in issue” in Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co., 282 U. S. 555 (1931). That reference merely reflected the fact that, in Story Parchment, which was not an attempt to monopolize case, the parties did not challenge the definition of the market adopted by the lower courts. Nor was Du Pont itself concerned with the issue in this case.
It is also our view that Lessig and later Ninth Circuit decisions refining and applying it are inconsistent with the policy of the Sherman Act. The purpose of the Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself. It does so not out of solicitude for private concerns but out of concern for the public interest. See, e. g., Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 488 (1977); Cargill, Inc. v. Monfort of Colorado, Inc., 479 U. S. 104, 116-117 (1986); Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S. 294, 320 (1962). Thus, this Court and other courts have been careful to avoid constructions of §2 which might chill competition, rather than foster it. It is some-
Sorbothane, Inc., was formerly called Sorbo, Inc. App. 67.
Two violations of §1 were alleged, resale price maintenance and division of territories. Attempted monopolization, monopolization, and conspiracy to monopolize were charged under §2. All in all, four alleged violations of federal law and seven alleged violations of state law were sent to the jury.
The special verdict form advised the jury as follows:
“The following pages identify the name of each defendant and the claims for which plaintiffs contend that the defendant is liable. If you find that any of the defendants are liable on any of the claims, you may award damages to the plaintiffs against those defendants. Should you decide to award damages, please assess damages for each defendant and each claim separately and without regard to whether you have already awarded the same damages on another claim or against another defendant. The court will insure that there is no double recovery. The verdict will not be totaled.” App. 416.
The District Court’s jury instructions were transcribed as follows:
“In order to win on the claim of attempted monopoly, the Plaintiff must prove each of the following elements by a preponderance of the evidence: first, that the Defendants had a specific intent to achieve monopoly power in the relevant market; second, that the Defendants engaged in exclusionary or restrictive conduct in furtherance of its specific intent; third, that there was a dangerous probability that Defendants could sooner or later achieve [their] goal of monopoly power in the relevant market; fourth, that the Defendants’ conduct occurred in or affected interstate commerce; and, fifth, that the Plaintiff was injured in the business or property by the Defendants’ exclusionary or restrictive conduct.
“If the Plaintiff has shown that the Defendant engaged in predatory conduct, you may infer from that evidence the specific intent and the dangerous probability element of the offense without any proof of the relevant market or the Defendants’ marketing [sic] power.” Id., at 251-252. See also App. to Pet. for Cert. A16, A20.
See, e. g., CVD, Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 769 F. 2d 842, 861 (CA1 1986), cert. denied, 476 U. S. 1016 (1986); Twin Laboratories, Inc. v. Weider Health & Fitness, 900 F. 2d 666, 670 (CA2 1990); Harold Friedman, Inc. v. Kroger Co., 581 F. 2d 1068, 1079 (CA3 1978); Abcor Corp. v. AM Int'l, Inc., 916 F. 2d 924, 926, 931 (CA4 1990); C. A. T. Industrial Disposal, Inc. v. Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc., 884 F. 2d 209, 210 (CA5 1989); Arthur S. Langenderfer, Inc. v. S. E. Johnson Co., 917 F. 2d 1413, 1431-1432 (CA6 1990), cert. denied, 502 U. S. 899 (1991); Indiana Grocery, Inc. v. Super Valu Stores, Inc., 864 F. 2d 1409, 1413-1416 (CA7 1989); General Indus tries Corp. v. Hartz Mountain Corp., 810 F. 2d 795, 804 (CA8 1987); Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America, 885 F. 2d 683, 693 (CA10 1989), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 972 (1990); Key Enterprises of Delaware, Inc. v. Venice Hospital, 919 F. 2d 1550, 1565 (CA11 1990); Neumann v. Reinforced Earth Co., 252 U. S. App. D. C. 11, 15-16, 786 F. 2d 424, 428-429, cert. denied, 479 U. S. 851 (1986); Abbott Laboratories v. Brennan, 952 F. 2d 1346, 1354 (CA Fed. 1991), cert. denied, 505 U. S. 1205 (1992).
Our grant of certiorari was limited to the first question presented in the petition: “Whether a manufacturer’s distributor expressly absolved of violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act can, without any evidence of market power or specific intent, be found liable for attempting to monopolize solely by virtue of a unique Ninth Circuit rule?” Pet. for Cert. i.
Justice Holmes confirmed that this was his interpretation of Swift in Hyde v. United States, 225 U. S. 347 (1912). In dissenting in that case on other grounds, the Justice, citing Swift, stated that an attempt may be found where the danger of harm is very great; however, “combination, intention and overt act may all be present without amounting to a criminal attempt_ There must be dangerous proximity to success.” 225 U. S., at 387-388.
See, e. g., Arthur S. Langenderfer, Inc. v. S. E. Johnson Co., 917 F. 2d, at 1431-1432; Twin Laboratories, Inc. v. Weider Health & Fitness, 900 F. 2d, at 570; Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America, 885 F 2d, at 693; Indiana Grocery, Inc. v. Super Valu Stores, Inc., 864 F 2d, at 1413-1416; General Industries Corp. v. Hartz Mountain Corp., 810 F 2d, at 804.
Lessig cited United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U. S., at 226, in support of its interpretation, but Yellow Cab relied on the “any part” language to support the proposition that it is immaterial how large an amount of interstate trade is affected, or how important that part of commerce is in relation to the entire amount of that type of commerce in the Nation.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Burton
delivered the opinion of the
Court.
This decision applies the federal income tax to gains derived by a debtor from his purchase of his own obligations at a discount and his consequent control over their discharge. It presents the specific question whether a solvent natural person, in straitened financial circumstances, must include in his gross income for federal income tax purposes the difference between (1) the face amount of his personal indebtedness as the maker of secured bonds, originally issued by him at face value for cash, and (2) a lesser amount paid by him for their purchase. The debtor’s obligations were not unpaid balances of purchase prices which could be readjusted by the discharge of the obligations. The proceeds of the obligations were not traced into identifiable losses offsetting the debtor’s realized gains from the discharge of these obligations. Each seller knew that the bonds he sold were being bought by or for the maker of them. In each sale the bondholder sought to minimize his probable loss by getting as much as possible, directly or indirectly, from the maker of the bonds as the one available purchaser of them. The maker of the bonds, at the same time, sought to reduce his obligations as much as possible by buying the bonds as cheaply as he could. While each seller thus knew that he was receiving from the maker of the bonds less than their face amount, there is no finding that any seller intended to transfer or release something for nothing or to make a gift of any part of his claim, as distinguished from making a sale and assignment of his whole claim for the highest available price. The maker thus realized a gain from each purchase and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue found correctly that, for federal income tax purposes, the maker must include that gain in his gross income for the tax year in which he made the purchase.
The respondent, Lewis F. Jacobson, in 1938, 1939 and 1940 resided, practiced law and owned or controlled substantial property interests in Chicago, Illinois. In 1943 the petitioner, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, found deficiencies in the income taxes paid by the respondent for each of those years. Those deficiencies totaled $3,967.97, of which about $2,500 are now before us. This case arose from the Commissioner’s addition to the reported gross income of the respondent of the differences between (1) the principal face amounts of certain leasehold bonds executed by the respondent and (2) the lesser amounts paid by him for their purchase. Such purchases were made by or for him substantially as follows:
Upon the respondent’s petition, the Tax Court reviewed the Commissioner’s findings and—
“Held that, as to the bonds acquired by petitioner [Jacobson, the respondent here] through direct negotiations with the bondholders, he is not taxable on the gain therefrom under the doctrine of Helvering v. American Dental Co., 318 U. S. 322; held, further, that petitioner is taxable on the gain realized in the purchases from bondholders through the secretary of the bondholders’ committee and the security dealers, under the doctrine of the Supreme Court in United States v. Kirby Lumber Co., 284 U. S. 1, he being at all times solvent.” 6 T. C. 1048.
Six of the sixteen judges dissented and five of those six voted to uphold the Commissioner completely, on the ground that none of the transactions were gratuitous. 6 T. C. 1048, 1057-1059. The Commissioner petitioned the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to review that part of the judgment which was unfavorable to him. The respondent did the same as to the remainder of the judgment. That court decided against the Commissioner on both petitions. It held that, because the respective sellers knew that the bonds they sold were being bought by or for the respondent, as the maker of them, any excess of the face values of the bonds over their sales prices should be treated as gifts to the respondent and as exempt from income tax. 164 F. 2d 594. Due to the importance of the issues in the unsettled field of the taxability of gains derived by a debtor from his discharge of his own obligations at a discount, we granted certiorari in both cases. 333 U. S. 866. We have heard and decided them together.
The further material facts, as found by the Tax Court or as shown by undisputed evidence, are as follows:
By purchases made in 1922 and 1923 the respondent acquired a 99-year lease, running from May 1, 1914, together with a two-story store, office and apartment building on the leased premises in Chicago. On or about May 1, 1925, he borrowed $90,000 from a nearby bank and, together with his wife, executed in return 200 bonds secured by a trust deed mortgaging to that bank the leasehold and the improvements thereon. The bonds bore interest at 6% per cent per annum and were for the total principal amount of $90,000, with $2,500 maturing semiannually up to and including November 1, 1931. The balance of the bonds, totalling $57,500, were to mature May 1, 1932. The original proceeds were used by the respondent to retire the existing encumbrance, of an undisclosed amount, on the property, pay for a $16,250 addition made by him to the building on the leasehold and pay the necessary brokerage commission of approximately 10 per cent of the loan, plus the cost of printing the bonds and other expenses in connection with the loan. A remaining “small surplus” was paid to the respondent. In 1925 the respondent, for the purposes of computing depreciation, allocated $76,580.56 to the improvements, including the new addition, and $40,000 to the leasehold, out of their total cost to him of $116,580.56.
The bonds due on or before November 1, 1931, were paid at or about their maturities. The debtor has never been in default on any interest payment. However, after the trustee bank closed on June 8, 1931, a committee was formed to represent the holders of this issue of bonds. May 1, 1932, the respondent secured from the committee and individual bondholders a five-year extension of the maturity on all of the bonds and a reduction in the interest rate from 6% to 5 per cent. During this extension the respondent issued his checks in the names of the respective bondholders to cover interest due them. The checks were delivered by the secretary of the bondholders’ committee, the respondent kept himself fully informed as to the identity and location of the respective bondholders and they, in turn, frequently visited him to learn about his financial condition and that of the trusteed property. In 1937 he procured a further extension of the maturity of the bonds to May 1, 1942, and, in that connection, paid 10 per cent on the principal of each bond, leaving a total outstanding balance of $51,750 payable on these bonds.
The Tax Court found that in 1938 the fair market value of the leasehold and the improvements thereon was $80,000 and that in 1939 and 1940 it was the same, less accrued depreciation. The respondent testified that he valued it at considerably less, even as low as twice the amount of its gross income, or about $32,000. The gross and net income from the trusteed property, after deduction of expenses, depreciation and also the interest on the bonds, was:
Year Gross income Net income
1938............ $16,550.00 $1,233.95
1939............ 16,520.75 1,107.11
1940............ 15,578.50 1,719.41
The respondent received from his law practice and other sources the following additional gross income: 1938, $38,390.85; 1939, $35,644.78; and 1940, $35,279.59. The Tax Court said that: “On the strength of the showing of petitioner’s assets and liabilities, we find petitioner was solvent during each of the taxable years 1938, 1939, and 1940.” 6 T. C. at p. 1053. The Court of Appeals said: “The Tax Court found that the taxpayer was solvent during each of the taxable years 1938, 1939 and 1940, and we accept the finding, although a perusal of the record makes it quite apparent that he was in straitened financial circumstances.” 164 F. 2d at p. 596.
In his petition to the Tax Court the respondent stated, and it has not been disputed, that the value of the leasehold and building had sharply depreciated since his acquisition of them. The neighborhood had changed, stores were vacant or paid less than half of their previous rents, from 1932 to 1938 the value of the property was substantially less than its cost to him, conditions were getting worse and he felt certain that he would sustain a large loss in connection with the property.
The Tax Court’s findings describe each bond sale that is material. Some were to the respondent personally and some to his law partner, acting on his behalf. The rest were made indirectly to the respondent through brokers or through the bondholders’ committee. The Tax Court said that each sale that was made through a broker or the committee was closely akin to an open market transaction. It made no finding that any seller intended to transfer or release something for nothing. It referred to all of the respondent’s acquisitions of bonds as purchases. Apparently the bonds were payable to bearer and the Tax Court referred to them as negotiable bonds. Each seller made a complete transfer to the respondent of all the seller’s rights to or under the bonds. Each seller thus determined the amount of his own loss on his investment. Each knew that the maker of the bond would acquire or secure control over it and would thus be enabled to reduce his liabilities by its face amount. Except for the 10 per cent paid on each bond in 1937, there is no evidence that any bondholder at any time received any partial payment on any bond or consented to a reduction of the indebtedness evidenced by the bond. There is no suggestion that any of the respondent’s payments made in 1938, 1939 or 1940 were made specifically in partial reduction of the respondent’s obligation as evidenced by a bond or that any bondholder specifically discharged him from any part of the balance of that obligation. On the other hand, it does appear that each of such payments was made in consideration of the transfer to the respondent of title to the entire bond. Each bond was delivered to the respondent evidencing his obligation for its full original face amount, less only the 10 per cent payment made, on account, in 1937. At the time of the trial, the respondent apparently still held the purchased bonds “intact.” The Court of Appeals repudiated any distinction made by the Tax Court for present purposes between the direct and indirect sales to the respondent. The Court of Appeals based its decision on each seller’s knowledge that he was transferring his bond to the maker of it. Thus far we agree. The Court of Appeals, however, without any finding of intent' by the respective sellers to transfer or release something for nothing, as distinguished from an intent to get the highest available price for their entire claims, treated the respondent’s gain from each purchase as exempt from the taxation imposed by § 22 (a) of the Revenue Act of 1938 and of the Internal Revenue Code, because that court felt itself obliged by precedent to classify each such gain as a “gift” under § 22 (b) (3) of that Act and Code. We hold, however, that those Sections do not, in the light of the decisions of this Court, permit that result.
The first test of the taxability of such gains relates to their inclusion within the gross income of the taxpayer under § 22 (a), without reference to the specific exclusions made from it by § 22(b). The other test consists of the application to such gains of any of those specific exclusions. We hold that these gains come within § 22 (a) but not within any of the exclusions from gross income stated in § 22 (b).
The respondent realized an immediate financial gain from his purchase of these bonds at a discount. By that acquisition he was enabled, at will, to cancel them and thus discharge himself from liability to pay them. While the record indicates that he held them “intact,” apparently without crediting released indebtedness on them or otherwise physically cancelling them in whole or in part (except for the 10 per cent payments made by him on each bond in 1937), his possession of them and control over them is not disputed and the petitioner has properly treated their acquisition as constituting a reduction of the respondent’s debts to the extent of their face amount. At the time of their purchase the respondent was unconditionally and primarily bound to pay their face amounts on May 1, 1942, with interest. Although in straitened financial circumstances he was solvent, both before and after his acquisition of the bonds, and the bonds apparently were collectible from him in full through appropriate enforcement proceedings. His acquisition, and consequent control over the discharge of these bonds, therefore, improved his net worth by the difference between their face amount and the price he paid for them. It also relieved him of the semiannual interest payments on them of 5 per cent per annum. His acquisition of them likewise reduced the face amount of the lien held by others upon his leasehold property. In the first instance he had received the full face amount in cash for these bonds so that his repurchase of them for 50 per cent, or less, of that amount reflected a substantial benefit which he had derived from the use of that borrowed money. These were not purchase money bonds. The gains from their cancellation were not akin to reductions in balances due on the prices of previously acquired property. The respective sellers of the bonds bore no relation to the respondent other than that of creditors. The gains derived by the respondent through these purchases were comparable to those he would have realized if he had purchased, at the same discount, like bonds issued by a third party and had resold them at full face value or had turned them in at full value as a credit upon some other indebtedness of the respondent. His gains were comparable in their nature to those which he would have realized if a third party, pursuant to a contract, had paid off his indebtedness on these bonds for him to the extent of the discount at which he purchased them. The nature of the gain derived by a debtor from his.purchase of his own obligations at a discount is the same whether the debtor is a corporation or a natural person. That such a gain comes within the meaning of gross income as used in federal income tax laws was long ago recognized by the Treasury Department’s Regulations and by this Court in the leading cases in this field. United States v. Kirby Lumber Co., 284 U. S. 1; Helvering v. American Chicle Co., 291 U. S. 426. Similar provisions appeared in the Regulations in effect in 1938-1940.
If § 22 (a) stood alone, without the exclusions stated in § 22 (b), the gain realized by the respondent in this case unquestionably would constitute gross income for income tax purposes. The provisions of § 22 (b) and the decisions of this Court do not change that result. On the contrary, they confirm it.
A striking demonstration of the meaning given by Congress to § 22 (a) appears in its Amendments to § 22 (b) of the Internal Revenue Code by the Revenue Act of 1939, c. 247, 53 Stat. 862, approved June 29, 1939. These Amendments then applied only to taxable years beginning after December 31,1938, and only to discharges of indebtedness occurring on or after June 29, 1939. The value of these Amendments for the purposes of the instant case is not so much in the exclusions which they prescribe, as in the clear light which their own limitations shed upon §§ 22 (a) and 22 (b) to the extent that those Sections remain unchanged.
Unless those Sections as they stood in 1938 meant that the gains derived by a debtor corporation from its purchases of its own obligations at a discount resulted in gross income under § 22 (a), there was no need for these 1939 Amendments. Furthermore, as the status of natural persons and corporations is not differentiated in § 22 (a), the new Amendments make it equally clear that, inasmuch as they relieve only certain corporations from the taxability of gains derived from their purchases of their own obligations at a discount, it must be that similar gains derived by natural persons also remain taxable under §22 (a). The strength of this reflection of the Amendments upon the unamended Sections is emphasized by their temporary character. The Amendments expressly provide that they shall not apply to a taxable year beginning after December 31, 1942. This indicates that, for its permanent program, Congress regarded such gains as properly taxable and it indicates that the Amendments were intended to authorize temporary changes in policy and were not clarifications of existing or continuing tax policies. While the time limit originally prescribed has been subsequently extended, the extensions have been made by separate Acts, each for a period of one to three years. This repeated emphasis upon their temporary character increases the contrast which they make with the permanent policy of Congress as to the general tax-ability of this kind of gains under § 22 (a).
These Amendments describe gains corresponding almost precisely with those derived by the respondent from his transactions in the instant case but the Amendments apply only to corporate gains. They thus indicate that such gains were recognized as not having been excluded from gross income by § 22 (b) (3) or by any other Section. If they had been so excluded there would have been no need for the new Amendments to exclude those which they did, even temporarily. Furthermore, those gains are not excluded from gross income for all purposes of the income tax laws. Section 22 (b) (9) excludes them only from the ordinary income taxes for the taxable year in which the taxpaying corporation purchases its own securities at a discount. Furthermore, the exclusion under § 22 (b) (9), as distinguished from other exclusions under § 22 (b), is available only upon the express condition that the taxpayer makes and files at the time of filing the return its consent to the Regulations* prescribed under § 113 (b) (3) then in effect. That Section and such Regulations require that, where any amount is excluded by a corporation from its gross income under § 22 (b) (9) on account of its discharge of its own indebtedness, the whole or a part of such amount shall be applied to the reduction of the basis of property held by the taxpayer during any portion of the taxable year in which such discharge occurs. The amount to be so applied and the properties to which the reduction shall be allocated are to be determined by Regulations approved by the Secretary of the Treasury. This means that such a gain, instead of being completely excluded as exempt from taxation, is postponed, for income tax purposes, until a later date when the property is disposed of in a way which will permit another form of ascertainment of the taxpayer’s gain or loss in its disposition. These provisions therefore demonstrate that Congress, at least since 1939, has prescribed that, in order for a corporate taxpayer to exclude from its gross income under § 22 (a) certain gains attributable to the discharge within the taxable year of the taxpayer’s indebtedness evidenced by bonds, the taxpayer must consent to the subsequent use of those gains in reducing the basis of property held by the taxpayer during any portion of the taxable year in which such discharge occurred. A corporate taxpayer with gains meeting these specifications but not filing the required consent would be obliged to include those gains in its gross income, unless additional facts brought them under some other exemption. A fortiori, a natural person, such as the respondent in the instant case, who has derived gains precisely within these specifications but who, as a natural person, is ineligible to file the required consent is obliged to include those gains in his gross income under § 22 (a). It remains, therefore, to consider whether there are facts in this case which bring this respondent’s transactions within any exclusion other than that stated in § 22 (b) (9).
The only provision for the exclusion of these types of gains from the respondent’s gross income that is presented for our consideration is the general exemption of gifts from taxation prescribed by § 22 (b) (3). This was applied by this Court in favor of a taxpayer in Helvering v. American Dental Co., 318 U. S. 322, as well as by the court below in the instant case. Both the general provision for taxation of income and this provision for the exclusion of gifts from gross income, for income tax purposes, have been in the Federal Income Tax Acts in substantially their present form since the Revenue Act of 1916. The contrast between the provisions is striking. The income taxed is described in sweeping terms and should be broadly construed in accordance with an obvious purpose to tax income comprehensively. The exemptions, on the other hand, are specifically stated and should be construed with restraint in the light of the same policy. Congress could have excluded from the gross income of all taxpayers the gains derived by debtors either from their acquisitions of their own obligations at a discount and their consequent control over them, or from their respective releases from all or part of such obligations by their respective creditors upon the debtor’s payment to the creditor of something less than the full amount of the debt. Congress, especially since the Revenue Act of 1938, has been cognizant of this issue and of its power to meet it as stated, but it has chosen to extend such relief only on the above described restricted and temporary basis and only in the case of corporations. In its treatment of the issue Congress also has required the corporate taxpayer’s consent to an alternative plan for a reduction of the corporation’s basis of property values to be used in later determinations of its gains or losses. This special treatment is far different from the total exclusion of a gain resulting from an exempt gift. If such gains were already exempted as gifts under § 22 (b) (3), as representing something transferred to the debtor for nothing, there would have been no need for § 22 (b) (9). The conclusion to be drawn is that such transfers as are described in § 22 (b) (9) could not, without more, qualify as exempt gifts under § 22 (b) (3). The same may be said of the acquisition, by a natural person, of his own obligations as debtor. The facts in the instant case present a situation quite similar to one contemplated by § 22 (b) (9) except that the taxpayer here is a natural person. This emphasizes the taxability of the gains before us.
In the instant case the relation between the bondholder and the respondent may be assumed in each transaction to have been one in which the ultimate parties were known to each other to be such. There was no suggestion in the evidence or the findings that any bondholder was acting from any interest other than his own. Each transaction was a sale. The seller sought to get as high a price as he could for the bond and the buyer sought to pay as low a price as he could for the same bond. If the transaction had been completely on the open market through a stock exchange, the conduct and intent of each party could have been the same and there would have been little, if any, basis for any claim that the respondent’s gain was not taxable income. The mere fact that the seller knew that he was selling to the maker of the bond as his only available market did not change the sale into a gift. In the absence of proof to the contrary, the intent of the seller may be assumed to have been to get all he could for his entire claim. Although the sales price was less than the face of the bond and less than the original issuing price of the bond, there was nothing to indicate that the seller was not getting all that he could for all that he had. There is nothing in the evidence or findings to indicate that he intended to transfer or did transfer something for nothing. The form of the transaction emphasized this relationship. The seller assigned the entire bond to his purchaser. The seller did not first release the maker from a part of the maker’s obligation and, having made the maker a gift of that release, then sell him the balance of the bond or vice versa. If the seller actually had intended to give the maker some gift the natural reflection of that gift would have been a credit on the face of the bond or at least some record or testimony evidencing the release. This is not saying that the form of the transaction is conclusive. Assuming that the extension of the maturity of the bonds in the instant case was binding on the creditor, we do not rest this case upon the fact that the sale was made before maturity or that the seller may have received valid consideration for a total release of his claim because the debtor’s payment was made before maturity. It is quite possible that a bondholder might make a gift of an entire bond to anyone, including the maker of it. The facts and findings in this case do not establish any such intent of the seller to make a gift in contradiction of the natural implications arising from the sales and assignments which he made. It is conceivable, although hardly likely, that a bondholder, in the ordinary course of business and without any express release of his debtor, might have sold part of his claims on the bonds he held at the full face value of those parts and then have made a gift of the rest of his claims on those bonds to the same debtor “for nothing.” It is that kind of extraordinary transaction that the respondent asks us, as a matter of law, to read into the simple sales which actually took place and from which he derived financial gains. We are unable to do so on the findings before us. Cf. Bogardus v. Commissioner, 302 U. S. 34.
The situation in each transaction is a factual one. It turns upon whether the transaction is in fact a transfer of something for the best price available or is a transfer or release of only a part of a claim for cash and of the balance “for nothing.” The latter situation is more likely to arise in connection with a release of an open account for rent or for interest, as was found to have occurred in Helvering v. American Dental Co., supra, than in the sale of outstanding securities, either of a corporation as described in § 22 (b) (9), or of a natural person as presented in this case. For these reasons we hold that the Commissioner was justified in finding a taxable gain, rather than an exempt gift, in each of the transactions before us. The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is reversed and the cause is remanded for further action in accordance with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Rutledge, although joining in the Court’s judgment and opinion, is of the view that the result is essentially in conflict with that reached in Helvering v. American Dental Co., 318 U. S. 322.
Mr. Justice Reed, with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins, dissenting.
As detailed in Helvering v. American Dental Company, 318 U. S. 322, the problems of the tax results to the debtor of the release of indebtedness have been difficult. That opinion shows that both Congress and Internal Revenue Regulations have taken varying views as to whether a taxpayer should pay an income tax on such balance sheet improvements.
We held in the American Dental case in 1943 that the “receipt of financial advantages gratuitously” was a gift under Int. Rev. Code § 22. Congress has made no change in the law since that time, nor has it been requested to do so. For the reasons discussed at length in that case, we are of the opinion that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed.
In his petition to the Tax Court, the respondent, in describing the sale of bonds to him at a discount in 1939, said:
“It was self interest and good business judgment exercised by all prudent persons to take cash settlements, when otherwise greater losses might be incurred. I have done that very thing myself, and have advised clients to do so in similar circumstances. Most real estate bonds in Chicago were selling from 5c to 25e on the dollar in 1932 to 1940.”
In the instant case the respondent was found to have been solvent before, as well as after, his realization of the gains in question. The payment of the bonds purchased by him was secured by the mortgage of his leasehold property which property had a fair market value substantially in excess of the face amount of the bonds. The record fails to establish any sufficient basis for a claim that the respondent had suffered losses which, for tax purposes, offset his gains from his purchase of the bonds. Little of the $90,000 originally received by him for the bonds was used to purchase property. There is no finding or substantial evidence showing specifically how those funds were invested. Even if they are traced, in part, into the addition made to the building on the leasehold premises and into the discharge of the then existing encumbrance on those premises, the total so used is not shown and the shrinkage in the value of those investments is not clearly ascertained in the taxable years in question. The ratio of the loss in value of the leasehold property indicated by the Tax Court findings is about 32 per cent of its cost in 1925 but this loss is merely based upon estimates. The respondent claims a larger shrinkage but there is not a sufficient ascertainment of it to permit consideration of its use as an offset to the respondent’s gains in 1938, 1939 or 1940. See 2 Mertens, Law of Federal Income Taxation, § 11.20 and n. 99 (1942).
“SEC. 22. GROSS INCOME.
“ (a) General Definition. — 'Gross income’ includes gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service, of whatever kind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, trades, businesses, commerce, or sales, or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in such property; also from interest, rent, dividends, securities, or the transaction of any business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever....” 52 Stat. 457.
This was re-enacted as § 22 (a), I. R. C., 53 Stat. 9, and amended in a manner not material here in 53 Scat. 574r-575, 26 U. S. C. (1940 ed.) § 22 (a). The Revenue Act of 1938 applied to the respondent’s income in 1938 and the Internal Revenue Code to that in 1939 and 1940.
“SEC. 22. GROSS INCOME.
“(b) Exclusions from Gross Income. — The following items shall not be included in gross income and shall be exempt from taxation under this title:
“(3) Gifts, bequests, and devises. — The value of property acquired by gift, bequest, devise, or inheritance (but the income from such property shall be included in gross income); ”
52 Stat. 458.
This was re-enacted as § 22 (b) (3), I. R. C., 53 Stat. 10, 26 U. S. C. (1940 ed.) § 22 (b) (3), without material change.
See note 1, supra, showing the varied uses to which the respondent applied these proceeds and showing that it is not practicable in this case to determine his losses from his resulting investments, and much less to offset them against his gains now at issue. His tax benefits from those losses are thus postponed until some such occasion as the sale of the properties reflecting them makes it possible to ascertain the losses clearly.
Such discharges of a taxpayer’s debts by payments made for his benefit are realizable income to him. In Douglas v. Willcuts, 296 U. S. 1, 9, this Court said:
“The question is one of statutory construction. We think that the definitions of gross income (Revenue Acts, 1926, § 213; 1928, § 22) are broad enough to cover income of that description. They are to be considered in the light of the evident intent of the Congress ‘to use its power to the full extent.’ Irwin v. Gavit, 268 U. S. 161; Helvering v. Stockholms Bank, 293 U. S. 84, 89. We have held that income was received by a taxpayer, when, pursuant to a contract, a debt or other obligation was discharged by another for his benefit. The transaction was regarded as being the same in substance as if the money had been paid to the taxpayer and he had transmitted it to his creditor. Old Colony Trust Co. v. Commissioner, 279 U. S. 716; United States v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 279 U. S. 732.”
“... By the Revenue Act of (November 23,) 1921, c. 136, § 213 (a) gross income includes ‘gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever,’ and by the Treasury Regulations authorized by § 1303, that have been in force through repeated reenactments, ‘If the corporation purchases and retires any of such bonds at a price less than the issuing price or face value, the excess of the issuing price or face value over the purchase price is gain or income for the taxable year.’ Article 545 (1) (c) of Regulations 62, under Revenue Act of 1921. See Article 544 (1) (c) of Regulations 45, under Revenue Act of 1918; Article 545 (1) (c) of Regulations 65, under Revenue Act of 1924; Article 545 (1) (c) of Regulations 69, under Revenue Act of 1926; Article 68 (1) (c) of Regulations 74, under Revenue Act of 1928. We see no reason why the Regulations should not be accepted as a correct statement of the law.
“... The defendant in error has realized within the year an accession to income, if we take words in their plain popular meaning, as they should be taken here.” United States v. Kirby Lumber Co., 284 U. S. 1, 2-3.
“Art. 22 (a)-14. Cancellation op indebtedness. — (a) In general. — The cancellation of indebtedness, in whole or in part, may result in the realization of income. If, for example, an individual performs services for a creditor, who in consideration thereof cancels the debt, income in the amount of the debt is realized by the debtor as compensation for his services. A taxpayer realizes income by the payment or purchase of his obligations at less than their face value....
“Art. 22 (a)-18. Sale and purchase by corporation op its bonds. — (1) (a) If bonds are issued by a corporation at their face value, the corporation realizes no gain or loss. (b) If the corporation purchases any of such bonds at a price in excess of the issuing price or face value, the excess of the purchase price over the issuing price or face value is a deductible expense for the taxable year, (c) If, however, the corporation purchases any of such bonds at a price less than the issuing price or face value, the excess of the issuing price or face value over the purchase price is gain or income for the taxable year.” Treasury Regulations 101, promulgated under the Revenue Act of 1938.
In Treasury Regulations 103, promulgated under the Internal Revenue Code, §§ 19.22 (a)-14 and 19.22 (a)-18 were identical with the above. Even today they are the same in Treasury Regulations 111, promulgated under the Internal Revenue. Code, as §§
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), a prior state drug-trafficking conviction is for a “serious drug offense” if “a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more is prescribed by law” for the offense. 18 U. S. C. § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). The question in this case concerns how a federal court should determine the maximum sentence for a prior state drug offense for ACCA purposes. We hold that the “maximum term of imprisonment” for a defendant’s prior state drug offense is the maximum sentence applicable to his offense when he was convicted of it.
I
After an extended chase, police officers in Fayetteville, North Carolina, apprehended petitioner Clifton Terelle Mc-Neill. McNeill was caught with 3.1 grams of crack cocaine packaged for distribution and a .38-caliber revolver. In August 2008, he pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1), and possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1).
At sentencing, the District Court determined that McNeill qualified for ACCA’s sentencing enhancement. Under ACCA, a person who violates 18 U. S. C. § 922(g) and “has three previous convictions ... for a violent felony or a serious drug offense” is subject to a 15-year minimum prison sentence. § 924(e)(1). McNeill conceded that two of his prior convictions — assault with a deadly weapon and robbery — were for “violent felonies.”
McNeill argued, however, that none of his six state drug-trafficking convictions were for “serious drug offense[s]” because those crimes no longer carried a “maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more.” § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). When McNeill committed those crimes between 1991 and 1994, each carried a 10-year maximum sentence, and McNeill in fact received 10-year sentences. See N. C. Gen. Stat. §§ 14-1.1(a)(8), 90-95(a)(l) and (b)(1) (Michie 1993) (sale of cocaine and possession with intent to sell cocaine). But as of October 1, 1994, North Carolina reduced the maximum sentence for selling cocaine to 38 months and the maximum sentence for possessing cocaine with intent to sell to 30 months. .See N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§ 15A-1340.17(c) and (d), 90-95(a)(l) and (b)(1) (Lexis 2009).
The District Court rejected McNeill’s request that it look to current state law and instead relied on the 10-year maximum sentence that applied to McNeill’s drug offenses at the time he committed them. No. 5:08-CR-2-D-l (EDNC, Jan. 26, 2009), App. 118. Finding that McNeill therefore had three prior convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses, the court applied ACCA’s sentencing enhancement. The court then departed upward from the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range and sentenced Mc-Neill to 300 months in prison in light of his “long and unrelenting history of serious criminal conduct” and “near certain likelihood of recidivism.” Id., at 119, 121.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Although the court consulted the maximum sentence under current state law, it reached the same conclusion as the District Court because North Carolina’s revised sentencing scheme does not apply to crimes committed before October T, 1994. 598 F. 3d 161, 165 (2010) (agreeing with United States v. Hinojosa, 349 F. 3d 200 (CA5 2003), and disagreeing with United States v. Darden, 539 F. 3d 116 (CA2 2008)). Thus, even if McNeill were convicted today for his 1991,1992, and September 1994 drug offenses, he would still be subject to the old 10-year statutory maximum. 598 F. 3d, at 165 (citing N. C. Gen. Stat. §15A-1340.10 and State v. Branch, 134 N. C. App. 637, 639-640, 518 S. E. 2d 213, 215 (1999)). We granted certiorari, 562 U. S. 1128 (2011), and now affirm, albeit for a different reason.
II
A
As in all statutory construction cases, we begin with “the language itself [and] the specific context in which that language is used.” Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U. S. 337, 341 (1997). ACCA’s sentencing enhancement applies to individuals who have “three previous convictions ... for a violent felony or a serious drug offense.” § 924(e)(1). As relevant here, the statute defines a “serious drug offense” as “an offense under State law, involving manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute, a controlled substance , for which a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more is prescribed by law.” § 924(e) (2) (A) (ii).
The plain text of ACCA requires a federal sentencing court to consult the maximum sentence applicable to a defendant’s previous drug offense at the time of his conviction for that offense. The statute requires the court to determine whether a “previous convictio[n]” was for a serious drug offense. The only way to answer this backward-looking question is to consult the law that applied at the time of that conviction. We did precisely that in United States v. Rodriquez, 553 U. S. 377 (2008), where we addressed whether the “maximum term of imprisonment” includes recidivism enhancements. In assessing the “maximum term of imprisonment” for Rodriguez’s state drug offenses, we consulted the version of state law “that [he] was convicted of violating,” that is, the 1994 statutes and penalties that applied to his offenses at the time of his state convictions. Id., at 380-381.
Use of the present tense in the definition of “serious drug offense” does not suggest otherwise. McNeill argues that the present-tense verb in the phrase “is prescribed by law” requires federal courts to determine the maximum sentence for a potential predicate offense by looking to the state law in effect at the time of the federal sentencing, as if the state offense were committed on the day of federal sentencing. That argument overlooks the fact that ACCA is concerned with convictions that have already occurred. Whether the prior conviction was for an offense “involving manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute, a controlled substance” can only be answered by reference to the law under which the defendant was convicted. Likewise, the maximum sentence that “is prescribed by law” for that offense must also be determined according to the law applicable at that time.
McNeill’s interpretation contorts the plain meaning of the statute. Although North Carolina courts actually sentenced him to 10 years in prison for his drug offenses, McNeill now contends that the “maximum term of imprisonment” for those offenses is 30 or 38 months. We find it “hard to accept the proposition that a defendant may lawfully [have] be[en] sentenced to a term of imprisonment that exceeds the ‘maximum term of imprisonment . . . prescribed by law.’” Id., at 383.
B
The “broader context of the statute as a whole,” specifically the adjacent definition of “violent felony,” confirms this interpretation. Robinson, supra, at 341. ACCA defines “violent felony” in part as a crime that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another” or “is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” § 924(e)(2)(B) (emphasis added).
Despite Congress’ use of present tense in that definition, when determining whether a defendant was convicted of a “violent felony,” we have turned to the version of state law that the defendant was actually convicted of violating. In Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575 (1990), the Court held that whether Taylor’s 1963 and 1971 convictions were for a crime that “is burglary” depended on the “former Missouri statutes defining second-degree burglary” that “were the bases for Taylor’s prior convictions.” Id., at 602; see id., at 578, n. 1 (noting a subsequent change in state law, but relying on the burglary statutes in force “[i]n those years” in which Taylor was convicted). Similarly, in James v. United States, 550 U. S. 192 (2007), this Court looked to the versions of Florida’s burglary and criminal attempt statutes that were in effect “at the time of James’ [1993 state] conviction.” Id., at 197; see ibid, (quoting the 1993 versions of the Florida statutes). The present-tense verbs in the definition of “violent felony” did not persuade us to look anywhere other than the law under which the defendants were actually convicted to determine the elements of their offenses.
Having repeatedly looked to the historical statute of conviction in the context of violent felonies, we see no reason to interpret “serious drug offense[s]” in the adjacent section of the same statute any differently. In both definitions, Congress used the present tense to refer to past convictions. Cf. Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U. S. 29, 39 (2009) (“Where, as here, Congress uses similar statutory language ... in two adjoining provisions, it normally intends similar interpretations”).
C
This natural reading of ACCA also avoids the absurd results that would follow from consulting current state law to define a previous offense. See United States v. Wilson, 503 U. S. 329, 334 (1992) (“[Ajbsurd results are to be avoided”).
For example, McNeill concedes that under his approach, a prior conviction could “disappear” entirely for ACCA purposes if a State reformulated the offense between the defendant’s state conviction and federal sentencing. Tr. of Oral Arg. 12-13. The Sixth Circuit confronted a similar scenario in Mallett v. United States, 334 F. 3d 491 (2003), where Ohio had substantially changed how drug quantities were measured since Mallett’s state drug conviction. Id., at 502 (addressing this issue in the context of the career offender provision of the Sentencing Guidelines). The Sixth Circuit could not “determine how Mallett would now be sentenced under Ohio’s revised drug laws” because the offense for which he had been convicted “no longer exist[ed] and no conversion between the former and amended statutes [wa]s facially apparent.” Ibid. The court therefore was compelled to look to state law “as of the time of the state-court conviction” to determine the maximum possible sentence for Mallet’s prior offense. Id., at 503.
It cannot be correct that subsequent changes in state law can erase an earlier conviction for ACCA purposes. A defendant’s history of criminal activity — and the culpability and dangerousness that such history demonstrates — does not cease to exist when a State reformulates its criminal statutes in a way that prevents precise translation of the old conviction into the new statutes. Congress based ACCA’s sentencing enhancement on prior convictions and could not have expected courts to treat those convictions as if they had simply disappeared. To the contrary, Congress has expressly directed that a prior violent felony conviction remains a “conviction” unless it has been “expunged, or set aside or [the] person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored.” 18 U. S. C. §921(a)(20); see also Custis v. United States, 511 U. S. 485, 491 (1994) (explaining that § 921(a)(20) “creates a clear negative implication that courts may count a conviction that has not been set aside”).
In addition, McNeill’s interpretation would make ACCA’s applicability depend on the timing of the federal sentencing proceeding. McNeill cannot explain why two defendants who violated § 922(g) on the same day and who had identical criminal histories — down to the dates on which they committed and were sentenced for their prior offenses — should receive dramatically different federal sentences solely because one’s § 922(g) sentencing happened to occur after the state legislature amended the punishment for one of the shared prior offenses. In contrast, the interpretation we adopt permits a defendant to know even before he violates § 922(g) whether ACCA would apply.
Ill
Applying our holding to this case, we conclude that the District Court properly applied ACCA’s sentencing enhancement to McNeill. In light of his two admitted violent felony convictions, McNeill needed only one conviction for a “serious drug offense” to trigger ACCA, but we note that all six of his prior drug convictions qualify.
In November 1992, McNeill pleaded guilty and was sentenced in a North Carolina court for five offenses: selling cocaine on four separate occasions in October 1991 and possessing cocaine with intent to sell on one occasion in February 1992. At the time of McNeill’s November 1992 conviction and sentencing, North Carolina law dictated that the maximum sentence for selling cocaine in 1991 and the maximum sentence for possessing cocaine with intent to sell in 1992 was 10 years in prison. See N. C. Gen. Stat. §§14-1.1(a)(8), 90-95(a)(l) and (b)(1) (Michie 1993). McNeill’s 1992 convictions were therefore for “serious drug offense[s]” within the meaning of ACCA.
McNeill’s sixth drug offense was possessing cocaine with intent to sell in September 1994. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in a North Carolina court in April 1995. By April 1995, North Carolina had changed the sentence applicable to that type of drug offense but still provided that the maximum sentence for possessing cocaine with intent to sell in September 1994 was 10 years in prison. See 1993 N. C. Sess. Laws, ch, 538, §2 (repealing N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-1.1); 1993 N. C. Sess. Laws, ch. 538, § 56 (as modified by Extra Session 1994 N. C. Sess. Laws, ch. 24, § 14(b)) (“This act becomes effective October 1, 1994, and applies only to offenses occurring on or after that date. Prosecutions for, or sentences based on, offenses occurring before the effective date of this act [are controlled by] the statutes that would be applicable to those prosecutions or sentences but for the provisions of this act”). Therefore, McNeill’s 1995 conviction was also for a “serious drug offense.”
* * *
We conclude that a federal sentencing court must determine whether “an offense under State law” is a “serious drug offense” by consulting the “maximum term of imprisonment” applicable to a defendant’s previous drug offense at the time of the defendant’s state conviction for that offense. § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
As the Government notes, this case does not concern a situation in which a State subsequently lowers the maximum penalty applicable to an offense and makes that reduction available to defendants previously convicted and sentenced for that offense. Brief for United States 18, n. 5; ef. 18 U. S. C. § 3582(c)(2). We do not address whether or under what circumstances a federal court could consider the effect of that state action.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case arises out of proceedings to enforce the claim of a veteran to re-employment rights under § 9 of the Universal Military Training and Service Act. 62 Stat. 604, 614-618, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. § 459, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. (Supp. V) § 459. More specifically, petitioner claims that he has been deprived of seniority rights to which he is entitled under the statute and the collective bargaining agreement in force between his employer, respondent railroad, and the union representing its employees.
Made part of the complaint filed in the District Court are provisions of the collective bargaining agreement regulating the relations between respondent and its employees, especially provisions relating to seniority and promotions. Employees are divided into three groups according to the functions they perform, with seniority defined within each group. Rule 10 provides that when new positions are available or vacancies occur in existing positions, such positions will be “bulletined” by the employer and employees may bid therefor. Rule 1 (3) (A) provides that, “Promotion will be confined to the group . . . with the exception that employes on positions enumerated in group two (2) will be given preference over nonemployes in the assignment to positions in group one (1), based upon fitness and ability . . . Rule 15 states that, “An employe returning after leave of absence may return to former position or may, upon return . . . exercise seniority rights to any position bulletined during such absence.”
The complaint alleges that petitioner was employed by respondent as a relief clerk-chief caller, a position classified • under the collective bargaining agreement in group 2. On September 26,1950, he left his employment for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States. Petitioner was still in the Armed Forces when respondent, pursuant to the procedure set forth in Rule 10 of the collective bargaining agreement, bulletined two group 1 positions to be filled. On September 8, 1952, the group 1 position of bill clerk was bulletined and a nonemployee assigned to it on September 15. On September 10, 1952, the group 1 position of assistant cashier was bulletined and a nonemployee assigned to it on September 22. Petitioner was separated from the military service on September 25, 1952, and on October 1 applied for re-employment with respondent. He was placed in the group 1 position of assistant cashier with a group 1 seniority date of October 7, 1952. Subsequently this position was abolished and petitioner reduced to a group 2 position. Respondent refused to allow petitioner to exercise claimed seniority rights to place himself in the group 1 position of bill clerk in place of the nonemployee who had been assigned to that position on September 15, 1952.
In the District Court petitioner contended that the group 1 seniority date assigned him on re-employment, October 7, 1952, was erroneous, and that under § 9 of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, supra, he was entitled to a seniority date of September 8 or September 10, 1952, the dates on which, if he had then been employed by respondent, he could have applied for the bulletined group 1 positions. Such a seniority date, according to petitioner, would have entitled him to replace the nonemployee as bill clerk when the position of assistant cashier was abolished, and thus avoided reduction to group 2.
Petitioner prayed the District Court to order respondent to assign him the requested earlier seniority date and to permit him to place himself in the position of bill clerk, and in addition he sought compensation for wages lost as a result of being deprived of the group 1 position. The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a cause of action under the Universal Military Training and Service Act, and the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. 240 F. 2d 8. Because of the importance of the question presented in the administration of the statute and the protection of veterans’ rights thereunder, we granted certiorari. 353 U. S. 948.
The Court of Appeals correctly held that petitioner was not obliged, before bringing suit in the District Court under § 9 (d) of the Act, 62 Stat. 616, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. (Supp. V) § 459 (d), to pursue remedies possibly available under the grievance procedure set forth in the collective bargaining agreement or before the National Railroad Adjustment Board. See 48 Stat. 1189-1193, 45 U. S. C. § 153. The rights petitioner asserts are rights created by federal statute even though their determination may necessarily involve interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement. Although the statute does not itself create a seniority system, but accepts that set forth in the collective bargaining agreement, it requires the application of the principles of that system in a manner that will not deprive the veteran of the benefits, in terms of restoration to position and advancement in status, for which Congress has provided. Petitioner sues not simply as an employee under a collective bargaining agreement, but as a veteran asserting special rights bestowed upon him in furtherance of a federal policy to protect those who have served in the Armed Forces.
For the effective protection of these distinctively federal rights, Congress provided in § 9 (d) of the Act that if any employer fails to comply with the provisions of the statute, the District Court, upon the filing of a petition by a person entitled to the benefits of the Act, has jurisdiction to compel compliance and to compensate for loss of wages. The court is enjoined to order speedy hearing in any such case and to advance it on the calendar, and the United States Attorney must appear and act for the veteran in the prosecution of his claim if reasonably satisfied that he is entitled to the benefits of the Act. Nowhere is it suggested that before a veteran can obtain the benefit of this expeditious procedure and the remedies available to him in the District Court he must exhaust other avenues of relief possibly open under a collective bargaining agreement or before a tribunal such as the National Railway Adjustment Board. On the contrary, the statutory scheme contemplates the speedy vindication of the veteran’s rights by a suit brought immediately in the District Court, advanced on the calendar before other litigation, and prosecuted with the assistance of the United States Attorney. Only thus, it evidently was thought, would adequate protection be assured the veteran, since delay in the vindication of re-employment rights might often result in hardship to the veteran and the defeat, for all practical purposes, of the rights Congress sought to give him. To insist that the veteran first exhaust other possibly lengthy and doubtful procedures on the ground that his claim is not different from any other employee grievance or claim under a collective bargaining agreement would ignore the actual character of the rights asserted and defeat the liberal procedural policy clearly manifested in the statute for the vindication of those rights.
Section 9 of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, on which petitioner relies, requires that a returning veteran who has been separated from the service under the conditions set forth in the statute be restored by his employer to his former position or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay. He is not to be disadvantaged by serving his country. Section 9(c)(1) states that he shall be restored “without loss of seniority.” In Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corp., 328 U. S. 275, 284-285, and Oakley v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 338 U. S. 278, 283, the same provision in an earlier Act was interpreted to mean that a returning veteran does not step back at the exact point he left his employment, but rather is entitled to “a position which, on the moving escalator of terms and conditions affecting that particular employment, would be comparable to the position which he would have held if he had remained continuously in his civilian employment.” 338 U. S., at 283. This interpretation is now embodied in § 9 (c) (2) of the present Act.
However, § 9 (c) does not guarantee the returning serviceman a perfect reproduction of the civilian employment that might have been his if he had not been called to the colors. Much there is that might have flowed from experience, effort, or chance to which he cannot lay claim under the statute. Section 9 (c) does not assure him that the past with all its possibilities of betterment will be recalled. Its very important but limited purpose is to assure that those changes and advancements in status that would necessarily have occurred simply by virtue of continued employment will not be denied the veteran because of his absence in the military service. The statute manifests no purpose to give to the veteran a status that he could not have attained as of right, within the system of his employment, even if he had not been inducted into the Armed Forces but continued in his civilian employment.
Thus, on application for 're-employment a veteran is not entitled to demand that he be assigned a position higher than that he formerly held when promotion to such a position depends, not simply on seniority or some other form of automatic progression, but on the exercise of discretion on the part of the employer. On his return from service, petitioner in the present case could not have demanded under the statute that respondent place him in any group 1 position. Promotion to a group 1 position from group 2, in which petitioner had formerly been employed, is not dependent simply on seniority. Under Rule 1 (3) (A) of the collective bargaining agreement it is dependent on fitness and ability and the exercise of a discriminating managerial choice. Collective bargaining agreements that include such familiar provisions are presupposed by the statute, and it is in their context that it must be placed. See Aeronautical Lodge v. Campbell, 337 U. S. 521, 527. Petitioner was not entitled to a group 1 position simply because in his absence it had been bulletined, and if he had then been employed he might have applied for it, and respondent might have found that he possessed the requisite fitness and ability. The statute does not envisage overriding an employer’s discretionary choice by any such mandatory promotion. Nor does it sanction interfering with and disrupting the usual, carefully adjusted relations among the employees themselves regarding opportunities for advancement.
The precise question in the present case is not essentially different. Petitioner was not, by virtue of the fact that the group 1 position of assistant cashier had been bulletined in his absence, entitled to that position on re-employment. Rule 15 of the collective bargaining agreement states that an employee who returns from leave of absence may “exercise seniority rights to any position bulletined during such absence.” But seniority alone does not, under Rule 1 (3) (A), entitle an employee to move from group 2 to group 1; fitness and ability are also relevant. Respondent asserts that petitioner was in fact assigned to the group 1 position of assistant cashier through a mistake of law. Whatever the reason, the fact of employment in the higher position did not enlarge petitioner’s rights under either the collective bargaining agreement or the statute. Since respondent was not obligated to give petitioner the higher position at all, when it did so it was not bound to give him a seniority date earlier than that to which any employee similarly promoted would have been entitled. In this case that was the date on which petitioner’s pay in the group 1 position commenced, and not a month earlier when the position had first been bulletined.
Petitioner argues that because the complaint was summarily dismissed on motion he did not have the opportunity to prove that by custom and practice under the collective bargaining agreement he would necessarily have been assigned to the group 1 position of bill clerk or assistant cashier had he remained continuously in respondent’s employ. He states that interpretation and practice by the parties to an agreement are frequently the most reliable bases for determining rights claimed to arise under it. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment, but with leave to petitioner to amend his complaint to allege, if such be the fact, that in actual practice under the collective bargaining agreement advancement from group 2 to group 1 is automatic.
The judgment is
Afirmei.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas dissent on the merits.
“In case any private employer fails or refuses to comply with the provisions of subsection (b), (c)(1) or subsection (g) of this section, the district court of the United States for the district in which such private employer maintains a place of business shall have power, upon the filing of a motion, petition, or other appropriate pleading by the person entitled to the benefits of such provisions, specifically to require such employer to comply with such provisions and to compensate such person for any loss of wages or benefits suffered by reason of such employer’s unlawful action: Provided, That any such compensation shall be in addition to and shall not be deemed to diminish any of the benefits of such provisions. The court shall order speedy hearing in any such case and shall advance it on the calendar. Upon application to the United States attorney or comparable official for the district in which such private employer maintains a place of business, by any person claiming to be entitled to the benefits of such provisions, such United States attorney or official, if reasonably satisfied that the person so applying is entitled to such benefits, shall appear and act as attorney for such person in the amicable adjustment of the claim or in the filing of any motion, petition, or other appropriate pleading and the prosecution thereof specifically to require such employer to comply with such provisions: Provided, That no fees or court costs shall be taxed against any person who may apply for such benefits: Provided further, That only the employer shall be deemed a necessary party respondent to any such action.” 62 Stat. 616, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. (Supp. V) § 459 (d).
“Any person who is restored to a position in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (A) or (B) of subsection (b) shall be considered as having been on furlough or leave of absence during his period of training and service in the armed forces, shall be so restored without loss of seniority, shall be entitled to participate in insurance or other benefits offered by the employer pursuant to established rules and practices relating to employees on furlough or leave of absence in effect with the employer at the time such person was inducted into such forces, and shall not be discharged from such position without cause within one year after such restoration.” 62 Stat. 604, 615, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. § 459 (c) (1).
“It is hereby declared to be the sense of the Congress that any person who is restored to a position in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (A) or (B) of subsection (b) should be so restored in such manner as to give him such status in his employment as he would have enjoyed if he had continued in such employment continuously from the time of his entering the armed forces until the time of his restoration to such employment.” 62 Stat. 604, 615-616, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. §459 (e) (2).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Since 1933 the Missouri Pacific, the New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railway Co. and a number of affiliated railroad corporations have been in reorganization under the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 205. A second plan of reorganization, approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, was before the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Comstock then, in 1944, made objection to allowance of a claim of approximately 10 million dollars by the Missouri Pacific, one debtor corporation, against another, the New Orleans, which, during the 10 years of proceedings, had been unchallenged. The issues raised by his objection were severed from other problems of reorganization which do not concern us here. After full hearing the District Court made findings and wrote an opinion, In re Missouri Pacific R. Co., 64 F. Supp. 64, overruling his objections. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. Comstock v. Group of Institutional Investors, 163 F. 2d 350.
The issues of fact, contested in a long hearing, are not before us for review. Petitioner assured us, in support of the petition for certiorari here, that “there is no factual controversy before this Court” and “we assume the findings of the District Court. Our challenge is directed only to the legal import of these unchallenged facts.”
Much of petitioner’s argument seems to depart from these assumptions and to invite us to reach conclusions from the voluminous record in the case, contrary to those reached by the two courts below. This we cannot do. A seasoned and wise rule of this Court makes concurrent findings of two courts below final here in the absence of very exceptional showing of error. Stuart v. Hayden, 169 U. S. 1; Brainard v. Buck, 184 U. S. 99; First National Bank v. Littlefield, 226 U. S. 110; Baker v. Schofield, 243 U. S. 114; Second Russian Insurance Co. v. Miller, 268 U. S. 552; Texas & N. O. R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Clerks, 281 U. S. 548; Page v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp., 286 U. S. 269; Pick Mfg. Co. v. General Motors Corp., 299 U. S. 3; Virginian R. Co. v. System Federation, 300 U. S. 515; United States v. O’Donnell, 303 U. S. 501; Anderson v. Abbott, 321 U. S. 349; Allen v. Trust Co., 326 U. S. 630; United States v. Dickinson, 331 U. S. 745. No such error is claimed by petitioner.
Since we are concluded by such concurrent findings, we can do no better than to adopt the statement of facts made in the opinion of the Court of Appeals, on the basis of which petitioner’s propositions of law are predicated and must be decided. The essential facts so recited are:
“It appears that the Missouri Pacific acquired the controlling interest in the capital stock of the New Orleans at the end of 1924 and at times relevant here owned from 58 to 93 percent of the total $15,000,000 par value of such stock, and from January 1925, until simultaneous commencement of reorganization proceedings in bankruptcy of both corporations in 1933, it managed the affairs of the New Orleans through Missouri Pacific officers who were given corresponding positions in the New Orleans corporation. An expansion program for both companies was carried on and throughout the course of operations the Missouri Pacific made advancements for improvements and betterments to the New Orleans. Some were repaid, but in February 1933, the New Orleans filed its application with the Interstate Commerce Commission under Section 20a of the Transportation Act (49 U.S.C.A. Sec. 20a (2)), showing that it was indebted to the Missouri Pacific for an accumulation of such advances over a period of years remaining unpaid in the sum of $10,355,226.78, and that it had been requested by the Missouri Pacific to issue demand notes therefor in the amount of $9,955,226.78 to the Missouri Pacific. It had partially complied by issuing one such note for $400,000.00, and one for $2,498,500, and after hearing the Commission made its finding as required by the statute, 49 U.S.C.A. Sec. 20a (2), and authorized New Orleans to issue to the Missouri Pacific a note for the remaining $7,456,726.78. So that at the time of the bankruptcy of the New Orleans on t|ie same date as that of the Missouri Pacific the notes of the New Orleans to the Missouri Pacific in the sum of $10,355,226.78 were outstanding and unpaid. Under authorization of the Interstate Commerce Commission, granted after hearing, the Missouri Pacific had pledged two of the notes aggregating $9,955,226.78 as security for loans made to it by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. An additional pledge was made to Railroad Finance Corporation.
“After appointment of the trustees for the railroads and on August 29, 1938, an officer of the Missouri Pacific filed claim for that company against the New Orleans for the amount of the notes, plus an item of advancement of $210,000.00, aggregating the amount of $10,565,226.78, describing the consideration as 'cash advances for operation, interest payments, etc., at various times from March 1929 to February 1933, both inclusive/ The items which made up the total $10,565,226.78 were clearly specified and evidence of the validity of the debt as consideration for the notes was adduced before the Commission at an early stage of these Section 77 proceedings, and the obligation was deemed to be valid and ahead of New Orleans’ stockholder interest in all of the account-ings, computations and adjustments resulting in the plan of reorganization determined by the Commission and approved by the court in 1940. It has also been so considered by the Commission in the plan of reorganization before the court at the time of the hearing and order now appealed from.
“It appears that in 1926 the Missouri Pacific issued and caused to be sold to the public its 5%% Secured Serial Bonds in the amount of $13,156,000, secured by the pledge of $1000.00 par value of New Orleans capital stock for each $1000.00 principal amount of outstanding bonds, so that the officers who were put in charge of the affairs of both corporations came under fiduciary obligation to the creditors and the stockholders of each company to handle honestly the affairs of each.
“Comstock owns some of said 5%% Secured Serial Bonds so secured by the pledge of the New Orleans capital stock, and by virtue of his ownership of said bonds he has an interest as a creditor of the Missouri Pacific in the payment of his bonds and the interest thereon, and also an interest in the capital stock of the New Orleans pledged to secure the bonds. On November 22, 1944, he filed his objections to the plan of reorganization and plea for equitable treatment on the basis of those interests. Certain of his objections contained charges of mismanagement of the Missouri Pacific to his detriment as a bondholding creditor of that corporation, but the separately numbered objections here involved relate to wrongs which he alleges were done by the Missouri Pacific to the New Orleans to the detriment of his interest in the pledged stock of that company.
“By his objections 'Numbered 19 and related objections,’ Comstock charged that during the period when the affairs of the New Orleans were controlled by its majority stockholder the Missouri Pacific, between the end of 1924 and the bankruptcy in 1933, the Missouri Pacific management caused the New Orleans to pay dividends illegally out of capital and to improvidently declare and pay dividends unjustified by the business and condition of the New Orleans; improperly loaned money to it for the purpose of enabling it to pay dividends; involved it (the New Orleans) in expansion and improperly made advancements to it and caused it to assume indebtedness growing out of expansion; caused it to be operated with unfair advantage to the Missouri Pacific and loss to itself, and generally mismanaged it and committed spoliation and waste of its property and interests to the financial detriment of the New Orleans and for the benefit of the Missouri Pacific. There is also a charge that the trustee for the New Orleans, who is also trustee for the Missouri Pacific, failed to perform his duties as trustee for the New Orleans, to the detriment of New Orleans stock interest. Although an Exhibit ‘A! attached to the objections assumed to set forth details, the charges remained sweeping and general in form with few exceptions.
“The objector prayed that the Missouri Pacific claim for $10,565,227 and interest against the New Orleans be disallowed; that it be determined that the New Orleans was not indebted to the Missouri Pacific, and in the alternative, that all claims of the Missouri Pacific against the New Orleans be subordinated in the reorganization to the New Orleans capital stock interest.
“The allegations of breaches of obligations on the part of the Missouri Pacific were traversed in pleadings of other parties in interest. The main burden of producing witnesses and evidence to justify the handling of the affairs of the New Orleans by the Missouri Pacific during the period of Missouri Pacific management and to prove the $10,565,226.78 indebtedness of the New Orleans to the Missouri Pacific was carried at the trial by the Group of Institutional Investors Holding First and Refunding Mortgage Bonds of Missouri Pacific Railroad Company and The Protective Committee for the holders of General Mortgage Bonds of Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. They recognized fully the fiduciary nature of the obligation which law and equity attributed to the Missouri Pacific by reason of its pledge of the capital stock of the New Orleans to secure the 5%% Serial Bonds while the New Orleans was under its management as majority stockholder, and that by the terms of the pledge the Missouri Pacific was entitled to receive itself only the dividends (lawfully and properly declared) of the New Orleans stock and was required as to the corpus of said stock to honestly manage the corporate affairs and to exercise honest judgment and good faith to preserve the stock interest inviolate.
“Comstock did not question or deny that the New Orleans had executed its negotiable promissory notes to the Missouri Pacific which were outstanding at the time of the trial drawing interest, and conceded that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation as an innocent holder thereof in pledge could hold the New Orleans for their face amount and interest, but his contention was that by reason of its wrong-doings the Missouri Pacific either had no valid claim or that such claim as it had should be subordinated to the capital stock interest. He did not assert or tender evidence to show that any specified individuals working for the New Orleans or the Missouri Pacific, or both companies, had misappropriated or wrongfully diverted to their own use any of the assets or business of the New Orleans to the detriment of stockholders. He tendered no evidence to show that the plan of Missouri Pacific system expansion, including expansion and improvement of the New Orleans, and for the financing thereof, adopted and carried through by the Missouri Pacific, was in itself fraudulent or reckless and improvident. As to the New Orleans, the plan contemplated that the Missouri Pacific would advance money to the New Orleans for betterments and additions on short time loans, and that at intervals when the indebtedness became of sufficient size bond issues would be sold to refund it. The worst of the depression came coincidentally with the time when such refunding was expected to be made and made the refunding impossible.
“From testimony frankly given by himself, and on the face of the record, it clearly appears as to the case Comstock presented to the court on the objections herein involved that after the report of the Senate subcommittee which criticized the Missouri Pacific management of the New Orleans, and in 1940, Comstock bought a few of the Serial bonds at about 10 cents on the dollar and then employed an accountant to make studies of the accounts, records and reports of Missouri Pacific management of the New Orleans and based his charges on the accountant’s studies. He tendered no extraneous or newly discovered evidence. As the period of Missouri Pacific alleged mismanagement of the New Orleans (1925 to 1933) had expired many years before Com-stock acquired his interest in New Orleans stock, a court would not ordinarily have felt obliged at his instance to try the merits of charges of mismanagement committed in long past years and claimed to be provable by contemporaneous records which were at all times accessible. It would not sanction such buying into a lawsuit.
“But here the plan for Missouri Pacific reorganization was before the court to be approved or disapproved, according to whether it was or was not fair and equitable. The proposed plan included as one of its essential postulates that the New Orleans was indebted to the Missouri Pacific in a sum which with accumulated interest amounted to around eighteen million dollars. No judicial determination upon the validity of the debt had ever been made in any adversary proceedings throughout the thirteen year course of the Section 77 proceedings and bonds like Comstock’s are outstanding in many hands aggregating some $13,500,000. Although the court was of opinion that not only Comstock but all other owners of the Missouri Pacific 5%% Serial Bonds secured by New Orleans stock who had at all times trustee representation and in great part representation by counsel, had been guilty of laches in failing for so many years to assert and present proof and try out before the Commission and the court the alleged invalidity of the debt almost entirely evidenced by the notes, it concluded that judicial adjudication should be made as to the debt and that the court should, and therefore it did, hear the evidence covering the whole period of management of the New Orleans by the Missouri Pacific, and it tried out the whole case and all the charges presented by Comstock on the merits.
“The expert accountant called by Comstock produced a large number of exhibits which he had prepared from the books, records and reports of the individual companies and explained in connection with them the inferences he had drawn from his studies and expressed his opinions tending to support the Comstock charges. He centered his attack largely on that part of the accounting system of the railroads through which the New Orleans and its fourteen subsidiary railroads had been treated as a unit for financing purposes and the financial condition indicated by consolidated balance sheets. By disregarding the system character of all the Gulf Coast Lines held under New Orleans ownership he inferred a much less favorable financial position for the New Orleans than was shown by its consolidated balance sheets. He had no personal knowledge of the railroad operations or transactions covered by his testimony.
“The Group of Institutional Investors Holding First and Refunding Mortgage Bonds of Missouri Pacific and The Protective Committee for the holders of General Mortgage bonds of Missouri Pacific to sustain the burden of Missouri Pacific defense called as their witnesses on the trial the railroad men who had engaged, each in his own department, in all of the transactions and railroad operations and the records made thereof throughout the period involved, and they, testified of and concerning matters with which they were intimately familiar. Also Mr. William Wyer, who after his graduation from Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology served in railroad construction and operation for the government during World War I, and in U. S. Railroad Administration during Federal Control, and afterwards in various positions in the Division of Operations, Division of Accounts and Assistant to the Comptroller. From 1920 to 1927 he occupied important positions with the Southern Railroad Company and the Denver Rio Grande and Western, the latter being 'fifty percent, owned by the Missouri Pacific so it was considered a part of the Missouri Pacific System.’ In February, 1929, he became Assistant to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Missouri Pacific who was also Chairman of the Board of the New Orleans, and later in the year he became Secretary and Treasurer of the Missouri Pacific and an officer on all the subsidiaries, except as to the Texas and Pacific he was such officers for only six years. He handled a great many of the financial matters involving the Missouri Pacific and the New Orleans under the supervision of the Chairman of the Board of the Missouri Pacific. In 1933 he started studies which have provided substantially all of the studies upon which the various plans of reorganization have been based. He was at the time of testifying the chief executive officer of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. He was thoroughly informed and conversant with the Missouri Pacific policies of system operation and of expanding and financing, and with the railroad operations and the financial transactions upon which the validity or invalidity of the debt in controversy depend, as well as the accounting and reporting system maintained for disclosing and reporting them. He had an important part in what was done, was in touch with substantially the whole course of the management of the New Orleans under attack and he gave his extensive testimony upon direct and cross examination with obvious understanding of its relevancy and importance. His testimony, supported by many accounting and summarizing exhibits, was to the effect that Missouri Pacific management of New Orleans was honest and was beneficial to New Orleans.
“Judge Moore, presiding at the trial, has exercised the jurisdiction in these Section 77 proceedings through most of their course, and his questions, comments and directions reflect his close attention to and understanding of the testimony and its application through the trial. His written opinion is reported 64 F. Supp. 64. His findings of facts and conclusions of law were drawn with care and thoroughness, and appear to us to be responsive to all the issues presented by the objections here involved and the evidence that was adduced, and the appellant has not called our attention to any refusal on the part of the court to make findings in respect to any other issues claimed to have been presented. The vast extent of the railroad business carried on by the Missouri Pacific and the New Orleans during the long past period of alleged mismanagement and the intricate corporate structures of the railroads, inevitably presented most serious problems in the attempts of accountants to picture what their course of operations and financial transactions had been. The New Orleans had in some respects the character of a holding company in that it operated itself only a small fraction (around 11%) of the railroad mileage of its railroad system but owned the stocks and securities of some fourteen other railroad companies and was the only one of the group of railroads comprising its railroad system which had any relatively substantial amount of securities outstanding in the hands of the public. For financing purposes the individual roads in the group were dependent upon the New Orleans which, acting for the group in respect to financing, presented the necessary unitary functioning principal. There was fundamental controversy as to what inferences should be drawn from the available accounts to establish the true financial condition of the New Orleans at different times within the period and to establish and present the financial results of the railroad operations that were carried on. Mr. Wyer testified that the identified consolidated balance sheets compiled under direction of the Missouri Pacific and New Orleans officers were the summarizing records which were submitted to the Board of Directors to keep its members informed in the discharge of their duties. It was through the use of the consolidated balance sheets that the New Orleans and its affiliated railroads were treated as a unit in the financing of the companies throughout Missouri Pacific management. Though he could not say what went on in the minds of others, his testimony leaves no room to doubt that the Board members well understood how the computations were arrived at and that the members relied on them in the usual course of the financing of the business. He was intimately familiar with all phases of the accounting in which they culminate, and although he admitted that perfection was never attained, his testimony together with that of the railroad officers and employees who did the work, fully justified the trial court’s reliance upon the consolidated balance sheets in his findings and conclusions. But the disputes and conflicts of testimony in respect to the accounts and the inferences to be drawn were all issues of fact. The court recognized fully all the burden of obligation imposed by law upon the Missouri Pacific in respect to its management of the New Orleans and that if the Comstock charges could be proved and the indebtedness in issue was invalid or ought not in equity to be enforced against New Orleans stockholders, the then pending plan of reorganization could not stand.
“Comstock’s contention that the court erroneously put the burden of proving his charges on him rather than requiring the Missouri Pacific to proceed first to disprove them, is without merit. As the execution of the promissory notes was admitted and at least formal proof of all of the items of advancements making up the debt had been in the record of the Section 77 proceedings for many years before the hearing, the court required only that all the records of the transactions that were questioned be made available for the hearing so that there was the equivalent of a full disclosure by the Missouri Pacific before Comstock was required to proceed with his proof of the charges. In its findings the court stated the facts as it found them to be proven by the whole evidence. It found in detail and in effect that the Missouri Pacific had administered the affairs of the New Orleans in good faith to the advantage of that company; had made the advancements to it for proper purposes; had not caused dividends to be paid out of capital or improvidently in bad faith, and that the asserted indebtedness arose from advancement made by Missouri Pacific to New Orleans for betterments and additions and was valid and should be allowed in items specified, and that the plan of reorganization based as it was in part on recognition of the existence of the debt in question, was fair and equitable and conformable to the requirements of law regarding the participation of the various classes of creditors and stockholders.”
We are confronted at the outset with petitioner’s delay and conduct and its effect on the duty of this Court and that below to pass on the merits of his objections. Corn-stock, apparently with general knowledge of the conduct he alleges to be a wrong toward the securities which he now holds, bought them at about 10 cents on the dollar nearly seven years after the alleged misconduct had ended. Thus, it was not Comstock who was a victim of any wrongdoing but those in whose hands the securities depreciated to the low point at which Comstock bought. It is apparent that Comstock bought a grievance to exploit and to reap the advantage of its rectification. Those who realized the loss through sales to Comstock could, in no event, be indemnified in this proceeding. From every viewpoint, the delay in asserting these claims is unusual. The District Court found it also prejudicial due to the death of six named witnesses and participants, among others, whose testimony would be important. While it considered the objections barred by laches, it nonetheless adjudged their merits.
We think that, in the reorganization proceeding, the courts may entertain on their merits objections to a plan even if made by one who might be barred from asserting a cause of action in his own behalf, if the subject-matter of the objections is such that it goes beyond the objector’s individual interests and affects the fairness and equity of the plan. In view of the amount and position of the claim involved, we do not disagree with the Court of Appeals that such was the case here.
It also is true, as the court below indicates, that this objector made no effort to exhaust or to avail himself of administrative remedies in support of his objection. Neither the objection nor the evidentiary support for it were laid before the Interstate Commerce Commission in its hearings on successive plans of reorganization. The requirement that the Commission “hold public hearings, at which opportunity shall be given to any interested party to be heard, and following which the Commission shall render a report” to the court is not provided without a purpose and is not to be ignored by persons with claims or objections to be heard. This issue involved matters with which the Commission and its staff are especially qualified to deal. It has had no opportunity to express a view on this issue, which was allowed to go by default before it, and the courts do not have the benefit of the Commission’s informed judgment on the matter involved. To by-pass the Commission and make the court the original forum for such contentions is not to be encouraged.
But the court did not refuse to hear the objections on their merits. In view of the functions cast upon the court in such cases, we cannot say that it may not, in its discretion, consider objections on their merits even though they have not been presented to the Commission. Some circumstances might be disclosed to indicate a remand for their consideration by the Commission. They might indicate that the courts would withhold approval, not out of deference to the objecting parties’ rights but because of the broad responsibility laid upon the court for the equity and fairness of the plan as a whole. The court will be diligent to protect itself and the public from approval of unfair plans, even by default, and may take for its own use evidence no party would have a right to force upon it. The court below evidently considered the circumstances of this case to warrant such inquiry into the merits, and we do not inquire whether the discretion was wisely exercised.
The case on the merits presents, as to several different and complicated transactions, a single question of law. It is said that our decision in Taylor v. Standard Gas & Electric Co., 306 U. S. 307, requires that the claim of Missouri Pacific against the New Orleans be disallowed and petitioner’s objections sustained. In that case this Court reformulated for application to reorganization cases a wholesome equity doctrine to the effect that a claim against a debtor subsidiary be disallowed or at least subordinated when the claimant corporation has wholly dominated and controlled the subsidiary and in the transactions creating the debt has breached its fiduciary duty and acted both to its own benefit and to the detriment of the debtor. As we later said of the decision, “This was based on the equities of the case — the history of spoliation, mismanagement, and faithless stewardship of the affairs of the subsidiary by Standard to the detriment of the public investors.” Pepper v. Litton, 308 U. S. 295, 308.
Petitioner asks us to declare the same result in this case despite explicit and unchallenged findings that, in its dealings with New Orleans during the period involved, “the Missouri Pacific acted in good faith and with due regard to its obligations, legal and equitable, to the New Orleans and its security holders,” that the “effect of the control by the Missouri Pacific of the Gulf Coast Lines was beneficial and advantageous to the New Orleans and the holders and pledgees of its securities,” that all dividends in question “were paid either out of the earned surplus of the New Orleans available for dividends or out of the net income of the New Orleans after payment of all prior charges against income,” and that the subordination of the claim as asked “would unjustly enrich the holders of the Capital Stock of the New Orleans and the holders of the Secured Serial Bonds,” as well as other more detailed findings to the same effect.
In the case before us there was domination of the subsidiary, a relationship between corporations which the law has not seen fit to proscribe. By the application of long-standing principles of equity this Court fashioned the rule in the Taylor case to prevent a fiduciary in such a position from enriching itself by breach of its trust. It is not mere existence of an opportunity to do wrong that brings the rule into play; it is the unconscionable use of the opportunity afforded by the domination to advantage itself at the injury of the subsidiary that deprives the wrongdoer of the fruits of his wrong. On the findings in this case, the claim of Missouri Pacific was the outgrowth of complicated but legitimate good faith business transactions, neither in design or effect producing injury to the petitioner or the interests for which he speaks.
Special emphasis has been placed on the fact that under control of the Missouri Pacific dividends were paid by the subsidiary at a time when it was borrowing money represented by this claim. It is clear from the findings that the dividends were paid out of current earnings or surplus, and not in violation of law or contract. Only in 1929 did New Orleans earn currently sufficient to pay its dividends. Nevertheless in all three years there was sufficient earned surplus legally to permit dividends. Heavy investments in improvements may require borrowings for dividends; but no law or public policy requires a corporation to finance capital additions out of earnings or to pass dividends because of low current earnings when past earnings are available for dividend purposes. These past earnings may be used to compensate the capital that produced them, and capital additions may be made from funds borrowed or raised by issues of capital securities, so long as the authorizations required in the case of railroads are obtained. No question is raised as to the authority to borrow.
While the contemporaneous borrowing to pay for capital additions, and payment of dividends, is not in itself illegal, it would, of course, come under the ban of the Taylor decision if it were carried out in breach of good faith for the advantage of the holding company to the detriment of the subsidiary. But the findings of good faith, fair dealing and freedom from fraud or overreaching cover the dividend policy as well as other questioned transactions. Such being the facts, the allowance of the claim is not error of law.
The findings here do not stop with holding that the questioned transactions were intended to and did benefit the system as a whole. An over-all benefit to the system might be attained at the injury of one of its units and the security holders of that unit. But here the finding of good faith and of benefit applies to the New Orleans and its security holders as well as to the system generally. The finding is unequivocal that the control of Missouri Pacific not only was “in good faith and with due regard to its obligations, legal and equitable, to the New Orleans and its security holders,” but also that its control of the Gulf Coast Lines “was beneficial and advantageous to the New Orleans and the holders and pledgees of its securities.” The criticised transactions are thus not only exonerated of evil or illegal intent but are also established as beneficial rather than injurious to the interests which now challenge them. The findings to that effect are entitled to special weight where, as here, they are based on the District Judge’s complete familiarity with the case. Reconstruction Finance Corporation v. Denver & Rio Grande Western R. Co., 328 U. S. 495, 533. Affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, they are, under the rule concerning concurrent findings, and on the basis of our grant of certiorari, conclusive in this Court.
Disallowance of petitioner’s objections on such findings was not error of law. In this view of the case we need not consider questions tendered as to validity or effect of the issuance of notes or of their pledge.
The judgment below in No. 451 is
Affirmed.
Petitions in Nos. 452, 453 and 454 were addressed to dismissals by the Court of Appeals from the same order as No. 451 but taken in different names. The petitions were filed as safeguards against procedural objections to review of the order. The writs in these cases are dismissed.
“1 '* * * that the issue by the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway Company of a note or notes in an aggregate amount not exceeding $7,456,726.78, as aforesaid, (2) is for a lawful object within its corporate purposes, and compatible with the public interest, which is necessary and appropriate for and consistent with the proper performance by it of service to the public as a common carrier, and which will not impair its ability to perform that service, and (b) is reasonably necessary and appropriate for such purpose.’ New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway Company Notes, Finance Docket No. 9817; 189 ICC 600, 601, (1933) (R. 20839-20840).”
“2 The Exhibit ‘A’ also included excerpts from a report of a subcommittee of the United States Senate on the subject of Missouri Pacific System — Inter Company Dividends and Advances, published about July 29, 1940, which criticized Missouri Pacific management of the New Orleans.”
“3 There was also at all times a substantial minority stockholding interest in the New Orleans with means to keep informed of the affairs of the regulated railroad corporation.”
The leading party opposing Comstock on this appeal was the Group of Institutional Investors, holding first and refunding mortgage bonds of MOP. This group represented less than 10% of such bonds and admitted that it had “no financial interest in the controversy revolving about” the MOP claim, its only interest being to expedite a reorganization plan then under consideration. But this group offered the only evidence in the District Court in support of the MOP claim. Another party was the NOTM mortgage and income bondholders committee, which also admitted it had no direct interest in the MOP claim litigation. Other parties included MOP, the MOP common and preferred stockholders committees, the MOP trustee, Alleghany Corporation, and certain groups of creditors and indenture trustees. These parties are now respondents before us.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The State of Maine requires government employees to pay a service fee to the local union that acts as their exclusive bargaining agent even if those employees disagree with, and do not belong to, the union. This Court has held that, in principle, the government may require this kind of payment without violating the First Amendment. See, e. g., Railway Employes v. Hanson, 351 U. S. 225 (1956) (upholding such an arrangement as constitutional); Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977) (same); Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn., 500 U. S. 507 (1991) (same). At the same time, the Court has considered the constitutionality of charging for various elements of such a fee, upholding the charging of some elements (e. g., those related to administering a collective-bargaining contract) while forbidding the charging of other elements (e. g., those related to political expenditures). Compare, e. g., Ellis v. Railway Clerks, 466 U. S. 435 (1984), with Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740 (1961).
In this case, a local union charges nonmembers a service fee that (among other things) reflects an affiliation fee that the local union pays to its national union organization. We focus upon one portion of that fee, a portion that the national union uses to pay for litigation expenses incurred in large part on behalf of other local units. We ask whether a local’s charge to nonmembers that reflects that element is consistent with the First Amendment. And we conclude that under our precedent the Constitution permits including this element in the local’s charge to nonmembers as long as (1) the subject matter of the (extralocal) litigation is of a kind that would be chargeable if the litigation were local, e. g., litigation appropriately related to collective bargaining rather than political activities, and (2) the litigation charge is reciprocal in nature, i. e., the contributing local reasonably expects other locals to contribute similarly to the national’s resources used for costs of similar litigation on behalf of the contributing local if and when it takes place.
I
Maine has designated the Maine State Employees Association (the local union) as the exclusive bargaining agent for certain executive branch employees. A collective-bargaining agreement between Maine and the local requires nonmember employees whom the union represents to pay the local union a “service fee.” And that service fee equals that portion of ordinary union dues that is related to ordinary representational activities, e. g., collective-bargaining or contract administration activities. In calculating the fee, the union starts with ordinary union dues and subtracts a sum representing the pro rata cost of nonchargeable union activities such as political, public relations, or lobbying activities.
The service fee includes a charge that represents the affiliation fee the local pays to its national union, the Service Employees International Union. The included charge takes account of the affiliation fee, however, only insofar as the fee helps to pay for the national’s activities that are of a chargeable kind, such as collective-bargaining or contract administration activities. The local does not charge nonmembers for the portion of the affiliation fee that helps pay for the national’s activities of a kind that would not normally be chargeable, such as political, public relations, or lobbying activities.
The local includes in the chargeable portion of the affiliation fee an amount that helps the national pay for litigation activities, some of which do not directly benefit Maine’s state employees’ local but rather directly benefit other locals or the national organization itself. (For purposes of simplicity, we shall call all this extraunit litigation “national litigation.”) As is true of all other parts of the affiliation fee, the local’s charge to nonmembers reflects these national litigation costs only insofar as the national litigation concerns activities that are of a chargeable kind. The local does not charge nonmembers for the portion of national litigation costs that concerns activities of a kind that would not normally be chargeable, such as political, public relations, or lobbying activities.
Numbers may help illustrate the scope of the issue. In 2005, the full service fee the local charged nonmembers amounted to about 49% of a member's ordinary union dues. (The petitioners here, beneficiaries of grandfathering rules, paid a half fee, amounting to about 24.5% of a member’s fee.) The full fee for employees like the petitioners would have amounted to about $9.70 per month. About $1.34 per month' of that $9.70 reflected a pro rata share of the portion of the national affiliation fee that the local believed was chargeable. The portion of the $1.34 per month affiliation fee charge that represented national litigation costs — the cost here at issue — amounted to considerably less.
Although the amount at issue per nonmember may be small, nonmembers believed the principle important. And in December 2005, nonmembers challenged in arbitration several aspects of the local’s service fee, including the element at issue here. In 2006, the arbitrator found all aspects of the service fee lawful. Before the arbitrator reached his decision, however, the petitioners, who are nonmembers of the local union, brought this lawsuit in Maine’s Federal District Court also challenging various aspects of the service fee, including this element. In particular, they claimed that the First Amendment prohibits charging them for any portion of the service fee that represents what we have called “national litigation,” i. e., litigation that does not directly benefit the local. The District Court, finding no material facts at issue, upheld this element of the fee. 425 F. Supp. 2d 137 (2006). The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the District Court’s determination. 498 F. 3d 49 (2007). Because of uncertainty among the Circuits as to whether, or when, the Constitution permits charging nonmembers for the costs of national litigation, we granted certiorari. Compare Otto v. Pennsylvania State Educ. Assn.-NEA, 330 F. 3d 125 (CA3 2003), with Pilots Against Illegal Dues v. Air Line Pilots Assn., 938 F. 2d 1123 (CA10 1991).
II
Prior decisions of this Court frame the question before us. In Hanson, Street, and Abood, the Court set forth a general First Amendment principle: The First Amendment permits the government to require both public sector and private sector employees who do not wish to join a union designated as the exclusive collective-bargaining representative at their unit of employment to pay that union a service fee as a condition of their continued employment. Taken together, Hanson and Street make clear that the local union cannot charge the nonmember for certain activities, such as political or ideological activities (with which the nonmembers may disagree). But under that precedent, the local can charge nonmembers for activities more directly related to collective bargaining. In such instances, the Court has determined that the First Amendment burdens accompanying the payment requirement are justified by the government’s interest in preventing freeriding by nonmembers who benefit from the union’s collective-bargaining activities and in maintaining peaceful labor relations. Street, 367 U. S., at 768-772; Hanson, 351 U. S., at 233-238.
In Abood, the Court explained the basis for a First Amendment challenge to service fees as follows: “To be required to help finance the union as a collective-bargaining agent might well be thought ... to interfere in some way with an employee’s freedom to associate for the advancement of ideas, or to refrain from doing so, as he sees fit.” 431 U. S., at 222. But the Abood Court rejected such a challenge. It found that, “the judgment clearly made in Hanson and Street is that such interference as exists is constitutionally justified by the legislative assessment of the important contribution of the union shop to the system of labor relations established by Congress.” Ibid. The Court added that, “ ‘furtherance of the common cause leaves some leeway for the leadership of the group. As long as they act to promote the cause which justified bringing the group together, the individual cannot withdraw his financial support merely because he disagrees with the group’s strategy.’ ” Id., at 223 (quoting Street, supra, at 778 (Douglas, J., concurring)).
In Ellis and Lehnert, the Court refined the general First Amendment principle. In particular, it refined the boundaries of Abood’s constitutional “leeway” by describing the nature of the cost elements that the local, constitutionally speaking, could include, or which the local could not constitutionally include, in the service fee. In 1984, the Court wrote in Ellis that service fees are constitutionally permissible when they relate to the union’s duties of “negotiating and administering a collective agreement and in adjusting grievances and disputes.” 466 U. S., at 446-447 (citing Railway Clerks v. Allen, 373 U. S. 113, 121 (1963)). Accordingly, the Court explained, the local union could charge the nonmember for union “expenditures [that] are necessarily or reasonably incurred for the purpose of performing the duties of an exclusive representative of the employees in dealing with the employer on labor-management issues.” 466 U. S., at 448. In doing so, the union could charge nonmembers for “the direct costs of negotiating and administering a collective-bargaining contract” and for “the expenses of activities or undertakings normally or reasonably employed to implement or effectuate the duties of the union as exclusive representative of the employees in the bargaining unit.” Ibid.
Applying this standard, the Ellis Court examined the particular service fee charges challenged in that case. The Court held that the local union could charge nonmembers for the costs of a national convention, id., at 448-449; for the costs of social activities, id., at 449-450; and for the costs of those portions of publications not devoted to political causes, id., at 450-451. Convention expenses are chargeable, the Court explained, because, if a local union is to function effectively, “it must maintain its corporate or associational existence.” Id., at 448.
The Court also held that the local union could charge nonmembers for litigation expenses incidental to the local union’s negotiation or administration of a collective-bargaining agreement, fair representation litigation, jurisdictional disputes, or other litigation normally conducted by an exclusive representative. Id., at 453. But the Court then said (in language that the petitioners here emphasize) that “expenses of litigation not having such a connection with the bargaining unit are not to be charged to objecting employees.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
In 1991, the Court in Lehnert again described when an expense is chargeable. The Court said that a chargeable expenditure must bear an appropriate relation to collective-bargaining activity. 500 U. S., at 519. (Its specific description of that relation is not at issue here. Compare ibid, with id., at 557-558 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).) The Court then considered one aspect of the matter here before us, the chargeability of a local union’s payment to a national organization, say, an affiliation fee. The Court assumed that, in any given year, such a payment would primarily benefit other local units or the national organization itself, but it would not necessarily provide a direct benefit to the contributing local. The petitioners in the case (nonmembers of a teacher’s union) argued that the Constitution forbids a local union to charge nonmembers for these activities, i. e., for “activities that, though closely related to collective bargaining generally, are not undertaken directly on behalf of the bargaining unit to which the objecting employees belong.” Id., at 519.
The Court divided five to four on the general affiliation fee matter. The majority of the Court rejected the nonmembers’ claim. The Court noted that it had “never interpreted” the chargeability test “to require a direct relationship between the expense at issue and some tangible benefit to the dissenters’ bargaining unit.” Id., at 522. Indeed, “to require so close a connection would be to ignore the unified-membership structure under which many unions, including those here, operate.” Id., at 528. Rather, the affiliation relationship is premised on the “notion that the parent will bring to bear its often considerable economic, political, and informational resources when the local is in need of them.” Ibid. And that “part of a local’s affiliation fee which contributes to the pool of resources potentially available to the local is assessed for the bargaining unit’s protection, even if it is not actually expended on that unit in any particular membership year.” Ibid.
The Court then held that “a local bargaining representative may charge objecting employees for their pro rata share of the costs associated with otherwise chargeable activities of its state and national affiliates, even if those activities were not performed for the direct benefit of the objecting employees’ bargaining unit.” Id., at 524 (emphasis added). Of particular relevance here, the Court added that the local unit need not “demonstrate a direct and tangible impact upon the dissenting employee’s unit.” Nonetheless, it said, there must be “some indication that the payment [say, to the national affiliate] is for services that may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local union by virtue of their membership in the parent organization.” Ibid.
Finally, the Lehnert Court turned to the subject now before us, that of payment for national litigation. On this point, the Court split into three irreconcilable factions. A plurality of four wrote that, even though the union was “clearly correct that precedent established through litigation on behalf of one unit may ultimately be of some use to another unit,” it nonetheless found “extraunit litigation to be more akin to lobbying in both kind and effect.” Id., at 528. The plurality added that litigation is often “expressive.” It concluded that “[w]hen unrelated to an objecting employee’s unit, such activities are not germane to the union’s duties as exclusive bargaining representative.” Ibid.
The Member of the Court who provided the fifth vote for the other portions of the Court’s opinion dissented from the part of the opinion on national litigation. Justice Marshall noted that the plurality’s discussion of national litigation costs was dicta because no such costs were at issue in the case. Id., at 544 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Nevertheless, Justice Marshall characterized any rule that found national litigation costs per se nonchargeable as “surely incorrect” and indicated such costs should be assessed under the plurality’s own test, i. e., whether the litigation bears an appropriate relation to collective bargaining. Id., at 546-547.
At the same time, four Members of the Court agreed with the nonmembers that including national costs in the service fee violates the First Amendment except when those costs pay for specific services “actually provided” to the local. Id., at 561 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis deleted). They thought that a local union cannot charge nonmembers for national activities unless there is a direct relationship between the expenses and “some tangible benefit to the dissenters’ bargaining unit.” Id., at 562 (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the dissent expressly rejected the majority’s chargeability test for national expenses. But the dissent did not separately discuss national litigation activities, perhaps because, as Justice Marshall pointed out, they were not directly at issue in that case.
Ill
As a result of the Lehnert Court’s failure to find a majority as to the chargeability of national litigation expenses, the lower courts have been uncertain about the matter. Compare Otto, 330 F. 3d, at 138, with Pilots Against Illegal Dues, 938 F. 2d, at 1130-1131. Having examined the question further, we now believe that, consistent with the Court’s precedent, costs of that litigation are chargeable provided the litigation meets the relevant standards for charging other national expenditures that the Lehnert majority enunciated. Under those standards, a local union may charge a nonmember an appropriate share of its contribution to a national’s litigation expenses if (1) the subject matter of the national litigation bears an appropriate relation to collective bargaining and (2) the arrangement is reciprocal — that is, the local’s payment to the national affiliate is for “services that may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local union by virtue of their membership in the parent organization.” 500 U. S., at 524.
We reach this conclusion in part because logic suggests that the same standard should apply to national litigation expenses as to other national expenses. We can find no significant difference between litigation activities and other national activities the cost of which this Court has found chargeable. We can find no sound basis for holding that national social activities, national convention activities, and activities involved in producing the nonpolitical portions of national union publications all are chargeable but national litigation activities are not. See Ellis, 466 U. S., at 448-451. Of course, a local nonmember presumably has the right to attend, and consequently can directly benefit from, national social and convention activities; and a local nonmember can read, and benefit from, a national publication. But so can a local nonmember benefit from national litigation aimed at helping other units if the national or those other units will similarly contribute to the cost of litigation on the local union’s behalf should the need arise.
The petitioners’ arguments to the contrary rest primarily upon their understanding of Ellis and Lehnert Ellis, we must concede, sets forth certain kinds of national litigation— for the most part directly related to a local union’s particular interests — as chargeable; but it then goes on to say, as we have earlier pointed out, supra, at 215, that “expenses of litigation not having such a connection with the bargaining unit are not to be charged to objecting employees.” 466 U. S., at 453. Nonetheless, as the Court of Appeals noted, the Ellis Court focused upon a local union’s payment of national litigation expenses without any understanding as to reciprocity. Indeed, Justice Kennedy pointed out in his Lehnert dissent, “Ellis ... contains no discussion of whether a local bargaining unit might choose to fund litigation . . . through a cost sharing arrangement under the auspices of the affiliate.” 500 U. S., at 564 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Ellis nowhere explains why reciprocal litigation funding arrangements would fail to benefit a local union. Hence, Ellis does not answer the question presented here.
We must also concede that a plurality in Lehnert wrote that national litigation expenses were not chargeable “[wjhen unrelated to an objecting employee’s unit.” 500 U. S., at 528. But, again, reciprocal litigation funding was not before the Court; hence the plurality could not (and did not) decide whether an understanding as to reciprocity produced the relationship necessary for chargeability. Regardless, a plurality does not speak for the Court as a whole.
Nor can one simply add together the four Lehnert dissenters and the four Members of the plurality in an effort to find a majority of Justices who hold the petitioners’ view. That is because the Lehnert majority, speaking for the Court, adopted a more liberal standard of chargeability than the standard embraced by the dissent. And the question here is whether that standard permits charging nonmembers for national litigation expenses. There was no majority agreement in Lehnert about the answer to this last mentioned question. The best we can do for the petitioners is to find Lehnert ambiguous on the point at issue.
IV
Applying Lehnert’s standard to the national litigation expenses here at issue, we find them chargeable. First, the kind of national litigation activity for which the local charges nonmembers concerns only those aspects of collective bargaining, contract administration, or other matters that the courts have held chargeable. Ellis, supra, at 446-447. The lower courts found (and the petitioners here do not dispute) that the local charges nonmembers only for those national litigation activities that, in respect to subject matter, “were comparable to those undertaken” by the local and which the local “deemed chargeable” in its calculation of the “service fee.” 498 F. 3d, at 52, 64-65. And no one here denies that under Lehnert this kind of activity bears an appropriate relation to collective bargaining. See, e. g., Lehnert, 500 U. S., at 519 (plurality opinion); see also id., at 524 (“[A] local bargaining representative may charge objecting employees for their pro rata share of the costs associated with otherwise chargeable activities of its state and national affiliates ... ”).
Second, the location of the litigation activity is at the national (or extraunit), not the local, level. But, as we have just said (under Lehnert), activity at the national level is chargeable as long as the charges in question are “for services that may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local union by virtue of their membership in the parent organization.” Ibid.
The Court of Appeals treated the litigation charge at issue as reciprocal in nature, and concluded the District Court must have done so as well. See 498 F. 3d, at 64-65. The local union here says that the payment of its affiliation fee gives locals in general access to the national’s financial resources — compiled via contributions from various locals— “which would not otherwise be available to the local union when needed to effectively negotiate, administer or enforce the local’s collective bargaining agreements.” Brief for Respondent 18-19. The resources in question include resources related to litigation. No one claims that the national would treat the local union before us any differently, in terms of making these resources available, than the national would treat any other local. The petitioners do not suggest the contrary. And we consequently conclude, as did the lower courts, that the existence of reciprocity is assumed by the parties and not here in dispute.
The record then leads us to find that the national litigation expenses before us are both appropriately related to collective bargaining and reciprocal. Consequently, consistent with our precedent, those expenses are chargeable. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court (Parts I, II-A, and III) together with an opinion (Part II-B), in which Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice Marshall joined.
• Like its companions, this case involves a claim of a State’s unconstitutional interference with the decision to terminate pregnancy. The particular object of the challenge is a Missouri statute excluding abortions that are not “medically indicated” from the purposes for which Medicaid benefits are available to needy persons. In its present posture, however, the case presents two issues not going to the merits of this dispute. The first is whether the plaintiff-appellees, as physicians who perform nonmedically indicated abortions, have standing to maintain the suit, to which we answer that they do. The second is whether the Court of Appeals, exercising jurisdiction because the suit had been dismissed in the District Court for lack of standing, properly proceeded to a determination of the merits, to which we answer that it did not.
I
Missouri participates in the so-called Medicaid program, under which the Federal Government partially underwrites qualifying state plans for medical assistance to the needy. See 42 U. S. C. § 1396 et seq. (1970 ed. and Supp. IV). Missouri’s plan, which is set out in Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 208.151-208.158 (Supp. 1975), includes, in § 208.152, a list of 12 categories of medical services that are eligible for Medicaid funding. The last is:
“(12) Family planning services as defined by federal rules and regulations; provided, however, that such family planning services shall not in-elude abortions unless such abortions are medically indicated.”
This provision is the subject of the litigation before us.
The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri by two ■ Missouri-licensed physicians. Each plaintiff avers, in an affidavit filed in opposition to a motion to dismiss, that he “has provided, and anticipates providing abortions to welfare patients who are eligible for Medicaid payments.” App. 32, 36. The plaintiffs further allege in their affidavits that all Medicaid applications filed in connection with abortions performed by them have been refused by the defendant, who is the responsible state official, in reliance on the challenged § 208.152 (12). App. 32, 36. It is not entirely clear who has filed these applications. One affiant states that “he and [his] patients have been refused,” id., at 32; the other refers to “those who have submitted applications for such payments on his behalf” and states that such “payments'have been refused.” Id., at 36. Indeed, it is not entirely clear to whom the payments would go if they were made. We assume, however, 'from .the statute’s several references to payments “on behalf of” eligible persons, see §§208.151 and 208.-152, that the provider of the services himself seeks reimbursement from the State. In any event, each plaintiff states that he anticipates further refusals by the defendant to fund nonmedically indicated abortions. Each avers that such refusals “deter [him] from the practice of medicine in the manner he considers to be most expertise [sic] and beneficial for said patients . . . and chill and thwart the ordinary and customary functioning of the doctor-patient relationship.” App. 32, 36.
The complaint sought a declaration of the statute's invalidity and an injunction against its enforcement. A number of grounds were stated, among them that the statute, “on its face and as applied,” is unconstitutionally vague, “[d]eprives plaintiffs of their right to practice medicine according to the highest standards of medical practice”; “[d]eprives plaintiffs’ patients of the fundamental right of a woman to determine for herself whether to bear children”; “[infringes upon plaintiffs’ right to render and their patients’ right to receive safe and adequate medical advice and treatment”; and “[d]eprives plaintiffs and their patients, each in their own classification, of the equal protection of the laws.” Id., at 16, 12-13.
The defendant’s sole pleading in District Court was a pre-answer motion to dismiss. Dismissal was sought upon several alternative grounds: that there was no case or controversy; that the plaintiffs lacked “standing to litigate the constitutional issues raised”; that injunctive relief “cannot be granted” because of absence of “irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs; that the plaintiffs “personally could suffer no harm”; and that in any case they “cannot litigate the alleged deprivation or infringement of the civil rights of their welfare patients.” Id., at 2<D25.
The plaintiffs having responded to this motion with a memorandum and also with the affidavits described above, the three-judge panel that had been convened to hear the case dismissed the count now before us “for lack of standing.” The court saw no “logical nexus between the status asserted by the plaintiffs and the claim they seek to have adjudicated.” Wulff v. State Bd. of Registration for Healing Arts, 380 F. Supp. 1137, 1144 (1974).
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. 508 F. 2d 1211 (1974). It reasoned that Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179 (1973), as interpreted in several of its own earlier decisions, had “ ‘paved the way for physicians to assert their constitutional rights to practice medicine/ ” citing Nyberg v. City of Virginia, 495 F. 2d 1342, 1344 (CA8), appeal dismissed and cert. denied, 419 U. S. 891 (1974). Those rights were said to include “ ‘the right to advise and perform abortions/ ” and furthermore to be “ ‘inextricably bound up with the privacy rights of women who seek abortions.’ ” 508 F. 2d, at 1213. Clearly, the restriction of Medicaid benefits affected the plaintiff physicians “both professionally and monetarily.” Id., at 1214. The result, in the Court of Appeals’ view, was that they had alleged sufficient “ ‘injury in fact,’ ” and also an interest “ ‘arguably within the zone of interests to be protected ; . . by the . .. constitutional guarantee in question,’ ” ibid., quoting Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 153 (1970).
Although it found the matter “not without its difficulty,” 508 F. 2d, at 1214, the Court of Appeals next concluded that, being “urged by appellants” (respondents here), it should proceed from the standing question to the merits of the case. This, rather than a remand, it considered proper because the question of the statute’s validity could not profit from further refinement, and indeed was one whose answer was in no doubt. The statute was “obviously unconstitutional,” and it therefore appeared “that the case might well have been decided by one federal judge.” Id., at 1215. The court, accordingly, chose “to make final determination of this case.” Ibid. Proceeding to the merits, the court found a “clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” Ibid. The statute constituted a “special regulation on abortion,” and discriminated against both the patient and the physician “by reason of the patient’s poverty.” Id., at 1215-1216. Section 208.152 (12) was therefore declared unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals. Injunctive relief was felt to be unnecessary, it being assumed that the State would comply with the declaration and cease any discrimination between needy patients seeking therapeutic and nontherapeutic abortions. 508 F. 2d, at 1213-1216. We granted certiorari, limited to the two questions identified in the opening paragraph of this opinion. 422 U. S. 1041 (1975).
II
Although we are not certain that they have been clearly separated in the District Court’s and Court of Appeals’ opinions, two distinct standing questions are presented. We have distinguished them in prior cases, e. g., Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S., at 152-153; Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 99 n. 20 (1968); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 255 (1953), and they are these: First, whether the plaintiff-respondents allege “injury in fact,” that is, a sufficiently concrete interest in the outcome of their suit to make it a case or controversy subject to a federal court’s Art. Ill jurisdiction, and, second, whether, as a prudential matter, the plaintiff-respondents are proper proponents of the particular legal rights on which they base their suit.
A. The first of these questions needs little comment, for there is no doubt now that the respondent-physicians suffer concrete injury from the operation of the challenged statute. Their complaint and affidavits, described above, allege that they have performed and will continue to perform operations for which they would be reimbursed under the Medicaid program, were it not for the limitation of reimbursable abortions to those that are “medically indicated.” If the physicians prevail in their suit to remove this limitation, they will benefit, for they will then receive payment for the abortions. The State (and Federal Government) will'be out of pocket by the amount of the payments. The relationship between the parties is classically adverse, and there clearly exists between them a case or controversy in the constitutional sense. Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U. S. 26, 37-39 (1976); Investment Co. Institute v. Camp, 401 U. S. 617, 620-621 (1971); Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S., at 151-156.
B. The question of what rights the doctors may assert in seeking to resolve that controversy is more difficult. The Court of Appeals adverted to what it perceived to be the doctor’s own “constitutional rights to practice medicine.” 508 F. 2d, at 1213. We have no occasion to decide whether such rights exist. Assuming that they do, the doctors, of course, can assert them. It appears, however, that the Court of Appeals also accorded the doctors standing to assert, and indeed granted them relief based partly upon, the rights of their patients. We must decide whether this assertion of jus tertii was a proper one.
Federal courts must hesitate before resolving a controversy, even one within their constitutional power to resolve, on the basis of the rights of third persons not parties to the litigation. The reasons are two. First, the courts should not adjudicate such rights unnecessarily, and it may be that in fact the holders of those rights either do not wish to assert them, or will be able to enjoy them regardless of whether the in-court litigant is successful or not. See Ashwander v. TV A, 297 U. S. 288, 345-348 (1936) (Brandéis, J., concurring) (offering the standing requirement as one means by which courts avoid unnecessary constitutional adjudications). Second, third parties themselves usually will be the best proponents of their own rights. The courts depend on effective advocacy, and therefore should prefer to construe legal rights only when the most effective advocates of those rights are before them. The holders of the rights may have a like preference, to the extent they will be bound by the courts’ decisions under the doctrine of stare decisis. See, e. g., Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962) (standing requirement aimed at “assuring] that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of the issues upon which the court so largely depends”); Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366, 397 (1898) (assertion of third parties’ rights would come with “greater cogency” from the third parties themselves). These two considerations underlie the Court’s general rule: “Ordinarily, one may not claim standing in this Court to vindicate the constitutional rights of some third party.” Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S., at 255. See also Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S., at 99 n. 20; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 429 (1961).
Like any general rule, however, this one should not be applied where its underlying justifications are absent. With this in mind, the Court has looked primarily to two factual elements to determine whether the rule should apply in a particular case. The first is the relationship of the litigant to the person whose right he seeks to assert. If the enjoyment of the right is inextricably bound up with the activity the litigant wishes to pursue, the court at least can be sure that its construction of the right is not unnecessary in the sense that the right’s enjoyment will be unaffected by the outcome of the suit. Furthermore, the relationship between the litigant and the third party may be such that the former is fully, or very nearly, as effective a proponent of the right as the latter. Thus in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965), where two persons had been convicted of giving advice on contraception, the Court permitted the defendants, one of whom was a licensed physician, to assert the privacy rights of the married persons whom they advised. The Court pointed to the “confidential” nature of the relationship between the defendants and the married persons, and reasoned that the rights of the latter were “likely to be diluted or adversely affected” if they could not be asserted in such a case. Id., at 481. See also Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, 445-446 (1972) (stressing “advocate” relationship and “impact of the litigation on the third-party interests”); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S., at 259 (owner of real estate subject to racial covenant granted standing to challenge such covenant in part because she was “the one in whose charge and keeping repose [d] the power to continue to use her property to discriminate or to discontinue such use”). A doctor-patient relationship similar to that in Griswold existed in Doe v. Bolton, where the Court also permitted physicians to assert the rights of their patients. 410 U. S., at 188-189. Indeed, since that right was the right to an abortion, Doe would flatly control the instant case were it not for the fact that there the physicians were seeking protection from possible criminal prosecution.
The other factual element to which the Court has looked is the ability of the third party to assert his own right. Even where the relationship is close, the reasons for requiring persons to assert their own rights will generally still apply. If there is some genuine obstacle to such assertion, however, the third party’s absence from court loses its tendency to suggest that his right is not truly at stake, or truly important to him, and fhe party who is in court becomes by default the right’s best available proponent. Thus, in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449 (1958), the Court held that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in resisting a court order that it divulge the names of its members, could assert the First and Fourteenth Amendments rights of those members to remain anonymous. The Court reasoned that “[tjo require that [the right] be claimed by the members themselves would result in nullification of the right at the very moment of its assertion.” Id., at 459. See also Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S., at 446; Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S., at 259.
Application of these principles to the present case quickly yields its proper result. The closeness of the relationship is patent, as it was in Griswold and in Doe. A woman cannot safely secure an abortion without the aid of a physician, and an impecunious woman cannot easily secure an abortion without the physician’s being paid by the State. The woman’s exercise of her right to an abortion, whatever its dimension, is therefore necessarily at stake here. Moreover, the constitutionally protected abortion decision is one in which the physician is intimately involved. See Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S., at 153-156. Aside from the woman herself, therefore, the physician is uniquely qualified to litigate the constitutionality of the State’s interference with, or discrimination against, that decision.
As to the woman’s assertion of her own rights, there are several obstacles. For one thing, she may be chilled from such assertion by a desire to protect the very privacy of her decision from the publicity of a court suit. A second obstacle is the imminent mootness, at least in the technical sense, of any individual woman’s claim. Only a few months, at the most, after the maturing of the decision to undergo an abortion, her right thereto will have been irrevocably lost, assuming, as it seems fair to assume, that unless the impecunious woman can establish Medicaid eligibility she must forgo abortion. It is true that these obstacles are not insurmountable. Suit may be brought under a pseudonym, as so frequently has been done. A woman who is no longer pregnant may nonetheless retain the right to litigate the point because it is “ 'capable of repetition yet evading review.’ ” Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S., at 124-125. And it may be that a class could be assembled, whose fluid membership always included some women with live claims. But if the assertion of the right is to be “representative” to such an extent anyway, there seems little loss in terms of effective advocacy from allowing its assertion by a physician.
For these reasons, we conclude that it generally is appropriate to allow a physician to assert the rights of women patients as against governmental interference with the abortion decision, and we decline to restrict our holding to that effect in Doe to its purely criminal context. In this respect, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
III
On this record, we do not agree, however, with the action of the Court of Appeals in proceeding beyond the issue of standing to a resolution of the merits of the case. Petitioner urges that this action was particularly inappropriate because the case is one in which the requested injunctive relief could be granted or denied on the merits only by a three-judge district court, with direct appeal here. We find it unnecessary to reach this contention, or the respondents’ arguments that a three-judge court was not required because the statute is so patently unconstitutional and because in any event only declaratory relief is warranted. Quite apart from these considerations, the Court of Appeals’ resolution of the merits seems to us to be an unacceptable exercise of its appellate jurisdiction.
As noted, with respect to the complaint’s count that is before us, petitioner filed in the District Court only a pre-answer motion to dismiss for lack of standing. He filed no answer, and no other pleading addressed to the merits. He did answer some interrogatories, App. 26, but stipulated to no facts, and gave no intimation of what defenses, if any, he might have other than the plaintiffs’ alleged lack of standing. The District Court granted his motion to dismiss and no more. That dismissal was the “final decision” appealed from, see 28 U. S. C. § 1291, and on appeal petitioner limited himself entirely to the standing determination that underlay it. In short, petitioner has never been heard in any way on the merits of the case.
It is the general rule, of course, that a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below. In Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U. S. 552, 556 (1941), the Court explained that this is “essential in order that parties may have the opportunity to offer all the evidence they believe relevant to the issues . . . [and] in order that litigants may not be surprised on appeal by final decision there of issues upon which they have had no opportunity to introduce evidence.” We have no idea what evidence, if any, petitioner would, or could, offer in defense of this statute, but this is only because petitioner has had no opportunity to proffer such evidence. Moreover, even assuming that there is no such evidence, petitioner should have the opportunity to present whatever legal arguments he may have in defense of the statute. We think he was justified in not presenting those arguments to the Court of Appeals, and in assuming, rather, that he would at least be allowed to answer the complaint, should the Court of Appeals reinstate it.
The matter of what questions may be taken up and resolved for the first time on appeal is one left primarily to the discretion of the courts of appeals, to be exercised on the facts of individual cases. We announce no general rule. Certainly there are circumstances in which a federal appellate court is justified in resolving an issue not passed on below, as where the proper resolution is beyond any doubt, see Turner v. City of Memphis, 369 U. S. 350 (1962), or where “injustice might otherwise result.” Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U. S., at 557. Suffice it to say that this is not such a case. The issue resolved by the Court of Appeals has never been passed upon in any decision of this Court. This being so, injustice was more likely to be caused than avoided by deciding the issue without petitioner’s having had an opportunity to be heard.
Assuming, therefore, that the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to proceed to the merits in this case, we hold that it should not have done so. To that extent, its judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded with directions that it be returned to the District Court so that petitioner may file an answer to the complaint and the litigation proceed accordingly.
It is so ordered.
Planned Parenthood of Missouri v. Danforth, ante, p. 52, Bellotti v. Baird, post, p. 132.
The complaint contained two additional counts directed against the Missouri State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts, and concerning other Missouri statutes relating to abortions upon minors. The District Court’s dismissal of those counts has not been appealed and is not now before us.
Plaintiffs sued on their own behalf and on behalf of the class of similarly situated physicians. App. 15. Apparently, however, the suit was dismissed by the District Court before any such class was certified.
Defendant Singleton, petitioner herein, is Chief of the Bureau of Medical Services in the Division of Welfare of Missouri’s Department of Public Health and Welfare. Id., at 16.
We have reiterated that holding today in Planned Parenthood of Missouri v. Danforth, ante, at 62.
Mr. Justice Powell objects that such an obstacle is not enough, that our prior cases allow assertion of third-party rights only when such assertion by the third parties themselves would be “in all practicable terms impossible.” Post, at 126. Carefully analyzed, our cases do not go that far. The Negro real-estate purchaser in Barrows, if he could prove that the racial covenant alone stood in the way of his purchase (as presumably he could easily have done, given the amicable posture of the seller in that case), could surely have sought a declaration of its invalidity or an injunction against its enforcement. The Association members in NAACP v. Alabama could have obtained a similar declaration or injunction, suing anonymously by the use of pseudonyms. The recipients of contraceptives in Eisenstadt (or their counterparts in Griswold and Doe, for that matter) could have sought similar relief as necessary to the enjoyment of their constitutional rights. The point is not that these were easy alternatives, but that they differed only in the degree of difficulty, if they differed at all, from the alternative in this case of the women themselves seeking a declaration or injunction that would force the State to pay the doctors for their abortions.
Mr. Justice Powell would so limit Doe, and the other cases cited, explaining them as cases in which the State “directly interfered with the abortion decision” and “directly interdicted the normal functioning of the physician-patient relationship by criminalizing certain procedures.” Post, at 128, There is no support in the language of the cited cases for this distinction, and we are given no logical reason why “direct” interference with a litigant’s conduct should provide a special reason for allowing him to assert third-party rights. Moreover, a “direct interference” or “interdiction” test does not appear to be supported by precedent. We have allowed jus tertii assertion where the interference was no more direct than it is here, In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), for example, private schools were permitted to assert the rights of parents as against a state requirement that their children receive a public education, even though the private schools were not thereby “interdicted” at all, but only reduced to the role of supplementing the public school education. Conversely, we regularly disallow jus tertii assertion even though the State has “interdicted” the litigant’s conduct to the point of “criminalizing” it. See Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223, 230 (1973) (Fourth Amendment rights of others); Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 610 (1973) (rights of others to be free from application of same statute); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S, 420, 429-430 (1961) (store owners convicted of violating Sunday closing laws could not assert religious liberty rights of customers). Finally, it is not clear why a “direct interference” or “interdiction” test would not allow the jus tertii assertion in this case. For a doctor who cannot afford to work for nothing, and a woman who cannot afford to pay him, the State’s refusal to fund an abortion, is as effective an “interdiction” of it as would ever be necessary. Furthermore, since the right asserted in this case is not simply the right to have an abortion, but the right to have abortions nondiscriminatorily funded, the denial of such funding is as complete an “interdiction” of the exercise of the right as could ever exist.
MR. Justice Powell also voices the concern that our decision today will be “difficult to cabin,” and threatens to allow “any provider of services ... to assert his client's or customer’s constitutional rights, if any, in an attack on a welfare statute that excludes from coverage his particular transaction.” Post, at 129, 129-130. It is true that it is mofe difficult to predict the pattern of results in future cases when the Court elects to proceed, as it does today, by assessing relevant factors in individual cases (and we give no decisive or pre-eminent importance to any one of these factors), rather than by adopting a set of per se rules, such as those Mr. Justice Powell would apparently prefer based on the “direct interdiction” of the litigant’s conduct and the impossibility of third-party assertion. Still, we cannot share the Justice’s alarm. Unless the “provider of services” that he has in mind enjoys with his “client” a confidential relationship such as that of the doctor and patient, unless the “client’s” claim is imminently moot, as the pregnant woman’s technically is, the standing issue in such a future case will not be definitively controlled by this one. Beyond that, we simply decline to speculate on cases not before us.
These examples are not intended to be exclusive.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioners, citizens of Mexico, entered the United States illegally. To assure their presence as material witnesses at the federal criminal trials of those accused of illegally bringing them into this country, they were required to post bond pursuant to former Rule 46 (b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Unable to make bail, they were incarcerated.
The petitioners instituted the present class action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on behalf of themselves and others similarly incarcerated as material witnesses. Their complaint alleged that they, and the other members of their class, had been paid only $1 for every day of their confinement; that the statute providing the compensation to be paid witnesses requires payment of a total of $21 per day to material witnesses in custody; and that, alternatively, if the statute be construed to require payment of only $1 per day to detained witnesses, it violates the Fifth Amendment guarantees of just compensation and due process. They did not attack the validity or length of their incarceration as such, but sought monetary damages under the Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (a)(2), for the lost compensation claimed, and equivalent declaratory and injunctive relief.
The statute in question, 28 U. S. C. § 1821, provides that a “witness attending in any court of the United States . . . shall receive $20 for each day’s attendance and for the time necessarily occupied in going to and returning from the same A separate paragraph of the statute entitles “a witness . . . detained in prison for want of security for his appearance, ... in addition to his subsistence, to a compensation of $1 per day.”
The petitioners’ complaint was grounded upon the theory that they were “attending in . . . court” throughout the period of their incarceration, since they were prevented from engaging in their normal occupations in order to be ready to testify. They argued that the $20 fee is compensation for the inconvenience and private loss suffered when a witness comes to testify, and that all of these burdens are borne by the incarcerated witness throughout his confinement. Urging that the compensation provisions should be applied as broadly as the problem they were designed to ameliorate, the petitioners argued that they were entitled to the $20 compensation for every day of confinement, in addition to the $1 a day that they viewed as a token payment for small necessities while in jail.
While they pressed this broad definition of “attendance,” the petitioners also pointed to a narrower and more acute problem in administering the statute. Their amended complaint alleged that nonincarcerated witnesses are paid $20 for each day after they have been summoned to testify — even for those days they are not needed in court and simply wait in the relative comfort of their hotel rooms to be called. By contrast, witnesses in jail are paid only $1 a day when they are waiting to testify — even when the trial for which they have been detained is in progress. In short, the amended complaint alleged that the Government has construed the statute to mean that incarcerated witnesses must be physically present in the courtroom before they are eligible for the $20 daily compensation, but that nonincarcerated witnesses need not be similarly present to receive that amount.
In its answer, the Government conceded that each witness detained in custody is paid only $1 for every day of incarceration, and that the witness fee of $20 is paid only when such- a witness is actually in attendance in court. The Government defended this practice as required by the literal words of the statute, and argued that the statute, as so construed, is constitutional.
In an unreported order, the District Court granted the Government's motion for summary judgment, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 452 F. 2d 951. The Court of Appeals concluded that the $20 witness fee is properly payable only to those witnesses who are “in attendance” or traveling to and from court, and not to those who are incarcerated to assure their attendance. So interpreted, the court upheld the statute as constitutional. We granted certiorari, 409 U. S. 841, to consider a question of seeming importance in the administration of justice in the federal courts.
I
Both the petitioners and the Government adhere to their own quite contrary interpretations of § 1821 — the petitioners maintaining that they are entitled to a $20 witness fee for every day of incarceration and the Government seeking to limit such payment to those days on which a detained witness is physically “in attendance” in court. We find both interpretations of the statute incorrect — the petitioners’ too expansive, the Government’s too restricted.
The statute provides to a “witness attending in any court of the United States” $20 “for each day's attendance.” This perforce means that a witness can be eligible for the $20 fee only when two requirements are satisfied — when there is a court in session that he is to attend, and when he is in necessary attendance on that court.
The petitioners’ interpretation of “attendance” as beginning with the first day of incarceration slights the statutory requirement that attendance be in court. A witness might be detained many days before the case in which he is to testify is called for trial. During that time, there is literally no court in session in which he could conceivably be considered to be in attendance. Over a century and a half ago Attorney General William Wirt rejected a similar construction of an almost identically worded law. He found that the then-current statute, which provided compensation to a witness “for each day he shall attend in court,” could not be construed to provide payment to incarcerated witnesses for every day of their detention:
“There is no court, except it be a court in session. There are judges; but they do not constitute a court, except when they assemble to administer the law. ... Now I cannot conceive with what propriety a witness can be said to be attending in court when there is no court, and will be no court for several months.
“To consider a witness who has been committed to jail becausfe he cannot give security to attend a future court, to be actually attending the court from the time of his commitment, and this for five months before there is any court in existence, would seem to me to be rather a forced and unnatural construction.” 1 Op, Atty. Gen. 424, 427.
The Government, on the other hand, would place a restrictive gloss on the statute’s requirement of necessary attendance; it maintains that the $20 compensation need be paid only for the days a witness is in actual physical attendance in court, and it concludes that a witness confined during the trial need only be paid for those days on which he is actually brought into the courtroom. But § 1821 does not speak in terms of “physical” or “actual” attendance, and we decline to engraft such a restriction upon the statute. Rather, the statute reaches those witnesses who have been summoned and are in necessary attendance on the court, in readiness to testify. There is nothing magic about the four walls of a courtroom. Once a witness has been summoned to testify, whether he waits in a witness room, a prosecutor’s office, a hotel room, or the jail, he is still available to testify, and it is that availability that the statute compensates. Non-incarcerated witnesses are compensated under the statute for days on which they have made themselves available to testify but on which their physical presence in the courtroom is not required — for example, where the trial is adjourned or where their testimony is only needed on a later day. We cannot accept the anomalous conclusion that the same statutory language imposes a requirement of physical presence in the courtroom on witnesses who have been confined. Attorney General Wirt concluded that language similar to that at issue here, did not require any such physical presence:
“But it was by no means my intention to authorize the inference . . . that, in order to entitle a witness to his per diem allowance under the act of Congress, it was necessary that he should be every day corporeally present within the walls of the court-room, and that the court must be every day in actual session. Such a puerility never entered my mind. My opinion simply was, and is, that before compensation could begin to run, the court must have commenced its session; the session must be legally subsisting, and the witness attending on the court — not necessarily in the court-room, but within its power, whenever it may require his attendance. ... I consider a witness as attending on court to the purpose of earning his compensation, so long as he is in the power of the court whensoever it may become necessary to call for his evidence, although he may not have entered the court-room until such call shall have been made; and I consider the court in session from the moment of its commencement until its adjournment sine die, notwithstanding its intermediate adjournments de die in diem." 1 Op. Atty. Gen., at 426-427.
We conclude that a material witness who has been incarcerated is entitled to the $20 compensation for every day of confinement during the trial or other proceeding for which he has been detained. On each of those days, the two requirements of the statute are satisfied — there is a court in session and the witness is in necessary attendance. He is in the same position as a nonincar-cerated witness who is summoned to appear on the first day of trial, but on arrival is told by the prosecutor that he is to hold himself ready to testify on a later day in the trial. The Government pays such a witness for every day he is in attendance on the court, and the statute requires it to pay the same per diem compensation to the incarcerated witness. Because the Court of Appeals upheld a construction of the statute that would allow the $20 to be paid to incarcerated witnesses only for those days they actually appear in the courtroom, its judgment must be set aside.
II
The petitioners argue that if § 1821 provides incarcerated witnesses only a dollar day for the period before the trial begins, then the statute is unconstitutional. We cannot agree.
As noted at the outset, the petitioners do not attack the constitutionality of incarcerating material witnesses, or the length of such incarceration in any particular case. Rather, they say that when the Government incarcerates material witnesses, it has “taken” their property, and that one dollar a day is not just compensation for this “taking” under the Fifth Amendment. Alternatively, they argue that payment of only one dollar a day before trial, when contrasted with the $20 a day paid to witnesses attending a trial, is a denial of due process of law.
But the Fifth Amendment does not require that the Government pay for the performance of a public duty it is already owed. See Monongahela Bridge Co. v. United States, 216 U. S. 177, 193 (modification of bridge obstructing river); United States v. Hobbs, 450 F. 2d 935 (Selective Service Act); United States v. Dillon, 346 F. 2d 633, 635 (representation of jndigents by court-appointed attorney); Roodenko v. United States, 147 F. 2d 752, 754 (alternative service for conscientious objectors); cf. Kunhardt & Co. v. United States, 266 U. S. 537, 540. It is beyond dispute that there is in fact a public obligation to provide evidence, see United States v. Bryan, 339 U. S. 323, 331; Blackmer v. United States, 284 U. S. 421, 438, and that this obligation persists no matter how financially burdensome it may be. The financial losses suffered during pretrial detention are an extension of the burdens borne by every witness who testifies. The detention of a material witness, in short, is simply not a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment, and the level of his compensation, therefore, does not, as such, present a constitutional question. “[I]t is clearly recognized that the giving of testimony and the attendance upon court or grand jury in order to testify are public duties which every person within the jurisdiction of the Government is bound to perform upon being properly summoned, and for performance of which he is entitled to no further compensation than that which the statutes provide. The personal sacrifice involved is a part of the necessary contribution of the individual to the welfare of the public.” Blair v. United States, 250 U. S. 273, 281.
Similarly, we are unpersuaded that the classifications drawn by § 1821 as we have construed it are so irrational as to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Cf. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499. The statute provides $20 per diem compensation to a witness who is in necessary attendance on a court, but that fee is payable to any witness, incarcerated or not. During the period that elapses before his attendance on a court, a witness who is not incarcerated gets no compensation whatever from the Government. An incarcerated witness, on the other hand, gets one dollar a day during that period, in addition to subsistence in kind.
We cannot say that there is no reasonable basis for distinguishing the compensation paid for pretrial detention from the fees paid for attendance at trial. Pretrial confinement will frequently be longer than the period of attendance on the court, and throughout that period of confinement the Government must bear the cost of food, lodging, and security for detained witnesses. Congress could thus reasonably determine that while some compensation should be provided during the pretrial detention period, a minimal amount was justified, particularly in view of the fact that the witness has a public obligation to testify. As the Court of Appeals correctly observed, “ [Governmental recognition of its interest in having persons appear in court by paying them for that participation in judicial proceedings, does not require that it make payment of the same nature and extent to persons who are held available for participation in judicial proceedings should it prove to be necessary. That the government pays for one stage does not require that it pay in like manner for all stages.” 452 F. 2d, at 955.
We do not pass upon the wisdom or ultimate fairness of the compensation Congress has provided for the pretrial detention of material witnesses. We do not decide “that a more just and humane system could not be devised.” Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 487. Indeed, even though it opposed granting the petition for certiorari in the present case, the Government found it “obvious” that “the situation is not a satisfactory one,” and we were informed at oral argument that a legislative proposal to increase the per diem payment to detained witnesses will shortly be submitted by the Department of Justice to the Office of Management and Budget for review. But no matter how unwise or unsatisfactory the present rates might be, the Constitution provides no license to impose the levels of compensation we might think fair and just. That task belongs to Congress, not to us.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 46 (b), at the time this case arose, and before Rule 46 was amended to conform to the Bail Reform Act of 1966, provided:
“Bail for Witness.
“If it appears by affidavit that the testimony of a person is material in any criminal proceeding and if it is shown that it may become impracticable to secure his presence by subpoena, the court or commissioner may require him to give bail for his appearance as a witness, in an amount fixed by the court or commissioner. If the person fails to give bail the court or commissioner may commit him to the custody of the marshal pending final disposition of the proceeding in which the testimony is needed, may order his release if he has been detained for an unreasonable length of time and may modify at any time the requirement as to bail.”
The statute provides in full:
Ҥ 1821. Per diem and mileage generally; subsistence.
“A witness attending in any court of the United States, or before a United States commissioner, or before any person authorized to take his deposition pursuant to any rule or order of a court of the United States, shall receive $20 for each day’s attendance and for the time necessarily occupied in going to and returning from the same, and 10 cents per mile for going from and returning to his place of residence. Regardless of the mode of travel employed by the witness, computation of mileage under this section shall be made on the basis of a uniform table of distances adopted by the Attorney General. Witnesses who are not salaried employees of the Government and who are not in custody and who attend at points so far removed from their respective residence as to prohibit return thereto from day to day shall be entitled to an additional allowance of $16 per day for expenses of subsistence including the time necessarily occupied in going to and returning from the place of attendance: Provided, That in lieu of the mileage allowance provided for herein, witnesses who are required to travel between the Territories and possessions, or to and from the continental United States, shall be entitled to the actual expenses of travel at the lowest first-class rate available at the time of reservation for passage, by means of transportation employed: Provided further, That this section shall not apply to Alaska.
“When a witness is detained in prison for want of security for his appearance, he shall be entitled, in addition to his subsistence, to a compensation of $1 per day.
“Witnesses in the district courts for the districts of Canal Zone, Guam, and the Virgin Islands shall receive the same fees and allowances provided in this section for witnesses in other district courcs of the United States.”
By way of illustration, the witness who sets out on Monday in order to be available to testify on Tuesday; but who is not actually called to the court for testimony until Friday; and who returns home on Saturday, will receive $20 for every day from Monday through Saturday. But the material witness who is incarcerated on Monday, held until Friday when he testifies, and then released, will receive one dollar for every day and an additional $20 only for Friday — the day he actually testifies.
Both parties bolster their statutory interpretations with arguments based upon the statutory language. The petitioners point out that incarcerated witnesses are not specifically excluded from those entitled to receive the $20 fee for attending court, though they are excluded from those entitled to the $16-a-day subsistence allowance. Hence, they conclude that Congress intended that they be eligible for the $20-per-day fee. But that argument proves no more than that Congress intended a detained witness to be eligible for the $20 fee for every day he is “attending” court; it does not indicate that Congress intended that every day of incarceration is the equivalent of a day attending court and compensable at the rate of $20 per day.
The Government supports its position by pointing out that the statute allocates to a detained witness $1 per day "in addition to his subsistence,” not $1 a day in addition both to subsistence and to a witness fee of $20. But it is difficult to give any weight to this argument, since the Government acknowledges that a detained witness is to be paid $20 a day at least for days of physical attendance in court. Therefore, according to the Government’s own interpretation, the $l-a-day clause can hardly be exclusive.
“And be it jurther enacted, That the compensation to jurors and witnesses, in the courts of the United States, shall be as follows, to wit: to each grand and other juror, for each day he shall attend in court, one dollar and twenty-five cents; and for travelling, at the rate of five cents per mile, from their respective places of abode, to the place where the court is holden, and the like allowance for returning; to the witnesses summoned in any court of the United States, the same allowance as is above provided for jurors.” Act of Feb. 28, 1799, c. 19, § 6, 1 Stat. 626.
Cf., e. g., Hunter v. Russell, 59 F. 964, 967-968; Whipple v. Cumberland Cotton Mfg. Co., 29 F. Cas. 933 (No. 17,515); Hance v. McCormick, 11 F. Cas. 401 (No. 6,009).
The Department of Justice regulations repeat the statutory directive that a witness is to be paid $20 for “each day’s attendance.” Department of Justice, United States Marshal’s Manual 340.14 (1971). There is no explicit requirement of physical presence in the courtroom.
The legislative history of the compensation provision is unenlightening. Though Congress early provided compensation for witnesses attending in the courts of the United States, no specific provision was made for incarcerated witnesses. See, e. g., Act of May 8, 1792, c. 36, § 3, 1 Stat. 277; Act of June 1, 1796, c. 48, § 2, 1 Stat. 492; Act of Feb. 28, 1799, c. 19, § 6, 1 Stat. 626. In 1853, Congress provided for payment to a witness of $1.50 a day while attending court, and specifically indicated that a detained witness was to be paid $1 a day over and above his subsistence. Act of Feb. 26, 1853, c. 80, § 3, 10 Stat. 167. In 1926, Congress eliminated the specific provision for compensation to detained witnesses and raised the per diem compensation for attendance in court. Act of Apr. 26, 1926, c. 183, §§ 1-3, 44 Stat. 323-324.
In the following two decades, Congress changed the levels of compensation but did not specifically provide for compensation to detained witnesses. See Act of June 30, 1932, c. 314, § 323, 47 Stat. 413; Act of Mar. 22, 1935, c. 39, § 3, 49 Stat. 105; Act of Dec. 24, 1942, c. 825, § 1, 56 Stat. 1088. When the Judicial Code was revised in 1948, the provision for per diem compensation to detained witnesses was again absent, Act of June 25, 1948, c. 646, § 1821, 62 Stat. 950, but was added the following year, Act of May 24, 1949, c. 139, § 94, 63 Stat. 103, with the explanation by the House Committee on the Judiciary that it had been “inadvertently omitted.” H. R. Rep. No. 352, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 16. By a separate measure, witness fees were increased. Act of May 10, 1949, c. 96, 63 Stat. 65. While the per diem fee, the subsistence fee, and the travel allowance have all been increased, the $1 a day for incarcerated witnesses has remained constant. See Act of Aug. 1, 1956, c. 826, 70 Stat. 798; Act of Mar. 27, 1968, Pub. L. 90-274, § 102 (b), 82 Stat. 62.
The petitioners urge that this history of steadily increasing fees at least indicates a congressional intent to compensate witnesses fully for their lost time and income, and that since they suffer these losses throughout the period of incarceration they ought to receive the $20 for every day of confinement. But Congress recognized that witness fees could not fully compensate witnesses for their lost time or income. See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 891, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 36; S. Rep. No. 187, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 2. The petitioners point to no hint in any of the reports on the various changes in compensation levels which could justify the conclusion that Congress intended to provide more than $1 a day to detained witnesses for the period of their pretrial confinement.
It was also error to affirm the summary judgment for the Government because there was a genuine issue of material fact whether the petitioners had ever been paid for the days that they actually attended court. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56 (c); Arenas v. United States 322 U. S. 419, 432-434; Sartor v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp., 321 U. S. 620, 623-629. They alleged in their amended complaint that on many occasions they testified for the Government and were not paid $20 a day for such testimony. The Government agreed that they were entitled to that compensation, but contended in its answer that they had been so paid. No affidavits or other evidence was submitted to support that contention, and the Court of Appeals in affirming summary judgment for the Government did not comment on this clear factual dispute.
Since a remand is required, we also note that the District Court never explicitly ruled on the petitioners’ motion to have this suit declared a class action under Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, and the Court of Appeals did not discuss the issue. It will, of course, be appropriate on remand for the District Court to determine whether this suit was properly brought as a class action, and we accordingly express no view on that issue.
See Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 184 (“The duty to disclose knowledge of crime ... is so vital that one known to be innocent may be detained, in the absence of bail, as a material witness”); Barry v. United States ex rel. Cunningham, 279 U. S. 597, 616-618.
“[I]t may be a sacrifice of time and labor, and thus of ease, of profits, of livelihood. This contribution is not to be regarded as a gratuity, or a courtesy, or an ill-required favor. It is a duty not to be grudged or evaded. Whoever is impelled to evade or to resent it should retire from the society of organized and civilized communities, and become a hermit. He who will live by society must let society live by him, when it requires to.” 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2192, p. 72 (J. McNaughton rev. 1961).
There is likewise no substance to the petitioners’ argument that the $l-a-day payment is so low as to impose involuntary servitude prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. Cf. Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U. S. 88, 104-105; Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 437-444.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | D | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Nancy J. Schwalb and William McGlone, respondents in No. 87-1979, were employees of petitioner Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company (C & 0), and were injured while working at petitioner’s terminal in Newport News, Virginia, where coal was being loaded from railway cars to a ship on navigable waters. Robert T. Goode, respondent in No. 88-127, was injured while working for petitioner Norfolk and Western Railway Company (N & W) at its coal loading terminal in Norfolk, Virginia. If respondents’ injuries are covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA or Act), 44 Stat. 1424, as amended, 33 U. S. C. §§ 901-950 (1982 ed. and Supp. V), the remedy provided by that Act is exclusive and resort may not be had to the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), 35 Stat. 65, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §§ 51-60 (1982 ed. and Supp. V), which provides a negligence cause of action for railroad employees. The Supreme Court of Virginia held in both cases that the LHWCA was not applicable and that respondents could proceed to trial under the FELA. We reverse.
I
7At the C & 0 facility, a mechanical conveyor-belt system transports coal from railroad hopper cars to colliers berthed at the piers. The loading process begins when a hopper car is rolled down an incline to a mechanical dumper which is activated by trunnion rollers and which dumps the coal through a hopper onto conveyor belts. The belts carry the coal to a loading tower from which it is poured into the hold of a ship. The trunnion rollers are located at each end of the dumper. Typically, some coal spills out onto the rollers and falls below the conveyor belts during the loading process. This spilled coal must be removed frequently to prevent fouling of the loading equipment. Respondents Nancy Schwalb and William McGlone both worked at C & O’s terminal as laborers doing housekeeping and janitorial services. One of their duties was to clean spilled coal from the trunnion rollers and from underneath the conveyor belts. Both also performed ordinary janitorial services at the loading site. McGlone’s right arm was severely injured while he was clearing away coal beneath a conveyor belt. Schwalb suffered a serious head injury when she fell while walking along a catwalk in the dumper area. At the time, she was on her way to clean the trunnion rollers.
At N & W’s terminal, a loaded coal car is moved to the dumper where it is locked into place by a mechanical device called a “retarder.” The dumper turns the car upside down. The coal falls onto conveyor belts and is delivered to the ship via a loader. Respondent Robert Goode was a pier machinist at N & W’s terminal. His primary job was to maintain and repair loading equipment, including the dumpers and conveyor belts. Goode injured his hand while repairing a retarder on one of N & W’s dumpers. Loading at that dumper was stopped for several hours while Goode made the repairs.
The three respondents commenced separate actions in Virginia trial courts under the FELA. Petitioners responded in each case by challenging jurisdiction on the ground that the LHWCA provided respondents’ sole and exclusive remedy. See 33 U. S. C. §905(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V). All three trial courts held evidentiary hearings and concluded that respondents were employees covered by the LHWCA. The suits were dismissed and respondents appealed. The Supreme Court of Virginia consolidated the appeals of Schwalb and McGlone and reversed the dismissals. 235 Va. 27, 365 S. E. 2d 742 (1988).
Relying on one of its earlier decisions, White v. Norfolk & Western R. Co., 217 Va. 823, 232 S. E. 2d 807 (1977), the court stated that the key question was whether an employee’s activities had a realistically significant relationship to the loading of cargo on ships. 235 Va., at 31, 365 S. E. 2d, at 744. Pointing to expressions in our opinion in Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432 U. S. 249 (1977), that landward coverage of the LHWCA was limited to the “‘essential elements’ ” of loading and unloading, the court concluded that “the ‘essential elements’ standard is more nearly akin to the ‘significant relationship’ standard we adopted in White” than the broader construction argued by C & O. 235 Va., at 33, 365 S. E. 2d, at 745. Applying the White standard, the court ruled that employees performing purely maintenance tasks should be treated no differently under the Act than those performing purely clerical tasks and held that Schwalb and McGlone were not covered. The court later dealt with the Goode case in an unpublished order, relying on its decision in Schwalb and reversing the trial court’s judgment that an employee who repairs loading equipment is covered by the LHWCA. No. 870252 (Apr. 22, 1988), App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 88-127, p. 17A.
Because the Supreme Court of Virginia’s holding in these cases was contrary to the position adopted by Federal Courts of Appeals, see, e. g., Harmon v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 239 U. S. App. D. C. 239, 244-245, 741 F. 2d 1398, 1403-1404 (1984); Sea-Land Services, Inc. v. Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, 685 F. 2d 1121, 1123 (CA9 1982) (per curiam); Hullinghorst Industries, Inc. v. Carroll, 650 F. 2d 750, 755-756 (CA5 1981); Garvey Grain Co. v. Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, 639 F. 2d 366, 370 (CA7 1981) (per curiam); Prolerized New England Co. v. Benefits Review Board, 637 F. 2d 30, 37 (CA1 1980), we granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 489 U. S. 1009-1010 (1989).
II
For the LHWCA to apply, the injured person must be injured in the course of his employment, 33 U. S. C. § 902(2) (1982 ed.); his employer must have employees who are employed in maritime employment, §902(4); the injury must occur “upon the navigable waters of the United States (including any adjoining pier, wharf, dry dock, terminal, building way, marine railway, or other adjoining area customarily used by an employer in loading, unloading, repairing, dismantling, or building a vessel),” 33 U. S. C. § 903(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V); and the employee who is injured within that area must be a “person engaged in maritime employment, including any longshoreman or other person engaged in long-shoring operations, and any harbor-worker including a ship repairman, shipbuilder, and ship-breaker, but such term does not include — ” certain enumerated categories of employees, §902(3). It is undisputed that the first three of these requirements are satisfied in these cases. The issue is whether the employees were engaged in maritime employment within the meaning of § 902(3).
The employment that is maritime within the meaning of § 902(3) expressly includes the specified occupations but obviously is not limited to those callings. Herb’s Welding, Inc. v. Gray, 470 U. S. 414, 423, n. 9 (1985); P. C. Pfeiffer Co. v. Ford, 444 U. S. 69, 77-78, n. 7 (1979). The additional reach of the section has been left to the courts sitting in review of decisions made in the Department of Labor, which is charged with administering the Act. In the course of considerable litigation, including several cases in this Court, it has been clearly decided that, aside from the specified occupations, land-based activity occurring within the §903 situs will be deemed maritime only if it is an integral or essential part of loading or unloading a vessel. This is a sensible construction of § 902(3) when read together with § 903(a), particularly in light of the purpose of the 1972 amendments to the LHWCA which produced those sections.
Prior to 1972, the Act applied only to injuries occurring on navigable waters. Longshoremen loading or unloading a ship were covered on the ship and the gangplank but not shoreward, even though they were performing the same functions whether on or off the ship. Congress acted to obviate this anomaly: § 903(a) extended coverage to the area adjacent to the ship that is normally used for loading and unloading, but restricted the covered activity within that area to maritime employment. Pub. L. 92-576, 86 Stat. 1251. There were also specific exclusions in both § 902(3) and § 903; those exclusions were expanded in 1984. See Pub. L. 98-426, § 2(a), 98 Stat. 1639.
In Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, supra, we held that the 1972 amendments were to be liberally construed and that the LHWCA, as amended, covered all those on the situs involved in the essential or integral elements of the loading or unloading process. Id., at 267, 268, 271. But those on the situs not performing such tasks are not covered. Id., at 267. This has been our consistent view. P. C. Pfeiffer Co. v. Ford, supra, held that workers performing no more than one integral part of the loading or unloading process were entitled to compensation under the Act. Id., at 82. We also reiterated in Herb’s Welding, Inc. v. Gray, supra, that the maritime employment requirement as applied to land-based work other than longshoring and the other occupations named in §902(3) is an occupational test focusing on loading and unloading. Those not involved in those functions do not have the benefit of the Act. Id., at 424.
In the cases before us, respondents were connected with the loading process only by way of the repair and maintenance services that they were performing when they were injured. There is no claim that if those services are not maritime employment, respondents are nevertheless covered by the LHWCA. See Northeast Marine Terminal Co. v. Caputo, 432 U. S., at 272-274. Only if the tasks they were performing are maritime employment, are respondents in these cases covered by the Act.
Although we have not previously so held, we are quite sure that employees who are injured while maintaining or repairing equipment essential to the loading or unloading process are covered by the Act. Such employees are engaged in activity that is an integral part of and essential to those overall processes. That is all that § 902(3) requires. Coverage is not limited to employees who are denominated “longshoremen” or who physically handle the cargo. Nor are maintenance employees removed from coverage if they also have duties not integrally connected with the loading or unloading functions. Someone who repairs or maintains a piece of loading equipment is just as vital to and an integral part of the loading process as the operator of the equipment. When machinery breaks down or becomes clogged or fouled because of the lack of cleaning, the loading process stops until the difficulty is cured. It is irrelevant that an employee’s contribution to the loading process is not continuous or that repair or maintenance is not always needed. Employees are surely covered when they are injured while performing a task integral to loading a ship.
Our conclusion that repair and maintenance to essential equipment are reached by the Act is buttressed by the fact that every Court of Appeals to have addressed the issue has arrived at the same result. See the cases cited supra, at 44-45. As evidenced by the amicus brief of the United States filed in these cases, the Secretary of Labor also agrees that such repair and maintenance employees are engaged in maritime employment within the meaning of § 902(3), and the Benefits Review Board also has consistently taken this view, see, e. g., Wuellet v. Scappoose Sand & Gravel Co., 18 BRBS 108, 110-111 (1986); De Robertis v. Oceanic Container Serv ice, Inc., 14 BRBS 284, 286-287 (1981); Cabezas v. Oceanic Container Service, Inc., 11 BRBS 279, 283-288 (1979), and cases cited therein.
Ill
Applying the standard expressed in our cases, we conclude that each of the respondents is covered by the LHWCA. The Supreme Court of Virginia held that Goode was not covered because in its view repair of equipment essential to the loading process was not maritime employment. This was error. It makes no difference that the particular kind of repair Goode was doing might be considered traditional railroad work or might be done by railroad employees wherever railroad cars are unloaded. The determinative consideration is that the ship loading process could not continue unless the retarder that Goode worked on was operating properly. It is notable that the loading actually was stopped while Goode made the repairs and that one of his supervisors apparently expressed the desire that Goode hurry up so that the loading could continue.
Respondents Schwalb and McGlone also were performing duties essential to the overall loading process. There is testimony in the record that if the coal which spills onto the rollers is not periodically removed, the rollers may become clogged and the dumper will become inoperable. App. 57, 92. The same is true of the coal that falls beneath the conveyor belts. Ibid. Testimony indicated that a buildup of such coal could eventually foul the conveyors and cause them to be shut down. Equipment cleaning that is necessary to keep machines operative is a form of maintenance and is only different in degree from repair work. Employees who are injured on the situs while performing these essential functions are covered by the LHWCA.
> I — f
For the reasons given above, the judgments of the Supreme Court of Virginia are reversed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We again consider the right to an abortion. We understand the controversial nature of the problem. Millions of Americans believe that life begins at conception and consequently that an abortion is akin to causing the death of an innocent child; they recoil at the thought of a law that would permit it. Other millions fear that a law that forbids abortion would condemn many American women to lives that lack dignity, depriving them of equal liberty and leading those with least resources to undergo illegal abortions with the attendant risks of death and suffering. Taking account of these virtually irreconcilable points of view, aware that constitutional law must govern a society whose different members sincerely hold directly opposing views, and considering the matter in light of the Constitution’s guarantees of fundamental individual liberty, this Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman’s right to choose. Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973); Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992). We shall not revisit those legal principles. Rather, we apply them to the circumstances of this case.
Three established principles determine the issue before us. We shall set them forth in the language of the joint opinion in Casey. First, before "viability... the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy.” Id., at 870 (plurality opinion).
Second, "a law designed to further the State’s interest in fetal life which imposes an undue burden on the woman’s decision before fetal viability” is unconstitutional. Id., at 877. An "undue burden is... shorthand for the conclusion that a state regulation has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” Ibid.
Third, “ ‘subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.’ ” Id., at 879 (quoting Roe v. Wade, supra, at 164-165).
We apply these principles to a Nebraska law banning “partial birth abortion.” The statute reads as follows:
“No partial birth abortion shall be performed in this state, unless such procedure is neeessary to save the life of the mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Neb. Rev. Stat. Ann. §28-328(1) (Supp. 1999).
The statute defines “partial birth abortion” as:
“an abortion procedure in which the person performing the abortion partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery.” § 28-326(9).
It further defines “partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child” to mean
“deliberately and intentionally delivering into the vagina a living unborn child, or a substantial portion thereof, for the purpose of performing a procedure that the person performing such procedure knows will kill the unborn child and does kill the unborn child.” Ibid.
The law classifies violation of the statute as a “Class III felony” carrying a prison term of up to 20 years, and a fine of up to $25,000. §§28-328(2), 28-105. It also provides for the automatic revocation of a doctor’s license to practice medicine in Nebraska. § 28-328(4).
We hold that this statute violates the Constitution.
HH
<j
Dr. Leroy Carhart is a Nebraska physician who performs abortions in a clinical setting. He brought this lawsuit in Federal District Court seeking a declaration that the Nebraska statute violates the Federal Constitution, and asking for an injunction forbidding its enforcement. After a trial on the merits, during which both sides presented several expert witnesses, the District Court held the statute unconstitutional. 11F. Supp. 2d 1099 (Neb. 1998). On appeal, the Eighth Circuit affirmed. 192 F. 3d 1142 (1999); cf. Hope Clinic v. Ryan, 195 F. 3d 857 (CA7 1999) (en banc) (considering a similar statute, but reaching a different legal conclusion). We granted certiorari to consider the matter.
B
Because Nebraska law seeks to ban one method of aborting a pregnancy, we must describe and then discuss several different abortion procedures. Considering the fact that those procedures seek to terminate a potential human life, our discussion may seem clinically cold or callous to some, perhaps horrifying to others. There is no alternative way, however, to acquaint the reader with the technical distinctions among different abortion methods and related factual matters, upon which the outcome of this ease depends. For that reason, drawing upon the findings of the trial court, underlying testimony, and related medical texts, we shall describe the relevant methods of performing abortions in technical detail.
The evidence before the trial court, as supported or supplemented in the literature, indicates the following:
1. About 90% of all abortions performed in the United States take place during the first trimester of pregnancy, before 12 weeks of gestational age. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Abortion Surveillance — United States, 1996, p. 41 (July 30, 1999) (hereinafter Abortion Surveillance). During the first trimester, the predominant abortion method is “vacuum aspiration," which involves insertion of a vacuum tube (cannula) into the uterus to evacuate the contents. Such an abortion is typically performed on an outpatient basis under local anesthesia. 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1102; Obstetrics: Normal & Problem Pregnancies 1253-1254 (S. Gabbe, J. Niebyl, & J. Simpson eds. 3d ed. 1996). Vacuum aspiration is considered particularly safe. The procedure’s mortality rates for first trimester abortion ai'e, for example, 5 to 10 times lower than those associated with carrying the fetus to term. Complication rates are also low. Id., at 1251; Lawson et al., Abortion Mortality, United States, 1972 through 1987, 171 Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 1365, 1368 (1994); M. Paul et al., A Clinicians Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion 108-109 (1999) (hereinafter Medical and Surgical Abortion). As the fetus grows in size, however, the vacuum aspiration method becomes increasingly difficult to use. 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1102-1103; Obstetrics: Normal & Problem Pregnancies, supra, at 1268.
2. Approximately 10% of all abortions are performed during the second trimester of pregnancy (12 to 24 weeks). Abortion Surveillance 41. In the early 1970’s, inducing labor through the injection of saline into the uterus was the predominant method of second trimester abortion. Id., at 8; Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U. S. 52, 76 (1976). Today, however, the medical profession has switched from medical induction of labor to surgical procedures for most second trimester abortions. The most commonly used procedure is called “dilation and evacuation” (D&E). That procedure (together with a modified form of vacuum aspiration used in the early second trimester) accounts for about 95% of all abortions performed from 12 to 20 weeks of gestational age. Abortion Surveillance 41.
3. D&E “refers generically to transcervieal procedures performed at 13 weeks gestation or later.” American Medical Association, Report of Board of Trustees on Late-Term Abortion, App. 490 (hereinafter AMA Report). The AMA Report, adopted by the District Court, describes the process as follows.
Between 13 and 15 weeks of gestation:
“D&E is similar to vacuum aspiration except that the cervix must be dilated more widely because surgical instruments are used to remove larger pieces of tissue. Osmotic dilators are usually used. Intravenous fluids and an analgesic or sedative may be administered. A local anesthetic such as a paracervical block may be administered, dilating agents, if used, are removed and instruments are inserted through the cervix into the uterus to removal fetal and placental tissue. Because fetal tissue is friable and easily broken, the fetus may not be removed intact. The walls of the uterus are scraped with a curette to ensure that no tissue remains.” Id., at 490-491.
After 15 weeks:
“Because the fetus is larger at this stage of gestation (particularly the head), and because bones are more rigid, dismemberment or other destructive procedures are more likely to be required than at earlier gestational ages to remove fetal and placental tissue.” Id., at 491.
After 20 weeks:
“Some physicians use intrafetal potassium chloride or digoxin to induce fetal demise prior to a late D&E (after 20 weeks), to facilitate evacuation.” Id., at 491-492.
There are variations in D&E operative strategy; compare ibid, with W. Hern, Abortion Practice 146-156 (1984), and Medical and Surgical Abortion 133-185. However, the common points are that D&E involves (1) dilation of the cervix; (2) removal of at least some fetal tissue using nonvacuum instruments; and (3) (after the 15th week) the potential need for instrumental disarticulation or dismemberment of the fetus or the collapse of fetal parts to facilitate evacuation from the uterus.
4. When instrumental disarticulation incident to D&E is necessary, it typically occurs as the doctor pulls a portion of the fetus through the cervix into the birth canal. Dr. Car-hart testified at trial as follows:
“Dr. Carhart:... ‘The dismemberment occurs between the traction of... my instrument and the counter-traction of the internal os of the cervix....
“Counsel: ‘So the dismemberment occurs after you pulled a part of the fetus through the cervix, is that correct?
“Dr. Carhart: ‘Exactly. Because you’re using — The cervix has two strictures or two rings, the internal os and the external os... that’s what’s actually doing the dismembering....
“Counsel: ‘When we talked before or talked before about a D&E, that is not — where there is not intention to do it intact, do you, in that situation, dismember the fetus in útero first, then remove portions?
“Dr. Carhart: T don’t think so.... I don’t know of any way that one could go in and intentionally dismember the fetus in the uterus.... It takes something that restricts the motion of the fetus against what you’re doing before you’re going to get dismemberment.’ ” 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1104.
Dr. Carhart’s specification of the location of fetal disarticulation is consistent with other sources. See Medical and Surgical Abortion 135; App. in Nos. 98-3245 and 98-3300 (CA8), p. 683, (testimony of Dr. Phillip Stubblefield) (“Q: So you don’t actually dismember the fetus in útero, then take the pieces out? A: No”).
5. The D&E procedure carries certain risks. The use of instruments within the uterus creates a danger of accidental perforation and damage to neighboring organs. Sharp fetal bone fragments create similar dangers. And fetal tissue accidentally left behind can cause infection and various other complications. See 11F. Supp. 2d, at 1110; Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery 1045 (D. Nichols & D. Clarke-Pearson eds. 2d ed. 2000); F. Cunningham et al., Williams Obstetrics 598 (20th ed. 1997). Nonetheless studies show that the risks of mortality and complication that accompany the D&E procedure between the 12th and 20th weeks of gestation are significantly lower than those accompanying induced labor procedures (the next safest midseeond trimester procedures). See Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery, supra, at 1046; AMA Report, App. 495, 496; Medical and Surgical Abortion 139,142; Lawson, 171 Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol., at 1368.
6. At trial, Dr. Carhart and Dr. Stubblefield described a variation of the D&E procedure, which they referred to as an “intact D&E.” See 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1105, lili. Like other versions of the D&E technique, it begins with induced dilation of the cervix. The procedure then involves removing the fetus from the uterus through the cervix “intact,” i. e., in one pass, rather than in several passes. Ibid. It is used after 16 weeks at the earliest, as vacuum aspiration becomes ineffective and the fetal skull becomes too large to pass through the cervix. Id., at 1105. The intact D&E proceeds in one of two ways, depending on the presentation of the fetus. If the fetus presents head first (a vertex presentation), the doctor collapses the skull; and the doctor then extracts the entire fetus through the cervix. If the fetus presents feet first (a breech presentation), the doctor pulls the fetal body through the cervix, collapses the skull, and extracts the fetus through the cervix. Ibid. The breech extraction version of the intact D&E is also known commonly as “dilation and extraction,” or D&X. Id., at 1112. In the late second trimester, vertex, breech, and traverse/ compound (sideways) presentations occur in roughly similar proportions. Medical and Surgical Abortion 135; 11F. Supp. 2d, at 1108.
7. The intact D&E procedure can also be found described in certain obstetric and abortion clinical textbooks, where two variations are recognized. The first, as just described, calls for the physician to adapt his method for extracting the intact fetus depending on fetal presentation. See Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery, supra, at 1043; Medical and Surgical Abortion 136-137. This is the method used by Dr. Carhart. See 11F. Supp. 2d, at 1105. A slightly different version of the intact D&E procedure, associated with Dr. Martin Haskell, calls for conversion to a breech presentation in all cases. See Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery, supra, at 1043 (citing M. Haskell, Dilation and Extraction for Late Second Trimester Abortion (1992), in 139 Cong. Ree. 8605 (1993)).
8. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists describes the D&X procedure in a manner corresponding to a breech-conversion intact D&E, including the following steps:
"1. deliberate dilatation of the cervix, usually over a sequence of days;
“2. instrumental conversion of the fetus to a footling breech;
“3. breech extraction of the body excepting the head; and
“4. partial evacuation of the intracranial contents of a living fetus to effect vaginal delivery of a dead but otherwise intact fetus.” American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Executive Board, Statement on Intact Dilation and Extraction (Jan. 12, 1997) (hereinafter ACOG Statement), App. 599-560.
Despite the technical differences we have just described, intact D&E and D&X are sufficiently similar for us to use the terms interchangeably.
9. Dr. Carhart testified he attempts to use the intact D&E procedure during weeks 16 to 20 because (1) it reduces the dangers from sharp bone fragments passing through the cervix, (2) minimizes the number of instrument passes needed for extraction and lessens the likelihood of uterine perforations caused by those instruments, (3) reduces the likelihood of leaving infection-causing fetal and placental tissue in the uterus, and (4) could help to prevent potentially fatal absorption of fetal tissue into the maternal circulation. See 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1107. The District Court made no findings about the D&X procedure’s overall safety. Id., at 1126, n. 39. The District Court concluded, however, that “the evidence is both clear and convincing that Carhart’s D&X procedure is superior to, and safer than, the... other abortion procedures used during the relevant gestational period in the 10 to 20 eases a year that present to Dr. Garhart ” Id., at 1126.
10. The materials presented at trial referred to the potential benefits of the D&X procedure in circumstances involving nonviable fetuses, such as fetuses with abnormal fluid accumulation in the brain (hydrocephaly). See 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1107 (quoting AMA Report, App. 492 (“ ‘Intact D&X may be preferred by some physicians, particularly when the fetus has been diagnosed with hydrocephaly or other anomalies incompatible with life outside the womb’ ”)); see also Grimes, The Continuing Need for Late Abortions, 280 JAMA 747, 748 (Aug. 26, 1998) (D&X “may be especially useful in the presence of fetal anomalies, such as hydrocephalus,” because its reduction of the cranium allows “a smaller diameter to pass through the cervix, thus reducing risk of cervical injury”). Others have emphasized its potential for women with prior uterine sears, or for women for whom induction of labor would be particularly dangerous. See Women’s Medical Professional Corp. v. Voinovich, 911 F. Supp. 2d 1051, 1067 (SD Ohio 1995); Evans v. Kelley, 977 F. Supp. 2d 1283, 1296 (ED Mich. 1997).
11. There are no reliable data on the number of D&X abortions performed annually. Estimates have ranged between 640 and 5,000 per year. Compare Henshaw, Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States, 1995-1996,30 Family Planning Perspectives 263,268 (1998), with Joint Hearing on S. 6 and H. R. 929 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 105th Cong., 1st Sess., 46 (1997).
II
The question before us is whether Nebraska’s statute, making criminal the performance of a “partial birth abortion,” violates the Federal Constitution, as interpreted in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), and Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973). We conclude that it does for at least two independent reasons. First, the law lacks any exception “ ‘for the preservation of the... health of the mother.’ ” Casey, 505 U. S., at 879 (plurality opinion). Second, it “imposes an undue burden on a woman’s ability” to choose a D&E abortion, thereby unduly burdening the right to choose abortion itself. Id., at 874. We shall discuss each of these reasons in turn.
A
The Casey plurality opinion reiterated what the Court held in Roe; that “ ‘subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.’” 505 U. S., at 879 (quoting Roe, supra, at 164-165) (emphasis added).
The fact that Nebraska’s law applies both previability and postviability aggravates the constitutional problem presented. The State’s interest in regulating abortion previa-bility is considerably weaker than postviability. See Casey, supra, at 870. Since the law requires a health exception in order to validate even a postviability abortion regulation, it at a minimum requires the same in respect to previability regulation. See Casey, supra, at 880 (majority opinion) (assuming need for health exception previability); see also Harris v. McRae, 448 U. S. 297, 316 (1980).
The quoted standard also depends on the state regulations “promoting [the State’s] interest in the potentiality of human life.” The Nebraska law, of course, does not directly further an interest “in the potentiality of human life” by saving the fetus in question from destruction, as it regulates only a method of performing abortion. Nebraska describes its interests differently It says the law “ ‘show[s] concern for the life of the unborn,’ ” “prevents] cruelty to partially born children,” and “preserved] the integrity of the medical profession.” Brief for Petitioners 48. But we cannot see how the interest-related differences could make any difference to the question at hand, namely, the application of the “health” requirement.
Consequently, the governing standard requires an exception “where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment for the preservation of the life or health of the mother,” Casey, supra, at 879, for this Court has made clear that a State may promote but not endanger a woman’s health when it regulates the methods of abortion. Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U. S. 747, 768-769 (1986); Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U. S. 379, 400 (1979); Danforth, 428 U. S., at 76-79; Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179, 197 (1973).
Justice Thomas says that the cases just cited limit this principle to situations where the pregnancy itself creates a threat to health. See post, at 1010. He is wrong. The cited eases, reaffirmed in Casey, recognize that a State cannot subject women’s health to significant risks both in that context, and also where state regulations force women to use riskier methods of abortion. Our cases have repeatedly invalidated statutes that in the process of regulating the methods of abortion, imposed significant health risks. They make clear that a risk to a women’s health is the same whether it happens to arise from regulating a particular method of abortion, or from barring abortion entirely. Our holding does not go beyond those cases, as ratified in Casey.
1
Nebraska responds that the law does not require a health exception unless there is a need for such an exception. And here there is no such need, it says. It argues that “safe alternatives remain available” and “a ban on partial-birth abortion/D&X would create no risk to the health of women.” Brief for Petitioners 29, 40. The problem for Nebraska is that the parties strongly contested this factual question in the trial court below; and the findings and evidence support Dr. Carhart. The State fails to demonstrate that banning D&X without a health exception may not create significant health risks for women, because the record shows that significant medical authority supports the proposition that in some circumstances, D&X would be the safest procedure.
We shall reiterate in summary form the relevant findings and evidence. On the basis of medical testimony the District Court concluded that “Carhart’s D&X procedure is... safer tha[n] the D&E and other abortion procedures used during the relevant gestational period in the 10 to 20 eases a year that present to Dr. Carhart.” 11F. Supp. 2d, at 1126. It found that the D&X procedure permits the fetus to pass through the cervix with a minimum of instrumentation. Ibid. It thereby
“reduces operating time, blood loss and risk of infection; reduces complications from bony fragments; reduces instrument-inflicted damage to the uterus and cervix; prevents the most common causes of maternal mortality (DIC and amniotie fluid embolus); and eliminates the possibility of ‘horrible complications’ arising from retained fetal parts.” Ibid.
The District Court also noted that a select panel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists concluded that D&X “ ‘may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.’ ” Id., at 1105, n. 10 (quoting ACOG Statement, App. 600-601) (but see an important qualification, infra, at 934). With one exception, the federal trial courts that have heard expert evidence on the matter have reached similar factual conclusions. See Rhode Island Medical Soc. v. Whitehouse, 66 F. Supp. 2d 288, 314 (RI. 1999); A Choice for Women v. Butterworth, 54 F. Supp. 2d 1148, 1153, 1156 (SD Fla. 1998); Causeway Medical Suite v. Foster, 48 F. Supp. 2d 604, 613-614 (ED La. 1999); Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Gilmore, 11 F. Supp. 2d 795, 827, n. 40 (ED Va. 1998); Hope Clinic v. Ryan, 995 F. Supp. 2d 847, 852 (ND Ill. 1998), vacated, 195 F. 8d 857 (CA7 1999), cert. pending, No. 99-1152; Voinovich, 911 F. Supp. 2d, at 1069-1070; Kelley, 977 F. Supp. 2d, at 1296; but see Planned Parenthood of Wis. v. Doyle, 44 F. Supp. 2d 975, 980 (WD Wis.), vacated, 195 F. 3d 857 (CA7 1999).
2
Nebraska, along with supporting amici, replies that these findings are irrelevant, wrong, or applicable only in a tiny number of instances. It says (1) that the D&X procedure is “little-used,” (2) by only “a handful of doctors.” Brief for Petitioners 32. It argues (3) that D&E and labor induction are at all times “safe alternative procedures.” Id., at 36. It refers to the testimony of petitioners’ medical expert, who testified (4) that the ban would not increase a woman’s risk of several rare abortion complications (disseminated intra-vascular coagulopathy and amniotie fluid embolus), id., at 37; App. 642-644.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons et al., amici supporting Nebraska, argue (5) that elements of the D&X procedure may create special risks, including cervical incompetence caused by overdilitation, injury caused by conversion of the fetal presentation, and dangers arising from the “blind” use of instrumentation to pierce the fetal skull while lodged in the birth canal. See Brief for Association of American Physicians and Surgeons et al. as Amici Curiae 21-23; see also Sprang & Neerhof, Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy, 280 JAMA 744,746 (Aug. 26,1998).
Nebraska further emphasizes (6) that there are no medical studies “establishing the safety of the partial-birth abortion/ D&X procedure,” Brief for Petitioners 39, and “no medical studies comparing the safety of partial-birth abortion/D&X to other abortion procedures,” ibid. It points to, id., at 35, (7) an American Medical Association policy statement that “‘there does not appear to be any identified situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion,’” Late Term Pregnancy Termination Techniques, AMA Policy H-5.982 (1997). And it points out (8) that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists qualified its statement that D&X “may be the best or most appropriate procedure,” by adding that the panel “could identify no circumstances under which [the D&X] procedure... would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” App. 600-601.
3
We find these eight arguments insufficient to demonstrate that Nebraska’s law needs no health exception. For one thing, certain of the arguments are beside the point. The D&X procedure’s relative rarity (argument (1)) is not highly relevant. The D&X is an infrequently used abortion procedure; but the health exception question is whether protecting women’s health requires an exception for those infrequent occasions. A rarely used treatment might be necessary to treat a rarely occurring disease that could strike anyone — the State cannot prohibit a person from obtaining treatment simply by pointing out that most people do not need it. Nor can we know whether the fact that only a “handful” of doctors use the procedure (argument (2)) reflects the comparative rarity of late second term abortions, the procedure’s recent development, Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery, at 1043, the controversy surrounding it, or, as Nebraska suggests, the procedure’s lack of utility.
For another thing, the record responds to Nebraska’s (and amici’s) medically based arguments. In respect to argument (3), for example, the District Court agreed that alternatives, such as D&E and induced labor, are “safe” but found that the D&X method was significantly safer in certain circumstances. 11 F. Supp. 2d, at 1125-1126. In respect to argument (4), the District Court simply- relied on different expert testimony — testimony stating that “ ‘[a]nother advantage of the Intact D&E is that it eliminates the risk of embolism of cerebral tissue into the woman’s blood stream.’ ” Id., at 1124 (quoting Hearing on H. R. 1833 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 104th Cong., 1st Sess., 260 (1995) (statement of W. Hern).
In response to amici’s argument (5), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in its own amici brief, denies that D&X generally poses risks greater than the alternatives. It says that the suggested alternative procedures involve similar or greater risks of cervical and. uterine injury, for “D&E procedures, involve similar amounts of dili-tation” and “of course childbirth involves even greater cervical dilitation.” Brief for American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists et al. as Amici Curiae 23. The College points out that Dr. Carhart does not reposition the fetus thereby avoiding any risks stemming from conversion to breech presentation, and that, as compared with D&X, D&E involves the same, if not greater, “blind” use of sharp instruments in the uterine cavity. Id., at 23-24.
We do not quarrel with Nebraska’s argument (6), for Nebraska is right. There are no general medical studies documenting comparative safety. Neither do we deny the import of the American Medical Association’s statement (argument (7)) — even though the State does omit the remainder of that statement: “The AMA recommends that the procedure not be used unless alternative procedures pose materially greater risk to the woman.” Late Term Pregnancy Termination Techniques, AMA Policy H-5.982 (emphasis added).
We cannot, however, read the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists panel’s qualification (that it could not “identify” a circumstance where D&X was the “only” life- or health-preserving option) as if, according to Nebraska’s argument (8), it denied the potential health-related need for D&X. That is because the College writes the following in its amici brief:
“Depending on the physician’s skill and experience, the D&X procedure ean be the most appropriate abortion procedure for some women in some circumstances. D&X presents a variety of potential safety advantages over other abortion procedures used during the same gestational period. Compared to D&Bs involving dismemberment, D&X involves less risk of uterine perforation or cervical laceration because it requires the physician to make fewer passes into the uterus with sharp instruments and reduces the presence of sharp fetal bone fragments that ean injure the uterus and cervix. There is also considerable evidence that D&X reduces the risk of retained fetal tissue, a serious abortion complication that ean cause maternal death, and that D&X reduces the incidence of a 'free floating’ fetal head that can be difficult for a physician to grasp and remove and ean thus cause maternal injury. That D&X procedures usually take less time than other abortion methods used at a comparable stage of pregnancy can also have health advantages. The shorter the procedure, the less blood loss, trauma, and exposure to anesthesia. The intuitive safety advantages of intact D&E are supported by clinical experience. Especially for women with particular health conditions, there is medical evidence that D&X may be safer than available alternatives.” Brief for American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists et al. as Amici Curiae 21-22 (citation and footnotes omitted).
4
The upshot is a District Court finding that D&X significantly obviates health risks in certain circumstances, a highly plausible reeord-based explanation of why that might be so, a division of opinion among some medical experts over whether D&X is generally safer, and an absence of controlled medical studies that would help answer these medical questions. Given these medically related evidentiary circumstances, we believe the law requires a health exception.
The word “necessary’ in Casey’s phrase “necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother,” 505 U. S., at 879 (internal quotation marks omitted), cannot refer to an absolute necessity or to absolute proof. Medical treatments and procedures are often considered appropriate (or inappropriate) in light of estimated comparative health risks (and health benefits) in particular cases. Neither can that phrase require unanimity of medical opinion. Doctors often differ in their estimation of comparative health risks and appropriate treatment. And Casey’s words “appropriate medical judgment” must embody the judicial need to tolerate responsible differences of medical opinion — differences of a sort that the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ statements together indicate are present here.
For another thing, the division of medical opinion about the matter at most means uncertainty, a factor that signals the presence of risk, not its absence. That division here involves highly qualified knowledgeable experts on both sides of the issue. Where a significant body of medical opinion believes a procedure may bring with it greater safety for some patients and explains the medical reasons supporting that view, we cannot say that the presence of a different view by itself proves the contrary. Rather, the uncertainty means a significant likelihood that those who believe that D&X is a safer abortion method in certain circumstances may turn out to be right. If so, then the absence of a health exception will place women at an unnecessary risk of tragic health consequences. If they are wrong, the exception will simply turn out to have been unnecessary.
In sum, Nebraska has not convinced us that a health exception is “never necessary to preserve the health of women.” Reply Brief for Petitioners 4. Rather, a statute that altogether forbids D&X creates a significant health risk. The statute consequently must contain a health exception. This is not to say, as Justice Thomas and Justice Kennedy claim,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | E | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Of petitioners’ various contentions we find the one relating to the validity of the search and seizure made by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation disposi-tive of this case, and we therefore need not consider the others.
The indictment charged the three petitioners with relieving, comforting, and assisting one Thompson, a fugitive from justice, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 3, and with conspiring to commit that offense in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 371. In addition, it charged petitioners Kremen and Coleman with harboring Steinberg, also a fugitive from justice, and with conspiring to commit that offense. Petitioners were found guilty, and on appeal their convictions were sustained, one judge dissenting. 231 F. 2d 155. Because of the unusual character of the search and seizure here involved, we granted certiorari, without, however, limiting the writ. 352 U. S. 819.
Thompson and Steinberg had been fugitives from justice for about two years when agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered them, in the company of Kremen, Coleman and another, at a secluded cabin near the village of Twain Harte, California. After keeping the cabin under surveillance for some 24 hours, the officers arrested the three petitioners and Thompson. Thompson and Steinberg were arrested outside the cabin; Kremen and Coleman, inside. The agents possessed outstanding arrest warrants for Thompson and Steinberg, but none for Kremen and Coleman. These four individuals were searched and documents found on their persons were seized. In addition, an exhaustive search of the cabin and a seizure of its entire contents were made shortly after the arrests. The agents possessed no search warrant. The property seized from the house was taken to the F. B. I. office at San Francisco for further examination. A copy of the F. B. I.’s inventory of the property thus taken is printed in the appendix to this opinion, post, p. 349.
The majority of the Court are agreed that objections to the validity of the search and seizure were adequately raised and preserved. The seizure of the entire contents of the house and its removal some two hundred miles away to the F. B. I. offices for the purpose of examination are beyond the sanction of any of our cases. While the evidence seized from the persons of the petitioners might have been legally admissible, the introduction against each of petitioners of some items seized in the house in the manner aforesaid rendered the guilty verdicts illegal. The convictions must therefore be reversed, with instructions to grant the petitioners a new trial.
Reversed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before the Court is whether the proceeds of certain insurance policies on the life of the decedent, payable to named beneficiaries and irrevocably assigned by the insured, should be included in the estate of the decedent for the purposes of the federal estate tax. The facts are not in dispute. In 1934 decedent, then aged 76, purchased a series of annuity-life insurance policy combinations. Three single-premium life insurance policies, at face values of $200,000, $100,000, and $50,000, respectively, were obtained without the requirement of a medical examination. As a condition to selling decedent each life insurance policy, the companies involved required decedent also to purchase a separate, single-premium, nonrefundable life annuity policy. The premiums for each life insurance policy and for each annuity policy were fixed at regular rates. The size of each annuity, however, was calculated so that in the event the annuitant-insured died prematurely the annuity premium, less the amount allocated to annuity payments already made, would combine with the companion life insurance premium, plus interest, to equal the amount of insurance proceeds to be paid. Each annuity policy could have been purchased without the insurance policy for the same premium charged for it under the annuity-life insurance combination.
The decedent’s children were primary beneficiaries of the insurance policies; the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company, as trustee of a trust established by decedent, was named beneficiary of the interests of any of decedent’s children who predeceased her. In the year of purchase, decedent assigned all rights and benefits under two of the life insurance policies to her children and under the other to the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company as trustee. These rights and benefits included the rights to receive dividends, to change the beneficiaries, to surrender the policies, and to assign them. Dividends were received, but, as far as the record discloses, none of the other rights was exercised. A gift tax on these transfers was paid by the decedent in 1935. In 1938 decedent amended the above-mentioned trust so that it became irrevocable. As the Government concedes, the decedent retained no beneficial or reversionary interest in the trust.
The insured died in 1946. The proceeds of the three insurance policies were not included in her estate in the estate tax return. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue determined that these proceeds should have been included and assessed a deficiency accordingly. The adjusted tax was paid by the executors, and when claim for refund was denied, this action for refund followed. The District Court entered judgment for the taxpayers, but the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed. 241 F. 2d 690. We granted certiorari. 354 U. S. 921.
It is conceded by the parties that the question of whether the proceeds should be included in the estate is not determinable by the federal estate tax provision dealing with life insurance proceeds. Cf. Helvering v. Le Gierse, 312 U. S. 531. To support the decision below, the Government argues that the proceeds are includible in the estate under Section 811 (c) (1) (B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, which includes, in the estate of the decedent, property, to the extent of the decedent’s interest therein, which the decedent had transferred without adequate and full consideration, under which transfer the decedent
“has retained for his life ... (i) the possession or enjoyment of, or the right to income from, the property . . . .”
The Government contends that the annuity payments, which were retained until death, were income from property transferred by the decedent to her children through the use of the life insurance policies.
On the other hand, petitioners, executors of the estate, assert that the annuity payments were income from the annuity policies, which were separate property from the insurance policies, and that since decedent had assigned away the life insurance policies before death, she retained no interest in them at death.
The Government relies on Helvering v. Le Gierse, supra, where this Court also had before it the issue of the taxability of proceeds from a life insurance policy in an annuity-life insurance combination. After holding that the taxability of these proceeds was not to be determined for estate tax purposes according to the statutory provisions dealing with life insurance, the Court held that the proceeds were includible in the estate under Section 302 (c) of the Revenue Act of 1926 because they devolved on the beneficiaries in a transfer which took “effect in possession or enjoyment at or after . . . death.” 312 U. S., at 542. However, in reaching this conclusion the decision did not consider the problem in the case at bar, for in Le Oierse the insured had retained the rights and benefits of the insurance policy until death. The facts in the instant case on this point are fundamentally different. Prior to death, the decedent had divested herself of all interests in the insurance policies, including the possibility that the funds would return to her or her estate if the beneficiaries predeceased her. The assignees became the “owners” of the policies before her death; they had received the right to the immediate and unlimited use of the policies to the full extent of their worth. The immediate value of the policies was always substantial. In the year of assignment their total cash surrender value was over $289,000; in the year of death it was over $326,000. Under the assignment, the decedent had not
become a life tenant who postpones the possession and enjoyment of the property by the remaindermen until her death. Cf. Helvering v. Bullard, 303 U. S. 297; Commissioner v. Estate of Church, 335 U. S. 632. On the contrary, the assignees held the bundle of rights, the incidents of ownership, over property from which the decedent had totally divorced herself. Cf. Chase National Bank v. United States, 278 U. S. 327; Goldstone v. United States, 325 U. S. 687.
Illustrative of the distinction between Helvering v. Le Gierse and the case at bar is the fact that the Government has not endeavored here to sustain the tax under the statutory provision applied in that case. Instead of the provision taxing transfers “intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment at or after” the transferor’s death, the provision applied in Le Gierse, the Government relies on the provision taxing transfers in which the transferor has retained until death “the right to income from” the transferred property. However, the Government’s position that the annuities were income from property which the insured transferred to her children under the life insurance policies is not well taken.
To establish its contention, the Government must aggregate the premiums of the annuity policies with those of the life insurance policies and establish that the annuity payments were derived as income from the entire investment. This proposition cannot be established. Admittedly, when the policies were purchased, each life insurance-annuity combination was the product of a single, integrated transaction. However, the parties neither intended that, nor acted as if, any of the transactions would have a quality of indivisibility. Regardless of the considerations prompting the insurance companies to hedge their life insurance contracts with annuities, each time an annuity-life insurance combination was written, two items of property, an annuity policy and an insurance policy, were transferred to the purchaser. The annuity policy could have been acquired separately, and the life insurance policy could have been, and was, conveyed separately. The annuities arose from personal obligations of the insurance companies which were in no way conditioned on the continued existence of the life insurance contracts. These periodic payments would have continued unimpaired and without diminution in size throughout the life of the insured even if the life insurance policies had been extinguished. Quite clearly the annuity payments arose solely from the annuity policies. The use and enjoyment of the annuity policies were entirely independent of the life insurance policies. Because of this independence, the Commissioner may not, by aggregating the two types of policies into one investment, conclude that by receiving the annuities, the decedent had retained income from the life insurance contracts.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Of course, an additional amount is added to the premiums to compensate the insurance companies for expenses.
In agreement with the decision below are Burr v. Commissioner, 156 F. 2d 871 (C. A. 2d Cir.), and Conway v. Glenn, 193 F. 2d 965 (C. A. 6th Cir.). To the contrary is Bohnen v. Harrison, 199 F. 2d 492 (C. A. 7th Cir.), affirmed by an equally divided Court, 345 U. S. 946.
Section 302 (g) of the Revenue Act of 1926, 44 Stat. 9, 71, exempted from the estate proceeds up to $40,000 “receivable ... as insurance” by persons other than the executor. The proceeds in Helvering v. Le Gierse were not considered to have arisen from “insurance” as Congress meant the word to be used because the ordinary “insurance risk” was not present. The insurance company had not undertaken to shift the risk of premature death from the insured and to distribute the risk among its other policyholders. On the contrary, by requiring a concurrent purchase of a nonrefundable annuity contract, the company had neutralized the risk at the expense of the “insured.” The remaining risk, whether the annuitant would live beyond the actuarial prediction and after the insurance policy had been surrendered, was considered not an insurance risk but a risk of ordinary investment. Cf. Meisenholder, Taxation of Annuity Contracts under Estate and Inheritance Taxes, 39 Mich. L. Rev. 856, 883.
The principle that the proceeds are not considered “receivable ... as insurance” applies whether at death the rights and benefits of the policies are in the hands of the insured or of another person. Goldstone v. United States, 325 U. S. 687, 690.
Cf. Goldstone v. United States, supra.
Nor are the assignees like second annuitants in survivorship annuities or joint annuitants in joint and survivor annuities. The donor’s and donee’s annuities have a common fund as the source so that if the source of the donor’s annuity is extinguished, the donee’s annuity is destroyed. The entire economic enjoyment of the second annuitant must, realistically speaking, await the death of the first annuitant, and a substantial portion of the surviving joint annuitant’s enjoyment is similarly postponed. Cf., e. g., Commissioner v. Wilder’s Estate, 118 F. 2d 281; Commissioner v. Clise, 122 F. 2d 998; Mearkle’s Estate v. Commissioner, 129 F. 2d 386.
Section 811 (c)(1)(C) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, as amended by Section 7 (a) of the Act of October 25, 1949, c. 720, 63 Stat. 891, 895.
Section 811 (c) (1) (B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, as amended by Section 7 (a) of the Act of October 25, 1949, c. 720, 63 Stat. 894. This provision was also a part of Section 302 (c) of the Revenue Act of 1926 at the time applicable in Helvering v. Le Gierse.
Where a decedent, not in contemplation of death, has transferred property to another in return for a promise to make periodic payments to the transferor for his lifetime, it has been held that these payments are not income from the transferred property so as to include the property in the estate of the decedent. E. g., Estate of Sarah A. Bergan, 1 T. C. 543, Acq., 1943 Cum. Bull. 2; Security Trust & Savings Bank, Trustee, 11 B. T. A. 833; Seymour Johnson, 10 B. T. A. 411; Hirsh v. United States, 68 Ct. Cl. 508, 35 F. 2d 982 (Ct. Cl. 1929); cf. Welch v. Hall, 134 F. 2d 366. In these eases the promise is a personal obligation of the transferee, the obligation is usually not chargeable to the transferred property, and the size of the payments is not determined by the size of the actual income from the transferred property at the time the payments are made.
For the treatment by lower courts of the life insurance-annuity combination in a similar situation in the field of federal income taxation, cf. Commissioner v. Meyer, 139 F. 2d 256; Edna E. Meredith, 1 T. C. M. 847, affirmed, Helvering v. Meredith, 140 F. 2d 973; John Koehrer, 4 T. C. M. 219.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice Marshall, Justice Powell, and Justice Stevens joined.
We are required in this case to determine whether the Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District, properly applied the precepts of the Fourth Amendment in holding that respondent Royer was being illegally detained at the time of his purported consent to a search of his luggage.
On January 3, 1978, Royer was observed at Miami International Airport by two plainclothes detectives of the Dade County, Fla., Public Safety Department assigned to the county’s Organized Crime Bureau, Narcotics Investigation Section. Detectives Johnson and Magdalena believed that Royer’s appearance, mannerisms, luggage, and actions fit the so-called “drug courier profile.” Royer, apparently unaware of the attention he had attracted, purchased a one-way ticket to New York City and checked his two suitcases, placing on each suitcase an identification tag bearing the name “Holt” and the destination “La Guardia.” As Royer made his way to the concourse which led to the airline boarding area, the two detectives approached him, identified themselves as policemen working out of the sheriff’s office, and asked if Royer had a “moment” to speak with them; Royer said “Yes.”
Upon request, but without oral consent, Royer produced for the detectives his airline ticket and his driver’s license. The airline ticket, like the baggage identification tags, bore the name “Holt,” while the driver’s license carried respondent’s correct name, “Royer.” When the detectives asked about the discrepancy, Royer explained that a friend had made the reservation in the name of “Holt.” Royer became noticeably more nervous during this conversation, whereupon the detectives informed Royer that they were in fact narcotics investigators and that they had reason to suspect him of transporting narcotics.
The detectives did not return his airline ticket and identification but asked Royer to accompany them to a room, approximately 40 feet away, adjacent to the concourse. Royer said nothing in response but went with the officers as he had been asked to do. The room was later described by Detective Johnson as a “large storage closet,” located in the stewardesses’ lounge and containing a small desk and two chairs. Without Royer’s consent or agreement, Detective Johnson, using Royer’s baggage check stubs, retrieved the “Holt” luggage from the airline and brought it to the room where respondent and Detective Magdalena were waiting. Royer was asked if he would consent to a search of the suitcases. Without orally responding to this request, Royer produced a key and unlocked one of the suitcases, which one detective then opened without seeking further assent from Royer. Marihuana was found in that suitcase. According to Detective Johnson, Royer stated that he did not know the combination to the lock on the second suitcase. When asked if he objected to the detective opening the second suitcase, Royer said “[n]o, go ahead,” and did not object when the detective explained that the suitcase might have to be broken open. The suitcase was pried open by the officers and more marihuana was found. Royer was then told that he was under arrest. Approximately 15 minutes had elapsed from the time the detectives initially approached respondent until his arrest upon the discovery of the contraband.
Prior to his trial for felony possession of marihuana, Royer made a motion to suppress the evidence obtained in the search of the suitcases. The trial court found that Royer’s consent to the search was “freely and voluntarily given,” and that, regardless of the consent, the warrantless search was reasonable because “the officer doesn’t have the time to run out and get a search warrant because the plane is going to take off.” Following the denial of the motion to suppress, Royer changed his plea from “not guilty” to “nolo conten-dere,” specifically reserving the right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress. Royer was convicted.
The District Court of Appeal, sitting en banc, reversed Royer’s conviction. The court held that Royer had been involuntarily confined within the small room without probable cause; that the involuntary detention had exceeded the limited restraint permitted by Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), at the time his consent to the search was obtained; and that the consent to search was therefore invalid because tainted by the unlawful confinement.
Several factors led the court to conclude that respondent’s confinement was tantamount to arrest. Royer had “found himself in a small enclosed area being confronted by two police officers — a situation which presents an almost classic definition of imprisonment.” 389 So. 2d 1007, 1018 (1980). The detectives’ statement to Royer that he was suspected of transporting narcotics also bolstered the finding that Royer was “in custody” at the time the consent to search was given. Ibid. In addition, the detectives’ possession of Royer’s airline ticket and their retrieval and possession of his luggage made it clear, in the District Court of Appeal’s view, that Royer was not free to leave. Ibid.
At the suppression hearing Royer testified that he was under the impression that he was not free to leave the officers’ presence. The Florida District Court of Appeal found that this apprehension “was much more than a well-justified subjective belief,” for the State had conceded at oral argument before that court that “the officers would not have permitted Royer to leave the room even if he had erroneously thought he could.” Ibid. The nomenclature used to describe Royer’s confinement, the court found, was unimportant because under Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200 (1979), “a police confinement which . . . goes beyond the limited restraint of a Terry investigatory stop may be constitutionally justified only by probable cause.” 389 So. 2d, at 1019 (footnote omitted). Detective Johnson, who conducted the search, had specifically stated at the suppression hearing that he did not have probable cause to arrest Royer until the suitcases were opened and their contents revealed. Ibid. In the absence of probable cause, the court concluded, Royer’s consent to search, given only after he had been unlawfully confined, was ineffective to justify the search. Ibid. Because there was no proof at all that a “break in the chain of illegality” had occurred, the court found that Royer’s consent was invalid as a matter of law. Id., at 1020. We granted the State’s petition for certiorari, 454 U. S. 1079 (1981), and now affirm.
II
Some preliminary observations are in order. First, it is unquestioned that without a warrant to search Royer’s luggage and in the absence of probable cause and exigent circumstances, the validity of the search depended on Royer’s purported consent. Neither is it disputed that where the validity of a search rests on consent, the State has the burden of proving that the necessary consent was obtained and that it was freely and voluntarily given, a burden that is not satisfied by showing a mere submission to a claim of lawful authority. Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U. S. 319, 329 (1979); Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 233-234 (1973); Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543, 548-549 (1968); Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13 (1948); Amos v. United States, 255 U. S. 313, 317 (1921).
Second, law enforcement officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment by merely approaching an individual on the street or in another public place, by asking him if he is willing to answer some questions, by putting questions to him if the person is willing to listen, or by offering in evidence in a criminal prosecution his voluntary answers to such questions. See Dunaway v. New York, supra, at 210, n. 12; Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 31, 32-33 (Harlan, J., concurring); id., at 34 (White, J., concurring). Nor would the fact that the officer identifies himself as a police officer, without more, convert the encounter into a seizure requiring some level of objective justification. United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 555 (1980) (opinion of Stewart, J.). The person approached, however, need not answer any question put to him; indeed, he may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 32-33 (Harlan, J., concurring); id., at 34 (White, J., concurring). He may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds. United States v. Mendenhall, supra, at 556 (opinion of Stewart, J.). If there is no detention — no seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment — then no constitutional rights have been infringed.
Third, it is also clear that not all seizures of the person must be justified by probable cause to arrest for a crime. Prior to Terry v. Ohio, supra, any restraint on the person amounting to a seizure for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment was invalid unless justified by probable cause. Dunaway v. New York, supra, at 207-209. Terry created a limited exception to this general rule: certain seizures are justifiable under the Fourth Amendment if there is articula-ble suspicion that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime. In that case, a stop and a frisk for weapons were found unexceptionable. Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143 (1972), applied the same approach in the context of an informant’s report that an unnamed individual in a nearby vehicle was carrying narcotics and a gun. Although not expressly authorized in Terry, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 881-882 (1975), was unequivocal in saying that reasonable suspicion of criminal activity warrants a temporary seizure for the purpose of questioning limited to the purpose of the stop. In Brignoni-Ponce, that purpose was to verify or dispel the suspicion that the immigration laws were being violated, a governmental interest that was sufficient to warrant temporary detention for limited questioning. Royer does not suggest, nor do we, that a similar rationale would not warrant temporary detention for questioning on less than probable cause where the public interest involved is the suppression of illegal transactions in drugs or of any other serious crime.
Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692 (1981), involved another circumstance in which a temporary detention on less than probable cause satisfied the ultimate test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. There the occupant of a house was detained while a search warrant for the house was being executed. We held that the warrant made the occupant sufficiently suspect to justify his temporary seizure. The “limited intrusio[n] on the personal security” of the person detained was justified “by such substantial law enforcement interests” that the seizure could be made on articulable suspicion not amounting to probable cause. Id., at 699.
Fourth, Terry and its progeny nevertheless created only limited exceptions to the general rule that seizures of the person require probable cause to arrest. Detentions may be “investigative” yet violative of the Fourth Amendment absent probable cause. In the name of investigating a person who is no more than suspected of criminal activity, the police may not carry out a full search of the person or of his automobile or other effects. Nor may the police seek to verify their suspicions by means that approach the conditions of arrest. Dunaway v. New York, swpra, made this clear. There, the suspect was taken to the police station from his home and, without being formally arrested, interrogated for an hour. The resulting incriminating statements were held inadmissible: reasonable suspicion of crime is insufficient to justify custodial interrogation even though the interrogation is investigative. Id., at 211-212. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975), and Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721 (1969), are to the same effect.
The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures has always been interpreted to prevent a search that is not limited to the particularly described “place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” U. S. Const., Arndt. 4, even if the search is made pursuant to a warrant and based upon probable cause. The Amendment’s protection is not diluted in those situations where it has been determined that legitimate law enforcement interests justify a warrantless search: the search must be limited in scope to that which is justifed by the particular purposes served by the exception. For example, a warrantless search is permissible incident to a lawful arrest because of legitimate concerns for the safety of the officer and to prevent the destruction of evidence by the arrestee. E. g., Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 763 (1969). Nevertheless, such a search is limited to the person of the arrestee and the area immediately within his control. Id., at 762. Terry v. Ohio, supra, also embodies this principle: “The scope of the search must be ‘strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.” 392 U. S., at 19, quoting Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 310 (1967) (For-tas, J., concurring). The reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment requires no less when the police action is a seizure permitted on less than probable cause because of legitimate law enforcement interests. The scope of the detention must be carefully tailored to its underlying justification.
The predicate permitting seizures on suspicion short of probable cause is that law enforcement interests warrant a limited intrusion on the personal security of the suspect. The scope of the intrusion permitted will vary to some extent with the particular facts and circumstances of each case. This much, however, is clear: an investigative detention must be temporary and last no longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. Similarly, the investigative methods employed should be the least intrusive means reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer’s suspicion in a short period of time. See, e. g., United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, at 881-882; Adams v. Williams, supra, at 146. It is the State’s burden to demonstrate that the seizure it seeks to justify on the basis of a reasonable suspicion was sufficiently limited in scope and duration to satisfy the conditions of an investigative seizure.
Fifth, Dunaway and Brown hold that statements given during a period of illegal detention are inadmissible even though voluntarily given if they are the product of the illegal detention and not the result of an independent act of free will. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S., at 218-219; Brown v. Illinois, supra, at 601-602. In this respect those cases reiterated one of the principal holdings of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963).
Sixth, if the events in this case amounted to no more than a permissible police encounter in a public place or a justifiable Terry-type detention, Royer’s consent, if voluntary, would have been effective to legalize the search of his two suitcases. Cf. United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411, 424-425 (1976). The Florida District Court of Appeal in the case before us, however, concluded not only that Royer had been seized when he gave his consent to search his luggage but also that the bounds of an investigative stop had been exceeded. In its view the “confinement” in this case went beyond the limited restraint of a Terry investigative stop, and Royer’s consent was thus tainted by the illegality, a conclusion that required reversal in the absence of probable cause to arrest. The question before us is whether the record warrants that conclusion. We think that it does.
HH HH I — I
The State proffers three reasons for holding that when Royer consented to the search of his luggage, he was not being illegally detained. First, it is submitted that the entire encounter was consensual and hence Royer was not being held against his will at all. We find this submission untenable. Asking for and examining Royer’s ticket and his driver’s license were no doubt permissible in themselves, but when the officers identified themselves as narcotics agents, told Royer that he was suspected of transporting narcotics, and asked him to accompany them to the police room, while retaining his ticket and driver’s license and without indicating in any way that he was free to depart, Royer was effectively seized for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. These circumstances surely amount to a show of official authority such that “a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.” United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S., at 554 (opinion of Stewart, J.) (footnote omitted).
Second, the State submits that if Royer was seized, there existed reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify a temporary detention and that the limits of a Terry-type stop were never exceeded. We agree with the State that when the officers discovered that Royer was traveling under an assumed name, this fact, and the facts already known to the officers— paying cash for a one-way ticket, the mode of checking the two bags, and Royer’s appearance and conduct in general— were adequate grounds for suspecting Royer of carrying drugs and for temporarily detaining him and his luggage while they attempted to verify or dispel their suspicions in a manner that did not exceed the limits of an investigative detention. We also agree that had Royer voluntarily consented to the search of his luggage while he was justifiably being detained on reasonable suspicion, the products of the search would be admissible against him. We have concluded, however, that at the time Royer produced the key to his suitcase, the detention to which he was then subjected was a more serious intrusion on his personal liberty than is allowable on mere suspicion of criminal activity.
By the time Royer was informed that the officers wished to examine his luggage, he had identified himself when approached by the officers and had attempted to explain the discrepancy between the name shown on his identification and the name under which he had purchased his ticket and identified his luggage. The officers were not satisfied, for they informed him they were narcotics agents and had reason to believe that he was carrying illegal drugs. They requested him to accompany them to the police room. Royer went with them. He found himself in a small room — a large closet — equipped with a desk and two chairs. He was alone with two police officers who again told him that they thought he was carrying narcotics. He also found that the officers, without his consent, had retrieved his checked luggage from the airline. What had begun as a consensual inquiry in a public place had escalated into an investigatory procedure in a police interrogation room, where the police, unsatisfied with previous explanations, sought to confirm their suspicions. The officers had Royer’s ticket, they had his identification, and they had seized his luggage. Royer was never informed that he was free to board his plane if he so chose, and he reasonably believed that he was being detained. At least as of that moment, any consensual aspects of the encounter had evaporated, and we cannot fault the Florida District Court of Appeal for concluding that Terry v. Ohio and the cases following it did not justify the restraint to which Royer was then subjected. As a practical matter, Royer was under arrest. Consistent with this conclusion, the State conceded in the Florida courts that Royer would not have been free to leave the interrogation room had he asked to do so. Furthermore, the State’s brief in this Court interprets the testimony of the officers at the suppression hearing as indicating that had Royer refused to consent to a search of his luggage, the officers would have held the luggage and sought a warrant to authorize the search. Brief for Petitioner 6.
We also think that the officers’ conduct was more intrusive than necessary to effectuate an investigative detention otherwise authorized by the Terry line of cases. First, by returning his ticket and driver’s license, and informing him that he was free to go if he so desired, the officers might have obviated any claim that the encounter was anything but a consensual matter from start to finish. Second, there are undoubtedly reasons of safety and security that would justify moving a suspect from one location to another during an investigatory detention, such as from an airport concourse to a more private area. Cf. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 109-111 (1977) (per curiam). There is no indication in this case that such reasons prompted the officers to transfer the site of the encounter from the concourse to the interrogation room. It appears, rather, that the primary interest of the officers was not in having an extended conversation with Royer but in the contents of his luggage, a matter which the officers did not pursue orally with Royer until after the encounter was relocated to the police room. The record does not reflect any facts which would support a finding that the legitimate law enforcement purposes which justified the detention in the first instance were furthered by removing Royer to the police room prior to the officers’ attempt to gain his consent to a search of his luggage. As we have noted, had Royer consented to a search on the spot, the search could have been conducted with Royer present in the area where the bags were retrieved by Detective Johnson and any evidence recovered would have been admissible against him. If the search proved negative, Royer would have been free to go much earlier and with less likelihood of missing his flight, which in itself can be a very serious matter in a variety of circumstances.
Third, the State has not touched on the question whether it would have been feasible to investigate the contents of Royer’s bags in a more expeditious way. The courts are not strangers to the use of trained dogs to detect the presence of controlled substances in luggage. There is no indication here that this means was not feasible and available. If it had been used, Royer and his luggage could have been momentarily detained while this investigative procedure was carried out. Indeed, it may be that no detention at all would have been necessary. A negative result would have freed Royer in short order; a positive result would have resulted in his justifiable arrest on probable cause.
We do not suggest that there is a litmus-paper test for distinguishing a consensual encounter from a seizure or for determining when a seizure exceeds the bounds of an investigative stop. Even in the discrete category of airport encounters, there will be endless variations in the facts and circumstances, so much variation that it is unlikely that the courts can reduce to a sentence or a paragraph a rule that will provide unarguable answers to the question whether there has been an unreasonable search or seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Nevertheless, we must render judgment, and we think that the Florida District Court of Appeal cannot be faulted in concluding that the limits of a Terry-stop had been exceeded.
IV
The State’s third and final argument is that Royer was not being illegally held when he gave his consent because there was probable cause to arrest him at that time. Detective Johnson testified at the suppression hearing and the Florida District Court of Appeal held that there was no probable cause to arrest until Royer’s bags were opened, but the fact that the officers did not believe there was probable cause and proceeded on a consensual or Terry-stop rationale would not foreclose the State from justifying Royer’s custody by proving probable cause and hence removing any barrier to relying on Royer’s consent to search. Peters v. New York, decided with Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 66-67 (1968). We agree with the Florida District Court of Appeal, however, that probable cause to arrest Royer did not exist at the time he consented to the search of his luggage. The facts are that a nervous young man with two American Tourister bags paid cash for an airline ticket to a “target city.” These facts led to inquiry, which in turn revealed that the ticket had been bought under an assumed name. The proffered explanation did not satisfy the officers. We cannot agree with the State, if this is its position, that every nervous young man paying cash for a ticket to New York City under an assumed name and carrying two heavy American Tourister bags may be arrested and held to answer for a serious felony charge.
V
Because we affirm the Florida District Court of Appeal’s conclusion that Royer was being illegally detained when he consented to the search of his luggage, we agree that the consent was tainted by the illegality and was ineffective to justify the search. The judgment of the Florida District Court of Appeal is accordingly
Affirmed.
The facts set forth in this opinion are taken from the en banc decision of the Florida District Court of Appeal, Third District, 389 So. 2d 1007, 1015-1018 (1980), and from the transcript of the hearing on the motion to suppress contained in the joint appendix. App. 11A-116A.
The “drug courier profile” is an abstract of characteristics found to be typical of persons transporting illegal drugs. In Royer’s ease, the detectives attention was attracted by the following facts which were considered to be within the profile: (a) Royer was carrying American Tourister luggage, which appeared to be heavy, (b) he was young, apparently between 25-35, (c) he was casually dressed, (d) he appeared pale and nervous, looking around at other people, (e) he paid for his ticket in cash with a large number of bills, and (f) rather than completing the airline identification tag to be attached to checked baggage, which had space for a name, address, and telephone number, he wrote only a name and the destination. 389 So. 2d, at 1016; App. 27A-40A.
Fla. Stat. §893.13(l)(a)(2) (1975).
App. 114A-116A.
Under Florida law, a plea of nolo contendere is equivalent to a plea of guilty.
On appeal, a panel of the District Court of Appeal of Florida found that viewing the totality of the circumstances, the finding of consent by the trial court was supported by clear and convincing evidence. 389 So. 2d 1007 (1979). The panel decision was vacated and rehearing en banc granted. Id., at 1015 (1980). It is the decision of the en banc court that is reviewed here.
The Florida court was also of the opinion that “a mere similarity with the contents of the drug courier profile is insufficient even to constitute the articulable suspicion required to justify” the stop authorized by Terry v. Ohio. It went on to hold that even if it followed a contrary rule, or even if articulable suspicion occurred at some point prior to Royer’s consent to search, the facts did not amount to probable cause that would justify the restraint imposed on Royer. 389 So. 2d, at 1019. As will become clear, we disagree on the reasonable-suspicion issue but do concur that probable cause to arrest was lacking.
In its brief and at oral argument before this Court, the State contests whether this concession was ever made. We have no basis to question the statement of the Florida court.
Our decision here is consistent with the Court’s judgment in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544 (1980). In Mendenhall, the respondent was walking along an airport concourse when she was approached by two federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers. As in the present case, the officers asked for Mendenhall’s airline ticket and some identification; the names on the ticket and identification did not match. When one of the agents specifically identified himself as attached to the DEA, Men-denhall became visibly shaken and nervous. Id., at 548.
After returning the ticket and identification, one officer asked Menden-hall if she would accompany him to the DEA airport office, 50 feet away, for further questions. Once in the office, Mendenhall was asked to consent to a search of her person and her handbag; she was advised of her right to decline. Ibid. In a private room following further assurance from Men-denhall that she consented to the search, a policewoman began the search of Mendenhall’s person by requesting that Mendenhall disrobe. As she began to undress, Mendenhall removed two concealed packages that appeared to contain heroin and handed them to the policewoman. Id., at 549. The Court of Appeals determined that the initial “stop” of Menden-hall was unlawful because not based upon a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. In the alternative, the court found that even if the initial stop was permissible, the officer’s request that Mendenhall accompany him to the DEA office constituted an arrest without probable cause.
This Court reversed. Two Justices were of the view that the entire encounter was consensual and that no seizure had taken place. Three other Justices assumed that there had been a seizure but would have held that there was reasonable suspicion to warrant it; hence a voluntary consent to search was a valid basis for the search. Thus, the five Justices voting to reverse appeared to agree that Mendenhall was not being illegally detained when she consented to be searched. The four dissenting Justices also assumed that there had been a detention but were of the view that reasonable grounds for suspecting Mendenhall did not exist and concluded that Mendenhall was thus being illegally detained at the time of her consent.
The case before us differs in important respects. Here, Royer’s ticket and identification remained in the possession of the officers throughout the encounter; the officers also seized and had possession of his luggage. As a practical matter, Royer could not leave the airport without them. In Mendenhall, no luggage was involved, the ticket and identification were immediately returned, and the officers were careful to advise that the suspect could decline to be searched. Here, the officers had seized Royer’s luggage and made no effort to advise him that he need not consent to the search.
Courts of Appeals are in disagreement as to whether using a dog to detect drugs in luggage is a search, but no Court of Appeals has held that more than an articulable suspicion is necessary to justify this kind of a war-rantless search if indeed it is a search. See, e. g., United States v. Sullivan, 625 F. 2d 9, 13 (CA4 1980) (no search), cert. denied, 450 U. S. 923 (1981); United States v. Burns, 624 F. 2d 95, 101 (CA10 1980) (same); United States v. Beale, 674 F. 2d 1327, 1335 (CA9 1982) (sniff is an intrusion requiring reasonable suspicion), cert, pending, No. 82-674. Furthermore, the law of the Circuit from which this case comes was and is that “use of [drug-detecting canines] constitute^] neither a search nor a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Goldstein, 635 F. 2d 356, 361 (CA5), cert. denied, 452 U. S. 962 (1981). See United States v. Viera, 644 F. 2d 509, 510 (CA5), cert. denied, 454 U. S. 867 (1981). Decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rendered prior to September 30, 1981, are binding precedent on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F. 2d 1206, 1207 (CA11 1981).
In any event, we hold here that the officers had reasonable suspicion to believe that Royer’s luggage contained drugs, and we assume that the use of dogs in the investigation would not have entailed any prolonged detention of either Royer or his luggage which may involve other Fourth Amendment concerns. In United States v. Beale, supra, for example, after briefly questioning two suspects who had checked baggage for a flight from the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport, the officers proceeded to the baggage area where a trained dog alerted to one of the checked bags. Meanwhile, the suspects had boarded their plane for California, where their bags were again sniffed by a trained dog and they were arrested. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a judgment convicting the suspects on the ground that articulable suspicion was necessary to justify the use of a trained dog to sniff luggage and that the existence or not of that requirement should have been determined in the District Court. 674 F. 2d, at 1335. In the case before us, the officers, with founded suspicion, could have detained Royer for the brief period during which Florida authorities at busy airports seem able to carry out the dog-sniffing procedure.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question for decision is whether a State that terminates public assistance payments to a particular recipient without affording him the opportunity for an evidentiary hearing prior to termination denies the recipient procedural due process in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
This action was brought in the District Court for the Southern District of New York by residents of New York City receiving financial aid under the federally assisted program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or under New York State’s general Home Relief program. Their complaint alleged that the New York State and New York City officials administering these programs terminated, or were about to terminate, such aid without prior notice and hearing, thereby denying them due process of law. At the time the suits were filed there was no requirement of prior notice or hearing of any kind before termination of financial aid. However, the State and city adopted procedures for notice and hearing after tho suits were brought, and the plaintiffs, appellees here, then challenged the constitutional adequacy of those procedures.
The State Commissioner of Social Services amended the State Department of Social Services’ Official Regulations to require that local social services officials proposing to discontinue or suspend a recipient’s financial aid do so according to a procedure that conforms to either subdivision (a) or subdivision (b) of § 351.26 of the regulations as amended. The City of New York elected to promulgate a local procedure according to subdivision (b). That subdivision, so far as here pertinent, provides that the local procedure must include the giving of notice to the recipient of the reasons for a proposed discontinuance or suspension at least seven days prior to its effective date, with notice also that upon request the recipient may have the proposal reviewed by a local welfare official holding a position superior to that of the supervisor who approved the proposed discontinuance or suspension,' and, further, that the recipient may submit, for purposes of the review, a written statement to demonstrate why his grant should not be discontinued or suspended. The decision by the reviewing official whether to discontinue or suspend aid must be made expeditiously, with written notice of the decision to the recipient. The section further expressly provides that “[assistance shall not be discontinued or suspended prior to the date such notice of decision is sent to the recipient and his representative, if any, or prior to the proposed effective date of discontinuance or suspension, whichever occurs later.”
Pursuant to subdivision (b), the New York City Department of Social Services promulgated Procedure No. 68-18. A caseworker who has doubts about the recipient’s continued eligibility must first discuss them with the recipient. If the caseworker concludes that the recipient is no longer eligible, he recommends termination of aid to a unit supervisor. If the latter concurs, he sends the recipient a letter stating the reasons for proposing to terminate aid and notifying him that within seven days he may request that a higher official review the record, and may support the request with a written statement prepared personally or with the aid of an attorney or other person. If the reviewing official affirms the determination of ineligibility, aid is stopped immediately and the recipient is informed by letter of the reasons for the action. Appellees’ challenge to this procedure emphasizes the absence of any provisions for the personal appearance of the recipient before the reviewing official, for oral presentation of evidence, and for confrontation and cross-examination of adverse witnesses. However, the letter does inform the recipient that he may request a post-termination “fair hearing.” This is a proceeding before an independent state hearing officer at which the recipient may appear personally, offer oral evidence, confront and cross-examine the witnesses against him, and have a record made of the hearing. If the recipient prevails at the “fair hearing” he is paid all funds erroneously withheld. HEW Handbook, pt. IV, §§ 6200-6500; 18 NYCRR §§ 84.2-84.23. A recipient whose aid is not restored by a “fair hearing” decision may have judicial review. N. Y. Civil Practice Law and Rules, Art. 78 (1963). The recipient is so notified, 18 NYCRR § 84.16.
I
The constitutional issue to be decided, therefore, is the narrow one whether the Due Process Clause requires that the recipient be afforded an evidentiary hearing before the termination of benefits. The District Court held that only a pre-termination evidentiary hearing would satisfy the constitutional command, and rejected the argument of the state and city officials that the combination of the post-termination “fair hearing” with the informal pre-termination review disposed of all due process claims. The court said: “While post-termination review is relevant, there is one overpowering fact which controls here. By hypothesis, a welfare recipient is destitute, without funds or assets. . . . Suffice it to say that to cut off a welfare recipient in the face of . . . ‘brutal need’ without a prior hearing of some sort is unconscionable, unless overwhelming considerations justify it.” Kelly v. Wyman, 294 F. Supp. 893, 899, 900 (1968). The court rejected the argument that the need to protect the public’s tax revenues supplied the requisite “overwhelming consideration.” “Against the justified desire to protect public funds must be weighed the individual’s overpowering need in this unique situation not to be wrongfully deprived of assistance .... While the problem of additional expense must be kept in mind, it does not justify denying a hearing meeting the ordinary standards of due process. Under all the circumstances, we hold that due process requires an adequate hearing before termination of welfare benefits, and the fact that there is a later constitutionally fair proceeding does not alter the result.” Id., at 901. Although state officials were party defendants in the action, only the Commissioner of Social Services of the City of New York appealed. We noted probable jurisdiction, 394 U. S. 971 (1969), to decide important issues that have been the subject of disagreement in principle between the three-judge court in the present case and that convened in Wheeler v. Montgomery, No. 14, post, p. 280, also decided today. We affirm.
Appellant does not contend that procedural due process is not applicable to the termination of welfare benefits. Such benefits are a matter of statutory entitlement for persons qualified to receive them. Their termination involves state action that adjudicates important rights. The constitutional challenge cannot be answered by an argument that public assistance benefits are “a ‘privilege' and not a ‘right.’ ” Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 627 n. 6 (1969). Relevant constitutional restraints apply as much to the withdrawal of public assistance benefits as to disqualification for unemployment compensation, Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963); or to denial of a tax exemption, Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 613 (1958); or to discharge from public employment, Slochower v. Board of Higher Education, 350 U. S. 551 (1956). The extent to which procedural due process must be afforded the recipient is influenced by the extent to which he may be “condemned to suffer grievous loss," Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 168 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring), and depends upon whether the recipient’s interest in avoiding that loss outweighs the governmental interest in summary adjudication. Accordingly, as we said in Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers Union v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961), “consideration of what procedures due process may require under any given set of circumstances must begin with a determination of the precise nature of the government function involved as well as of the private interest that has been affected by governmental action.” See also Hannah v. Larche, 363 U. S. 420, 440, 442 (1960).
It is true, of course, that some governmental benefits may be administratively terminated without affording the recipient a pre-termination evidentiary hearing. But we agree with the District Court that when welfare is discontinued, only a pre-termination evidentiary hearing provides the recipient with procedural due process. Cf. Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337 (1969). For qualified recipients, welfare provides the means to obtain essential food, clothing, housing, and medical care. Cf. Nash v. Florida Industrial Commission, 389 U. S. 235, 239 (1967). Thus the crucial factor in this context — a factor not present in the case of the blacklisted government contractor, the discharged government employee, the taxpayer denied a tax exemption, or virtually anyone else' whose governmental entitlements are ended — is that termination of aid pending resolution of a controversy over eligibility may deprive an eligible recipient of the very means by which to live while he waits. Since he lacks independent resources, his situation becomes immediately desperate. His need to concentrate upon finding the means for daily subsistence, in turn, adversely affects his ability to seek redress from the welfare bureaucracy.
Moreover, important governmental interests are promoted by affording recipients a pre-termination evi-dentiary hearing. From its founding the Nation's basic commitment has been to foster the dignity and well-being of all persons within its borders. We have come to recognize that forces not within the control of the poor contribute to their poverty. This perception, against the background of our traditions, has significantly influenced the development of the contemporary public assistance system. Welfare, by meeting the basic demands of subsistence, can help bring within the reach of the poor the same opportunities that are available to others to participate meaningfully in the life of the community. At the same time, welfare guards against the societal malaise that may flow from a widespread sense of unjustified frustration and insecurity. Public assistance, then, is not mere charity, but a means to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The same governmental interests that counsel the provision of welfare, counsel as well its uninterrupted provision to those eligible to receive it; pre-termination evidentiary hearings are indispensable to that end.
Appellant does not challenge the force of these considerations but argues that they are outweighed by countervailing governmental interests in conserving fiscal and administrative resources. These interests, the argument goes, justify the delay of any evidentiary hearing until after discontinuance of the grants. Summary adjudication protects the public fisc by stopping payments promptly upon discovery of reason to believe that a recipient is no longer eligible. Since most terminations are accepted without challenge, summary adjudication also conserves both the fisc and administrative time and energy by reducing the number of evidentiary hearings actually held.
We agree with the District Court, however, that these governmental interests are not overriding in the welfare context. The requirement of a prior hearing doubtless involves some greater expense, and the benefits paid to ineligible recipients pending decision at the hearing probably cannot be recouped, since these recipients are likely to be judgment-proof. But the State is not without weapons to minimize these increased costs. Much of the drain on fiscal and administrative resources can be reduced by developing procedures for prompt pre-termination hearings and by skillful use of personnel and facilities. Indeed, the very provision for a post-termination evidentiary hearing in New York’s Home Relief program is itself cogent evidence that the State recognizes the primacy of the public interest in correct eligibility determinations and therefore in the provision of procedural safeguards. Thus, the interest of the eligible recipient in uninterrupted receipt of public assistance, coupled with the State’s interest that his payments not be erroneously terminated, clearly outweighs the State’s competing concern to prevent any increase in its fiscal and administrative burdens. As the District Court correctly concluded, “[t]he stakes are simply too high for the welfare recipient, and the possibility for honest error or irritable misjudgment too great, to allow termination of aid without giving the recipient a chance, if he so desires, to be fully informed of the case against him so that he may contest its basis and produce evidence in rebuttal.” 294 F. Supp., at 904-905.
II
We also agree with the District Court, however, that the pre-termination hearing need not take the form of a judicial or quasi-judicial trial. We bear in mind that the statutory “fair hearing” will provide the recipient with a full administrative review. Accordingly, the pre-termination hearing has one function, only: to produce an initial determination of the validity of the welfare department’s grounds for discontinuance of payments in order to protect a recipient against an erroneous termination of his benefits. Cf. Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337, 343 (1969) (Harlan, J., concurring). Thus, a complete record and a comprehensive opinion, which would serve primarily to facilitate judicial review and to guide future decisions, need not be provided at the pre-termination stage. We recognize, too., that both welfare authorities and recipients have an interest in relatively speedy resolution of questions of eligibility, that they are used to dealing with one another informally, and that some welfare departments have very burdensome caseloads. These considerations justify the limitation of the pre-termination hearing to minimum procedural safeguards, adapted to the particular characteristics of welfare recipients, and to the limited nature of the controversies to be resolved. We wish to add that we, no less than the dissenters, recognize the importance of not imposing upon the States or the Federal Government in this developing field of law any procedural requirements beyond those demanded by rudimentary due process.
“The fundamental requisite of due process of law is the opportunity to be heard.” Grannis v. Ordean, 234 U. S. 385, 394 (1914). The hearing must be “at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner.” Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U. S. 545, 552 (1965). In the present context these principles require that a recipient have timely and adequate notice detailing the reasons for a proposed termination, and an effective opportunity to defend by confronting any adverse witnesses and by presenting his own arguments and evidence orally. These rights are important in cases such as those before us, where recipients have challenged proposed terminations as resting on incorrect or misleading factual premises or on misapplication of rules or policies to the facts of particular cases.
We are not prepared to say that the seven-day notice currently provided by New York City is constitutionally insufficient per se, although there may be cases where fairness would require that a longer time be given. Nor do we see any constitutional deficiency in the content or form of the notice. New York employs both a letter and a personal conference with a caseworker to inform a recipient of the precise questions raised about his continued eligibility. Evidently the recipient is told the legal and factual bases for the Department's doubts. This combination is probably the most effective method of communicating with recipients.
The city’s procedures presently do not permit recipients to appear personally with or without counsel before the official who finally determines continued eligibility. Thus a recipient is not permitted to present evidence to that official orally, or to confront or cross-examine adverse witnesses. These omissions are fatal to the constitutional adequacy of the procedures.
The opportunity to be heard must be tailored to the capacities and circumstances of those who are to be heard. It is not enough that a welfare recipient may present his position to the decision maker in writing or secondhand through his caseworker. Written submissions are an unrealistic option for most recipients, who lack the educational attainment necessary to write effectively and who cannot obtain professional assistance. Moreover, written submissions do not afford the flexibility of oral presentations; they do not permit the recipient to mold his argument to the issues the decision maker' appears to regard as important. Particularly where credibility and veracity are at issue, as they must be in many termination proceedings, written submissions are a wholly unsatisfactory basis for decision. The secondhand presentation to the decisionmaker by the caseworker has its own deficiencies; since the caseworker usually gathers the facts upon which the charge of ineligibility rests, the presentation of the recipient’s side of the controversy cannot safely be left to him. Therefore a recipient must be allowed to state his position orally. Informal procedures will suffice; in this context due process does not require a particular order of proof or mode of offering evidence. Cf. HEWJiandbook, pt. IV, § 6400 (a). ^
In almost every setting where important decisions turn on questions of fact, due process requires an opportunity to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses. E. g., ICC v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 227 U. S. 88, 93-94 (1913); Willner v. Committee on Character & Fitness, 373 U. S. 96, 103-104 (1963). What we said in Greene v. McElroy, 360 U. S. 474, 496-497 (1959), is particularly pertinent here:
“Certain principles have remained relatively immutable in our jurisprudence. One of these is that where governmental action seriously injures an individual, and the reasonableness of the action depends on fact findings, the evidence used to prove the Government’s case must be disclosed to the individual so that he has an opportunity to show that it is untrue. While this is important in the case of documentary evidence, it is even more important where the evidence consists of the testimony of individuals whose memory might be faulty or who, in fact, might be perjurers or persons motivated by malice, vindictiveness, intolerance, prejudice, or jealousy. We have formalized these protections in the requirements of confrontation and cross-examination. They have ancient roots. They find expression in the Sixth Amendment .... This Court has been zealous to protect these rights from erosion. It has spoken out not only in criminal cases, . . . but also in all types of cases where administrative . . . actions were under scrutiny.”
Welfare recipients must therefore be given an opportunity to confront and cross-examine the witnesses relied on by the department.
“The right to be heard would be, in many cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 68-69 (1932). We do not say that counsel must be provided at the pre-termination hearing, but only that the recipient must be allowed to retain an attorney if he so desires. Counsel can help delineate the issues, present the factual contentions in an orderly manner, conduct cross-examination, and generally safeguard the interests of the recipient. We do not anticipate that this assistance will unduly prolong or otherwise encumber the hearing. Evidently HEW has reached the same conclusion. See 45 CFR § 205.10, 34 Fed. Reg. 1144 (1969); 45 CFR § 220.25, 34 Fed. Reg. 13595 (1969).
Finally, the decisionmaker’s conclusion as to a recipient’s eligibility must rest solely on the legal rules and evidence adduced at the hearing. Ohio Bell Tel. Co. v. PUC, 301 U. S. 292 (1937); United States v. Abilene & S. R. Co., 265 U. S. 274, 288-289 (1924). To demonstrate compliance with this elementary requirement, the decision maker should state the reasons for his determination and indicate the evidence he relied on, cf. Wichita R. & Light Co. v. PUC, 260 U. S. 48, 57-59 (1922), though his statement need not amount to a full opinion or even formal findings of fact and conclusions of law. And, of course, an impartial decision maker is essential. Cf. In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133 (1955); Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33, 45-46 (1950). We agree with the District Court that prior involvement in some aspects of a case will not necessarily bar a welfare official from acting as a decision maker. He should not, however, have participated in making the determination under review.
Affirmed.
[For dissenting opinion of Me. Chief Justice Burgee, see post, p. 282.]
[For dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart, see post, p. 285.]
AFDC was established by the Social Security Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 627, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §§ 601-610 (1964 ed. and Supp. IV). It is a categorical assistance program supported by federal grants-in-aid but administered by the States according to regulations of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. See N. Y. Social Welfare Law §§ 343-362 (1966). We considered other aspects of AFDC in King v. Smith, 392 U. S. 309 (1968), and in Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969).
Home Relief is a general assistance program financed and administered solely by New York state and local governments. N. Y. Social Welfare Law §§ 157-165 (1966), since July 1, 1967, Social Services Law §§ 157-166. It assists any person unable to support himself or to secure support from other sources. Id., § 158.
Two suits were brought and consolidated in the District Court. The named plaintiffs were 20 in number, including intervenors. Fourteen had been or were about to be cut off from AFDC, and six from Home Relief. During the course of this litigation most, though not all, of the plaintiffs either received a “fair hearing” (see infra, at 259-260) or were restored to the rolls without a hearing. However, even in many of the cases where payments have been resumed, the underlying questions of eligibility that resulted in the bringing of this suit have not been resolved. For example, Mrs. Altagracia Guzman alleged that she was in danger of losing AFDC payments for failure to cooperate with the City Department of Social Services in suing her estranged husband. She contended that the departmental policy requiring such cooperation was inapplicable to the facts of her case. The record shows that payments to Mrs. Guzman have not been terminated, but there is no indication that the basic dispute over her duty to cooperate has been resolved, or that the alleged danger of termination has been removed. Home Relief payments to Juan DeJesus were terminated because he refused to accept counseling and rehabilitation for drug addiction. Mr. DeJesus maintains that he does not use drugs. His payments were restored the day after his complaint was filed. But there is nothing in the record to indicate that the underlying factual dispute in his case has been settled. 3
The adoption in February 1968 and the amendment in April of Regulation § 351.26 coincided with or followed several revisions by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of its regulations implementing 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (4), which is the provision of the Social Security Act that requires a State to afford a “fair hearing” to any recipient of aid under a federally assisted program before termination of his aid becomes final. This requirement is satisfied by a post-termination “fair hearing” under regulations presently in effect. See HEW Handbook of Public Assistance Administration (hereafter HEW Handbook), pt. IV, §§ 6200-6400. A new HEW regulation, 34 Fed. Reg. 1144 (1969), now scheduled to take effect in July 1970, 34 Fed. Reg. 13595 (1969), would require continuation of AFDC payments until the final decision after a “fair hearing” and would give recipients a right to appointed counsel at “fair hearings.” 45 CFR § 205.10, 34 Fed. Reg. 1144 (1969); 45 CFR § 220.25, 34 Fed. Reg. 1356 (1969). For the safeguards specified at such “fair hearings” see HEW Handbook, pt. IV, §§6200-6400. Another recent regulation now in effect requires a local agency administering AFDC to give “advance notice of questions it has about an individual’s eligibility so that a recipient has an opportunity to discuss his situation before receiving formal written notice of reduction in payment or termination of assistance.” Id., pt. IV, §2300 (d)(5). This case presents no issue of the validity or construction of the federal regulations. It is only subdivision (b) of §351.26 of the New York State regulations and implementing procedure 68-18 of New York City that pose the -constitutional question before us. Cf. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 641 (1969). Even assuming that the constitutional question might be avoided in the context of AFDC by construction of the Social Security Act or of the present federal regulations thereunder, or by waiting for the new regulations to become effective, the question must be faced and decided in the context of New York’s Home Relief program, to which the procedures also apply.
These omissions contrast with the provisions of subdivision (a) of § 351.26, the validity of which is not at issue in this Court. That subdivision also requires written notification to the recipient at least seven days prior to the proposed effective date of the reasons for the proposed discontinuance or suspension. However, the notification must further advise the recipient that if he makes a request therefor he will be afforded an opportunity to appear at a time and place indicated before the official identified in the notice, who will review his case with him and allow him to present such written and oral evidence as the recipient may have to demonstrate why aid should not be discontinued or suspended. The District Court assumed that subdivision (a) would be construed to afford rights of confrontation and cross-examination and a decision based solely on the record. 294 F. Supp. 893, 906-907 (1968).
N. Y. Social Welfare Law § 353 (2) (1966) provides for a post-termination “fair hearing” pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (4). See n. 3, supra. Although the District Court noted that HEW had raised some objections to the New York “fair hearing” procedures, 294 F. Supp., at 898 n. 9, these objections are not at issue in this Court. Shortly before this suit was filed, New York State adopted a similar provision for a “fair hearing” in terminations of Home Relief. 18 NYCRR §§ 84.2-84.23. In both AFDC and Home Relief the “fair hearing” must be held within 10 working days of the request, § 84.6, with decision within 12 working days thereafter, § 84.15. It was conceded in oral argument that these time limits are not in fact observed.
Current HEW regulations require the States to make full retroactive payments (with federal matching funds) whenever a “fair hearing” results in a reversal of a termination of assistance. HEW Handbook, pt. IV, §§ 6200 (k), 6300 (g), 6500 (a); see 18 NYCRR § 358.8. Under New York State regulations retroactive payments can also be made, with certain limitations, to correct an erroneous termination discovered before a “fair hearing” has been held. 18 NYCRR § 351.27. HEW regulations also authorize, but do not require, the States to continue AFDC payments without loss of federal matching funds pending completion of a “fair hearing.” HEW Handbook, pt. IV, § 6500 (b). The new HEW regulations presently scheduled to become effective July 1, 1970, will supersede all of these provisions. See n. 3, supra.
Appellant does not question the recipient’s due process right to evidentiary review after termination. For a general discussion of the provision' of an evidentiary hearing prior to termination, see Comment, The Constitutional Minimum for the Termination of Welfare Benefits: The Need for and Requirements of a Prior Hearing, 68 Mich. L. Rev. 112 (1969).
It may be realistic today to regard welfare entitlements as more like “property” than a “gratuity.” Much of the existing wealth in this country takes the form of rights that do not fall within traditional common-law concepts of property. It has been aptly noted that
“[sjociety today is built around entitlement. The automobile dealer has his franchise, the doctor and lawyer their professional licenses, the worker his union membership, contract, and pension rights, the executive his contract and stock options; all are devices to aid security and independence. Many of the most important of these entitlements now flow from government: subsidies to farmers and businessmen, routes for airlines and channels for television stations; long term contracts for defense, space, and education; social security pensions for individuals. Such sources of security, whether private or public, are no longer regarded as luxuries or gratuities; to the recipients they are essentials, fully deserved, and in no sense a form of charity. It is only the poor whose entitlements, although recognized by public policy, have not been effectively enforced.” Reich, Individual Rights and Social Welfare: The Emerging Legal Issues, 74 Yale L. J. 1245, 1255 (1965). See also Reich, The New Property, 73 Yale L. J. 733 (1964).
See also Goldsmith v. United States Board of Tax Appeals, 270 U. S. 117 (1926) (right of a certified public accountant to practice before the Board of Tax Appeals); Hornsby v. Allen, 326 F. 2d 605 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1964) (right to obtain a retail liquor store license); Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 294 F. 2d 150 (C. A. 5th Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U. S. 930 (1961) (right to attend a public college).
One Court of Appeals has stated: “In a wide variety of situations, it has long been recognized that where harm to the public is threatened, and the private interest infringed is reasonably deemed to be of less importance, an official body can take summary action pending a later hearing.” R. A. Holman & Co. v. SEC, 112 U. S. App. D. C. 43, 47, 299 F. 2d 127, 131, cert. denied, 370 U. S. 911 (1962) (suspension of exemption from stock registration requirement). See also, for example, Ewing v. Mytinger & Casselberry, Inc., 339 U. S. 594 (1950) (seizure of mislabeled vitamin product); North American Cold Storage Co. v. Chicago, 211 U. S. 306 (1908) (seizure of food not fit for human use); Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414 (1944) (adoption of wartime price regulations); Gonzalez v. Freeman, 118 U. S. App. D. C. 180, 334 F. 2d 570 (1964) (disqualification of a contractor to do business with the Government). In Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers Union v. McElroy, supra, at 896, summary dismissal of a public employee was upheld because “[i]n [its] proprietary military capacity, the Federal Government . . . has traditionally exercised unfettered control,” and because the case involved the Government’s “dispatch of its own internal affairs.” Cf. Perkins v. Lukens Steel Co., 310 U. S. 113 (1940).
Administrative determination that a person is ineligible for welfare may also render him ineligible for participation in state-financed medical programs. See N. Y. Social Welfare Law § 366 (1966).
His impaired adversary position is particularly telling in light of the welfare bureaucracy’s difficulties in reaching correct decisions on eligibility. See Comment, Due Process and the Right to a Prior Hearing in Welfare Cases, 37 Ford. L. Rev. 604, 610-611 (1969).
See, e. g., Reich, supra, n. 8, 74 Yale L. J., at 1255.
Due process does not, of course, require two hearings. If, for example, a State simply wishes to continue benefits until after a “fair” hearing there will be no need for a preliminary hearing.
This case presents no question requiring our determination whether due process requires only an opportunity for written submission, or an opportunity both for written submission and oral argument, where there are no factual issues in dispute or where the application of the rule of law is not intertwined with factual issues. See FCC v. WJR, 337 U. S. 265, 275-277 (1949).
“[T]he prosecution of an appeal demands a degree of security, awareness, tenacity, and ability which few dependent people have.” Wedemeyer & Moore, The American Welfare System, 54 Calif. L. Rev. 326, 342 (1966).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act provides that certain forms of contraband, including motor vehicles used in violation of the Act’s provisions, may be seized and potentially forfeited. In this ease, we must decide whether the Fourth Amendment requires the police to obtain a warrant before seizing an automobile from a public place when they have probable cause to believe that it is forfeitable contraband. We hold that it does not.
I
On three occasions in July and August 1993, police officers observed respondent Tyvessel Tyvorus White using his car to deliver cocaine, and thereby developed probable cause to believe that his ear was subject to forfeiture under the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act (Act), Fla. Stat. §932.701 et seq. (1997). Several months later, the police arrested respondent at his place of employment on charges unrelated to the drug transactions observed in July and August 1993. At the same time, the arresting officers, without securing a warrant, seized respondent’s automobile in accordance with the provisions of the Act. See § 932.703(2)(a). They seized the vehicle solely because they believed that it was forfeitable under the Act. During a subsequent inventory search, the police found two pieces of crack cocaine in the ashtray. Based on the discovery of the cocaine, respondent was charged with possession of a controlled substance in violation of Florida law.
At his trial on the possession charge, motion to suppress the evidence discovered during the inventory search. He argued that the warrantless seizure of his car violated the Fourth Amendment, thereby making the cocaine the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The trial court initially reserved ruling on respondent’s motion, but later denied it after the jury returned a guilty verdict. On appeal, the Florida First District Court of Appeal affirmed. 680 So. 2d 550 (1996). Adopting the position of a majority of state and federal courts to have considered the question, the court rejected respondent’s argument that the Fourth Amendment required the police to secure a warrant prior to seizing his vehicle. Id., at 554. Because the Florida Supreme Court and this Court had not directly addressed the issue, the court certified to the Florida Supreme Court the question whether, absent exigent circumstances, the war-rantless seizure of an automobile under the Act violated the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 555.
In a divided opinion, the Florida Supreme Court answered the certified question in the affirmative, quashed the First District Court of Appeal’s opinion, and remanded. 710 So. 2d 949, 955 (1998). The majority of the court concluded that, absent exigent circumstances, the Fourth Amendment requires the police to obtain a warrant prior to seizing property that has been used in violation of the Act. Ibid. According to the court, the fact that the police develop probable cause to believe that such a violation occurred does not, standing alone, justify a warrantless seizure. The court expressly rejected the holding of the Eleventh Circuit, see United States v. Valdes, 876 F. 2d 1554 (1989), and the majority of other Federal Circuits to have addressed the same issue in the context of the federal civil forfeiture law, 21 U. S. C. §881, which is similar to Florida’s. See United States v. Decker, 19 F. 3d 287 (CA6 1994) (per curiam); United States v. Pace, 898 F. 2d 1218, 1241 (CA7 1990); United States v. One 1978 Mercedes Benz, 711 F. 2d 1297 (CA5 1983); United States v. Kemp, 690 F. 2d 397 (CA4 1982); United States v. Bush, 647 F. 2d 357 (CA3 1981). But see United States v. Dixon, 1 F. 3d 1080 (CA10 1993); United States v. Lasanta, 978 F. 2d 1300 (CA2 1992); United States v. Linn, 880 F. 2d 209 (CA9 1989). We granted certiorari, 525 U. S. 1000 (1998), and now reverse.
► — 1
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and further provides that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” U. S. Const., Arndt. 4. In deciding whether a challenged governmental action violates the Amendment, we have taken care to inquire whether the action was regarded as an unlawful search and seizure when the Amendment was framed. See Wyoming v. Houghton, ante, at 299; Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 182, 149 (1925) (“The Fourth Amendment is to be construed in light of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when it was adopted, and in a manner which will conserve public interests as well as the interests and rights of individual citizens”).
In Carroll, we held that when federal officers have probable cause to believe that an automobile contains contraband, the Fourth Amendment does not require them to obtain a warrant prior to searching the car for and seizing the contraband. Our holding was rooted in federal law enforcement practice at the time of the adoption of the Fourth Amendment. Specifically, we looked to laws of the First, Second, and Fourth Congresses that authorized federal officers to conduct warrantless searches of ships and to seize concealed goods subject to duties. Id., at 150-151 (citing Act of July 81,1789, §§24,29,1 Stat. 43; Act of Aug. 4,1790, §50,1 Stat. 170; Act of Feb. 18, 1793, §27, 1 Stat. 315; Act of Mar. 2, 1799, §§68-70, 1 Stat. 677, 678). These enactments led us to conclude that “contemporaneously with the adoption of the Fourth Amendment,” Congress distinguished “the necessity for a search warrant between goods subject to forfeiture, when concealed in a dwelling house or similar place, and like goods in course of transportation and concealed in a movable vessel where they readily could be put out of reach of a search warrant.” 267 U. S., at 151.
The Florida Supreme Court recognized that under Carroll, the police could search respondent’s car, without obtaining a warrant, if they had probable cause to believe that it contained contraband. The court, however, rejected the argument that the warrantless seizure of respondent’s vehicle itself also was appropriate under Carroll and its progeny. It reasoned that “[tjhere is a vast difference between permitting the immediate search of a movable automobile based on actual knowledge that it then contains contraband [and] the discretionary seizure of a citizen’s automobile based upon a belief that it may have been used at some time in the past to assist in illegal activity.” 710 So. 2d, at 953. We disagree.
The principles underlying the rule in Carroll and the founding-era statutes upon which they are based fully support the conclusion that the warrantless seizure of respondent’s ear did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Although, as the Florida Supreme Court observed, the police lacked probable cause to believe that respondent’s car contained contraband, see 710 So. 2d, at 953, they certainly had probable cause to believe that the vehicle itself was contraband under Florida law. Recognition of the need to seize readily movable contraband before it is spirited away undoubtedly underlies the early federal laws relied upon in Carroll. See 267 U. S., at 150-152; see also California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 390 (1985); South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 367 (1976). This need is equally weighty when the automobile, as opposed to its contents, is the contraband that the police seek to secure. Furthermore, the early federal statutes that we looked to in Carroll, like the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act, authorized the warrantless seizure of both goods subject to duties and the ships upon which those goods were concealed. See, e. g., 1 Stat. 43, 46; 1 Stat. 170, 174; 1 Stat. 677, 678, 692.
In addition to the special considerations recognized in the context of movable items, our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has consistently accorded law enforcement officials greater latitude in exercising their duties in public places. For example, although a warrant presumptively is required for a felony arrest in a suspect’s home, the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless arrests in public places where an officer has probable cause to believe that a felony has occurred. See United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411, 416-424 (1976). In explaining this rule, we have drawn upon the established “distinction between a warrantless seizure in an open area and such a seizure on private premises.” Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 587 (1980); see also id., at 586-587 (“It is also well settled that objects such as weapons or contraband found in a public place may be seized by the police without a warrant”). The principle that underlies Watson extends to the seizure at issue in this case. Indeed, the facts of this case are nearly indistinguishable from those in G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U. S. 338 (1977). There, we considered whether federal agents violated the Fourth Amendment by failing to secure a warrant prior to seizing automobiles in partial satisfaction of income tax assessments. Id., at 351. We concluded that they did not, reasoning that “[t]he seizures of the automobiles in this case took place on public streets, parking lots, or other open places, and did not involve any invasion of privacy.” Ibid. Here, because the police seized respondent’s vehicle from a public area — respondent’s employer’s parking lot — the warrantless seizure also did not involve any invasion of respondent’s privacy. Based on the relevant history and our prior precedent, we therefore conclude that the Fourth Amendment did not require a warrant to seize respondent’s automobile in these circumstances.
The judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
That Act provides, in relevant part: “Any contraband article, vessel, motor vehicle, aircraft, other personal property, or real property used in violation of any provision of the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act, or in, upon, or by means of which any violation of the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act has taken or is taking place, may be seized and shall be forfeited.” Fla. Stat. § 932.703(l)(a) (1997).
Nothing in the Act requires the police to obtain a warrant prior to seizing a vehicle. See State v. Pomerance, 434 So. 2d 329, 330 (Fla. App. 1983). Rather, the Act simply provides that “[plersonal property may be seized at the time of the violation or subsequent to the violation, if the person entitled to notice is notified at the time of the seizure . . . that there is a right to an adversarial preliminary hearing after the seizure to determine whether probable cause exists to believe that such property has been or is being used in violation of the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act." §932.703(2)(a).
The Aet defines "contraband” to include any "vehicle of any kind,... which was used... as an instrumentality in the commission of, or in aiding or abetting in the commission of, any felony.” § 932.701(2)(a)(5).
At oral argument, respondent contended that the delay between the time that the police developed probable cause to seize the vehicle and when the seizure actually occurred undercuts the argument that the war-rantless seizure was necessary to prevent respondent from removing the car out of the jurisdiction. We express no opinion about whether excessive delay prior to a seizure could render probable cause stale, and the seizure therefore unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Murphy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves a tax-free liquidation by a parent corporation of some of its subsidiaries. At the time of the liquidation the parent had earnings and profits available for distribution, and the subsidiaries had an aggregate net deficit. The issue now before us is whether the rule of Commissioner v. Sansome, 60 F. 2d 931, requires the subtraction of the subsidiaries’ deficit from the parent’s earnings and profits, in determining whether a subsequent distribution by the parent constituted dividends or a return of capital to its stockholders.
The Sansome case, supra, arose from a tax-free reorganization in which the transferor corporation had a surplus in earnings and profits available for distribution. It was there held that those earnings and profits, for purposes of a subsequent distribution by the transferee corporation to its stockholders, retain their status as earnings or profits and are taxable to the recipients as dividends. The rule has been held to include liquidations of a subsidiary by its parent. Robinette v. Commissioner, 148 F. 2d 513; U. S. Treas. Reg. 101, Art. 115-11, promulgated under the Revenue Act of 1938 and made retroactive, 52 Stat 447.
The facts were stipulated, and so found by the Tax Court. So far as relevant, they are as follows: In December, 1936, Nevada-California Electric Corporation liquidated five of its wholly-owned subsidiaries by distributing to itself all of their assets, subject to their liabilities, and by redeeming and canceling all of their outstanding stock. No gain or loss on the liquidation was recognized for income tax purposes under § 112 (b) (6) of the Revenue Act of 1936. On the date of liquidation, one of the subsidiaries had earnings and profits accumulated after February 28, 1913, in the amount of $90,362.77. The four others had deficits which aggregated $3,147,803.62. On December 31, 1936, the parent had earnings and profits accumulated after February 28, 1913, in the amount of $2,129,957.81, which amount does not reflect the earnings or deficits of the subsidiaries. In 1937, Nevada-California had earnings of $390,387.02. In the years 1918 to 1933 inclusive the parent and its subsidiaries filed consolidated income tax returns.
Respondent was the owner of 2,640 shares of the preferred stock of Nevada-California. During 1937 that corporation made a pro rata cash distribution to its preferred stockholders in the amount of $802,284, of which respondent received $18,480. The Commissioner determined that the distribution was a dividend under § 115 of the Revenue Act of 1936 and constituted ordinary income in its entirety.
Of the 1937 distribution, approximately 49% was chargeable to earnings and profits of the taxable year. Consequently, respondent conceded in the Tax Court that that percentage of her share, or about nine thousand dollars, was taxable as a dividend under § 115 (a) (2). The Tax Court held in her favor that the balance was not a taxable dividend out of earnings and profits, on the theory that all of Nevada-California’s accumulated earnings and profits, plus the accumulated earnings and profits of the subsidiary that had a surplus, were erased by the aggregate deficits of the other four subsidiaries. 8 T. C. 190. The Court of Appeals affirmed by a divided court, 167 F. 2d 117. We brought the case here on a writ of certiorari, 335 U. S. 807, because of its importance in the administration of the revenue laws, and because of an alleged conflict of the decision below with that of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Cranson v. United States, 146 F. 2d 871.
Commissioner v. Sansome, 60 F. 2d 931, arose thus: A Corporation sold out all its assets to B Corporation, both organized under the laws of New Jersey. B Corporation assumed all liabilities and issued its stock to the stockholders of A Corporation, without change in the proportions of' their holdings. The only change was that the charter of B Corporation- gave it slightly broader powers. At the time of the reorganization, A Corporation had on its books a large surplus and undivided profits. The new corporation made no profit and the company soon dissolved. The liquidating distributions in 1923, the year when the dissolution was begun, did not exhaust the amount of accumulated profits of the predecessor corporation, and the Commissioner contended that those distributions were taxable to the stockholders as dividends and not, as claimed by them, as a return of capital. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed with the Commissioner, and held that since the reorganization was nontaxable under § 202 (c) (2) of the Revenue Act of 1921, the accumulated earnings and profits of the transferor retained their character as such for tax purposes in the hands of the transferee and were consequently taxable on distribution as ordinary income under § 201 of the same Act. The view of the court was thus expressed by Judge Learned Hand: “Hence we hold that a corporate reorganization which results in no ‘gain or loss’ under section 202 (c) (2) (42 Stat. 230) does not toll the company’s life as continued venture under section 201, and that what were ‘earnings or profits’ of the original, or subsidiary, company remain, for purposes of distribution, ‘earnings or profits’ of the successor, or parent, in liquidation.” 60 F. 2d 931, 933. The rule has been consistently followed judicially and has received explicit Congressional approval.
The rationale of the Samóme decision as a “continued venture” doctrine has been often repeated in the cases, and in some of them the fact that the successor corporation has differed from the predecessor merely in identity or form has lent it plausibility. Other cases, however, demonstrate that the “continued venture” analysis does not accurately indicate the basis of the decisions. The rule that earnings and profits of a corporation do not lose their character as such by virtue of a tax-free reorganization or liquidation has been applied where more than one corporation has been absorbed or liquidated, where there has been a “split-off” reorganization, and where the reorganization has resulted in substantial changes in the proprietary interests.
In Commissioner v. Munter, 331 U. S. 210, this Court reversed a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit which had held in favor of the taxpayer on the ground that the ownership of the successor corporation was so different from that of the two predecessors that there was not sufficient continuity of the corporate entity to apply the Samóme doctrine. The opinion of the Court stated our unanimous view of the basis of the rule: “A basic principle of the income tax laws has long been that corporate earnings and profits should be taxed when they are distributed to the stockholders who own the distributing corporation. . . . Thus unless those earnings and profits accumulated by the predecessor corporations and undistributed in this reorganization are deemed to have been acquired by the successor corporation and taxable upon distribution by it, they would escape the taxation which Congress intended. . . . The congressional purpose to tax all stockholders who receive distributions of corporate earnings and profits cannot be frustrated by any reorganization which leaves earnings and profits undistributed in whole or in part.” 331 U. S. at 214, 215. See Murchison’s Estate v. Commissioner, 76 F. 2d 641, 642; Putnam v. United States, 149 F. 2d 721, 726; Samuel L. Slover, 6 T. C. 884, 886. We conclude from the cases that the Sansome rule is grounded not on a theory of continuity of the corporate enterprise but on the necessity to prevent escape of earnings and profits from taxation.
The decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Harter v. Helvering, 79 F. 2d 12, is not inconsistent with this view. In that case the situation was as follows: A Corporation and B Corporation, each of which had accumulated earnings and profits, merged to form C Corporation. By the operation of the Sansome rule, the earnings and profits retained their character as such in the hands of C. Some time later, D Corporation acquired all the stock of C, and thereafter liquidated it in a transaction in which no gain or loss was recognized. At the time of the liquidation of C Corporation, D Corporation, the parent, had a deficit in earnings and profits. The court held, in determining the amount of earnings and profits available to D Corporation after the liquidation for distribution as dividends, that its deficit should be deducted from the accumulated earnings and profits acquired from its subsidiary. It is vigorously contended that the logic of the Harter case compels the allowance of a deduction of the deficits of the subsidiaries from the accumulated earnings and profits of the parent. We believe this view to be the product of inadequate analysis. The difference between the Harter situation and the problem before us may perhaps be clarified by comparing them taxwise if neither liquidation had occurred. Briefly stated, in the case of a distribution to a corporation with a deficit from either current or prior losses, the corporation receiving the distribution has no taxable income or earnings or profits available for current distribution until current income exceeds current losses, and no accumulated earnings or profits until its actual deficit from prior losses is erased. See 1 Mertens, Law of Federal Income Taxation (1942) § 9.30, and cases cited therein n. 44 et seg. In the instant situation, however, the parent did have accumulated earnings and profits available for distribution as dividends, absent the liquidation. Congressional intent to tax such earnings and profits on their distribution cannot be prevented by the fact of an intervening reorganization or liquidation.
The operation of the Sansome rule on the taxation of corporate distributions is brought into high relief by consideration of the economic relation between a parent corporation and its subsidiary. Congress requires that earnings and profits, current or accumulated, be taxed to the recipients thereof as dividends on their distribution. If a subsidiary has a surplus in earnings and profits, the parent has a choice of two methods by which it may “realize” this surplus. It may cause the subsidiary to declare a dividend, or it may liquidate its interest or part of its interest in the subsidiary. In the former case, the distribution would of course be taxable as ordinary income to the parent insofar as that distribution, plus the parent’s other income, represented net income to it. If the parent uses the second method, two alternatives again are available: the liquidation may take the form of a sale outright, or may be performed within the framework of the reorganization sections of the Internal Revenue Code or its predecessor acts. If the former, gain is of course realized, and is also recognized for tax purposes. We note in passing, in this connection, that such gain will correspond, if at all, only by coincidence with the amount of earnings and profits of the subsidiary. If the latter, Congress has determined that the gain shall not be recognized at that time, but that such recognition shall be deferred. If the subsidiary has a deficit in earnings and profits, the deficit may be “realized” by the parent only by liquidation, and the same two alternatives are present as when the subsidiary has a surplus: sale, and reorganization within § 112. Again, in the former case, loss is realized and also recognized. And in the case of a reorganization or liquidation in the framework of the Code, the recognition of loss is deferred by Congressional mandate to a later time.
If the assets of the parent and subsidiary are combined via a tax-free reorganization or liquidation, the effect of the Sansome rule is simply this: a distribution of assets that would have been taxable as dividends absent the reorganization or liquidation does not lose that character by virtue of the tax-free transaction. Respondent’s contention that the logic of the Sansome rule requires subtracting the deficit of the subsidiary from the earnings and profits of the parent as a corollary of carrying over the earnings and profits of the subsidiary has a superficial plausibility; but the plausibility disappears when it is noted that the taxpayer would thus obtain an advantage taxwise that would not be available absent the liquidation, since there is no way to “declare” a deficit, and thus no method of loss realization open to the parent parallel to a declaration of dividends as a mode of realizing the profits of a subsidiary.
It is urged upon us that the deficits of the subsidiaries should be subtracted from the earnings and profits of the parent in order to make the tax consequences of the liquidation correspond with corporate accounting practice. The answer is brief. The Sansome rule itself, as applied to earnings and profits, has never been thought to be controlled by ordinary corporate accounting concepts; its uniform effect is to treat for tax purposes as earnings or profits assets which are properly considered capital for many if not most corporate purposes, and it has long been a commonplace of tax law that similar divergences often occur. See Commissioner v. Wheeler, 324 U. S. 542, 546; Putnam v. United States, 149 F. 2d 721, 726; 1 Mertens, op. cit. § 9.33; Rudick, op. cit. 878-906.
Congress has expressed its purpose to tax all stockholders who receive distributions of earnings and profits. In order to facilitate simplification of corporate financial structures, it has further provided that certain intercorporate transactions shall be free of immediate tax consequences to the corporations. There has been judicially superimposed by the Sansome rule, with the subsequent explicit ratification of Congress, the doctrine that tax-free reorganizations shall not disturb the status of earnings and profits otherwise available for distribution. Nevada-California at the time of the 1937 distribution to respondent had such earnings and profits. Since we believe that to allow deduction from these earnings of the deficits of its subsidiaries would be in effect to recognize losses the tax effects of which Congress has explicitly provided should be deferred, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Douglas concurs in the result.
“SEC. 112. RECOGNITION OF GAIN OR LOSS.
“(a) General Rule. — Upon the sale or exchange of property the entire amount of the gain or loss, determined under section 111, shall be recognized, except as hereinafter provided in this section.
"(b) Exchanges Solely in Kind.—
“(6) Property received by corporation on complete liquidation op another. — No gain or loss shall be recognized upon the receipt by a corporation of property distributed in complete liquidation of another corporation. . . .” 49 Stat. 1648, 1678-79.
It does not appear in what years occurred the subsidiaries’ losses which resulted in their deficits, or to what extent they were set off against the net income of the parent in consolidated return years. To the extent that such set-offs did exist, the basis of the subsidiaries’ stock to Nevada-California had been reduced and the losses realized by the parent and availed of for tax purposes prior to the liquidation. U. S. Treas. Reg. 94, Art. 113 (b)-l, promulgated under the Revenue Act of 1936.
“SEC. 115. DISTRIBUTIONS BY CORPORATIONS.
“(a) Definition of Dividend. — The term ‘dividend’ when used in this title (except in section 203 (a) (3) and section 207 (c) (1), relating to insurance companies) means any distribution made by a corporation to its shareholders, whether in money or in other property, (1) out of its earnings or profits accumulated after February 28, 1913, or (2) out of the earnings or profits of the taxable year (computed as of the close of the taxable year without diminution by reason of any distributions made during the taxable year), without regard to the amount of the earnings and profits at the time the distribution was made.
“(b) Source of Distributions. — For the purposes of this Act every distribution is made out of earnings or profits to the extent thereof, and from the most recently accumulated earnings or profits. Any earnings or profits accumulated, or increase in value of property accrued, before March 1, 1913, may be distributed exempt from tax, after the earnings and profits accumulated after February 28, 1913, have been distributed, but any such tax-free distribution shall be applied against and reduce the adjusted basis of the stock provided in section 113.” 49 Stat. 1687.
Respondent agrees that the earnings and profits of the subsidiary with a surplus become, by virtue of the Sansome rule, earnings and profits of the parent, whatever the ultimate treatment of the deficits of the other subsidiaries.
Section 201 of the 1921 Act specifies what corporate distributions are taxable as dividends; §202 (c) (2) provides for the nonrecognition of gain or loss from certain corporate reorganizations.
Commissioner v. Munter, 331 U. S. 210; United States v. Kauffmann, 62 F. 2d 1045; Murchison’s Estate v. Commissioner, 76 F. 2d 641; Harter v. Helvering, 79 F. 2d 12; Georday Enterprises, Ltd. v. Commissioner, 126 F. 2d 384; Reed Drug Co. v. Commissioner, 130 F. 2d 288; Robinette v. Commissioner, 148 F. 2d 513; Putnam v. United States, 149 F. 2d 721. See also Coudon v. Tait, 61 F. 2d 904, which was decided a few months after Sansome and reached the same result independently.
The Senate Finance Committee Report on § 115 (h) of the Revenue Act of 1936, S. Rep. No. 2156, 74th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 19 (1939-1 Cum. Bull, (part 2) 678, 690), recognized the rule of the Sansome case, and said that the amendment made by that Act intended no change in existing law, but was added only in the interest of clarity. U. S. Treas. Reg. 94, Art. 115-11, promulgated under the 1936 Act, incorporates the substance of the report. The Revenue Act of 1938 amended § 115 (h) only by extending its application to distributions of “property or money” as well as of “stock or securities”; the effect was to make § 115 (h) harmonize with § 112 (b) (6) and (7); and Treasury Regulations 101, promulgated under the 1938 Act, was amended to conform. The Internal Revenue Code contains the section substantially unchanged.
Section 501 of the Second Revenue Act of 1940 added § 115 (1) to the Internal Revenue Code, to elaborate the law with regard to the effect of tax-free distributions on earnings and profits. The reports accompanying the bill in Congress, H. R. Rep. No. 2894, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 41 (1940-2 Cum. Bull. 496, 526), and S. Rep. No. 2114, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 25 (1940-2 Cum. Bull. 528, 546-547), both recognize the application of “the principle under which the earnings and profits of the transferor by reason of the transfer become the earnings and profits of the transferee.” Ibid., p. 25. The reports do not mention deficits.
See, e. g., Murchison’s Estate v. Commissioner, Reed Drug Co. v. Commissioner, United States v. Kauffmann, all supra, n. 6.
Harter v. Helvering, Baker v. Commissioner, 80 F. 2d 813.
Barnes v. United States, 22 F. Supp. 282; Estate of McClintic, 47 B. T. A. 188; Stella K. Mandel, 5 T. C. 684.
Commissioner v. Munter, supra.
See Note, The Effect of Tax-Free Reorganizations on Subsequent Corporate Distributions, 48 Col. L. Rev. 281; Atlas, The Case of the Disappearing Earnings and Profits, in Seventh Annual Institute of Federal Taxation, 1155; ef. 1 Mertens, Law of Federal Income Taxation (1942) §9.58; 1 Montgomery, Federal Taxes — Corporations and Partnerships 1948-49, 154 (1948); Green, Recent Trends Under the Sansome Rule, in Sixth Annual Institute on Federal Taxation, 338; cf. Rudick, “Dividends” and “Earnings or Profits” Under the Income Tax Law: Corporate Non-Liquidating Distributions, 89 U. Pa. L. Rev. 865, 896.
Senior Investment Corp., 2 T. C. 124, did not involve the question before us, but was concerned with the applicability, for purposes of computing surtax on undistributed profits, of §§26 (c) (1) and 26 (c) (3) of the Revenue Act of 1936, the' latter as amended by § 501 (а) (2) of the Revenue Act of 1942, to the transferor corporation in a tax-free reorganization. 49 Stat. 1664; 56 Stat. 798, 954. The question of “inheritance” of a deficit was not in issue. See Green, supra, note 12, at 341.
The operation of the Sansome rule is restricted, of course, to earnings and profits which are not considered to be distributed to its own stockholders by the transferor corporation in a tax-free reorganization. Commissioner v. Munter, 331 U. S. 210, 215-16; Samuel L. Slover, 6 T. C. 884. Cf. U. S. Treas. Reg. 111, § 29.112(b) (б) -4 as to the effect of a tax-free reorganization on minority stockholders of the transferor corporation.
On the merits, respondent’s argument is not convincing. It fails to take into account the difference between the concept of surplus or deficit, which is a summary of the operations of the corporation reporting it, and the concept of gain or loss, which reports the effect of the tax-free transaction itself. So various are the possible permutations and combinations of the economic factors that equivalence of surplus or deficit in the accounts of the subsidiary with the gain or loss to the parent would be mere coincidence. Consider for example the case where a corporation acquires all the stock of another which at the time has a large deficit. If the subsidiary is soon liquidated, the deficit will still be large, and the parent may realize little or no loss on the liquidation. See the first two texts cited note 12, supra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
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Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These consolidated cases raise two important questions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 103, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq. (1970 ed. and Supp. Ill): First: When employees or applicants for employment have lost the opportunity to earn wages because an employer has engaged in an unlawful discriminatory employment practice, what standards should a federal district court follow in deciding whether to award or deny backpay? Second: What must an employer show to establish that pre-employment tests racially discriminatory in effect, though not in intent, are sufficiently “job related” to survive challenge under Title VII?
The respondents — plaintiffs in the District Court— are a certified class of present and former Negro employees at a paper mill in Roanoke Rapids, N. C.; the petitioners — defendants in the District Court— are the plant’s owner, the Albemarle Paper Co., and the plant employees’ labor union, Halifax Local No. 425. In August 1966, after filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and receiving notice of their right to sue, the respondents brought a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, asking permanent injunctive relief against “any policy, practice, custom or usage” at the plant that violated Title VII. The respondents assured the court that the suit involved no claim for any monetary awards on a class basis, but in June 1970, after several years of discovery, the respondents moved to add a class demand for backpay. The court ruled that this issue would be considered at trial.
At the trial, in July and August 1971, the major issues were the plant’s seniority system, its program of employment testing, and the question of backpay. In its opinion of November 9, 1971, the court found that the petitioners had “strictly segregated” the plant’s departmental “lines of progression” prior to January 1, 1964, reserving the higher paying and more skilled lines for whites. The “racial identifiability” of whole lines of progression persisted until 1968, when the lines were reorganized under a new collective-bargaining agreement. The court found, however, that this reorganization left Negro employees “ ‘locked’ in the lower paying job classifications.” The formerly “Negro” lines of progression had been merely tacked on to the bottom of the formerly “white” lines, and promotions, demotions, and layoffs continued to be governed — where skills were “relatively equal” — by a system of “job seniority.” Because of the plant’s previous history of overt segregation, only whites had seniority in the higher job categories. Accordingly, the court ordered the petitioners to implement a system of “plantwide” seniority.
The court refused, however, to award backpay to the plaintiff class for losses suffered under the “job seniority” program. The court explained:
“In the instant case there was no evidence of bad faith non-compliance with the Act. It appears that the company as early as 1964 began active recruitment of blacks for its Maintenance Apprentice Program. Certain lines of progression were merged on its own initiative, and as judicial decisions expanded the then existing interpretations of the Act, the defendants took steps to correct the abuses without delay....
“In addition, an award of back pay is an equitable remedy.... The plaintiffs’ claim for back pay was filed nearly five years after the institution of this action. It was not prayed for in the pleadings. Although neither party can be charged with deliberate dilatory tactics in bringing this cause to trial, it is apparent that the defendants would be substantially prejudiced by the granting of such affirmative relief. The defendants might have chosen to exercise unusual zeal in having this court determine their rights at an earlier date had they known that back pay would be at issue.”
The court also refused to enjoin or limit Albemarle’s testing program. Albemarle had required applicants for employment in the skilled lines of progression to have a high school diploma and to pass two tests, the Revised Beta Examination, allegedly a measure of nonverbal intelligence, and the Wonderlic Personnel Test (available in alternative Forms A and B), allegedly a measure of verbal facility. After this Court’s decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), and on the eve of trial, Albemarle engaged an industrial psychologist to study the “job relatedness” of its testing program. His study compared the test scores of current employees with supervisorial judgments of their competence in ten job groupings selected from the middle or top of the plant’s skilled lines of progression. The study showed a.statistically significant correlation with supervisorial ratings in three job groupings for the Beta Test, in seven job groupings for either Form A or Form B of the Wonderlic Test, and in two job groupings for the required battery of both the Beta and the Wonderlic Tests. The respondents’ experts challenged the reliability of these studies, but the court concluded:
“The personnel tests administered at the plant have undergone validation studies and have been proven to be job related. The defendants have carried the burden of proof in proving that these tests are ‘necessary for the safe and efficient operation of the business’ and are, therefore, permitted by the Act. However, the high school education requirement used in conjunction with the testing requirements is unlawful in that the personnel tests alone are adequate to measure the mental ability and reading skills required for the job classifications.”
The petitioners did not seek review of the court’s judgment, but the respondents appealed the denial of a back-pay award and the refusal to enjoin or limit Albemarle’s use of pre-employment tests. A divided Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the judgment of the District Court, ruling that backpay should have been awarded and that use of the tests should have been enjoined, 474 F. 2d 134 (1973). As for backpay, the Court of Appeals held that an award could properly be requested after the complaint was filed and that an award could not be denied merely because the employer had not acted in “bad faith,” id., at 142:
“Because of the compensatory nature of a back pay award and the strong congressional policy embodied in Title VII, a district court must exercise its discretion as to back pay in the same manner it must exercise discretion as to attorney fees under Title II of the Civil Rights Act.... Thus, a plaintiff or a complaining class who is successful in obtaining an injunction under Title VII of the Act should ordinarily be awarded back pay unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust. Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, 390 U. S. 400... (1968).” (Footnote omitted.)
As for the pre-employment tests, the Court of Appeals held, id., at 138, that it was error
“to approve a validation study done without job analysis, to allow Albemarle to require tests for 6 lines of progression where there has been no validation study at all, and to allow Albemarle to require a person to pass two tests for entrance into 7 lines of progression when only one of those tests was validated for that line of progression.”
In so holding the Court of Appeals “gave great deference” to the “Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures,” 29 CFR pt. 1607, which the EEOC has issued “as a workable set of standards for employers, unions and employment agencies in determining whether their selection procedures conform with the obligations contained in title VII...29 CFR § 1607.1 (c).
We granted certiorari because of an evident Circuit conflict as to the standards governing awards of back-pay and as to the showing required to establish the “job relatedness” of pre-employment tests.
II
Whether a particular member of the plaintiff class should have been awarded any backpay and, if so, how much, are questions not involved in this review. The equities of individual cases were never reached. Though at least some of the members of the plaintiff class obviously suffered a loss of wage opportunities on account of Albemarle’s unlawfully discriminatory system of job seniority, the District Court decided that no backpay should be awarded to anyone in the class. The court declined to make such an award on two stated grounds: the lack of “evidence of bad faith non-compliance with the Act,” and the fact that “the defendants would be substantially prejudiced” by an award of backpay that was demanded contrary to an earlier representation and late in the progress of the litigation. Relying directly on Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, 390 U. S. 400 (1968), the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that back-pay could be denied only in “special circumstances.” The petitioners argue that the Court of Appeals was in error — that a district court has virtually unfettered discretion to award or deny backpay, and that there was no abuse of that discretion here.
Piggie Park Enterprises, supra, is not directly in point. The Court held there that attorneys’ fees should “ordinarily” be awarded — i. in all but “special circumstances” — to plaintiffs successful in obtaining injunctions against discrimination in public accommodations, under Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Act appears to leave Title II fee awards to the district court’s discretion, 42 U. S. C. § 2000a-3 (b), the court determined that the great public interest in having injunctive actions brought could be vindicated only if successful plaintiffs, acting as “private attorneys general,” were awarded attorneys’ fees in all but very unusual circumstances. There is, of course, an equally strong public interest in having injunctive actions brought under Title VII, to eradicate discriminatory employment practices. But this interest can be vindicated by applying the Piggie Park standard to the attorneys’ fees provision of Title VII, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5 (k), see Northcross v. Memphis Board of Education, 412 U. S. 427, 428 (1973). For guidance as to the granting and denial of backpay, one must, therefore, look elsewhere.
The petitioners contend that the statutory scheme provides no guidance, beyond indicating that backpay awards are within the District Court’s discretion. We disagree. It is true that backpay is not an automatic or mandatory remedy; like all other remedies under the Act, it is one which the courts “may” invoke. The scheme implicitly recognizes that there may be cases calling for one remedy but not another, and — owing to the structure of the federal judiciary — these choices are, of course, left in the first instance to the district courts. However, such discretionary choices are not left to a court’s “inclination, but to its judgment; and its judgment is to be guided by sound legal principles.” United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30, 35 (No. 14,692d) (CC Va. 1807) (Marshall, C. J.). The power to award backpay was bestowed by Congress, as part of a complex legislative design directed at a historic evil of national proportions. A court must exercise this power “in light of the large objectives of the Act,” Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 331 (1944). That the court’s discretion is equitable in nature, see Curtis v. Loether, 415 U. S. 189, 197 (1974), hardly means that it is unfettered by meaningful standards or shielded from thorough appellate review. In Mitchell v. DeMario Jewelry, 361 U. S. 288, 292 (1960), this Court held, in the face of a silent statute, that district courts enjoyed the “historic power of equity” to award lost wages to workmen unlawfully discriminated against under § 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1069, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 217 (1958 ed.) The Court simultaneously noted that “the statutory purposes [leave] little room for the exercise of discretion not to order reimbursement.” 361 U. S., at 296.
It is true that “[e]quity eschews mechanical rules... [and] depends on flexibility.” Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392, 396 (1946). But when Congress invokes the Chancellor’s conscience to further transcendent legislative purposes, what is required is the principled application of standards consistent with those purposes and not “equity [which] varies like the Chancellor’s foot.” Important national goals would be frustrated by a regime of discretion that “produce [d] different results for breaches of duty in situations that cannot be differentiated in policy.” Moragne v. States Marine Lines, 398 U. S. 375, 405 (1970).
The District Court’s decision must therefore be measured against the purposes which inform Title VII. As the Court observed in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S., at 429-430, the primary objective was a prophylactic one:
“It was to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white employees over other employees.”
Backpay has an obvious connection with this purpose. If employers faced only the prospect of an injunctive order, they would have little incentive to shun practices of dubious legality. It is the reasonably certain prospect of a backpay award that “provide[s] the spur or catalyst which causes employers and unions to self-examine and to self-evaluate their employment practices and to endeavor to eliminate, so far as possible, the last vestiges of an unfortunate and ignominious page in this country’s history.” United States v. N. L. Industries, Inc., 479 F. 2d 354, 379 (CA8 1973).
It is also the purpose of Title VII to make persons whole for injuries suffered on account of unlawful employment discrimination. This is shown by the very fact that Congress took care to arm the courts with full equitable powers. For it is the historic purpose of equity to “secur [e] complete justice,” Brown v. Swann, 10 Pet. 497, 503 (1836); see also Porter v. Warner Holding Co., 328 U. S. 395, 397-398 (1946). “[WJhere federally protected rights have been invaded, it has been the rule from the beginning that courts will be alert to adjust their remedies so as to grant the necessary relief.” Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 684 (1946). Title VII deals with legal injuries of an economic character occasioned by racial or other antiminority discrimination. The terms “complete justice” and “necessary relief” have acquired a clear meaning in such circumstances. Where racial discrimination is concerned, “the [district] court has not merely the power but the duty to render a decree which will so far as possible eliminate the discriminatory effects of the past as well as bar like discrimination in the future.” Louisiana v. United States, 380 U. S. 145, 154 (1965). And where a legal injury is of an economic character,
“[t]he general rule is, that when a wrong has been done, and the law gives a remedy, the compensation shall be equal to the injury. The latter is the standard by which the former is to be measured. The injured party is to be placed, as near as may be, in the situation he would have occupied if the wrong had not been committed.” Wicker v. Hoppock, 6 Wall. 94, 99 (1867).
The “make whole” purpose of Title VII is made evident by the legislative history. The backpay provision was expressly modeled on the backpay provision of the National Labor Relations Act. Under that Act, “[m]aking the workers whole for losses suffered on account of an unfair labor practice is part of the vindication of the public policy which the Board. enforces.” Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U. S. 177, 197 (1941). See also Nathanson v. NLRB, 344 U. S. 25, 27 (1952); NLRB v. Rutter-Rex Mfg. Co., 396 U. S. 258, 263 (1969). We may assume that Congress was aware that the Board, since its inception, has awarded backpay as a matter of course — not randomly or in the exercise of a standardless discretion, and not merely where employer violations are peculiarly deliberate, egregious, or inexcusable. Furthermore, in passing the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Congress considered several bills to limit the judicial power to award backpay. These limiting efforts were rejected, and the backpay provision was re-enacted substantially in its original form. A Section-by-Section Analysis introduced by Senator Williams to accompany the Conference Committee Report on the 1972 Act strongly reaffirmed the “make whole” purpose of Title VII:
“The provisions of this subsection are intended to give the courts wide discretion exercising their equitable powers to fashion the most complete relief possible. In dealing with the present section 706 (g) the courts have stressed that the scope of relief under that section of the Act is intended to make the victims of unlawful discrimination whole, and that the attainment of this objective rests not only upon the elimination of the particular unlawful employment practice complained of, but also requires that persons aggrieved by the consequences and effects of the unlawful employment practice be, so far as possible, restored to a position where they would have been were it not for the unlawful discrimination.” 118 Cong. Rec. 7168 (1972).
As this makes clear, Congress’ purpose in vesting a variety of “discretionary” powers in the courts was not to limit appellate review of trial courts, or to invite inconsistency and caprice, but rather to make possible the “fashion[ing] [of] the most complete relief possible.”
It follows that, given a finding of unlawful discrimination, backpay should be denied only for reasons which, if applied generally, would not frustrate the central statutory purposes of eradicating discrimination throughout the economy and making persons whole for injuries suffered through past discrimination. The courts of appeals must maintain a consistent and principled application of the backpay provision, consonant with the twin statutory objectives, while at the same time recognizing that the trial court will often have the keener appreciation of those facts and circumstances peculiar to particular cases.
The District Court’s stated grounds for denying back-pay in this case must be tested against these standards. The first ground was that Albemarle’s breach of Title VII had not been in “bad faith.” This is not a sufficient reason for denying backpay. Where an employer has shown bad faith — by maintaining a practice which he knew to be illegal or of highly questionable legality — he can make no claims whatsoever on the Chancellor’s conscience. But, under Title VII, the mere absence of bad faith simply opens the door to equity; it does not depress the scales in the employer’s favor. If backpay were awardable only upon a showing of bad faith, the remedy would become a punishment for moral turpitude, rather than a compensation for workers’ injuries. This would read the “make whole” purpose right out of Title VII, for a worker’s injury is no less real simply because his employer did not inflict it in “bad faith.” Title VII is not concerned with the employer’s “good intent or absence of discriminatory intent” for “Congress directed the thrust of the Act to the consequences of employment practices, not simply the motivation.” Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S., at 432. See also Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U. S. 526, 535 (1963); Wright v. Council of City of Emporia, 407 U. S. 451, 461-462 (1972). To condition the awarding of backpay on a showing of “bad faith” would be to open an enormous chasm between injunctive and backpay relief under Title VII. There is nothing on the face of the statute or in its legislative history that justifies the creation of drastic and categorical distinctions between those two remedies.
The District Court also grounded its denial of backpay on the fact that the respondents initially disclaimed any interest in backpay, first asserting their claim five years after the complaint was filed. The court concluded that the petitioners had been “prejudiced” by this conduct. The Court of Appeals reversed on the ground “that the broad aims of Title VII require that the issue of back pay be fully developed and determined even though it was not raised until the post-trial stage of litigation,” 474 F. 2d, at 141.
It is true that Title VII contains no legal bar to raising backpay claims after the complaint for injunctive relief has been filed, or indeed after a trial on that complaint has been had. Furthermore, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54 (c) directs that
“every final judgment shall grant the relief to which the party in whose favor it is rendered is entitled, even if the party has not demanded such relief in his pleadings.”
But a party may not be “entitled” to relief if its conduct of the cause has improperly and substantially prejudiced the other party. The respondents here were not merely tardy, but also inconsistent, in demanding backpay. To deny backpay because a particular cause has been prosecuted in an eccentric fashion, prejudicial to the other party, does not offend the broad purposes of Title VII. This is not to say, however, that the District Court’s ruling was necessarily correct. Whether the petitioners were in fact prejudiced, and whether the respondents’ trial conduct was excusable, are questions that will be open to review by the Court of Appeals, if the District Court, on remand, decides again to decline to make any award of backpay. But the standard of review will be the familiar one of whether the District Court was “clearly erroneous” in its factual findings and whether it “abused” its traditional discretion to locate “a just result” in light of the circumstances peculiar to the case, Langnes v. Green, 282 U. S. 531, 541 (1931). On these issues of procedural regularity and prejudice, the “broad aims of Title VII” provide no ready solution.
Ill
In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424 (1971), this Court unanimously held that Title VII forbids the use of employment tests that are discriminatory in effect unless the employer meets “the burden of showing that any given requirement [has]... a manifest relationship to the employment in question.” Id., at 432. This burden arises, of course, only after the complaining party or class has made out a prima facie case of discrimination, i. e., has shown that the tests in question select applicants for hire or promotion in a racial pattern significantly different from that of the pool of applicants. See McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792, 802 (1973). If an employer does then meet the burden of proving that its tests are “job related,” it remains open to the complaining party to show that other tests or selection devices, without a similarly undesirable racial effect, would also serve the employer’s legitimate interest in “efficient and trustworthy workmanship.” Id., at 801. Such a showing would be evidence that the employer was using its tests merely as a “pretext” for discrimination. Id., at 804-805. In the present case, however, we are concerned only with the question whether Albemarle has shown its tests to be job related.
The concept of job relatedness takes on meaning from the facts of the Griggs case. A power company in North Carolina had reserved its skilled jobs for whites prior to 1965. Thereafter, the company allowed Negro workers to transfer to skilled jobs, but all transferees — white and Negro — were required to attain national median scores on two tests:
“[T]he Wonderlic Personnel Test, which purports to measure general intelligence, and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test. Neither was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs....
“... Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company’s judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force.” 401 U. S., at 428-431.
The Court took note of “the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability,” id., at 433, and concluded:
“Nothing in the Act precludes the use of testing or measuring procedures; obviously they are useful. What Congress has forbidden is giving these devices and mechanisms controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance.... What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.” Id., at 436.
Like the employer in Griggs, Albemarle uses two general ability tests, the Beta Examination, to test nonverbal intelligence, and the Wonderlic Test (Forms A and B), the purported measure of general verbal facility which was also involved in the Griggs case. Applicants for hire into various skilled lines of progression at the plant are required to score 100 on the Beta Exam and 18 on one of the Wonderlic Test’s two alternative forms.
The question of job relatedness must be viewed in the context of the plant’s operation and the history of the testing program. The plant, which now employs about 650 persons, converts raw wood into paper products. It is organized into a number of functional departments, each with one or more distinct lines of progression, the theory being that workers can move up the line as they acquire the necessary skills. The number and structure of the lines have varied greatly over time. For many years, certain lines were themselves more skilled and paid higher wages than others, and until 1964 these skilled lines were expressly reserved for white workers. In 1968, many of the unskilled “Negro” lines were “end-tailed” onto skilled “white” lines, but it apparently remains true that at least the top jobs in certain lines require greater skills than the top jobs in other lines. In this sense, at least, it is still possible to speak of relatively skilled and relatively unskilled lines.
In the 1950’s while the plant was being modernized with new and more sophisticated equipment, the Company introduced a high school diploma requirement for entry into the skilled lines. Though the Company soon concluded that this requirement did not improve the quality of the labor force, the requirement was continued until the District Court enjoined its use. In the late 1950’s the Company began using the Beta Examination and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (also involved in the Griggs case) to screen applicants for entry into the skilled lines. The Bennett Test was dropped several years later, but use of the Beta Test continued.
The Company added the Wonderlic Tests in 1963, for the skilled lines, on the theory that a certain verbal intelligence was called for by the increasing sophistication of the plant’s operations. The Company made no attempt to validate the test for job relatedness, and simply adopted the national “norm” score of 18 as a cut-off point for new job applicants. After 1964, when it discontinued overt segregation in the lines of progression, the Company allowed Negro workers to transfer to the skilled lines if they could pass the Beta and Wonderlic Tests, but few succeeded in doing so. Incumbents in the skilled lines, some of whom had been hired before adoption of the tests, were not required to pass them to retain their jobs or their promotion rights. The record shows that a number of white incumbents in high-ranking job groups could not pass the tests.
Because departmental reorganization continued up to the point of trial, and has indeed continued since that point, the details of the testing program are less than clear from the record. The District Court found that, since 1963, the Beta and Wonderlic Tests have been used in 13 lines of progression, within eight departments. Albemarle contends that at present the tests are used in only eight lines of progression, within four departments.
Four months before this case went to trial, Albemarle engaged an expert in industrial psychology to “validate” the job relatedness of its testing program. He spent a half day at the plant and devised a “concurrent validation” study, which was conducted by plant officials, without his supervision. The expert then subjected the results to statistical analysis. The study dealt with 10 job groupings, selected from near the top of nine of the lines of progression. Jobs were grouped together solely by their proximity in the line of progression; no attempt was made to analyze jobs in terms of the particular skills they might require. All, or nearly all, employees in the selected groups participated in the study — 105 employees in all, but only four Negroes. Within each job grouping, the study compared the test scores of each employee with an independent “ranking” of the employee, relative to each of his coworkers, made by two of the employee's supervisors. The supervisors, who did not know the test scores, were asked to
“determine which ones they felt irrespective of the job that they were actually doing, but in their respective jobs, did a better job than the person they were rating against....”
For each job grouping, the expert computed the “Phi coefficient” of statistical correlation between the test scores and an average of the two supervisorial rankings. Consonant with professional conventions, the expert regarded as “statistically significant” any correlation that could have occurred by chance only five times, or fewer, in 100 trials. On the basis of these results, the District Court found that “[t]he personnel tests administered at the plant have undergone validation studies and have been proven to be job related.” Like the Court of Appeals, we are constrained to disagree.
The EEOC has issued “Guidelines” for employers seeking to determine, through professional validation studies, whether their employment tests are job related. 29 CFR pt. 1607. These Guidelines draw upon and make reference to professional standards of test validation established by the American Psychological Association. The EEOC Guidelines are not administrative “regulations” promulgated pursuant to formal procedures established by the Congress. But, as this Court has heretofore noted, they do constitute “[t]he administrative interpretation of the Act by the enforcing agency,” and consequently they are “entitled to great deference.” Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S., at 433-434. See also Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U. S. 86, 94 (1973).
The message of these Guidelines is the same as that of the Griggs case — that discriminatory tests are impermissible unless shown, by professionally acceptable methods, to be “predictive of or significantly correlated with important elements of work behavior which comprise or are relevant to the job or jobs for which candidates are being evaluated.” 29 CFR § 1607.4 (c).
Measured against the Guidelines, Albemarle’s validation study is materially defective in several respects:
(1) Even if it had been otherwise adequate, the study would not have “validated” the Beta and Wonderlic test battery for all of the skilled lines of progression for which the two tests are, apparently, now required. The study showed significant correlations for the Beta Exam in only three of the eight lines. Though the Wonderlic Test’s Form A and Form B are in theory identical and interchangeable measures of verbal facility, significant correlations for one form but not for the other were obtained in four job groupings. In two job groupings neither form showed a significant correlation. Within some of the lines of progression, one form was found acceptable for some job groupings but not for others. Even if the study were otherwise reliable, this odd patchwork of results would not entitle Albemarle to impose its testing program under the Guidelines. A test may be used in jobs other than those for which it has been professionally validated only if there are “no significant differences” between the studied and unstudied jobs. 29 CFR § 1607.4 (c)(2). The study in this case involved no analysis of the attributes of, or the particular skills needed in, the studied job groups. There is accordingly no basis for concluding that “no significant differences” exist among the lines of progression, or among distinct job groupings within the studied lines of progression. Indeed, the study’s checkered results appear to compel the opposite conclusion.
(2) The study compared test scores with subjective supervisorial rankings. While they allow the use of supervisorial rankings in test validation, the Guidelines quite plainly contemplate that the rankings will be elicited with far more care than was demonstrated here. Albemarle’s supervisors were asked to rank employees by a “standard” that was extremely vague and fatally open to divergent interpretations. As previously noted, each “job grouping” contained a number of different jobs, and the supervisors were asked, in each grouping, to
“determine which ones [employees] they felt irrespective of the job that they were actually doing, but in their respective jobs, did a better job than the person they were rating against....”
There is no way of knowing precisely what criteria of job performance the supervisors were considering, whether each of the supervisors was considering the same criteria or whether, indeed, any of the supervisors actually applied a focused and stable body of criteria of any kind. There is, in short, simply no way to determine whether the criteria actually considered were sufficiently related to the Company’s legitimate interest in job-specific ability to justify a testing system with a racially discriminatory impact.
(3) The Company’s study focused, in most cases, on job groups near the top of the various lines of progression. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., supra, the Court left open “the question whether testing requirements that take into account capability for the next succeeding position or related future promotion might be utilized upon a showing that such long-range requirements fulfill a genuine business need.” 401 U. S., at 432. The Guidelines take a sensible approach to this issue, and we now endorse it:
“If job progression structures and seniority provisions are so established that new employees will probably, within a reasonable period of time and in a great majority of cases, progress to a higher level, it may be considered that candidates are being evaluated for jobs at that higher level. However, where job progression is not so nearly automatic, or the time span is such that higher level jobs or employees’ potential may be expected to change in significant ways, it shall be considered that candidates are being evaluated for a job at or near the entry level.” 29 CFR § 1607.4 (c) (1).
The fact that the best of those employees working near the top of a line of progression score well on a test does not necessarily mean that that test, or some particular cutoff score on the test, is a permissible measure of the minimal qualifications of new workers entering lower level jobs. In drawing any such conclusion, detailed consideration must be given to the normal speed of promotion, to the efficacy of on-the-job training in the scheme of promotion, and to the possible use of testing as a promotion device, rather than as a screen for entry into low-level jobs. The District Court made no findings on these issues. The issues take on special importance in a case, such as this one, where incumbent employees are permitted to work at even high-level jobs without passing the company’s test battery. See 29 CFR § 1607.11.
(4) Albemarle’s validation study dealt only with job-experienced, white workers; but the tests themselves are given to new job applicants, who are younger, largely inexperienced, and in many instances nonwhite. The APA Standards state that it
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case poses certain questions concerning the proper construction of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 816, 33 U. S. C. § 1251 et seg. (1970 ed., Supp III) (1972 Act), which provide a comprehensive program for controlling and abating water pollution. Section 2 of the 1972 Act, 86 Stat. 833, in adding Title II, §§ 201-212, to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 62 Stat. 1155, 33 U. S. C. §§ 1281-1292 (1970 ed., Supp. Ill), makes available federal financial assistance in the amount of 75% of the cost of municipal sewers and sewage treatment works. Under § 207, there is “authorized to be appropriated” for these purposes “not to exceed” $5 billion for fiscal year 1973, “not to exceed” $6 billion for fiscal year 1974, and “not to exceed” $7 billion for fiscal year 1975. Section 205 (a) directs that “[s]ums authorized to be appropriated pursuant to [§ 207]” for fiscal year 1973 be allotted “not later than 30 days after October 18, 1972.” The “[s]ums authorized” for the later fiscal years 1974 and 1975 “shall be allotted by the Administrator not later than the January 1st immediately preceding the beginning of the fiscal year for which authorized . . . .” From these allotted sums, § 201 (g)(1) authorizes the Administrator “to make grants to any . . . municipality ... for the construction of publicly owned treatment works ...,” pursuant to plans and specifications as required by § 203 and meeting the other requirements of the Act, including those of § 204. Section 203 (a) specifies that the Administrator’s approval of plans for a project “shall be deemed a contractual obligation of the United States for the payment of its proportional contribution to such project.”
The water pollution bill that became the 1972 Act was passed by Congress on October 4, 1972, but was vetoed by the President on October 17. Congress promptly overrode the veto. Thereupon the President, by letter dated November 22, 1972, directed the Administrator “not [to] allot among the States the maximum amounts provided by section 207” and, instead, to allot “[n]o more than $2 billion of the amount authorized for the fiscal year 1973, and no more than $3 billion of the amount authorized for the fiscal year 1974 . ...” On December 8, the Administrator announced by regulation that in accordance with the President's letter he was allotting for fiscal years 1973 and 1974 “sums not to exceed $2 billion and $3 billion, respectively.”
This litigation, brought by the city of New York and similarly situated municipalities in the State of New York, followed immediately. The complaint sought judgment against the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency declaring that he was obligated to allot to the States the full amounts authorized by § 207 for fiscal years 1973 and 1974, as well as an order directing him to make those allotments. In May 1973, the District Court denied the Administrator’s motion to dismiss and granted the cities’ motion for summary judgment. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that “the Act requires the Administrator to allot the full sums authorized to be appropriated in § 207.” 161 U. S. App. D. C. 114, 131, 494 F. 2d 1033, 1050 (1974).
Because of the differing views with respect to the proper construction of the Act between the federal courts in the District of Columbia in this case and those of the Fourth Circuit in Train v. Campaign Clean Water, post, p. 136, we granted certiorari in both cases, 416 U. S. 969 (1974), and heard them together. The sole issue before us is whether the 1972 Act permits the Administrator to allot to the States under § 205 (a) less than the entire amounts authorized to be appropriated by § 207. We hold that the Act does not permit such action and affirm the Court of Appeals.
Section 205 (a) provides that the “[s]ums authorized to be appropriated pursuant to [§ 207] . . . shall be allotted by the Administrator.” Section 207 authorizes the appropriation of “not to exceed” specified amounts for each of three fiscal years. The dispute in this case turns principally on the meaning of the foregoing language from the indicated sections of the Act.
The Administrator contends that § 205 (a) directs the allotment of only “sums” — not “all sums” — authorized by § 207 to be appropriated and that the sums that must be allotted are merely sums that do not exceed the amounts specified in § 207 for each of the three fiscal years. In other words, it is argued that there is a maximum, but no minimum, on the amounts that must be allotted under § 205 (a). This is necessarily the case, he insists, because the legislation, after initially passing the House and Senate in somewhat different form, was amended in Conference and the changes, which were adopted by both Houses, were intended to provide wide discretion in the Executive to control the rate of spending under the Act.
The changes relied on by the Administrator, the so-called Harsha amendments, were two. First, § 205 of the House and Senate bills as they passed those Houses and went to Conference, directed that there be allotted “all sums” authorized to be appropriated by § 207. The word “all” was struck in Conference. Second, § 207 of the House bill authorized the appropriation of specific amounts for the three fiscal years. The Conference Committee inserted the qualifying words “not to exceed” before each of the sums so specified.
The Administrator’s arguments based on the statutory language and its legislative history are unpersuasive. Section 207 authorized appropriation of “not to exceed” a specified sum for each of the three fiscal years. If the States failed to submit projects sufficient to require obligation, and hence the appropriation, of the entire amounts authorized, or if the Administrator, exercising whatever authority the Act might have given him to deny grants, refused to obligate these total amounts, § 207 would obviously permit appropriation of the lesser amounts. But if, for example, the full amount provided for 1973 was obligated by the Administrator in the course of approving plans and making grants for municipal contracts, § 207 plainly “authorized” the appropriation of the entire $5 billion. If a sum of money is “authorized” to be appropriated in the future by § 207, then § 205 (a) directs that an amount equal to that sum be allotted. Section 207 speaks of sums authorized to be appropriated, not of sums that are required to be appropriated; and as far as § 205 (a)’s requirement to allot is concerned, we see no difference between the $2 billion the President directed to be allotted for fiscal year 1973 and the $3 billion he ordered withheld. The latter sum is as much authorized to be appropriated by § 207 as is the former. Both’ must be allotted.
It is insisted that this reading of the Act fails to give any effect to the Conference Committee’s changes in the bill. But, as already indicated, the “not to exceed” qualifying language of § 207 has meaning of its own, quite apart from §205 (a), and reflects the realistic possibility that approved applications for grants from funds already allotted would not total the maximum amount authorized to be appropriated. Surely there is nothing inconsistent between authorizing “not to exceed” $5 billion for 1973 and requiring the full allotment of the $5 billion among the States. Indeed, if the entire amount authorized is ever to be appropriated, there must be approved municipal projects in that amount, and grants for those projects may only be made from allotted funds.
As for striking the word “all” from § 205, if Congress intended to confer any discretion on the Executive to withhold funds from this program at the allotment stage, it chose quite inadequate means to do so. It appears to us that the word “sums” has no different meaning and can be ascribed no different function in the context of § 205 than would the words “all sums.” It is said that the changes were made to give the Executive the discretionary control over the outlay of funds for Title II programs at either stage of the process. But legislative intention, without more, is not legislation. Without something in addition to what is now before us, we cannot accept the addition of the few words to § 207 and the deletion of the one word from § 205 (a) as altering the entire complexion and thrust of the Act. As conceived and passed in both Houses, the legislation was intended to provide a firm commitment of substantial sums within a relatively limited period of time in an effort to achieve an early solution of what was deemed an urgent problem. We cannot believe that Congress at the last minute scuttled the entire effort by providing the Executive with the seemingly limitless power to withhold funds from allotment and obligation. Yet such was the Government’s position in the lower courts — combined with the argument that the discretion conferred is unreviewable.
The Administrator has now had second thoughts. He does not now claim that the Harsha amendments should be given such far-reaching effect. In this Court, he views §§ 205 (a) and 207 as merely conferring discretion on the Administrator as to the timing of expenditures, not as to the ultimate amounts to be allotted and obligated. He asserts that although he may limit initial allotments in the three specified years, “the power to allot continues” and must be exercised, “until the full $18 billion has been exhausted.” Brief for Petitioner 13; Tr. of Oral Arg. 16-17. It is true that this represents a major modification of the Administrator's legal posture, but our conclusion that § 205 (a) requires the allotment of sums equal to the total amounts authorized to be appropriated under § 207 is not affected. In the first place, under § 205 (a) the Administrator’s power to allot extends only to “sums” that are authorized to be appropriated under § 207. If he later has power to allot, and must allot, the balance of the $18 billion not initially allotted in the specified years, it is only because these additional amounts are “sums” authorized by § 207 to be appropriated. But if they are “sums” within the meaning of § 205 (a), then that section requires that they be allotted by November 17, 1972, in the case of 1973 funds, and for 1974 and 1975 “not later than the January 1st immediately preceding the beginning of the fiscal year for which authorized.” The November 22 letter of the President and the Administrator’s consequent withholding of authorized funds cannot be squared with the statute.
Second, even assuming an intention on the part of Congress, in the hope of forestalling a veto, to imply a power of some sort in the Executive to control outlays under the Act, there is nothing in the legislative history of the Act indicating that such discretion arguably granted was to be exercised at the allotment stage rather than or in addition to the obligation phase of the process. On the contrary, as we view the legislative history, the indications are that the power to control, such as it was, was to be exercised at the point where funds were obligated and not in connection with the threshold function of allotting funds to the States. The Court of Appeals carefully examined the legislative history in this respect and arrived at the same conclusion, as have most of the other courts that have dealt with the issue. We thus reject the suggestion that the conclusion we have arrived at is inconsistent with the legislative history of §§ 205 (a) and 207.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Douglas concurs in the result.
The provisions of Title II, as added by the 1972 Amendments chiefly involved in this case are, in pertinent part, as follows:
Section 205 (a), 33 U. S. C. § 1285 (a) (1970 ed., Supp. Ill):
“Sums authorized to be appropriated pursuant to section 1287 of this title for each fiscal year beginning after June 30, 1972, shall be allotted by the Administrator not later than the January 1st immediately preceding the beginning of the fiscal year for which authorized, except that the allotment for fiscal year 1973 shall be made not later than 30 days after October 18, 1972. . . .”
Section 207, 33 U. S. C. § 1287 (1970 ed., Supp. Ill):
“There is authorized to be appropriated to carry out this sub-chapter ... for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1973, not to exceed $5,000,000,000, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1974, not to exceed $6,000,000,000, and for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1975, not to exceed $7,000,000,000.”
Section 203, 33 U. S. C. § 1283 (1970 ed., Supp. Ill):
“(a) Each applicant for a grant shall submit to the Administrator for his approval, plans, specifications, and estimates for each proposed project for the construction of treatment works for which a grant is applied for [sic] under section 1281 (g)(1) of this title from funds allotted to the State under section 1285 of this title and which otherwise meets the requirements of this chapter. The Administrator shall act upon such plans, specifications, and estimates as soon as practicable after the same have been submitted, and his approval of any such plans, specifications, and estimates shall be deemed a contractual obligation of the United States for the payment of its proportional contribution to such project.
“(b) The Administrator shall, from time to time as the work progresses, make payments to the recipient of a grant for costs of construction incurred on a project. These payments shall at no time exceed the Federal share of the cost of construction incurred to the date of the voucher covering such payment plus the Federal share of the value of the materials which have been stockpiled in the vicinity of such construction in conformity to plans and specifications for the project.
“(c) After completion of a project and approval of the final voucher by the Administrator, he shall pay out of the appropriate sums the unpaid balance of the Federal share payable on account of such project.”
The Act thus established a funding method differing in important respects from the normal system of program approval and authorization of appropriation followed by separate annual appropriation acts. Under that approach, it is not until the actual appropriation that the Government funds can be deemed firmly committed. Under the contract-authority scheme incorporated in the legislation before us now, there are authorizations for future appropriations but also initial and continuing authority in the Executive Branch contractually to commit funds of the United States up to the amount of the authorization. The expectation is that appropriations will be automatically forthcoming to meet these contractual commitments. This mechanism considerably reduces whatever discretion Congress might have exercised in the course of making annual appropriations. The issue in this case is the extent of the authority of the Executive to control expenditures for a program that Congress has funded in the manner and under the circumstances present here.
Letter from President Nixon to William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, Nov. 22, 1972, App. 15-16.
Although the allotment for fiscal year 1975 is not directly at issue in this case, on January 15, 1974, the Administrator allotted $4 billion out of the $7 billion authorized for allotment for that fiscal year. Brief for Petitioner 6.
37 Fed. Reg. 26282 (1972).
The District Court ordered the action to proceed as a class action under Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 23 (b) (1) and (2) and also allowed the city of Detroit to intervene as a plaintiff.
The petition for a writ of certiorari also presented the question whether a suit to compel the allotment of the sums in issue here is barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, but that issue was not briefed and apparently has been abandoned. The Administrator concedes that, if § 205 (a) requires allotment of the full amounts authorized by § 207, then “allotment is a ministerial act and the district courts have jurisdiction to order that it be done.” Brief for Petitioner 14.
On July 12, 1974, while this case was pending in this Court the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Pub. L. 93-344, 88 Stat. 297, 31 U. S. C. § 1301 et seq. (1970 ed., Supp. IY), became effective. Title X of that Act imposes certain requirements on the President in postponing or withholding the use of authorized funds. If he determines that certain budget authority will not be required to carry out a particular program and is of the view that such authority should be rescinded, he must submit a special message to Congress explaining the basis therefor. For the rescission to be effective, Congress must approve it within 45 days. Should the President desire to withhold or delay the obligation or expenditure of budget authority, he must submit a similar special message to Congress. His recommendation may be rejected by either House adopting a resolution disapproving the proposed deferral.
These provisions do not render this case moot or make its decision unnecessary, for § 1001, note following 31 U. S. C. § 1401 (1970 ed., Supp. IV), provides that:
“Nothing contained in this Act, or in any amendments made by this Act, shall be construed as—
“(3) affecting in any way the claims or defenses of any party to litigation concerning any impoundment.”
The Act would thus not appear to affect cases such as this one, pending on the date of enactment of the statute. The Solicitor General, on behalf of the Administrator, has submitted a supplemental brief to this effect. The city of New York agrees that the case has not been mooted by the Impoundment Act and no contrary views have been filed.
Although asserting on the foregoing ground and on other grounds that the Impoundment Act has no application here, the Executive Branch included among the deferrals of budget authority reported to Congress pursuant to the new Act:
“Grants for waste treatment plant construction ($9 billion). Release of all these funds would be highly inflationary, particularly in view of the rapid rise in non-Federal spending for pollution control. Some of the funds now deferred will be allotted on or prior to February 1, 1975.”
In connection with that submission, the President asserted that the Act “applies only to determinations to withhold budget authority which have been made since the law was approved,” but nevertheless thought it appropriate to include in the report actions which were concluded before the effective date of the Act. 120 Cong. Rec. S17195 (Sept. 23, 1974). Other than as they bear on the possible mootness in the litigation before us, no issues as to the reach or coverage of the Impoundment Act are before us.
Section 205 as it appeared in the Senate bill directed the Administrator to “allocate” rather than to “allot.” The difference appears to be without significance.
The Act declares that “it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985,” § 101 (a) (1), 33 U. S. C. § 1251 (a) (1) (1970 ed., Supp. III). Congress intended also to apply to publicly owned sewage treatment works “the best practicable waste treatment technology over the life of the works consistent with the purposes of this subchapter.” §201 (g) (2) (A), 33 U. S. C. § 1281 (g) (2) (A) (1970 ed, Supp. III). See §301 (b)(1)(B), 33 U.S.C.§ 1311 (b)(1)(B) (1970 ed, Supp. III). The congressional determination to commit $18 billion during the fiscal years 1973-1975 is reflected in the following remarks of Senator Muskie, the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee concerned with the legislation and the manager of the bill on the Senate floor:
“[T]hose who say that raising the amounts of money called for in this legislation may require higher taxes, or that spending this much money may contribute to inflation simply do not understand the language of this crisis.
“The conferees spent hours and days studying the problem of financing the cleanup effort required by this new legislation. The members agreed in the end that a total of $18 billion had to be committed by the Federal Government in 75-percent grants to municipalities during fiscal years 1973-75. That is a great deal of money; but that is how much it will cost to begin to achieve the requirements set forth in the legislation.
“. . . [T]here were two strong imperatives which worked together to convince the members of the conference that this much money was needed: first, the conviction that only a national commitment of this magnitude would produce the necessary technology; and second, the knowledge that a Federal commitment of $18 billion in 75-per-cent grants to the municipalities was the minimum amount needed to finance the construction of waste treatment facilities which will meet the standards imposed by this legislation.
“Mr. President, to achieve the deadlines we are talking about in this bill we are going to need the strongest kind of evidence of the Federal Government’s commitment to pick up its share of the load. We cannot back down, with any credibility, from the kind of investment in waste treatment facilities that is called for by this bill. And the conferees are convinced that the level of investment that is authorized is the minimum dose of medicine that will solve the problems we face.” 118 Cong. Rec. 33693-33694 (1972).
Both Houses rejected authorization-appropriation funding in favor of the contract-authority system, which was deemed to involve a more binding and reliable commitment of funds. See 117 Cong. Rec. 38799, 38846-38853 (1971); 118 Cong. Rec. 10751-10761 (1972). Congressman Harsha, the House floor manager of the bill, explained the preference for the contract-authority approach and indicated that it was essential for orderly and continuous planning. Id., at 10757-10758.
The Administrator goes on to argue that under his present view of the Act, there is little if any difference between discretion to withhold allotments and discretion to refuse to obligate, for under either approach the full amounts authorized will eventually be available for obligation. The city of New York contends otherwise. Our view of the Act makes it unnecessary to reach the question.
The Administrator now indicates that the Act is presently being administered in accordance with his view of the Act asserted here. Brief for Petitioner 13.
Under §205 (b), any funds allotted to a State that remain un-obligated at the end of a one-year period after the close of the fiscal year for which funds are authorized become available for reallotment by the Administrator in accordance with a formula to be determined by the Administrator. These provisions for reallotment, as well as the reallotment formula, plainly apply only to funds that have already been allotted.
Senator Muskie, who was the senior majority conferee from the Senate, gave his view of the meaning of the Harsha amendments on the floor of the Senate:
“Under the amendments proposed by Congressman William Harsha and others, the authorizations for obligational authority are ‘not to exceed’ $18 billion over the next 3 years. Also, ‘all’ sums authorized to be obligated need not be committed, though they must be allocated. These two provisions were suggested to give the Administration some flexibility concerning the obligation of construction grant funds.” 118 Cong’. Rec. 33694 (1972).
He repeated his views in the course of Senate proceedings to override the President’s veto. Id., at 36871. Nothing was said in the Senate challenging the Senator’s view that executive discretion did not extend to allotments.
In the House, the power to make allotments under § 205 was not mentioned in terms. The impact of the Harsha amendments was repeatedly explained by reference to discretion to obligate or to expend. Typical was • Representative Harsha’s remarks that the amendments were intended to “emphasize the President’s flexibility to control the rate of spending . . . ,” and that "the pacing item” in the expenditure of funds was the Administrator’s power to approve plans, specifications, and estimates. Id., at 33754. See also id., at 33693, 33704, 33715-33716, 33754^33755, 36873-36874, 37056-37060.
161 U. S. App. D. C. 114, 494 F. 2d 1033 (1974), aff’g 358 F. Supp. 669 (DC 1973). Other District Courts have reached this same result: Ohio ex rel. Brown v. Administrator, EPA Nos. C. 73-1061 & C. 74-104 (ND Ohio June 26, 1974); Maine v. Fri, Civ. No. 14-51 (Me. June 21, 1974); Florida v. Train, Civ. No. 73-156 (ND Fla. Feb. 25, 1974); Texas v. Ruckelshaus, No. A-73-CA-38 (WD Tex. Oct. 2, 1973); Martin-Trigona v. Ruckelshaus, No. 72-C-3044 (ND Ill. June 29, 1973); Minnesota v. EPA, No. 4-73, Civ. 133 (Minn. June 25, 1974). The only District Court case in which the issue was actively litigated and which held to the contrary was Brown v. Ruckelshaus, 364 F. Supp. 258 (CD Cal. 1973).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner and a codefendant, charged with committing a double murder, were tried jointly in a bench trial. Neither defendant testified at trial. In finding petitioner guilty as charged, the trial judge expressly relied on portions of the co-defendant’s confession, obtained by police at the time of arrest, as substantive evidence against petitioner. The question for decision is whether such reliance by the judge upon the codefendant’s confession violated petitioner’s rights as secured by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.
I
In February 1982, police officers of East St. Louis asked petitioner Millie Lee to come to the police station to help identify a badly burned body that the police had discovered in an apartment in the housing complex in which Lee lived. While Lee was examining photographs of the body, a detective noticed that she began to cry. The detective advised Lee of her Miranda rights, and began to question her about the whereabouts of her aunt, Mattie Darden, with whom Lee shared an apartment. After giving a number of confused and conflicting accounts concerning when she had last seen or talked to her aunt, Lee finally admitted that she and her boyfriend, Edwin Thomas, had been involved in the stabbing of both Aunt Beedie and her friend, Odessa Harris, and that the body was her Aunt Beedie’s. At that point, the officers questioning Lee again read her her Miranda rights, placed her under arrest, and continued to question her. After concluding their interview with Lee, the police presented her with a typewritten account of her statement, which included at the top of the first page a recitation and waiver of her Miranda rights. Lee read and signed each page of the confession.
Petitioner’s codefendant, Edwin Thomas, arrived at the police station, ostensibly for “questioning” about the homicides, while police officers were still in the process of interviewing Lee; nonetheless, the police apparently were sufficiently informed of Thomas’ involvement such that upon his arrival, he was read his rights and confronted by an officer with his alleged participation in the murders. Thomas indicated at that point that he “wanted to think about” whether to talk to the police.
During her questioning by the police, Millie Lee had asked to see Edwin Thomas; after being advised of his rights, Thomas asked if he could see Lee. After they obtained Lee’s confession, the police allowed the two to meet. Lee and Thomas were permitted to kiss and to hug, and one of the officers then asked Lee, in the presence of Thomas, “what was the statement you had just given us implicating Edwin?” Lee said to Thomas: “They know about the whole thing, don’t you love me Edwin, didn’t you in fact say . . . that we wouldn’t let one or the other take the rap alone.” Brief for Respondent 6. At that point, Thomas gave a statement to the police, which was later typed and then presented to Thomas for his review and signature.
According to Lee’s statement, on the evening of February 11, 1982, she and Thomas were at home in the apartment that Lee shared with Aunt Beedie when the aunt and her friend Odessa Harris arrived at approximately 8:30 or 9 p.m. Aunt Beedie and Odessa went into the bedroom, while Lee did the dishes in the kitchen. Thomas, who had been watching television, joined Lee in the kitchen, and the two apparently had .“two or three words not really an argument.” Odessa then came out of the bedroom to the kitchen and asked “what the hell was going on.” As related in Lee’s confession, Odessa “said we ought to be ashamed of ourselves arguing and making all that noise. I told her it was none of her business that she didn’t live here.” Odessa returned to the bedroom. App. 6.
As Lee’s account further related, after Odessa returned to the bedroom Lee called her back into the kitchen in order to confirm whether Aunt Beedie had “really” paid the rent. Odessa assured Lee that the rent had indeed been paid, and then complained once more about the fact that Lee and Thomas had been arguing. As Odessa left the kitchen to return to the bedroom, she passed Thomas and gave him “dirty looks.” When Odessa turned her head Thomas got up from his chair and stabbed Odessa in the back with a 24-inch-long knife. Odessa fell on the floor, and called out to Aunt Beedie. Lee explained that she then
“ran, well I don’t know if I ran or walked into the bedroom. Edwin was standing over by the kitchen cabinet with the knife in his hand with blood on it. Odessa was laying there moaning. When I went into the bedroom my aunt Beety was sitting on the bed and then she got up and had a knife in her hand. I don’t know where the knife came from, my aunt usually kept her gun by her bed. I don’t know what kind of gun it is. When my aunt got up off the bed she told me to get out of her way or she would kill me and then she swung at me with the knife. I ran into the kitchen and got a butcher knife that was sitting on the kitchen table and then I went back into the bedroom where my aunt was and then I stabbed her. I kept stabbing her. The first time I stabbed her, I hit her in the chest, I kept stabbing her and I really don’t know where else I stabbed her, I had my eyes closed some of the time.” Id., at 7.
Lee’s statement also included an account of some of the circumstances leading up to the killing:
“Me, and Edwin had talked about stop[p]ing aunt Mattie from harassing me before. She would come in drunk or would get on the phone and tell people that I never did anything for her that I wouldn’t give her anything to eat, or anything since I had a boyfriend. . . . Edwin used to get mad when my aunt would talk about me and that he couldn’t take much more of what my auntie was doing, that when he began talking about doing something to aunt Beetty [sic] but he never said what. Odessa was always jumping up in my face and one time about a month ago me and Odessa got into an argument about my dress that I let Odessa use and Edwin seen her get in my face that time. He, Edwin just couldn’t stand to see my auntie or Odessa harass me anymore. Things just kept adding up and adding up and the night that we killed Odessa and my aunt Beetty [sic] Edwin just couldn’t take anymore.” Id., at 12.
Thomas’ confession paralleled Lee’s in several respects. It described the argument between himself and Lee, the confrontation with Odessa in the kitchen, and the stabbings of Odessa and then Aunt Beedie. However, Thomas’ statement provided an altogether different version of how he and Lee came to commit the murders. Most significantly, Thomas stated that he and Lee had previously discussed killing Aunt Beedie, and referred to conversations immediately prior to the murders that suggested a premeditated plan to kill. According to Thomas, after Odessa scolded Lee for arguing with Thomas:
“This is when I asked [Lee] ‘did she still want to go through with it?’ I was referring to what -we had plained [sic] before about killing Aunt Beedie. We had talked about doing something to Aunt Beedie, but we had not figure out just what we would do. We had never before discussed doing anything to Odessa just Aunt Beedie, because we were tired of Aunt Beedie getting drunk, and coming home and ‘going off’ on [Lee]. . . . After asking [Lee], ‘did she still want to do it?’ [Lee] first gave me a funny look, as though she was not going to do it, she stared into space for awhile, then she looked at me and said, ‘yes.’
“We decided that if we did something to Aunt Beedie, we had to do somthing [sic] with Odessa. We wanted Odessa to leave, but she stayed there. We had plained [sic] that [Lee] was suppose [sic] to get Odessa to stand, with her back toward the front room, looking into the kitchen, while I would grab her from the back, using the big knife.” Id., at 17-18.
Lee’s statement, by contrast, suggested that it was Thomas who had been provoked by Aunt Beedie’s behavior and Thomas who had snapped the night of the murders. Her statement made no mention of an alleged decision by herself and Thomas to “go through with it,” nor, of course, did it indicate that the two had formulated a plan to induce Odessa to return to the kitchen where Thomas would kill her. On the contrary, Lee asserted that on the night of the killings “Edwin just couldn’t take anymore.”
Lee and Thomas were charged in a two-count indictment with murder. Count one charged them with the murder of Aunt Beedie, and count two with the murder of Odessa. They were appointed separate counsel for trial.
On the day of trial, counsel for the two defendants withdrew motions for severance and for trial by jury. In withdrawing the motion for separate trials, counsel for Thomas explained that “[sjince we are having a Bench Trial, the Court would only consider the evidence proper to each defendant, we feel that there is no longer any need for that motion.” The court then asked petitioner’s lawyer whether that was her understanding as well. She replied: “Yes, your Honor. I have conferred with Miss Lee. We would ask the Court to consider the evidence separately for each defendant.” The judge replied: “It will be done that way.” Tr. 3.
Neither defendant testified at trial, except on behalf of their respective motions to suppress their statements on the ground that they were given involuntarily, motions that were denied by the trial judge.
At trial both the prosecution and the defendants relied heavily on the confessions. In closing, counsel for petitioner called the court’s attention to Lee’s confession, and argued that it showed that Lee was “not responsible for the death of Odessa Harris. ... As I read her statement, she was not personally involved in the stabbing of Odessa Harris. Mr. Thomas was.” Id., at 232-233. Counsel maintained that under Illinois law, in order to be guilty of murder a person must be involved before or during the commission of the offense, and that Lee’s confession simply could not fairly be read to support such a finding. With respect to Aunt Beedie’s killing, counsel urged the court to consider the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. According to counsel, Lee’s statement indicated that Aunt Beedie had had a knife, that Lee and Aunt Beedie had struggled, and that the stabbing occurred as a result of that struggle. Counsel suggested that Lee had acted either upon the “unreasonable belief that her act of stabbing Mattie Darden constituted self-defense” or, in the alternative, that the killing “was the result of a sudden and intense passion resulting from serious provocation.” Brief for Petitioner 5.
In rebuttal, the prosecutor described Lee’s arguments in support of lesser offenses as “interesting. ” He answered the suggestion that the evidence showed insufficient intent to support murder by asserting that “once you read the confession of Millie Lee, you will note that she indicates in her statement that before anything begins, . . . that she and Edwin spoke together ... at which time Edwin asked her, ‘Are you ready?’ And she, after thinking awhile, said, ‘Yes.’” The prosecutor maintained that this exchange, which he incorrectly attributed to Lee’s statement, and which had in fact appeared only in Thomas’ confession, demonstrated a willingness on the part of Lee to “go through with whatever plan” the two had formulated with respect to the victims, and thus that there had been an agreement to kill. The State also argued in closing — again erroneously drawing from Thomas’, not Lee’s, confession — that Lee “did in fact aid and assist and encourage this whole operation, by drawing Odessa out of the bedroom”; the prosecutor argued that this was evident from Thomas’ statement that it was necessary to kill Odessa in order to go ahead with the plan to kill Aunt Beedie. To prove Lee’s intent to kill and to rebut her theories of self-defense and sudden and intense passion, the State pointed to Thomas’ assertion that he had asked Lee if she was willing to go through with what they had talked about, and her reply “I’m scared, but I will go through with it.” Tr. 236.
In finding Lee guilty of the murders of Aunt Beedie and Odessa, and explaining why he rejected Lee’s assertions that she had not participated in the killing of Odessa and that she acted either in self-defense or under intense and sudden passion with respect to the stabbing of Aunt Beedie, the trial judge expressly relied on Thomas’ confession and his version of the killings, particularly with respect to the decision to kill Aunt Beedie allegedly made earlier by Lee and Thomas. Lee’s contentions, the judge declared, were
“disputed by the statement of her co-defendant, who stated that he asked Miss Lee do you want to go through with it. A previously conceived plan to dispose of Miss Darden. And after some thinking . . . she responded that she did. There is no showing that they acted under a sudden and intense passion, in fact prior to the stabbing, according to his own confession, the defendant took a knife . . . and awaited the arrival of Miss Harris into the kitchen, in fact had his co-defendant call her so she could come out. Now that isn’t a sudden and intense passion.” App. 25.
Lee was sentenced to a term of 40 years’ incarceration for the murder of Odessa, and life imprisonment for the murder of Aunt Beedie.
On appeal, Lee contended, among other things, that her Confrontation Clause rights were violated by the trial court’s consideration of Thomas’ confession against her. The state appeals court conceded that the trial court considered Thomas’ confession in finding Lee guilty, but held that since the defendants’ confessions were “interlocking,” they did not fall within the rule of Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123 (1968), which, the court stated, was that the “admission of a codefendant’s extrajudicial statement that inculpates the other defendant violates the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him.” 129 Ill. App. 3d 1197, 491 N. E. 2d 1391 (1984). The court did not explain what it meant by saying that the confessions were “interlocking,” how the confessions interlocked, or how or why the Bruton analysis would be altered when confessions did interlock. The Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. We granted certiorari. 473 U. S. 904 (1985).
II
The State of Illinois concedes that this case involves the use of a codefendant’s confession as substantive evidence against petitioner. Brief for Respondent 9. Illinois also correctly recognizes that the admissibility of the evidence as a matter of state law is not the issue in this case; rather, it properly identifies the question presented to be “whether that substantive use of the hearsay confession denied Petitioner rights guaranteed her under the Confrontation Clause. ...” Id., at 11. It contends, in essence, that Lee’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated because Thomas was unavailable and his statement was “reliable” enough to warrant its untested admission into evidence against Lee. See Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U. S. 56 (1980). We need not address the question of Thomas’ availability, for we hold that Thomas’ statement, as the confession of an accomplice, was presumptively unreliable and that it did not bear sufficient independent “indicia of reliability” to overcome that presumption.
A
In Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400 (1965), this Court unanimously held that the Confrontation Clause was applicable to the States, and in doing so, remarked that it “cannot seriously be doubted at this late date that the right of cross-examination is included in the right of an accused in a criminal case to confront the witnesses against him.” Id., at 404. Citing and quoting from such cases as Kirby v. United States, 174 U. S. 47 (1899), Alford v. United States, 282 U. S. 687 (1931), Greene v. McElroy, 360 U. S. 474 (1959), In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257 (1948), and Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 466 (1965), we observed that “[t]here are few subjects, perhaps, upon which this Court and other courts have been more nearly unanimous than in the expressions of belief that the right of confrontation and cross-examination is an essential and fundamental requirement for the kind of fair trial which is this country’s constitutional goal.” Pointer, supra, at 405.
On one level, the right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses contributes to the establishment of a system of criminal justice in which the perception as well as the reality of fairness prevails. To foster such a system, the Constitution provides certain safeguards to promote to the greatest possible degree society’s interest in having the accused and accuser engage in an open and even contest in a public trial. The Confrontation Clause advances these goals by ensuring that convictions will not be based on the charges of unseen and unknown — and hence unchallengeable — individuals.
But the confrontation guarantee serves not only symbolic goals. The right to confront and to cross-examine witnesses is primarily a functional right that promotes reliability in criminal trials. In California v. Green, 399 U. S. 149, 158 (1970), we identified how the mechanisms of confrontation and cross-examination advance the pursuit of truth in criminal trials. Confrontation, we noted,
“(1) insures that the witness will give his statements under oath — thus impressing him with the seriousness of the matter and guarding against the lie by the possibility of a penalty for perjury; (2) forces the witness to submit to cross-examination, the ‘greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth’; (3) permits the jury that is to decide the defendant’s fate to observe the demeanor of the witness making his statement, thus aiding the jury in assessing his credibility” (footnote omitted). Ibid.
Our cases recognize that this truthfinding function of the Confrontation Clause is uniquely threatened when an accomplice’s confession is sought to be introduced against a criminal defendant without the benefit of cross-examination. As has been noted, such a confession “is hearsay, subject to all the dangers of inaccuracy which characterize hearsay generally. . . . More than this, however, the arrest statements of a co-defendant have traditionally been viewed with special suspicion. Due to his strong motivation to implicate the defendant and to exonerate himself, a codefendant’s statements about what the defendant said or did are less credible than ordinary hearsay evidence.” Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S., at 141 (White, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).
Thus, in Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 415 (1965), we reversed a conviction because a confession purportedly made by the defendant’s accomplice was read to the jury by the prosecutor. Because the accomplice in that case, while called to the witness stand, invoked his privilege against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions put to him, we held that the defendant’s “inability to cross-examine [the accomplice] as to the alleged confession plainly denied him the right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause.” Id., at 419. This holding, on which the Court was unanimously agreed, was premised on the basic understanding that when one person accuses another of a crime under circumstances in which the declarant stands to gain by inculpating another, the accusation is presumptively suspect and must be subjected to the scrutiny of cross-examination.
Over the years since Douglas, the Court has spoken with one voice in declaring presumptively unreliable accomplices’ confessions that incriminate defendants. Even Justice Harlan, who was generally averse to what he regarded as an expansive reading of the confrontation right, stated that he “would be prepared to hold as a matter of due process that a confession of an accomplice resulting from formal police interrogation cannot be introduced as evidence of the guilt of an accused, absent some circumstance indicating authorization or adoption.” Dutton v. Evans, 400 U. S. 74, 98 (1970) (concurring in judgment).
Our ruling in Bruton illustrates the extent of the Court’s concern that the admission of this type of evidence will distort the truthfinding process. In Bruton, we held that the Confrontation Clause rights of the petitioner were violated when his codefendant’s confession was admitted at their joint trial, despite the fact that the judge in that case had carefully instructed the jury that the confession was admissible only against the codefendant. We based our decision in Bruton on the fact that a confession that incriminates an accomplice is so “inevitably suspect” and “devastating” that the ordinarily sound assumption that a jury will be able to follow faithfully its instructions could not be applied. Bruton, supra, at 136.
Although in the present case the state court apparently relied on Bruton in reaching its decision, this is not strictly speaking a Bruton case because we are not here concerned with the effectiveness of limiting instructions in preventing spill-over prejudice to a defendant when his codefendant’s confession is admitted against the codefendant at a joint trial. Rather, this case is strikingly similar to Douglas. Here, as in Douglas, the State sought to use hearsay evidence as substantive evidence against the accused. In both cases, the hearsay in question was a confession made by an alleged accomplice, and in neither case was the defendant able to confront and cross-examine the declarant. Whatever differences there are between the cases show clearly that in the present case the Confrontation Clause concerns are of even greater consequence than in Douglas. In Douglas, the accomplice’s confession was read by the prosecutor to the uncooperative declarant in order to “refresh [his] recollection,” 380 U. S., at 316, and was thus technically not evidence that was admitted against the accused; in the present case, Thomas’ statement was, of course, admitted into evidence by the judge following a suppression hearing. Moreover, here, unlike Douglas, it is not necessary to speculate as to whether the factfinder would consider the uncross-examined hearsay; the judge expressly so relied. In this case the Court does not address a hypothetical. The danger against which the Confrontation Clause was erected — the conviction of a defendant based, at least in part, on presumptively unreliable evidence — actually occurred.
B
Illinois contends that Thomas’ statement bears sufficient “indicia of reliability” to rebut the presumption of unreliability that attaches to codefendants’ confessions, citing as support our decision in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U. S., at 66 (citations omitted). While we agree that the presumption may be rebutted, we are not persuaded that it has been in this case.
In Roberts, we recognized that even if certain hearsay evidence does not fall within “a firmly rooted hearsay exception” and is thus presumptively unreliable and inadmissible for Confrontation Clause purposes, it may nonetheless meet Confrontation Clause reliability standards if it is supported by a “showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” Ibid. However, we also emphasized that “[reflecting its underlying purpose to augment accuracy in the factfinding process by ensuring the defendant an effective means to test adverse evidence, the Clause countenances only hearsay marked with such trustworthiness that ‘there is no material departure from the reason of the general rule.’” Id., at 65, quoting Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 107 (1934). Illinois’ asserted grounds for holding Thomas’ statement to be reliable with respect to Lee’s culpability simply do not meet this standard.
First, contrary to Illinois’ contention, the circumstances surrounding the confession do not rebut the presumption that Thomas’ statement could not be trusted as regards Lee’s participation in the murders. When Thomas was taken in for questioning and read his rights he refused to talk to the police. The confession was elicited only after Thomas was told that Lee had already implicated him and only after he was implored by Lee to share “the rap” with her. The unsworn statement was given in response to the questions of police, who, having already interrogated Lee, no doubt knew what they were looking for, and the statement was not tested in any manner by contemporaneous cross-examination by counsel, or its equivalent. Although, as the State points out, the confession was found to be voluntary for Fifth Amendment purposes, such a finding does not bear on the question of whether the confession was also free from any desire, motive, or impulse Thomas may have had either to mitigate the appearance of his own culpability by spreading the blame or to overstate Lee’s involvement in retaliation for her having implicated him in the murders. It is worth noting that the record indicates that Thomas not only had a theoretical motive to distort the facts to Lee’s detriment, but that he also was actively considering the possibility of becoming her adversary: prior to trial, Thomas contemplated becoming a witness for the State against Lee. This record evidence documents a reality of the criminal process, namely, that once partners in a crime recognize that the “jig is up,” they tend to lose any identity of interest and immediately become antagonists, rather than accomplices.
We also reject Illinois’ second basis for establishing reliability, namely, that because Lee’s and Thomas’ confessions “interlock” on some points, Thomas’ confession should be deemed trustworthy in its entirety. Obviously, when co-defendants’ confessions are identical in all material respects, the likelihood that they are accurate is significantly increased. But a confession is not necessarily rendered reliable simply because some of the facts it contains “interlock” with the facts in the defendant’s statement. See Parker v. Randolph, 442 U. S. 62, 79 (1979) (Blackmun, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The true danger inherent in this type of hearsay is, in fact, its selective reliability. As we have consistently recognized, a codefendant’s confession is presumptively unreliable as to the passages detailing the defendant’s conduct or culpability because those passages may well be the product of the codefendant’s desire to shift or spread blame, curry favor, avenge himself, or divert attention to another. If those portions of the codefendant’s purportedly “interlocking” statement which bear to any significant degree on the defendant’s participation in the crime are not thoroughly substantiated by the defendant’s own confession, the admission of the statement poses too serious a threat to the accuracy of the verdict to be countenanced by the Sixth Amendment. In other words, when the discrepancies between the statements are not insignificant, the codefendant’s confession may not be admitted.
In this case, the confessions overlap in their factual recitations to a great exteht. However, they clearly diverge with respect to Lee’s participation in the planning of her aunt’s death, Lee’s facilitation of the murder of Odessa, and certain factual circumstances relevant to the couple’s premeditation. For example, Lee’s confession states that Thomas was “talking about doing something to aunt Beetty [sic] but he never said what,” App. 12, and does not refer at all to the joint plan to do “something to Aunt Beedie” which Thomas repeatedly mentions in his confession. Id., at 17. Nor does Lee’s confession give any indication that Lee and Thomas colluded to “do somthing [sic] with Odessa,” id., at 18, as does Thomas’ statement. Lee states that she called Odessa into the kitchen only to discuss the rent and that Thomas assaulted Odessa after Odessa had left the kitchen, given Thomas a “dirty loo[k],” and was walking toward the bedroom. Id., at 6. By contrast, Thomas indicates that “[Lee] was suppose [sic] to get Odessa to stand, with her back toward the front room, looking into the kitchen” so that Thomas could stab her from the back, id., at 18, and that he actually attacked Odessa while she was in the kitchen at Lee’s beckoning. Id., at 19. Finally, there are certain factual discrepancies in the two statements which bear on Lee’s alleged pre-existing intent to kill the two women. For example, Thomas states that the couple had thought to put on gloves before the killings, id., at 20, while Lee states that they put on gloves only to dispose of the bodies. Id., at 10.
The subjects upon which these two confessions do not “interlock” cannot in any way be characterized as irrelevant or trivial. The discrepancies between the two go to the very issues in dispute at trial: the roles played by the two defendants in the killing of Odessa, and the question of premeditation in the killing of Aunt Beedie.
In sum, we are not convinced that there exist sufficient “indicia of reliability,” flowing from either the circumstances surrounding the confession or the “interlocking” character of the confessions, to overcome the weighty presumption against the admission of such uncross-examined evidence. We therefore hold that on the record before us, there is no occasion to depart from the time-honored teaching that a co-defendant’s confession inculpating the accused is inherently unreliable, and that convictions supported by such evidence violate the constitutional right of confrontation.
By holding that the consideration of Thomas’ untested confession against Lee violated Lee’s Confrontation Clause rights, we do not foreclose the possibility that this error was harmless when assessed in the context of the entire case against Lee. See Schneble v. Florida, 405 U. S. 427 (1972). However, because the Illinois courts are in a better position to assess the remaining evidence in light of the substantive state law of murder, we leave this determination in the first instance to the state courts. Accordingly, the judgment of the Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth Judicial District, is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The Confrontation Clause provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right... to be confronted with the witnesses against him . . . .”
Mattie Darden was known also as “Aunt Beety” or “Aunt Beedie.”
It is evident that the prosecutor, in arguing Lee’s guilt, invited the court to consider Thomas’ confession, an invitation that the court accepted and which generated the error that we address in this opinion. However, there has been no claim made regarding the significance, if any, of prosecutorial misconduct or mistake that results in inadmissible hearsay evidence being brought to the attention of the factfinder, and we thus do not address the question.
We have previously turned to McCormick’s definition of hearsay as “testimony in court, or written evidence, of a statement made out of court, the statement being offered as an assertion to show the truth of matters asserted therein, and thus resting for its value upon the credibility of the out-of-court asserter.” E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence §246, p. 584 (2d ed. 1972). We have also quoted approvingly McCormick’s caveat that “[s]implification has a measure of falsification.” Ibid, (quoted in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U. S., at 62, n. 4).
We reject respondent’s categorization of the hearsay involved in this case as a simple “declaration against penal interest.” That concept defines too large a class for meaningful Confrontation Clause analysis. We decide this case as involving a confession by an accomplice which incriminates a criminal defendant.
Illinois makes the somewhat surprising argument — an argument, incidentally, that was not made before the state court — that this case does not present any Confrontation Clause issue since Lee was afforded an opportunity to cross-examine Thomas diming the suppression hearing. We disagree.
The function of a suppression hearing is to determine the voluntariness, and hence the admissibility for Fifth Amendment purposes, of a confession. The truth or falsity of the statement is not relevant to the voluntariness inquiry, and no such testimony was given by Thomas. Counsel for both Lee and Thomas specifically stated that their clients were testifying “for purposes of the motion to suppress the confession only.” Tr. 205, 219. Before either defendant took the stand, the court announced: “Let the record show the testimony of this defendant will be used solely for the purpose of sustaining the motion to suppress previously made.” Id., at 205.
Thus, there was no opportunity to cross-examine Thomas with respect to the reliability of the statement, especially as it may have related to Lee, and thus no opportunity for cross-examination sufficient to satisfy the demands of the Confrontation Clause. Cf. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 376-377 (1964) (A defendant’s constitutional right to a hearing to object to the use of a confession involves a determination of voluntariness, “a determination uninfluenced by the truth or falsity of the confession”).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and the judgment is reversed. Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas would reverse for the reasons stated in the opinion of Mr. Justice Black in Jacobellis v. Ohio, ante, p. 196. Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Goldberg would reverse for the reasons stated in the opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan in Jacobellis, ante, p. 184. Mr. Justice Stewart would reverse for the reasons stated in his opinion in Jacobellis, ante, p. 197. The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Clark, Mr. Justice Harlan, and Mr. Justice White are of the opinion that certiorari should be denied.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This action was instituted in the United States Court of Claims by government per diem employees to recover holiday pay consisting of an extra day’s compensation for each holiday worked during the year 1945.
Each of the respondents was employed by the Navy under a Schedule of Wages which provided that “whenever an employee is relieved or prevented from working solely because of the occurrence of any day declared a holiday” he was to receive the same pay for such days as for other days. This language was taken from a Joint Resolution of Congress of June 29, 1938, 52 Stat. 1246, having to do with holiday pay. In 1945 the respondents were not relieved from working on certain holidays named in this Resolution and were paid only the regular scheduled pay for the work performed on those days. They contend that under a Joint Resolution of January 6,1885, 23 Stat. 516, they have a vested right to an additional full day’s wage as “gratuity pay” for each holiday worked. The Government urges that the 1885 Resolution was repealed in toto by the Joint Resolution of June 29, 1938, or in the alternative that the latter is inconsistent and in conflict with the provisions of the earlier Resolution upon which respondents rely.
The Court of Claims entered judgment for respondents, believing that the issue “was considered and disposed of by [its] majority opinion ... in Kelly v. United States, 119 C. Cls. 197,” holding that the employees concerned were entitled to gratuity pay under a Joint Resolution of 1895, not here involved, as well as under their wage agreement negotiated through collective bargaining in 1924. 132 Ct. Cl. 564, 132 F. Supp. 462. While we affirmed the Kelly case, 342 U. S. 193, it was on the basis of the wage agreement present there. We left open the issue involved here. Subsequently, thousands of claims based on the 1885 Resolution, including those of respondents, were filed against the Government, necessitating a decision on the question now presented. We granted certiorari, 350 U. S. 953.
The legislative history of the 1938 Resolution is clear. Executive Order No. 7763 of December 6,1937, 2 Fed. Reg. 2685, excused all government employees from work on December 24, 1937. Under the 1885 Resolution per diem employees received no compensation for that day since the holidays enumerated therein did not include December 24. A Joint Resolution was introduced in the House by Representative Ramspeck to allow holiday pay to per diem employees for that day. On referral to the House Committee on Civil Sevice, advice was sought from the Civil Service Commission, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Comptroller General. The Civil Service Commission advised by letter dated February 15, 1938, that the “accounting authorities, however, have held that in the absence of specific legislation the regular employees of the Federal Government whose compensation is fixed at a rate per day, per hour, or on a piece-work basis lose pay for that day. This has resulted in discrimination against these groups of Federal employees.” The Commission advised, further, that “there is the broader question involved of securing statutory authority for such payments as a general practice . . . H. R. Rep. No. 2683, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. 2. The Commission suggested the language that might be inserted in a Resolution that “would give permanent statutory authority” for holiday pay. In addition, the Commission’s reference to the “accounting authorities” revealed that the Comptroller General had advised the Secretary of the Navy on December 20, 1937, that under existing law (a) per annum employees suffered no loss of income as the result of holidays, whether declared by statute or executive order, whereas per diem employees received pay only for those holidays enumerated in the 1885 Resolution; (b) per diem employees received statutory holiday pay whether the holiday happened to fall on a nonwork day (Saturday or Sunday) or not, while per annum workers were allowed neither additional pay nor holiday time when the holiday happened to fall on a nonwork day; and (c) if a per diem employee worked on a statutory holiday falling on such a nonwork day, he received double pay.
In its Report, supra, to the House, the Committee incorporated the letter from the Commission, the advisory opinion of the Comptroller General, and a letter dated February 14, 1938, from the Bureau of the Budget advising that the proposed legislation would not be “in conflict with the program of the President.” The Committee drafted an entirely new Resolution, incorporating the language suggested by the Commission, intending for it to cover the “general practice” of the Government in regard to holiday pay. The only legislation then covering the general practice of the Government as to holiday-pay was the 1885 Resolution and as to it the Committee categorically declared in its Report:
“Section 2 [of the Resolution] proposes to repeal the joint resolution of January 6, 1885 (U. S. C., title 5, sec. 86), which is as follows: . . .” [It then sets out in full the 1885 Resolution.]
Furthermore, there is no indication anywhere in its Report that any'portion of the 1885 Resolution — much less any administrative practice thereunder — was to survive. In addition to this unequivocal statement that the purpose of the 1938 Resolution was to repeal the 1885 one, the Committee further revealed by its action under the Rules of the 75th Congress that it so intended. The Rules required a Committee reporting out a bill repealing an act or part thereof to include in its report the text of the act or part thereof proposed to be repealed. The Report here included the text of the 1885 Resolution in toto. On the other hand, if it was intended only that the 1885 Resolution be amended, the Rules required the Committee to insert in its report a comparative print of the part of the act which it proposed to be amended. Here no such comparative print was inserted.
Moreover, the few brief statements on the floor of the House show nothing to the contrary. Representative Ramspeck declared that the Resolution “gives the same right to per diem employees as to the regular monthly employees.” Representative Rogers stated, “This simply prevents an unintentional discrimination.” Nothing was said as to the 1885 Resolution, nor did anyone contend, contrary to the Committee Report, that it was not the intention to repeal it in toto. See 83 Cong. Rec. 9466-9467.
It is contended that the purpose of the 1938 Resolution was to increase the number of holidays for per diem employees to include those allowed by executive order, but to leave intact the allowance of double pay for per diem employees who worked on the holidays specified in the 1885 Resolution. This cannot be correct, for no one contends that the 1938 Resolution did not repeal the 1885 Resolution, as interpreted, with reference to holiday pay on nonwork days. That being so, we cannot see why the 1885 Resolution should be regarded as having been left unrepealed with reference to holiday pay on work days. Moreover, respondents’ contention is entirely untenable in light of the Committee Report. Confusion would be created rather than eliminated if the contention were accepted. The purpose, as shown by the letters, the advisory opinion, the Report, and the statements on the floor of the House, was to alleviate discriminations as to holiday pay and to treat employees alike insofar as possible. This the 1938 Resolution accomplished. Should the respondents’ interpretation prevail, it would result in a double standard of pay for per diem employees working on holidays. On those holidays included in the 1885 Resolution, the employees would receive double pay, while on holidays included in or created pursuant to the authority provided by the 1938 Resolution alone they would receive only single pay. This result is required because the 1938 Resolution permits no holiday pay when the employee is required to work. We cannot attribute such anomalous results to the Congress. It is urged that our interpretation would result in a per diem employee receiving the same pay for working on a holiday as is received by his fellow employee who is excused from so working. But this is no discrimination as it likewise is visited upon the per annum employee.
We now turn to other indications supporting the position that the 1885 Resolution was repealed. As we indicated earlier, the double payment for holiday work recognized prior to the 1938 Resolution came about in 1906 through an interpretation of the 1885 Resolution by the Assistant Comptroller of the Treasury. This ruling was recognized by all departments and agencies of the Government until August 1938, when the Comptroller General held that the 1885 Resolution had been repealed by the 1938 Resolution and gratuity pay for holidays was no longer a right of per diem employees. This opinion was followed consistently by all of the departments and agencies of the Government. In this regard it is of importance to note that several efforts were made to repeal this interpretation by specific Act of Congress, but in each instance the bill failed to pass. This contemporaneous interpretation of the 1938 Resolution by the agency charged with its supervision — an interpretation followed by all agencies of the Government — together with acquiescence of the Congress, must be given great weight.
Likewise it is noted that the House Committee on the Revision of Laws has similarly treated the 1938 Resolution. In the 1940 and 1946 recodifications of the United States Code the 1885 Resolution is listed as being repealed by the later Resolution of 1938. Again in the 1952 edition of the Code the 1885 Resolution is not only listed as repealed but its entire text is omitted from the Code. An explanatory notation states that this Resolution was repealed and is now covered by § 86a which is the 1938 Resolution.
As we noted earlier, this case is not disposed of by United States v. Kelly, 342 U. S. 193, and nothing in Kelly lends support to the employees’ argument here. Kelly was a printer employed at the Government Printing Office. The wages of employees in Kelly’s office were fixed by a collective-bargaining agreement pursuant to the Act of June 7, 1924, 43 Stat. 658. This Act, though amended, remained in effect as to the provisions involved here at the time of Kelly’s claim. The contract Kelly sued on was entered into by the Government under this Act. We said the problem was “whether the [1938] Resolution somehow precludes the awarding of the gratuity pay which the agreement [so made] seems to grant.” 342 U. S., at 194. We held that “since the agreement provided for gratuity pay for holidays worked, [Kelly] was entitled to such pay.” The award to Kelly, then, was solely on the basis of the collective-bargaining agreement. Here there is no such agreement. There is nothing on which the employees can rely which affirmatively grants the double pay they claim.
The judgment of the Court of Claims is, therefore,
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Joint Resolution of June 29, 1938, c. 818, 52 Stat. 1246, 5 U. S. C. § 86a:
“. . . [W]henever regular employees of the Federal Government whose compensation is fixed at a rate per day, per hour, or on a piece-work basis are relieved or prevented from working solely because of the occurrence of a holiday such as New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or any other day declared a holiday by Federal statute or Executive order, or any day on which the departments and establishments of the Government are closed by Executive order, they shall receive the same pay for such days as for other days on which an ordinary day’s work is performed.
“Sec. 2. The joint resolution of January 6, 1885 (U. S. C., title 5, sec. 86), and all other laws inconsistent or in conflict with the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed to the extent of such inconsistency or conflict.”
23 Stat. 516 (1885), as amended, 24 Stat. 644 (1887), 5 U. S. C. (1934 ed.) § 86, which provides:
“. . . The employees of the Navy Yard, Government Printing Office, Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and all other per diem employees of the Government on duty at Washington, or elsewhere in the United States shall be allowed the following holidays, to wit: The 1st day of January, the 22d day of February, the day of each year which is celebrated as ‘Memorial’ or ‘Decoration Day’, the 4th day of July, the 25th day of December, and such days as may be designated by the President as days for national thanksgiving, and shall receive the same pay as on other days.”
This double pay resulted from interpretation of the 1885 Resolution by the office of the Comptroller of the Treasury. 13 Comp. Dec. 40. See also, 13 Comp. Gen. 295, 297.
It is true that the Comptroller General’s 1937 letter pointed up the discrimination between per annum and per diem employees on nonwork days. But, even though not specifically adverted to, it would seem that a similar discrimination was also apparent as to work days in that per annum employees would receive no extra pay, while per diem employees would receive not only their regular wage but an equal amount as holiday pay.
Moreover, the Schedule of Wages here provided for 50% additional pay for work required on holidays not included in the regular tour of duty and 125% additional for work in excess of eight hours on such days.
18 Comp. Gen. 10,13; 18 Comp. Gen. 186.
H. J. Res. 303, 76th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. 1386, 77th Cong., 1st Sess.; S. 1930, 77th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. 6222, 77th Cong., 1st Sess.; S. 1679, 79th Cong., 2d Sess.
The policy of allowing gratuity pay for holidays worked in peacetime and of prohibiting it in wartime is reflected in a section of the Federal Employees Pay Act of 1945, 59 Stat. 298, 5 U. S. C. § 922. This section provided for gratuity pay for holidays worked but was not to go into effect until the cessation of hostilities in World War II. By implication then, there was no gratuity pay allowed by statute for holidays worked during wartime.
Kelly also claimed under a Joint Resolution. The Resolution of 1885 provided for “gratuity pay” for holidays for all government per diem employees. A Joint Resolution of 1895 referring specifically to Government Printing Office employees is substantially identical in regard to holiday pay with the 1885 Resolution. The Kelly case was considered on the basis of the 1895 Resolution, but the Court was not required to determine whether Kelly was entitled to any pay under that Resolution.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Involved in these cases are an appeal and two cross-appeals from a decision of the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama holding invalid, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution, the existing and two legislatively proposed plans for the apportionment of seats in the two houses of the Alabama Legislature, and ordering into effect a temporary reapportionment plan comprised of parts of the proposed but judicially disapproved measures.
I.
On August 26, 1961, the original plaintiffs (appellees in No. 23), residents, taxpayers and voters of Jefferson County, Alabama, filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, in their own behalf and on behalf of all similarly situated Alabama voters, challenging the apportionment of the Alabama Legislature. Defendants below (appellants in No. 23), sued in their representative capacities, were various state and political party officials charged with the performance of certain duties in connection with state elections. The complaint alleged a deprivation of rights under the Alabama Constitution and under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and asserted that the District Court had jurisdiction under provisions of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U. S. C. §§ 1983, 1988, as well as under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3).
The complaint stated that the Alabama Legislature was composed of a Senate of 35 members and a House of Representatives of 106 members. It set out relevant portions of the 1901 Alabama Constitution, which prescribe the number of members of the two bodies of the State Legislature and the method of apportioning the seats among the State’s 67 counties, and provide as follows:
Art. IV, Sec. 50. “The legislature shall consist of not more than thirty-five senators, and not more than one hundred and five members of the house of representatives, to be apportioned among the several districts and counties, as prescribed in this Constitution; provided that in addition to the above number of representatives, each new county hereafter created shall be entitled to one representative.”
Art. IX, Sec. 197. “The whole number of senators shall be not less than one-fourth or more than one-third of the whole number of representatives.”
Art. IX, Sec. 198. “The house of representatives shall consist of not more than one hundred and five members, unless new counties shall be created, in which event each new county shall be entitled to one representative. The members of the house of representatives shall be apportioned by the legislature among the several counties of the state, according to the number of inhabitants in them, respectively, as ascertained by the decennial census of the United States, which apportionment, when made, shall not be subject to alteration until the next session of the legislature after the next decennial census of the United States shall have been taken.”
Art. IX, Sec. 199. “It shall be the duty of the legislature at its first session after the taking of the decennial census of the United States in the year nineteen hundred and ten, and after each subsequent decennial census, to fix by law the number of representatives and apportion them among the several counties of the state, according to the number of inhabitants in them, respectively; provided, that each county shall be entitled to at least one representative.”
Art. IX, Sec. 200. “It shall be the duty of the legislature at its first session after taking of the decennial census of the United States in the year nineteen hundred and ten, and after each subsequent decennial census, to fix by law the number of senators, and to divide the state into as many senatorial districts as there are senators, which districts shall be as nearly equal to each other in the number of inhabitants as may be, and each shall be entitled to one senator, and no more; and such districts, when formed, shall not be changed until the next apportioning session of the legislature, after the next decennial census of the United States shall have been taken; provided, that counties created after the next preceding apportioning session of the legislature may be attached to senatorial districts. No county shall be divided between two districts, and no district shall be made up of two or more counties not contiguous to each other.”
Art. XVIII, Sec. 284. “... Representation in the legislature shall be based upon population, and such basis of representation shall not be changed by constitutional amendments.”
The maximum size of the Alabama House was increased from 105 to 106 with the creation of a new county in 1903, pursuant to the constitutional provision which states that, in addition to the prescribed 105 House seats, each county thereafter created shall be entitled to one representative. Article IX, §§ 202 and 203, of the Alabama Constitution established precisely the boundaries of the State’s senatorial and representative districts until the enactment of a new reapportionment plan by the legislature. These 1901 constitutional provisions, specifically describing the composition of the senatorial districts and detailing the number of House seats allocated to each county, were periodically enacted as statutory measures by the Alabama Legislature, as modified only by the creation of an additional county in 1903, and provided the plan of legislative apportionment existing at the time this litigation was commenced.
Plaintiffs below alleged that the last apportionment of the Alabama Legislature was based on the 1900 federal census, despite the requirement of the State Constitution that the legislature be reapportioned decennially. They asserted that, since the population growth in the State from 1900 to 1960 had been uneven, Jefferson and other counties were now victims of serious discrimination with respect to the allocation of legislative representation. As a result of the failure of the legislature to reapportion itself, plaintiffs asserted, they were denied “equal suffrage in free and equal elections... and the equal protection of the laws” in violation of the Alabama Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The complaint asserted that plaintiffs had no other adequate remedy, and that they had exhausted all forms of relief other than that available through the federal courts. They alleged that the Alabama Legislature had established a pattern of prolonged inaction from 1911 to the present which “clearly demonstrates that no reapportionment... shall be effected”; that representation at any future constitutional convention would be established by the legislature, making it unlikely that the membership of any such convention would be fairly representative; and that, while the Alabama Supreme Court had found that the legislature had not complied with the State Constitution in failing to reapportion according to population decennially, that court had nevertheless indicated that it would not interfere with matters of legislative reapportionment.
Plaintiffs requested that a three-judge District Court be convened. With respect to relief, they sought a declaration that the existing constitutional and statutory provisions, establishing the present apportionment of seats in the Alabama Legislature, were unconstitutional under the Alabama and Federal Constitutions, and an injunction against the holding of future elections for legislators until the legislature reapportioned itself in accordance. with the State Constitution. They further requested the issuance of a mandatory injunction, effective until such time as the legislature properly reapportioned, requiring the conducting of the 1962 election for legislators at large over the entire State, and any other relief which “may seem just, equitable and proper.”
A three-judge District Court was convened, and three groups of voters, taxpayers and residents of Jefferson, Mobile, and Etowah Counties were permitted to intervene in the action as intervenor-plaintiffs. Two of the groups are cross-appellants in Nos. 27 and 41. With minor exceptions, all of the intervenors adopted the allegations of and sought the same relief as the original plaintiffs.
On March 29, 1962, just three days after this Court had decided Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction requiring defendants to conduct at large the May 1962 Democratic primary election and the November 1962 general election for members of the Alabama Legislature. The District Court set the motion for hearing in an order stating its tentative views that an injunction was not required before the May 1962 primary election to protect plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, and that the Court should take no action which was not “absolutely essential” for the protection of the asserted constitutional rights before the Alabama Legislature had had a “further reasonable but prompt opportunity to comply with its duty” under the Alabama Constitution.
On April 14, 1962, the District Court, after reiterating the views expressed in its earlier order, reset the case for hearing on July 16, noting that the importance of the case, together with the necessity for effective action within a limited period of time, required an early announcement of its views. 205 F. Supp. 245. Relying on our decision in Baker v. Carr, the Court found jurisdiction, justiciability and standing. It stated that it was taking judicial notice of the facts that there had been population changes in Alabama’s counties since 1901, that the present representation in the State Legislature was not on a population basis, and that the legislature had never reapportioned its membership as required by the Alabama Constitution. Continuing, the Court stated that if the legislature complied with the Alabama constitutional provision requiring legislative representation to be based on population there could be no objection on federal constitutional grounds to such an apportionment. The-Court further indicated that, if the legislature failed to act, or if its actions did not meet constitutional standards, it would be under a “clear duty” to take some action on the matter prior to the November 1962 general election. The District Court stated that its “present thinking” was to follow an approach suggested by MR. Justice Clark in his concurring opinion in Baker v. Carr— awarding seats released by the consolidation or revamping of existing districts to counties suffering “the most egregious discrimination,” thereby releasing the strangle hold on the legislature sufficiently so as to permit the newly elected body to enact a constitutionally valid and permanent reapportionment plan, and allowing eventual dismissal of the case. Subsequently, plaintiffs were permitted to amend their complaint by adding a further prayer for relief, which asked the District Court to reapportion the Alabama Legislature provisionally so that the rural strangle hold would be relaxed enough to permit it to reapportion itself.
On July 12, 1962, an extraordinary session of the Alabama Legislature adopted two reapportionment plans to take effect for the 1966 elections. One was a proposed constitutional amendment, referred to as the “67-Senator Amendment.” It provided for a House of Representatives consisting of 106 members, apportioned by giving one seat to each of Alabama’s 67 counties and distributing the others according to population by the “equal proportions” method. Using this formula, the constitutional amendment specified the number of representatives allotted to each county until a new apportionment could be made on the basis of the 1970 census. The Senate was to be composed of 67 members, one from each county. The legislation provided that the proposed amendment should be submitted to the voters for ratification at the November 1962 general election.
The other reapportionment plan was embodied in a statutory measure adopted by the legislature and signed into law by the Alabama Governor, and was referred to as the “Crawford-Webb Act.” It was enacted as standby legislation to take effect in 1966 if the proposed constitutional amendment should fail of passage by a majority of the State’s voters, or should the federal courts refuse to accept the proposed amendment (though not rejected by the voters) as effective action in compliance with the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. The act provided for a Senate consisting of 35 members, representing 35 senatorial districts established along county lines, and altered only a few of the former districts. In apportioning the 106 seats in the Alabama House of Representatives, the statutory measure gave each county one seat, and apportioned the remaining 39 on a rough population basis, under a formula requiring increasingly more population for a county to be accorded additional seats. The Crawford-Webb Act also provided that it would be effective “until the legislature is reapportioned according to law,” but provided no standards for such a reapportionment. Future apportionments would presumably be based on the existing provisions of the Alabama Constitution which the statute, unlike the proposed constitutional amendment, would not affect.
The evidence adduced at trial before the three-judge panel consisted primarily of figures showing the population of each Alabama county and senatorial district according to the 1960 census, and the number of representatives allocated to each county under each of the three plans at issue in the litigation — the existing apportionment (under the 1901 constitutional provisions and the current statutory measures substantially reenacting the same plan), the proposed 67-Senator constitutional amendment, and the Crawford-Webb Act. Under all three plans, each senatorial district would be represented by only one senator.
On July 21, 1962, the District Court held that the inequality of the existing representation in the Alabama Legislature violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a finding which the Court noted had been “generally conceded” by the parties to the litigation, since population growth and shifts had converted the 1901 scheme, as perpetuated some 60 years later, into an invidiously discriminatory plan completely lacking in rationality. 208 F. Supp. 431. Under the existing provisions, applying i960 census figures, only 25.1% of the State’s total population resided in districts represented by a majority of the members of the Senate, and only 25.7% lived in counties which could elect a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. Population-variance ratios of up to about 41-to-l existed in the Senate, and up to about 16-to-l in the House. Bullock County, with a population of only 13,462, and Henry County, with a population of only 15,286, each were allocated two seats in the Alabama House, whereas Mobile County, with a population of 314,301, was given only three seats, and Jefferson County, with 634,864 people, had only seven representatives. With respect to senatorial apportionment, since the pertinent Alabama constitutional provisions had been consistently construed as prohibiting the giving of more than one Senate seat to any one county, Jefferson County, with over 600,000 people, was given only one senator, as was Lowndes County, with a 1960 population of only 15,417, and Wilcox County, with only 18,739 people.
The Court then considered both the proposed constitutional amendment and the Crawford-Webb Act to ascertain whether the legislature had taken effective action to remedy the unconstitutional aspects of the existing apportionment. In initially summarizing the result which it had reached, the Court stated:
“This Court has reached the conclusion that neither the ‘67-Senator Amendment/ nor the ‘Crawford-Webb Act’ meets the necessary constitutional requirements. We find that each of the legislative acts, when considered as a whole, is so obviously discriminatory, arbitrary and irrational that it becomes unnecessary to pursue a detailed development of each of the relevant factors of the [federal constitutional] test.”
The Court stated that the apportionment of one senator to each county, under the proposed constitutional amendment, would “make the discrimination in the Senate even more invidious than at present.” Under the 67-Senator Amendment, as pointed out by the court below, “[t]he present control of the Senate by members representing 25.1% of the people of Alabama would be reduced to control by members representing 19.4% of the people of the State,” the 34 smallest counties, with a total population of less than that of Jefferson County, would have a majority of the senatorial seats, and senators elected by only about 14% of the State’s population could prevent the submission to the electorate of any future proposals to amend the State Constitution (since a vote of two-fifths of the members of one house can defeat a proposal to amend the Alabama Constitution). Noting that the “only conceivable rationalization” of the senatorial apportionment scheme is that it was based on equal representation of political subdivisions within the State and is thus analogous to the Federal Senate, the District Court rejected the analogy on the ground that Alabama counties are merely involuntary political units of the State created by statute to aid in the administration of state government. In finding the so-called federal analogy irrelevant, the District Court stated:
“The analogy cannot survive the most superficial examination into the history of the requirement of the Federal Constitution and the diametrically opposing history of the requirement of the Alabama Constitution that representation shall be based on population. Nor can it survive a comparison of the different political natures of states and counties.”
The Court also noted that the senatorial apportionment proposal “may not have complied with the State Constitution,” since not only is it explicitly provided that the population basis of legislative representation “shall not be changed by constitutional amendments,” but the Alabama Supreme Court had previously indicated that that requirement could probably be altered only by constitutional convention. The Court concluded, however, that the apportionment of seats in the Alabama House, under the proposed constitutional amendment, was “based upon reason, with a rational regard for known and accepted standards of apportionment.” Under the proposed apportionment of representatives, each of the 67 counties was given one seat and the remaining 39 were allocated on a population basis. About 43% of the State’s total population would live in counties which could elect a majority in that body. And, under the provisions of the 67-Senator Amendment, while the maximum population-variance ratio was increased to about 59-to-l in the Senate, it was significantly reduced to about 4.7-to-l in the House of Representatives. Jefferson County was given 17 House seats, an addition of 10, and Mobile County was allotted eight, an increase of five. The increased representation of the urban counties was achieved primarily by limiting the State’s 55 least populous counties to one House seat each, and the net effect was to take 19 seats away from rural counties and allocate them to the more populous counties. Even so, serious disparities from a population-based standard remained. Montgomery County, with 169,210 people, was given only four seats, while Coosa County, with a population of only 10,726, and Cleburne County, with only 10,911, were each allocated one representative.
Turning next to the provisions of the Crawford-Webb Act, the District Court found that its apportionment of the 106 seats in the Alabama House of Representatives, by allocating one seat to each county and distributing the remaining 39 to the more populous counties in diminishing ratio to their populations, was “totally unacceptable.” Under this plan, about 37% of the State’s total population would reside in counties electing a majority of the members of the Alabama House, with a maximum population-variance ratio of about 5-to-l. Each representative from Jefferson and Mobile Counties would represent over 52,000 persons while representatives from eight rural counties would each represent less than 20,000 people. The Court regarded the senatorial apportionment provided in the Crawford-Webb Act as “a step in the right direction, but an extremely short step,” and but a “slight improvement over the present system of representation.” The net effect of combining a few of the less populous counties into two-county, districts and splitting up several of the larger districts into smaller ones would be merely to increase the minority which would be represented by a majority of the members of the Senate from 25.1% to only 27.6% of the State’s population. The Court pointed out that, under the Crawford-Webb Act, the vote of a person in the senatorial district consisting of Bibb and Perry Counties would be worth 20 times that of a citizen in Jefferson County, and that the vote of a citizen in the six smallest districts would be worth 15 or more times that of a Jefferson County voter. The Court concluded that the Crawford-Webb Act was “totally unacceptable” as a “piece of permanent legislation” which, under the Alabama Constitution, would have remained in effect without alteration at least until after the next decennial census.
Under the detailed requirements of the various constitutional provisions relating to the apportionment of seats in the Alabama Senate and House of Representatives, the Court found, the membership of neither house can be apportioned solely on a population basis, despite the provision in Art. XVIII, § 284, which states that “ [r] epresentation in the legislature shall be based upon population.” In dealing with the conflicting and somewhat paradoxical requirements (under which the number of seats in the House is limited to 106 but each of the 67 counties is required to be given at least one representative, and the size of the Senate is limited to 35 but it is required to have at least one-fourth of the members of the House, although no county can be given more than one senator), the District Court stated its view that “the controlling or dominant provision of the Alabama Constitution on the subject of representation in the Legislature” is the previously referred to language of § 284. The Court stated that the detailed requirements of Art. IX, §§ 197-200,
“make it obvious that in neither the House nor the Senate can representation be based strictly and entirely upon population.... The result may well be that representation according to population to some extent must be required in both Houses if invidious discrimination in the legislative systems as a whole is to be avoided. Indeed,... it is the policy and theme of the Alabama Constitution to require representation according to population in both Houses as nearly as may be, while still complying with more detailed provisions.”
The District Court then directed its concern to the providing of an effective remedy. It indicated that it was adopting and ordering into effect for the November 1962 election a provisional and temporary reapportionment plan composed of the provisions relating to the House of Representatives contained in the 67-Senator Amendment and the provisions of the Crawford-Webb Act relating to the Senate. The Court noted, however, that “[t]he proposed reapportionment of the Senate in the ‘Crawford-Webb Act/ unacceptable as a piece of permanent legislation, may not even break the strangle hold.” Stating that it was retaining jurisdiction and deferring any hearing on plaintiffs’ motion for a permanent injunction “until the Legislature, as provisionally reapportioned..., has an opportunity to provide for a true reapportionment of both Houses of the Alabama Legislature,” the Court emphasized that its “moderate” action was designed to break the strangle hold by the smaller counties on the Alabama Legislature and would not suffice as a permanent reapportionment. On July 25, 1962, the Court entered its decree in accordance with its previously stated determinations, concluding that “plaintiffs... are denied... equal protection... by virtue of the debasement of their votes since the Legislature of the State of Alabama has failed and continues to fail to reapportion itself as required by law.” It enjoined the defendant state officials from holding any future elections under any of the apportionment plans that it had found invalid, and stated that the 1962 election of Alabama legislators could validly be conducted only under the apportionment scheme specified in the Court’s order.
After the District Court’s decision, new primary elections were held pursuant to legislation enacted in 1962 at the same special session as the proposed constitutional amendment and the Crawford-Webb Act, to be effective in the event the Court itself ordered a particular reapportionment plan into immediate effect. The November 1962 general election was likewise conducted on the basis of the District Court’s ordered apportionment of legislative seats, as Mr. Justice Black refused to stay the District Court’s order. Consequently, the present Alabama Legislature is apportioned in accordance with the temporary plan prescribed by the District Court’s decree. All members of both houses of the Alabama Legislature serve four-year terms, so that the next regularly scheduled election of legislators will not be held until 1966. The 1963 regular session of the Alabama Legislature produced no legislation relating to legislative apportionment, and the legislature, which meets biennially, will not hold another regular session until 1965.
No effective political remedy to obtain relief against the alleged malapportionment of the Alabama Legislature appears to have been available. No initiative procedure exists under Alabama law. Amendment of the State Constitution can be achieved only after a proposal is adopted by three-fifths of the members of both houses of the legislature and is approved by a majority of the people, or as a result of a constitutional convention convened after approval by the people of a convention call initiated by a majority of both houses of the Alabama Legislature.
Notices of appeal to this Court from the District Court’s decision were timely filed by defendants below (appellants in No. 23) and by two groups of intervenor-plain-tiffs (cross-appellants in Nos. 27 and 41). Appellants in No. 23 contend that the District Court erred in holding the existing and the two proposed plans for the apportionment of seats in the Alabama Legislature unconstitutional, and that a federal court lacks the power to affirmatively reapportion seats in a state legislature. Cross-appellants in No. 27 assert that the court below erred in failing to compel reapportionment of the Alabama Senate on a population basis as allegedly required by the Alabama Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution. Cross-appellants in No. 41 contend that the District Court should have required and ordered into effect the apportionment of seats in both houses of the Alabama Legislature on a population basis. We noted probable jurisdiction on June 10, 1963. 374 U. S. 802.
II.
Undeniably the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal elections. A consistent line of decisions by this Court in cases involving attempts to deny or restrict the right of suffrage has made this indelibly clear. It has been repeatedly recognized that all qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right to vote, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, and to have their votes counted, United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383. In Mosley the Court stated that it is “as equally unquestionable that the right to have one’s vote counted is as open to protection... as the right to put a ballot in a box.” 238 U. S., at 386. The right to vote can neither be denied outright, Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347, Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268, nor destroyed by alteration of ballots, see United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 315, nor diluted by ballot-box stuffing, Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, United States v. Saylor, 322 U. S. 385. As the Court stated in Classic, “Obviously included within the right to choose, secured by the Constitution, is the right of qualified voters within a state to cast their ballots and have them counted... 313 U. S., at 315. Racially based gerrymandering, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, and the conducting of white primaries, Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536, Nixon v. Condon, 286 U. S. 73, Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461, both of which result in denying to some citizens their right to vote, have been held to be constitutionally impermissible. And history has seen a continuing expansion of the scope of the right of suffrage in this country. The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice'''is of the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government. And the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.
In Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, we held that a claim asserted under the Equal Protection Clause challenging the constitutionality of a State’s apportionment of seats in its legislature, on the ground that the right to vote of certain citizens was effectively impaired since debased and diluted, in effect presented a justiciable controversy subject to adjudication by federal courts. The spate of similar cases filed and decided by lower courts since our decision in Baker amply shows that the problem of state legislative malapportionment is one that is perceived to exist in a large number of the States. In Baker, a suit involving an attack on the apportionment of seats in the Tennessee Legislature, we remanded to the District Court, which had dismissed the action, for consideration on the merits. We intimated no view as to the proper constitutional standards for evaluating the validity of a state legislative apportionment scheme. Nor did we give any consideration to the question of appropriate remedies. Rather, we simply stated:
“Beyond noting that we have no cause at this stage to doubt the District Court will be able to fashion relief if violations of constitutional rights are found, it is improper now to consider what remedy would be most appropriate if appellants prevail at the trial.”
We indicated in Baker, however, that the Equal Protection Clause provides discoverable and manageable standards for use by lower courts in determining the constitutionality of a state legislative apportionment scheme, and we stated:
“Nor need the appellants, in order to succeed in this action, ask the Court to enter upon policy determinations for which judicially manageable standards are lacking. Judicial standards under the Equal Protection Clause are well developed and familiar, and it has been open to courts since the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment to determine, if on the particular facts they must, that a discrimination reflects no policy, but simply arbitrary and capricious action.”
Subsequent to Baker, we remanded several cases to the courts below for reconsideration in light of that decision.
In Gray v. Sanders, 372 U. S. 368, we held that the Georgia county unit system, applicable in statewide primary elections, was unconstitutional since it resulted in a dilution of the weight of the votes of certain Georgia voters merely because of where they resided. After indicating that the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments prohibit a State from overweighting or diluting votes on the basis of race or sex, we stated :
“How then can one person be given twice or ten times the voting power of another person in a statewide election merely because he lives in a rural area or because he lives in the smallest rural county? Once the geographical unit for which a representative is to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election are to have an equal vote — whatever their race, whatever their sex, whatever their occupation, whatever their income, and wherever their home may be in that geographical unit. This is required by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The concept of ‘we the people’ under the Constitution visualizes no preferred class of voters but equality among those who meet the basic qualifications. The idea that every voter is equal to every other voter in his State, when he casts his ballot hrfavor of one of several competing candidates, underlies many of our decisions.”
Continuing, we stated that “there is no indication in the Constitution that homesite or occupation affords a permissible basis for distinguishing between qualified voters within the State.” And, finally, we concluded: “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote.”
We stated in Gray, however, that that case,
“unlike Baker v. Carr,... does not involve a question of the degree to which the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the authority of a State Legislature in designing the geographical districts from which representatives are chosen either for the State Legislature or for the Federal House of Representatives.... Nor does it present the question, inherent in the bicameral form of our Federal Government, whether a State may have one house chosen without regard to population.”
Of course, in these cases we are faced with the problem not presented in Gray — that of determining the basic standards and stating the applicable guidelines for implementing our decision in Baker v. Carr.
In Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1, decided earlier this Term, we held that attacks on the constitutionality of congressional districting plans enacted by state legislatures do not present non justiciable questions and should not be dismissed generally for “want of equity.” We determined that the constitutional test for the validity of congressional districting schemes was one of substantial equality of population among the various districts established by a state legislature for the election of members of the Federal House of Representatives.
In that case we decided that an apportionment of congressional seats which “contracts the value of some votes and expands that of others” is unconstitutional, since “the Federal Constitution intends that when qualified voters elect members of Congress each vote be given as much weight as any other vote....” We concluded that the constitutional prescription for election of members of the House of Representatives “by the People,” construed in its historical context, “means that as nearly as is practicable one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” We further stated:
“It would defeat the principle solemnly embodied in the Great Compromise — equal representation in the House for equal numbers of people — for us to hold that, within the States, legislatures may draw the lines of congressional districts in such a way as to give some voters a greater voice in choosing a Congressman than others.”
We found further, in Wesberry, that “our Constitution’s plain objective” was that “of making equal representation for equal numbers of people the fundamental goal....” We concluded by stating:
“No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined. Our Constitution leaves no room for classification of people in a way that unnecessarily abridges this right.”
Gray and Wesberry are of course not dispositive of or directly controlling on our decision in these cases involving state legislative apportionment controversies. Admittedly, those decisions, in which we held that, in statewide and in congressional elections, one person’s vote must be counted equally with those of all other voters in a State, were based on different constitutional considerations and were addressed to rather distinct problems. But neither are they wholly inapposite. Gray, though not determinative here since involving the weighting of votes in.statewide elections, established the basic principle of equality among voters within a State, and held that voters cannot be classified, constitutionally, on the basis of where they live, at least with respect to voting in statewide elections. And our decision in Wes-berry was of course grounded on that language of the Constitution which prescribes that members of the Federal House of Representatives are to be chosen “by the People,” while attacks on state legislative apportionment schemes, such as that involved in the instant cases, are principally based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, Wesberry clearly established that the fundamental principle of rep-sentative government in this country is one of equal representation for equal numbers of people, without regard to race, sex, economic status, or place of residence within a State. Our problem, then, is to ascertain, in the instant cases, whether there are any constitutionally cognizable principles which would justify departures from the basic standard of equality among voters in the apportionment of seats in state legislatures.
III.
A predominant consideration in determining whether a State’s legislative apportionment scheme constitutes an invidious discrimination violative of rights asserted under the Equal Protection Clause is that the rights allegedly impaired are individual and personal in nature. As stated by the Court in United States v. Bathgate, 246 U. S. 220, 227, “[t]he right to vote is personal While the result of a court decision in a state legislative
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents questions concerning a federal court’s obligation to abstain from the adjudication of federal claims arising out of an ongoing state grand jury investigation. We granted certiorari, 479 U. S. 1063 (1987), to consider whether the District Court, under Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), was required to abstain from adjudicating respondents’ claims for injunctive relief, and, if so, whether the court had the discretion to dismiss, rather than to stay, respondents’ additional claims for damages and attorney’s fees. Because we have concluded that the first issue is now moot, we vacate that portion of the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remand with directions to dismiss all claims for equitable relief. We affirm, however, the remaining portion of the Court of Appeals’ judgment reversing the District Court’s dismissal of respondents’ claims for monetary relief.
Respondents William Monaghan, Theodore DeSantis, and John James are in the construction business together. They jointly own respondents Foundations & Structures, Inc. (F & S), and MJD Construction Company, Inc., New Jersey corporations, and William E. Monaghan Associates, a New Jersey general partnership. On October 4, 1984, petitioner Albert G. Palentchar, a criminal investigator for the State of New Jersey, applied to the Honorable Samuel T. Lenox, Jr., the “assignment judge” of the Superior Court for Mercer County with supervisory authority over the state grand jury, for a warrant to search the Tuckahoe, N. J., premises of F & S for evidence of theft, bribery, records tampering, and other criminal activities that were the subject of an ongoing state grand jury investigation. Judge Lenox found probable cause and issued a warrant authorizing the seizure of documents, including contracts, minutes, site logs, invoices, correspondence, memoranda, deeds, canceled checks, and bank statements. The validity of this warrant has not been contested.
The following morning, Palentchar and eight other New Jersey law enforcement officers, all petitioners here, executed the warrant. The search lasted approximately eight hours. In their federal complaint, respondents allege that, in addition to seizing hundreds of documents, petitioners barricaded the sole exit from the premises, searched all departing vehicles, recorded the serial numbers on F & S machinery, detained in one room all persons on the premises at the time of the search until they produced identification, threatened to tear apart respondents’ homes if the documents were not discovered, and engaged in a number of other unlawful activities. See Complaint in No. 84-5369 (D NJ), pp. 7-9, 10. The execution of the warrant gave rise to the federal litigation now before us.
Respondents’ attorneys arrived while the search was in progress and challenged the adequacy under New Jersey law of the inventory procedure. To resolve the dispute, respondents’ counsel and petitioner Deakins telephoned Judge Lenox, who ordered all seized materials sealed pending his assessment of the procedure. Ten days later, on October 15, 1984, New Jersey’s Deputy Attorney General Julian Wilsey invited respondents’ counsel to examine the documents under seal and to copy whatever documents respondents needed in order to continue the conduct of their business. General Wilsey also informed respondents’ counsel that the State was prepared to return any documents discovered that exceeded the scope of the warrant. In the course of this examination, counsel identified numerous documents that they contended were either outside the scope of the warrant or protected by the attorney-client or attorney-work-product privilege. The State disagreed, and the disputed documents were resealed under the authority of Judge Lenox’s original sealing order.
On December 27, while the documents were still under seal, respondents instituted this civil rights action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Respondents sought equitable relief, including the return of all documents seized, and, as well, compensatory and punitive damages for the alleged violations of their rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and attorney’s fees. Respondents also asserted certain pendent state claims for trespass, conversion, unlawful confinement, and the intentional or reckless infliction of emotional distress. Prior to filing an answer, petitioners moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the existence of an ongoing state grand jury investigation required the federal court to abstain from adjudicating disputes arising out of that investigation. Respondents countered with a motion for a preliminary injunction directing the return of the documents.
While all this was taking place in federal court, Judge Lenox, at the State’s behest, entered an ex parte order directing respondents to show cause why he should not lift the seal and make the documents available to the state officials conducting the grand jury investigation. Three days before the scheduled hearing on that order to show cause, the District Court issued a temporary restraining order staying discovery in the federal action and directing the State not to lift the seal before the District Court disposed of the motions pending before it. Several months later, on August 6, 1985, the District Court granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss on abstention grounds and denied respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction. App. to Pet. for Cert. 5a.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the District Court’s denial of the preliminary injunction but reversed the judgment dismissing the complaint. 798 F. 2d 632 (1986). A divided panel ruled that the abstention doctrine pronounced in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), and its progeny did not require the District Court to abstain from adjudicating respondents’ claims for injunctive relief arising out of the ongoing state grand jury investigation. The panel was unanimous, however, in reversing the District Court’s dismissal of respondents’ claims for money damages and attorney’s fees. Relying on Circuit precedent, the Court of Appeals held that, even when abstaining entirely from the adjudication of equitable claims, a district court was required to stay rather than to dismiss federal claims that were not cognizable in the state forum in which the companion equitable claims were being adjudicated. 798 F. 2d, at 635-636, citing Crane v. Fauver, 762 F. 2d 325, 328-329 (CA3 1985); Williams v. Red Bank Bd. of Ed., 662 F. 2d 1008, 1022-1024 (CA3 1981). The Court of Appeals noted that the availability of a separate state forum in which the monetary claims could be brought did nothing to lessen the District Court’s obligation to retain jurisdiction over the claims properly before it. 798 F. 2d, at 635-636. The court remanded the case for further proceedings.
After the Court of Appeals rendered its judgment, the state grand jury returned an indictment against three of the respondents — Monaghan, DeSantis, and F & S — and against others not parties to the present federal action. None of the seized documents had ever been submitted to the indicting grand jury, and the contested documents were still under seal at the time the indictment was returned. The Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Cumberland County, to which the indictment was assigned for trial, took jurisdiction over respondents’ equitable claims for the return of the seized documents. See Memorandum for Respondents Suggesting that Cause is Moot 3. The Superior Court has since held that certain documents were seized in violation of the attorney-client privilege and has ordered their return. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 22-23. Still pending before that court are motions seeking the return of other documents seized. See id., at 23. In light of these developments, all six respondents represent, through common counsel, that they do not wish to pursue their claims for equitable relief in federal court. Id., at 22-25. They wish to withdraw these claims from their federal complaint and seek injunctive relief exclusively in the state proceedings initiated by the indictment. Respondents also represent that, if the complaint were remanded to the District Court, they would seek a stay of all federal proceedings on the damages claims pending resolution of the state proceedings. Id., at 22, 25; Memorandum for Respondents Suggesting that Cause is Moot 4.
I-H ( — I
Article III of the Constitution limits federal courts to the adjudication of actual, ongoing controversies between litigants. Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395, 401 (1975); SEC v. Medical Committee for Human Rights, 404 U. S. 403, 407 (1972). It is not enough that a controversy existed at the time the complaint was filed, and continued to exist when review was obtained in the Court of Appeals. Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 402 (1975); Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 459, n. 10 (1974). In the case now before us, respondents state that they no longer seek any equitable relief in federal court. Because there no longer is a live controversy between the parties over whether a federal court can hear respondents’ equitable claims, the first question on which certiorari was granted is moot.
Petitioners, however, object that respondents’ promise to amend their complaint is an empty one, because nothing will prevent respondents, particularly those not indicted, from nullifying that amendment by further amendment or from filing a new complaint if they are dissatisfied with the relief obtained in the state criminal proceeding. Petitioners also express concern that respondents will raise only some of their equitable claims in the state proceeding, thus preserving the option of pursuing the remaining claims in federal court. If respondents return to federal court while the grand jury investigation is still in progress, petitioners argue, the District Court would be bound by the decision of the Court of Appeals in this case and would refuse to abstain. To prevail on the abstention question, petitioners would then have to appeal to the very court that already had decided the question against them and ultimately petition successfully again for certiorari. Even then, petitioners suggest, respondents could use the same ploy once more to deprive this Court of jurisdiction. According to petitioners, this potential for manipulation renders the case “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” and should therefore shield it from a conclusion of mootness. See Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U. S. 478, 482 (1982).
Petitioners misconceive the effect respondents’ representations and our reliance thereon will have on the shape of the federal litigation. When a claim is rendered moot while awaiting review by this Court, the judgment below should be vacated with directions to the District Court to dismiss the relevant portion of the complaint. See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36, 39-40 (1950). This disposition strips the decision below of its binding effect. And respondents can be prevented from reviving their claims by the order of dismissal. Because this case was rendered moot in part by respondents’ willingness permanently to withdraw their equitable claims from their federal action, a dismissal with prejudice is indicated. This will prevent the regeneration of the controversy by a reassertion of a right to litigate the equitable claims in federal court. Relying upon the representations of respondents’ counsel at oral argument that all six respondents have no continuing interest in the federal adjudication of their claims for equitable relief, the equitable claims of all respondents should be dismissed with prejudice. Respondents therefore will be barred from reviving in federal court their equitable claims against petitioners arising out of the events surrounding the execution of the search warrant.
Ill
Our conclusion that the issue concerning respondents’ equitable claims is now moot does not prevent our consideration of the propriety of the District Court’s dismissal of respondents’ claims for monetary relief. See University of Texas v. Camenisch, 451 U. S. 390, 393 (1981); Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 495-500 (1969). Respondents continue to press their claims for damages and attorney’s fees. They state, however, that they will seek a stay of federal proceedings on these claims pending resolution of the state proceeding. Tr. of Oral Arg. 25; Memorandum for Respondents Suggesting that Cause is Moot 4.
Petitioners argue that the Younger doctrine — which requires a federal court to abstain where a plaintiff's federal claims could be adjudicated in a pending state judicial proceeding — applies to complaints seeking only monetary relief. Petitioners further argue that it is within the District Court’s discretion to dismiss rather than stay a federal complaint for damages and fees where abstention is required. We need not decide the extent to which the Younger doctrine applies to a federal action seeking only monetary relief, however, because even if the Younger doctrine requires abstention here, the District Court has no discretion to dismiss rather than to stay claims for monetary relief that cannot be redressed in the state proceeding.
In reversing the District Court’s dismissal of the claims for damages and attorney’s fees, the Court of Appeals applied the Third Circuit rule that requires a District Court to stay rather than dismiss claims that are not cognizable in the parallel state proceeding. 798 F. 2d, at 635, citing Crane v. Fauver, 762 F. 2d 325 (1985), and Williams v. Red Bank Bd. of Ed., 662 F. 2d 1008 (1981). The Third Circuit rule is sound. It allows a parallel state proceeding to go forward without interference from its federal sibling, while enforcing the duty of federal courts “to assume jurisdiction where jurisdiction properly exists.” Id., at 1024. This Court repeatedly has stated that the federal courts have a “virtually unflagging obligation” to exercise their jurisdiction except in those extraordinary circumstances “ ‘where the order to the parties to repair to the State court would clearly serve an important countervailing interest.’” Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S. 800, 813, 817 (1976), quoting County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360 U. S. 185, 188-189 (1959); see also Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Construction Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 14-15 (1983).
We are unpersuaded by petitioners’ suggestion that this case presents such extraordinary circumstances. First, petitioners’ speculation that the District Court, if allowed to retain jurisdiction, would “hover” about the state proceeding, ready to lift the stay whenever it concluded that things were proceeding unsatisfactorily, is groundless. Petitioners seem to assume that the District Court would not hold up its end of the comity bargain — an assumption as inappropriate as the converse assumption that the States cannot be trusted to enforce federal rights with adequate diligence. See Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 493-494, n. 35 (1976).
Second, petitioners’ contention that Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89 (1984), prevents the District Court from adjudicating respondents’ claims under state law does not argue for the dismissal of all of respondents’ damages claims, state and federal. Petitioners seem to suggest that the state-law claims predominate in the complaint, and the federal claims are minimal additions not substantial enough to require the District Court to exercise its jurisdiction. Saying nothing about the applicability of Penn hurst to the particular state-law claims alleged in respondents’ complaint, we note that a sizable portion of the relief sought in the federal complaint is intended to compensate respondents for injuries allegedly sustained in violation of federal constitutional rights. There can be no question that respondents have alleged injuries under federal law sufficient to justify the District Court’s retention of jurisdiction. When the federal proceeding recommences in the District Court, petitioners will be free to argue that the state claims should be dismissed under Pennhurst.
Finally, petitioners argue that allowing the District Court to dismiss the complaint will prevent the piecemeal litigation of the dispute between the parties. But the involvement of the federal courts cannot be blamed for the fragmentary nature of the proceedings in this litigation. Because the state criminal proceeding can provide only equitable relief, any action for damages would necessarily be separate. Indeed, the state forum in which petitioners invite respondents to pursue their claims for monetary relief clearly would require the initiation of a separate action. See Brief for Petitioners 32. Piecemeal litigation of the issues involved in this case is thus inevitable.
In sum, none of the circumstances cited by petitioners to justify the District Court’s dismissal of respondents’ claims for damages and attorney’s fees constitutes the kind of extraordinary circumstance that we have held may justify abdication of the “virtually unflagging obligation ... to exercise the jurisdiction given” the federal courts. Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S., at 817.
>
Because respondents’ claims for equitable relief are moot, we vacate the portion of the Court of Appeals’ judgment addressing those claims and remand with instructions to dismiss the claims for equitable relief with prejudice. We affirm the portion of the Court of Appeals’ judgment reversing the District Court’s dismissal of respondents’ claims for monetary relief and attorney’s fees.
It is so ordered.
This fact is not reflected in the record but the parties have informed the Court in their briefs, in their memoranda as to mootness, and at oral argument, that the indictment had been returned. See Brief for Petitioners 18; Brief for Respondents 17; Memorandum for Respondents Suggesting that Cause is Moot 3; Memorandum for Petitioners in Opposition to Suggestion 2; Tr. of Oral Arg. 6-7 and 22.
See Memorandum for Respondents Suggesting that Cause is Moot 3; Brief for Respondents 18; Tr. of Oral Arg. 22, 24-25.
This Court rejected respondents’ suggestion of mootness filed before argument. 482 U. S. 912 (1987). Representations of counsel in response to inquiries at oral argument now have persuaded us that the suggestion is sound as to the first question presented.
The Court’s ability to prevent respondents from renewing their claims after they are dismissed as moot distinguishes this case from one in which a defendant attempts to avoid appellate review by voluntarily ceasing the challenged conduct without losing the ability to reinitiate the conduct once the mooted case is dismissed. In the latter circumstance this Court has ruled that “[m]ere voluntary cessation of allegedly illegal conduct does not moot a case; if it did, the courts would be compelled to leave ‘[t]he defendant . . . free to return to his old ways.’” United States v. Concentrated Phosphate Export Assn., Inc., 393 U. S. 199, 203 (1968), quoting United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 632 (1953). In this case, the “conduct” that petitioners fear will be resumed is the pursuit of the federal litigation for equitable relief. Once that litigation is dismissed with prejudice, it cannot be resumed in this or any subsequent action. To reinitiate the abstention dispute between these parties, respondents would have to allege new equitable claims, presumably arising out of other events. The threat to petitioners, based on the mere “speculative eontingenc[y],” Hall v. Beals, 396 U. S. 45, 49 (1969), that respondents will assert new federal claims for equitable relief against the same New Jersey law enforcement agents cannot be said to be “sufficiently real and immediate to show an existing controversy.” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 496 (1974).
This, of course, is not to say that respondents would be prevented from asserting a right to present claims against these petitioners for equitable relief in federal court should the disputed conduct be repeated. The Court recognized in United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36, 40 (1950), that the vacation and dismissal of the complaint that has become moot “clears the path for future relitigation of the issues between the parties,” should subsequent events rekindle their controversy.
In his concurring opinion in this case, Justice White urges that we reach the question — not considered at any stage below, and not the subject of our grant of certiorari — whether the Younger doctrine applies to cases in which only money damages are sought in the federal forum. Apparently, Justice White also finds it appropriate to conclude that Younger requires abstention in this particular case, although he does not analyze this question separately. Because all respondents have represented that they will seek a stay of their damages claims on remand, we see no reason to reach issues so awkwardly presented for review.
In both Crane v. Fauver, 762 F. 2d, at 329, and Williams v. Red Bank Bd. of Ed., 662 F. 2d, at 1024, n. 16, the Court of Appeals recognized that unless it retained jurisdiction during the pendency of the state proceeding, a plaintiff could be barred permanently from asserting his claims in the federal forum by the running of the applicable statute of limitations.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case arises on an information under §§15 and 16 (a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 52 Stat. 1060, 1068-1069, as amended, 63 Stat. 910, 919, 29 U. S. C. §§ 215, 216 (a), charging the defendant corporation, its division operations manager and two successive branch managers with violations of the minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping provisions of the Act. Thirty-two counts were laid: six for failure under § 6 of the Act to pay minimum wages, twenty for violation of the overtime provisions of § 7, and six for failure to comply with the requirements for record-keeping under § 11. Counts 1-6 charge minimum wage violations in six separate weeks, one per week, but only as to one employee in any one week and only as to three employees in all. Counts 7-26 charge overtime violations in twenty separate weeks, one per week. A total of eleven employees are involved, two violations having been charged as to each of nine employees. Counts 27-32 charge record-keeping violations as to four employees, two violations as to each of two employees being charged. Section 16 of the Act subjects an employer, offending for the first time, to a maximum fine of $10,000 for violation of any provision of § 15, and would, the District Court assumed, authorize a fine of $320,000 upon conviction under this information.
Rejecting a reading of § 15 whereby the prosecutor could treat as a separate offense each breach of the statutory duty owed to a single employee during any single workweek, the District Court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss all but three counts of the information. The court held that it is a course of conduct rather than the separate items in such course that constitutes the punishable offense and ordered consolidation of the separate acts set forth in the information into three counts, charging one violation each of §§ 6, 7 and ll. To review this decision, the Government brought the case here under the Criminal Appeals Act, 34 Stat. 1246, 18 U. S. C. § 3731.
The problem of construction of the criminal provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act is not easy of solution. What Congress has made the allowable unit of prosecution — the only issue before us — cannot be answered merely by a literal reading of the penalizing sections. Generalities about statutory construction help us little. They are not rules of law but merely axioms of experience. Boston Sand Co. v. United States, 278 U. S. 41, 48. They do not solve the special difficulties in construing a particular statute. The variables render every problem of statutory construction unique. See United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U. S. 394, 402. For that reason we may utilize, in construing a statute not unambiguous, all the light relevantly shed upon the words and the clause and the statute that express the purpose of Congress. Very early Mr. Chief Justice Marshall told us, “Where the mind labours to discover the design of the legislature, it seizes every thing from which aid can be derived . . . .” United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386. Particularly is this so when we construe statutes defining conduct which entail stigma and penalties and prison. Not that penal statutes are not subject to the basic consideration that legislation like all other writings should be given, insofar as the language permits, a commonsensical meaning. But when choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite. We should not derive criminal outlawry from some ambiguous implication.
The penal provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act is only part of a scheme available to the Government and to the employee for enforcing the Act. The preventive remedy of an injunction and individual or class actions for restitution and damages in § 16 (b) are not only also available. They are the remedies more frequently invoked and more effective in achieving the purposes of the Act. Of course the various remedies must be read in relation to each other. But we are asked here in addition to infer that an employer’s failure to perform his obligations as to each employee creates a separate criminal offense because the provisions for civil liability in § 16 (b) expressly recognize a right in the individual employee to maintain a separate action against his employer for restitution and damages. The argument cuts both ways. If Congress had wanted to attach criminal consequences to each separate civil liability it could easily have said so, just as it had no difficulty in stating explicitly that the unit for civil liability was what was owing to each employee. Instead of balancing the various generalized axioms of experience in construing legislation, regard for the specific history of the legislative process that culminated in the Act now before us affords more solid ground for giving it appropriate meaning.
When originally introduced in Congress, the bill out of which the Fair Labor Standards Act evolved had two separate penalty provisions, one for underpayments in violation of § 6 or § 7 and one for failure to comply with the record-keeping provisions of § 11. Each provision set the maximum fine at $500 and explicitly defined what constituted a separate offense. As to §§ 6 and 7 the employee was the unit of criminal offense and as to § 11 each week of violation was a separate offense. After the measure wound its way through a long legislative process there resulted consolidation of the two penalty provisions, elimination of the separate offense clauses, and substitution of $10,000 for $500 as the maximum fine. These rather striking changes would in themselves afford justifiable ground for giving the less harsh and therefore more reasonable construction to the offense-creating portions of the legislation. In addition, we have illuminating statements in both houses concerning the separation of offenses. Although the separate offense clause for record-keeping violations was deleted early in the legislative process, the other separate offense clause was attacked in debate precisely because it would authorize the sort of multiplication of offenses by the number of employees that the information before us represents. Indeed, multiplication in this information goes beyond what even the original bills would have authorized. Underpayments of the same employees are split into separate counts of the information, and record-keeping violations during the same week are split to serve as the basis of separate counts.
It would be self-deceptive to claim that only one answer is possible to our problem. But the history of this legislation and the inexplicitness of its language weigh against the Government’s construction of a statute that cannot be said to be decisively clear on its face one way or the other. Because of the history and language of this legislation, the case is not attracted by the respective authority of two cases pressed upon us. In re Snow, 120 U. S. 274, and Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299.
The district judge was therefore correct in rejecting the Government’s construction of the statute. The offense made punishable under the Fair Labor Standards Act is a course of conduct. Such a reading of the statute compendiously treats as one offense all violations that arise from that singleness of thought, purpose or action, which may be deemed a single “impulse,” a conception recognized by this Court in the Blockburger case, supra, at 302, quoting Wharton’s Criminal Law (11th ed.) § 34. Merely to illustrate, without attempting to rule on specific situations: a wholly unjustifiable managerial decision that a certain activity was not work and therefore did not require compensation under F. L. S. A. standards cannot be turned into a multiplicity of offenses by considering each underpayment in a single week or to a single employee as a separate offense.
However, a wholly distinct managerial decision that piece workers should be paid less than the statutory requirement in terms of hourly rates, see United States v. Bosenwasser, 323 U. S. 360, involves a different course of conduct, and so would constitute a different offense. Thus, underpayments based on violations of the statute as to these piece workers could not be compounded into a single offense with unrelated underpayments which resulted from the decision that a certain activity was not work, merely because the two kinds of underpayments occurred in the same workweek or involved the same employee. Whether an aggregate of acts constitute a single course of conduct and therefore a single offense, or more than one, may not be capable of ascertainment merely from the bare allegations of an information and may have to await the trial on the facts.
This information is based on what we find to be an improper theory. But a draftsman of an indictment may charge crime in a variety of forms to avoid fatal variance of the evidence. He may cast the indictment in several counts whether the body of facts upon which the indictment is based gives rise to only one criminal offense or to more than one. To be sure, the defendant may call upon the prosecutor to elect or, by asking for a bill of particulars, to render the various counts more specific. In any event, by an indictment of multiple counts the prosecutor gives the necessary notice and does not do the less so because at the conclusion of the Government’s case the defendant may insist that all the counts are merely variants of a single offense.
By affirming this order without prejudice to amendment of the information, we do not mean to suggest that amendment to increase the number of offenses may be made after trial has begun. But the Government is not precluded from now amending the information either to meet the exigencies of the evidence or to charge as separate offenses separate courses of conduct as to each substantive provision. All we now decide is that the district judge correctly held that a single course of conduct does not constitute more than one offense under § 15 of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Without prejudice to amendment of the information before trial if the evidence to be offered warrants it, the order below is
Affirmed.
The criminal enforcement provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act are §§ 15 and 16. Section 16 provides a maximum fine of $10,000 for “[a]ny person who willfully violates any of the provisions of section 15 . . . .” Section 15 makes it “unlawful for any person ... (2) to violate any of the provisions of section 6 or section 7 ... (5) to violate any of the provisions of section 11 (c) . . . .” Section 6 provides, “Every employer shall pay to each of his employees who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce . . . not less than 75 cents an hour; . . . .” Section 7 provides “. . .no employer shall employ any of his employees who is engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce for a workweek longer than forty hours, unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of the hours above specified at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed.” Section 11 (c) requires the employer to “make, keep, and preserve such records of the persons employed by him and of the wages, hours, and other conditions and practices of employment maintained by him, and shall preserve such records for such periods of time, and shall make such reports therefrom to the Administrator as he shall prescribe by regulation or order . . . .”
102 F. Supp. 179, 186, modified by Order dated March 10, 1952, R. 20.
The Government urges that the Act be construed “to punish each failure to comply with each duty imposed by the Act as to each employee in each workweek and as to each record required to be kept.” Brief for United States, p. 10. However, in none of the first 26 counts, charging minimum wage or overtime underpayments, were similar violations charged as to two employees in the same week, so that it would be sufficient in this case to urge that the violations may be split according to the workweek, rather than also according to the employee. As to the last six counts, charging record-keeping violations, it might have been possible for the Government to urge less than that each record required to be kept is a separate offense. With one minor exception, violations were alleged as to at least two employees in every workweek for which record-keeping violations were charged. The workweek was not the unit of prosecution, since the periods of time in these six counts range from about seven weeks to over six months. But the employee was also not the unit, since although violations as to each employee were made into separate charges, two employees are the subject of two charges apiece.
Whatever differences exist between the minimum necessary to sustain this particular information and the claim made by the Government are immaterial, in view of our disposition of the case.
Appellee does not urge in this case that § 15 prescribes only-one offense even if there are three kinds of violations. Such an argument seems to have been made and was rejected, as to distinct requirements under two different sections of the act there involved, in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, 305, where the penal provision applied to “any person who violates or fails to comply with any of the requirements of this act.”
See §§ 27 (a) and 27 (b) in S. 2475 and H. R. 7200, 75th Cong., 1st Sess.
In §27 (a), the clause read: “Where the employment of an employee in violation of any provision of this Act or of a labor-standard order is unlawful, each employee so employed in violation of such provision shall constitute a separate offense.” In §27 (b), the clause was: “. . .' and each week of such failure to keep the records required under this Act or to furnish same to the Board or any authorized representative of the Board shall constitute a separate offense.”
See 81 Cong. Rec. 7792; 81 Cong. Rec. 9507; 82 Cong. Rec. 1828. Force is added to these statements by the fact that one was made by a member of the House who proposed the amendment which was adopted, by vote on division, specifically to delete the separate offense clause of §27 (a) (then §22 (a)). 82 Cong. Rec. 1828-1839. The bill thus came to the Conference from the House with both separate offense clauses deleted, but from the Senate with only the clause of § 27 (b) deleted. Both versions still provided a maximum fine of $500. The Conference accepted the House version, with neither separate offense clause, but raised the maximum fine to $10,000. See S. 2475, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., §§ 23 (a), 23 (b), as reported from Committee, July 8, 1937; 81 Cong. Rec. 7957; H. R. Rep. No. 2182, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. 5; 83 Cong. Rec. 7450; Conference Report, § 16 (a), 83 Cong. Rec. 9249.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice ALITOdelivered the opinion of the Court.
Darius Clark sent his girlfriend hundreds of miles away to engage in prostitution and agreed to care for her two young children while she was out of town. A day later, teachers discovered red marks on her 3-year-old son, and the boy identified Clark as his abuser. The question in this case is whether the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause prohibited prosecutors from introducing those statements when the child was not available to be cross-examined. Because neither the child nor his teachers had the primary purpose of assisting in Clark's prosecution, the child's statements do not implicate the Confrontation Clause and therefore were admissible at trial.
I
Darius Clark, who went by the nickname "Dee," lived in Cleveland, Ohio, with his girlfriend, T.T., and her two children: L.P., a 3-year-old boy, and A.T., an 18-month-old girl.Clark was also T.T.'s pimp, and he would regularly send her on trips to Washington, D.C., to work as a prostitute. In March 2010, T.T. went on one such trip, and she left the children in Clark's care.
The next day, Clark took L.P. to preschool. In the lunchroom, one of L.P.'s teachers, Ramona Whitley, observed that L.P.'s left eye appeared bloodshot. She asked him " '[w]hat happened,' " and he initially said nothing. 137 Ohio St.3d 346, 347, 2013-Ohio-4731, 999 N.E.2d 592, 594. Eventually, however, he told the teacher that he " 'fell.' " Ibid. When they moved into the brighter lights of a classroom, Whitley noticed " '[r]ed marks, like whips of some sort,' " on L.P.'s face. Ibid.She notified the lead teacher, Debra Jones, who asked L.P., " 'Who did this? What happened to you?' " Id., at 348, 999 N.E.2d, at 595. According to Jones, L.P. " 'seemed kind of bewildered' " and " 'said something like, Dee, Dee.' " Ibid. Jones asked L.P. whether Dee is "big or little," to which L.P. responded that "Dee is big." App. 60, 64. Jones then brought L.P. to her supervisor, who lifted the boy's shirt, revealing more injuries. Whitley called a child abuse hotline to alert authorities about the suspected abuse.
When Clark later arrived at the school, he denied responsibility for the injuries and quickly left with L.P. The next day, a social worker found the children at Clark's mother's house and took them to a hospital, where a physician discovered additional injuries suggesting child abuse. L.P. had a black eye, belt marks on his back and stomach, and bruises all over his body. A.T. had two black eyes, a swollen hand, and a large burn on her cheek, and two pigtails had been ripped out at the roots of her hair.
A grand jury indicted Clark on five counts of felonious assault (four related to A.T. and one related to L.P.), two counts of endangering children (one for each child), and two counts of domestic violence (one for each child). At trial, the State introduced L.P.'s statements to his teachers as evidence of Clark's guilt, but L.P. did not testify. Under Ohio law, children younger than 10 years old are incompetent to testify if they "appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts and transactions respecting which they are examined, or of relating them truly." Ohio Rule Evid. 601(A)(Lexis 2010). After conducting a hearing, the trial court concluded that L.P. was not competent to testify. But under Ohio Rule of Evidence 807, which allows the admission of reliable hearsay by child abuse victims, the court ruled that L.P.'s statements to his teachers bore sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness to be admitted as evidence.
Clark moved to exclude testimony about L.P.'s out-of-court statements under the Confrontation Clause. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that L.P.'s responses were not testimonial statements covered by the Sixth Amendment. The jury found Clark guilty on all counts except for one assault count related to A.T., and it sentenced him to 28 years' imprisonment. Clark appealed his conviction, and a state appellate court reversed on the ground that the introduction of L.P.'s out-of-court statements violated the Confrontation Clause.
In a 4-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed. It held that, under this Court's Confrontation Clause decisions, L.P.'s statements qualified as testimonial because the primary purpose of the teachers' questioning "was not to deal with an existing emergency but rather to gather evidence potentially relevant to a subsequent criminal prosecution." 137 Ohio St.3d, at 350, 999 N.E.2d, at 597. The court noted that Ohio has a "mandatory reporting" law that requires certain professionals, including preschool teachers, to report suspected child abuse to government authorities. See id.,at 349-350, 999 N.E.2d, at 596-597. In the court's view, the teachers acted as agents of the State under the mandatory reporting law and "sought facts concerning past criminal activity to identify the person responsible, eliciting statements that 'are functionally identical to live, in-court testimony, doing precisely what a witness does on direct examination.' " Id.,at 355, 999 N.E.2d, at 600(quoting Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts,557 U.S. 305, 310-311, 129 S.Ct. 2527, 174 L.Ed.2d 314 (2009); some internal quotation marks omitted).
We granted certiorari, 573 U.S. ----, 135 S.Ct. 43, 189 L.Ed.2d 896 (2014), and we now reverse.
II
A
The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause, which is binding on the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, provides: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." In Ohio v. Roberts,448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), we interpreted the Clause to permit the admission of out-of-court statements by an unavailable witness, so long as the statements bore "adequate 'indicia of reliability.' " Such indicia are present, we held, if "the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception" or bears "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness." Ibid.
In Crawford v. Washington,541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), we adopted a different approach. We explained that "witnesses," under the Confrontation Clause, are those "who bear testimony," and we defined "testimony" as "a solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact." Id.,at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354(internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). The Sixth Amendment, we concluded, prohibits the introduction of testimonial statements by a nontestifying witness, unless the witness is "unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination." Id.,at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Applying that definition to the facts in Crawford,we held that statements by a witness during police questioning at the station house were testimonial and thus could not be admitted. But our decision in Crawforddid not offer an exhaustive definition of "testimonial" statements. Instead, Crawfordstated that the label "applies at a minimum to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations." Id.,at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354.
Our more recent cases have labored to flesh out what it means for a statement to be "testimonial." In Davis v. Washingtonand Hammon v. Indiana,547 U.S. 813, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006), which we decided together, we dealt with statements given to law enforcement officers by the victims of domestic abuse. The victim in Davismade statements to a 911 emergency operator during and shortly after her boyfriend's violent attack. In Hammon,the victim, after being isolated from her abusive husband, made statements to police that were memorialized in a " 'battery affidavit.' " Id.,at 820, 126 S.Ct. 2266.
We held that the statements in Hammonwere testimonial, while the statements in Daviswere not. Announcing what has come to be known as the "primary purpose" test, we explained: "Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution." Id.,at 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266. Because the cases involved statements to law enforcement officers, we reserved the question whether similar statements to individuals other than law enforcement officers would raise similar issues under the Confrontation Clause. See id.,at 823, n. 2, 126 S.Ct. 2266.
In Michigan v. Bryant,562 U.S. 344, 131 S.Ct. 1143, 179 L.Ed.2d 93 (2011), we further expounded on the primary purpose test. The inquiry, we emphasized, must consider "all of the relevant circumstances." Id.,at 369, 131 S.Ct. 1143. And we reiterated our view in Davisthat, when "the primary purpose of an interrogation is to respond to an 'ongoing emergency,' its purpose is not to create a record for trial and thus is not within the scope of the [Confrontation] Clause." 562 U.S., at 358, 131 S.Ct. 1143. At the same time, we noted that "there may be othercircumstances, aside from ongoing emergencies, when a statement is not procured with a primary purpose of creating an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony." Ibid."[T]he existence vel nonof an ongoing emergency is not the touchstone of the testimonial inquiry." Id.,at 374, 131 S.Ct. 1143. Instead, "whether an ongoing emergency exists is simply one factor ... that informs the ultimate inquiry regarding the 'primary purpose' of an interrogation." Id.,at 366, 131 S.Ct. 1143.
One additional factor is "the informality of the situation and the interrogation." Id.,at 377, 131 S.Ct. 1143. A "formal station-house interrogation," like the questioning in Crawford,is more likely to provoke testimonial statements, while less formal questioning is less likely to reflect a primary purpose aimed at obtaining testimonial evidence against the accused. Id.,at 366, 377, 131 S.Ct. 1143. And in determining whether a statement is testimonial, "standard rules of hearsay, designed to identify some statements as reliable, will be relevant." Id.,at 358-359, 131 S.Ct. 1143. In the end, the question is whether, in light of all the circumstances, viewed objectively, the "primary purpose" of the conversation was to "creat[e] an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony." Id.,at 358, 131 S.Ct. 1143. Applying these principles in Bryant,we held that the statements made by a dying victim about his assailant were not testimonial because the circumstances objectively indicated that the conversation was primarily aimed at quelling an ongoing emergency, not establishing evidence for the prosecution. Because the relevant statements were made to law enforcement officers, we again declined to decide whether the same analysis applies to statements made to individuals other than the police. See id.,at 357, n. 3, 131 S.Ct. 1143.
Thus, under our precedents, a statement cannot fall within the Confrontation Clause unless its primary purpose was testimonial. "Where no such primary purpose exists, the admissibility of a statement is the concern of state and federal rules of evidence, not the Confrontation Clause." Id.,at 359, 131 S.Ct. 1143. But that does not mean that the Confrontation Clause bars every statement that satisfies the "primary purpose" test. We have recognized that the Confrontation Clause does not prohibit the introduction of out-of-court statements that would have been admissible in a criminal case at the time of the founding. See Giles v. California,554 U.S. 353, 358-359, 128 S.Ct. 2678, 171 L.Ed.2d 488 (2008); Crawford,541 U.S., at 56, n. 6, 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Thus, the primary purpose test is a necessary, but not always sufficient, condition for the exclusion of out-of-court statements under the Confrontation Clause.
B
In this case, we consider statements made to preschool teachers, not the police. We are therefore presented with the question we have repeatedly reserved: whether statements to persons other than law enforcement officers are subject to the Confrontation Clause. Because at least some statements to individuals who are not law enforcement officers could conceivably raise confrontation concerns, we decline to adopt a categorical rule excluding them from the Sixth Amendment's reach. Nevertheless, such statements are much less likely to be testimonial than statements to law enforcement officers. And considering all the relevant circumstances here, L.P.'s statements clearly were not made with the primary purpose of creating evidence for Clark's prosecution. Thus, their introduction at trial did not violate the Confrontation Clause.
L.P.'s statements occurred in the context of an ongoing emergency involving suspected child abuse. When L.P.'s teachers noticed his injuries, they rightly became worried that the 3-year-old was the victim of serious violence. Because the teachers needed to know whether it was safe to release L.P. to his guardian at the end of the day, they needed to determine who might be abusing the child.Thus, the immediate concern was to protect a vulnerable child who needed help. Our holding in Bryantis instructive. As in Bryant,the emergency in this case was ongoing, and the circumstances were not entirely clear. L.P.'s teachers were not sure who had abused him or how best to secure his safety. Nor were they sure whether any other children might be at risk. As a result, their questions and L.P.'s answers were primarily aimed at identifying and ending the threat. Though not as harried, the conversation here was also similar to the 911 call in Davis. The teachers' questions were meant to identify the abuser in order to protect the victim from future attacks. Whether the teachers thought that this would be done by apprehending the abuser or by some other means is irrelevant. And the circumstances in this case were unlike the interrogation in Hammon,where the police knew the identity of the assailant and questioned the victim after shielding her from potential harm.
There is no indication that the primary purpose of the conversation was to gather evidence for Clark's prosecution. On the contrary, it is clear that the first objective was to protect L.P. At no point did the teachers inform L.P. that his answers would be used to arrest or punish his abuser. L.P. never hinted that he intended his statements to be used by the police or prosecutors. And the conversation between L.P. and his teachers was informal and spontaneous. The teachers asked L.P. about his injuries immediately upon discovering them, in the informal setting of a preschool lunchroom and classroom, and they did so precisely as any concerned citizen would talk to a child who might be the victim of abuse. This was nothing like the formalized station-house questioning in Crawfordor the police interrogation and battery affidavit in Hammon.
L.P.'s age fortifies our conclusion that the statements in question were not testimonial. Statements by very young children will rarely, if ever, implicate the Confrontation Clause. Few preschool students understand the details of our criminal justice system. Rather, "[r]esearch on children's understanding of the legal system finds that" young children "have little understanding of prosecution." Brief for American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children as Amicus Curiae7, and n. 5 (collecting sources). And Clark does not dispute those findings. Thus, it is extremely unlikely that a 3-year-old child in L.P.'s position would intend his statements to be a substitute for trial testimony. On the contrary, a young child in these circumstances would simply want the abuse to end, would want to protect other victims, or would have no discernible purpose at all.
As a historical matter, moreover, there is strong evidence that statements made in circumstances similar to those facing L.P. and his teachers were admissible at common law. See Lyon & LaMagna, The History of Children's Hearsay: From Old Bailey to Post-Davis,82 Ind. L.J. 1029, 1030 (2007); see also id.,at 1041-1044(examining child rape cases from 1687 to 1788); J. Langbein, The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial 239 (2003) ("The Old Bailey" court in 18th-century London "tolerated flagrant hearsay in rape prosecutions involving a child victim who was not competent to testify because she was too young to appreciate the significance of her oath"). And when 18th-century courts excluded statements of this sort, see, e.g., King v. Brasier,1 Leach 199, 168 Eng. Rep. 202 (K.B. 1779), they appeared to do so because the child should have been ruled competent to testify, not because the statements were otherwise inadmissible. See Lyon & LaMagna, supra,at 1053-1054. It is thus highly doubtful that statements like L.P.'s ever would have been understood to raise Confrontation Clause concerns. Neither Crawfordnor any of the cases that it has produced has mounted evidence that the adoption of the Confrontation Clause was understood to require the exclusion of evidence that was regularly admitted in criminal cases at the time of the founding. Certainly, the statements in this case are nothing like the notorious use of ex parteexamination in Sir Walter Raleigh's trial for treason, which we have frequently identified as "the principal evil at which the Confrontation Clause was directed." Crawford,541 U.S., at 50, 124 S.Ct. 1354; see also Bryant,562 U.S., at 358, 131 S.Ct. 1143.
Finally, although we decline to adopt a rule that statements to individuals who are not law enforcement officers are categorically outside the Sixth Amendment, the fact that L.P. was speaking to his teachers remains highly relevant. Courts must evaluate challenged statements in context, and part of that context is the questioner's identity. See id.,at 369, 131 S.Ct. 1143. Statements made to someone who is not principally charged with uncovering and prosecuting criminal behavior are significantly less likely to be testimonial than statements given to law enforcement officers. See, e.g., Giles,554 U.S., at 376, 128 S.Ct. 2678. It is common sense that the relationship between a student and his teacher is very different from that between a citizen and the police. We do not ignore that reality. In light of these circumstances, the Sixth Amendment did not prohibit the State from introducing L.P.'s statements at trial.
III
Clark's efforts to avoid this conclusion are all off-base. He emphasizes Ohio's mandatory reporting obligations, in an attempt to equate L.P.'s teachers with the police and their caring questions with official interrogations. But the comparison is inapt. The teachers' pressing concern was to protect L.P. and remove him from harm's way. Like all good teachers, they undoubtedly would have acted with the same purpose whether or not they had a state-law duty to report abuse. And mandatory reporting statutes alone cannot convert a conversation between a concerned teacher and her student into a law enforcement mission aimed primarily at gathering evidence for a prosecution.
It is irrelevant that the teachers' questions and their duty to report the matter had the natural tendency to result in Clark's prosecution. The statements at issue in Davisand Bryantsupported the defendants' convictions, and the police always have an obligation to ask questions to resolve ongoing emergencies. Yet, we held in those cases that the Confrontation Clause did not prohibit introduction of the statements because they were not primarily intended to be testimonial. Thus, Clark is also wrong to suggest that admitting L.P.'s statements would be fundamentally unfair given that Ohio law does not allow incompetent children to testify. In any Confrontation Clause case, the individual who provided the out-of-court statement is not available as an in-court witness, but the testimony is admissible under an exception to the hearsay rules and is probative of the defendant's guilt. The fact that the witness is unavailable because of a different rule of evidence does not change our analysis.
Finally, Clark asks us to shift our focus from the context of L.P.'s conversation with his teachers to the jury's perception of those statements. Because, in his view, the "jury treated L.P.'s accusation as the functional equivalent of testimony," Clark argues that we must prohibit its introduction. Brief for Respondent 42. Our Confrontation Clause decisions, however, do not determine whether a statement is testimonial by examining whether a jury would view the statement as the equivalent of in-court testimony. The logic of this argument, moreover, would lead to the conclusion that virtually all out-of-court statements offered by the prosecution are testimonial. The prosecution is unlikely to offer out-of-court statements unless they tend to support the defendant's guilt, and all such statements could be viewed as a substitute for in-court testimony. We have never suggested, however, that the Confrontation Clause bars the introduction of all out-of-court statements that support the prosecution's case. Instead, we ask whether a statement was given with the "primary purpose of creating an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony." Bryant, supra,at 358, 131 S.Ct. 1143. Here, the answer is clear: L.P.'s statements to his teachers were not testimonial.
IV
We reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice SCALIA, with whom Justice GINSBURGjoins, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court's holding, and with its refusal to decide two questions quite unnecessary to that holding: what effect Ohio's mandatory-reporting law has in transforming a private party into a state actor for Confrontation Clause purposes, and whether a more permissive Confrontation Clause test-one less likely to hold the statements testimonial-should apply to interrogations by private actors. The statements here would not be testimonial under the usual test applicable to informal police interrogation.
L.P.'s primary purpose here was certainly not to invoke the coercive machinery of the State against Clark. His age refutes the notion that he is capable of forming such a purpose. At common law, young children were generally considered incompetent to take oaths, and were therefore unavailable as witnesses unless the court determined the individual child to be competent. Lyon & LaMagna, The History of Children's Hearsay: From Old Bailey to Post-Davis,82 Ind. L.J. 1029, 1030-1031 (2007). The inconsistency of L.P.'s answers-making him incompetent to testify here-is hardly unusual for a child of his age. And the circumstances of L.P.'s statements objectively indicate that even if he could, as an abstract matter, form such a purpose, he did not. Nor did the teachers have the primary purpose of establishing facts for later prosecution. Instead, they sought to ensure that they did not deliver an abused child back into imminent harm. Nor did the conversation have the requisite solemnity necessary for testimonial statements. A 3-year-old was asked questions by his teachers at school. That is far from the surroundings adequate to impress upon a declarant the importance of what he is testifying to.
That is all that is necessary to decide the case, and all that today's judgment holds.
I write separately, however, to protest the Court's shoveling of fresh dirt upon the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation so recently rescued from the grave in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). For several decades before that case, we had been allowing hearsay statements to be admitted against a criminal defendant if they bore " 'indicia of reliability.' " Ohio v. Roberts,448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980). Prosecutors, past and present, love that flabby test. Crawfordsought to bring our application of the Confrontation Clause back to its original meaning, which was to exclude unconfronted statements made by witnesses-i.e.,statements that were testimonial. 541 U.S., at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354. We defined testimony as a " 'solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact,' " ibid.-in the context of the Confrontation Clause, a fact "potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution," Davis v. Washington,547 U.S. 813, 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006).
Crawfordremains the law. But when else has the categorical overruling, the thorough repudiation, of an earlier line of cases been described as nothing more than "adopt[ing] a different approach," ante, at 2179 -as though Crawfordis only a matter of twiddle-dum twiddle-dee preference, and the old, pre-Crawford"approach" remains available? The author unabashedly displays his hostility to Crawfordand its progeny, perhaps aggravated by inability to muster the votes to overrule them. Crawford"does not rank on the [author of the opinion's] top-ten list of favorite precedents-and ... the [author] could not restrain [himself] from saying (and saying and saying) so." Harris v. Quinn,573 U.S. ----, ----, 134 S.Ct. 2618, 2652-2653, 189 L.Ed.2d 620 (2014)(KAGAN, J., dissenting).
But snide detractions do no harm; they are just indications of motive. Dicta on legal points, however, can do harm, because though they are not binding they can mislead. Take, for example, the opinion's statement that the primary-purpose test is merely oneof several heretofore unmentioned conditions ("necessary, but not always sufficient") that must be satisfied before the Clause's protections apply. Ante, at 2180 - 2181. That is absolutely false, and has no support in our opinions. The Confrontation Clause categorically entitles a defendant to be confronted with the witnesses against him; and the primary-purpose test sorts out, among the many people who interact with the police informally, who is acting as a witness and who is not. Those who fall into the former category bear testimony, and are therefore acting as "witnesses," subject to the right of confrontation. There are no other mysterious requirements that the Court declines to name.
The opinion asserts that future defendants, and future Confrontation Clause majorities, must provide "evidence that the adoption of the Confrontation Clause was understood to require the exclusion of evidence that was regularly admitted in criminal cases at the time of the founding."Ante,at 2182. This dictum gets the burden precisely backwards-which is of course precisely the idea. Defendants may invoke their Confrontation Clause rights once they have established that the state seeks to introduce testimonial evidence against them in a criminal case without unavailability of the witness and a previous opportunity to cross-examine. The burden is upon the prosecutor who seeks to introduce evidence overthis bar to prove a long-established practice of introducing specifickinds of evidence, such as dying declarations, see Crawford, supra,at 56, n. 6, 124 S.Ct. 1354, for which cross-examination was not typically necessary. A suspicious mind (or even one that is merely not naïve) might regard this distortion as the first step in an attempt to smuggle longstanding hearsay exceptions back into the Confrontation Clause-in other words, an attempt to return to Ohio v. Roberts.
But the good news is that there are evidently not the votes to return to that halcyon era for prosecutors; and that dicta, even calculated dicta, are nothing but dicta. They are enough, however, combined with the peculiar phenomenon of a Supreme Court opinion's aggressive hostility to precedent that it purports to be applying, to prevent my joining the writing for the Court. I concur only in the judgment.
Justice THOMAS, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court that Ohio mandatory reporters are not agents of law enforcement, that statements made to private persons or by very young children will rarely implicate the Confrontation Clause, and that the admission of the statements at issue here did not implicate that constitutional provision. I nonetheless cannot join the majority's analysis. In the decade since we first sought to return to the original meaning of the Confrontation Clause, see Crawford v. Washington,541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), we have carefully reserved consideration of that Clause's application to statements made to private persons for a case in which it was squarely presented. See, e.g.,Michigan v. Bryant,562 U.S. 344, 357, n. 3, 131 S.Ct. 1143, 179 L.Ed.2d 93 (2011).
This is that case; yet the majority does not offer clear guidance on the subject, declaring only that "the primary purpose test is a necessary, but not always sufficient, condition" for a statement to fall within the scope of the Confrontation Clause. Ante,at 2180 - 2181. The primary purpose test, however, is just as much "an exercise in fiction ... disconnected from history" for statements made to private persons as it is for statements made to agents of law enforcement, if not more so. See Bryant, supra,at 379, 131 S.Ct. 1143(THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted). I would not apply it here. Nor would I leave the resolution of this important question in doubt.
Instead, I would use the same test for statements to private persons that I have employed for statements to agents of law enforcement, assessing whether those statements bear sufficient indicia of solemnity to qualify as testimonial. See Crawford, supra, at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354; Davis v. Washington,547 U.S. 813, 836-837, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006)(THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). This test is grounded in the history of the common-law right to confrontation, which "developed to target particular practices that occurred under the English bail and committal statutes passed during the reign of Queen Mary, namely, the civil-law mode of criminal procedure, and particularly its use of ex parteexaminations as evidence against the accused." Id.,at 835, 126 S.Ct. 2266(internal quotation marks omitted). Reading the Confrontation Clause in light of this history, we have interpreted the accused's right to confront "the witnesses against him," U.S. Const., Amdt. 6, as the right to confront those who "bear testimony" against him, Crawford,541 U.S., at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354(relying on the ordinary meaning of "witness"). And because "[t]estimony ... is ... a solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact," ibid.(internal quotation marks and brackets omitted), an analysis of statements under the Clause must turn in part on their solemnity, Davis, supra,at 836, 126 S.Ct. 2266(opinion of THOMAS, J.).
I have identified several categories of extrajudicial statements that bear sufficient indicia of solemnity to fall within the original meaning of testimony. Statements "contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions" easily qualify. White v. Illinois,502 U.S. 346, 365, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992)(THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). And statements not contained in such materials may still qualify if they were obtained in "a formalized dialogue"; after the issuance of the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona,384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); while in police custody; or in an attempt to evade confrontation. Davis, supra,at 840, 126 S.Ct. 2266(opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also Bryant,562 U.S., at 379, 131 S.Ct. 1143(same) (summarizing and applying test). That several of these factors seem inherently inapplicable to statements made to private persons does not mean that the test is unsuitable for analyzing such statements. All it means is that statements made to private persons rarely resemble the historical abuses that the common-law right to confrontation developed to address, and it is those practices that the test is designed to identify.
Here, L.P.'s statements do not bear sufficient indicia of solemnity to qualify as testimonial. They were neither contained in formalized testimonial materials nor obtained as the result of a formalized dialogue initiated by police. Instead, they were elicited during questioning by L.P.'s teachers at his preschool. Nor is there any indication that L.P.'s statements were offered at trial to evade confrontation. To the contrary, the record suggests that the prosecution would have produced L.P. to testify had he been deemed competent to do so. His statements bear no "resemblance to the historical practices that the Confrontation Clause aimed to eliminate." Ibid.The admission of L.P.'s extrajudicial statements thus does not implicate the Confrontation Clause.
I respectfully concur in the judgment.
Like the Ohio courts, we identify Clark's victims and their mother by their initials.
In fact, the teachers and a social worker who had come to the school werereluctant to release L.P. into Clark's care after the boy identified Clark as his abuser. But after a brief "stare-down" with the social worker, Clark bolted out the door with L.P., and social services were not able to locate the children until the next day. App. 92-102, 150-151.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This case originated as a challenge, under the Privileges and Immunities Clause, U. S. Const., Art. IV, § 2, cl. 1, and under the Fourteenth Amendment, to New Mexico’s statutes requiring licenses to hunt game in that State. A three-judge United States District Court upheld the State’s statutory provisions insofar as they imposed higher license fees for nonresidents than for residents, but the court also ruled that the statutes governing the allocation of licenses to hunt, certain rare species of game were unconstitutional. Plaintiff-appellant Terk, a Texas resident, appeals from that portion of the District Court’s judgment that upheld the New Mexico fee discrimination. The defendant-appellees, who are the Director of the State’s Department of Game and Fish and the members of the State Game Commission, did not seek review of that portion of the judgment that held the allocation of licenses to be unconstitutional.
The issue as to the fee discrimination between residents and nonresidents is controlled by this Court’s recent decision in Baldwin v. Montana Fish & Game Comm’n, ante, p. 371. On appellant Terk’s appeal, therefore, the judgment of the United States District Court is affirmed. We express no view, however, on the allocation issue as to which no review was sought.
Affirmed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented by this case is whether the Louisiana Supreme Court, in sustaining a judgment for damages in a public official’s defamation action, correctly interpreted and applied the rule of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964), that the plaintiff in such an action must prove that the defamatory publication “was made with ‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” 376 U. S., at 279-280.
On June 27, 1962, petitioner St. Amant, a candidate for public office, made a televised speech in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the course of this speech, St. Amant read a series of questions which he had put to J. D. Albin, a member of a Teamsters Union local, and Albin’s: answers to those questions. The exchange concerned the allegedly nefarious activities of E. G. Partin, the president of the local, and the alleged relationship between Partin and St. Amant’s political opponent. One of Albin’s answers concerned his efforts to prevent Partin from secreting union records; in this answer Albin referred to Herman A. Thompson, an East Baton Rouge Parish deputy sheriff and respondent here:
“Now, we knew that this safe was gonna be moved that night, but imagine our predicament, knowing of Ed’s connections with the Sheriff’s office through Herman Thompson, who made recent visits to the Hall to see Ed. We also knew of money that had passed hands between Ed and Herman Thompson . . . from Ed to Herman. We also knew of his connections with State Trooper Lieutenant Joe Green. We knew we couldn’t get any help from there and we didn’t know how far that he was involved in the Sheriff’s office or the State Police office through that, and it was out of the jurisdiction of the City Police.”
Thompson promptly brought suit for defamation, claiming that the publication had “impute [d] . . . gross misconduct” and “infer[red] conduct of the most nefarious nature.” The case was tried prior to the decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra. The trial judge ruled in Thompson’s favor and awarded $5,000 in damages. Thereafter, in the course of entertaining and denying a motion for a new trial, the Court considered the ruling in New York Times, finding that rule no barrier to the judgment already entered. The Louisiana Court of Appeal reversed because the record failed to show that St. Amant had acted with actual malice, as required by New York Times. 184 So. 2d 314 (1966). The Supreme Court of Louisiana reversed the intermediate appellate court. 250 La. 405, 196 So. 2d 255 (1967). In its view, there was sufficient evidence that St. Amant recklessly disregarded whether the statements about Thompson were true or false. We granted a writ of certiorari. 389 U. S. 1033 (1968).
For purposes of this case we accept the determinations of the Louisiana courts that the material published by-St. Amant charged Thompson with criminal conduct, that the charge was false, and that Thompson was a public official and so had the burden of proving that the false statements about Thompson were made with actual malice as defined in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and later cases. We cannot, however, agree with either the Supreme Court of Louisiana or the trial court that Thompson sustained this burden.
Purporting to apply the New York Times malice standard, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that St. Amant had broadcast false information about Thompson recklessly, though not knowingly. Several reasons were given for this conclusion. St. Amant had no personal knowledge of Thompson’s activities; he relied solely on Albin’s affidavit although the record was silent as to Albin’s reputation for veracity; he failed to verify the information with those in the union office who might have known the facts; he gave no consideration to whether or not the statements defamed Thompson and went ahead heedless of the consequences; and he mistakenly believed he had no responsibility- for the broadcast because he was merely quoting Albin’s words.
These considerations fall short of proving St. Amant’s reckless disregard for the accuracy of his statements about Thompson. “Reckless disregard,” it is true, cannot be fully encompassed in one infallible definition. Inevitably its outer limits will be marked out through case-by-case adjudication, as is true with so many legal standards for judging concrete cases, whether the standard is provided by the Constitution, statutes, or case law. Our cases, however, have furnished meaningful guidance for the further definition of a reckless publication. In New York Times, supra, the plaintiff did not satisfy his burden because the record failed to show that the publisher was aware of the likelihood that he was circulating false information. In Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64 (1964), also decided before the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court in this case, the opinion emphasized the necessity for a showing that a false publication was made with a “high degree of awareness of . .. probable falsity.” 379 U. S., at 74. Mb. Justice Hahlan’s opinion in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U. S. 130, 153 (1967), stated that evidence of either deliberate falsification or reckless publication “despite the publisher’s awareness of probable falsity” was essential to recovery by public officials in defamation actions. These cases are clear that reckless conduct is not measured by whether a reasonably prudent man would have published, or would have investigated before publishing. There must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication. Publishing with such doubts shows reckless disregard for truth or falsity and demonstrates actual malice.
It may be said that such a test puts a premium on ignorance, encourages the irresponsible publisher not to inquire, and permits the issue to be determined by the defendant’s testimony that he published the statement in good faith and unaware of its probable falsity. Con-cededly the reckless disregard standard may permit recovery in fewer situations than would a rule that publishers must satisfy the standard of the reasonable man or the prudent publisher. But New York Times and succeeding cases have emphasized that the stake of the people in public business and the conduct of public officials is so great that neither the defense of truth nor the standard of ordinary care would protect against self-censorship and thus adequately implement First Amendment policies. Neither lies nor false communications serve the ends of the First Amendment, and no one suggests their desirability or further proliferation. But to insure the ascertainment and publication of the truth about public affairs, it is essential that the First Amendment protect some erroneous publications as well as true ones. We adhere to this view and to the line which our cases have drawn between false communications which are protected and those which are not.
The defendant in a defamation action brought by a public official cannot, however, automatically insure a favorable verdict by testifying that he published with a belief that the statements were true. The finder of fact must determine whether the publication was indeed made in good faith. Professions of good faith will be unlikely to prove persuasive, for example, where a story is fabricated by the defendant, is the product of his imagination, or is based wholly on an unverified anonymous telephone call. Nor will they be likely to prevail when the publisher’s allegations are so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation. Likewise, recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.
By no proper test of reckless disregard was St. Amant’s broadcast a reckless publication about a public officer. Nothing referred to by the Louisiana courts indicates an awareness by St. Amant of the probable falsity of Albin’s statement about Thompson. Failure to investigate does not in itself establish bad faith. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, supra, at 287-288. St. Amant’s mistake about his probable legal liability does not evidence a doubtful mind on his part. That he failed to realize the import of what he broadcast — and was thus “heedless” of the consequences for Thompson — is similarly colorless. Closer to the mark are considerations of Albin’s reliability. However, the most the state court could say was that there was no evidence in the record of Albin’s reputation for veracity, and this fact merely underlines the failure of Thompson’s evidence to demonstrate a low community assessment of Albin’s trustworthiness or unsatisfactory experience with him by St. Amant.
Other facts in this record support our view. St. Amant made his broadcast in June 1962. He had known Albin since October 1961, when he first met with members of the dissident Teamsters faction. St. Amant testified that he had verified other aspects of Albin’s information and that he had affidavits from others. Moreover Albin swore to his answers, first in writing and later in the presence of newsmen. According to Albin, he was prepared to substantiate his charges. St. Amant knew that Albin was engaged in an internal struggle in the union; Albin seemed to St. Amant to be placing himself in personal danger by publicly airing the details of the dispute.
Because the state court misunderstood and misapplied the actual malice standard which must be observed in a public official’s defamation action, the judgment is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas concur in the judgment of the Court for the reasons set out in their concurring opinions in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 293 (1964), and Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64, 79, 80 (1964).
St. Amant had preceded this question and answer with other answers by Albin asserting that Partin, on learning that a union member had written to the Secretary of Labor charging that Partin had been stealing union funds, had become “pretty riled up” and had decided to “get rid of the safe” containing the union records.
The Louisiana Supreme Court concluded, after considering state law, that a deputy sheriff has “substantial responsibility for or control over the conduct of governmental affairs,” the test established by Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, 85 (1966), “at least where law enforcement and police functions are concerned.” 250 La., at 422, 196 So. 2d, at 261.
See, e. g., Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U. S. 130, 169-170 (Warren, C. J., concurring in the result), and 172 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (1967).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
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