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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.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this action, we must decide whether a mother, the custodian of a child pursuant to a court order, may invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to resist an order of the juvenile court to produce the child. We hold that she may not.
I
Petitioner Maurice M. is an abused child. When he was three months old, he was hospitalized with a fractured left femur, and examination revealed several partially healed bone fractures and other indications of severe physical abuse. In the hospital, respondent Bouknight, Maurice’s mother, was observed shaking Maurice, dropping him in his crib despite his spica cast, and otherwise handling him in a manner inconsistent with his recovery and continued health. Hospital personnel notified the Baltimore City Department of Social Services (BCDSS), petitioner in No. 88-1182, of suspected child abuse. In February 1987, BCDSS secured a court order removing Maurice from Bouknight’s control and placing him in shelter care. Several months later, the shelter care order was inexplicably modified to return Maurice to Bouknight’s custody temporarily. Following a hearing held shortly thereafter, the juvenile court declared Maurice to be a “child in need of assistance,” thus asserting jurisdiction over Maurice and placing him under BCDSS’ continuing oversight. BCDSS agreed that Bouknight could continue as custodian of the child, but only pursuant to extensive conditions set forth in a court-approved protective supervision order. The order required Bouknight to “cooperate with BCDSS,” “continue in therapy,” participate in parental aid and training programs, and “refrain from physically punishing [Maurice].” App. to Pet. for Cert. 86a. The order’s terms were “all subject to the further Order of the Court.” Id., at 87a. Bouk-night’s attorney signed the order, and Bouknight in a separate form set forth her agreement to each term.
Eight months later, fearing for Maurice’s safety, BCDSS returned to juvenile court. BCDSS caseworkers related that Bouknight would not cooperate with them and had in nearly every respect violated the terms of the protective order. BCDSS stated that Maurice’s father had recently died in a shooting incident and that Bouknight, in light of the results of a psychological examination and her history of drug use, could not provide adequate care for the child. App. 33-34. On April 20, 1988, the court granted BCDSS’ petition to remove Maurice from Bouknight’s control for placement in foster care. BCDSS officials also petitioned for judicial relief from Bouknight’s failure to produce Maurice or reveal where he could be found. Id., at 36-39. The petition recounted that on two recent visits by BCDSS officials to Bouknight’s home, she had refused to reveal the location of the child or had indicated that the child was with an aunt whom she would not identify. The petition further asserted that inquiries of Bouknight’s known relatives had revealed that none of them had recently seen Maurice and that BCDSS had prompted the police to issue a missing persons report and referred the case for investigation by the police homicide division. Also on April 20, the juvenile court, upon a hearing on the petition, cited Bouknight for violating the protective custody order and for failing to appear at the hearing. Bouknight had indicated to her attorney that she would appear with the child, but also expressed fear that if she appeared the State would “‘snatch the child.’” Id., at 42, 54. The court issued an order to show cause why Bouknight should not be held in civil contempt for failure to produce the child. Expressing concern that Maurice was endangered or perhaps dead, the court issued a bench warrant for Bouk-night’s appearance. Id., at 51-57.
Maurice was not produced at subsequent hearings. At a hearing one week later, Bouknight claimed that Maurice was with a relative in Dallas. Investigation revealed that the relative had not seen Maurice. The next day, following another hearing at which Bouknight again declined to produce Maurice, the juvenile court found Bouknight in contempt for failure to produce the child as ordered. There was and has been no indication that she was unable to comply with the order. The court directed that Bouknight be imprisoned until she “purge[d] herself of contempt by either producing [Maurice] before the court or revealing to the court his exact whereabouts.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 82a.
The juvenile court rejected Bouknight’s subsequent claim that the contempt order violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against self-incrimination. The court stated that the production of Maurice would purge the contempt and that “[t]he contempt is issued not because she refuse[d] to testify in any proceeding . . . [but] because she has failed to abide by the Order of this Court, mainly [for] the production of Maurice M.” App. 150. While that decision was being appealed, Bouknight was convicted of theft and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment in separate proceedings. The Court of Appeals of Maryland vacated the juvenile court’s judgment upholding the contempt order. In re Maurice M., 314 Md. 391, 550 A. 2d 1135 (1988). The Court of Appeals found that the contempt order unconstitutionally compelled Bouknight to admit through the act of production “a measure of continuing control and dominion over Maurice’s person” in circumstances in which “Bouknight has a reasonable apprehension that she will be prosecuted.” Id., at 403-404, 550 A. 2d, at 1141. Chief Justice Rehnquist granted BCDSS’ application for a stay of the judgment and mandate of the Maryland Court of Appeals, pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari. 488 U. S. 1301 (1988) (in chambers). We granted certiorari, 490 U. S. 1003 (1989), and we now reverse.
I — I I — I
The Fifth Amendment provides that “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The Fifth Amendment’s protection “applies only when the accused is compelled to make a testimonial communication that is incriminating.” Fisher v. United States, 425 U. S. 391, 408 (1976); see Doe v. United States, 487 U. S. 201, 207, 209-210, n. 8 (1988) (Doe II); Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 761 (1966) (“[T]he privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature”). The juvenile court concluded that Bouknight could comply with the order through the unadorned act of producing the child, and we thus address that aspect of the order. When the government demands that an item be produced, “the only thing compelled is the act of producing the [item].” Fisher, supra, at 410, n. 11; see United States v. Doe, 465 U. S. 605, 612 (1984) (Doe I). The Fifth Amendment’s protection may nonetheless be implicated because the act of complying with the government’s demand testifies to the existence, possession, or authenticity of the things produced. See Doe II, supra, at 209; Doe I, supra, at 612-614, and n. 13; Fisher, supra, at 410-413. But a person may not claim the Amendment’s protections based upon the incrimination that may result from the contents or nature of the thing demanded. Doe I, 465 U. S., at 612, and n. 10; id., at 618 (O’Connor, J., concurring); Fisher, supra, at 408-410. Bouknight therefore cannot claim the privilege based upon anything that examination of Maurice might reveal, nor can she assert the privilege upon the theory that compliance would assert that the child produced is in fact Maurice (a fact the State could readily establish, rendering any testimony regarding existence or authenticity insufficiently incriminating, see Fisher, supra, at 411). Rather, Bouknight claims the benefit of the privilege because the act of production would amount to testimony regarding her control over, and possession of, Maurice. Although the State could readily introduce evidence of Bouknight’s continuing control over the child — e. g., the custody order, testimony of relatives, and Bouknight’s own statements to Maryland officials before invoking the privilege — her implicit communication of control over Maurice at the moment of production might aid the State in prosecuting Bouknight.
The possibility that a production order will compel testimonial assertions that may prove incriminating does not, in all contexts, justify invoking the privilege to resist production. See infra, at 556-558. Even assuming that this limited testimonial assertion is sufficiently incriminating and “sufficiently testimonial for purposes of the privilege,” Fisher, supra, at 411, Bouknight may not invoke the privilege to resist the production order because she has assumed custodial duties related to production and because production is required as part of a noncriminal regulatory regime.
The Court has on several occasions recognized that the Fifth Amendment privilege may not be invoked to resist compliance with a regulatory regime constructed to effect the State’s public purposes unrelated to the enforcement of its criminal laws. In Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1 (1948), the Court considered an application of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 and a regulation issued thereunder which required licensed businesses to maintain records and make them available for inspection by administrators. The Court indicated that no Fifth Amendment protection attached to production of the “required records,” which the “‘defendant was required to keep, not for his private uses, but for the benefit of the public, and for public inspection.’” Id., at 17-18 (quoting Wilson v. United States, 221 U. S. 361, 381 (1911)). The Court’s discussion of the constitutional implications of the scheme focused upon the relation between the Government’s regulatory objectives and the Government’s interest in gaining access to the records in Shapiro’s possession:
“It may be assumed at the outset that there are limits which the Government cannot constitutionally exceed in requiring the keeping of records which may be inspected by an administrative agency and may be used in prosecuting statutory violations committed by the record-keeper himself. But no serious misgiving that those bounds have been overstepped would appear to be evoked when there is a sufficient relation between the activity sought to be regulated and the public concern so that the Government can constitutionally regulate or forbid the basic activity concerned, and can constitutionally require the keeping of particular records, subject to inspection by the Administrator.” 335 U. S., at 32.
See also In re Harris, 221 U. S. 274, 279 (1911) (Holmes, J.) (regarding a court order that a bankrupt produce account books, “[t]he question is not of testimony but of surrender— not of compelling the bankrupt to be a witness against himself in a criminal case, past or future, but of compelling him to yield possession of property that he no longer is entitled to keep”). The Court has since refined those limits to the government’s authority to gain access to items or information vested with this public character. The Court has noted that “the requirements at issue in Sha-piro were imposed in ‘an essentially non-criminal and regulatory area of inquiry,”’ and that Shapiro’s reach is limited where requirements “are directed to a ‘selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.’” Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39, 57 (1968) (quoting Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U. S. 70, 79 (1965)); see Grosso v. United States, 390 U. S. 62, 68 (1968) (Shapiro inapplicable because “[h]ere, as in Marchetti, the statutory obligations are directed almost exclusively to individuals inherently suspect of criminal activities”); Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85, 98-99 (1968).
California v. Byers, 402 U. S. 424 (1971), confirms that the ability to invoke the privilege may be greatly diminished when invocation would interfere with the effective operation of a generally applicable, civil regulatory requirement. In Byers, the Court upheld enforcement of California’s statutory requirement that drivers of cars involved in accidents stop and provide their names and addresses. A plurality found the risk of incrimination too insubstantial to implicate the Fifth Amendment, id., at 427-428, and noted that the statute “was not intended to facilitate criminal convictions but to promote the satisfaction of civil liabilities,” id., at 430, was “‘directed at the public at large,”’ ibid, (quoting Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, supra, at 79), and required disclosure of no inherently illegal activity. See also United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259 (1927) (rejecting Fifth Amendment objection to requirement to file income tax return). Justice Harlan, the author of Marchetti, Grosso, and Haynes, concurred in the judgment. He distinguished those three cases as considering statutory schemes that “focused almost exclusively on conduct which was criminal,” 402 U. S., at 454. While acknowledging that in particular cases the California statute would compel incriminating testimony, he concluded that the noncriminal purpose and the general applicability of the reporting requirement demanded compliance even in such cases. Id., at 458.
When a person assumes control over items that are the legitimate object of the government’s noncriminal regulatory powers, the ability to invoke the privilege is reduced. In Wilson v. United States, supra, the Court surveyed a range of cases involving the custody of public documents and records required by law to be kept because they related to “the appropriate subjects of governmental regulation and the enforcement of restrictions validly established.” Id., at 380. The principle the Court drew from these cases is:
“[Wjhere, by virtue of their character and the rules of law applicable to them, the books and papers are held subject to examination by the demanding authority, the custodian has no privilege to refuse production although their contents tend to criminate him. In assuming their custody he has accepted the incident obligation to permit inspection.” Id., at 382.
See also Braswell v. United States, 487 U. S. 99, 109-113 (1988); Curdo v. United States, 354 U. S. 118, 123-124 (1957) (“A custodian, by assuming the duties of his office, undertakes the obligation to produce the books of which he is custodian in response to a rightful exercise of the State’s visitorial powers”). In Shapiro, the Court interpreted this principle as extending well beyond the corporate context, 335 U. S., at 16-20, and emphasized that Shapiro had assumed and retained control over documents in which the Government had a direct and particular regulatory interest. Id., at 7-8, 14-15. Indeed, it was in part Shapiro’s custody over items having this public nature that allowed the Court in Marchetti, supra, at 57, Grosso, supra, at 69, and Haynes, supra, at 99, to distinguish the measures considered in those cases from the regulatory requirement at issue in Shapiro.
These principles readily apply to this case. Once Maurice was adjudicated a child in need of assistance, his care and safety became the particular object of the State’s regulatory interests. See 314 Md., at 404, 550 A. 2d, at 1141; Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. §§ 3 — 801(e), 3-804(a) (Supp. 1989); see also App. 105 (“This court has jurisdiction to require at all times to know the whereabouts of the minor child. We asserted jurisdiction over that child in the spring of 1987 . . .”). Maryland first placed Maurice in shelter care, authorized placement in foster care, and then entrusted responsibility for Maurice’s care to Bouknight. By accepting care of Maurice subject to the custodial order’s conditions (including requirements that she cooperate with BCDSS, follow a prescribed training regime, and be subject to further court orders), Bouknight submitted to the routine operation of the regulatory system and agreed to hold Maurice in a manner consonant with the State’s regulatory interests and subject to inspection by BCDSS. Cf. Shapiro v. United States, supra. In assuming the obligations attending custody, Bouknight “has accepted the incident obligation to permit inspection.” Wilson, 221 U. S., at 382. The State imposes and enforces that obligation as part of a broadly directed, noncriminal regulatory regime governing children cared for pursuant to custodial orders. See Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. §3-802(a) (1984) (setting forth child protective purposes of subtitle, including “providing] for the care, protection, and wholesome mental and physical development of children coming within the provisions of this subtitle”); see also Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. §§3-820(b), (c) (Supp. 1989); In re Jessica M., 312 Md. 93, 538 A. 2d 305 (1988).
Persons who care for children pursuant to a custody order, and who may be subject to a request for access to the child, are hardly a “ ‘selective group inherently suspect of criminal activities.’” Marchetti, supra, at 57 (quoting Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U. S., at 79). The juvenile court may place a child within its jurisdiction with social service officials or “under supervision in his own home or in the custody or under the guardianship of a relative or other fit person, upon terms the court deems appropriate.” Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. § 3-820(c)(l)(i) (Supp. 1989). Children may be placed, for example, in foster care, in homes of relatives, or in the care of state officials. See, e. g., In re Jessica M., supra; In re Arlene G., 301 Md. 355, 483 A. 2d 39 (1984); Maryland Dept, of Health and Mental Hygiene v. Prince George’s County Dept, of Social Services, 47 Md. App. 436, 423 A. 2d 589 (1980). Even when the court allows a parent to retain control of a child within the court’s jurisdiction, that parent is not one singled out for criminal conduct, but rather has been deemed to be, without the State’s assistance, simply “unable or unwilling to give proper care and attention to the child and his problems.” Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. § 3-801(e) (Supp. 1989); see In re Jertrude 0., 56 Md. App. 83, 466 A. 2d 885 (1983), cert. denied, 298 Md. 309, 469 A. 2d 863 (1984). The provision that authorized the juvenile court’s efforts to gain production of Maurice reflects this broad applicability. See Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. § 3-814(c) (1984) (“If a parent, guardian, or custodian fails to bring the child before the court when requested, the court may issue a writ of attachment directing that the child be taken into custody and brought before the court. The court may proceed against the parent, guardian, or custodian for contempt”). This provision “fairly may be said to be directed at . . . parents, guardians, and custodians who accept placement of juveniles in custody.” 314 Md., at 418, 550 A. 2d, at 1148 (McAuliffe, J., dissenting).
Similarly, BCDSS’ efforts to gain access to children, as well as judicial efforts to the same effect, do not “focu[s] almost exclusively on conduct which was criminal.” Byers, 402 U. S., at 454 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment). Many orders will arise in circumstances entirely devoid of criminal conduct. Even when criminal conduct may exist, the court may properly request production and return of the child, and enforce that request through exercise of the contempt power, for reasons related entirely to the child’s well-being and through measures unrelated to criminal law enforcement or investigation. See Maryland Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. § 3-814(c) (1984). This case provides an illustration: concern for the child’s safety underlay the efforts to gain access to and then compel production of Maurice. See App. 33-39, 53-55, 150, 155-158; see also 314 Md., at 419, 550 A. 2d, at 1149 (McAuliffe, J., dissenting). Finally, production in the vast majority of cases will embody no incriminating testimony, even if in particular cases the act of production may incriminate the custodian through an assertion of possession or the existence, or the identity, of the child. Cf. Byers, 402 U. S., at 430-431; id., at 458 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment). These orders to produce children cannot be characterized as efforts to gain some testimonial component of the act of production. The government demands production of the very public charge entrusted to a custodian, and makes the demand for compelling reasons unrelated to criminal law enforcement and as part of a broadly applied regulatory regime. In these circumstances, Bouknight cannot invoke the privilege to resist the order to produce Maurice.
We are not called upon to define the precise limitations that may exist upon the State’s ability to use the testimonial aspects of Bouknight’s act of production in subsequent criminal proceedings. But we note that imposition of such limitations is not foreclosed. The same custodial role that limited the ability to resist the production order may give rise to corresponding limitations upon the direct and indirect use of that testimony. See Braswell, 487 U. S., at 118, and n. 11. The State’s regulatory requirement in the usual case may neither compel incriminating testimony nor aid a criminal prosecution, but the Fifth Amendment protections are not thereby necessarily unavailable to the person who complies with the regulatory requirement after invoking the privilege and subsequently faces prosecution. See Marchetti, 390 U. S., at 58-59 (the “attractive and apparently practical” course of subsequent use restriction is not appropriate where a significant element of the regulatory requirement is to aid law enforcement); see also Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 26-27 (1969); Haynes, 390 U. S., at 100; Grosso, 390 U. S., at 69; cf. Doe I, 465 U. S., at 617, n. 17 (scope of restriction). In a broad range of contexts, the Fifth Amendment limits prosecutors’ ability to use testimony that has been compelled. See Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 391-394 (1968) (no subsequent admission of testimony provided in suppression hearing); Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n of New York Harbor, 378 U. S. 52, 75-76, 79 (1964) (Fifth Amendment bars use, in criminal processes, in other jurisdictions of testimony compelled pursuant to a grant of use immunity in one jurisdiction); Maness v. Meyers, 419 U. S. 449, 474-475 (1975) (White, J., concurring in result); Adams v. Maryland, 347 U. S. 179, 181 (1954) (“[A] witness does not need any statute to protect him from the use of self-incriminating testimony he is compelled to give over his objection. The Fifth Amendment takes care of that without a statute”); see also New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U. S. 450 (1979); Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U. S. 493, 500 (1967). But cf. Doe I, supra, at 616-617 (construing federal use immunity statute, 18 U. S. C. §§6001-6005); Pillsbury Co. v. Conboy, 459 U. S. 248, 261-262 (1983) (declining to supplement previous grant of federal use immunity).
Ill
The judgment of the Court of Appeals of Maryland is reversed, and the cases are remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
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.
Justice BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Copyright Act of 1976 gives a copyright owner the "exclusive righ [t]" to "perform the copyrighted work publicly." 17 U.S.C. § 106(4). The Act's Transmit Clause defines that exclusive right as including the right to
"transmit or otherwise communicate a performance... of the [copyrighted] work... to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance... receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times." § 101.
We must decide whether respondent Aereo, Inc., infringes this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. We conclude that it does.
I
A
For a monthly fee, Aereo offers subscribers broadcast television programming over the Internet, virtually as the programming is being broadcast. Much of this programming is made up of copyrighted works. Aereo neither owns the copyright in those works nor holds a license from the copyright owners to perform those works publicly.
Aereo's system is made up of servers, transcoders, and thousands of dime-sized antennas housed in a central warehouse. It works roughly as follows: First, when a subscriber wants to watch a show that is currently being broadcast, he visits Aereo's website and selects, from a list of the local programming, the show he wishes to see.
Second, one of Aereo's servers selects an antenna, which it dedicates to the use of that subscriber (and that subscriber alone) for the duration of the selected show. A server then tunes the antenna to the over-the-air broadcast carrying the show. The antenna begins to receive the broadcast, and an Aereo transcoder translates the signals received into data that can be transmitted over the Internet.
Third, rather than directly send the data to the subscriber, a server saves the data in a subscriber-specific folder on Aereo's hard drive. In other words, Aereo's system creates a subscriber-specific copy-that is, a "personal" copy-of the subscriber's program of choice.
Fourth, once several seconds of programming have been saved, Aereo's server begins to stream the saved copy of the show to the subscriber over the Internet. (The subscriber may instead direct Aereo to stream the program at a later time, but that aspect of Aereo's service is not before us.) The subscriber can watch the streamed program on the screen of his personal computer, tablet, smart phone, Internet-connected television, or other Internet-connected device. The streaming continues, a mere few seconds behind the over-the-air broadcast, until the subscriber has received the entire show. See A Dictionary of Computing 494 (6th ed. 2008) (defining "streaming" as "[t]he process of providing a steady flow of audio or video data so that an Internet user is able to access it as it is transmitted").
Aereo emphasizes that the data that its system streams to each subscriber are the data from his own personal copy, made from the broadcast signals received by the particular antenna allotted to him. Its system does not transmit data saved in one subscriber's folder to any other subscriber. When two subscribers wish to watch the same program, Aereo's system activates two separate antennas and saves two separate copies of the program in two separate folders. It then streams the show to the subscribers through two separate transmissions-each from the subscriber's personal copy.
B
Petitioners are television producers, marketers, distributors, and broadcasters who own the copyrights in many of the programs that Aereo's system streams to its subscribers. They brought suit against Aereo for copyright infringement in Federal District Court. They sought a preliminary injunction, arguing that Aereo was infringing their right to "perform" their works "publicly," as the Transmit Clause defines those terms.
The District Court denied the preliminary injunction. 874 F.Supp.2d 373 (S.D.N.Y.2012). Relying on prior Circuit precedent, a divided panel of the Second Circuit affirmed. WNET, Thirteen v. Aereo, Inc., 712 F.3d 676 (2013) (citing Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121 (2008)). In the Second Circuit's view, Aereo does not perform publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause because it does not transmit "to the public." Rather, each time Aereo streams a program to a subscriber, it sends a private transmission that is available only to that subscriber. The Second Circuit denied rehearing en banc, over the dissent of two judges. WNET, Thirteen v. Aereo, Inc., 722 F.3d 500 (2013). We granted certiorari.
II
This case requires us to answer two questions: First, in operating in the manner described above, does Aereo "perform" at all? And second, if so, does Aereo do so "publicly"? We address these distinct questions in turn.
Does Aereo "perform"? See § 106(4) ("[T]he owner of [a] copyright... has the exclusive righ[t]... to perform the copyrighted work publicly" (emphasis added)); § 101 ("To perform... a work 'publicly' means [among other things] to transmit... a performance... of the work... to the public..." (emphasis added)). Phrased another way, does Aereo "transmit... a performance" when a subscriber watches a show using Aereo's system, or is it only the subscriber who transmits? In Aereo's view, it does not perform. It does no more than supply equipment that "emulate[s] the operation of a home antenna and [digital video recorder (DVR) ]." Brief for Respondent 41. Like a home antenna and DVR, Aereo's equipment simply responds to its subscribers' directives. So it is only the subscribers who "perform" when they use Aereo's equipment to stream television programs to themselves.
Considered alone, the language of the Act does not clearly indicate when an entity "perform[s]" (or "transmit[s]") and when it merely supplies equipment that allows others to do so. But when read in light of its purpose, the Act is unmistakable: An entity that engages in activities like Aereo's performs.
A
History makes plain that one of Congress' primary purposes in amending the Copyright Act in 1976 was to overturn this Court's determination that community antenna television (CATV) systems (the precursors of modern cable systems) fell outside the Act's scope. In Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U.S. 390, 88 S.Ct. 2084, 20 L.Ed.2d 1176 (1968), the Court considered a CATV system that carried local television broadcasting, much of which was copyrighted, to its subscribers in two cities. The CATV provider placed antennas on hills above the cities and used coaxial cables to carry the signals received by the antennas to the home television sets of its subscribers. The system amplified and modulated the signals in order to improve their strength and efficiently transmit them to subscribers. A subscriber "could choose any of the... programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set." Id., at 392, 88 S.Ct. 2084. The CATV provider "neither edited the programs received nor originated any programs of its own." Ibid.
Asked to decide whether the CATV provider infringed copyright holders' exclusive right to perform their works publicly, the Court held that the provider did not "perform" at all. See 17 U.S.C. § 1(c) (1964 ed.) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to "perform... in public for profit" a nondramatic literary work), § 1(d) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to "perform... publicly" a dramatic work). The Court drew a line: "Broadcasters perform. Viewers do not perform." 392 U.S., at 398, 88 S.Ct. 2084 (footnote omitted). And a CATV provider "falls on the viewer's side of the line." Id., at 399, 88 S.Ct. 2084.
The Court reasoned that CATV providers were unlike broadcasters:
"Broadcasters select the programs to be viewed; CATV systems simply carry, without editing, whatever programs they receive. Broadcasters procure programs and propagate them to the public; CATV systems receive programs that have been released to the public and carry them by private channels to additional viewers." Id., at 400, 88 S.Ct. 2084.
Instead, CATV providers were more like viewers, for "the basic function [their] equipment serves is little different from that served by the equipment generally furnished by" viewers. Id., at 399, 88 S.Ct. 2084. "Essentially," the Court said, "a CATV system no more than enhances the viewer's capacity to receive the broadcaster's signals [by] provid[ing] a well-located antenna with an efficient connection to the viewer's television set." Ibid. Viewers do not become performers by using "amplifying equipment," and a CATV provider should not be treated differently for providing viewers the same equipment. Id., at 398-400, 88 S.Ct. 2084.
In Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U.S. 394, 94 S.Ct. 1129, 39 L.Ed.2d 415 (1974), the Court considered the copyright liability of a CATV provider that carried broadcast television programming into subscribers' homes from hundreds of miles away. Although the Court recognized that a viewer might not be able to afford amplifying equipment that would provide access to those distant signals, it nonetheless found that the CATV provider was more like a viewer than a broadcaster. Id., at 408-409, 94 S.Ct. 1129. It explained: "The reception and rechanneling of [broadcast television signals] for simultaneous viewing is essentially a viewer function, irrespective of the distance between the broadcasting station and the ultimate viewer." Id., at 408, 94 S.Ct. 1129.
The Court also recognized that the CATV system exercised some measure of choice over what to transmit. But that fact did not transform the CATV system into a broadcaster. A broadcaster exercises significant creativity in choosing what to air, the Court reasoned. Id., at 410, 94 S.Ct. 1129. In contrast, the CATV provider makes an initial choice about which broadcast stations to retransmit, but then "'simply carr[ies], without editing, whatever programs [it] receive[s].' " Ibid. (quoting Fortnightly,supra, at 400, 88 S.Ct. 2084 (alterations in original)).
B
In 1976 Congress amended the Copyright Act in large part to reject the Court's holdings in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. See H.R.Rep. No. 94-1476, pp. 86-87 (1976) (hereinafter H.R. Rep.) (The 1976 amendments "completely overturned" this Court's narrow construction of the Act in Fortnightly and Teleprompter ). Congress enacted new language that erased the Court's line between broadcaster and viewer, in respect to "perform [ing]" a work. The amended statute clarifies that to "perform" an audiovisual work means "to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible." § 101; see ibid. (defining "[a]udiovisual works" as "works that consist of a series of related images which are intrinsically intended to be shown by the use of machines..., together with accompanying sounds"). Under this new language, both the broadcaster and the viewer of a television program "perform," because they both show the program's images and make audible the program's sounds. See H.R. Rep., at 63 ("[A] broadcasting network is performing when it transmits [a singer's performance of a song]... and any individual is performing whenever he or she... communicates the performance by turning on a receiving set").
Congress also enacted the Transmit Clause, which specifies that an entity performs publicly when it "transmit[s]... a performance... to the public." § 101; see ibid. (defining "[t]o 'transmit' a performance" as "to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent"). Cable system activities, like those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter, lie at the heart of the activities that Congress intended this language to cover. See H.R. Rep., at 63 ("[A] cable television system is performing when it retransmits [a network] broadcast to its subscribers"); see also ibid. ("[T]he concep[t] of public performance... cover[s] not only the initial rendition or showing, but also any further act by which that rendition or showing is transmitted or communicated to the public"). The Clause thus makes clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs, even if when doing so, it simply enhances viewers' ability to receive broadcast television signals.
Congress further created a new section of the Act to regulate cable companies' public performances of copyrighted works. See § 111. Section 111 creates a complex, highly detailed compulsory licensing scheme that sets out the conditions, including the payment of compulsory fees, under which cable systems may retransmit broadcasts. H.R. Rep., at 88 (Section 111 is primarily "directed at the operation of cable television systems and the terms and conditions of their liability for the retransmission of copyrighted works").
Congress made these three changes to achieve a similar end: to bring the activities of cable systems within the scope of the Copyright Act.
C
This history makes clear that Aereo is not simply an equipment provider. Rather, Aereo, and not just its subscribers, "perform[s]" (or "transmit[s]"). Aereo's activities are substantially similar to those of the CATV companies that Congress amended the Act to reach. See id., at 89 ("[C]able systems are commercial enterprises whose basic retransmission operations are based on the carriage of copyrighted program material"). Aereo sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs, many of which are copyrighted, almost as they are being broadcast. In providing this service, Aereo uses its own equipment, housed in a centralized warehouse, outside of its users' homes. By means of its technology (antennas, transcoders, and servers), Aereo's system "receive[s] programs that have been released to the public and carr[ies] them by private channels to additional viewers." Fortnightly, 392 U.S., at 400, 88 S.Ct. 2084. It "carr[ies]... whatever programs [it] receive[s]," and it offers "all the programming" of each over-the-air station it carries. Id., at 392, 400, 88 S.Ct. 2084.
Aereo's equipment may serve a "viewer function"; it may enhance the viewer's ability to receive a broadcaster's programs.
It may even emulate equipment a viewer could use at home. But the same was true of the equipment that was before the Court, and ultimately before Congress, in Fortnightly and Teleprompter.
We recognize, and Aereo and the dissent emphasize, one particular difference between Aereo's system and the cable systems at issue in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. The systems in those cases transmitted constantly; they sent continuous programming to each subscriber's television set. In contrast, Aereo's system remains inert until a subscriber indicates that she wants to watch a program. Only at that moment, in automatic response to the subscriber's request, does Aereo's system activate an antenna and begin to transmit the requested program.
This is a critical difference, says the dissent. It means that Aereo's subscribers, not Aereo, "selec[t] the copyrighted content" that is "perform [ed]," post, at 2513 (opinion of SCALIA, J.), and for that reason they, not Aereo, "transmit" the performance. Aereo is thus like "a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card." Post, at 2514. A copy shop is not directly liable whenever a patron uses the shop's machines to "reproduce" copyrighted materials found in that library. See § 106(1) ("exclusive righ [t]... to reproduce the copyrighted work"). And by the same token, Aereo should not be directly liable whenever its patrons use its equipment to "transmit" copyrighted television programs to their screens.
In our view, however, the dissent's copy shop argument, in whatever form, makes too much out of too little. Given Aereo's overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies does not make a critical difference here. The subscribers of the Fortnightly and Teleprompter cable systems also selected what programs to display on their receiving sets. Indeed, as we explained in Fortnightly, such a subscriber "could choose any of the... programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set." 392 U.S., at 392, 88 S.Ct. 2084. The same is true of an Aereo subscriber. Of course, in Fortnightly the television signals, in a sense, lurked behind the screen, ready to emerge when the subscriber turned the knob. Here the signals pursue their ordinary course of travel through the universe until today's "turn of the knob"-a click on a website-activates machinery that intercepts and reroutes them to Aereo's subscribers over the Internet. But this difference means nothing to the subscriber. It means nothing to the broadcaster. We do not see how this single difference, invisible to subscriber and broadcaster alike, could transform a system that is for all practical purposes a traditional cable system into "a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card."
In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user's involvement in the operation of the provider's equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But the many similarities between Aereo and cable companies, considered in light of Congress' basic purposes in amending the Copyright Act, convince us that this difference is not critical here. We conclude that Aereo is not just an equipment supplier and that Aereo "perform[s]."
III
Next, we must consider whether Aereo performs petitioners' works "publicly," within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. Under the Clause, an entity performs a work publicly when it "transmit[s]... a performance... of the work... to the public." § 101. Aereo denies that it satisfies this definition. It reasons as follows: First, the "performance" it "transmit[s]" is the performance created by its act of transmitting. And second, because each of these performances is capable of being received by one and only one subscriber, Aereo transmits privately, not publicly. Even assuming Aereo's first argument is correct, its second does not follow.
We begin with Aereo's first argument. What performance does Aereo transmit? Under the Act, "[t]o 'transmit' a performance... is to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent." Ibid. And "[t]o 'perform' " an audiovisual work means "to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible." Ibid.
Petitioners say Aereo transmits a prior performance of their works. Thus when Aereo retransmits a network's prior broadcast, the underlying broadcast (itself a performance) is the performance that Aereo transmits. Aereo, as discussed above, says the performance it transmits is the new performance created by its act of transmitting. That performance comes into existence when Aereo streams the sounds and images of a broadcast program to a subscriber's screen.
We assume arguendo that Aereo's first argument is correct. Thus, for present purposes, to transmit a performance of (at least) an audiovisual work means to communicate contemporaneously visible images and contemporaneously audible sounds of the work. Cf. United States v. American Soc. of Composers, Authors and Publishers, 627 F.3d 64, 73 (C.A.2 2010) (holding that a download of a work is not a performance because the data transmitted are not "contemporaneously perceptible"). When an Aereo subscriber selects a program to watch, Aereo streams the program over the Internet to that subscriber. Aereo thereby "communicate[s]" to the subscriber, by means of a "device or process," the work's images and sounds. § 101. And those images and sounds are contemporaneously visible and audible on the subscriber's computer (or other Internet-connected device). So under our assumed definition, Aereo transmits a performance whenever its subscribers watch a program.
But what about the Clause's further requirement that Aereo transmit a performance "to the public"? As we have said, an Aereo subscriber receives broadcast television signals with an antenna dedicated to him alone. Aereo's system makes from those signals a personal copy of the selected program. It streams the content of the copy to the same subscriber and to no one else. One and only one subscriber has the ability to see and hear each Aereo transmission. The fact that each transmission is to only one subscriber, in Aereo's view, means that it does not transmit a performance "to the public."
In terms of the Act's purposes, these differences do not distinguish Aereo's system from cable systems, which do perform "publicly." Viewed in terms of Congress' regulatory objectives, why should any of these technological differences matter? They concern the behind-the-scenes way in which Aereo delivers television programming to its viewers' screens. They do not render Aereo's commercial objective any different from that of cable companies. Nor do they significantly alter the viewing experience of Aereo's subscribers. Why would a subscriber who wishes to watch a television show care much whether images and sounds are delivered to his screen via a large multisubscriber antenna or one small dedicated antenna, whether they arrive instantaneously or after a few seconds' delay, or whether they are transmitted directly or after a personal copy is made? And why, if Aereo is right, could not modern CATV systems simply continue the same commercial and consumer-oriented activities, free of copyright restrictions, provided they substitute such new technologies for old? Congress would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies.
The text of the Clause effectuates Congress' intent. Aereo's argument to the contrary relies on the premise that "to transmit... a performance" means to make a single transmission. But the Clause suggests that an entity may transmit a performance through multiple, discrete transmissions. That is because one can "transmit" or "communicate" something through a set of actions. Thus one can transmit a message to one's friends, irrespective of whether one sends separate identical e-mails to each friend or a single e-mail to all at once. So can an elected official communicate an idea, slogan, or speech to her constituents, regardless of whether she communicates that idea, slogan, or speech during individual phone calls to each constituent or in a public square.
The fact that a singular noun ("a performance") follows the words "to transmit" does not suggest the contrary. One can sing a song to his family, whether he sings the same song one-on-one or in front of all together. Similarly, one's colleagues may watch a performance of a particular play-say, this season's modern-dress version of "Measure for Measure"-whether they do so at separate or at the same showings. By the same principle, an entity may transmit a performance through one or several transmissions, where the performance is of the same work.
The Transmit Clause must permit this interpretation, for it provides that one may transmit a performance to the public "whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance... receive it... at the same time or at different times." § 101. Were the words "to transmit... a performance" limited to a single act of communication, members of the public could not receive the performance communicated "at different times." Therefore, in light of the purpose and text of the Clause, we conclude that when an entity communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people, it transmits a performance to them regardless of the number of discrete communications it makes.
We do not see how the fact that Aereo transmits via personal copies of programs could make a difference. The Act applies to transmissions "by means of any device or process." Ibid. And retransmitting a television program using user-specific copies is a "process" of transmitting a performance. A "cop[y]" of a work is simply a "material objec[t]... in which a work is fixed... and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated." Ibid. So whether Aereo transmits from the same or separate copies, it performs the same work; it shows the same images and makes audible the same sounds. Therefore, when Aereo streams the same television program to multiple subscribers, it "transmit[s]... a performance" to all of them.
Moreover, the subscribers to whom Aereo transmits television programs constitute "the public." Aereo communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to a large number of people who are unrelated and unknown to each other. This matters because, although the Act does not define "the public," it specifies that an entity performs publicly when it performs at "any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered." Ibid. The Act thereby suggests that "the public" consists of a large group of people outside of a family and friends.
Neither the record nor Aereo suggests that Aereo's subscribers receive performances in their capacities as owners or possessors of the underlying works. This is relevant because when an entity performs to a set of people, whether they constitute "the public" often depends upon their relationship to the underlying work. When, for example, a valet parking attendant returns cars to their drivers, we would not say that the parking service provides cars "to the public." We would say that it provides the cars to their owners. We would say that a car dealership, on the other hand, does provide cars to the public, for it sells cars to individuals who lack a pre-existing relationship to the cars. Similarly, an entity that transmits a performance to individuals in their capacities as owners or possessors does not perform to "the public," whereas an entity like Aereo that transmits to large numbers of paying subscribers who lack any prior relationship to the works does so perform.
Finally, we note that Aereo's subscribers may receive the same programs at different times and locations. This fact does not help Aereo, however, for the Transmit Clause expressly provides that an entity may perform publicly "whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance... receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times." Ibid. In other words, "the public" need not be situated together, spatially or temporally. For these reasons, we conclude that Aereo transmits a performance of petitioners' copyrighted works to the public, within the meaning of the Transmit Clause.
IV
Aereo and many of its supporting amici argue that to apply the Transmit Clause to Aereo's conduct will impose copyright liability on other technologies, including new technologies, that Congress could not possibly have wanted to reach. We agree that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents, did not intend to discourage or to control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. But we do not believe that our limited holding today will have that effect.
For one thing, the history of cable broadcast transmissions that led to the enactment of the Transmit Clause informs our conclusion that Aereo "perform [s]," but it does not determine whether different kinds of providers in different contexts also "perform." For another, an entity only transmits a performance when it communicates contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds of a work. See Brief for Respondent 31 ("[I]f a distributor... sells [multiple copies of a digital video disc] by mail to consumers,... [its] distribution of the DVDs merely makes it possible for the recipients to perform the work themselves-it is not a 'device or process' by which the distributor publicly performs the work" (emphasis in original)).
Further, we have interpreted the term "the public" to apply to a group of individuals acting as ordinary members of the public who pay primarily to watch broadcast television programs, many of which are copyrighted. We have said that it does not extend to those who act as owners or possessors of the relevant product.
And we have not considered whether the public performance right is infringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 31 (distinguishing cloud-based storage services because they "offer consumers more numerous and convenient means of playing back copies that the consumers have already lawfully acquired" (emphasis in original)). In addition, an entity does not transmit to the public if it does not transmit to a substantial number of people outside of a family and its social circle.
We also note that courts often apply a statute's highly general language in light of the statute's basic purposes. Finally, the doctrine of "fair use" can help to prevent inappropriate or inequitable applications of the Clause. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 104 S.Ct. 774, 78 L.Ed.2d 574 (1984).
We cannot now answer more precisely how the Transmit Clause or other provisions of the Copyright Act will apply to technologies not before us. We agree with the Solicitor General that "[q]uestions involving cloud computing, [remote storage] DVRs, and other novel issues not before the Court, as to which 'Congress has not plainly marked [the] course,' should await a case in which they are squarely presented." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 34 (quoting Sony, supra, at 431, 104 S.Ct. 774 (alteration in original)). And we note that, to the extent commercial actors or other interested entities may be concerned with the relationship between the development and use of such technologies and the Copyright Act, they are of course free to seek action from Congress. Cf. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512.
* * *
In sum, having considered the details of Aereo's practices, we find them highly similar to those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter. And those are activities that the 1976 amendments sought to bring within the scope of the Copyright Act. Insofar as there are differences, those differences concern not the nature of the service that Aereo provides so much as the technological manner in which it provides the service. We conclude that those differences are not adequate to place Aereo's activities outside the scope of the Act.
For these reasons, we conclude that Aereo "perform[s]" petitioners' copyrighted works "publicly," as those terms are defined by the Transmit Clause. We therefore reverse the contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals, and we remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice SCALIA, with whom Justice THOMAS and Justice ALITO join, dissenting.
This case is the latest skirmish in the long-running copyright battle over the delivery of television programming. Petitioners, a collection of television networks and affiliates (Networks), broadcast copyrighted programs on the public airwaves for all to see. Aereo, respondent, operates an automated system that allows subscribers to receive, on Internet-connected devices, programs that they select, including the Networks' copyrighted programs. The Networks sued Aereo for several forms of copyright infringement, but we are here concerned with a single claim: that Aereo violates the Networks' "exclusive righ[t]" to "perform" their programs "publicly." 17 U.S.C. § 106(4). That claim fails at the very outset because Aereo does not "perform" at all. The Court manages to reach the opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their place an improvised standard ("looks-like-cable-TV") that will sow confusion for years to come.
I. Legal Standard
There are two types of liability for copyright infringement: direct and secondary. As its name suggests, the former applies when an actor personally engages in infringing conduct. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 433, 104 S.Ct. 774, 78 L.Ed.2d 574 (1984). Secondary liability, by contrast, is a means of holding defendants responsible for infringement by third parties, even when the defendants "have not themselves engaged in the infringing activity." Id., at 435, 104 S.Ct. 774. It applies when a defendant "intentionally induc[es] or encourag[es]" infringing acts by others or profits from such acts "while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit [them]." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913, 930, 125 S.Ct. 2764, 162 L.Ed.2d 781 (2005).
Most suits against equipment manufacturers and service providers involve secondary-liability claims. For example, when movie studios sued to block the sale of Sony's Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR), they argued that Sony was liable because its customers were making unauthorized copies. See Sony,supra, at 434-435, 104 S.Ct. 774. Record labels and movie studios relied on a similar theory when they sued Grokster and StreamCast, two providers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software. See Grokster, supra, at 920-921, 927, 125 S.Ct. 2764.
This suit, or rather the portion of it before us here, is fundamentally different. The Networks claim that Aereo directly infringes their public-performance right. Accordingly, the Networks must prove that Aereo "perform [s]" copyrighted works, § 106(4), when its subscribers log in, select a channel, and push the "watch" button. That process undoubtedly results in a performance; the question is who does the performing. See Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121, 130 (C.A.2 2008). If Aereo's subscribers perform but Aereo does not, the claim necessarily fails.
The Networks' claim is governed by a simple but profoundly important rule: A defendant may be held directly liable only if it has engaged in volitional conduct that violates the Act. See 3 W. Patry, Copyright § 9:5.50 (2013). This requirement is firmly grounded in the Act's text, which defines "perform" in active, affirmative terms: One "perform[s]" a copyrighted "audiovisual work," such as a movie or news broadcast, by "show[ing] its images in any sequence" or "mak[ing] the sounds accompanying it audible." § 101. And since the Act makes it unlawful to copy or perform copyrighted works, not to copy or perform in general, see § 501(a), the volitional-act requirement demands conduct directed to the plaintiff's copyrighted material, see Sony, supra, at 434, 104 S.Ct. 774. Every Court of Appeals to have considered an automated-service provider's direct liability for copyright infringement has adopted that rule. See Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network LLC, 747 F.3d 1060, 1066-1068 (C.A.9 2014
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a diversity case for wrongful death of petitioner’s decedent, who was killed when a tractor-trailer leased by respondent crashed off a Pennsylvania highway. The action was tried to a jury on a negligence theory and judgment went for petitioner. 161 F. Supp. 875. The Court of Appeals reversed, finding that under Pennsylvania law the decedent was an employee of respondent and that the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act, Purdon’s Pa. Stat. Ann., 1952, Tit. 77, provided the exclusive remedy. 257 F. 2d 445. We granted certiorari, 358 U. S. 927, on the question whether, in the light of Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc., 356 U. S. 525 (1958) (decided after this case was argued, in the Court of Appeals), the matter of the relationship of the decedent to respondent was a jury question. We have concluded that Byrd does control that issue and that the judgment must therefore be reversed.
Respondent is an interstate motor carrier of freight certificated under the Interstate Commerce Act. It had leased a tractor-trailer, complete with driver,, from one Fidler, an' independent contractor. Its lease contract, which had been in effect for four years, required Fidler to furnish the driver as well as to keep the leased equipment in repair. In this connection the evidence indicates that Fidler had authorized his driver, where circumstances required, to hire services and purchase necessities on trips of this kind. • The vehicle and driver leased by respondent were en route from Syracuse, N. Y., to Midland, Pa., with 36,000 pounds of steel'when the mishap leading to decedent’s death occurred! The trip from. Syracuse had been so beset with difficulties, such as tire replacements, battery trouble and brake failure, as well as bad weather, that it had already consumed 7 days’ time. Under ordinary conditions 20 hours .of elapsed time would have been sufficient. During a stop at a tavern near Waterford, Pa., the driver, Schroyer, was talking to the tavern keeper about his truck troubles when decedent and his cousin entered the place. Schroyer offeréd the cousin $25 to accompany him for the remainder of the trip and, upon, refusal, made the same offer to decedent. .The latter accepted.. While the evidence is weak on the point, the indications are that decedent’s job was to aid the driver in the event further trouble with the truck was encountered. Decedent was experienced with cars and had worked for a short time as a mechanic. Schroyer and decedent proceeded in the truck-trailer toward their destination, with the former driving. Some hours later the vehicle was found off the road on the downside of an embankment. Both men were dead.
This action ensued, in which petitioner alleged neglir gence on the part of Fidler and respondent for continuing to operate the vehicle with knowledge. of its defective brakes. Liability, of respondent was rested upon the rule that its status as a certificated carrier made it liable for the negligence of Fidler, its independent contractor, whose motor equipment was operated under the former’s I. C. C. certificate. ■ This is the law of Pennsylvania, Kissell v. Motor Age Transit Lines, 357 Pa. 204, 209, 53 A. 2d 593, 597. Petitioner’s theory was that his decedent was an invitee on the tractor-trailer, and that Fidler and his driver, Schroyer, therefore, owed decedent a duty of due care for breach of which respondent was liable under its I. C. C. certificate. Respondent claiméd that decedent was a trespasser and, under Pennsylvania law, that it was therefore liable only for wanton misconduct. After discovery had been exhausted, respondent moved for summary judgment on the ground that the circumstances of decedent’s engagement by Schroyer created an employer-employee relationship between, it and decedent under the State workmen’s compensation statute. The motion was denied and the case went to trial. It was submitted to the jury on special interrogatories covering the issues as to liability and a general charge as to the damages. The trial judge entered judgment on the special issues and the damage verdict for $76,500.
Interrogatory No. I, the meaning of which is now in controversy, inquired as to whether it was “reasonably necessary for the protection of defendant’s [respondent’s] interests” to engage decedent. The Court of Appeals held that the affirmative answer of the jury classified decedent as respondent’s employee bringing him within the general definition of § 104 of the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act. It' noted that respondent had conceded that decedent was its “casual” employee but that this was not enough to take him out of the Act’s coverage for, in addition, such casual employment must ■“not be in the regular course of business” of respondent. This, the Court of Appeals said, was a question of law under Pennsylvania practice and open to review. It held that the finding under Interrogatory No. 1 put decedent “into the regular business” of respondent. This holding would call for the dismissal of this suit, as petitioner’s exclusive remedy would be under the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act.
Since the keystone of the Court of Appeals’ holding depends on its interpretation of Special Interrogatory No. 1, we note the views of the trial judge on that issue. In his opinion on the motion of respondent for judgment non obstante verdicto, he observed that “the interrogatory . . . was not. so phrased as to require the jury to determine whether decedent was an employe'e of Aetna.” Rather, it “was simply to secure a finding from the jury as to the reasonable necessity of Schroyer engaging decedent.’’ 161 F. Supp., at 878. Likewise during the trial, in a colloquy with counsel as to this interrogatory, he advised: “[Y]ou notice there I refrain from saying just what his [decedent’s] status is. I don’t think it necessary to have the jury find whether he was employed or not; I think that is a question for the law.” On balance we believe that an examination of the record supports this interpretation of Interrogatory No. 1, although it must be admitted that the apparently inadvertent use of the. words in “protection of the defendant’s interest” in the interrogatory may have been taken in a different light by the jury.
Be this as it may, however, not only the question of the relationship of the decedent to respondent should have been submitted to the jury but, in order to meet § 104’s definition, it should likewise have passed upon whether the employment, if any, Was “casual” and not “in the regular course” of respondent’s business. Our opinion in Byrd came down subsequent to argument in the Court of Appeals. As we said in that case “An essential characteristic of [the federal system] is the manner in which, in civil common-law actions, it distributes trial functions between judge and jury . . . [assigning] the decisions of disputed questions of fact to the jury.” Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Coop., supra, at 537. We found there that the South Carolina rule in compensation cases, permitting courts to decide such factual issues without the aid of juries, was not “announced as an integral part of the special relationship, created by the statute.” Id., at 536. We held that under such circumstances “the federal court should. not follow the state rule.” Id., at 538. The same reasoning applies here. We have been given no reason for the distinction in the Pennsylvania practice of trying ¡Aich disputed factual issues to the court. Respondent does not claim that the rule is an “integral part of the special relationship” created by its statute but rather that the disputed issue of employment was in fact submitted to the jury. It cannot be gainsaid that all of the disputed issues' were not so submitted. In order to determine whether the Pennsylvania Act bars recovery here the court must have a full answer as to the status of the decedent as an employee under § 104 of the Act. If the jury, under proper instructions, finds facts which show that, under § 104, the decedent was respondent’s employee and that such employment Was “casual” and not “in the regular course” of respondent’s business, then it can find for petitioner.
We are therefore of the opinion that a new trial, on the. whole case is necessary, since these-disputed issues are so interrelated with the ultimate issues of liability and damages that a limited hearing would not be in the interest of fairness and efficiency in judicial administration. If the evidence on that trial is such as to justify with reason different conclusions on the factual issues as to the relationship of decedent as an employee, under § 104 of Pennsylvania’s Act, of either respondent or its contractor, Fidler, resolution of those issues, along with others that arise from'the evidence; will be for the jury. The jury’s verdict at that trial will determine if as well as in what amount petitioner may recover in this action.
Reversed and remanded.
Also see 49 Stat. 557, as amended, 49 U. S. C. § 315, which provides that a certificate holder must carry insurance to satisfy any final judgment for injuries due to the “negligent . . . use of motor véhicles under such certificate.”
“Interrogatory Number 1. Under the evidence in this case, do you find that an unforeseen contingency arose which made it reasonably necessary for the protection of the defendant’s interests that the driver Charles Schroyer engage the decedent Norman Ormsbee, Jr. to accompanying him for the remainder of the trip?”
Section 104 of the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act, Purdon’s Pa. Stat. Ann., 1952, Tit. 77, § 22, Cum. Supp., provides:
“The term ‘employe,’ as used in this act is declared to be synonymous with servant, and includes—
“All natural persons who perform services for another for a valuable consideration, exclusive of persons whose employment is casual in character and not in the regular course of the business of the employer, and exclusive of persons to whom articles or materials are given out to be made up, cleaned, washed, altered, ornamented, finished, or repaired, or adapted for sale in the worker’s own home, or on other premises, not under the control or management of the employer. Every executive officer of a corporation elected or appointed in accordance with the charter and by-laws of the corporation, except elected officers of the Commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions, shall be an employe of- the 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:
|
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 motion to affirm is granted and the judgment is affirmed. Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U. S. 663.
Mr. Justice Black dissents for the reasons given in his dissenting opinion in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, supra.
Mr. Justice Harlan, joined by Mr. Justice Stewart, dissents for the reasons given in his dissenting opinion in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 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:
|
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.
The question here is when the 1-year statute of limitations in 28 U. S. C. § 2255, ¶ 6(4), begins to run in a case of a prisoner’s collateral attack on his federal sentence on the ground that a state conviction used to enhance that sentence has since been vacated. We hold that the period begins when a petitioner receives notice of the order vacating the prior conviction, provided that he has sought it with due diligence in state court, after entry of judgment in the federal case with the enhanced sentence.
I — (
In 1994, petitioner Robert Johnson, Jr., was indicted for distributing cocaine base and related conspiracy. Following his guilty plea to a single count of distribution in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1) and 18 U. S. C. § 2, the presentence investigation report recommended that Johnson receive an enhanced sentence as a career offender under §4B1.1 of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, owing to his two 1989 convictions by the State of Georgia for distributing cocaine. Without elaboration, Johnson filed an objection to the recommendation, which he withdrew at the sentencing hearing. The District Court imposed the enhancement and entered judgment on November 29, 1994.
On appeal, Johnson argued for the first time that he should not have been sentenced as a career offender because one of his Georgia convictions was invalid. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the sentence, finding that in the trial court Johnson had raised no objection to the validity of his prior convictions and that the judge’s career offender findings were not clearly erroneous. United States v. Johnson, No. 94-9402 (Dec. 22, 1995) (per curiam), App. 7. In a footnote, the Court of Appeals
“note[d] in passing that, should appellant obtain at some future date the vacation of the state court conviction in question because [it was] obtained in violation of his constitutional rights, he could petition the district court under 28 U. S. C. § 2255 for the relief he now asks us to provide.” Id., at 8, n. 1.
We denied certiorari. Johnson v. United States, 517 U. S. 1162 (1996).
Two days later, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) went into effect, imposing, among other things, a 1-year period of limitations on motions by prisoners seeking to modify their federal sentences:
“The limitation period shall run from the latest of—
“(1) the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes final;
“(2) the date on which the impediment to making a motion created by governmental action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the movant was prevented from making a motion by such governmental action;
“(3) the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or
“(4) the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” 28 U. S. C. §2255, ¶6.
A fifth option supplied uniformly by the Courts of Appeals gave prisoners whose convictions became final before AEDPA a 1-year grace period running from the new statute’s effective date. Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 183, n. 1 (2001) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (collecting cases).
On April 25, 1997, one year and three days after his pre-AEDPA federal conviction became final and just after the 1-year grace period expired, Johnson pro se filed a motion in the District Court for a 60-day extension of time to attack his federal sentence under § 2255. Finding the AEDPA period expired, the District Court denied the motion, though it added that denial was without prejudice to Johnson’s right to file a § 2255 motion claiming any alternative limitation period under the statute.
On February 6,1998, Johnson petitioned for writ of habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Wayne County, Georgia, claiming the invalidity of his guilty pleas in seven cases between 1983 and 1993 because he had not knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived his right to counsel. One of the seven pleas Johnson challenged was the basis for one of the 1989 convictions on which the District Court had rested the career offender enhancement of Johnson’s federal sentence. The State of Georgia denied Johnson’s allegations, but filed no hearing transcripts. The Superior Court found that the records did “not show an affirmative waiver of [Johnson’s] right to an attorney” in any of the cases, App. 10, and entered an order of vacatur, that all seven convictions be reversed, ibid.
Just over three months later, Johnson was back in the Federal District Court pro se with a motion under § 2255 to vacate the enhanced federal sentence following the vacatur of one of its predicate state convictions. He claimed his motion was timely because the order vacating the state judgment was “new evidence” not previously discoverable, and so the trigger of a renewed limitation period. The Magistrate Judge took Johnson to be relying on the discovery of “facts supporting the claim” addressed in § 2255, ¶ 6(4), but still recommended denial of the motion for failure on Johnson’s part to exercise the “due diligence” required by that provision. Id., at 15-17. Although Johnson objected that lack of education excused him from acting more promptly, and that he had filed the state petition as soon as he could get help from an inmate law clerk, the District Court denied the § 2255 motion as untimely. In the court’s view, the applicable limitation was the 1-year grace period that was over in April 1997, which Johnson had done nothing to toll in the 21 months he waited after his conviction became final before filing his state habeas petition. Id., at 19.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. 340 F. 3d 1219 (CA11 2003). The majority reasoned that the state-court order vacating the prior state conviction was not a “‘fact’” under the fourth paragraph of the §2255 limitation rule. Id., at 1223. In the majority’s view, the state-court order was properly classified as a “legal proposition” or a “court action obtained at the behest of a federal prisoner, not ‘discovered’ by him.” Ibid. Because the fourth paragraph of the limitation rule was therefore of no avail to Johnson, the Court of Appeals majority agreed with the District Court that the time for filing expired in 1997, at the end of the 1-year grace period. Id., at 1226. The majority also agreed that Johnson had no equitable claim to toll the running of the 1-year period because he had waited too long before going back to the state court. Id., at 1226-1228. Judge Roney dissented, arguing that the state court’s order was a “fact” supporting Johnson’s § 2255 motion, a fact not discoverable prior to the order’s issuance. Id., at 1228-1229. Over one dissent, rehearing en banc was denied. 353 F. 3d 1328 (2003).
We granted certiorari, 542 U. S. 965 (2004), to resolve a disagreement among the Courts of Appeals as to whether vacatur of a prior state conviction used to enhance a federal sentence can start the 1-year limitation period under the fourth alternative of the §2255 rule. Compare 340 F. 3d 1219 (case below) (vacatur not a trigger); Brackett v. United States, 270 F. 3d 60 (CA1 2001) (same), with United States v. Gadsen, 332 F. 3d 224 (CA4 2003) (vacatur a fact not previously discoverable giving rise to a new 1-year period).
We agree with Johnson that the state-court vacatur is a matter of fact for purposes of the limitation rule in the fourth paragraph. But we also hold that the statute allows the fact of the state-court order to set the 1-year period running only if the petitioner has shown due diligence in seeking the order. Applying that qualification, we affirm.
hH l-H
The Government shares Johnson s preliminary assumption that if he filed his §2255 motion in time, he is entitled to federal resentencing now that the State has vacated one of the judgments supporting his enhanced sentence. Neither the enhancement provision of the Sentencing Guidelines applied here, nor the mandatory enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U. S. C. § 924(e), has been read to mean that the validity of a prior conviction supporting an enhanced federal sentence is beyond challenge. Cf. Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980) (validity of prior conviction irrelevant under federal statute prohibiting possession of a firearm by a felon). Our cases applying these provisions assume the contrary, that a defendant given a sentence enhanced for a prior conviction is entitled to a reduction if the earlier conviction is vacated. Custis v. United States, 511 U. S. 485 (1994); Daniels v. United States, 532 U. S. 374 (2001).
Such was the premise in Custis v. United States, supra, even though we held that the ACCA generally created no opportunity to attack a prior state conviction collaterally at a federal sentencing proceeding, 511 U. S., at 490, and that the Constitution demands no more, id., at 496-497. We thought that Congress had not meant to make it so easy to challenge final judgments that every occasion to enhance a sentence for recidivism would turn a federal sentencing court into a forum for difficult and time-consuming reexaminations of stale state proceedings. Ibid. We recognized only one exception to this rule that collateral attacks were off-limits, and that was for challenges to state convictions allegedly obtained in violation of the right to appointed counsel, an exception we thought necessary to avoid undermining Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963). Custis v. United States, 511 U. S., at 494-496. As to challenges falling outside of that exception, we pointed out that a defendant who successfully attacked his state conviction in state court or on federal habeas review could then “apply for reopening of any federal sentence enhanced by the state sentences.” Id., at 497.
Daniels v. United States, supra, extended Custis to hold, subject to the same exception for Gideon claims, that a federal prisoner may not attack a predicate state conviction through a §2255 motion challenging an enhanced federal sentence, 532 U. S., at 376, and again we stressed considerations of administration and finality, id., at 378-380. Again, too, we acknowledged that a prisoner could proceed under §2255 after successful review of the prior state conviction on federal habeas under §2254 or favorable resort to any postconviction process available under state law, id., at 381. We simply added that if the prior conviction was no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right, the federal prisoner could do nothing more about his sentence enhancement. Id., at 382.
This case presents the distinct issue of how soon a prisoner, successful in his state proceeding, must challenge the federal sentence under § 2255. The resolution turns on understanding what “facts” affecting an enhanced sentence could most sensibly fall within that term as used in the fourth paragraph of the §2255 limitation provision, under which the one year runs from “the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” Johnson says that the order vacating his prior conviction is the factual matter supporting his § 2255 claim, discovery of which triggers the refreshed 1-year period. The Court of Appeals majority said no because it understood a legally operative order of vacatur to be a mandate of law or a consequence of applying law, and therefore distinct from a matter of “ 'fact’ ” as Congress used the term in §2255. 340 F. 3d, at 1223. The United States does not endorse that law-fact distinction, but argues that the facts supporting Johnson’s § 2255 claim, for purposes of the fourth paragraph, are the facts on which he based his challenge to the validity of his state convictions.
We think none of these positions is sound, at least in its entirety. As for the Government’s proposed reading, certainly it is true that the circumstances rendering the underlying predicate conviction invalid are ultimate subjects of fact supporting the §2255 claim, in the sense that proof of those facts (or the government’s failure to negate them) is necessary to vacate the prior state conviction and eliminate the ground for the federal enhancement. But this is not enough to fit the Government’s position comfortably into paragraph.four. The text of §2255, ¶6(4), clearly links the running of the limitation period to the discovery of the “facts supporting the claim or claims presented,” but on the Government’s view, the statute of limitations may begin to run (and may even expire) before the § 2255 claim and its necessary predicate even exist. Prior to the federal conviction, a petitioner has no §2255 claim because he has no enhanced federal sentence to challenge; and prior to the state vacatur, which Daniels makes a necessary condition for relief in most cases, a petitioner cannot obtain relief under § 2255. Cf. Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp., of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 195 (1997) (statutes of limitations ordinarily do not begin to run until a plaintiff’s complete cause of action has accrued). Hence, it is highly doubtful that in §2255 challenges to enhanced sentences Congress would have meant to start the period running under paragraph four on the discoverability date of facts that may have no significance under federal law for years to come and that cannot by themselves be the basis of a § 2255 claim, Daniels v. United States, supra, at 376.
There are further reasons against applying the fourth paragraph as the Government would. Congress does not appear to have adopted a policy of enhancing federal sentences regardless of the validity of state convictions relied on for the enhancement. Custis and Daniels were decided on just the contrary, and unchallenged, understanding; it would certainly push the limits of coherence for the Court now to apply the fourth paragraph in a way that would practically close the door to relief that each of those cases specifically left open. Nor is there any reason to think Congress meant the limitation period to run earlier for the sake of preserving finality of state convictions; States are capable of providing their own limitations periods (and most of them would have barred Johnson’s challenge).
Johnson’s argument improves on the Government’s proposal by pegging the limitation period to notice of the state order eliminating the predicate required for enhancement, which is almost always necessary and always sufficient for relief. We do not find his proposal vulnerable to the point made by the majority of the Court of Appeals, that an order vacating a conviction is legally expressive or operative language that may not be treated as a matter of fact within the meaning of the statute. We commonly speak of the “fact of a prior conviction,” e. g., Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000), and an order vacating a predicate conviction is spoken of as a fact just as sensibly as the order entering it. In either case, a claim of such a fact is subject to proof or disproof like any other factual issue.
But Johnson’s take on the statute carries anomalies of its own, one minor, one more serious. It is strange to say that an order vacating a conviction has been “discovered,” the term used .by paragraph four, and stranger still to speak about the date on which it could have been discovered with due diligence, when the fact happens to be the outcome of a proceeding in which the §2255 petitioner was the moving party. By bringing that proceeding, the petitioner causes the factual event to occur, after all, and unless his mail goes astray his prompt discovery of the crucial fact is virtually guaranteed through official notice.
A more serious problem is Johnson’s position that his § 2255 petition is timely under paragraph four as long as he brings it within a year of learning he succeeded in attacking the prior conviction, no matter how long he may have slumbered before starting the successful proceeding. If Johnson were right about this, a petitioner might wait a long time before raising any question about a predicate conviction, as this very case demonstrates. Of course it may well be that Johnson took his time because his basic sentence had years to run before the period of enhancement began. But letting a petitioner wait for as long as the enhancement makes no difference to his actual imprisonment, while the predicate conviction grows increasingly stale and the federal outcome is subject to question, is certainly at odds with the provision in paragraph four that the one year starts running when the operative fact “could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” And by maximizing the time that judgments are open to question, a rule allowing that kind of delay would thwart one of AEDPA’s principal purposes, Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S., at 179; Woodford v. Garceau, 538 U. S. 202, 206 (2003), a purpose that was also central to our decisions in Custis and Daniels, see supra, at 303-304.
We think neither anomaly is serious enough, however, to justify rejecting Johnson’s basic argument that notice of the order vacating the predicate conviction is the event that starts the one year running. Our job here is to find a sensible way to apply paragraph four when the truth is that with Daniels not yet on the books AEDPA’s drafters probably never thought about the situation we face here. Of course it is peculiar to speak of “discovering” the fact of the very eventuality the petitioner himself has brought about, but when that fact is necessary to the § 2255 claim, and treating notice of it as the trigger produces a more reasonable scheme than the alternatives, the scheme should be reconciled with the statutory language if it can be. And here the fit is painless, if short on style.
While it sounds odd to speak of discovering a fact one has generated, a petitioner does not generate the fact of vacatur all by himself. He does, after all, have to learn of the court’s response in the state proceeding, and receiving notice of success can surely qualify as a kind of discovery falling within the statutory language.
That leaves us with the question of how to implement the statutory mandate that a petitioner act with due diligence in discovering the crucial fact of the vacatur order that he himself seeks. The answer is that diligence can be shown by prompt action on the part of the petitioner as soon as he is in a position to realize that he has an interest in challenging the prior conviction with its potential to enhance the later sentence. The important thing is to identify a particular time when the course of the later federal prosecution clearly shows that diligence is in order. That might be the date the federal indictment is disclosed, the date of judgment, or the date of finality after direct appeal. Picking the first date would require the quickest response and serve finality best, but it would produce some collateral litigation that federal acquittals would prove to have been needless, and it shares the same disconnection from the existence of a §2255 claim as the Government’s view of the relevant “facts,” see supra, at 305-306. If we picked the third date, collateral litigation would be minimized, but finality would come late. This shapes up as a case for choosing the bowl of porridge between the one too hot and the one too cold, and settling on the date of judgment as the moment to activate due diligence seems best to reflect the statutory text and its underlying concerns. After the entry of judgment, the subject of the § 2255 claim has come into being, the significance of inaction is clear, and very little litigation would be wasted, since most challenged federal convictions are in fact sustained.
The dissent, like Johnson, would dispense with any due diligence requirement in seeking the state vacatur order itself, on the ground that the States can impose their own limitations periods on state collateral attacks, as most States do, post, at 316 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). But the United States has an interest in the finality of sentences imposed by its own courts; §2255 is, after all, concerned directly with federal cases. As to those federal cases, due diligence is not a “requirement of [our] own design,” post, at 312, but an explicit demand in the text of § 2255, ¶ 6(4), one that reflects AEDPA’s core purposes, supra, at 307-308. The requirement of due diligence must therefore demand something more than the dissent’s willingness to accept no diligence at all, if the predicate conviction occurred in a State that itself imposes no limit of time for collaterally attacking its convictions.
The dissent suggests that due diligence is satisfied by-prompt discovery of the existence of the order vacating the state conviction. Post, at 314. Where one “discovers” a fact that one has helped to generate, however, supra, at 308-309, whether it be the result of a court proceeding or of some other process begun at the petitioner’s behest, it does not strain logic to treat required diligence in the “discovery” of that fact as entailing diligence in the steps necessary for the existence of that fact. To see why this is so, one need only consider a more commonplace use of the paragraph four limitation rule. When a petitioner bases his § 2255 claim on the result of a DNA test, it is the result of the test that is the “fac[t] supporting the claim” in the § 2255 motion, and the 1-year limitation period therefore begins to run from the date the test result is “discovered.” Yet unless it is to be read out of the statute, the due diligence requirement would say that the test result only triggers a new 1-year period if the petitioner began the testing process with reasonable promptness once the DNA sample and testing technology were available. Under the dissent’s view, however, the petitioner could wait untold years (perhaps until the death of a key prosecution witness) before calling for the DNA test, yet once he “discovered” the result of that test, he would get the benefit of a rejuvenated 1-year period regardless of his lengthy delay. Such a result simply cannot be squared with the statute’s plain text and purpose.
We accordingly apply the fourth paragraph in the situation before us by holding that from November 29, 1994, the date the District Court entered judgment in his federal case, Johnson was obliged to act diligently to obtain the state-court order vacating his predicate conviction. Had he done so, the 1-year limitation period would have run from the date he received notice of that vacatur.
II
Although Johnson knew that his conviction subjected him to the career offender enhancement, he failed to attack the predicate for enhancement by filing his state habeas petition until February 1998, more than three years after entry of judgment in the federal case. Indeed, even if we moved the burden of diligence ahead to the date of finality of the federal conviction or to AEDPA’s effective date two days later, Johnson would still have delayed unreasonably, having waited over 21 months. Johnson has offered no explanation for this delay, beyond observing that he was acting pro se and lacked the sophistication to understand the procedures. But we have never accepted pro se representation alone or procedural ignorance as an excuse for prolonged inattention when a statute’s clear policy calls for promptness, and on this record we think Johnson fell far short of reasonable diligence in challenging the state conviction. Since there is every reason to believe that prompt action would have produced a state vacatur order well over a year before he filed his § 2255 petition, the fourth paragraph of §2255 is unavailable, and Johnson does not suggest that his motion was timely under any other provision.
We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
The United States represents that Johnson specified invalid waiver of counsel in support of the claim. Brief for United States 7. The opinion of the Court of Appeals in Johnson’s direct appeal, cited as authority by the Government, indicates only that Johnson claimed invalid waiver of his constitutional rights. United States v. Johnson, No. 94-9402 (CA11, Dec. 22, 1995) (per curiam), App. 7, 8. While the Court of Appeals’ opinion in the instant case specified that Johnson claimed a violation of his right to counsel, 340 F. 3d 1219, 1221 (2003), we know of nothing in the record indicating that either party ever argued that his objection could have been litigated under the Gideon exception recognized in Custis v. United States, 511 U. S. 485 (1994), see infra, at 303.
April 25, 1997, is the date Johnson’s motion was stamped filed in the District Court. Johnson did not contend below, and nothing in the record indicates, that his motion should have been deemed filed on an earlier date by operation of the so-called prison mailbox rule, see Houston v. Lack, 487 U. S. 266 (1988).
Hindsight after Daniels v. United States, 532 U. S. 374 (2001), reveals that Johnson’s claim likely would have brought his challenge within the Gideon exception, entitling him to attack the state conviction collaterally in a timely §2255 motion after enhancement of his federal sentence, even without having first resorted to state court. See infra, at 304.
The Daniels Court allowed that “there may be rare cases in which no channel of review was actually available to a defendant with respect to a prior conviction, due to no fault of his own,” in which case a prisoner might be able to use a motion under § 2255 to challenge the prior conviction as well as the federal sentence based on it. 532 U. S., at 383-384. As in Daniels, the circumstances of this case do not call for further exploration of that possibility.
It is also doubtful that Congress meant the federal limitation period to begin running, let alone expire, at a time when a typical state convict will have no inducement under federal law to act. On the Government’s reading, in fact, a defendant could be obligated to act at a time when he had no real incentive for questioning the state conviction. Many of those convictions that in time become predicates for enhancing later sentences are, like the one here, the consequences of guilty pleas entered on terms defendants are willing to accept. Thus, a federal limitation rule obligating a defendant to turn around and attack a state guilty plea he has just entered would in practice place most predicate convictions beyond challenge as a matter of federal law.
At the time Johnson filed his state habeas petition, Georgia law would have permitted him to wait indefinitely before seeking reversal of his 1989 convictions. The Georgia Legislature amended the state habeas statute in 2004 to create a 4-year statute of limitations for petitions for writs of habeas corpus. Ga. Code Ann. § 9-14-42 (Lexis Supp. 2004).
Certainly, as the dissent notes, post, at 318-319, “due diligence” is an inexact measure of how much delay is too much. But the imprecision here is no greater than elsewhere in the law when diligence must be shown, and the statute’s use of an imprecise standard is no justification for depriving the statutory language of any meaning independent of corresponding state law, as the dissent would have us do. Post, at 319.
Once a petitioner diligently has initiated state-court proceedings, any delay in those proceedings that is not attributable to the petitioner will not impair the availability of the paragraph four limitation rule, once those proceedings finally conclude. We further recognize that the facts underlying the challenge to the state-court conviction might themselves not be discoverable through the exercise of due diligence until after the date of the federal judgment. In such circumstances, once the facts become discoverable and the prisoner proceeds diligently to state court, the limitation period will run from the date of notice of the eventual state-court vacatur. Finally, we note that a petitioner who has been inadequately diligent can still avail himself of paragraph four if he can show that he filed the §2255 motion within a year of the date he would have received notice of vacatur if he had acted promptly, though this may be a difficult showing.
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 petition for writ of certiorari is' granted. In view of the representations in the Solicitor General’s brief on pages 7 and 8, concerning testimony given before the Subcommittee of Legislative Oversight of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce subsequent to the decision by the Court of Appeals in this case, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals for such action as it may deem appropriate.
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.
The petitioners were convicted in the Recorder’s Court of the City of Greenville, South Carolina, for violating the trespass statute of that State. Each was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 or in lieu thereof to serve 30 days in jail. An appeal to the Greenville County Court was dismissed, and the Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed. 239 S. C. 298, 122 S. E. 2d 826. We granted certiorari to consider the substantial federal questions presented by the record. 370 U. S. 935.
The 10 petitioners are Negro boys and girls who, on August 9, 1960, entered the S. H. Kress store in Green-, ville and seated themselves at the lunch counter for the purpose, as they testified, of being served. When the Kress manager. observed the petitioners sitting at the counter, he “had one of [his] . . . employees call the Police Department and turn the lights off and state the lunch counter was closed.” A captain of police and two other officers responded by proceeding to the store in a patrol car where they were met by other policemen and two state agents who had preceded them there. In the presence of the police and the state agents, the manager “announced that the lunch counter was being closed and would everyone leave” the area. The petitioners, who had been sitting at the counter for five minutes, remained seated and were promptly, arrested. The boys were searched, and both boys and girls were taken to police headquarters.
The manager of the store did not request the police to arrest petitioners; he asked them to leave because integrated service was “contrary to local customs” of segregation. at lunch counters and in violation of the following Greenville City ordinance requiring separation of the races in restaurants:
“It shall be unlawful for any person owning, managing or controlling any hotel, restaurant, cafe, eating house, boarding-house or similar establishment to furnish meals to white persons and colored persons in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter; provided, however, that meals may be served to white persons and colored persons in the same room where separate facilities are furnished. Separate facilities shall be interpreted to mean:
“(a) Separate eating utensils and separate dishes for the serving of food, all of which shall be distinctly marked by some appropriate color scheme or otherwise;
“(b) Separate tables, counters or booths;
“(c) Á distance of at least thirty-five feet shall be maintained between the area where white and colored persons are served;
“(d) The area referred to iii subsection (c) above shall not be vacant, but shall be occupied by the usual display counters and merchandise found.in a business concern of a similar nature ;
“(e) A separate facility shall be maintained and used for the cleaning of eating utensils and dishes furnished the two races.” Code of Greenville, 1953, as amended in 1958, § 31-8.
The manager and the police conceded that the petitioners were clean, well dressed, unoffensive in conduct, and that they sat quietly at the counter which was designed' to accommodate 59 persons. The manager described his establishment as a national chain store of 15 or 20 departments, selling over 10,000 items. He stated that the general public was invited to do business at the store and that the patronage of Negroes was solicited in all departments of the store other than the lunch counter.
Petitioners maintain that South Carolina has denied them rights of free speech, both because their activity was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments and because the trespass statute did not require a showing that the Kress manager gave them notice of his authority when he asked them to leave. Petitioners also assert that they have been deprived of the equal protection of the laws- secured to them against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment. We need decide only the last of the questions thus raised.
The evidence in this case establishes beyond doubt that the Kress management’s decision to exclude petitioners from the lunch counter was made because they were Negroes. It cannot be disputed that under our decisions “private conduct abridging individual rights does no violence to the Equal Protection Clause unless to some significant extent the State in any of its manifestations has been found to have become involved in it.” Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S. 715, 722; Turner v. City of Memphis, 369 U. S. 350.
It cannot be denied that here the City of Greenville, an agency of the State, has provided by its ordinance that the decision as to whether a restaurant facility is to be operated, on a desegregated basis is to be reserved to it. When the State has commanded a particular result, it has saved to itself the power to determine that result and thereby "to a significant extent” has "become involved” in it, and, in fact, has removed that decision from the sphere of private choice. It has thus effectively determined that a person owning, managing or controlling ail eating place is left with no choice of his own but must segregate his white, and Negro patrons. The Kress management, in deciding to exclude Negroes, did precisely what the city law required.
Consequently these convictions cannot stand,.even assuming, as respondent contends, that the manager would have acted as he did independently of the existence of the ordinance. The State will not be heard to make this contention in support of the convictions; For'the convictions had the effect, which the State cannot deny, of enforcing the ordinance passed by the City of Greenville, the agency of the State.' When a state agency passes a law compelling persons to discriminate against other persons because of race, and the State’s criminal processes are employed in a way which enforcés the discrimination mandated by that law, such a palpable violation of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot be saved by attempting to separate the mental urges of the discriminators.
Reversed.
S. C. Code, 1952 (Cum. Supp. 1960), § 16-388:
“Entering premises after warned not to do so or failing to leave after requested.
“Any person:’
“(1) Who without legal cause or good excuse enters into the dwelling house, place of business or on the premises of another person, after having been warned, within six months, preceding, not to do so or
“ (2) Who, having entered into the dwelling house, place of business or on the premises of another person without having been warned within six months not to do so, and fails and refuses, without good cause or excuse, to leave immediately upon being ordered or requested to do so by the person in possession, - or his agent or representative,
“Shall, on conviction, be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for not more than thirty days.”
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.
In Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 867 (1988), and McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433 (1990), this Court held invalid capital sentencing schemes that require juries to disregard mitigating factors not found unanimously. In this case, we must determine whether the rule announced , in Mills and McKoy can be applied on federal habeas corpus review to a defendant whose conviction became final in 1987. Under our retroactivity analysis as set forth in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), federal habeas corpus petitioners may not avail themselves of new rules of criminal procedure outside two narrow exceptions. We conclude that Mills announced a new rule that does not. fall within either of Teague’s exceptions.
I
More than 20 years ago, a jury convicted respondent, George Banks, of 12 counts of first-degree murder, and the trial court sentenced him to death. The facts of this case are set forth in detail in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision affirming respondent’s conviction and sentence on direct review. See Commonwealth v. Banks, 513 Pa. 318, 521 A. 2d 1 (1987). Direct review ended when this Court denied certiorari on October 5, 1987. Banks v. Pennsylvania, 484 U. S. 873. Approximately eight months later, this Court handed down its decision in Mills, supra, which announced that the Constitution forbids States from imposing a requirement that the jury find a potential mitigating factor unanimously before that factor may be considered in the sentencing decision.
Respondent pursued state postconviction relief on the theory that the instructions and verdict form given to the jury in his case violated the Mills principle, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected this claim on the merits. See Commonwealth v. Banks, 540 Pa. 143, 656 A. 2d 467 (1995). Respondent then turned to the federal courts. Although the District Court denied relief, Banks v. Horn, 63 F. Supp. 2d 525 (MD Pa. 1999), the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed respondent’s death sentence, Banks v. Horn, 271 F. 3d 527 (2001). In reaching its decision, the Court of Appeals declined to apply the retroactivity analysis set forth in Teague v. Lane, supra, to the question whether Mills applied retroactively to respondent. This was not necessary, in the Court of Appeals’ view, because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had itself applied Mills. 271 F. 3d, at 543. We summarily reversed, holding that “in addition to performing any analysis required by AEDPA [the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996], a federal court considering a habeas petition must conduct a threshold Teague analysis when the issue is properly raised by the state.” Horn v. Banks, 536 U. S. 266, 272 (2002) (per curiam) (Banks I):
On remand, the Court of Appeals considered the retroactive application of Mills. Banks v. Horn, 316 F. 3d 228 (CA3 2003). The court recognized that its primary task was to determine whether Mills announced a new rule, and that this, in turn, required it to ascertain whether the precedent existing at the time respondent’s conviction became final dictated or compelled the rule in Mills. 316 F. 3d, at 233-235. From this Court’s decisions in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), and their direct progeny, the Court of Appeals distilled the rule that the “Eighth Amendment prohibits any barrier to the sen-tencer’s consideration of mitigating evidence.” 316 F. 3d, at 289. The Court of Appeals characterized this Court’s decision in Mills as “merely recognizing] that the perceived need for unanimity could constitute one such unconstitutional barrier,” and concluded that the existing legal landscape compelled the decision in Mills. 316 F. 3d, at 240. Accordingly, the court held that Mills applied retroactively to respondent and reinstated the remainder of its previous opinion, again granting respondent relief from his death sentence.
We granted the Commonwealth’s second petition for certiorari in this case to decide whether Mills applies retroactively to respondent and, if so, whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unreasonably applied federal law in holding that there was no Mills error in respondent’s case. 539 U. S. 987 (2003). Although the Lockett/Eddings line of cases supports the Court’s decision in Mills, it does not compel that decision. Mills therefore announced a new rule. We are also unable to conclude that the Mills rule falls under either Teague exception. In particular, Mills did not announce a “watershed rul[e] of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 495 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we again reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
II
Under Teague, the determination whether a constitutional rule of criminal procedure applies to a case on collateral review involves a three-step process. See, e. g., Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 527 (1997). First, the court must determine when the defendant’s conviction became final. Second, it must ascertain the “legal landscape as it then existed,” Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 468 (1993), and ask whether the Constitution, as interpreted by the precedent then existing, compels the rule, Saffle, supra, at 488. That is, the court must decide whether the rule is actually “new.” Finally, if the rule is new, the court must consider whether it falls within either of the two exceptions to nonretroactivity. Lambrix, supra, at 527.
A
Ordinarily, ascertaining the date on which a defendant’s conviction becomes final poses no difficulties: State convictions are final “for purposes of retroactivity analysis when the availability of direct appeal to the state courts has been exhausted and the time for filing a petition for a writ of certiorari has elapsed or a timely filed petition has been finally denied.” Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U. S. 383, 390 (1994). See also Clay v. United States, 537 U. S. 522, 527 (2003). Respondent, however, urges a different rule. He argues that in view of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s unique “relaxed waiver rule” — pursuant to which that court considered his Mills claim on the merits — his conviction became final for Teague purposes in 1995 when the State Supreme Court decided the Mills claim against him. Brief for Respondent 25-31. Because of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s practice of considering forfeited claims in capital cases, respondent insists, “conventional notions of ‘finality’” do not apply. Id., at 27.
In the past, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did, in fact, apply a “relaxed waiver rule” in death penalty cases. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. DeHart, 539 Pa. 5, 25, 650 A. 2d 38, 48 (1994); Commonwealth v. Billa, 521 Pa. 168, 181, 555 A. 2d 835, 842 (1989). But this practice, which the court has abandoned, see Commonwealth v. Albrecht, 554 Pa. 31, 44-46, 720 A. 2d 693, 700 (1998), “was not absolute, but discretionary,” Commonwealth v. Freeman, 573 Pa. 532, 557, n. 9, 827 A. 2d 385, 400, n. 9 (2003) (describing past practice). Notably, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has expressly stated, in a capital case, that it would decline to apply Mills retroactively. Commonwealth v. Peterkin, 538 Pa. 455, 465, n. 4, 649 A. 2d 121, 126, n. 4 (1994).
A state court’s past discretionary “‘practice’ [of] declining] to apply ordinary waiver principles in capital cases,” Albrecht, supra, at 44, 720 A. 2d, at 700, does not render convictions and sentences that are no longer subject to direct review nonfinal for Teague purposes. Such a judgment is “final” despite the possibility that a state court might, in its discretion, decline to enforce an available procedural bar and choose to apply a new rule of law. Cf. Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 81-91 (1977).
Respondent’s argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Teague. Teague's nonretroactivity principle acts as a limitation on the power of federal courts to grant “ha-beas corpus relief to . . . state prisoner[s].” Caspari, 510 U. S., at 389. That is why federal habeas corpus courts “must apply Teague before considering the merits of [a] claim,” ibid., whenever the State raises the question, a point we explained in Banks I, see 536 U. S., at 271. See also id., at 271-272 (explaining that the Court of Appeals had erred by focusing only on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s treatment of respondent’s Mills claim).
This should make clear that the Teague principle protects not only the reasonable judgments of state courts but also the States’ interest in finality quite apart from their courts. As Teague explained:
“In many ways the application of new rules to eases on collateral review may be more intrusive than the enjoining of criminal prosecutions, cf. Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 43-54 (1971), for it continually forces the States to marshal resources in order to keep in prison defendants whose trials and appeals conformed to then-existing constitutional standards.” 489 U. S., at 310.
In short, our rule for determining when a state conviction becomes final applies to this case without modification, and we agree with the Court of Appeals that respondent’s conviction became final in 1987. See 316 F. 3d, at 235.
B
We must therefore assay the legal landscape as of 1987 and ask “whether the rule later announced in [Mills] was dictated by then-existing precedent — whether, that is, the unlawfulness of [respondent’s] conviction was apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix, supra, at 527-528. In Mills, the Court held that the Constitution prohibits States from requiring jurors to find mitigating factors unanimously. McKoy, 494 U. S., at 444; Mills, 486 U. S., at 374-375; id., at 384 (vacating death sentence because the jury instructions gave rise to a “substantial probability that reasonable jurors ... may have thought they were precluded from considering any mitigating evidence” not found unanimously).
In reaching its conclusion, the Court in Mills and McKoy relied on a line of cases beginning with Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978) (plurality opinion), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982). In Lockett, a plurality of the Court struck down Ohio’s death penalty statute because it prevented the sentencer from “considering, as a mitigating factor,”, certain “aspect[s] of a defendant’s character or record and [certain] circumstances of the offense that the defendant profferfed] as a basis for a sentence less than.death.” 438 U. S., at 604. A majority of the Court first embraced this principle in Eddings. There, the Court confronted a situation in which the sentencer had found, “as a matter of law [that it] was unable even to consider [potentially mitigating] evidence.” 455 U. S., at 113. The Court held that this limitation violated the Lockett rule. 455 U. S., at 113-115. See also Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1, 4, 8-9 (1986) (holding that States cannot, through evidentiary rules, exclude relevant mitigating evidence from the sentencer’s consideration).
In Mills, the Court noted that its previous eases did not depend on the source of the potential barrier to the sen-tencer’s ability to consider mitigating evidence. 486 U. S., at 375. The Court then asserted that “[t]he same [rule must apply] with respect to a single juror’s holdout vote against finding the presence of a mitigating circumstance.” Ibid. See also McKoy, supra, at 441-443 (quoting Mills and performing the same analysis).
The generalized Lockett rule (that the sentencer must be allowed to consider any mitigating evidence) could be thought to support the Court’s conclusion in Mills and McKoy. But what is essential here is that it does not mandate the Mills rule. Each of the eases relied on by Mills (and McKoy) specifically considered only obstructions to the sentencer’s ability to consider mitigating evidence. Mills’ innovation rests with its shift in focus to individual jurors. We think it clear that reasonable jurists could have differed as to whether the Lockett principle compelled Mills. See Lambrix, 520 U S., at 527-528.
But there is no need to guess. In Mills, four Justices dissented, reasoning that because nothing prevented the jurors from hearing any mitigating evidence that the defendant proffered, the Lockett principle did not control. 486 U. S., at 394 (opinion of Rehnquist, C. J.). In McKoy, three Justices dissented, explaining that “‘the principle established in Lockett does not remotely support” the new focus on individual jurors. 494 U. S., at 464 (opinion of Scalia, J.); see id., at 466 (“In short, Lockett and Eddings are quite simply irrelevant to the question before us . . .”); see also id., at 452-453 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that the Court “stretche[d]” the Lockett cases “beyond their proper bounds”). The dissent in McKoy stressed the Court’s move from jury to juror. See 494 U. S., at 465-466 (opinion of Scalia, J.). Indeed, prior to Mills, none of the Court’s relevant cases addressed individual jurors, see, e. g., Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393 (1987), a trend that continued even after Mills, see, e. g., Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484 (1990); Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989); Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U. S. 164 (1988).
The McKoy dissent also explained that the Mills rule governs how the sentencer considers evidence, not what evidence it considers. In the dissent’s view, the Lockett line governed the latter but not the former. See 494 U. S., at 465-466 (opinion of Scalia, J.). For this distinction, the dissent relied on Saffle v. Parks, supra, decided the same day. There, the Court held that the Lockett line of cases did not compel (assuming it informed) the sought-for rule that States may not “instruct the sentencer to render its decision on the evidence without sympathy.” 494 U. S., at 490. The Court observed:
“Parks asks us to create a rule relating, not to what mitigating evidence the jury must be permitted to consider in making its sentencing decision, but to how it must consider the mitigating evidence. There is a simple and logical difference between rules that govern what factors the jury must be permitted to consider in making its sentencing decision and rules that govern how the State may guide the jury in considering and weighing those factors in reaching a decision.” Ibid.
Thus, although the Lockett principle — conceived of at a high level of generality — could be thought to support the Mills rule, reasonable jurists differed even as to this point. It follows a fortiori that reasonable jurists could have concluded that the Lockett line of cases did not compel Mills Given the brand new attention Mills paid to individual jurors and the relevance of the what/how distinction drawn in Saffle (which again distinguishes Mills from the Lockett line), we must conclude that the Mills rule “br[o]k[e] new ground,” Teague, 489 U. S., at 301. Accordingly, Mills announced a new rule, which does not apply to respondent on collateral review, unless, of course, it falls under one of Teague's exceptions.
C
Teague's bar on retroactive application of new rules of constitutional criminal procedure has two exceptions. First, the bar does not apply to rules forbidding punishment “of certain primary conduct [or to] rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense.” Penry, supra, at 330; see also O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U. S. 151, 157 (1997). There is no argument that this exception applies here. The second exception is for “ ‘watershed rules of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding/ ” Ibid, (quoting Graham, 506 U. S., at 478).
We have repeatedly emphasized the limited scope of the second Teague exception, explaining that “‘it is clearly meant to apply only to a small core of rules requiring observance of those procedures that... are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty/ ” O’Dell, supra, at 157 (quoting Graham, supra, at 478). And, because any qualifying rule “‘would be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or guilt [that it is] unlikely that many such components of basic due process have yet to emerge/” Graham, supra, at 478 (quoting Teague, supra, at 313), it should come as no surprise that we have yet to find a new rule that falls under the second Teague exception. Perhaps for this reason, respondent does not even attempt to argue that Mills qualifies or to rebut petitioners’ argument that it does not, Brief for Petitioners 23-26.
In providing guidance as to what might fall within this exception, we have repeatedly referred to the rule of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963) (right to counsel), and only to this rule. See, e. g., Saffle, supra, at 495; cf. Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U. S. 333, 364 (1993) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). Gideon overruled Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455 (1942), noting that Betts itself had “made an abrupt break with [the Court’s] well-considered precedents.” 372 U. S., at 344. The Court continued:
“Lawyers to prosecute are everywhere deemed essential to protect the public’s interest in an orderly society. Similarly, there are few defendants charged with crime, few indeed, who fail to hire the best lawyers they can get to prepare and present their defenses. That government hires lawyers to prosecute and defendants who have the money hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries. 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. From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
See also id., at 344-345 (quoting Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 68-69 (1932)). Gideon, it is fair to say, “alter[ed] our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements essential to the fairness of a proceeding.” Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 242 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted).
By contrast, we have not hesitated to hold that less sweeping and fundamental rules do not fall within Teague’s second exception. In O’Dell v. Netherland, supra, for example, we considered the retroactivity of the rule announced in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154 (1994). Simmons held that a capital defendant must be allowed to inform the sentencer that he would be ineligible for parole if the prosecution argues future dangerousnéss. We rejected the petitioner’s argument that the Simmons rule was “‘on par’ with Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963),” emphasizing “the sweeping [nature] of Gideon, which established an affirmative right to counsel in all felony cases.” O’Dell, supra, at 167.
And, in Sawyer v. Smith, supra, we considered whether a habeas petitioner could make use of the rule announced in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320, 323 (1985) (holding that the Eighth Amendment bars imposition of the death penalty by a jury that had been led to believe that responsibility for the ultimate decision rested elsewhere). There too we declined to give retroactive effect to a rule that effectively withheld relevant information from the sentences See Sawyer, supra, at 242-245. We acknowledged that the Caldwell rule was intended to enhance “the accuracy of capital sentencing.” 497 U. S., at 244. But because it effected an incremental change, we could not conclude that “this systemic rule enhancing reliability is an ‘absolute prerequisite to fundamental fairness.’ ” Ibid, (quoting Teague, 489 U. S., at 314). See also Graham, supra, at 478 (concluding that the rule announced in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989), does not fall within the second Teague exception).
We recognize that avoidance of potentially arbitrary impositions of the death sentence motivated the Court in Mills and McKoy. Mills described two troubling situations that could theoretically occur absent the Mills rule. Eleven of twelve jurors, could, for example, agree that six mitigating circumstances existed, but one holdout juror could nevertheless force the death sentence. Similarly, all 12 jurors could agree that some mitigating circumstances existed and that these outweighed any aggravators, but because they did not agree on which mitigating circumstances were present, they would again have to return a death sentence. See Mills, 486 U. S., at 373-374; see also McKoy, 494 U. S., at 439-440 (describing these examples). Imposition of the death penalty in these circumstances, the Court reasoned, “would be the ‘height of arbitrariness.’” Id., at 440 (quoting Mills, supra, at 374). See also McKoy, supra, at 454 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).
Quite obviously, the Court decided Mills and McKoy as it did to avoid this possibility. But because “[a]ll of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence concerning capital sentencing is directed toward the enhancement of reliability and accuracy in some sense,” the fact that a new rule removes some remote possibility of arbitrary infliction of the death sentence does not suffice to bring it within Teague’s second exception. Sawyer, supra, at 243.
However laudable the Mills rule might be, “it has none of the primacy and centrality of the rule adopted in Gideon.” Saffle, 494 U. S., at 495. The Mills rule applies fairly narrowly and works no fundamental shift in “our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements” essential to fundamental fairness. O’Dell, 521 U. S., at 167 (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore conclude that the Mills rule does not fall within the second Teague exception.
m
We hold that Mills announced a new rule of constitutional criminal procedure that falls within neither Teague exception. Accordingly, that rule cannot be applied retroactively to respondent. 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.
Judge Sloviter wrote separately to express her view that Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 367 (1988), established a new rule that qualified for neither Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), exception. 316 F. 3d 228, 253-254 (CA3 2003) (opinion concurring in judgment). Judge Sloviter nevertheless posited that Mills could be applied to respondent because of Pennsylvania’s “unique relaxed waiver doctrine in capital cases.” 316 F. 3d, at 256.
Given our determination that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that Mills applied retroactively to respondent, we do not reach the question whether the Court of Appeals also erred in concluding that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unreasonably applied Mills.
Rules that fall within what we have referred to as Teague’s first exception “are more accurately characterized as substantive rules not subject to [Teague’s] bar.” Schriro v. Summerlin, ante, at 352, n. 4. See also infra, at 416, and n. 7.
Although nothing in this case turns on. it, we note that it is arguable that the “Mills rule” did not fully emerge until the Court issued McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433 (1990). See id., at 459-463 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
Because the focus of the inquiry is whether reasonable jurists could differ as to whether precedent compels the sought-for rule, we do not suggest that the mere existence of a dissent suffices to show that the rule is new.
The Court of Appeals erred by drawing from Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), the general rule that “the Constitution prohibited any barrier to the jury’s consideration of mitigating evidence,” 316 F. 3d, at 241-243 (emphasis added), without also acknowledging that the rule, for purposes of the Teague analysis, did not automatically extend to arguably analogous contexts. It is with respect to this last point that reasonable jurists did in fact differ.
As noted above, these rules are more properly viewed as substantive and therefore not subject to Teague’s bar. See n. 3, 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
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Pee Cubiam.
The question here is whether petitioner’s complaint stated a claim upon which relief could be granted. Petitioner is engaged at Lombard, Illinois, in the manufacture and sale in interstate commerce of a ceramic gas burner, known as the “Radiant Burner,” for the heating of houses and other buildings. Claiming that American Gas Association, Inc. (AGA), a membership corporation doing business in the Northern District of Illinois and in other States, and 10 of its numerous members who also are doing business in the Northern District of Illinois, combined and conspired to restrain interstate commerce in the manufacture, sale and use of gas burners in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act, petitioner brought this action against those parties for treble damages and an injunction in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The complaint included the following allegations: American Gas Association operates testing laboratories wherein it purports to determine the safety, utility and durability of gas burners. It has adopted a “seal of approval” which it affixes on such gas burners as it determines have passed its tests. Its tests are not based on “objective standards,” but are influenced by respondents, some of whom are in competition with petitioner, and thus its determinations can be made “arbitrarily and capriciously.” Petitioner has twice submitted its Radiant Burner to AGA for approval but it has not been approved, although it is safer and more efficient than, and just as durable as, gas burners which AGA has approved. “[B]ecause AGA and its Utility members, including Peoples and Northern, effectuate the plan and purpose of the unlawful combination and conspiracy alleged herein by . . . refusing to provide gas for use in the plaintiff’s Radiant Burner [s] . . . which are not approved by AGA,” petitioner’s gas burners have been effectively excluded from the market, as its potential customers will not buy gas burners for which they cannot obtain gas, and in consequence petitioner has suffered and is suffering the loss of substantial profits.
Respondents moved to dismiss for failure of the complaint to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The District Court granted the motions, dismissed the complaint and entered judgment for respondents. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed. 273 F. 2d 196. It stated that “No boycott, conspiracy to boycott or other form of per se violation is established by the facts alleged” (id., at 199), and that “[i]n the absence of a per se violation the Sherman Act protects the individual injured competitor and affords him relief, but only under circumstances where there is such general injury to the competitive process that the public at large suffers economic harm.” Id., at 200. It held that public injury was not alleged since “[t]he allegations of the plaintiff’s complaint fail to establish that there has been any appreciable lessening in the sale of conversion gas burners or gas furnaces or that the public has been deprived of a product of over-all superiority.” Id., at 200. Because of petitioner’s claim that this holding is contrary to-controlling decisions of this Court, we granted certiorari. 363 U. S. 809.
We think the decision of the Court of Appeals does not accord with our recent decision in Klor’s, Inc., v. Broadway-Hale Stores, 359 U. S. 207. The allegation in the complaint that “AGA and its Utility members, including Peoples and Northern, effectuate the plan and purpose of the unlawful combination and conspiracy . . . by . . . refusing to provide gas for use in the plaintiff’s Radiant Burner [s] ” because they “are not approved by AGA” clearly shows “one type of trade restraint and public harm the Sherman Act forbids . . . .” Id., at 210. It is obvious that petitioner cannot sell its gas burners, whatever may be their virtues, if, because of the alleged conspiracy, the purchasers cannot buy gas for use in those burners. The conspiratorial refusal “to provide gas for use in the plaintiff’s Radiant Burner [s] [because they] are not approved by AGA” therefore falls within one of the “classes of restraints which from their 'nature or character’ [are] unduly restrictive, and hence forbidden by both the common law and the statute. ... As to these classes of restraints . . . Congress [has] determined its own criteria of public harm and it [is] not for the courts to decide whether in an individual case injury [has] actually occurred.” Id,., at 211. The alleged conspiratorial refusal to provide gas for use in plaintiff’s Radiant Burners “interferes with the natural flow of interstate commerce [and] clearly has, by its ‘nature’ and ‘character,’ a ‘monopolistic tendency.’ As such it is not to be tolerated merely because the victim is just one [manufacturer] whose business is so small that his destruction makes little difference to the economy.” Id., at 213.
By § 1, Congress has made illegal: “Every contract, combination ... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States . . . .” Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1. Congress having thus prescribed the criteria of the prohibitions, the courts may not expand them. Therefore, to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under that section, allegations adequate- to show a violation and, in a private treble damage action,- that plaintiff was damaged thereby are all the law requires.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the cause is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed.
Of the 10 members of AGA who were joined with it as defendants, two are-public utilities engaged in the distribution of gas in the Northern District of Illinois, namely, The Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company and Northern Illinois Gas Company; two are pipeline companies engaged in transporting natural gas in interstate commerce into the Northern District of Illinois, namely, Natural Gas Pipeline of America and Texas-Illinois Natural Gas Co.; the other six are manufacturers of gas burners, namely, Autogas Company, Crown Stove Works, • Florence Stove Company, Gas Appliance Service, Inc., Norge Sales Corporation, and Sellers Engineering Company.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act provides: “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal . . . .”
Section 4 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, 15 U. S. C. § 15, states, “Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor . . . and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained . . . .”
Section 16 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 737, 15 U. S. C. § 26, states, “Any person, firm, corporation, or association shall be entitled to sue for and have injunctive relief, in any court of the United States having jurisdiction over the parties, against threatened loss or damage by a violation of the antitrust laws
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
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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
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas join.
We consider in this case whether the Due Process Clause is violated by Montana Code Annotated §45-2-203, which provides, in relevant part, that voluntary intoxication “may not be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of [a criminal] offense.”
I
In July 1992, while camping out m the Yaak region of northwestern Montana to pick mushrooms, respondent made friends with Roberta Pavola and John Christenson, who were doing the same. On Sunday, July 12, the three sold the mushrooms they had collected and spent the rest of the day and evening drinking, in bars and at a private party in Troy, Montana. Some time after 9 p.m., they left the party in Christenson’s 1974 Ford Galaxy station wagon. The drinking binge apparently continued, as respondent was seen buying beer at 9:20 p.m. and recalled “sitting on a hill or a bank passing a bottle of Black Velvet back and forth” with Christenson. 272 Mont. 114, 118, 900 P. 2d 260, 262 (1995).
At about midnight that night, officers of the Lincoln County, Montana, sheriff’s department, responding to reports of a possible drunk driver, discovered Christenson’s station wagon stuck in a ditch along U. S. Highway 2. In the front seat were Pavola and Christenson, each dead from a single gunshot to the head. In the rear of the car lay respondent, alive and yelling obscenities. His blood-alcohol content measured.36 percent over one hour later. On the floor of the car, near the brake pedal, lay respondent’s.38-caliber handgun, with four loaded rounds and two empty casings; respondent had gunshot residue on his hands.
Respondent was charged with two counts of deliberate homicide, a crime defined by Montana law as “purposely” or “knowingly” causing the death of another human being. Mont. Code Ann. §45-5-102 (1995). A portion of the jury charge, uncontested here, instructed that “[a] person acts purposely when it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result,” and that “[a] person acts knowingly when he is aware of his conduct or when he is aware under the circumstances his conduct constitutes a crime; or, when he is aware there exists the high probability that his conduct will cause a specific result.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 28a-29a. Respondent’s defense at trial was that an unidentified fourth person must have committed the murders; his own extreme intoxication, he claimed, had rendered him physically incapable of committing the murders, and accounted for his inability to recall the events of the night of July 12. Although respondent was allowed to make this use of the evidence that he was intoxicated, the jury was instructed, pursuant to Mont. Code Ann. §45-2-203 (1995), that it could not consider respondent’s “intoxicated condition... in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 29a. The jury found respondent guilty on both counts, and the court sentenced him to 84 years’ imprisonment.
The Supreme Court of Montana reversed. It reasoned (1) that respondent “had a due process right to present and have considered by the jury all relevant evidence to rebut the State’s evidence on all elements of the offense charged,” 272 Mont., at 125, 900 P. 2d, at 266, and (2) that evidence of respondent’s voluntary intoxication was “clear[ly]... relevant to the issue of whether [respondent] acted knowingly and purposely,” id., at 122, 900 P. 2d, at 265. Because § 45-2-203 prevented the jury from considering that evidence with regard to that issue, the court concluded that the State had been “relieved of part of its burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged,” id., at 124, 900 P. 2d, at 266, and that respondent had therefore been denied due process. We granted certio-rari. 516 U. S. 1021 (1995).
HH
The cornerstone of the Montana Supreme Court s judgment was the proposition that the Due Process Clause guarantees a defendant the light to present and have considered by the jury “all relevant evidence to rebut the State’s evidence on all elements of the offense charged.” 272 Mont., at 125, 900 P. 2d, at 266 (emphasis added). Respondent does not defend this categorical rule; he acknowledges that the right to present relevant evidence “has not been viewed as absolute.” Brief for Respondent 31. That is a wise concession, since the proposition that the Due Process Clause guarantees the right to introduce all relevant evidence is simply indefensible. As we have said: “The accused does not have an unfettered right to offer [evidence] that is incompetent, privileged, or otherwise inadmissible under standard rules of evidence.” Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U. S. 400, 410 (1988). Relevant evidence may, for example, be excluded on account of a defendant’s failure to comply with procedural requirements. See Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U. S. 145, 151 (1991). And any number of familiar and unquestionably constitutional evidentiary rules also authorize the exclusion of relevant evidence. For example, Federal (and Montana) Rule of Evidence 403 provides: “Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if 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.” (Emphasis added.) Hearsay rules, see Fed. Rule Evid. 802, similarly prohibit the introduction of testimony which, though unquestionably relevant, is deemed insufficiently reliable. Of course, to say that the right to introduce relevant evidence is not absolute is not to say that the Due Process Clause places no limits upon restriction of that right. But it is to say that the defendant asserting such a limit must sustain the usual heavy burden that a due process claim entails:
“[Preventing and dealing with crime is much more the business of the States than it is of the Federal Government, and... we should not lightly construe the Constitution so as to intrude upon the administration of justice by the individual States. Among other things, it is normally ‘within the power of the State to regulate procedures under which its laws are carried out,’... and its decision in this regard is not subject to proscription under the Due Process Clause unless ‘it offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.’ ” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 201-202 (1977) (citations omitted).
See also Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U. S. 348, 355 (1996) (applying Patterson test); Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422, 438, n. 6 (1983) (“[T]he Due Process Clause does not permit the federal courts to engage in a finely tuned review of the wisdom of state evidentiary rules”). Respondent’s task, then, is to establish that a defendant’s right to have a jury consider evidence of his voluntary intoxication in determining whether he possesses the requisite mental state is a “fundamental principle of justice.”
Our primary guide in determining whether the principle in question is fundamental is, of course, historical practice. See Medina v. California, 505 U. S. 437, 446 (1992). Here that gives respondent little support. By the laws of England, wrote Hale, the intoxicated defendant “shall have no privilege by this voluntary contracted madness, but shall have the same judgment as if he were in his right senses.” 1 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown *32-*33. According to Blackstone and Coke, the law’s condemnation of those suffering from dementia affectata was harsher still: Blackstone, citing Coke, explained that the law viewed intoxication “as an aggravation of the offence, rather than as an excuse for any criminal misbehaviour.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *25-*26. This stern rejection of inebriation as a defense became a fixture of early American law as well. The American editors of the 1847 edition of Hale wrote:
“Drunkenness, it was said in an early case, can never be received as a ground to excuse or palliate an offence: this is not merely the opinion of a speculative philosopher, the argument of counsel, or the obiter dictum of a single judge, but it is a sound and long established maxim of judicial policy, from which perhaps a single dissenting voice cannot be found. But if no other authority could be adduced, the uniform decisions of our own Courts from the first establishment of the government, would constitute it now a part of the common law of the land.” 1 Hale, supra, at *32, n. 3.
In an opinion citing the foregoing passages from Blackstone and Hale, Justice Story rejected an objection to the exclusion of evidence of intoxication as follows:
“This is the first time, that I ever remember it to have been contended, that the commission of one crime was an excuse for another. Drunkenness is a gross vice, and in the contemplation of some of our laws is a crime; and I learned in my earlier studies, that so far from its being in law an excuse for murder, it is rather an aggravation of its malignity.” United States v. Cornell, 25 F. Cas. 650, 657-658 (No. 14,868) (CC R. I. 1820).
The historical record does not leave room for the view that the common law’s rejection of intoxication as an “excuse” or “justification” for crime would nonetheless permit the defendant to show that intoxication prevented the requisite mens rea. Hale, Coke, and Blackstone were familiar, to say the least, with the concept of mens rea, and acknowledged that drunkenness “deprive[s] men of the use of reason,” 1 Hale, supra, at *32; see also Blackstone, supra, at *25. It is inconceivable that they did not realize that an offender’s drunkenness might impair his ability to form the requisite intent; and inconceivable that their failure to note this massive exception from the general rule of disregard of intoxication was an oversight. Hale’s statement that a drunken offender shall have the same judgment “as if he were in his right senses” must be understood as precluding a defendant from arguing that, because of his intoxication, he could not have possessed the mens rea required to commit the crime. And the same must be said of the exemplar of the common-law rule cited by both Hale and Blackstone, see 1 Hale, supra, at *32; Blackstone, supra, at *26, n. w, which is Ser-jeant Pollard’s argument to the King’s Bench in Reniger v. Fogossa, 1 Plowd. 1, 19, 75 Eng. Rep. 1, 31 (1550): “[I]f a person that is drunk kills another, this shall be Felony, and he shall be hanged for it, and yet he did it through Ignorance, for when he was drunk he had no Understanding nor Memory; but inasmuch as that Ignorance was occasioned by his own Act and Folly, and he might have avoided it, he shall not be privileged thereby.” (Emphasis added.) See also Beverley’s Case, 4 Co. Rep. 123b, 125a, 76 Eng. Rep. 1118, 1123 (K. B. 1603) (“although he who is drunk, is for the time non compos mentis, yet his drunkenness does not extenuate his act or offence, nor turn to his avail” (emphasis added) (footnote omitted)).
Against this extensive evidence of a lengthy common-law tradition decidedly against him, the best argument available to respondent is the one made by his amicus and conceded by the State: Over the course of the 19th century, courts carved out an exception to the common law’s traditional across-the-board condemnation of the drunken offender, allowing a jury to consider a defendant’s intoxication when assessing whether he possessed the mental state needed to commit the crime charged, where the crime was one requiring a “specific intent.” The emergence of this new rule is often traced to an 1819 English case, in which Justice Hol-royd is reported to have held that “though voluntary drunkenness cannot excuse from the commission of crime, yet where, as on a charge of murder, the material question is, whether an act was premeditated or done only with sudden heat and impulse, the fact of the party being intoxicated [is] a circumstance proper to be taken into consideration.” 1 W. Russell, Crimes and Misdemeanors *8 (citing King v. Grindley, Worcester Sum. Assizes 1819, MS). This exception was “slow to take root,” however, Hall, Intoxication and Criminal Responsibility, 57 Harv. L. Rev. 1045, 1049 (1944), even in England. Indeed, in the 1835 case of King v. Carroll, 7 Car. & P. 145, 147, 173 Eng. Rep. 64, 65 (N. P.), Justice Park claimed that Holroyd had “retracted his opinion” in Grind-ley, and said “there is no doubt that that case is not law.” In this country, as late as 1858 the Missouri Supreme Court could speak as categorically as this:
“To look for deliberation and forethought in a man maddened by intoxication is vain, for drunkenness has deprived him of the deliberating faculties to a greater or less extent; and if this deprivation is to relieve him of all responsibility or to diminish it, the great majority of crimes committed will go unpunished. This however is not the doctrine of the common law; and to its maxims, based as they obviously are upon true wisdom and sound policy, we must adhere.” State v. Cross, 27 Mo. 332, 338 (1858).
And as late as 1878, the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the giving of the following instruction at a murder trial:
“ ‘The voluntary intoxication of one who without provocation commits a homicide, although amounting to a frenzy, that is, although the intoxication amounts to a frenzy, does not excuse him from the same construction of his conduct, and the same legal inferences upon the question of premeditation and intent, as affecting the grade of his crime, which are applicable to a person entirely sober.”’ State v. Tatro, 50 Vt. 483, 487 (1878).
See also Harris v. United States, 8 App. D. C. 20, 26-30 (1896); Flanigan v. People, 86 N. Y. 554, 559-560 (1881); Commonwealth v. Hawkins, 69 Mass. 463, 466 (1855); State v. McCants, 1 Spears 384, 391-395 (S. C. 1842). Eventually, however, the new view won out, and by the end of the 19th century, in most American jurisdictions, intoxication could be considered in determining whether a defendant was capable of forming the specific intent necessary to commit the crime charged. See Hall, supra, at 1049; Hopt v. People, 104 U. S. 631, 633-634 (1882) (citing cases).
On the basis of this historical record, respondent’s amicus argues that “[t]he old common-law rule... was no longer deeply rooted at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.” Brief for National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae 23. That conclusion is questionable, but we need not pursue the point, since the argument of amicus mistakes the nature of our inquiry. It is not the State which bears the burden of demonstrating that its rule is “deeply rooted,” but rather respondent who must show that the principle of procedure violated by the rule (and allegedly required by due process) is “ ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.’ ” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S., at 202. Thus, even assuming that when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted the rule Montana now defends was no longer generally applied, this only cuts off what might be called an a fortiori argument in favor of the State. The burden remains upon respondent to show that the “new common-law” rule — that intoxication may be considered on the question of intent — was so deeply rooted at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment (or perhaps has become so deeply rooted since) as to be a fundamental principle which that Amendment enshrined.
That showing has not been made. Instead of the uniform and continuing acceptance we would expect for a rule that enjoys “fundamental principle” status, we find that fully one-fifth of the States either never adopted the “new common-law” rule at issue here or have recently abandoned it. Cf. Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U. S. 348 (1996) (finding due process violation in a rule having no common-law pedigree whatever, and adopted, very recently, by only four States). See also Martin v. Ohio, 480 U. S. 228, 236 (1987) (“We are aware that all but two of the States... have abandoned the common-law rule.... But the question remains whether those [two] States are in violation of the Constitution”).
It is not surprising that many States have held fast to or resurrected the common-law rule prohibiting consideration of voluntary intoxication in the determination of mens rea, because that rule has considerable justification — which alone casts doubt upon the proposition that the opposite rule is a “fundamental principle.” A large number of crimes, especially violent crimes, are committed by intoxicated offenders; modern studies put the numbers as high as half of all homicides, for example. See, e. g., Third Special Report to the U. S. Congress on Alcohol and Health from the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare 64 (1978); Note, Alcohol Abuse and the Law, 94 Harv. L. Rev. 1660, 1681-1682 (1981). Disallowing consideration of voluntary intoxication has the effect of increasing the punishment for all unlawful acts committed in that state, and thereby deters drunkenness or irresponsible behavior while drunk. The rule also serves as a specific deterrent, ensuring that those who prove incapable of controlling violent impulses while voluntarily intoxicated go to prison. And finally, the rule comports with and implements society’s moral perception that one who has voluntarily impaired his own faculties should be responsible for the consequences. See, e. g., McDaniel v. State, 356 So. 2d 1151, 1160-1161 (Miss. 1978).
There is, in modern times, even more justification for laws such as § 45-2-203 than there used to be. Some recent studies suggest that the, connection between drunkenness and crime is as much cultural as pharmacological — that is, that drunks are violent not simply because alcohol makes them that way, but because they are behaving in accord with their' learned belief that drunks are violent. See, e.g., Collins, Suggested Explanatory Frameworks to Clarify the Alcohol Use/Violence Relationship, 15 Contemp. Drug Prob. 107, 115 (1988); Critchlow, The Powers of John Barleycorn, 41 Am. Psychologist 751, 754-755 (July 1986). This not only adds additional support to the traditional view that an intoxicated criminal is not deserving of exoneration, but it suggests that juries — who possess the same learned belief as the intoxicated offender — will be too quick to accept the claim that the defendant was biologically incapable of forming the requisite mens rea. Treating the matter as one of excluding misleading evidence therefore makes some sense.
In sum, not every widespread experiment with a procedural rule favorable to criminal defendants establishes a fundamental principle of justice. Although the rule allowing a jury to consider evidence of a defendant’s voluntary intoxication where relevant to mens rea has gained considerable acceptance, it is of too recent vintage, and has not received sufficiently uniform and permanent allegiance, to qualify as fundamental, especially since it displaces a lengthy common-law tradition which remains supported by valid justifications today.
Ill
The Supreme Court of Montana’s conclusion that Mont. Code Ann. § 45-2-203 (1995) violates the Due Process Clause purported to rest on two lines of our jurisprudence. First, it derived its view that the Due Process Clause requires the admission of all relevant evidence from the statement in Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U. S. 284, 294 (1973), that “[t]he right of an accused in a criminal trial to due process is, in essence, the right to a fair opportunity to defend against the State’s accusations.” Respondent relies heavily on this statement, which he terms “the Chambers principle,” Brief for Respondent 30.
We held in Chambers that “the exclusion of [certain] critical evidence, coupled with the State’s refusal to permit [petitioner] to cross-examine McDonald, denied him a trial in accord with traditional and fundamental standards of due process.” 410 U. S., at 302. We continued, however:
“In reaching this judgment, we establish no new principles of constitutional law. Nor does our holding signal any diminution in the respect traditionally accorded to the States in the establishment and implementation of their own criminal trial rules and procedures. Rather, we hold quite simply that under the facts and circumstances of this case the rulings of the trial court deprived Chambers of a fair trial.” Id., at 302-303 (emphasis added).
In other words, Chambers was an exercise in highly case-specific error correction. At issue were two rulings by the state trial court at Chambers’ murder trial: denial of Chambers’ motion to treat as an adverse witness one McDonald, who had confessed to the murder for which Chambers was on trial, but later retracted the confession; and exclusion, on hearsay grounds, of testimony of three witnesses who would testify that McDonald had confessed to them. We held that both of these rulings were erroneous, the former because McDonald’s testimony simply was adverse, id., at 297-298, and the second because the statements “were originally made and subsequently offered at trial under circumstances that provided considerable assurance of their reliability,” id., at 300, and were “well within the basic rationale of the exception for declarations against interest,” id., at 302. Thus, the holding of Chambers — if one can be discerned from such a fact-intensive case — is certainly not that a defendant is denied “a fair opportunity to defend against the State’s accusations” whenever “critical evidence” favorable to him is excluded, but rather that erroneous evidentiary rulings can, in combination, rise to the level of a due process violation.
Respondent cites our decision in Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 683 (1986), as evidence that his version of the “Chambers principle” governs our jurisprudence. He highlights statements in Crane to the effect that “an essential component of procedural fairness is an opportunity to be heard,” which would effectively be denied “if the State were permitted to exclude competent, reliable evidence... when such evidence is central to the defendant’s claim of innocence.” Id., at 690; Brief for Respondent 31. But the very next sentence of that opinion (which respondent omits) makes perfectly clear that we were not setting forth an absolute entitlement to introduce crucial, relevant evidence: “In the absence of any valid state justification, exclusion of this kind of exculpatory evidence deprives a defendant of the basic right to have the prosecutor’s case encounter and survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” 476 U. S., at 690-691 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). Our holding that the exclusion of certain evidence in that case violated the defendant’s constitutional rights rested not on a theory that all “competent, reliable evidence” must be admitted, but rather on the ground that the Supreme Court of Kentucky’s sole rationale for the exclusion (that the evidence “did not relate to the credibility of the confession,” Crane v. Commonwealth, 690 S. W. 2d 753, 755 (1985)) was wrong. See 476 U. S., at 687. Crane does nothing to undermine the principle that the introduction of relevant evidence can be limited by the State for a “valid” reason, as it has been by Montana.
The second line of our cases invoked by the Montana Supreme Court’s opinion requires even less discussion. In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970), announced the proposition that the Due Process Clause requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the charged crime, and Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510, 524 (1979), established a corollary, that a jury instruction which shifts to the defendant the burden of proof on a requisite element of mental state violates due process. These decisions simply are not implicated here because, as the Montana court itself recognized, “[t]he burden is not shifted” under § 45-2-203. 272 Mont., at 124, 900 P. 2d, at 266. The trial judge instructed the jury that “[t]he State of Montana has the burden of proving the guilt of the Defendant beyond a reasonable doubt,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 27a, and that “[a] person commits the offense of deliberate homicide if he purposely or knowingly causes the death of another human being,” id., at 28a. Thus, failure by the State to produce evidence of respondent’s mental state would have resulted in an acquittal. That acquittal did not occur was presumably attributable to the fact, noted by the Supreme Court of Montana, that the State introduced considerable evidence from which the jury might have concluded that respondent acted “purposely” or “knowingly.” See 272 Mont., at 122, 900 P. 2d, at 265. For example, respondent himself testified that, several hours before the murders, he had given his handgun to Pavola and asked her to put it in the glove compartment of Christenson’s car. Ibid.; 5 Tr. 1123. That he had to retrieve the gun from the glove compartment before he used it was strong evidence that it was his “conscious object” to commit the charged crimes; as was the execution-style manner in which a single shot was fired into the head of each victim.
Recognizing that Sandstrom is not directly on point, the Supreme Court of Montana described §45-2-203 as a burden-reducing, rather than burden-shifting, statute. 272 Mont., at 122-123, 124, 900 P. 2d, at 265, 266. This obviously was not meant to suggest that the statute formally reduced the burden of proof to clear and convincing, or to a mere preponderance; there is utterly no basis for that, neither in the text of the law nor in the jury instruction that was given. What the court evidently meant is that, by excluding a significant line of evidence that might refute mens rea, the statute made it easier for the State to meet the requirement of proving mens rea beyond a reasonable doubt — reduced the burden in the sense of making the burden easier to bear. But any evidentiary rule can have that effect. “Reducing” the State’s burden in this manner is not unconstitutional, unless the rule of evidence itself violates a fundamental principle of fairness (which, as discussed, this one does not). We have “rejected] the view that anything in the Due Process Clause bars States from making changes in their criminal law that have the effect of making it easier for the prosecution to obtain convictions.” McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79, 89, n. 5 (1986).
Finally, we may comment upon the Montana Supreme Court’s citation of the following passage in Martin v. Ohio, 480 U. S. 228 (1987), a case upholding a state law that placed on the defendant the burden of proving self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence:
“It would be quite different if the jury had been instructed that self-defense evidence could not be considered in determining whether there was a reasonable doubt about the State’s case, i. e., that self-defense evidence must be put aside for all purposes unless it satisfied the preponderance standard. Such an instruction would relieve the State of its burden and plainly run afoul of [In re] Winship’s mandate. The instructions in this case... are adequate to convey to the jury that all of the evidence, including the evidence going to self-defense, must be considered in deciding whether there was a reasonable doubt about the sufficiency of the State’s proof of the elements of the crime.” Id., at 233-234 (citation omitted).
See also 272 Mont., at 122-123, 900 P. 2d, at 265. This passage can be explained in various ways — e. g., as an assertion that the right to have a jury consider self-defense evidence (unlike the right to have a jury consider evidence of voluntary intoxication) is fundamental, a proposition that the historical record may support. But the only explanation needed for present purposes is the one given in Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co., 511 U. S. 375, 379 (1994): “It is to the holdings of our cases, rather than their dicta, that we must attend.” If the Martin dictum means that the Due Process Clause requires all relevant evidence bearing on the elements of a crime to be admissible, the decisions we have discussed show it to be incorrect.
* * *
“The doctrines of actus reus, mens rea, insanity, mistake, justification, and duress have historically provided the tools for a constantly shifting adjustment of the tension between the evolving aims of the criminal law and changing religious, moral, philosophical, and medical views of the nature of man. This process of adjustment has always been thought to be the province of the States.” Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514, 535-536 (1968) (plurality opinion). The people of Montana have decided to resurrect the rule of an earlier era, disallowing consideration of voluntary intoxication when a defendant’s state of mind is at issue. Nothing in the Due Process Clause prevents them from doing so, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Montana to the contrary must be reversed.
It is so ordered.
Justice O’Connor agrees that “a defendant does not enjoy an absolute right to present evidence relevant to his defense,” post, at 62, and does not dispute the validity of the evidentiary rules mentioned above. She contends, however, that Montana’s Rule is not like these because it “places a blanket exclusion on a category of evidence that would allow the accused to negate the offense’s mental-state element.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Of course hearsay is a “category” of evidence as well; what Justice O’Connor apparently has in mind is that this particular category relates to evidence tending to prove a particular fact. That is indeed a distinction, but it is hard to understand why it should make a difference. So long as the category of excluded evidence is selected on a basis that has good and traditional policy support, it ought to be valid.
We do not entirely understand Justice O’Connor’s argument that the vice of §45-2-203 is that it excludes evidence “essential to the accused’s defense,” post, at 64; see also post,' at 72. Evidence of intoxication is not always “essential,” any more than hearsay evidence is always “nonessential.”
Besides Montana, those States are Arizona, see State v. Ramos, 133 Ariz. 4, 6, 648 P. 2d 119, 121 (1982) (upholding statute precluding jury consideration of intoxication for purposes of determining whether defendant acted “knowingly”); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-503 (Supp. 1995-1996) (voluntary intoxication “is not a defense for any criminal act or requisite state of mind”); Arkansas, see White v. State, 290 Ark. 130, 134-137, 717 S. W. 2d 784, 786-788 (1986) (interpreting Ark. Code Ann. §5-2-207 (1993)); Delaware, see Wyant v. State, 519 A. 2d 649, 651 (1986) (interpreting Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §421 (1995)); Georgia, see Foster v. State, 258 Ga. 736, 742-745, 374 S. E. 2d 188, 194-196 (1988) (interpreting Ga. Code Ann. § 16-3-4 (1992)), cert. denied, 490 U. S. 1085 (1989); Hawaii, see Haw. Rev. Stat. §702-230(2) (1993), State v. Souza, 72 Haw. 246, 248, 813 P. 2d 1384, 1386 (1991) (§702-230(2) is constitutional); Mississippi, see Lanier v. State, 533 So. 2d 473, 478-479 (1988); Missouri, see Mo. Rev. Stat. §562.076 (1994), State v. Erwin, 848 S. W. 2d 476, 482 (§ 562.076 is constitutional), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 826 (1993); South Carolina, see State v. Vaughn, 268 S. C. 119, 124-126, 232 S. E. 2d 328, 330-331 (1977); and Texas, see Hawkins v. State, 605 S. W. 2d 586, 589 (Tex. Crim. App. 1980) (interpreting Tex. Penal Code Ann. §8.04 (1974)).
In his dissent, Justice Souter acknowledges that there may be valid policy reasons supporting the Montana law, some of which were brought forward by States that appeared as amici, see post, at 77-78 (citing Brief for State of Hawaii et al. as Amici Curiae 16). He refuses to consider the adequacy of those reasons, however, because they were not brought forward by Montana’s lawyers. We do not know why the constitutionality of Montana’s enactment should be subject to the condition subsequent that its lawyers be able to guess a policy justification that satisfies this Court. Whatever they guess will of course not necessarily be the real reason the Montana Legislature adopted the provision; Montana’s lawyers must speculate about that, just as we must. Our standard formulation has been: “Where... there are plausible reasons for [the legislature’s] action, our inquiry is at an end.” Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U. S. 166, 179 (1980). Justice Souter would change that to: “Where there are plausible reasons that counsel for the party supporting the legislation have mentioned.” Or perhaps it is:
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.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In August 1961, Internal Revenue Agent Whelan issued a summons to taxpayer Ryan ordering him to pro-ducé his books for the years 1942 through 1953 inclusive. Ryan appeared but refused to produce the records, claiming that because tax liability for those years was long since barred except for fraud, the agent had no right to examine the records unless he could show grounds for suspecting fraud.
The Government then instituted an enforcement proceeding in a federal district court pursuant to § 7402 (b) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. The complaint alleged that on the basis of estimated net worth calculations the agent' strongly suspected fraud, and that examination of the records for the years in question was relevant and material in determining its existence. The taxpayer answered, putting the question of probable cause in issue, and, in addition, stating that he had not received the letter required by § 7605 (b) informing him that the Secretary or his delegate had determined the examination to be necessary.
At the hearing the District Judge clearly indicated his opinion that the Government need not show probable cause for suspecting fraud, and ordered Ryan to produce those records which he had available. Although the hearing confirmed Ryan’s assertion that no “necessity letter” had been sent to him, the judge made no mention of this, probably because counsel did not press the point.
The Court of Appeals affirmed, 320 F. 2d 500, on the theory that no full-scale showing of probable cause need be made. Except for the records relating to the year 1945, which appeared to have been once previously examined, the court ruled that no necessity letter was required by § 7605 (b) because the Government had made no previous examination of those years.!
We granted certiorari, 376 U. S.. 904, on the only issue raised by petitioner, whether the Government must show probable cause for its examination of the records. On that issue we sustain the judgment of the Court oT Appeals for the reasons given in United States v. Powell, decided today, ante, p. 48.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice Golderg concur in the result, because they believe that through the testimony of Internal Revenue Agent Whelan a sufficient showing was made that the Government was not proceeding capriciously in this case.
Me. Justice Douglas dissents for the reasons given in his separate opinion in United States v. Powell, ante, p. 59.
I. R. C., § 6501. See United States v. Powell, decided today, ante, p. 48, at p. 49, note 2.
See id., at p. 52, note 10.
See id., at p. 52.
The propriety of the court’s interpretation of the necessity letter requirement of § 7605 (b) is, therefore, not before us. See Trailmobile Co. v. Whirls, 331 U. S. 40, 48.
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.
Per Curiam.
This case began when the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of the appellee, a nonprofit religious corporation. The appellee had previously enjoyed a tax exemption under § 501 (c) (3) of the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, 26 U. S. C. § 501 (c)(3). This section defines exempt organizations, in pertinent part, as:
“Corporations . . . organized and operated exclusively for religious . . . purposes ... , no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation, and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”
The appellee’s exemption under this provision was revoked on three grounds: (1) that the appellee was not operated exclusively for religious purposes, (2) that it had engaged in substantial activity aimed at influencing legislation, and (3) that it had intervened in political campaigns on behalf of candidates for public office.
The appellee paid the taxes assertedly owed and then filed the present suit for a refund in Federal District Court, claiming that it was entitled to an exempt status under § 501 (c) (3) of the Code. The case was heard by a single District Judge sitting without a jury. The judge ultimately decided that the appellee was entitled to tax-exempt status and to a refund of the taxes paid.
The District Court rejected all three grounds on which the Internal Revenue Service had revoked the appellee’s exempt status. It found, as fact, (1) that the appellee’s “activities have been directed toward achieving its religious goals,” (2) that “[w]ith the exception of support of the proposed Becker Amendment to the United States Constitution relating to voluntary prayer and Bible reading in public schools, [the appellee] has not engaged in attempts to influence legislation,” and (3) that the ap-pellee “has not endorsed a political candidate, and has not instructed its followers as to how to vote but only to vote.” On the basis of its findings of fact, the court concluded as law that the appellee fell within the terms of §501 (c)(3). That ended the case. But the District Court nonetheless went on to discuss certain constitutional issues.
In its conclusions of law, the court stated that the First Amendment prohibits both the Government and the courts from determining whether a religious organization is operated for exclusively religious purposes, and is thus eligible for tax-exempt status, by analyzing each and every activity of the organization and classifying it as “religious” or “political.” In this case, the court said, the Internal Revenue Service conducted and relied upon such an analysis in revoking the appellee’s exemption and, for that reason, the Service denied the free exercise of religion to the appellee. The District Court also stated that the Internal Revenue Service violated the appellee’s right to due process of law by singling it out, among all other religious organizations, for investigation and exemption revocation “without evidence to support its action.”
The United States seeks to appeal the decision of the single District Judge directly to this Court. It argues that we have jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1252. That jurisdictional provision allows a direct appeal to the Supreme Court from the decision of “any court of the United States . . . holding an Act of Congress unconstitutional in any civil action, suit, or proceeding to which the United States ... is a party.” Such a direct appeal is allowed whether the Act of Congress was declared unconstitutional “as a whole” or simply “as applied.” Fleming v. Rhodes, 331 U. S. 100, 102-103. The findings and conclusions of the District Court in the present case, however, reveal that it did not hold § 501 (c) (3) unconstitutional in either of these ways. Hence, we must dismiss this appeal for want of jurisdiction.
The “basis” of the District Court’s decision, United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17, 20, was that, under the facts adduced at trial, the appellee qualified for exempt status under §501 (c)(3). The court did not question or even consider the constitutionality of § 501 (c)(3) “as a whole.” Nor does any part of its opinion hold that the section was unconstitutional “as applied.” Indeed, the court in this case would hardly have found the appellee to be qualified for an exemption under §501 (c)(3), only to hold that the section could not be validly applied in the first place.
The District Court’s commentary on the denial of due process to the appellee was directed simply to’ the method by which § 501 (c) (3) was enforced — not to its basic applicability. The court held that the Internal Revenue Service may not discriminate in applying the section. This holding restricts freewheeling enforcement and may make it more difficult to revoke certain tax exemptions. But it does not call into question the validity of the underlying statute. Under § 1252, direct appeal to the Supreme Court is authorized only in the latter situation.
Similarly, the District Court’s commentary on the denial of the appellee’s First Amendment rights was directed to the particular interpretation given to § 501 (c)(3) by the Internal Revenue Service in this case and to its means of enforcing that interpretation. At most, the court’s reasoning on this point can be read to construe § 501 (c) (3) narrowly so as to avoid a First Amendment problem. The court refused to interpret and apply the section to require an analysis of the “religious'’ or “non-religious" character of every activity by a concededly religious organization, because such an interpretation and application would infringe the right to free exercise of religion. It stated that the Internal Revenue Service had already gone too far in its enforcement of this interpretation. But the statement that the Service violated the appellee’s First Amendment rights is not the same as a holding that Congress did so in enacting § 501 (c)(3). The court avoided holding that the section itself was unconstitutional “as applied” — i. e., that the section, by its own terms, infringed constitutional freedoms in the circumstances of the particular case. Rather, it held that the Service had misinterpreted § 501 (c) (3) and that the section must be narrowly construed. Although the construction was based on a constitutional premise, it did not amount to a holding that an Act of Congress is unconstitutional, as contemplated by § 1252. To the contrary, the District Court construed the section so as to save its constitutionality.
Our interpretation of the District Court’s conclusions of law does not, of course, indicate approval of those conclusions. The issue is not before us. We hold only that there is an absence of appellate jurisdiction under § 1252.
The judgment is vacated and the case remanded to the District Court for the entry of a fresh decree, so that the appellant may appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Mr. Justice Douglas took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
The findings of fact and conclusions of law of the District Court in this case, entered on June 24, 1971, are not officially reported.
By far the greatest portion of the District Court’s findings of fact are directed to the detailed history of the Government’s investigation of the appellee’s exempt status.
For example, the District Court stated:
“43. [The appellant] has characterized certain of [the appellee’s] activities during the years involved in this suit as urging the public to contact members of legislative bodies for the purpose of proposing, supporting or opposing legislation. [The appellee] has characterized the same activities as taking stands on issues of the day concerning matters which it construes to threaten its religious beliefs. The Court finds that these activities have resulted from [the appellee’s] religious beliefs and were merely incidental to the exercise of its religion and the expression and dissemination of its understanding of biblical concepts. The Court further finds that any such activities by [the appellee] were insubstantial in relationship to the totality of [the appellee’s] activities.
“44. [The appellant], in describing and characterizing [the appel-lee’s] activities as political and non-religious, has in fact indicated a disagreement with the content and nature of what [the appellee] has said and written. [The appellant] has thereby sponsored its own definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘religious.’ Such definitions by [the appellant] are impermissable [sic], ...
“45. [The appellee’s] expression of opinion on ‘current issues or issues of the day’ is not an act contemplated by prohibition against intervention in political campaigns or legislation and is not a violation of the provisions of Internal Revenue Code.”
A similar distinction has been drawn in the context of the three-judge district court statute, 28 U. S. C. §2281. “It is necessary to distinguish between a petition for injunction on the ground of the unconstitutionality of a statute as applied, which requires a three-judge court, and a petition which seeks an injunction on the ground of.the uneonstitutionality of the result obtained by the use of a statute which is not attacked as unconstitutional. The latter petition does not require a three-judge court. In such a case the attack is aimed at an allegedly erroneous administrative action.” Ex parte Bransford, 310 U. S. 354, 361.
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue presented in these two cases is whether the trustees of two multiemployer trust funds may seek judicial enforcement of the trust terms against a participating employer without first submitting to arbitration an underlying dispute over the meaning of a term in the employer’s collective-bargaining agreement.
HH
Respondents are the trustees of two multiemployer trust funds, the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund and the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Health and Welfare Fund (Trust Funds). Petitioners are two employers — Prosser’s Moving & Storage Co. (Prosser’s) and Schneider Moving & Storage Co. (Schneider)— who have agreed to participate in the trust funds. Respondents filed separate complaints against petitioners in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, claiming that petitioners had failed to meet their contribution requirements and had refused to allow an audit of their payroll records. Respondents requested the District Court to order an accounting and immediate payment of all sums thereby determined to be due. They alleged federal subject-matter jurisdiction under § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U. S. C. § 185(a), and §502 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. § 1132. Petitioners defended on the ground that respondents’ complaints raised disputed interpretations under the collective-bargaining agreements that first must be submitted to the applicable arbitration procedures. The District Court agreed with petitioners and dismissed the suits pending arbitration. It held that although arbitration is not a prerequisite for “simple collection matters” in which the employer’s liability under the collective-bargaining agreement is clear, arbitration is required in claims such as these where interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement is at issue.
A three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed and held that arbitration was not a prerequisite to federal suit in these two cases. Robbins v. Prosser’s Moving & Storage and Schneider Moving & Storage, Nos. 80-2116, 80-2117 (CA8, Mar. 24, 1982) (per curiam). An en banc court of the Eighth Circuit agreed with the panel. After examining competing considerations under the federal labor laws and under the federal laws governing employee trust funds, the court held that the relevant agreements indicated no intent on the part of the parties to require the arbitration of contractual disputes between the trustees and the employers and thus that failure to arbitrate could not bar respondents’ suits. The en banc court, therefore, reversed the decision of the District Court and remanded for further proceedings. 700 F. 2d 433 (1983). We granted certiorari in view of an apparent conflict among the Circuits on this issue. 464 U. S. 813 (1983). We now affirm.
I — H h-4
As resolved by the Court of Appeals, these cases present a narrow question of contract interpretation. The en banc court considered only whether the parties to the collective-bargaining agreements and the trust agreements intended to require the arbitration of disputes between the trustees and the employer before the trustees could exercise their contractual right to sue in federal court. Because of its resolution of this issue, the Court of Appeals did not reach respondents’ argument that requiring the trustees to submit their disputes with the employer to the applicable arbitration procedures was prohibited as a matter of law. If we agree with the Court of Appeals that the parties did not provide for such an arrangement, we also need not address that argument. We turn first, therefore, to an analysis of the relevant agreements.
Petitioners entered into collective-bargaining agreements with Local 610 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen & Helpers of America (Union). These agreements required petitioners to participate in the two multiemployer trust funds, and incorporated the terms of the two trust agreements by reference. The trust agreements required petitioners to contribute to the funds according to the applicable terms of their separate collective-bargaining agreements. To ensure compliance with the contribution requirements, the trust agreements gave the trustees the authority to examine petitioners’ payroll records. If the trustees determined that petitioners were not complying with their contribution requirements, they had the authority under the trust agreements to initiate legal proceedings to enforce those requirements:
“The Trustees . . . shall have the power to demand and collect the contributions of the Employers to the Fund. [The] Board of Trustees shall take such steps, including the institution and prosecution of, and intervention in, any legal proceedings as the Trustees in their discretion deem in the best interest of the Fund to effectuate the collection or preservation of contributions. . . which may be owed to the Trust Fund, without prejudice, however, to the rights of the Union to take whatever steps which may be deemed necessary for such purpose.” Pension Fund Agreement, Art. Ill, Sec. 4., App. 22.
The relevant terms of the two collective-bargaining agreements at issue here are substantially identical. Both required weekly payments to the funds for “each regular Employee.” No contributions were required for employees who worked “either temporarily or in cases of emergency.” Each collective-bargaining agreement also contained an arbitration clause that required the arbitration of any “differences . . . between the Company and the Union or any employee of the Company as to the meaning or application of the provisions of [the collective-bargaining] agreement.” Id., at 55. Arbitration could be demanded by either the Union or the Company in the case of Prosser’s collective-bargaining agreement, or by the Union alone in the case of Schneider’s collective-bargaining agreement. No other parties were given access to the arbitration process.
III
A
Petitioners argue that as third-party beneficiaries of the collective-bargaining agreements, the trustees are bound by the arbitration clauses provided therein to the same extent the Union would be if it were seeking judicial enforcement of those agreements. They rely on the general rule that the promisor may assert against the beneficiary any defense that he could assert against the promisee if the promisee were suing on the contract. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 309, Comment b (1981); S. Williston, Contracts § 395 (3d ed. 1959); 4 A. Corbin, Contracts § 819 (1951). That rule, however, is merely a rule of construction useful in determining contractual intent. It should not be applied so inflexibly as to defeat the intention of the parties. Where the language of the contract, or the circumstances under which it was executed, establish that the parties have provided that the right of the beneficiary is not to be affected by any defenses that the promisor might have against the promisee, the rule is inapplicable. Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 309, Comment b (1981). See also 4 A. Corbin, Contracts §§ 818, 819 (1951). Thus, the question is whether the parties to the agreements at issue here intended to condition the trustees’ contractual right to seek judicial enforcement of the trust agreements on exhaustion of the arbitration procedures set forth in the collective-bargaining agreements.
B
Before attempting to ascertain the parties’ intent from the relevant agreements, we must determine whether the presumption in favor of arbitrability applied in the Steelworkers Trilogy is applicable here. That presumption is an accepted rule of construction in determining the applicability of an arbitration clause to disputes between the union and the employer. Such a presumption furthers the national labor policy of peaceful resolution of labor disputes and thus best accords with the parties’ presumed objectives in pursuing collective bargaining. See Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U. S. 674, 578, 582-583 (1960). There is, however, less to commend the presumption in construing the applicability of arbitration clauses to disputes between the employer and the trustees of employee-benefit funds.
Arbitration promotes labor peace because it requires the parties to forgo the economic weapons of strikes and lockouts. Because the trustees of employee-benefit funds have no recourse to either of those weapons, requiring them to arbitrate disputes with the employer would promote labor peace only indirectly, if at all. We conclude, therefore, that the presumption of arbitrability is not a proper rule of construction in determining whether arbitration agreements between the union and the employer apply to disputes between trustees and employers, even if those disputes raise questions of interpretation under the collective-bargaining agreements.
C
Without the presumption of arbitrability, the agreements at issue here evidence no intent on the part of the parties to require arbitration of disputes between the trustees and the employers. Neither the terms of the trust agreements nor those of the collective-bargaining agreements contain any such requirement, and the circumstances surrounding the execution of each suggest that none should be inferred. We discuss each agreement in turn.
Under the terms of the trust agreements, the trustees have broad authority to initiate “any legal proceedings [that they] in their discretion deem in the best interest of the Fund to effectuate the collection or preservation of contributions.” Nowhere in the trust agreements is the exercise of that authority expressly conditioned on the exhaustion of any contractual remedies that might be found in the collective-bargaining agreements of individual employers. Nor have petitioners successfully identified any evidence that supports their argument that the parties nevertheless intended such a condition. This is not surprising. These are multiemployer trust funds. Each of the participating unions and employers has an interest in the prompt collection of the proper contributions from each employer. Any diminution of the fund caused by the arbitration requirements of a particular employer’s collective-bargaining agreement would have an adverse effect on the other participants. The enforcement mechanisms established in the trust agreements protect the collective interests of the parties from the delinquency of individual employers by allowing the trustees to seek prompt judicial enforcement of the contribution requirements. It is unreasonable to infer that these parties would agree to subordinate those mechanisms to whatever arbitration procedures might be required by a particular employer’s collective-bargaining agreement. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, therefore, we will not infer that the parties to the two multiemployer trust funds intended to condition the trustees’ enforcement authority on the arbitration procedures contained in petitioners’ separate collective-bargaining agreements.
Even if we assume that the parties to the collective-bargaining agreements could negate by their agreement the powers conferred on the trustees by the broader group of parties to the trust agreements, we find no attempt to do so here. The arbitration clauses found in these collective-bargaining agreements contain no suggestion that either the petitioners or the Union intended to require arbitration of disputes between the trustees and the employers. Under the terms of those agreements, arbitration is required only of “differences that arise between the Company and the Union or any employee of the Company as to the meaning or application of the provisions of this agreement.” App. 55 (emphasis added). Although petitioners concede that neither clause expressly requires the arbitration of disputes between the trustees and the employers, they argue that we should infer such a requirement. We see no justification for doing so.
As petitioners concede, the collective-bargaining agreements permit only the Union or the employer to invoke the arbitration process. It is unreasonable to infer that the parties to these agreements, or to the trust agreements, intended the trustees to rely on the Union to arbitrate their disputes with the employer. Because arbitration may be expensive, there is no reason to assume, without more persuasive evidence than is presented here, that the Union intended to incur such expenses at the request of the trustees and without any requirement that the trustees provide reimbursement. It is even less likely that the parties to the trust agreements intended to agree to such complete reliance on the Union. If the Union disagreed with the trustees’ construction of the agreement, it could refuse to arbitrate the claim, or compromise the trustees’ position in arbitration. The outcome of any subsequent judicial proceeding could be predetermined by the outcome of arbitration. We find particularly implausible petitioners’ further argument that a duty of fair representation may be implied, and that this should compel the Union to pursue the trustees’ uncom-promised claims through arbitration. There simply is no evidence that the Union owes any statutory or contractual duty of fair representation to the trustees. In the absence of such evidence, we will not engage the unlikely inference that the parties to these agreements intended to require the trustees to rely on the Union to arbitrate their disputes with the employer. Without that inference, as petitioners’ concede, there is no basis for assuming that the parties intended to require arbitration of disputes between the trustees and the employer.
IV
We hold that neither the trust agreements nor the collective-bargaining agreements at issue here evidence any intent to condition the contractual right of the trustees to seek judicial enforcement of the trust provisions on exhaustion of the arbitration procedures contained in petitioners’ collective-bargaining agreements. We, therefore, affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand both cases for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
Both multiemployer funds were established pursuant to § 302(c)(5) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 186(c)(5). The funds also are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq., and the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980 (MPPAA), 29 U. S. C. § 1145.
Section 301(a) of the LMRA provides a federal forum for suits to enforce labor contracts, including pension and welfare fund agreements. Section 502 of ERISA also provides a federal forum for enforcement of the various duties imposed by such trust fund agreements.
Cf. Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. 650 (1965) (exhaustion of contract grievance procedure generally is a predicate to suits seeking to enforce collective-bargaining agreements under § 301 of the LMRA). Petitioners’ responses to respondents’ claims differed in some minor respects. The primary issue in the Prosser case was whether the collective-bargaining agreement limited the scope of the trustees’ asserted authority to conduct an audit of the company’s records. Schneider submitted to the audit, but claimed that the trustees’ suit raised a dispute under the collective-bargaining agreement as to which employees were covered by the contribution requirement. Relevant here, however, is the fact that both petitioners defended on the ground that the trustees’ complaints raised arbitrable disputes under the collective-bargaining agreements that could not be reviewed by a federal court prior to arbitration.
See, e. g., Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund v. Howard Martin, Inc., 625 F. 2d 171 (CA7 1980) (arbitration of disputes between the trustees and employer involving interpretations of a collective-bargaining agreement a prerequisite to judicial review); Trustees of National Benefit Fund for Hospital & Health Care Employees v. Constant Care Community Health Center, Inc., 669 F. 2d 213 (CA4 1982) (same).
The en banc court expressed its holding at the outset as follows:
“Our conclusion is that the national pension policy embodied in the [LMRA], [ERISA], and the [MPPAA], together with the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement and accompanying trust instruments, dictate that these trustees not be bound by the arbitration procedure, which they have no right to initiate.” 700 F. 2d, at 435.
The subsequent explanation of that holding, and the court’s concluding statements, make clear that it consulted the “national pension policy” only to ascertain the parties’ contractual intent. After examining the agreements, the en banc court held:
“[A]rbitration, pension funds, and health and welfare funds, are all matters of contract. They either exist or not as the parties have agreed in the collective-bargaining contract and related documents. If the agreements in the cases before us provided in express words that trustees’ claims could not come to court before questions of contract interpretation had been settled by arbitration, this would be quite a different case. But they do not.” Id., at 442.
See Art. XV, Sec. 3 (Health & Welfare); Art. XVI, Sec. 3 (Pension) of Prosser’s Collective-Bargaining Agreement, App. 76.
The parties inform us that the relevant terms of the Pension Fund Agreement and the Health and Welfare Fund Agreement are identical in all pertinent respects. Only the Pension Fund Agreement was included in the joint appendix. References, therefore, will be made only to that agreement.
Artiele III, Sec. 1, of the Pension Fund Agreement provides in part: “Each Employer shall make continuing and prompt payments to the Trust Fund as required by the applicable collective bargaining agreement between the parties.” App. 21.
Article III, Sec. 5, of the Pension Fund Agreement provides in part: “The Trustees may, by their representatives, examine the pertinent records of each Employer at the Employer’s place of business whenever such examination is deemed necessary or advisable by the Trustees in connection with the proper administration of the Trust.” App. 23.
See Prosser’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, Art. XV, Secs. 5 and 6 (Health & Welfare); Art. XVI, Secs. 5 and 6 (Pension). App. 77-79.
In Lewis v. Benedict Coal Corp., 361 U. S. 459 (1960), for example, this Court rejected the argument that a rule of construction generally applicable to third-party beneficiaries was applicable to the trust beneficiaries of a collective-bargaining agreement. Justice Brennan writing for the majority refused to employ the general rule of construction urged by the promisor because the collective-bargaining agreement at issue “[was] not a typical third-party beneficiary contract,” and the circumstances surrounding the agreement counseled against the general inference. Id., at 468-469. We adopt the same approach here and decline to adopt a mechanical application of the rule of construction urged by petitioners.
See Steelworkers v. American Manufacturing Co., 363 U. S. 564 (1960); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593 (1960).
In NLRB v. Amax Coal Co., 453 U. S. 322, 337 (1981), this Court recognized that “disputes between benefit fund trustees over the administration of the trust cannot, as can disputes between parties in collective bargaining, lead to strikes, lockouts, or other exercises of economic power.” We think that the same observation applies to disputes between the trustees and the employer. Although the employer has economic weapons at its disposal, they would serve little purpose in disputes with the trustees of employee-benefit funds.
The presumption of arbitrability is, of course, generally applicable to any disputes between the union and the employer. In those circumstances, the presumption serves the national labor policy and fully accords with the probable intent of the parties.
Art. III, Sec. 4, of the Pension Fund Agreement, App. 22 (emphasis added).
Respondents inform us that these funds are two of the largest Taft-Hartley multiemployer funds in the United States. They have roughly 500,000 participants and beneficiaries nationwide. Brief for Respondents 6, 18.
Cf. Lewis v. Benedict Coal Co., 361 U. S., at 469 (“[Ujnlike the usual third-party beneficiary contract, this is an industry-wide agreement involving many promisors. . . . The application of the suggested [presumption] to this contract would require us to assume that the other [employers] . . . were willing to risk the threat of diminution of the fund in order to protect those of their number who might have become involved in local labor difficulties”).
In general, the terms of the trust agreements and the collective-bargaining agreements seem to support precisely the opposite conclusion, suggesting that conflicts between the collective-bargaining agreements and the trust agreements will be resolved in favor of the latter. The trust agreements expressly provide that “any construction [of the trust agreements] adopted by the Trustees in good faith shall be binding upon the Union, the Employees and Employers.” Art. IV, Sec. 17, Pension Trust Agreement, App. 26-27. The collective-bargaining agreements, on the other hand, provide that the employer is deemed to have ratified “all actions already taken or to be taken by [the] trustees within the scope of their authority.” Art. XV, Sec. 3, Prosser’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, App. 76.
Article V, Sec. 4, of Prosser’s Collective-Bargaining Agreement requires the Union to bear one-half the costs of arbitration with the employer. App. 57. The cost of arbitration is at least one reason why this Court has declined to agree that individual employees represented by the union have an absolute right to have their grievances taken to arbitration. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 191-192 (1967). The union may exercise its discretion in good faith to settle grievances “prior to the most costly and time-consuming step in the grievance procedures.” Id., at 191.
Indeed, the trust agreements seem to prohibit such an arrangement. Article II, Sec. 10, of the Pension Fund Agreement provides that “[n]o Employer or Union nor any representative of any Employer or Union . . . is authorized to . . . act as agent of the Trustees.” App. 21.
See Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S., at 596-599 (“It is the arbitrator’s construction which was bargained for; and so far as the arbitrator’s decision concerns construction of the contract, the courts have no business overruling him because their interpretation of the contract is different from his”). See also Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, Inc., 450 U. S. 728, 737 (1981).
A union’s statutory duty of fair representation traditionally runs only to the members of its collective-bargaining unit, and is coextensive with its statutory authority to act as the exclusive representative for all the employees within the unit. Vaca v. Sipes, supra, at 182; Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U. S. 335, 342 (1964). Moreover, petitioners have pointed to no evidence that suggests the parties intended to impose a contractual duty of fair representation on the Union.
Even if there were a duty of fair representation here, it would accord the Union wide discretion and would provide only limited protection to trust beneficiaries. A primary union objective is “to maximize overall compensation of its members.” Barrentine, 450 U. S., at 742. Thus, it may sacrifice particular elements of the compensation package “if an alternative expenditure of resources would result in increased benefits for workers in the bargaining unit as a whole.” Ibid.
Because there is no indication that the parties have agreed to the arrangement suggested by petitioners, we have no occasion to determine its legality.
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.
Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether a warrant was required to reopen a sealed container in which contraband drugs had been discovered in an earlier lawful border search, when the container was seized by the police after it had been delivered to respondent under police supervision.
hH
A large, locked metal container was shipped by air from Calcutta to respondent in Chicago. When the container arrived at O’Hare International Airport, a customs inspector opened it and found a wooden table approximately three feet in diameter and 8 to 10 inches thick. Marihuana was found concealed inside the table.
The customs inspector informed the Drug Enforcement Administration of these facts and Special Agent Labek came to the airport later that day. Labek chemically tested the substance contained in the table, confirming that it was marihuana. The table and the container were resealed.
The next day, Labek put the container in a delivery van and drove to respondent’s building. He was met there by Chicago Police Inspector Lipsek. Posing as delivery men, Labek and Lipsek entered the apartment building and announced they had a package for respondent. Respondent came to the lobby and identified himself. In response to Lipsek’s comment about the weight of the package, respondent answered that it “wasn’t that heavy; that he had packaged it himself, that it only contained a table.” App. 14.
At respondent’s request, the officers making the delivery left the container in the hallway outside respondent’s apartment. Labek stationed himself to keep the container in sight and observed respondent pull the container into his apartment. When Lipsek left to secure a warrant to enter and search respondent’s apartment, Labek maintained surveillance of the apartment; he saw respondent leave his apartment, walk to the end of the corridor, look out the window, and then return to the apartment. Labek remained in the building but did not keep the apartment door under constant surveillance.
Between 30 and 45 minutes after the delivery, but before Lipsek could return with a warrant, respondent reemerged from the apartment with the shipping container and was immediately arrested by Labek and taken to the police station. There, the officers reopened the container and seized the marihuana found inside the table. No search warrant had been obtained.
Respondent was charged with two counts of possession of controlled substances. Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 56 Vt, ¶¶ 704(e) and 705(e) (1981). Prior to trial, the trial court granted respondent’s motion to suppress the marihuana found in the table, relying on Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), and United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977).
On appeal, the Appellate Court of Illinois, First Judicial District, affirmed. 100 Ill. App. 3d 396, 426 N. E. 2d 1078 (1981). It relied primarily on Sanders and Chadwick in holding that respondent had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of the shipping container. 100 Ill. App. 3d, at 399-401, 426 N. E. 2d, at 1080-1082. It recognized that no warrant would be necessary if the police had made a “controlled delivery” of the container following a lawful search, but held that here the police had failed to make a “controlled delivery.”
A “controlled delivery,” in the view of the Illinois court, requires that the police maintain “dominion and control” over the container at all times; only by constant control, in that court’s view, can police be “absolutely sure” that its contents have not changed since the initial search. Id., at 402, 426 N. E. 2d, at 1082. Here, according to the court, the police could not have been “absolutely sure” of the container’s contents for two reasons: (1) Labek was not present when the container was resealed by the customs officers, and thus he knew of its contents only by “hearsay,” ibid., 426 N. E. 2d, at 1083, and (2) the container was out of sight for the 30 to 45 minutes while it was in respondent’s apartment; thus, in the court’s view, “there is no certainty that the contents of the package were the same before and after the package was brought into [respondent’s] apartment.” Ibid. Accordingly, the Illinois court held that the warrantless reopening of the container violated the Fourth Amendment.
We granted certiorari, 459 U. S. 904 (1982), and we reverse.
II
The lawful discovery by common carriers or customs officers of contraband in transit presents law enforcement authorities with an opportunity to identify and prosecute the person or persons responsible for the movement of the contraband. To accomplish this, the police, rather than simply seizing the contraband and destroying it, make a so-called controlled delivery of the container to its consignee, allowing the container to continue its journey to the destination contemplated by the parties. The person dealing in the contraband can then be identified upon taking possession of and asserting dominion over the container.
The typical pattern of a controlled delivery was well described by one court:
“Controlled deliveries of contraband apparently serve a useful function in law enforcement. They most ordinarily occur when a carrier, usually an airline, unexpectedly discovers what seems to be contraband while inspecting luggage to learn the identity of its owner, or when the contraband falls out of a broken or damaged piece of luggage, or when the carrier exercises its inspection privilege because some suspicious circumstance has caused it concern that it may unwittingly be transporting contraband. Frequently, after such a discovery, law enforcement agents restore the contraband to its container, then close or reseal the container, and authorize the carrier to deliver the container to its owner. When the owner appears to take delivery he is arrested and the container with the contraband is seized and then searched a second time for the contraband known to be there.” United States v. Bulgier, 618 F. 2d 472, 476 (CA7), cert. denied, 449 U. S. 843 (1980).
See also McConnell v. State, 595 P. 2d 147 (Alaska 1979).
Here, a customs agent lawfully discovered drugs concealed in a container and notified the appropriate law enforcement authorities. They took steps to arrange delivery of the container to respondent. A short time after delivering the container, the officers arrested respondent and reseized the container. Respondent claims, and the Illinois court held, that the warrantless reopening of the container following its reseizure violated respondent’s right under the Fourth Amendment “to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . .” We disagree.
The Fourth Amendment protects legitimate expectations of privacy rather than simply places. If the inspection by police does not intrude upon a legitimate expectation of privacy, there is no “search” subject to the Warrant Clause. See Walter v. United States, 447 U. S. 649, 663-665 (1980) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). The threshold question, then, is whether an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a previously lawfully searched container. It is obvious that the privacy interest in the contents of a container diminishes with respect to a container that law enforcement authorities have already lawfully opened and found to contain illicit drugs. No protected privacy interest remains in contraband in a container once government officers lawfully have opened that container and identified its contents as illegal. The simple act of resealing the container to enable the police to make a controlled delivery does not operate to revive or restore the lawfully invaded privacy rights.
This conclusion is supported by the reasoning underlying the “plain-view” doctrine. The plain-view doctrine authorizes seizure of illegal or evidentiary items visible to a police officer whose access to the object has some prior Fourth Amendment justification and who has probable cause to suspect that the item is connected with criminal activity. Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 738, and n. 4, 741-742 (1983) (plurality opinion); id., at 746 (Powell, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 748, 749-750 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). The plain-view doctrine is grounded on the proposition that once police are lawfully in a position to observe an item firsthand, its owner’s privacy interest in that item is lost; the owner may retain the incidents of title and possession but not privacy. That rationale applies here; once a container has been found to a certainty to contain illicit drugs, the contraband becomes like objects physically within the plain view of the police, and the claim to privacy is lost. Consequently, the subsequent reopening of the container is not a “search” within the intendment of the Fourth Amendment.
However, the rigors and contingencies inescapable in an investigation into illicit drug traffic often make “perfect” controlled deliveries and the “absolute certainty” demanded by the Illinois court impossible to attain. Conducting such a surveillance undetected is likely to render it virtually impossible for police so perfectly to time their movements as to avoid detection and also be able to arrest the owner and reseize the container the instant he takes possession. Not infrequently, police may lose sight of the container they are trailing, as is the risk in the pursuit of a car or vessel.
During such a gap in surveillance, it is possible that the container will be put to other uses — for example, the contraband may be removed or other items may be placed inside. The likelihood that this will happen depends on all the facts and circumstances, including the nature and uses of the container, the length of the break in surveillance, and the setting in which the events occur. However, the mere fact that the police may be less than 100% certain of the contents of the container is insufficient to create a protected interest in the privacy of the container. See Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S., at 764-765, n. 13. The issue then becomes at what point after an interruption of control or surveillance, courts should recognize the individual’s expectation of privacy in the container as a legitimate right protected by the Fourth Amendment proscription against unreasonable searches.
In fashioning a standard, we must be mindful of three Fourth Amendment principles. First, the standard should be workable for application by rank-and-file, trained police officers. See New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454, 458-460 (1981); United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 821 (1982). Second, it should be reasonable; for example, it would be absurd to recognize as legitimate an expectation of privacy where there is only a minimal probability that the contents of a particular container had been changed. Third, the standard should be objective, not dependent on the belief of individual police officers. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21-22 (1968). A workable, objective standard that limits the risk of intrusion on legitimate privacy interests is whether there is a substantial likelihood that the contents of the container have been changed during the gap in surveillance. We hold that absent a substantial likelihood that the contents have been changed, there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a container previously opened under lawful authority.
Ill
Applying these principles, we conclude there was no substantial likelihood here that the contents of the shipping container were changed during the brief period that it was out of sight of the surveilling officer. The unusual size of the container, its specialized purpose, and the relatively short break in surveillance combine to make it substantially unlikely that the respondent removed the table or placed new items inside the container while it was in his apartment. Thus, reopening the container did not intrude on any legitimate expectation of privacy and did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
The judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Common carriers have a common-law right to inspect packages they accept for shipment, based on their duty to refrain from carrying contraband. See United States v. Pryba, 163 U. S. App. D. C. 389, 397-398, 502 F. 2d 391, 399-400 (1974). Although sheer volume prevents systematic inspection of all or even a large percentage of the cargo in their care, see, e. g., McConnell v. State, 595 P. 2d 147, 148, and n. 1 (Alaska 1979), carriers do discover contraband in a variety of circumstances. Similarly, although the United States Government has the undoubted right to inspect all incoming goods at a port of entry, see United States v. Ramsey, 431 U. S. 606, 616-619 (1977), it would be impossible for customs officers to inspect every package. In the course of selective inspections, they inevitably discover contraband in transit.
When common carriers discover contraband in packages entrusted to their care, it is routine for them to notify the appropriate authorities. The arrival of police on the scene to confirm the presence of contraband and to determine what to do with it does not convert the private search by the carrier into a government search subject to the Fourth Amendment. E. g., United States v. Edwards, 602 F. 2d 458 (CA1 1979).
Of course, the mere fact that the consignee takes possession of the container would not alone establish guilt of illegal possession or importation of contraband. The recipient of the package would be free to offer evidence that the nature of the contents were unknown to him; the nature of the contents and the recipient’s awareness of them would be issues for the fact-finder.
Respondent has not claimed that the warrantless seizure of the container from the hallway of his apartment house following his arrest violated the Fourth Amendment; his claim goes only to the warrantless reopening of the container.
The Illinois Court held that Labek’s absence when the container was resealed by customs officers somehow made less than certain his knowledge of the container’s contents. This was plain error: where law enforcement authorities are cooperating in an investigation, as here, the knowledge of one is presumed shared by all. See Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U. S. 660, 568 (1971).
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
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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 petitioner, while employed by the respondents as a seaman on the SS Penn Sailor, slipped on wet paint, injuring his right wrist and elbow. He sued the respondents under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. § 688, and obtained a $90,000 verdict at his juiy trial. The respondents moved to set aside the verdict as excessive. Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 50, 59. The District Court granted the motion, and ordered a new trial on damages unless the petitioner agreed to remit $25,000 of the $90,000 award.
After some time the petitioner submitted to the District Court a proposed order stating that he accepted “under protest” the reduced verdict of $65,000, but reserving nonetheless “his right to appeal therefrom.” This language was adopted by the District Court in entering a judgment for the petitioner in the amount of $65,000.
The petitioner sought appellate review of the District Court’s decision to order a conditional new trial. In so doing he asked the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to discard the settled rule that a plaintiff who has accepted a remittitur may not appeal to seek reinstatement of the original verdict. The Court of Appeals refused the petitioner’s invitation, and dismissed the appeal. 536 F. 2d 536.
The Court of Appeals properly followed our precedents in holding that a plaintiff cannot “protest” a remittitur he has accepted in an attempt to open it to challenge on appeal. A line of decisions stretching back to 1889 has firmly established that a plaintiff cannot appeal the propriety of a remittitur order to which he has agreed. Kennon v. Gilmer, 131 U. S. 22, 29-30 (1889); Lewis v. Wilson, 151 U. S. 551, 554-555 (1894); Koenigsberger v. Richmond Silver Mining Co., 158 U. S. 41, 52 (1895); Woodworth v. Chesbrough, 244 U. S. 79, 82 (1917).
There are decisions in the Federal Courts of Appeals that depart from these unbroken precedents. Those decisions held or intimated that a plaintiff who accepts a remittitur “under protest” may challenge on appeal the correctness of the remittitur order. See, e. g., Bonn v. Puerto Rico Int’l Airlines, Inc., 518 F. 2d 89, 94 (CA1 1975); United States v. 1160.96 Acres of Land, 432 F. 2d 910 (CA5 1970); Gorsalitz v. Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp., 429 F. 2d 1033 (CA5 1970) ; Steinberg v. Indemnity Ins. Co. of North America, 364 F. 2d 266 (CA5 1966) ; Delta Engineering Corp. v. Scott, 322 F. 2d 11, 15 (CA5 1963). Other decisions have suggested that when entertaining cases pursuant to its diversity jurisdiction, a federal court should look to state practice to determine whether such an appeal is permitted. See Burnett v. Coleman Co., 507 F. 2d 726 (CA6 1974); Manning v. Altec, Inc., 488 F. 2d 127 (CA6 1973); Mooney v. Henderson Portion Pack Co., 334 F. 2d 7 (CA6 1964).
The proper role of the trial and appellate courts in the federal system in reviewing the size of jury verdicts is, however, a matter of federal law, see Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U. S. 460, 466-469 (1965); Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Coop., 356 U. S. 525 (1958), and that law has always prohibited appeals in the situation at bar. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit correctly adhered to the consistent rule established by this Court’s decisions. In order to clarify whatever uncertainty might exist, we now reaffirm the longstanding rule that a plaintiff in federal court, whether prosecuting a.state or federal cause of action, may not appeal from a remittitur order he has accepted.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and the judgment is affirmed.
So ordered.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blackmun would grant the petition for certiorari but would have the case argued and given plenary consideration rather than disposed of summarily.
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.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In these two consolidated cases we address the power of federal courts to require a losing party to pay the compensation of the winner’s expert witnesses. In No. 86-322, respondent J. T. Gibbons, Inc., sued petitioner Crawford Fitting Co. and other petitioners for alleged violations of the antitrust laws. The District Court directed a verdict in favor of petitioners. 565 F. Supp. 167 (ED La. 1981), aff’d, 704 F. 2d 787 (CA5 1983). Petitioners then filed a bill of costs with the Clerk of that court, seeking reimbursement from respondent for over $220,000 in litigation expenses, including substantial expert witness fees. The District Court held that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d) granted it discretion to exceed the $30-per-day witness fee limit found in 28 U. S. C. § 1821(b). It accordingly awarded petitioners $86,480.70 for their expert witnesses. 102 F. R. D. 73 (ED La. 1984). En banc, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that the limit of § 1821(b) controlled. 790 F. 2d 1193 (1986). In No. 86-328, respondent International Woodworkers of America (IWA) sued petitioner Champion International, alleging racial discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U. S. C. § 1981. After a trial on the merits, the District Court dismissed all of respondent’s claims. Petitioner thereafter filed a bill of costs, including. $11,807 in expert witness fees. The District Court declined to order respondent to reimburse petitioner for these fees to the extent they exceeded the $30-per-day limit. The en banc Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, finding the limit set forth in § 1821(b) dispositive. 790 F. 2d 1174 (1986). We agree and hold that when a prevailing party seeks reimbursement for fees paid to its own expert witnesses, a federal court is bound by the limit of § 1821(b), absent contract or explicit statutory authority to the contrary.
In 1793 Congress enacted a general provision linking some taxable costs in most cases in federal courts to the practice of the courts of the State in which the federal court sat. Act of Mar. 1, 1793, §4, 1 Stat. 333. This provision expired in 1799. Apparently from 1799 until 1853 federal courts continued to refer to state rules governing taxable costs. See Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, 250 (1975). By 1853 there was a “great diversity in practice among the courts” and “losing litigants were being unfairly saddled with exorbitant fees.” Id., at 251. Accordingly, Congress returned to the issue and comprehensively regulated fees and the taxation of fees as costs in the federal courts. The resulting 1853 Fee Act “was a far-reaching Act specifying in detail the nature and amount of the taxable items of cost in the federal courts.” 421 U. S., at 251-252.
It provided, in part, “That in lieu of the compensation now allowed by law to attorneys, solicitors, . . . and . . . witnesses ... in the several States, the following and no other compensation shall be taxed and allowed.” Act of Feb. 26, 1853, 10 Stat. 161. The rate for witnesses was set at $1.50 per day. 10 Stat. 167. The sweeping reforms of the 1853 Act have been carried forward to today, “without any apparent intent to change the controlling rules.” Alyeska Pipeline, supra, at 255. Title 28 U. S. C. § 1920 now embodies Congress’ considered choice as to the kinds of expenses that a federal court may tax as costs against the losing party:
“A judge or clerk of any court of the United States may tax as costs the following:
“(1) Fees of the clerk and marshal;
“(2) Fees of the court reporter for all or any part of the stenographic transcript necessarily obtained for use in the case;
“(3) Fees and disbursements for printing and witnesses;
“(4) Fees for exemplification and copies of papers necessarily obtained for use in the case;
“(5) Docket fees under section 1923 of this title;
“(6) Compensation of court appointed experts, compensation of interpreters, and salaries, fees, expenses, and costs of special interpretation services under section 1828 of this title.”
The witness fee specified in § 1920(3) is defined in 28 U. S. C. § 1821:
“(a)(1) Except as otherwise provided by law, a witness in attendance at any court of the United States . . . shall be paid the fees and allowances provided by this section.
“(b) A witness shall be paid an attendance fee of $30 per day for each day’s attendance. A witness shall also be paid the attendance fee for the time necessarily occupied in going to and returning from the place of attendance at the beginning and end of such attendance or at any time during such attendance.”
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d) in turn provides in part: “Except when express provision therefor is made either in a statute of the United States or in these rules, costs shall be allowed as of course to the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs.” The logical conclusion from the language and interrelation of these provisions is that § 1821 specifies the amount of the fee that must be tendered to a witness, § 1920 provides that the fee may be taxed as a cost, and Rule 54(d) provides that the cost shall be taxed against the losing party unless the court otherwise directs.
Petitioners argue that since § 1920 lists which expenses a court “may” tax as costs, that section only authorizes taxation of certain items. In their view, § 1920 does not preclude taxation of costs above and beyond the items listed, and more particularly, amounts in excess of the § 1821(b) fee. Thus, the discretion granted by Rule 54(d) is a separate source of power to tax as costs expenses not enumerated in § 1920. We think, however, that no reasonable reading of these provisions together can lead to this conclusion, for petitioners’ view renders § 1920 superfluous. If Rule 54(d) grants courts discretion to tax whatever costs may seem appropriate, then § 1920, which enumerates the costs that may be taxed, serves no role whatsoever. We think the better view is that § 1920 defines the term “costs” as used in Rule 54(d). Section 1920 enumerates expenses that a federal court may tax as a cost under the discretionary authority found in Rule 54(d). It is phrased permissively because Rule 54(d) generally grants a federal court discretion to refuse to tax costs in favor of the prevailing party. One of the items enumerated in § 1920 is the witness fee, set by § 1821(b) at $30 per day.
We cannot accept an interpretation of Rule 54(d) that would render any of these specific statutory provisions entirely without meaning. Repeals by implication are not favored, and petitioners proffer the ultimate in implication, for Rule 54(d) and §§ 1920 and 1821 are not even inconsistent. We think that it is clear that in §§ 1920 and 1821, Congress comprehensively addressed the taxation of fees for litigants’ witnesses. This conclusion is all the more compelling when we consider that § 1920(6) allows the taxation, as a cost, of the compensation of court-appointed expert witnesses. There is no provision that sets a limit on the compensation for court-appointed expert witnesses in the way that § 1821(b) sets a limit for litigants’ witnesses. It is therefore clear that when Congress meant to set a limit on fees, it knew how to do so. We think that the inescapable effect of these sections in combination is that a federal court may tax expert witness fees in excess of the $30-per-day limit set out in § 1821(b) only when the witness is court-appointed. The discretion granted by Rule 54(d) is not a power to evade this specific congressional command. Rather, it is solely a power to decline to tax, as costs, the items enumerated in § 1920.
The logic of this conclusion notwithstanding, petitioners place heavy weight on a single sentence found in our opinion in Farmer v. Arabian American Oil Co., 379 U. S. 227 (1964). In that case this Court held that the District Court had not abused its discretion in refusing to tax against the losing plaintiff the travel expenses of witnesses for the defendant. In the course of so ruling, the Court stated:
“[T]he discretion given district judges [by Rule 54(d)] to tax costs should be sparingly exercised with reference to expenses not specifically allowed by statute.” Id., at 235.
Applying this language to the present case, petitioners argue that courts therefore have discretion to tax as costs expenses incurred beyond those specified by Congress as fees in § 1821, and made taxable by § 1920.
The sentence relied upon is classic obiter: something mentioned in passing, which is not in any way necessary to the decision of the issue before the Court. We think the dictum is inconsistent with the foregoing analysis, and we disapprove it.
The argument petitioners present today was squarely rejected in Henkel v. Chicago, S. P., M. & O. R. Co., 284 U. S. 444 (1932). In that case, the Court held that federal courts have no authority to award expert witness fees in excess of the statutory limit set by Congress in the Fee Act of 1853. The Court’s reasoning was straightforward:
“Specific provision as to the amounts payable and taxable as witness fees was made by Congress as early as the Act of February 28, 1799 .... Under these provisions, additional amounts paid as compensation, or fees, to expert witnesses cannot be allowed or taxed as costs in cases in the federal courts.
“. . . Congress has dealt with the subject comprehensively and has made no exception of the fees of expert witnesses. Its legislation must be deemed controlling . . . .” Id., at 446-447.
Petitioners contend 'that because Henkel was decided before the merger of law and equity in the federal courts, it is no longer good law. Petitioners’ argument proceeds along the following lines: Prior to the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, federal courts could sit in law or in equity. In petitioners’ view, courts sitting in equity had broad discretion to award fees not specified by statute. Henkel, decided under this regime, held that courts at law had no power to exceed the limits set by statute. Now that the federal courts’ legal and equitable powers are combined, petitioners conclude that Henkel cannot control the scope of a federal court’s powers to exceed the limits set by statute.
We cannot agree. Henkel rested on statutory interpretation. Whatever the effect of the merger of law and equity in federal courts, it did not repeal any part of the Pee Act. Title 28 U. S. C. §§1920 and 1821, today’s counterparts to the provisions of the Fee Act at issue in Henkel, are still law, and when not overridden by contract or explicit statutory authority, they control a federal court’s power to hold a losing party responsible for the opponent’s witness fees.
Our conclusion conforms to our prior interpretations of the 1853 Fee Act. In Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240 (1975), we considered the general role of the Act in federal courts. The Act “specified] in detail the nature and amount of the taxable items of cost in the federal courts.” Id., at 252. The comprehensive scope of the Act and the particularity with which it was drafted demonstrated to us that Congress meant to impose rigid controls on cost-shifting in federal courts. Thus, we rejected an. argument similar to the one posited by petitioners today: “Nor has [Congress] extended any roving authority to the Judiciary to allow counsel fees as costs or otherwise whenever the courts might deem them warranted.” Id., at 260.
Although Congress responded to our decision in Alyeska by broadening the availability of attorney’s fees in the federal courts, see the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2641, 42 U. S. C. § 1988, it has not otherwise “retracted, repealed, or modified the limitations on taxable fees contained in the 1853 statute and its successors.” 421 U. S., at 260. Thus, we are once again asked to hold that a specific congressional enactment on the shifting of litigation costs is of no moment. We think that, as in Alyeska, Congress has made its intent plain in its detailed treatment of witness fees. We will not lightly infer that Congress has repealed §§ 1920 and 1821, either through Rule 54(d) or any other provision not referring explicitly to witness fees. As always, “ ‘[w]here there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.’ ” Radzanower v. Touche Ross & Co., 426 U. S. 148, 153 (1976), quoting Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 550-551 (1974) (emphasis added). Any argument that a federal court is empowered to exceed the limitations explicitly set out in §§ 1920 and 1821 without plain evidence of congressional intent to supersede those sections ignores our longstanding practice of construing statutes in pari materia. See United States v. United Continental Tuna Corp., 425 U. S. 164, 168-169 (1976); Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, 426 U. S. 1, 24 (1976).
We hold that absent explicit statutory or contractual authorization for the taxation of the expenses of a litigant’s witness as costs, federal courts are bound by the limitations set out in 28 U. S. C. § 1821 and § 1920. The judgments of the Court of Appeals are affirmed, and No. 86-322 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:
|
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 Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
An undercover government agent was placed in the cell of respondent Perkins, who was incarcerated on charges unrelated to the subject of the agent’s investigation. Respondent made statements that implicated him in the crime that the agent sought to solve. Respondent claims that the statements should be inadmissible because he had not been given Miranda warnings by the agent. We hold that the statements are admissible. Miranda warnings are not required when the suspect is unaware that he is speaking to a law enforcement officer and gives a voluntary statement.
I
In November 1984, Richard Stephenson was murdered in a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois. The murder remained unsolved until March 1986, when one Donald Charlton told police that he had learned about a homicide from a fellow inmate at the Graham Correctional Facility, where Charlton had been serving a sentence for burglary. The fellow inmate was Lloyd Perkins, who is the respondent here. Charlton told police that, while at Graham, he had befriended respondent, who told him in detail about a murder that respondent had committed in East St. Louis. On hearing Charlton’s account, the police recognized details of the Stephenson murder that were not well known, and so they treated Charlton’s story as a credible one.
By the time the police heard Charlton’s account, respondent had been released from Graham, but police traced him to a jail in Montgomery County, Illinois, where he was being held pending trial on a charge of aggravated battery, unrelated to the Stephenson murder. The police wanted to investigate further respondent’s connection to the Stephenson murder, but feared that the use of an eavesdropping device would prove impracticable and unsafe. They decided instead to place an undercover agent in the cellblock with respondent and Charlton. The plan was for Charlton and undercover agent John Parisi to pose as escapees from a work release program who had been arrested in the course of a burglary. Parisi and Charlton were instructed to engage respondent in casual conversation and report anything he said about the Stephenson murder.
Parisi, using the alias “Vito Bianco,” and Charlton, both clothed in jail garb, were placed in the cellblock with respondent at the Montgomery County jail. The cellblock consisted of 12 separate cells that opened onto a common room. Respondent greeted Charlton who, after a brief conversation with respondent, introduced Parisi by his alias. Parisi told respondent that he “wasn’t going to do any more time” and suggested that the three of them escape. Respondent replied that the Montgomery County jail was “rinky-dink” and that they could “break out.” The trio met in respondent’s cell later that evening, after the other inmates were asleep, to refine their plan. Respondent said that his girlfriend could smuggle in a pistol. Charlton said: “Hey, Pm not a murderer, Pm a burglar. That’s your guys’ profession.” After telling Charlton that he would be responsible for any murder that occurred, Parisi asked respondent if he had ever “done” anybody. Respondent said that he had and proceeded to describe at length the events of the Stephenson murder. Parisi and respondent then engaged in some casual conversation before respondent went to sleep. Parisi did not give respondent Miranda warnings before the conversations.
Respondent was charged with the Stephenson murder. Before trial, he moved to suppress the statements made to Parisi in the jail. The trial court granted the motion to suppress, and the State appealed. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed, 176 Ill. App. 3d 443, 531 N. E. 2d 141 (1988), holding that Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), prohibits all undercover contacts with incarcerated suspects that are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.
We granted certiorari, 493 U. S. 808 (1989), to decide whether an undercover law enforcement officer must give Miranda warnings to an incarcerated suspect before asking him questions that may elicit an incriminating response. We now reverse.
II
In Miranda v. Arizona, supra, the Court held that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination prohibits admitting statements given by a suspect during “custodial interrogation” without a prior warning. Custodial interrogation means “questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody . . . .” Id., at 444. The warning mandated by Miranda was meant to preserve the privilege during “incommunicado interrogation of individuals in a police-dominated atmosphere.” Id., at 445. That atmosphere is said to generate “inherently compelling pressures which work to undermine the individual’s will to resist and to compel him to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.” Id., at 467. “Fidelity to the doctrine announced in Miranda requires that it be enforced strictly, but only in those types of situations in which the concerns that powered the decision are implicated.” Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 437 (1984).
Conversations between suspects and undercover agents do not implicate the concerns underlying Miranda. The essential ingredients of a “police-dominated atmosphere” and compulsion are not present when an incarcerated person speaks freely to someone whom he believes to be a fellow inmate. Coercion is determined from the perspective of the suspect. Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U. S. 291, 301 (1980); Berkemer v. McCarty, supra, at 442. When a suspect considers himself in the company of cellmates and not officers, the coercive atmosphere is lacking. Miranda, 384 U. S., at 449 (“[T]he ‘principal psychological factor contributing to a successful interrogation is privacy—being alone with the person under interrogation’”); id., at 445. There is no empirical basis for the assumption that a suspect speaking to those whom he assumes are not officers will feel compelled to speak by the fear of reprisal for remaining silent or in the hope of more lenient treatment should he confess.
It is the premise of Miranda that the danger of coercion results from the interaction of custody and official interrogation. We reject the argument that Miranda warnings are required whenever a suspect is in custody in a technical sense and converses with someone who happens to be a government agent. Questioning by captors, who appear to control the suspect’s fate, may create mutually reinforcing pressures that the Court has assumed will weaken the suspect’s will, but where a suspect does not know that he is conversing with a government agent, these pressures do not exist. The state court here mistakenly assumed that because the suspect was in custody, no undercover questioning could take place. When the suspect has no reason to think that the listeners have official power over him, it should not be assumed that his words are motivated by the reaction he expects from his listeners. “[W]hen the agent carries neither badge nor gun and wears not ‘police blue,’ but the same prison gray” as the suspect, there is no “interplay between police interrogation and police custody.” Kamisar, Brewer v. Williams, Massiah and Miranda: What is “Interrogation”? When Does it Matter?, 67 Geo. L. J. 1, 67, 63 (1978).
Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception by taking advantage of a suspect’s misplaced trust in one he supposes to be a fellow prisoner. As we recognized in Miranda: “Confessions remain a proper element in law enforcement. Any statement given freely and voluntarily without any compelling influences is, of course, admissible in evidence.” 384 U. S., at 478. Ploys to mislead a suspect or lull him into a false sense of security that do not rise to the level of compulsion or coercion to speak are not within Miranda’s concerns. Cf. Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U. S. 492, 495-496 (1977) (per curiam); Moran v. Burbine, 475 U. S. 412 (1986) (where police fail to inform suspect of attorney’s efforts to reach him, neither Miranda nor the Fifth Amendment requires suppression of prearraignment confession after voluntary waiver).
Miranda was not meant to protect suspects from boasting about their criminal activities in front of persons whom they believe to be their cellmates. This case is illustrative. Respondent had no reason to feel that undercover agent Parisi had any legal authority to force him to answer questions or that Parisi could affect respondent’s future treatment. Respondent viewed the cellmate-agent as an equal and showed no hint of being intimidated by the atmosphere of the jail. In recounting the details of the Stephenson murder, respondent was motivated solely by the desire to impress his fellow inmates. He spoke at his own peril.
The tactic employed here to elicit a voluntary confession from a suspect does not violate the Self-Incrimination Clause. We held in Hoffa v. United States, 385 U. S. 293 (1966), that placing an undercover agent near a suspect in order to gather incriminating information was permissible under the Fifth Amendment. In Hoffa, while petitioner Hoffa was on trial, he met often with one Partin, who, unbeknownst to Hoffa, was cooperating with law enforcement officials. Partin reported to officials that Hoffa had divulged his attempts to bribe jury members. We approved using Hoffa’s statements at his subsequent trial for jury tampering, on the rationale that “no claim ha[d] been or could [have been] made that [Hoffa’s] incriminating statements were the product of any sort of coercion, legal or factual.” Id., at 304. In addition, we found that the fact that Partin had fooled Hoffa into thinking that Partin was a sympathetic colleague did not affect the volun-tariness of the statements. Ibid. Cf. Oregon v. Mathiason, supra, at 495-496 (officer’s falsely telling suspect that suspect’s fingerprints had been found at crime scene did not render interview “custodial” under Miranda); Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731, 739 (1969); Procunier v. Atchley, 400 U. S. 446, 453-454 (1971). The only difference between this case and Hoffa is that the suspect here was incarcerated, but detention, whether or not for the crime in question, does not warrant a presumption that the use of an undercover agent to speak with an incarcerated suspect makes any confession thus obtained involuntary.
Our decision in Mathis v. United States, 391 U. S. 1 (1968), is distinguishable. In Mathis, an inmate in a state prison was interviewed by an Internal Revenue Service agent about possible tax violations. No Miranda warning was given before questioning. The Court held that the suspect’s incriminating statements were not admissible at his subsequent trial on tax fraud charges. The suspect in Mathis was aware that the agent was a Government official, investigating the possibility of noncompliance with the tax laws. The case before us now is different. Where the suspect does not know that he is speaking to a government agent there is no reason to assume the possibility that the suspect might feel coerced. (The bare fact of custody may not in every instance require a warning even when the suspect is aware that he is speaking to an official, but we do not have occasion to explore that issue here.)
This Court’s Sixth Amendment decisions in Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964), United States v. Henry, 447 U. S. 264 (1980), and Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S. 159 (1985), also do not avail respondent. We held in those cases that the government may not use an undercover agent to circumvent the Sixth Amendment right to counsel once a suspect has been charged with the crime. After charges have been filed, the Sixth Amendment prevents the government from interfering with the accused’s right to counsel. Moulton, supra, at 176. In the instant case no charges had been filed on the subject of the interrogation, and our Sixth Amendment precedents are not applicable.
Respondent can seek no help from his argument that a bright-line rule for the application of Miranda is desirable. Law enforcement officers will have little difficulty putting into practice our holding that undercover agents need not
give Miranda warnings to incarcerated suspects. The use of undercover agents is a recognized law enforcement technique, often employed in the prison context to detect violence against correctional officials or inmates, as well as for the purposes served here. The interests protected by Miranda are not implicated in these cases, and the warnings are not required to safeguard the constitutional rights of inmates who make voluntary statements to undercover agents.
We hold that an undercover law enforcement officer posing as a fellow inmate need not give Miranda warnings to an incarcerated suspect before asking questions that may elicit an incriminating response. The statements at issue in this case were voluntary, and there is no federal obstacle to their admissibility at trial. We now reverse and remand for proceedings not inconsistent with our 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:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We decide in this case the question reserved 10 years ago in Morales v. New York, 396 U. S. 102 (1969), namely, “the question of the legality of custodial questioning on less than probable cause for a full-fledged arrest.” Id., at 106.
I
On March 26, 1971, the proprietor of a pizza parlor in Rochester, N. Y., was killed during an attempted robbery. On August 10, 1971, Detective Anthony Fantigrossi of the Rochester Police was told by another officer that an informant had supplied a possible lead implicating petitioner in the crime. Fantigrossi questioned the supposed source of the lead — a jail inmate awaiting trial for burglary — but learned nothing that supplied “enough information to get a warrant” for petitioner’s arrest. App. 60. Nevertheless, Fantigrossi ordered other detectives to “pick up” petitioner and “bring him in.” Id., at 54. Three detectives located petitioner at a neighbor’s house on the morning of August 11. Petitioner was taken into custody; although he was not told he was under arrest, he would have been physically restrained if he had attempted to leave. Opinion in People v. Dunaway (Monroe County Ct., Mar. 11, 1977), App. 116, 117. He was driven to police headquarters in a police car and placed in an interrogation room, where he was questioned by officers after being given the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). Petitioner waived counsel and eventually made statements and drew sketches that incriminated him in the crime.
At petitioner’s jury trial for attempted robbery and felony murder, his motions to suppress the statements and sketches were denied, and he was convicted. On appeal, both the Appellate Division of the Fourth Department and the New York Court of Appeals initially affirmed the conviction without opinion. 42 App. Div. 2d 689, 346 N. Y. S. 2d 779 (1973), aff’d, 35 N. Y. 2d 741, 320 N. E. 2d 646 (1974). However, this Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the Court’s supervening decision in Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975). 422 U. S. 1053 (1975). The petitioner in Brown, like petitioner Dunaway, made inculpatory statements after receiving Miranda warnings during custodial interrogation following his seizure — in that case a formal arrest — on less than probable cause. Brown’s motion to suppress the statements was also denied and the statements were used to convict him. Although the Illinois Supreme Court recognized that Brown’s arrest was unlawful, it affirmed the admission of the statements on the ground that the giving of Miranda warnings served to break the causal connection between the illegal arrest and the giving of the statements. This Court reversed, holding that the Illinois courts erred in adopting a per se rule that Miranda warnings in and of themselves sufficed to cure the Fourth Amendment violation; rather the Court held that in order to use such statements, the prosecution must show not only that the statements meet the Fifth Amendment voluntariness standard, but also that the causal connection between the statements and the illegal arrest is broken sufficiently to purge the primary taint of the illegal arrest in light of the distinct policies and interests of the Fourth Amendment.
In compliance with the remand, the New York Court of Appeals directed the Monroe County Court to make further factual findings as to whether there was a detention of petitioner, whether the police had probable cause, “and, in the event there was a detention and probable cause is not found for such detention, to determine the further question as to whether the making of the confessions was rendered infirm by the illegal arrest (see Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590, supra).” People v. Dunaway, 38 N. Y. 2d 812, 813-814, 345 N. E. 2d 583, 584 (1975).
The County Court determined after a supplementary suppression hearing that Dunaway’s motion to suppress should have been granted. Although reaffirming that there had been “full compliance with the mandate of Miranda v. Arizona,” the County Court found that “this case does not involve a situation where the defendant voluntarily appeared at police headquarters in response to a request of the police....” App. 117. The State’s attempt to justify petitioner’s involuntary investigatory detention on the authority of People v. Morales, 22 N. Y. 2d 55, 238 N. E. 2d 307 (1968)— which upheld a similar detention on the basis of information amounting to less than probable cause for arrest — was rejected on the grounds that the precedential value of Morales was questionable, and that the controlling authority was the “strong language” in Brown v. Illinois indicating “disdain for custodial questioning without probable cause to arrest.” The County Court further held that “the factual predicate in this case did not amount to probable cause sufficient to support the arrest of the defendant,” that “the Miranda warnings by themselves did not purge the taint of the defendant’s illegal seizure [,] Brown v. Illinois, supra, and [that] there was no claim or showing by the People of any attenuation of the defendant’s illegal detention,” App. 121. Accordingly petitioner’s motion to suppress was granted. Ibid.
A divided Appellate Division reversed. Although agreeing that the police lacked probable cause to arrest petitioner, the majority relied on. the Court of Appeals’ reaffirmation, subsequent to the County Court’s decision, that “[l]aw enforcement officials may detain an individual upon reasonable suspicion for questioning for a reasonable and brief period of time under carefully controlled conditions which are ample to protect the individual’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.” 61 App. Div. 2d 299, 302, 402 N. Y. S. 2d 490, 492 (1978), quoting People v. Morales, 42 N. Y. 2d 129, 135, 366 N. E. 2d 248, 251 (1977). The Appellate Division also held that even if petitioner’s detention were illegal, the taint of his illegal detention was sufficiently attenuated to allow the admission of his statements and sketches. The Appellate Division emphasized that petitioner was never threatened or abused by the police and purported to distinguish Brown v. Illinois, The Court of Appeals dismissed petitioner’s application for leave to appeal. App. 134.
We granted certiorari, 439 U. S. 979 (1978), to clarify the Fourth Amendment’s requirements as to the permissible grounds for custodial interrogation and to review the New York court’s application of Brown v. Illinois. We reverse.
II
We first consider whether the Rochester police violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments when, without probable cause to arrest, they took petitioner into custody, transported him to the police station, and detained him there for interrogation.
The Fourth Amendment, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause....” There can be little doubt that petitioner was “seized” in the Fourth Amendment sense when he was taken involuntarily to the police station. And respondent State concedes that the police lacked probable cause to arrest petitioner before his incriminating statement during interrogation. Nevertheless respondent contends that the seizure of petitioner did not amount to an arrest and was therefore permissible under the Fourth Amendment because the police had a “reasonable suspicion” that petitioner possessed “intimate knowledge about a serious and unsolved crime.” Brief for Respondent 10. We disagree.
Before Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable seizures of persons was analyzed in terms of arrest, probable cause for arrest, and warrants based on such probable cause. The basic principles were relatively simple and straightforward: The term “arrest” was synonymous with those seizures governed by the Fourth Amendment. While warrants were not required in all circumstances, the requirement of probable cause, as elaborated in numerous precedents, was treated as absolute. The “long-prevailing standards” of probable cause embodied “the best compromise that has been found for accommodating [the] often opposing interests” in “safeguard [ing] citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy” and in “seek[ing] to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176 (1949). The standard of probable cause thus represented the accumulated wisdom of precedent and experience as to the minimum justification necessary to make the kind of intrusion involved in an arrest “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. The standard applied to all arrests, without the need to “balance” the interests and circumstances involved in particular situations. Cf. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523 (1967).
Terry for the first time recognized an exception to the requirement that Fourth Amendment seizures of persons must be based on probable cause. That case involved a brief, on-the-spot stop on the street and a frisk for weapons, a situation that did not fit comfortably within the traditional concept of an “arrest.” Nevertheless, the Court held that even this type of “necessarily swift action predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat” constituted a “serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment,” 392 U. S., at 20, 17, and therefore “must be tested by the Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Id., at 20. However, since the intrusion involved in a “stop and frisk” was so much less severe than that involved in traditional “arrests,” the Court declined to stretch the concept of “arrest” — and the general rule requiring probable cause to make arrests “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment — to cover such intrusions. Instead, the Court treated the stop-and-frisk intrusion as a sui generis “rubric of police conduct,” ibid. And to determine the justification necessary to make this specially limited intrusion “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, the Court balanced the limited violation of individual privacy involved against the opposing interests in crime prevention and detection and in the police officer’s safety. Id., at 22-27. As a consequence, the Court established “a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.” Id., at 27. Thus, Terry departed from traditional Fourth Amendment analysis in two respects. First, it defined a special category of Fourth Amendment “seizures” so substantially less intrusive than arrests that the general rule requiring probable cause to make Fourth Amendment “seizures” reasonable could be replaced by a balancing test. Second, the application of this balancing test led the Court to approve this narrowly defined less intrusive seizure on grounds less rigorous than probable cause, but only for the purpose of a pat-down for weapons.
Because Terry involved an exception to the general rule requiring probable cause, this Court has been careful to maintain its narrow scope. Terry itself involved a limited, on-the-street frisk for weapons. Two subsequent cases which applied Terry also involved limited weapons frisks. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143 (1972) (frisk for weapons on basis of reasonable suspicion); Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106 (1977) (order to get out of car is permissible “de minimis” intrusion after car is lawfully detained for traffic violations; frisk for weapons justified after “bulge” observed in jacket). United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873 (1976), applied Terry in the special context of roving border patrols stopping automobiles to check for illegal immigrants. The investigative stops usually consumed less than a minute and involved “a brief question or two.” 422 U. S., at 880. The Court stated that “ [b] ecause of the limited nature of the intrusion, stops of this sort may be justified on facts that do not amount to the probable cause required for an arrest.” Ibid. See also United States v. Martines-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543 (1976) (fixed checkpoint to stop and check vehicles for aliens); Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648 (1979) (random checks for drivers’ licenses and proper vehicle registration not permitted on less than articulable reasonable suspicion).
Respondent State now urges the Court to apply a balancing test, rather than the general rule, to custodial interrogations, and to hold that “seizures” such as that in this case may be justified by mere “reasonable suspicion.” Terry and its progeny clearly do not support such a result. The narrow intrusions involved in those cases were judged by a balancing test rather than by the general principle that Fourth Amendment seizures must be supported by the “long-prevailing standards” of probable cause, Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S., at 176, only because these intrusions fell far short of the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest. Indeed, Brignoni-Ponce expressly refused to extend Terry in the manner respondent now urges. The Court there stated: “The officer may question the driver and passengers about their citizenship and immigration status, and he may ask them to explain suspicious circumstances, but any further detention or search must be based on consent or probable cause.” 422 U. S., at 881-882 (emphasis added). Accord, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at 567.
In contrast to the brief and narrowly circumscribed intrusions involved in those cases, the detention of petitioner was in important respects indistinguishable from a traditional arrest. Petitioner was not questioned briefly where he was found. Instead, he was taken from a neighbor’s home to a police car, transported to a police station, and placed in an interrogation room. He was never informed that he was “free to go”; indeed, he would have been physically restrained if he had refused to accompany the officers or had tried to escape their custody. The application of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of probable cause does not depend on whether an intrusion of this magnitude is termed an “arrest” under state law. The mere facts that petitioner was not told he was under arrest, was not “booked,” and would not have had an arrest record if the interrogation had proved fruitless, while not insignificant for all purposes, see Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291 (1973), obviously do not make petitioner’s seizure even roughly analogous to the narrowly defined intrusions involved in Terry and its progeny. Indeed, any “exception” that could cover a seizure as intrusive as that in this case would threaten to swallow the general rule that Fourth Amendment seizures are “reasonable” only if based on probable cause.
The central importance of the probable-cause requirement to the protection of a citizen’s privacy afforded by the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees cannot be compromised in this fashion. “The requirement of probable cause has roots that are deep in our history.” Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 100 (1959). Hostility to seizures based on mere suspicion was a prime motivation for the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, and decisions immediately after its adoption affirmed that “common rumor or report, suspicion, or even ‘strong reason to suspect’ was not adequate to support a warrant for arrest.” Id., at 101 (footnotes omitted). The familiar threshold standard of probable cause for Fourth Amendment seizures reflects the benefit of extensive experience accommodating the factors relevant to the “reasonableness” requirement of the Fourth Amendment, and provides the relative simplicity and clarity necessary to the implementation of a workable rule. See Brinegar v. United States, supra, at 175-176.
In effect, respondent urges us to adopt a multifactor balancing test of “reasonable police conduct under the circumstances” to cover all seizures that do not amount to technical arrests. But the protections intended by the Framers could all too easily disappear in the consideration and balancing of the multifarious circumstances presented by different cases, especially when that balancing may be done in the first instance by police officers engaged in the “often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.” Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948). A single, familiar standard is essential to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront. Indeed, our recognition of these dangers, and our consequent reluctance to depart from the proved protections afforded by the general rule, are reflected in the narrow limitations emphasized in the cases employing the balancing test. For all but those narrowly defined intrusions, the requisite “balancing” has been performed in centuries of precedent and is embodied in the principle that seizures are “reasonable” only if supported by probable cause.
Moreover, two important decisions since Terry confirm the conclusion that the treatment of petitioner, whether or not it is technically characterized as an arrest, must be supported by probable cause. Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721 (1969), decided the Term after Terry, considered whether fingerprints taken from a suspect detained without probable cause must be excluded from evidence. The State argued that the detention “was of a type which does not require probable cause,” 394 U. S., at 726, because it occurred during an investigative, rather than accusatory, stage, and because it was for the sole purpose of taking fingerprints. Rejecting the State’s first argument, the Court warned:
“[T]o argue that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the investigatory stage is fundamentally to misconceive the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Investigatory seizures would subject unlimited numbers of innocent persons to the harassment and ignominy incident to involuntary detention. Nothing is more clear than that the Fourth Amendment was meant to prevent wholesale intrusions upon the personal security of our citizenry, whether these intrusions be termed ‘arrests’ or ‘investigatory detentions.’ ” Id., at 726-727.
The State’s second argument in Davis was more substantial, largely because of the distinctions between taking fingerprints and interrogation:
“Fingerprinting involves none of the probing into an individual’s private life and thoughts that marks an interrogation or search. Nor can fingerprint detention be employed repeatedly to harass any individual, since the police need only one set of each person’s prints. Furthermore, fingerprinting is an inherently more reliable and effective crime-solving tool than eyewitness identifications or confessions and is not subject to such abuses as the improper line-up and the ‘third degree.’ Finally, because there is no danger of destruction of fingerprints, the limited detention need not come unexpectedly or at an inconvenient time.” Id., at 727.
In Davis, however, the Court found it unnecessary to decide the validity of a “narrowly circumscribed procedure for obtaining” the fingerprints of suspects without probable cause— in part because, as the Court emphasized, “petitioner was not merely fingerprinted during the... detention but also subjected to interrogation.” Id., at 728 (emphasis added). The detention therefore violated the Fourth Amendment.
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S. 590 (1975), similarly disapproved arrests made for “investigatory” purposes on less than probable cause. Although Brown’s arrest had more of the trappings of a technical formal arrest than petitioner’s, such differences in form must not be exalted over substance. Once in the police station, Brown was taken to an interrogation room, and his experience was indistinguishable from petitioner’s. Our condemnation of the police conduct in Brown fits equally the police conduct in this case:
“The impropriety of the arrest was obvious; awareness’ of the fact was virtually conceded by the two detectives when they repeatedly acknowledged, in their testimony, that the purpose of their action was 'for investigation’ or for 'questioning.’... The arrest, both in design and in execution, was investigatory. The detectives embarked upon this expedition for evidence in the hope that something might turn up.” Id., at 605.
See also id., at 602.
These passages from Davis and Brown reflect the conclusion that detention for custodial interrogation — regardless of its label — intrudes so severely on interests protected by the Fourth Amendment as necessarily to trigger the traditional safeguards against illegal arrest. We accordingly hold that the Rochester police violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments when, without probable cause, they seized petitioner and transported him to the police station for interrogation.
Ill
There remains the question whether the connection between this unconstitutional police conduct and the incriminating statements and sketches obtained during petitioner’s illegal detention was nevertheless sufficiently attenuated to permit the use at trial of the statements and sketches. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471 (1963); Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338 (1939); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385 (1920).
The New York courts have consistently held, and petitioner does not contest, that proper Miranda warnings were given and that his statements were “voluntary” for purposes of the Fifth Amendment. But Brown v. Illinois, supra, settled that “[t]he exclusionary rule,... when utilized to effectuate the Fourth Amendment, serves interests and policies that are distinct from those it serves under the Fifth,” 422 U. S., at 601, and held therefore that “Miranda warnings, and the exclusion of a confession made without them, do not alone sufficiently deter a Fourth Amendment violation.” Ibid.
“If Miranda warnings, by themselves, were held to attenuate the taint of an unconstitutional arrest, regardless of how wanton and purposeful the Fourth Amendment violation, the effect of the exclusionary rule would be substantially diluted.... Arrests made without warrant or without probable cause, for questioning or 'investigation/ would be encouraged by the knowledge that evidence derived therefrom, could well be made admissible at trial by the simple, expedient of giving Miranda warnings.” Id., at 602.
Consequently, although a confession after proper Miranda warnings may be found “voluntary” for purposes of the Fifth Amendment, this type of “voluntariness” is merely a “threshold requirement” for Fourth Amendment 'analysis, 422 U. S., at 604. Indeed, if the Fifth Amendment has been violated, the Fourth Amendment issue would not have to be reached.
Beyond this threshold requirement, Brown articulated a test designed to vindicate the “distinct policies and interests of the Fourth Amendment.” Id., at 602. Following Wong Sun, the Court eschewed any per se or “but for” rule, and identified the relevant inquiry as “whether Brown’s statements were obtained by exploitation of the illegality of his arrest,” 422 U. S., at 600; see Wong Sun v. United States, supra, at 488. Brown’s, focus on “the causal connection between the illegality and the confession,” 422 U. S., at 603, reflected the two policies behind the use of the exclusionary rule to effectuate the Fourth Amendment. When there is a close causal connection between the illegal seizure and the confession, not only is exclusion of the evidence more likely to deter similar police misconduct in the future, but use of the evidence is more likely to compromise the integrity of the courts.
Brown identified several factors to be considered “in determining whether the confession is obtained by exploitation of an illegal arrest [: t]he temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances,... and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.... And the burden of showing admissibility rests, of course, on the prosecution.” Id., at 603-604. Examining the case before it, the Court readily concluded that the State had failed to sustain its burden of showing the confession was admissible. In the “less than two hours” that elapsed between the arrest and the confession “there was no intervening event of significance whatsoever.” Ibid. Furthermore, the arrest without probable cause had a “quality of purposefulness” in that it was an “expedition for evidence” admittedly undertaken “in the hope that something might turn up.” Id., at 605.
The situation in this case is virtually a replica of the situation in Brown. Petitioner was also admittedly seized without probable cause in the hope that something might turn up, and confessed without any intervening event of significance. Nevertheless, three members of the Appellate Division purported to distinguish Brown on the ground that the police did not threaten or abuse petitioner (presumably putting aside his illegal seizure and detention) and that the police conduct was “highly protective of defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.” 61 App. Div. 2d, at 303, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 493. This betrays a lingering confusion between “voluntariness” for purposes of the Fifth Amendment and the “causal connection” test established in Brown. Satisfying the Fifth Amendment is only the “threshold” condition of the Fourth Amendment analysis required by Brown. No intervening events broke the connection between petitioner’s illegal detention and his confession. To admit petitioner’s confession in such a case would allow “law enforcement officers to violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity, safe in the knowledge that they could wash their hands in the ‘procedural safeguards’ of the Fifth.”
Reversed.
Me. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
See opinion in People v. Dunaway (Monroe County Ct., Mar. 11, 1977), App. 116-117. An informant had reportedly told the other detective that one James Cole had said that he and someone named “Irving” had been involved in the crime. The informant did not know “Irving’s” last name, but had identified a picture of petitioner Dunaway from a police file. After hearing this information, Fantigrossi interviewed Cole, who was in jail pending an indictment for burglary. Cole denied any involvement in the crime, but stated that he had been told about it two months earlier by another inmate, Hubert Adams. According to Cole, Adams had mentioned that his younger brother, Ba Ba Adams, had told him that he and a fellow named “Irving,” also known as “Axelrod,” had been involved in the crime.
See 61 App. Div. 2d 299, 301, 402 N. Y. S. 2d 490, 491 (1978). The first statement was made within an hour after Dunaway reached the police station; the following day he made a second, more complete statement.
We granted certiorari in Morales and noted that “[t]he ruling below, that the State may detain for custodial questioning on less than probable cause for a traditional arrest, is manifestly important, goes beyond our subsequent decisions in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), and Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968), and is claimed by petitioner to be at odds with Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721 (1969).” Morales v. New York, 396 U. S. 102, 104-105 (1969). Nevertheless, inadequacies in the record led us to remand for further development and to reserve the issue we decide today for a record that “squarely and necessarily presents the issue and fully illuminates the factual context in which the question arises.’’ Id., at 105. On remand, the New York courts determined that Morales had gone to the police voluntarily. People v. Morales, 42 N. Y. 2d 129, 137-138, 366 N. E. 2d 248, 252-253 (1977).
App. 118; see Brown v. Illinois, 422 U. S., at 602, 605.
61 App. Div. 2d, at 303-304, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 493. Two of the five members of the court dissented on this issue. Id., at 304, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 493 (Denman, J., concurring); id., at 305, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 494 (Cardamone, J., dissenting).
“It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has'seized’ that person.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 16 (1968). Respondent contends that petitioner accompanied the police voluntarily and therefore was not “seized.” Brief for Respondent 7-9. The County Court found otherwise, App. 117, quoted supra, at 205; and the Appellate Division treated the case as an involuntary detention justified by reasonable suspicion. See 61 App. Div. 2d, at 302-303, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 492. See also ALI, Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure § 2.01 (3) and commentary, p. 91 (Tent. Draft No. 1, 1966) (request to come to police station “may easily carry an implication of obligation, while the appearance itself, unless clearly stated to be voluntary, may be an awesome experience for the ordinary citizen”).
Both the County Court and the Appellate Division'found that the police lacked probable cause, and respondent does not question those findings here. See 61 App. Div. 2d, at 302, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 492; App. 120, citing Spinelli v. United States, 393 U. S. 410 (1969); Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108 (1964).
See, e. g., Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 (1967) (hot pursuit); United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411 (1976) (felony arrests in public places).
“Probable cause exists where ‘the facts and circumstances within their [the officers’] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that’ an offense has been or is being committed [by the person to be arrested].” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 175-176 (1949), quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 162 (1925). See generally 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment 436-480 (1978).
See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 111-112 (1975); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963).
The Court stressed the limits of its holding: the police officer’s belief that his safety or that of others is in danger must be objectively reasonable — based on reasonable inferences from known facts — so that it can be tested at the appropriate time by “the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge,” 392 U. S., at 21, 27; and the extent of the intrusion must be carefully tailored to the rationale justifying it.
Terry specifically declined to address “the constitutional propriety of an investigative'seizure’ upon less than probable cause for purposes of 'detention’ and/or interrogation.” Id., at 19 n. 16. Mr. Justice White, in a concurring opinion, made these observations on the matter of interrogation during an investigative stop:
“There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents a policeman from addressing questions to anyone on the streets. Absent special circumstances, the person approached may not be detained or frisked but may refuse to cooperate and go on his way. However, given the proper circumstances, such as those in this case, it seems to me the person may be briefly detained against his will while pertinent questions are directed to him. Of course, the person stopped is not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest, although it may alert the officer to the need for continued observation.” Id., at 34.
“[B] ecause of the importance of the governmental interest at stake, the minimal intrusion of a brief stop, and the absence of practical alternatives for policing the border, we hold that when an officer’s observations lead him reasonably to suspect that a particular vehicle may contain aliens who are illegally in the country, he may stop the car briefly and investigate the circumstances that provoke suspicion.” 422 U. S., at 881.
The factors that respondent would consider relevant in its balancing test, and the scope of the rule the test would produce, are not completely clear. The Appellate Division quoted two apparently different tests from the Court of Appeals opinion in People v. Morales, 42 N. Y. 2d 129, 366 N. E. 2d 248 (1977):
“£[L]aw enforcement officials may detain an individual upon reasonable suspicion for questioning for a reasonable and brief period of time under carefully controlled conditions which are ample to protect the individual’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights’ (42 NY2d, at p. 135). '“[A] policeman’s right to request information while discharging his law enforcement duties will hinge on the manner and intensity of the interference, the gravity of the crime involved and the circumstances attending the encounter” ’ (42 NY2d, at p. 137, quoting from People v. De Bour, 40 NY2d 210, 219).” 61 App. Div. 2d, at 302, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 492.
Then, in characterizing the ease before it, the Appellate Division suggested yet a third “test”:
“[T]his case involves a brief detention for interrogation based upon reasonable suspicion, where there was no formal accusation filed against defendant and where great public interest existed in solving a brutal crime which had remained unsolved for a period of almost five months.” Id., at 303, 402 N. Y. S. 2d, at 492.
See n. 14, supra.
While the rule proposed by respondent is not entirely clear, the Appellate Division cited with approval a test that would require an officer to weigh before any custodial interrogation “the manner and intensity of the interference, the gravity of the crime involved and the circumstances attending the encounter.” See n. 14, supra.
The officers drew their guns, informed Brown that he was under arrest, and handcuffed him. But Brown, unlike petitioner, was not a teenager; and the police had a report that he possessed a pistol and had used it on occasion, 422 U. S., at 594. The police in this case would have resorted to similar measures if petitioner had resisted being taken into custody. App. 117.
But see Westover v. United States, 384 U. S. 436, 494-497 (1966) (decided with Miranda v. Arizona).
See generally, 3 LaFave, supra n. 9, at 630-638; Comment, 25 Emory L. J. 227, 239-244 (1976); Comment, 13 Houston L. Rev. 753, 763-
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 Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or Act), 87 Stat. 884,16 U. S. C. § 1631 (1988 ed. and'Supp. V), contains a variety of protections designed to save from extinction species that the Secretary of the Interior designates as endangered or threatened. Section 9 of the Act makes it unlawful for any person to “take” any endangered or threatened species. The Secretary has promulgated a regulation that defines the statute’s prohibition on takings to include “significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife.” This case presents the question whether the Secretary exceeded his authority under the Act by promulgating that regulation.
I
Section 9(a)(1) of the Act provides the following protection for endangered species:
“Except as provided in sections 1535(g)(2) and 1539 of this title, with respect to any endangered species of fish or wildlife listed pursuant to section 1533 of this title it is unlawful for any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to—
“(B) take any such species within the United States or the territorial sea of the United States.” 16 U. S. C. § 1538(a)(1).
Section 3(19) of the Act defines the statutory term “take”:
“The term ‘take’ means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” 16 U. S. C. § 1532(19).
The Act does not further define the terms it uses to define “take.” The Interior Department regulations that implement the statute, however, define the statutory term “harm”:
“Harm, in the definition of ‘take’ in the Act means an act which actually kills or injures wildlife. Such act may include significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding, or sheltering.” 50 CFR § 17.3 (1994).
This regulation has been in place since 1975.
A limitation on the §9 “take” prohibition appears in § 10(a)(1)(B) of the Act, which Congress added by amendment in 1982. That section authorizes the Secretary to grant a permit for any taking otherwise prohibited by § 9(a)(1)(B) “if such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity.” 16 U. S. C. § 1539(a)(1)(B).
In addition to the prohibition on takings, the Act provides several other protections for endangered species. Section 4, 16 U. S. C. § 1533, commands the Secretary to identify species of fish or wildlife that are in danger of extinction and to publish from time to time lists of all species he determines to be endangered or threatened. Section 5, 16 U. S. C. § 1534, authorizes the Secretary, in cooperation with the States, see § 1535, to acquire land to aid in preserving such species. Section 7 requires federal agencies to ensure that none of their activities, including the granting of licenses and permits, will jeopardize the continued existence of endangered species “or result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat of such species which is determined by the Secretary... to be critical.” 16 U. S. C. § 1536(a)(2).
Respondents in this action are small landowners, logging companies, and families dependent on the forest products industries in the Pacific Northwest and in the Southeast, and organizations that represent their interests. They brought this declaratory judgment action against petitioners, the Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the statutory validity of the Secretary’s regulation defining “harm,” particularly the inclusion of habitat modification and degradation in the definition. Respondents challenged the regulation on its face. Their complaint alleged that application of the “harm” regulation to the red-cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species, and the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, had injured them economically. App. 17-23.
Respondents advanced three arguments to support their submission that Congress did not intend the word “take” in § 9 to include habitat modification, as the Secretary’s “harm” regulation provides. First, they correctly noted that language in the Senate’s original version of the ESA would have defined “take” to include “destruction, modification, or curtailment of [the] habitat or range” of fish or wildlife, but the Senate deleted that language from the bill before enacting it. Second, respondents argued that Congress intended the Act’s express authorization for the Federal Government to buy private land in order to prevent habitat degradation in § 5 to be the exclusive check against habitat modification on private property. Third, because the Senate added the term “harm” to the definition of “take” in a floor amendment without debate, respondents argued that the court should not interpret the term so expansively as to include habitat modification.
The District Court considered and rejected each of respondents’ arguments, finding “that Congress intended an expansive interpretation of the word ‘take,’ an interpretation that encompasses habitat modification.” 806 F. Supp. 279, 285 (1992). The court noted that in 1982, when Congress was aware of a judicial decision that had applied the Secretary’s regulation, see Palila v. Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources, 639 F. 2d 495 (CA9 1981) (Palila I), it amended the Act without using the opportunity to change the definition of “take.” 806 F. Supp., at 284. The court stated that, even had it found the ESA “‘silent or ambiguous’” as to the authority for the Secretary’s definition of “harm,” it would nevertheless have upheld the regulation as a reasonable interpretation of the statute. Id., at 285 (quoting Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843 (1984)). The District Court therefore entered summary judgment for petitioners and dismissed respondents’ complaint.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals initially affirmed the judgment of the District Court. 1 F. 3d 1 (CADC 1993). After granting a petition for rehearing, however, the panel reversed. 17 F. 3d 1463 (CADC 1994). Although acknowledging that “[t]he potential breadth of the word ‘harm’ is indisputable,” id., at 1464, the majority concluded that the immediate statutory context in which “harm” appeared counseled against a broad reading; like the other words in the definition of “take,” the word “harm” should be read as applying only to “the perpetrator’s direct application of force against the animal taken.... The forbidden acts fit, in ordinary language, the basic model ‘A hit B.’ ” Id., at 1465. The majority based its reasoning on a canon of statutory construction called noscitur a sociis, which holds that a word is known by the company it keeps. See Neal v. Clark, 95 U. S. 704, 708-709 (1878).
The majority claimed support for its construction from a decision of the Ninth Circuit that narrowly construed the word “harass” in the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, 16 U. S. C. § 1372(a)(2)(A), see United States v. Hayashi, 5 F. 3d 1278, 1282 (1993); from the legislative history of the ESA; from its view that Congress must not have intended the purportedly broad curtailment of private property rights that the Secretary’s interpretation permitted; and from the ESA’s land acquisition provision in §5 and restriction on federal agencies’ activities regarding habitat in §7, both of which the court saw as evidence that Congress had not intended the §9 “take” prohibition to reach habitat modification. Most prominently, the court performed a lengthy analysis of the 1982 amendment to §10 that provided for “incidental take permits” and concluded that the amendment did not change the meaning of the term “take” as defined in the 1973 statute.
Chief Judge Mikva, who had announced the panel's original decision, dissented. See 17 F. 3d, at 1473. In his view, a proper application of Chevron indicated that the Secretary had reasonably defined “harm,” because respondents had failed to show that Congress unambiguously manifested its intent to exclude habitat modification from the ambit of “take.” Chief Judge Mikva found the majority’s reliance on noscitur a sociis inappropriate in light of the statutory language and unnecessary in light of the strong support in the legislative history for the Secretary’s interpretation. He did not find the 1982 “incidental take permit” amendment alone sufficient to vindicate the Secretary’s definition of “harm,” but he believed the amendment provided additional support for that definition because it reflected Congress’ view in 1982 that the definition was reasonable.
The Court of Appeals’ decision created a square conflict with a 1988 decision of the Ninth Circuit that had upheld the Secretary’s definition of “harm.” See Palila v. Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources, 852 F. 2d 1106 (1988) (Palila II). The Court of Appeals neither cited nor distinguished Palila II, despite the stark contrast between the Ninth Circuit’s holding and its own. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 513 U. S. 1072 (1995). Our consideration of the text and structure of the Act, its legislative history, and the significance of the 1982 amendment persuades us that the Court of Appeals’ judgment should be reversed.
II
Because this case was decided on motions for summary-judgment, we may appropriately make certain factual assumptions in order to frame the legal issue. First, we assume respondents have no desire to harm either the red-cockaded woodpecker or the spotted owl; they merely wish to continue logging activities that would be entirely proper if not prohibited by the ESA. On the other hand, we must assume, arguendo, that those activities will have the effect, even though unintended, of detrimentally changing the natural habitat of both listed species and that, as a consequence, members of those species will be killed or injured. Under respondents’ view of the law, the Secretary’s only means of forestalling that grave result — even when the actor knows it is certain to occur — is to use his §5 authority to purchase the lands on which the survival of the species depends. The Secretary, on the other hand, submits that the § 9 prohibition on takings, which Congress defined to include “harm,” places on respondents a duty to avoid harm that habitat alteration will cause the birds unless respondents first obtain a permit pursuant to § 10.
The text of the Act provides three reasons for concluding that the Secretary’s interpretation is reasonable. First, an ordinary understanding of the word “harm” supports it. The dictionary definition of the verb form of “harm” is “to cause hurt or damage to: injure.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1034 (1966). In the context of the ESA, that definition naturally encompasses habitat modification that results in actual injury or death to members of an endangered or threatened species.
Respondents argue that the Secretary should have limited the purview of “harm” to direct applications of force against protected species, but the dictionary definition does not include the word “directly” or suggest in any way that only direct or willful action that leads to injury constitutes “harm.” Moreover, unless the statutory term “harm” encompasses indirect as well as direct injuries, the word has no meaning that does not duplicate the meaning of other words that §3 uses to define “take.” A reluctance to treat statutory terms as surplusage supports the reasonableness of the Secretary’s interpretation. See, e. g., Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Service, Inc., 486 U. S. 825, 837, and n. 11 (1988).
Second, the broad purpose of the ESA supports the Secretary’s decision to extend protection against activities that cause the precise harms Congress enacted the statute to avoid. In TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153 (1978), we described the Act as “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species ever enacted by any nation.” Id., at 180. Whereas predecessor statutes enacted in 1966 and 1969 had not contained any sweeping prohibition against the taking of endangered species except on federal lands, see id., at 175, the 1973 Act applied to all land in the United States and to the Nation’s territorial seas. As stated in § 2 of the Act, among its central purposes is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved....” 16 U. S. C. § 1531(b).
In Hill, we construed § 7 as precluding the completion of the Tellico Dam because of its predicted impact on the survival of the snail darter. See 437 U. S., at 193. Both our holding and the language in our opinion stressed the importance of the statutory policy. “The plain intent of Congress in enacting this statute,” we recognized, “was to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost. This is reflected not only in the stated policies of the Act, but in literally every section of the statute.” Id., at 184. Although the §9 “take” prohibition was not at issue in Hill, we took note of that prohibition, placing particular emphasis on the Secretary’s inclusion of habitat modification in his definition of “harm.” In light of that provision for habitat protection, we could “not understand how TVA intends to operate Tellico Dam without ‘harming’ the snail darter.” Id., at 184, n. 30. Congress’ intent to provide comprehensive protection for endangered and threatened species supports the permissibility of the Secretary’s “harm” regulation.
Respondents advance strong arguments that activities that cause minimal or unforeseeable harm will not violate the Act as construed in the “harm” regulation. Respondents, however, present a facial challenge to the regulation. Cf. Anderson v. Edwards, 514 U. S. 143, 155-156, n. 6 (1995); INS v. National Center for Immigrants’ Rights, Inc., 502 U. S. 183, 188 (1991). Thus, they ask us to invalidate the Secretary’s understanding of “harm” in every circumstance, even when an actor knows that an activity, such as draining a pond, would actually result in the extinction of a listed species by destroying its habitat. Given Congress’ clear expression of the ESA’s broad purpose to protect endangered and threatened wildlife, the Secretary’s definition of “harm” is reasonable.
Third, the fact that Congress in 1982 authorized the Secretary to issue permits for takings that § 9(a)(1)(B) would otherwise prohibit, “if such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity,” 16 U. S. C. § 1539(a)(1)(B), strongly suggests that Congress understood § 9(a)(1)(B) to prohibit indirect as well as deliberate takings. Cf. NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U. S. 267, 274-275 (1974). The permit process requires the applicant to prepare a “conservation plan” that specifies how he intends to “minimize and mitigate” the “impact” of his activity on endangered and threatened species, 16 U. S. C. § 1539(a)(2)(A), making clear that Congress had in mind foreseeable rather than merely accidental effects on listed species. No one could seriously request an “incidental” take permit to avert §9 liability for direct, deliberate action against a member of an endangered' or threatened species, but respondents would read “harm” so narrowly that the permit procedure would have little more than that absurd purpose. “When Congress acts to amend a statute, we presume it intends its amendment to have real and substantial effect.” Stone v. INS, 514 U. S. 386, 397 (1995). Congress’ addition of the § 10 permit provision supports the Secretary’s conclusion that activities not intended to harm an endangered species, such as habitat modification, may constitute unlawful takings under the ESA unless the Secretary permits them.
The Court of Appeals made three errors in asserting that “harm” must refer to a direct application of force because the words around it do. First, the court’s premise was flawed. Several of the words that accompany “harm” in the § 3 definition of “take,” especially “harass,” “pursue,” “wound,” and “kill,” refer to actions or effects that do not require direct applications of force. Second, to the extent the court read a requirement of intent or purpose into the words used to define “take,” it ignored § ll’s express provision that a “know-in[g]” action is enough to violate the Act. Third, the court employed noscitur a sociis to give “harm” essentially the same function as other words in the definition, thereby denying it independent meaning. The canon, to the contrary, counsels that a word “gathers meaning from the words around it.” Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307 (1961). The statutory context of “harm” suggests that Congress meant that term to serve a particular function in the ESA, consistent with, but distinct from, the functions of the other verbs used to define “take.” The Secretary’s interpretation of “harm” to include indirectly injuring endangered animals through habitat modification permissibly interprets “harm” to have “a character of its own not to be submerged by its association.” Russell Motor Car Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 514, 519 (1923).
Nor does the Act’s inclusion of the § 5 land acquisition authority and the § 7 directive to federal agencies to avoid destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat alter our conclusion. Respondents’ argument that the Government lacks any incentive to purchase land under §5 when it can simply prohibit takings under § 9 ignores the practical considerations that attend enforcement of the ESA. Purchasing habitat lands may well cost the Government less in many circumstances than pursuing civil or criminal penalties. In addition, the § 5 procedure allows for protection of habitat before the seller’s activity has harmed any endangered animal, whereas the Government cannot enforce the § 9 prohibition until an animal has actually been killed or injured. The Secretary may also find the § 5 authority useful for preventing'modification of land that is not yet but may in the future become habitat for an endangered or threatened species. The §7 directive applies only to the Federal Government, whereas the § 9 prohibition applies to “any person.” Section 7 imposes a broad, affirmative duty to avoid adverse habitat modifications that §9 does not replicate, and §7 does not limit its admonition to habitat modification that “actually kills or injures wildlife.” Conversely, §7 contains limitations that §9 does not, applying only to actions “likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species,” 16 U. S. C. § 1536(a)(2), and to modifications of habitat that has been designated “critical” pursuant to § 4, 16 U. S. C. § 1533(b)(2). Any overlap that § 5 or §7 may have with §9 in particular cases is unexceptional, see, e. g., Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 24, and n. 2 (1983), and simply reflects the broad purpose of the Act set out in § 2 and acknowledged in TVA v. Hill.
We need not decide whether the statutory definition of “take” compels the Secretary’s interpretation of “harm,” because our conclusions that Congress did not unambiguously manifest its intent to adopt respondents’ view and that the Secretary’s interpretation is reasonable suffice to decide this case. See generally Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). The latitude the ESA gives the Secretary in enforcing the statute, together with the degree of regulatory expertise necessary to its enforcement, establishes that we owe some degree of deference to the Secretary’s reasonable interpretation. See Breyer, Judicial Review of Questions of Law and Policy, 38 Admin. L. Rev. 363, 373 (1986).
H-t H — t
Our conclusion that the Secretary’s definition of “harm rests on a permissible construction of the ESA gains further support from the legislative history of the statute. The Committee Reports accompanying the bills that became the ESA do not specifically discuss the meaning of “harm,” but they make clear that Congress intended “take” to apply broadly to cover indirect as well as purposeful actions. The Senate Report stressed that “‘[t]ake’ is defined... in the broadest possible manner to include every conceivable way in which a person can ‘take’ or attempt to ‘take’ any fish or wildlife.” S. Rep. No. 93-307, p. 7 (1973). The House Report stated that “the broadest possible terms” were used to define restrictions on takings. H. R. Rep. No. 93-412, p. 15 (1973). The House Report underscored the breadth of the “take” definition by noting that it included “harassment, whether intentional or not.” Id., at 11 (emphasis added). The Report explained that the definition “would allow, for example, the Secretary to regulate or prohibit the activities of birdwatchers where the effect of those activities might disturb the birds and make it difficult for them to hatch or raise their young.” Ibid. These comments, ignored in the dissent’s welcome but selective foray into legislative history, see post, at 726-729, support the Secretary’s interpretation that the term “take” in § 9 reached far more than the deliberate actions of hunters and trappers.
Two endangered species bills, S. 1592 and S. 1983, were introduced in the Senate and referred to the Commerce Committee. Neither bill included the word “harm” in its definition of “take,” although the definitions otherwise closely resembled the one that appeared in the bill as ultimately enacted. See Hearings on S. 1592 and S. 1983 before the Subcommittee on Environment of the Senate Committee on Commerce, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 7, 27 (1973) (hereinafter Hearings). Senator Tunney, the floor manager of the bill in the Senate, subsequently introduced a floor amendment that added “harm” to the definition, noting that this and accompanying amendments would “help to achieve the purposes of the bill.” 119 Cong. Rec. 25683 (1973). Respondents argue that the lack of debate about the amendment that added “harm” counsels in favor of a narrow interpretation. We disagree. An obviously broad word that the Senate went out of its way to add to an important statutory definition is precisely the sort of provision that deserves a respectful reading.
The definition of “take” that originally appeared in S. 1983 differed from the definition as ultimately enacted in one other significant respect: It included “the destruction, modification, or curtailment of [the] habitat or range” of fish and wildlife. Hearings, at 27. Respondents make much of the fact that the Commerce Committee removed this phrase from the “take” definition before S. 1983 went to the floor. See 119 Cong. Rec. 25663 (1973). We do not find that fact especially significant. The legislative materials contain no indication, why the habitat protection provision was deleted. That provision differed greatly from the regulation at issue today. Most notably, the habitat protection provision in S. 1983 would have applied far more broadly than the regulation does because it made adverse habitat modification a categorical violation of the “take” prohibition, unbounded by the regulation’s limitation to habitat modifications that actually kill or injure wildlife. The S. 1983 language also failed to qualify “modification” with the regulation’s limiting adjective “significant.” We do not believe the Senate’s unelabo-rated disavowal of the provision in S. 1983 undermines the reasonableness of the more moderate habitat protection in the Secretary’s “harm” regulation.
The history of the 1982 amendment that gave the Secretary authority to grant permits for “incidental” takings provides further support for his reading of the Act. The House Report expressly states that “[b]y use of the word ‘incidental’ the Committee intends to cover situations in which it is known that a taking will occur if the other activity is engaged in but such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the activity.” H. R. Rep. No. 97-567, p. 31 (1982). This reference to the foreseeability of incidental takings undermines respondents’ argument that the 1982 amendment covered only accidental killings of endangered and threatened animals that might occur in the course of hunting or trapping other animals. Indeed, Congress had habitat modification directly in mind: Both the Senate Report and the House Conference Report identified as the model for the permit process a cooperative state-federal response to a case in California where a development project threatened incidental harm to a species of endangered butterfly by modification of its habitat. See S. Rep. No. 97-418, p. 10 (1982); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 97-835, pp. 30-32 (1982). Thus, Congress in 1982 focused squarely on the aspect of the “harm” regulation at issue in this litigation. Congress’ implementation of a permit program is consistent with the Secretary’s interpretation of the term “harm.”
IV
When it enacted the ESA, Congress delegated broad administrative and interpretive power to the Secretary. See 16 U. S. C. §§ 1533, 1540(f). The task of defining and listing endangered and threatened species requires an expertise and attention to detail that exceeds the normal province of Congress. Fashioning appropriate standards for issuing permits under § 10 for takings that would otherwise violate § 9 necessarily requires the exercise of broad discretion. The proper interpretation of a term such as “harm” involves a complex policy choice. When Congress has entrusted the Secretary with broad discretion, we are especially reluctant to substitute our views of wise policy for his. See Chevron, 467 U. S., at 865-866. In this case, that reluctance accords with our conclusion, based on the text, structure, and legislative history of the ESA, that the Secretary reasonably construed the intent of Congress when he defined “harm” to include “significant habitat modification or degradation that actually kills or injures wildlife.”
In the elaboration and enforcement of the ESA, the Secretary and all persons who must comply with the law will confront difficult questions of proximity and degree; for, as all recognize, the Act encompasses a vast range of economic and social enterprises and endeavors. These questions must be addressed in the usual course of the law, through case-by-case resolution and adjudication.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
The Act defines the term “endangered species” to mean “any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range other than a species of the Class Insecta determined by the Secretary to constitute a pest whose protection under the provisions of this chapter would present an overwhelming and overriding risk to man.” 16 U.S. C. §1532(6).
The Secretary, through the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, originally promulgated the regulation in 1975 and amended it in 1981 to emphasize that actual death or injury of a protected animal is necessary for a violation. See 40 Fed. Reg. 44412,44416 (1975); 46 Fed. Reg. 54748, 54750 (1981).
Respondents also argued in the District Court that the Secretary’s definition of “harm” is unconstitutionally void for vagueness, but they do not press that argument here.
The woodpecker was listed as an endangered species in 1970 pursuant to the statutory predecessor of the ESA. See 50 CFR § 17.11(h) (1994), issued pursuant to the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969, 83 Stat. 275.
See 55 Fed. Reg. 26114 (1990). Another regulation promulgated by the Secretary extends to threatened species, defined in the ESA as “any.species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range,” 16 U. S. C. § 1532(20), some but not all of the protections endangered species enjoy. See 50 CFR § 17.31(a) (1994). In the District Court respondents unsuccessfully challenged that regulation’s extension of § 9 to threatened species, but they do not press the challenge here.
Senate 1983, reprinted in Hearings on S. 1592 and S. 1983 before the Subcommittee on Environment of the Senate Committee on Commerce, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., 27 (1973).
Judge Sentelle filed a partial concurrence in which he declined to join the portions of the court’s opinion that relied on legislative history. See 17 F. 3d 1463, 1472 (CADC 1994).
The 1982 amendment had formed the basis on which the author of the majority’s opinion on rehearing originally voted to affirm the judgment of the District Court. Compare 1 F. 3d 1, 11 (CADC 1993) (Williams, J., concurring in part), with 17 F. 3d, at 1467-1472.
As discussed above, the Secretary’s definition of “harm” is limited to “act[s] which actually kil[l] or injurie] wildlife.” 50 CFR §17.3 (1994). In addition, in order to be subject to the Act’s criminal penalties or the more severe of its civil penalties, one must “knowingly violatfe]” the Act or its implementing regulations. 16 U. S. C. §§ 1540(a)(1), (b)(1). Congress added “knowingly” in place of “willfully” in 1978 to make “criminal violations of the act a general rather than a specific intent crime.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1804, p. 26 (1978). The Act does authorize up to a $500 civil fine for “[a]ny person who otherwise violates” the Act or its implementing regulations. 16 U. S. C. § 1540(a)(1). That provision is potentially sweeping, but it would be so with or without the Secretary’s “harm” regulation, making it unhelpful in assessing the reasonableness of the regulation. We have imputed scienter requirements to criminal statutes that impose sanctions without expressly requiring scienter, see, e. g., Staples v. United States, 511 U. S. 600 (1994), but the proper case in which we might consider whether to do so in the § 9 provision for a $500 civil penalty would be a challenge to enforcement of that provision itself, not a challenge to a regulation that merely defines a statutory term. We do not agree with the dissent that the regulation covers results that are not “even foreseeable... no matter how long the chain of causality between modification and injury.” Post, at 715. Respondents have suggested no reason why either the “knowingly violates” or the “otherwise violates” provision of the statute — or the “harm” regulation itself — should not be read to incorporate ordinary requirements of proximate causation and foreseeability. In any event, neither respondents nor their amici have suggested that the Secretary employs the “otherwise violates” provision with any frequency.
Respondents and the dissent emphasize what they portray as the “established meaning” of “take” in the sense of a “wildlife take,” a meaning respondents argue extends only to “the effort to exercise dominion over some creature, and the concrete effect of [sic] that creature.” Brief for Respondents 19; see post, at 717-718. This limitation ill serves the statutory text, which forbids not taking “some creature” but “tak[ing] any [endangered] species" — a formidable task for even the most rapacious feudal lord. More importantly, Congress explicitly defined the operative term “take” in the ESA, no matter how much the dissent wishes otherwise, see post, at 717-720, 722-723, thereby obviating the need for us to probe its meaning as we must probe the meaning of the undefined subsidiary term “harm.” Finally, Congress’ definition of “take” includes several words— most obviously “harass,” “pursue,” and “wound,” in addition to “harm” itself — that fit respondents’ and the dissent’s definition of “take” no better than does “significant habitat modification or degradation.”
In contrast, if the statutory term “harm” encompasses such indirect means of killing and injuring wildlife as habitat modification, the other terms listed in §3 — “harass,” “pursue,” “hunt,” “shoot,” “wound,” “kill,” “trap,” “capture,” and “collect” — generally retain independent meanings. Most of those terms refer to deliberate actions more frequently than does “harm,” and they therefore do not duplicate the sense of indirect causation that “harm” adds to the statute. In addition, most of the other words in the definition describe either actions from which habitat modification does not usually result (e. g., “pursue,” “harass”) or effects to which activities that modify habitat do not usually lead (e. g., “trap,” “collect”). To the extent the Secretary’s definition of “harm” may have applications.that overlap with other words in the definition, that overlap reflects the broad purpose of the Act. See infra this page and 699-700.
We stated: “The Secretary of the Interior has defined the term ‘harm’ to mean ‘an act or omission which actually injures or kills wildlife, including acts which annoy it to such an extent as to significantly disrupt essential behavioral patterns, which include, but are not limited to, breeding, feeding or sheltering; significant environmental modification or degradation which has such effects is included within the meaning of “harm.”’” TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S., at 184-185, n. 30 (citations omitted; emphasis in original).
The dissent incorrectly asserts that the Secretary’s regulation (1) “dispenses with the foreseeability of harm” and (2) “fail[s] to require injury to particular animals,” post, at 731. As to the first assertion, the regulation merely implements the statute, and it is therefore subject to the statute’s “knowingly violates” language, see 16 U. S. C. §§ 1540(a)(1), (b)(1), and ordinary requirements of proximate causation and foreseeability. See n. 9, supra. Nothing in the regulation purports to weaken those requirements. To the contrary, the word “actually” in the regulation should be construed to limit the liability about which the dissent appears most concerned, liability under the statute’s “otherwise violates” provision. See n. 9, supra; post, at 721-
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether peaceful picketing by a union, which does not represent a majority of the employees, to compel immediate recognition as the employees’ exclusive bargaining agent, is conduct of the union “to restrain or coerce” the employees in the exercise of rights guaranteed in § 7, and thus an unfair labor practice under §8 (b)(1)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act.
Curtis Bros., Inc., has a retail store and a warehouse in Washington, D. C., in which it carries on a moving, warehousing and retail furniture business. In 1953 respondent Teamsters Local 639 was certified by the National Labor Relations Board, following a Board-conducted election, to be the exclusive representative of the Company’s drivers, helpers, warehousemen and furniture finishers. However, when the Local called a strike over contract terms in February 1954 only nine of 21 employees in the unit left their jobs and Curtis Bros, replaced the nine with new employees. The strike continued but the Local gradually lost membership, and when after a year Curtis Bros, petitioned the Board to conduct another election, the Local wrote the Board that it did not claim to represent a majority of the employees. The Board nevertheless ordered another election, 114 N. L. R. B. 116, which was held in October 1955, and the then employees of the unit voted 28 to one in favor of “no union.”
A month after the election, in November 1955, the Local withdrew a picket line which had been maintained before the employees’ entrance to the warehouse during the period from February 1954. However, picketing at the customers’ entrance to the retail store was continued, but limited to not more than two pickets at any time. The pickets were orderly at all times and made no attempt to prevent anyone from entering the store. They simply patrolled before the entrance carrying signs reading on one side, “Curtis Bros, employs nonunion drivers, helpers, warehousemen and etc. Unfair to Teamsters Union No. 639 AFL,” and on the other side, “Teamsters Union No. 639 AFL wants employes of Curtis Bros, to join them to gain union wages, hours, and working conditions.”
After this picketing continued for about six months, Curtis Bros, made it the subject of an unfair labor practice charge against the Local for alleged violation of §8 (b)(1)(A). A complaint issued which alleged, in substance, that the picketing was activity to “restrain or coerce” the employees in the exercise of § 7 rights, and thus an unfair labor practice under §8 (b)(1)(A), because it was “recognition al” picketing, that is, picketing designed to induce Curtis Bros, to recognize the Local as the exclusive bargaining agent for the employees, although the union did not represent a majority of the employees.
The Trial Examiner recommended that the complaint be dismissed on the ground that the Local’s peaceful picketing, even if “recognitional,” was not conduct to “restrain or coerce.” The Board, one member disssent-ing, disagreed and entered a cease-and-desist order, 119 N. L. R. B. 232. On review at the instance of the Local, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, by a divided court, set aside the Board’s order, holding that §8 (b)(1)(A) “is inapplicable to peaceful picketing, whether 'organizational’ or ‘recogni-tional’ in nature....” 107 U. S. App. D. C. 42, 43, 274 F. 2d 551, 552. Because of the importance of the question in the administration of the Act, we. granted certiorari. 359 U. S. 965.
After we granted certiorari, the Congress enacted the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, which, among other things, adds a new § 8 (b)(7) to the National Labor Relations Act. It was stated by the Board on oral argument that if this case arose under the 1959 Act, the Board might have proceeded against the Local under § 8 (b) (7). This does not, however, relegate this litigation to the status of an unimportant controversy over the meaning of a statute which has been significantly changed. For the Board contends that new § 8 (b) (7) does not displace § 8 (b) (1) (A) but merely “supplements the power already conferred by Section 8 (b)(1)(A).” It argues that the Board may proceed against peaceful “recognitional” picketing conducted by a minority union in more situations than are specified in § 8 (b)(7) and without regard to the limitations of |8 (b)(7)(C).
Basic to the right guaranteed to employees in § 7 to form, join or assist labor organizations, is the right to engage in concerted activities to persuade other employees to join for their mutual aid and protection. Indeed, even before the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, and the Wagner Act, 49 Stat. 449, this Court recognized a right in unions to “use all lawful propaganda to enlarge their membership.” American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U. S. 184, 209. However, the Taft-Hartley Act added another right of employees also guaranteed protection, namely, the right to refrain from joining a union, except as that right might be affected by an agreement authorized in §8 (a)(3). Thus tension exists between the two rights of employees protected by § 7— their right to form, join or assist labor organizations, and their right to refrain from doing so. This tension is necessarily quite real when a union employs economic weapons to organize employees who do not want to join the union. The Board held here that peaceful picketing is not lawfully employed as an economic weapon to further self-organization if its objective is “recogni-tional.” The Board stated: “Because the object of the Union’s picketing in this case was to force the Company to commit an act prohibited by the statute itself [that is, to recognize and contract with the Local although it was not the chosen representative of a majority of the Curtis Bros, employees] and directly to deprive the employees of a right expressly guaranteed to them by the same Act, there is no occasion here to balance conflicting interests or rights.” 119 N. L. R. B. 232, 238. It therefore found no justification for the threat to the employees’ job security which was thought to be inherent in the economic pressure directed against the employer by the picketing. It was this threat which was said to taint peaceful picketing as unlawful conduct to “restrain or coerce” which the Board might forbid.
We first consider § 8 (b) (1) (A) in the light of § 13, as amended, which provides, in substance, that the Taft-Hartley Act shall not be taken as restricting or expanding either the right to strike or the limitations or qualifications on that right, as these were understood prior to 1947, unless “specifically provided for” in the Act itself. The Wagner Act conferred upon the Board wide authority to protect strikers from employer retaliation. However, the Court and the Board fashioned the doctrine that the Board should deny reinstatement to strikers who engaged in strikes which were conducted in an unlawful manner or for an unlawful objective. See for example Southern S. S. Co. v. Labor Board, 316 U. S. 31; Labor Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., 306 U. S. 240; Labor Board v. Sands Mfg. Co., 306 U. S. 332; and American News Co., 55 N. L. R. B. 1302. These are the “limitations or qualifications” on the right to strike referred to in § 13. See S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 28. The Board makes no claim that prior to 1947 it was authorized, because of any “limitation” or “qualification,” to issue a cease-and-desist order against peaceful “recogni-tional” picketing; indeed the full protections of the Norris-LaGuardia Act extended to peaceful picketing by minority unions for recognition. See Fur Workers Union No. 21238 v. Fur Workers Union, Local No. 72, 308 U. S. 522, per curiam affirming 70 App. D. C. 122, 105 F. 2d 1; Lauf v. Skinner & Co., 303 U. S. 323. Therefore, since the Board’s order in this case against peaceful picketing would obviously “impede” the right to strike, it can only be sustained if such power is “specifically provided for” in § 8 (b) (1) (A), as added by the Taft-Hartley Act. To be sure, § 13 does not require that the authority for the Board action be spelled out in so many words. Rather, since the Board does not contend that §8 (b)(1)(A) embodies one of the “limitations or qualifications” on the right to strike, § 13 declares a rule of construction which cautions against an expansive reading of that section which would adversely affect the right to strike, unless the congressional purpose to give it that meaning persuasively appears either from the structure or history of the statute. Therefore, § 13 is a command of Congress to the courts to resolve doubts and ambiguities in favor of an interpretation of § 8 (b)(1)(A) which safeguards the right to strike as understood prior to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act.
The Board asserts that the very general standard in § 8 (b)(1)(A) vests power in the Board to sit in judgment upon, and to condemn, a minority union’s resort to a specific economic weapon, here peaceful picketing. The structure of § 8 (b), which defines unfair labor practices, hardly supports the Board’s claims.. Earlier this Term we pointed out that “Congress has been rather specific when it has come to outlaw particular economic weapons on the part of unions.” Labor Board v. Insurance Agents’ International Union, 361 U. S. 477, 498. We referred to § 8 (b) (4) as illustrative of the congressional practice. In the context of a union’s striking to promote enlarged membership, Congress there explicitly prohibited a union’s resort to the secondary boycott, to the strike to force employers or self-employed persons to join unions, and, very pertinent here, to the “recognitional” strike where another union is certified. Plainly if the Board's interpretation is sustained, §8 (b)(1)(A) largely overlaps at least this last-mentioned prohibition, namely § 8 (b)(4)(C), to the extent of making it almost redundant. But the Court has rejected an argument that a provision of § 8 (b) (4) is a repetition of the prohibitions of § 8 (b)(1) (A). In International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. Labor Board, 341 U. S. 694, the Court, in holding that a peaceful strike to promote self-organization was proscribed by § 8 (b) (4) (A) if its objective was to “induce or encourage” a secondary boycott, contrasted the language of the two subsections and labeled the words “restrain or coerce” in § 8 (b) (1) (A) a “restricted phrase” to be equated with “threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit.” Id., at 701-703.
In the sensitive area of peaceful picketing Congress has dealt explicitly with isolated evils which experience has established flow from such picketing. Therefore, unless there is the clearest indication in the legislative history of §8 (b)(1)(A) supporting the Board’s claim of power under that section, we cannot sustain the Board’s order here. We now turn to an examination of the legislative history.
In the comprehensive review of union practices leading up to the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act, picketing practices were subjected to intensive inquiry by both House and Senate Labor Committees. The Senate bill, as brought to the floor by the Senate Labor Committee regulated organizational activity in specified situations. Proposed § 8 (b)(4) (3), now § 8 (b)(4)(C) of the law, made “recognitional” picketing of a primary employer unlawful only where “another labor organization has been certified as the representative” of his employees. Section 8 (b)(4) (2), now §8 (b)(4)(B), prohibited attempts to force recognition through secondary pressure.
However, five members of the Senate Labor Committee, including Senators Taft and Ball, believed that the Senate bill did not go far enough in the regulation of practices employed by unions for organizational purposes. These Senators introduced on the floor a proposed amendment to the Committee bill. The amendment as originally phrased was the counterpart of § 8 (a)(1) applicable to employers; it would have made it an unfair labor practice for a labor organization “to interfere with” as well as “to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in § 7....” The words “interfere with” were dropped during the debate, but except for this change, the amendment became § 8 (b)(1)(A).
The report of supplemental views which announced the five Senators’ intention to propose the amendment identifies the abuses which the section was designed to reach. That report states: “The committee heard many instances of union coercion of employees such as that brought about by threats of reprisal against employees and their families in the course of organizing campaigns; also direct interference by mass picketing and other violence. Some of these acts are illegal under State law, but we see no reason why they should not also constitute unfair labor practices to be investigated by the National Labor Relations Board, and at least deprive the violators of any protection furnished by the Wagner Act.” S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 50. Similar expressions pervaded the Senate debates on the amendment. The note repeatedly sounded is as to the necessity for protecting individual workers from union organizational tactics tinged with violence, duress or reprisal. Senator Ball cited numerous examples of organizing drives characterized by threats against unorganized workers of violence, job reprisals and such repressive assertions as that double initiation fees would be charged those who delayed joining the union. 93 Cong. Rec. 4016-4017. When Senator Ives objected to the words “interfere with” as too broad, Senator Taft insisted that even those words would have a limited application and would reach “reprehensible” practices but not methods of peaceful persuasion. He continued:
“Why should a union be able to go to an employee and threaten violence if he does not join the union? Why should a union be able to say to an employee, Tf you do not join this union we will see that you cannot work in the plant’?... We know that such things have actually occurred. We know that men have been threatened. There have been many cases in which unions have threatened men or their wives. They have called on them on the telephone and insisted that they sign bargaining cards. They have said to them, 'Sooner or later we are going to organize this plant with a closed shop, and you will be out.’...” 93 Cong. Rec. 4021.
It is true that here and there in the record of the debates there are isolated references to instances of conduct which might suggest a broader reach of the amendment. See for example 93 Cong. Rec. 4023-4024. But they appear more as asides in a debate, the central theme of which was not the curtailment of the right peacefully to strike, except as provided in § 8 (b)(4), but the elimination of the use of repressive tactics bordering on violence or involving particularized threats of economic reprisal. The plainest indication negating an intention to restrict the use by unions of methods of peaceful persuasion, including peaceful picketing, is seen in the comments of Senator Taft near the close of the debate. He said:
"It seems to me very clear that so long as a union-organizing drive is conducted by persuasion, by propaganda, so long as it has every legitimate purpose, the Board cannot in any way interfere with it... 93 Cong. Rec. 4434.
“The effect of the pending amendment is that the Board may call the union before them, exactly as it has called the employer, and say, ‘Here are the rules of the game. You must cease and desist from coercing and restraining the employees who want to work from going to work and earning the money which they are entitled to earn.’ The Board may say, ‘You can persuade them; you can put up signs; you can conduct any form of propaganda you want to in order to persuade them, but you cannot, by threat of force or threat of economic reprisal, prevent them from exercising their right to work.’ As I see it, that is the effect of the amendment.” 93 Cong. Rec. 4436.
“The Senator says it will slow up organizational drives. It will slow up organizational drives only if they are accompanied by threats and coercion. The cease-and-desist order will be directed against the use of threats and coercion. It will not be directed against the use of propaganda or the use of persuasion, or against the use of any of the other peaceful methods of organizing employees.
“Mr. President, I can see nothing in the pending measure which, as suggested by the Senator from Oregon, would in some way outlaw strikes. It would outlaw threats against employees. It would not outlaw anybody striking who wanted to strike. It would not prevent anyone using the strike in a legitimate way, conducting peaceful picketing, or employing persuasion. All it would do would be to outlaw such restraint and coercion as would prevent people from going to work if they wished to go to work.” Ibid.
This approach in the Senate is in sharp contrast to the House view, which was that picketing should be strictly circumscribed. The House passed a bill imposing drastic limitations upon the right to picket. Section 12 (a)(1) of that bill dealt specifically with the use of force and threats of force, but especially pertinent here are §§ 12 (a)(2) and 12 (a)(3)(C) which went far beyond this. The former would have outlawed all picketing of “an employer’s premises for the purpose of leading persons to believe that there exists a labor dispute involving such employer, in any case in which the employees are not involved in a labor dispute with their employer.” And the latter would have banned picketing “an object of which [was] (i) to compel an employer to recognize for collective bargaining a representative not certified under section 9... or (iii) to compel an employer to violate any law....” H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 47-49. Plainly the Local’s conduct in the instant case would have been prohibited if the House bill had become law.
But the House conferees abandoned the House bill in conference and accepted the Senate proposal. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510 on H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 42. They joined in a Conference Report which stated that “the primary strike for recognition (without a Board certification) was not prohibited.” Id., at 43.
This history makes pertinent what the Court said in Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. Labor Board, 357 U. S. 93, 99-100: “It is relevant to recall that the Taft-Hartley Act was, to a marked degree, the result of conflict and compromise between strong contending forces and deeply held views on the role of organized labor in the free economic life of the Nation and the appropriate balance to be struck between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests. This is relevant in that it counsels wariness in finding by construction a broad policy... as such when, from the words of the statute itself, it is clear that those interested in just such a condemnation were unable to secure its embodiment in enacted law.” Certainly due regard for this admonition quite apart from the caveat in § 13 requires caution against finding in the nonspecific, indeed vague, words, “restrain or coerce” that Congress intended the broad sweep for which the Board contends.
We conclude that the Board’s interpretation of § 8 (b) (1) (A) finds support neither in the way Congress structured § 8 (b) nor in the legislative history of § 8 (b)(1) (A). Rather it seems clear, and we hold, that Congress in the Taft-Hartley Act authorized the Board to regulate peaceful “recognitional” picketing only when it is employed to accomplish objectives specified in § 8 (b) (4); and that. § 8 (b)(1) (A) is a grant of power to the Board limited to authority to proceed against union tactics involving violence, intimidation, and reprisal or threats thereof — conduct involving more than the general pressures upon persons employed by the affected employers implicit in economic strikes.
The Board’s own interpretation for nearly a decade after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act gave § 8 (b)(1)(A) this limited application. See, e. g., National Maritime Union, 78 N. L. R. B. 971, enforcement granted, 175 F. 2d 686; Local 74, United Brotherhood of Carpenters (Watson’s Specialty Store), 80 N. L. R. B. 533, enforcement granted, 181 F. 2d 126, affirmed, 341 U. S. 707; Perry Norvell Co., 80 N. L. R. B. 225; Miami Copper Co., 92 N. L. R. B. 322; Medford Building & Construction Trades Council (Kogap Lumber Industries), 96 N. L. R. B. 165; District 50, United Mine Workers (Tungsten Mining Corp.), 106 N. L. R. B. 903. In Perry Norvell, supra, at 239, the Board declared:
“By Section 8(b)(1)(A), Congress sought to fix the rules of the game, to insure that strikes and other organizational activities of employees were conducted peaceably by persuasion and propaganda and not by physical force, or threats of force, or of economic reprisal. In that Section, Congress was aiming at means, not at ends.”
The Board dismisses these cases as “dubious precedent.” 119 N. L. R. B., at 246. We think they gave a sounder construction to § 8 (b) (1) (A) than the Board’s construction in the present case.
We are confirmed in our view by the action of Congress in passing the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. That Act goes beyond the Taft-Hartley Act to legislate a comprehensive code governing organizational strikes and picketing and draws no distinction between “organizational” and “recognitional” picketing. While proscribing peaceful organizational strikes in many situations, it also establishes safeguards against the Board’s interference with legitimate picketing activity. See § 8 (b) (7) (C). Were §8 (b)(1)(A) to have the sweep contended for by the Board, the Board might proceed against peaceful picketing in disregard of these safeguards. To be sure, what Congress did in 1959 does not establish what it meant in 1947. However, as another major step in an evolving pattern of regulation of union conduct, the 1959 Act is a relevant consideration. Courts may properly take into account the later Act when asked to extend the reach of the earlier Act’s vague language to the limits which, read literally, the words might permit. We avoid the incongruous result implicit in the Board’s construction by reading § 8 (b)(1)(A), which is only one of many interwoven sections in a complex Act, mindful of the manifest purpose of the Congress to fashion a coherent national labor policy.
Affirmed.
Memorandum of
Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Whittaker join.
At the time the writ of certiorari was granted in this case, it clearly appeared that there was involved an “important question of federal law which has not been, but should be, settled by this court.” See Rule 19, of the Revised Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States. Subsequently, however, Congress enacted the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. Section 704 (c) of that statute added to the National Labor Relations Act a new provision, § 8 (b)(7), which bans picketing for recognition or organizational purposes where: (A) the employer is lawfully recognizing another labor organization and a question concerning representation may not appropriately be raised under § 9 ; (B) within the preceding 12 months a valid election has been conducted; or (C) the picketing has been going on for an unreasonable period of time without a representation petition having been filed. See, ante, p. 277, note 5.
This new statutory provision seems squarely to cover the type of conduct involved here, and I would remand this case to the Board for reconsideration in the light of the 1959 legislation, as suggested by the Solicitor General.
Section 7, as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act, provides:
“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8 (a) (3).” 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. § 157.
Section 8(b)(1)(A) provides in pertinent part:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
“(1) to restrain or coerce (A) employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7 61 Stat. 141, 29 U. S. C.'
§158 (b)(1)(A).
The nine strikers who had been replaced were not permitted to vote in the election. Cf. §9 (c)(3), as amended by §702 of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 542, which permits striking employees who have been replaced to vote under certain circumstances.
Accord: Labor Board v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local No. 182, 272 F. 2d 85 (C. A. 2d Cir.). Contra: Labor Board v. United Rubber Workers, 269 F. 2d 694 (C. A. 4th Cir.), cert, granted and judgment reversed, post, p. 329.
New § 8 (b) (7) provides:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
“(7) to picket or cause to be picketed, or threaten to picket or cause to be picketed, any employer where an object thereof is forcing or requiring an employer to recognize or bargain with a labor organization as the representative of his employees, or forcing or requiring the employees of an employer to accept or select such labor organization as their collective bargaining representative, unless such labor organization is currently certified as the representative of such employees:
“(A) where the employer has lawfully recognized in accordance with this Act any other labor organization and a question concerning representation may not appropriately be raised under section 9 (c) of this Act,
“(B) where within the preceding twelve months a valid election under section 9 (c) of this Act has been conducted, or
“(C) where such picketing has been conducted without a petition under section 9 (e) being filed within a reasonable period of time not to exceed thirty days from the commencement of such picketing: Provided, That when such a petition has been filed the Board shall forthwith, without regard to the provisions of section 9 (c)(1) or the absence of a showing of a substantial interest on the part of the labor organization, direct an election in such unit as the Board finds to be appropriate and shall certify the results thereof: Provided further, That nothing in this subparagraph (C) shall be construed to prohibit any picketing or other publicity for the purpose of truthfully advising the public (including consumers) that an employer does not employ members of, or have a contract With, a labor organization, unless an effect of such picketing is to induce any individual employed by any other person in the course of his employment, not to pick up, deliver or transport any goods or not to perform any services.
“Nothing in this paragraph (7) shall be construed to permit any act which would otherwise be an unfair labor practice under this section 8(b).” 73Stat. 544.
The Solicitor General stated in a memorandum filed in this Court on October 21,1959, in another ease — Rubber Workers v. Labor Board, post, p. 329 — with reference to the several cases raising the “so-called Curtis issue,” that the passage of the 1959 Act injected “additional considerations [which] may, in the Court's view, warrant remand... to the Board for further examination in the light of” the 1959 Act. However, remand of this case would serve no purpose. After the Solicitor General made the suggestion the Board, on November 17, 1959, considered a case which arose prior to the 1959 Act. The Board, with four of its five members sitting, examined its position as to the scope of § 8 (b) (1) (A) in the light of the 1959 Act and by a vote of three to one decided that the doctrine announced in this, the Curtis Bros., case was in no way affected by the 1959 Act, stating that “[C]ontrary to our dissenting colleague, we believe that the new provisions concerning recognition and/or organizational picketing merely amplify the... Section 8 (b) proscriptions....” Local 208, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Sierra Furniture Co.), 125 N. L. R. B. 159, 162, n. 6.
The Board does not rely, as support for its order here under § 8 (b) (1) (A), upon the fact that the Local picketed after the election. In Local 208, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Sierra Furniture Co.), 125 N. L. R. B. 159, a like order was issued against peaceful “recognitional” picketing although no election had been held. We agree with the Board that if § 8 (b) (1) (A) confers power on the Board to proceed against such picketing, Congress did not limit its application to picketing following the conduct of an election at which the employees reject the union as their representative.
The Board does not say, however, that a union which does not represent a majority of the employees will always violate § 8 (b) (1) (A) if it peacefully pickets an employer to organize his employees, even, as here, if the picketing is carried on after the union has been rejected by the employees in a Board-conducted election. The Board says in its brief that the picketing is “organizational” and not “recognitional” if its purpose is “merely to organize the employees, with a view to demanding recognition in the future should majority support be acquired.” The Board’s view is that, if the picketing is “organizational,” a different question may be presented under § 8 (b) (1) (A) — that in such case its function to balance the competing rights of the union and the employees under § 7 may be invoked, and the picketing found to be privileged because the balance may be struck in favor of “a competing interest which the Act [§ 7] recognizes,” namely, the right to form, join or assist labor organizations.
If §8 (b)(1)(A) empowers the Board to proceed against peaceful picketing in any circumstances, the validity of a distinction in coverage between peaceful “organizational” and “recognitional” picketing has been challenged. See Cox, Some Current Problems in Labor Law: An Appraisal, 35 L. R. R. M. 48, 53-57; Bornstein, Organizational Picketing in American Law, 46 Ky. L. J. 25; Isaacson, Organizational Picketing: What is the Law? — Ought the Law to be Changed? 8 Buffalo L. R. 345. New § 8(b) (7) does not make the distinction.
Section 13 provides:
“Nothing in this Act, except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike, or to affect the limitations or qualifications on that right.” 61 Stat. 151, 29 U. S. C. § 163.
Picketing has been equated with striking for the purposes of § 13. See, e. g., Labor Board v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U. S. 665. Cf. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local No. 807 (Schultz Refrigerated Service, Inc.), 87 N. L. R. B. 502.
Section 8 (b)(4) provides:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
“(4) to engage in, or to induce or encourage the employees of any employer to engage in, a strike or a concerted refusal in the course of their employment to use, manufacture, process, transport, or otherwise handle or work on any goods, articles, materials, or commodities or to perform any services, where an object thereof is: (A) forcing or requiring any employer or self-employed person to join any labor or employer organization or any employer or other person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person; (B) forcing or requiring any other employer to recognize or bargain with a labor organization as the representative of his employees unless such labor organization has been certified as the representative of such employees under the provisions of section 9; (C) forcing or requiring any employer to recognize or bargain with a particular labor organization as the representative of his employees if another labor organization has been certified as the representative of such employees under the provisions of section 9; (D) forcing or requiring any employer to assign particular work to employees in a particular labor organization or in a particular trade, craft, or class rather than to employees in another labor organization or in another trade, craft, or class, unless such employer is failing to conform to an order or certification of the Board determining the bargaining representative for employees performing such work: Provided, That nothing contained in this subsection (b) shall be construed to make unlawful a refusal by any person to enter upon the premises of any ■employer (other than his own employer), if the employees of such employer are engaged in a strike ratified or
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This ease presents the question whether the exclusionary-rule, which generally prohibits the introduction at criminal trial of evidence obtained in violation of a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights, applies in parole revocation hearings. We hold that it does not.
I
Respondent Keith M. Scott pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of third-degree murder and was sentenced to a prison term of 10 to 20 years, beginning on March 31, 1983. On September 1, 1993, just months after completing the minimum sentence, respondent was released on parole. One of the conditions of respondent’s parole was that he would refrain from “owning or possessing any firearms or other weapons.” App. 5a. The parole agreement, which respondent signed, further provided:
“I expressly consent to the search of my person, property and residence, without a warrant by agents of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. Any items, in [sic] the possession of which constitutes a violation of parole/reparole shall be subject to seizure, and may be used as evidence in the parole revocation process.” Id., at 7a.
About five months later, after obtaining an arrest warrant based on evidence that respondent had'violated several conditions of his parole by possessing firearms, consuming alcohol, and assaulting a co-worker, three parole officers arrested respondent at a local diner. Before being transferred to a correctional facility, respondent gave the officers the keys to his residence. The officers entered the home, which was owned by his mother, but did not perform a search for parole violations until respondent’s mother arrived. The officers neither requested nor obtained consent to perform the search, but respondent’s mother, did direct them to his bedroom. After finding no relevant evidence there, the officers searched an adjacent sitting room in which they found five firearms, a compound bow, and three arrows.
At his parole violation hearing, respondent objected to the introduction of the evidence obtained during the search of his home on the ground that the search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The hearing examiner, however, rejected the challenge and admitted the evidence. As a result, the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole found sufficient evidence in the record to support the weapons and alcohol charges and recommitted respondent to serve 36 months’ backtime.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reversed and remanded, holding, inter alia, that the hearing examiner had erred in admitting the evidence obtained during the search of respondent’s residence. The court ruled that the search violated respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights because it was conducted without the owner’s consent and was not authorized by any state statutory or regulatory framework ensuring the reasonableness of searches by parole officers. 668 A. 2d 590, 596 (1995). The court further held that the exclusionary rule should apply because, in the circumstances of respondent’s case, the deterrence benefits of the rule outweighed its costs. Id., at 600.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed. 548 Pa. 418, 698 A. 2d 32 (1997). The court stated that respondent’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures was “unaffected” by his signing of the parole agreement giving parole officers permission to conduct warrant-less searches. Id., at 427, 698 A. 2d, at 36. It then held that the search in question was unreasonable because it was supported only by “mere speculation” rather than a “reasonable suspicion” of a parole violation. Ibid. Carving out an exception to its per se bar against application of the exclusionary rule in parole revocation hearings, see Commonwealth v. Kates, 452 Pa. 102, 120, 305 A. 2d 701, 710 (1973), the court further ruled that the federal exclusionary rule applied to this ease because the officers who conducted the search were aware of respondent’s parole status, 548 Pa., at 428-432, 698 A. 2d, at 37-38. The court reasoned that, in the absence of the rule, illegal searches would be undeterred when officers know that the subjects of their searches are parolees and that illegally obtained evidence can be introduced at parole hearings. Ibid.
We granted certiorari to determine whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule applies to parole revocation proceedings. 522 U. S. 992 (1997).
rH > — \
We have emphasized repeatedly that the government’s use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment does not itself violate the Constitution. See, e. g., United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 906 (1984); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 482, 486 (1976). Rather, a Fourth Amendment violation is “‘fully accomplished’” by the illegal search or seizure, and no exclusion of evidence from a judicial or administrative proceeding can “ ‘cure the invasion of the defendant’s rights which he has already suffered.’” United States v. Leon, supra, at 906 (quoting Stone v. Powell, supra, at 540 (White, J., dissenting)). The exclusionary rule is instead a judicially created means of deterring illegal searches and seizures. United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348 (1974). As such, the rule does not “proscribe the introduction of illegally seized evidence in all proceedings or against all persons,” Stone v. Powell, supra, at 486, but applies only in contexts “where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served,” United States v. Calandra, supra, at 348; see also United States v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433, 454 (1976) (“If... the exclusionary rule does not result in appreciable deterrence, then, clearly, its use in the instant situation is unwarranted”). Moreover, because the rule is prudential rather than constitutionally mandated, we have held it to be applicable only where its deterrence benefits outweigh its “substantial social costs.” United States v. Leon, 468 U. S., at 907.
Recognizing these costs, we have repeatedly declined to extend the exclusionary rule to proceedings other than criminal trials. Id., at 909; United States v. Janis, supra, at 447. For example, in United States v. Calandra, we held that the exclusionary rule does not apply to grand jury proceedings; in so doing, we emphasized that such proceedings play a special role in the law enforcement process and that the traditionally flexible, nonadversarial nature of those proceedings would be jeopardized by application of the rule. 414 U. S., at 343-346, 349-350. Likewise, in United States v. Janis, we held that the exclusionary rule did not bar the introduction of unconstitutionally obtained evidence in a civil tax proceeding because the costs of excluding relevant and reliable evidence would outweigh the marginal deterrence benefits, which, we noted, would be minimal because the use of the exclusionary rule in criminal trials already deterred illegal searches. 428 U. S., at 448, 454. Finally, in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S. 1032 (1984), we refused to extend the exclusionary rule to civil deportation proceedings, citing the high social costs of allowing an immigrant to remain illegally in this country and noting the incompatibility of the rule with the civil, administrative nature of those proceedings. Id., at 1050.
As in Calandra, Janis, and Lopez-Mendoza, we are asked to extend the operation of the exclusionary rule beyond the criminal trial context. We again decline to do so. Application of the exclusionary rule would both hinder the functioning of state parole systems and alter the traditionally flexible, administrative nature of parole revocation proceedings. The rule would provide only minimal deterrence benefits in this context, because application of the rule in the criminal trial context already provides significant deterrence of unconstitutional searches. We therefore hold that the federal exclusionary rule does not bar the introduction at parole revocation hearings of evidence seized in violation of parolees’ Fourth Amendment rights.
Because the exclusionary rule precludes consideration of reliable, probative evidence, it imposes significant costs: It undeniably detracts from the truthfinding process and allows many who would otherwise be incarcerated to escape the consequences of their actions. See Stone v. Powell, supra, at 490. Although we have held these costs to be worth bearing in certain circumstances, our eases have repeatedly emphasized that the rule’s “costly toll” upon truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives presents a high obstacle for those urging application of the rule. United States v. Payner, 447 U. S. 727, 784 (1980).
The costs of excluding reliable, probative evidence are particularly high in the context of parole revocation proceedings. Parole is a ‘Variation on imprisonment of convicted criminals,” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 477 (1972), in which the State accords a limited degree of freedom in return for the parolee’s assurance that he will comply with the often strict terms and conditions of his release. In most cases, the State is willing to extend parole only because it is able to condition it upon compliance with certain requirements. The State thus has an “overwhelming interest” in ensuring that a parolee complies with those requirements and is returned to prison if he fails to do so. Id., at 483. The exclusion of evidence establishing a parole violation, however, hampers the State’s ability to ensure compliance with these conditions by permitting the parolee to avoid the consequences of his noncompliance. The costs of allowing a parolee to avoid the consequences of his violation are compounded by the fact that parolees (particularly those who have already committed parole violations) are more likely to commit future criminal offenses than are average citizens. See Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U. S. 868, 880 (1987). Indeed, this is the very premise behind the system of close parole supervision. Ibid.
The exclusionary rule, moreover, is incompatible with the traditionally flexible, administrative procedures of parole revocation. Because parole revocation deprives the parolee not “of the absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled, but only of the conditional liberty properly dependent on observance of special parolé restrictions,” Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 480, States have wide latitude under the Constitution to structure parole revocation proceedings. Most States, including Pennsylvania, see 548 Pa., at 427-428, 698 A. 2d, at 36; Rivenbark v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 509 Pa. 248, 501 A. 2d 1110 (1985), have adopted informal, administrative parole revocation procedures in order to accommodate the large number of parole proceedings. These proceedings generally are not conducted by judges, but instead by parole boards, “members of which need not be judicial officers or lawyers.” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S., at 489. And traditional rules of evidence generally do not apply. Ibid. (“[T]he process should be flexible enough to consider evidence including letters, affidavits, and other material that would not be admissible in an adversary criminal trial”). Nor are these proceedings entirely adversarial, as they are designed to be “'predictive and discretionary5 as well as factfinding.” Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 787 (1973) (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 480).
Application of the exclusionary rule would significantly alter this process. The exclusionary rule frequently requires extensive litigation to determine whether particular evidence must be excluded. Cf. United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S., at 349 (noting that application of the exclusionary rule “would delay and disrupt grand jury proceedings” because “[suppression hearings would halt the orderly process of an investigation and might necessitate extended litigation of issues only tangentially related to the grand jury’s primary objective”); INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S., at 1048 (noting that “[t]he prospect of even occasional invocation of the exclusionary rule might significantly change and complicate the character of” the deportation system). Such litigation is inconsistent with the nonadversarial, administrative processes established by the States. Although States could adapt their parole revocation proceedings to accommodate such litigation, such a change would transform those proceedings from a “predictive and discretionary” effort to promote the best interests of both parolees and society into trial-like proceedings “less attuned” to the interests of the parolee. Gagnon v. Scarpelli, supra, at 787-788 (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 480). We are simply unwilling so to intrude into the States’ correctional schemes. See Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 483 (recognizing that States have an “overwhelming interest” in maintaining informal, administrative parole revocation procedures). Such a transformation ultimately might disadvantage parolees because in an adversarial proceeding, “the hearing body may be less tolerant of marginal deviant behavior and feel more pressure to reincarcerate than to continue nonpunitive rehabilitation.” Gagnon v. Scarpelli, supra, at 788. And the financial costs of such a system could reduce the State’s incentive to extend parole in the first place, as one of the purposes of parole is to reduce the costs of criminal punishment while maintaining a degree of supervision over the parolee.
The deterrence benefits of the exclusionary rule would not outweigh these costs. As the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recognized, application of the exclusionary rule to parole revocation proceedings would have little deterrent effect upon an officer who is unaware that the subject of his search is a parolee. 548 Pa., at 431, 698 A. 2d, at 38. In that situation, the officer will likely be searching for evidence of criminal conduct with an eye toward the introduction of the evidence at a criminal trial. The likelihood that illegally obtained evidence will be excluded from trial provides deterrence against Fourth Amendment violations, and the remote possibility that the subject is a parolee and that the evidence may be admitted at a parole revocation proceeding surely has little, if any, effect on the officer’s incentives. Cf. United States v. Janis, 428 U. S., at 448.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court thus fashioned a special rule for those situations in which the officer performing the search knows that the subject of his search is a parolee. We decline to adopt such an approach. We have never suggested that the exclusionary rule must apply in every circumstance in which it might provide marginal deterrence. United States v. Calandra, supra, at 350; Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 174 (1969). Furthermore, such a piecemeal approach to the exclusionary rule would add an additional layer of collateral litigation regarding the officer’s knowledge of the parolee’s status.
In any event, any additional deterrence from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s rule would be minimal. Where the person conducting the search is a police officer, the officer’s focus is not upon ensuring compliance with parole conditions or obtaining evidence for introduction at administrative proceedings, but upon obtaining convictions of those who commit crimes. The noncriminal parole proceeding “falls outside the offending officer’s zone of primary interest.” Janis, supra, at 458. Thus, even when the officer knows that the subject of his search is a parolee, the officer will be deterred from violating Fourth Amendment rights by the application of the exclusionary rule to criminal trials.
Even when the officer performing the search is a parole officer, the deterrence benefits of the exclusionary rule remain limited. Parole agents, in contrast to police officers, are not “engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime,” United States v. Leon, 468 U. S., at 914; instead, their primary concern is whether their parolees should remain free on parole. Thus, their relationship with parolees is more supervisory than adversarial. Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U. S. 868, 879 (1987). It is thus “unfair to assume that the parole officer bears hostility against the parolee that destroys his neutrality; realistically the failure of the parolee is in a sense a failure for his supervising officer.” Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, at 485-486. Although this relationship does not prevent parole officers from ever violating the Fourth Amendment rights of their parolees, it does mean that the harsh deterrent of exclusion is unwarranted, given such other deterrents as departmental training and discipline and the threat of damages actions. Moreover, although in some instances parole officers may act like police officers and seek to uncover evidence of illegal activity, they (like police officers) are undoubtedly aware that any unconstitutionally seized evidence that could lead to an indictment could be suppressed in a criminal trial. In this case, assuming that the search violated respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights, the evidence could have been inadmissible at trial if respondent had been criminally prosecuted.
* *
We have long been averse to imposing federal requirements upon the parole systems of the States. A federal requirement that parole boards apply the exclusionary rule, which is itself a “ ‘grudgingly taken, medicament,’ ” United States v. Janis, supra, at 455, n. 29, would severely disrupt the traditionally informal, administrative process of parole revocation. The marginal deterrence of unreasonable searches and seizures is insufficient to justify such an intrusion. We therefore hold that parole boards are not required by federal law to exclude evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, the judgment below is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
It is so ordered.
The court also held that the Board of Probation and Parole erred by admitting hearsay evidence regarding alcohol consumption and a separate incident of weapons possession.
While this case was pending in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Commonwealth Court filed an en banc opinion in another case that overruled its decision in respondent’s case and held that the exclusionary rule does not apply in parole revocation hearings. Kyte v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 680 A. 2d 14, 18, n. 8 (1996).
We also invited the parties to brief the question whether a search of a parolee’s residence must be based on reasonable suspicion where the parolee has consented to searches as a condition of parole. Respondent argues that we lack jurisdiction to decide this question in this case because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held, as a matter of Pennsylvania law, that respondent’s consent to warrantless searches as a condition of his state parole did not constitute consent to searches that are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Petitioner and its amid contend that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s opinion was at least ambiguous as to whether it relied on state or federal law to determine the extent of respondent’s consent, and that we therefore have jurisdiction under Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983). We need not parse the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in an attempt to discern its intent, however, because it is clear that we have jurisdiction to determine whether the exclusionary rule applies to state parole revocation proceedings, and our decision on that issue is sufficient to decide the case. We therefore express no opinion regarding the constitutionality of the search.
As discussed above, we have generally held the exclusionary rule to apply only in criminal trials. We have, moreover, significantly limited its application even in that context. For example, we have held that the rule does not apply when the officer reasonably relied on a search warrant that was later deemed invalid, United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 920-922 (1984); when the officer reasonably relied on a statute later deemed unconstitutional, Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 349-350 (1987); when the defendant seeks to assert another person’s Fourth Amendment rights, Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 174-175 (1969); and when the illegally obtained evidence is used to impeach a defendant’s testimony, United States v. Havens, 446 U. S. 620, 627-628 (1980); Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62, 65 (1954).
We thus have held that a parolee is not entitled to “the full panoply” of due process rights to which a criminal defendant is entitled, Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 480 (1972), and that the right to counsel generally does not attach to such proceedings because the introduction of counsel would “alter significantly the nature of the proceeding,” Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 787 (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:
|
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
announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join.
In United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, and Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263, this Court held “that a post-indictment pretrial lineup at which the accused is exhibited to identifying witnesses is a critical stage of the criminal prosecution; that police conduct of such a lineup without notice to and in the absence of his counsel denies the accused his Sixth [and Fourteenth] Amendment right to counsel and calls in question the admissibility at trial- of the in-court identifications of the accused by witnesses who attended the lineup.” Gilbert v. California, supra, at 272. Those cases further held that no “in-court identifications” are admissible in evidence if their “source” is a lineup conducted in violation of this constitutional standard. “Only a per se exclusionary rule as to such testimony can be an effective sanction,” the Court said, “£o assure that law enforcement authorities will respect the accused’s constitutional right to the presence of his counsel at the critical lineup.” Id., at 273. In the present case we are asked to extend the Wade-Gilbert per se exclusionary rule to identification testimony based upon a police station showup that took place before the defendant had been indicted or otherwise formally charged with any criminal offense.
On February 21, 1968, a man named Willie Shard reported to the Chicago police that the previous day two men had robbed him on a Chicago street of a wallet containing, among other things, traveler’s checks and a Social Security card. On February 22, two police officers stopped the petitioner and a companion, Ralph Bean, on West Madison Street in „ Chicago. When asked for identification, the petitioner produced a wallet that contained three traveler’s checks and a Social Security card, all bearing the name of Willie Shard. Papers with Shard’s name on them were also found in Bean’s possession. When asked to explain his possession of Shard’s property, the petitioner first said that the traveler’s checks were “play money,” and then told the officers that he had won them in a crap game. The officers then arrested the petitioner and Bean and took them to a police station.
Only after arriving at the police station, and checking the records there, did the arresting officers learn of the Shard robbery. A police car was then dispatched to Shard’s place of employment, where it picked up Shard and brought him to the police station. Immediately upon entering the room in the police station where the petitioner and Bean were seated at a table, Shard positively identified them as the men who had robbed him two days earlier. No lawyer was present in the room, and neither the petitioner nor Bean had asked for legal assistance, or been advised of any right to the presence of counsel.
More than six weeks later, the petitioner and Bean were indicted for the robbery of Willie Shard. Upon arraignment, counsel was appointed to represent them, and they pleaded not guilty. A pretrial motion to suppress Shard’s identification testimony was denied, and at the trial Shard testified as a witness for the prosecution. In his testimony he described his identification of the two men at the police station on February 22, and identified them again in the courtroom as the men who had robbed him on February 20. He was cross-examined at length regarding the circumstances of his identification of the two defendants. Cf. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400. The jury found both defendants guilty, and the petitioner’s conviction was affirmed on appeal. People v. Kirby, 121 Ill. App. 2d 323, 257 N. E. 2d 589. The Illinois appellate court held that the admission of Shard’s testimony was not error, relying upon an earlier decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, People v. Palmer, 41 Ill. 2d 571, 244 N. E. 2d 173, holding that the Wade-Gilbert per se exclusionary rule is not applicable to pre-indictment confrontations.
We granted certiorari, limited to this question. 402 U. S. 995.
I
We note at the outset that the constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination is in no way implicated here. The Court emphatically rejected the claimed applicability of that constitutional guarantee in Wade itself:
“Neither the lineup itself nor anything shown by this record that Wade was required to do in the lineup violated his privilege against self-incrimination. We have only recently reaffirmed that the privilege 'protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature . . . .’ Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 761. . . ” 388 U. S., at 221.
“We have no doubt that compelling the accused merely to exhibit his person for observation by a prosecution witness prior to trial involves no compulsion of the accused to give evidence having testimonial significance. It is compulsion of the accused to exhibit his physical characteristics, not compulsion to disclose any knowledge he might have. . . .” Id., at 222.
It follows that the doctrine of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, has no applicability whatever to the issue before us; for the Miranda decision was based exclusively upon the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, upon the theory that custodial interrogation is inherently coercive.
The Wade-Gilbert exclusionary rule, by contrast, stems from a quite different constitutional guarantee — the guarantee of the right to counsel contained in the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Unless all semblance of principled constitutional adjudication is to be abandoned, therefore, it is to the decisions construing that guarantee that we must look in determining the present controversy.
In a line of constitutional cases in this Court stemming back to the Court’s landmark opinion in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, it has been firmly established that a person’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel attaches only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings have been initiated against him. See Powell v. Alabama, supra; Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458; Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U. S. 52; Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335; White v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 59; Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201; United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218; Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263; Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S. 1.
This is not to say that a defendant in a criminal case has a constitutional right to counsel only at the trial itself. The Powell case makes clear that the right attaches at the time of arraignment, and the Court has recently held that it exists also at the time of a preliminary hearing. Coleman v. Alabama, supra. But the point is that, while members of the Court have differed as to existence of the right to counsel in the contexts of some of the above cases, all of those cases have involved points of time at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings — whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.
The only seeming deviation from this long line of constitutional decisions was Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478. But Escobedo is not apposite here for two distinct reasons. First, the Court in retrospect perceived that the “prime purpose” of Escobedo was not to vindicate the constitutional right to counsel as such, but, like Miranda, “to guarantee full effectuation of the privilege against self-incrimination . . . .” Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 729. Secondly, and perhaps even more important for purely practical purposes, the Court has limited the holding of Escobedo to its own facts, Johnson v. New Jersey, supra, at 733-734, and those facts are not remotely akin to the facts of the case before us.
The initiation of judicial criminal proceedings is far from a mere formalism. It is the starting point of our whole system of adversary criminal justice. For it is only then that the government has committed itself to prosecute, and only then that the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified. It is then that a defendant finds himself faced with the prosecu-torial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural criminal law. It is this point, therefore, that marks the commencement of the “criminal prosecutions” to which alone the explicit guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are applicable. See Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S., at 66—71; Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201; Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 324 (Douglas, J., concurring).
In this case we are asked to import into a routine police investigation an absolute constitutional guarantee historically and rationally applicable only after the onset of formal prosecutorial proceedings. We decline to do so. Less than a year after Wade and Gilbert were decided, the Court explained the rule of those decisions as follows: “The rationale of those cases was that an accused is entitled to counsel at any 'critical stage of the prosecution,’ and that a post-indictment lineup is such a 'critical stage.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.) Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 382-383. We decline to depart from that rationale today by imposing a per se exclusionary rule upon testimony concerning an identification that took place long before the commencement of any prosecution whatever.
II
What has been said is not to suggest that there may not be occasions during the course of a criminal investigation when the police do abuse identification procedures. Such abuses are not beyond the reach of the Constitution. As the Court pointed out in Wade itself, it is always necessary to “scrutinize any pretrial confrontation . . . 388 U. S., at 227. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments forbids a lineup that is unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293; Foster v. California, 394 U. S. 440. When a person has not been formally charged with a criminal offense, Stovall strikes the appropriate constitutional balance between the right of a suspect to be protected from prejudicial procedures and the interest of society in the prompt and purposeful investigation of an unsolved crime.
The judgment is affirmed.
The officers stopped the petitioner and his companion because they thought the petitioner was a man named Hampton, who was “wanted” in connection with an unrelated criminal offense. The legitimacy of this stop and the subsequent arrest is not before us.
“Q. All right. Now, Willie, calling your attention to February 22, 1968, did you receive a call from the police asking you to come down to the station?
“A. Yes, I did.
“Q. When you went down there, what if anything, happened, Willie?
“A. Well, I seen the two men was down there who robbed me.
“Q. Who took you to the police station?
“A. The policeman picked me up.
“MR. POMARO: Q. When you went to the police station did you see the two defendants?
“A. Yes, I did.
“Q. Do you see them in Court today?
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Point them out, please?
“A. Yes, that one there and the other one. (Indicating.)
“MR. POMARO: Indicating for the record the defendants Bean and Kirby.
“Q. And you positively identified them at the police station, is that correct?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Did any police officer make any suggestion to you whatsoever?
“THE WITNESS: No, they didn’t.”
“Q. Willie, when you looked back, when you were walking down the street and first saw the defendants, when you looked back, did you see them then?
“A. Yes, I seen them.
“Q. Did you get a good look at them then?
“A. Yes, I did.
“Q. All right. Now, when they grabbed you and took your money, did you see them then?
“A. Yes, I did.
“Q. Did you get a good look at them then?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Both of them?
“A. Correct.
“Q. When they walked away did you see them then?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Did you look at them, Willie?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Did you get a good look at them?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Are those the same two fellows? Look at them, Willie.
“A. Correct.
“Q. Are those the same two that robbed you?
“A. Yes.
“Q. You are sure, Willie?
“A. Yes.”
Bean's conviction was reversed. People v. Bean, 121 Ill. App 2d 332, 257 N. E. 2d 562.
The issue of the applicability of Wade and Gilbert to pre-indictment confrontation has severely divided the courts. Compare State v. Fields, 104 Ariz. 486, 455 P. 2d 964; Perkins v. State, 228 So. 2d 382 (Fla.); Buchanan v. Commonwealth, 210 Va. 664, 173 S. E. 2d 792; State v. Walters, 457 S. W. 2d 817 (Mo.), with United States v. Greene, 139 U. S. App. D. C. 9, 429 F. 2d 193; Rivers v. United States, 400 F. 2d 935 (CA5); United States v. Phillips, 427 F. 2d 1035 (CA9); Commonwealth v. Guillory, 356 Mass. 591, 254 N. E. 2d 427; People v. Fowler, 1 Cal. 3d 335, 461 P. 2d 643; Palmer v. State, 5 Md. App. 691, 249 A. 2d 482; People v. Hutton, 21 Mich. App. 312, 175 N. W. 2d 860; Commonwealth v. Whiting, 439 Pa. 205, 266 A. 2d 738; In re Holley, 107 R. I. 615, 268 A. 2d 723; Hayes v. State, 46 Wis. 2d 93, 175 N. W. 2d 625.
“[D]uring perhaps the most critical period of the proceedings against these defendants, that is to say, from the time of their arraignment until the beginning of their trial, when consultation, thoroughgoing investigation and preparation were vitally important, the defendants did not have the aid of counsel in any real sense, although they were as much entitled to such aid during that period as at the trial itself.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 57.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” U. S. Const., Amdt. VI.
In view of our limited grant of certiorari, we do not consider whether there might have been a deprivation of due process in the particularized circumstances of this ease. That question remains open for inquiry in a federal habeas corpus proceeding.
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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2283, provides:
“A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.”
This case presents issues respecting the scope of that Act.
I
In 1972, Donald C. McDougal bought from W. Erie Simpson a tract of land in Imperial County, Cal. Although the tract was in a residential subdivision, the county’s zoning ordinance allowed the tract’s owner to develop its natural resources if he could obtain a conditional-use permit. With the land, McDougal acquired such a permit, which allowed him to sell well water on the condition that it be sold only for use within the county. Simpson had never challenged that condition, nor had he ever sold much water from his well. Like Simpson, McDougal did not challenge the condition, but he did sell a good deal of water, and he sold some of it for use outside the county. McDougal’s neighbors grew irritated by the many trucks carrying water from McDougal’s premises, and they complained to the county. The county sought to vindicate its zoning ordinance and permit by asking a California Superior Court for injunctive and declaratory relief that would prohibit McDougal from selling water for consumption outside the county.
The state trial court enjoined McDougal from “conducting a trucking operation on the premises similar to that which occurred commencing on or about June 30, 1972.” On appeal to the California Supreme Court, McDougal argued that the permit’s geographic restriction was invalid. The state appellate court declined to reach that argument, since “a landowner or his successor in title is barred from challenging a condition imposed upon the granting of a special permit if he has acquiesced therein by either specifically agreeing to the condition or failing to challenge its validity, and accepted the benefits afforded by the permit.” County of Imperial v. McDougal, 19 Cal. 3d 505, 510-511, 564 P. 2d 14, 18. The California Supreme Court thus affirmed the Superior Court’s decision that the sale of water outside the county violated the ordinance, although it reversed the Superior Court’s finding that the frequent truck traffic at McDougal’s premises violated the zoning ordinance. McDougal appealed that judgment to this Court, which dismissed his appeal for want of a substantial federal question. 434 U. S. 944.
The respondents in this case are Mexican merchants: Respondent Munoz has a contract with McDougal to be his broker in arranging sales of water to Mexico; respondents Martinez and De Leon have agreed to purchase McDougal’s water for consumption in Mexico. Although none of the respondents was a named party to the suit against McDougal in the state courts, all of them were interested and — to an undetermined degree — involved in it, and Munoz participated as amicus curiae before the California Supreme Court. Twelve days after that court had denied McDougal’s petition for rehearing, and even before this Court had dismissed his appeal, the respondents initiated the present litigation by filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California a complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the County of Imperial from enforcing the terms of McDougal’s conditional permit. They argued in the District Court that those terms violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. The District Court concluded that respondents would suffer irreparable harm were there no injunction, and that they would probably succeed on the merits. Accordingly, the court issued a preliminary injunction restraining the county “from enforcing the restriction in the use permit which prohibits sale of water for use outside Imperial County.”
Some months later, the California Superior Court ordered McDougal to show cause why he should not be held guilty of contempt for violating the court’s injunction by selling water for use outside the county. After proceedings in which the county participated, he was found guilty of contempt and again ordered to cease selling water for use outside of Imperial County. That order was stayed, however, pending the outcome of the county’s appeal of the federal trial court’s order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Subsequently, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s order of preliminary injunction, 604 F. 2d 1174, and this Court granted the county’s petition for a writ of certiorari. 445 U. S. 903.
II
The county has maintained throughout the present litigation that the Anti-Injunction Act operates to prohibit the District Court from enjoining it from enforcing the terms of McDougal’s permit. In rejecting that argument, the District Court cited Hale v. Bimco Trading, Inc., 306 U. S. 375, and said that “this court may, if otherwise appropriate, restrain the operation of an unconstitutional statute; surely it does not lose the right to do so merely because the statute has been tested in the state courts.” In reaching the same conclusion, the Court of Appeals reasoned that the state trial court proceedings had terminated, and that the injunction, therefore, did not violate the rule that the Act cannot be evaded by addressing a federal injunction to the parties rather than to the state court. It also agreed with the District Court that, under the Hale case, “third parties are not barred under the Anti-Injunction Act from challenging a statute on federal constitutional grounds when the statute is also under litigation in the state courts.” 604 F. 2d, at 1176.
In our view the threshold reasoning of the Court of Appeals disregarded the teaching of this Court’s opinion in Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281. In that case, the railroad had secured a state-court injunction prohibiting the union from picketing a railroad facility. Two years later, the union tried but failed to convince the state court to dissolve the injunction in light of an intervening decision of this Court. The union did not appeal that decision, but instead persuaded a federal court to enjoin the railroad “from giving effect to or availing [itself] of the benefits of” the state-court injunction. Id., at 287. This Court held that “although this federal injunction is in terms directed only at the railroad it is an injunction ‘to stay proceedings in a State court.’ ” Ibid. The view of the Court of Appeals in the present case that after a state court has entered an injunction, its proceedings are concluded for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act was thus contrary to the square holding of the Atlantic Coast Line case.
The Court of Appeals’ final reason (and the District Court’s only reason) for finding the Act inapplicable was this Court’s decision in Hale v. Bimco Trading, Inc., supra. There, a cement company had secured from a state court a writ of mandamus ordering the state road department to enforce a statute requiring the inspection of cement imported into the State. Bimco Trading, Inc., subsequently obtained a federal-court injunction restraining the road department from enforcing the statute. This Court held that 28 U. S. C. § 379 (1934 ed.) — the predecessor of the current Anti-Injunction Act — did not bar the federal injunction, since to hold otherwise would have been to
“assert that a successful mandamus proceeding in a state court against state officials to enforce a challenged statute, bars injunctive relief in a United States district court against enforcement of the statute by state officials at the suit of strangers to the state court proceedings. This assumes that the mandamus proceeding bound the independent suitor in the federal court as though he were a party to the litigation in the state court. This, of course, is not so.” 306 U. S., at 377-378.
Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals addressed the question whether respondents in this case were “strangers to the state court proceeding” who were not bound “as though [they were parties] to the litigation in the state court.” Unless respondents were such “strangers,” the injunction they sought was barred by the Act.
Accordingly, the judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
The state trial court opinion is unreported.
The District Court opinion is unreported.
The dissenting opinion today rests entirely on the supposition that the Court of Appeals has already decided this question. That supposition is demonstrably untenable:
The Court of Appeals found that the Anti-Injunction Act was inapplicable, and proceeded to consider the merits of the petitioners’ res judicata defense, a defense based upon the judgment in the state litigation. The court held that the doctrine of res judicata did not in any event apply in the circumstances here presented, and accordingly explicitly declined to consider whether the respondents had been “in privity” with McDougal in the state litigation. Since the court did not even decide that the respondents had not been in privity with McDougal in the state litigation, it most assuredly could not have decided and did not decide that the respondents were “strangers to the state court proceeding.”
The respondents contend that their suit comes within one of the statutory exceptions to the Act. First, they urge that the “in aid of jurisdiction” exception applies. They apparently reason that the District Court was not barred from entering a declaratory judgment, that a declaratory judgment unsupported by an injunction would be a nullity, and that therefore an injunction was necessary “in aid of” the District Court’s subject-matter jurisdiction over Commerce Clause questions. This argument proves too much, since by its reasoning the exception, and not the rule, would always apply. Second, respondents assert that this case falls within the exception to the Act for injunctions “expressly authorized by Act of Congress.” They cite Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, for the undoubted proposition that suits under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 are within that exception. This argument cannot prevail, however, for the simple reason that the respondents’ complaint did not rely on or even so much as mention § 1983.
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 O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner sued respondent unions, claiming that their lobbying, litigation, and other concerted activities violated federal labor law and antitrust law. After petitioner lost on or withdrew each of its elaims, the National Labor Relations Board decided petitioner had violated federal labor law by prosecuting an unsuccessful suit with a retaliatory motive. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Because we find the Board lacked authority to assess liability using this standard, we reverse and remand.
I
Petitioner, an industrial general contractor, received a contract to modernize a California steel mill near the beginning of 1987. 246 F. 3d 619, 621 (CA6 2001). According to petitioner, various unions attempted to delay the project because petitioner’s employees were nonunion. Ibid. That September, petitioner and the mill operator filed suit against those unions in the District Court for the Northern District of California. App. to Pet. for Cert. 33a. The suit was based on the following basic allegations: First, the unions had lobbied for adoption and enforcement of an emissions standard, despite having no real concern the project would harm the environment. 246 F. 3d, at 621. Second, the unions had handbilled and picketed at petitioner’s site — and also encouraged strikes among the employees of petitioner’s subcontractors — without revealing reasons for their disagreement. Ibid. Third, to delay the construction project and raise costs, the unions had filed an action in state court alleging violations of California’s Health and Safety Code. Id., at 621-622. Finally, the unions had launched grievance proceedings against petitioner’s joint venture partner based on inapplicable collective bargaining agreements. Id., at 622.
Initially, petitioner and the mill operator sought damages under §303 of the Labor-Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 61 Stat. 158, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 187, which provides a cause of action against labor organizations for injuries caused by secondary boycotts prohibited under § 158(b)(4). 246 F. 3d, at 622. But after the District Court granted the unions’ motion for summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ lobbying- and grievance-related claims, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to allege that the unions’ activities violated §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1-2, which prohibit certain agreements in restraint of trade, monopolization, and attempts to monopolize. 246 F. 3d, at 622. The District Court dismissed the amended complaint, however, because it realleged claims that had already been decided. Id., at 622-623. The District Court also dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim regarding the unions’ state court lawsuit since the plaintiffs had no evidence that the suit was not reasonably based and because two unions that the plaintiffs sued were never parties to that state court action. Id., at 623.
The plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint. It included their remaining claims but again realleged claims that had already been decided. Ibid.; App. 32-33. The District Court dismissed the decided claims and imposed sanctions on the plaintiffs under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. 246 F. 3d, at 623. At that point, the mill operator dismissed its remaining claims with prejudice. Ibid. The District Court then granted summary judgment to the unions on petitioner’s antitrust claim once petitioner was unable to show the unions had formed a combination with nonlabor entities for an illegitimate purpose. Ibid. Petitioner dismissed its remaining claims and appealed. Id., at 623-624.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of petitioner’s antitrust claim. It held that the District Court erred in requiring petitioner to prove that the unions combined with nonlabor entities for an illegitimate purpose, but found the error harmless since the unions had antitrust immunity when lobbying officials or petitioning courts and agencies, unless the activity was a sham. USS-POSCO Industries v. Contra Costa County Bldg. & Const. Trades Council, AFL-CIO, 31 F. 3d 800, 810 (CA9 1994). Petitioner did' not argue that the unions’ litigation activity had been objectively baseless, but maintained that “the unions [had] engaged in a pattern of automatic petitioning of governmental bodies... without regard to... the merits of said petitions.” Ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added). The Ninth Circuit allowed that petitioner’s claim, if proved, could overcome the unions’ antitrust immunity, but rejected it nonetheless because “fifteen of the twenty-nine [actions filed by the unions]... have proven successful. The fact that more than half of all the actions... turn out to have merit cannot be reconciled with the charge that the unions were filing [them] willy-nilly without regard to success.” Id., at 811 (footnote omitted).
The Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court’s award of Rule 11 sanctions, however, after petitioner explained that it had realleged decided claims based on Circuit precedent suggesting that doing so was necessary to preserve them on appeal. Ibid. Although the Ninth Circuit decided that rule did not apply to amended complaints following summary judgment, it held that petitioner’s view was not frivolous and that its counsel could not be blamed for “err[ing] on the side of caution.” Id., at 812.
In the meantime, two unions had lodged complaints against petitioner with the National Labor Relations Board (Board), 246 F. 3d, at 624, and after the federal proceedings ended, the Board’s general counsel issued an administrative complaint against petitioner, alleging that it had violated § 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(1), by filing and maintaining the federal lawsuit. App. to Pet. for Cert. 29a. Section 8(a)(1) prohibits employers from restraining, coercing, of interfering with employees’ exercise of rights related to self-organization, collective bargaining, and other concerted activities. 29 U. S. C. §§ 157, 158(a)(1).
A three-member panel of the Board addressed cross-motions for summary judgment and ruled in favor of the general counsel. The panel determined that petitioner’s federal lawsuit had been unmeritorious because all of petitioner’s claims were dismissed or voluntarily withdrawn with prejudice. App. to Pet. for Cert. 30a, 47a, 49a. The panel then examined whether petitioner’s suit had been filed to retaliate against the unions for engaging in activities protected under the NLRA. The panel first concluded that the unions’ conduct was protected activity, id,., at 50a-59a, and then decided that petitioner’s lawsuit had been unlawfully motivated because it was “directed at protected conduct” and “necessarily tended to discourage similar protected activity,” and because petitioner admitted it had filed suit “‘to stop certain [ujnion conduct which it believed to be unprotected,’” id., at 59 a-60a. The panel found additional evidence of retaliatory motive because petitioner had sued some unions that were not parties to the state court lawsuit. Id., at 60a. The panel also found evidence of retaliatory motive because petitioner’s LMRA claims had an “utter absence of merit” and had been dismissed on summary judgment. Id., at 61a. After determining that petitioner’s suit had violated the NLRA because it was unsuccessful and retaliatory, the panel ordered petitioner to cease and desist from prosecuting such suits and to post notice to its employees admitting it had been found to have violated the NLRA and promising not to pursue such litigation in the future. Id., at 65a-67a. The panel also ordered petitioner to pay the unions’ legal fees and expenses incurred in defense of the federal suit. Id., at 65a.
Petitioner sought review of the Board’s decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Board cross-petitioned for enforcement of its order. The Sixth Circuit granted the Board’s petition. Relying on Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731, 747 (1983), the Sixth Circuit held that “because the judicial branch of government had already determined that [petitioner’s] claims against the unions were unmeritorious or dismissed, evidence of a simple retaliatory motive... suffice[d] to adjudge [petitioner] of committing an unfair labor practice.” 246 F. 3d, at 628. The court rejected petitioner’s argument that under Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 508 U. S. 49 (1993), “only baseless or ‘sham’ suits serve to restrict the otherwise unfettered right to seek court resolution of differences.” 246 F. 3d, at 629. Instead, the court decided Professional Real Estate Investors was inapplicable because its immunity standard had been established in the antitrust context without reference to any standard for determining if completed litigation violates the NLRA. 246 F. 3d, at 629. The Sixth Circuit found that substantial evidence supported the Board’s inference of retaliatory motive because petitioner had filed an unmeritorious suit, realleged previously decided claims, sought treble damages on its antitrust claim, and sought damages from unions not parties to the state court suit. Id,., at 629-631. The court also upheld the Board’s award of attorney’s fees. Id., at 632.
Petitioner sought review of the Sixth Circuit’s judgment by a petition for certiorari that raised four separate qués-tions. We granted certiorari on the following rephrased question:
“Did the Court of Appeals err in holding that under Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731 (1983), the NLRB may impose liability on an employer for filing a losing retaliatory lawsuit, even if the employer could show the suit was not objectively baseless under Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 508 U. S. 49 (1993)?” 534 U. S. 1074 (2002).
We now reverse the judgment of the Sixth Circuit and remand.
II
The First Amendment provides, in relevant part, that “Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” We have recognized this right to petition as one of “the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights,” Mine Workers v. Illinois Bar Assn., 389 U. S. 217, 222 (1967), and have explained that the right is implied by “[t]he very idea of a government, republican in form,” United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 552 (1876).
We have also considered the right to petition when interpreting federal law. In the antitrust context, for example, we held that “the Sherman Act does not prohibit... persons from associating... in an attempt to persuade the legislature or the executive to take particular action with respect to a law that would produce a restraint or a monopoly.” Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc., 365 U. S. 127, 136 (1961). We based our interpretation in part on the principle that we would not “lightly impute to Congress an intent to invade... freedoms” protected by the Bill of Rights, such as the right to petition. Id., at 138. We later made clear that this antitrust immunity “shields from the Sherman Act a concerted effort to influence public officials regardless of intent or purpose.” Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U. S. 657, 670 (1965).
These antitrust immunity principles were then extended to situations where groups “use... courts to advocate their causes and points of view respecting resolution of their business and economic interests vis-á-vis their competitors.” California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U. S. 508, 511 (1972) (emphasis added). We thus made explicit that “the right to petition extends to all departments of the Government,” and that “[t]he right of access to the courts is... but one aspect of the right of petition.” Id., at 510.
Even then, however, we emphasized that such immunity did not extend to “illegal and reprehensible practiced] which may corrupt the... judicial proces[s],” id., at 513, hearkening back to an earlier statement that antitrust immunity would not extend to lobbying “ostensibly directed toward influencing governmental action [that] is a mere sham to cover what is actually nothing more than an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor.” Noerr, supra, at 144. This line of cases thus establishes that while genuine petitioning is immune from antitrust liability, sham petitioning is not.
In Professional Real Estate Investors, we adopted a two-part definition of sham antitrust litigation: first, it “must be objectively baseless in the sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits”; second, the litigant’s subjective motivation must “concea[l] an attempt to interfere directly with the business relationships of a competitor... through the use [of] the governmental process — as opposed to the outcome of that process — as an anti-competitive weapon.” 508 U. S., at 60-61 (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis in original). For a suit to violate the antitrust laws, then, it must be a sham both objectively and subjectively.
This case raises the same underlying issue of when litigation may be found to violate federal law, but this time with respect to the NLRA rather than the Sherman Act. Recognizing this underlying connection, we previously decided whether the Board could enjoin state court lawsuits by analogizing to the antitrust context. In Bill Johnson’s, a restaurant owner had filed a state court lawsuit against individuals who picketed its restaurant after a waitress was fired. 461 U. S., at 738-734. The owner alleged that the picketing was harassing and dangerous and that a leaflet distributed by the picketers was libelous.'Id., at 734. The waitress filed a charge with the Board claiming the suit had been filed in retaliation for participation in protected activities. Id., at 735. The Administrative Law Judge (AU) decided that the owner’s suit lacked a reasonable basis and was intended to penalize protected activity based on his assessment of the evidence and its credibility. Id., at 736, 744. The Board upheld this determination and ordered the owner to withdraw its suit and pay the defendants’ legal expenses. Id., at 737. The Court of Appeals enforced the order. Ibid.
We vacated the judgment, however, holding that First Amendment and federalism concerns prevented “[t]he filing and prosecution of a well-founded lawsuit” from being “enjoined as an unfair labor practice, even if it would not have been commenced but for the plaintiff’s desire to retaliate against the defendant for exercising rights protected by the [NLRA].” Id., at 737, 743. We also held that the Board may not decide that a suit is baseless by making credibility determinations, as the ALJ had done, when genuine issues of material fact or state law exist. Id., at 745, 746-747. In recognition of our sham exception to antitrust immunity, however, we reasoned that “[w]e should follow a similar course under the NLRA” and held that the Board could enjoin baseless suits brought with a retaliatory motive, id., at 744 (citing California Motor Transport, supra), and then remanded for further proceedings, 461 U. S., at 749.
At issue today is not the standard for enjoining ongoing suits but the standard for declaring completed suits unlawful. In Bill Johnson’s, we remarked in dicta about that situation:
“If judgment goes against the employer in the state court,... or if his suit is withdrawn or is otherwise shown to be without merit, the employer has had its day in court, the interest of the State in providing a forum for its citizens has been vindicated, and the Board may then proceed to adjudicate the... unfair labor practice case. The employer’s suit having proved unmeritorious, the Board would be warranted in taking that fact into account in determining whether the suit had been filed in retaliation for the exercise of the employees’ [NLRA] §7 rights. If a violation is found, the Board may order the employer to reimburse the employees whom he had wrongfully sued for their attorney’s fees and other expenses. It may also order any other proper relief that would effectuate the policies of the [NLRA].” Id., at 747.
Under this standard, the Board could declare that a lost or withdrawn suit violated the NLRA if it was retaliatory. In Bill Johnson’s, however, the issue before the Court was whether the Board could enjoin an ongoing state lawsuit without finding that the suit lacked a reasonable basis in law or fact. Id., at 733. To resolve that issue, we had no actual need to decide whether the Board could declare unlawful reasonably based suits that were ultimately unsuccessful. Indeed, the Board had yet to declare such a suit unlawful: It had attempted to enjoin an uncompleted suit that it had declared baseless. Id., at 736-737. Nor did we have occasion to consider the precise scope of the term “retaliation.” See infra, at 633, 637.
Moreover, although our statements regarding completed litigation were intended to guide further proceedings, we did not expressly order the Board to adhere to its prior finding of unlawfulness under the standard we stated. See 461 U. S., at 749-750, n. 15 (“[0]n remand the Board may reinstate its finding that petitioner acted unlawfully... if the Board adheres to its previous finding that the suit was filed for a retaliatory purpose” (emphasis added)). Thus, exercising our “customary refusal to be bound by dicta,” U. S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U. S. 18, 24 (1994), we turn to the question presented.
III
Because of its objective component, the sham litigation standard in Professional Real Estate Investors protects reasonably based petitioning from antitrust liability. Because of its subjective component, it also protects petitioning that is unmotivated by anticompetitive intent, whether it is reasonably based or not. The Board admits such broad immunity is justified in the antitrust context because it properly “balances the risk of anticompetitive lawsuits against the chilling effect” on First Amendment petitioning that might be caused by “the treble-damages remedy and other distinct features of antitrust litigation,” such as the fact that antitrust claims may be privately initiated and may impose high discovery costs. Brief for Respondent NLRB 40-41. According to the Board, however, such broad protection is unnecessary in the labor law context because, outside of the LMRA, enforcement of the NLRA requires the Board’s general counsel to first authorize the issuance of an administrative complaint; thus, an adjudication cannot be launched solely by private action. See 29 U. S. C. § 153(d); NLRB v. Food & Commercial Workers, 484 U. S. 112, 118-119 (1987). Nor can the Board issue punitive remedies, see Republic Steel Corp. v. NLRB, 311 U. S. 7, 10-12 (1940), and instead is limited to restoring the previolation status quo, see id., at 12-13; NLRB v. J H. Rutter-Rex Mfg. Co., 396 U. S. 258, 265 (1969). The Board also allows “little prehearing discovery.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S. 214, 236 (1978).
At most, however, these arguments demonstrate that the threat of an antitrust suit may pose a greater burden on petitioning than the threat of an NLRA adjudication. This does not mean the burdens posed by the NLRA raise no First Amendment concerns. To determine if they do, we must first isolate those burdens.
Here, the Board’s determination that petitioner’s lawsuit violated the NLRA.resulted in an order requiring petitioner to post certain notices, refrain from filing similar suits, and pay the unions’ attorney’s fees. Petitioner did not challenge below the Board’s authority to impose the notice and injunction penalties upon a finding of illegality, but did challenge the Board’s authority to award attorney’s fees, albeit unsuccessfully. 246 F. 3d, at 631-632. Although petitioner sought review of the fee issue, Pet. for Cert, i, we did not grant certiorari on that specific question, instead asking the parties to address whether the Board may impose liability for a retaliatory lawsuit that was unsuccessful even if it was not objectively baseless. 534 U. S. 1074 (2002).
As we see it, a threshold question here is whether the Board may declare that an unsuccessful retaliatory lawsuit violates the NLRA even if reasonably based. If it may, the resulting finding of illegality is a burden by itself. In addition to a declaration of illegality and whatever legal consequences flow from that, the finding also poses the threat of reputational harm that is different and additional to any burden posed by other penalties, such as a fee award. Because we can resolve this case by looking only at the finding of illegality, we need not decide whether the Board otherwise has authority to award attorney’s fees when a suit is found to violate the NLRA.
Having identified this burden, we must examine the petitioning activity it affects. In Bill Johnson’s, we held that the Board may not enjoin reasonably based state court lawsuits in part because of First Amendment concerns. 461 U. S., at 742-743. We implied those concerns are no longer present when a suit ends because “the employer has had its day in court.” Id., at 747. By analogy to other areas of First Amendment law, one might assume that any concerns related to the right to petition must be greater when enjoining ongoing litigation than when penalizing completed litigation. After all, the First Amendment historically provides greater protection from prior restraints than after-the-fact penalties, see Alexander v. United States, 509 U. S. 544, 553-554 (1993), and enjoining a lawsuit could be characterized as a prior restraint, whereas declaring a completed lawsuit unlawful could be characterized as an after-the-fact penalty on petitioning. But this analogy at most suggests that injunctions may raise greater First Amendment concerns, not that after-the-fact penalties raise no concerns. Likewise, the fact that Bill Johnson’s allowed certain baseless suits to. be enjoined tells little about the propriety of imposing penalties on various classes of nonbaseless suits.
We said in Bill Johnson’s that the Board could enjoin baseless retaliatory suits because they fell outside of the First Amendment and thus were analogous to “false statements.” 461 U. S., at 743. We concluded that “[j]ust as false statements are not immunized by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, baseless litigation is not immunized by the First Amendment right to petition.” Ibid, (citations omitted). While this analogy is helpful, it does not suggest that the class of baseless litigation is completely unprotected: At most, it indicates such litigation should be unprotected “just as” false statements are. And while false statements may be unprotected for their own sake, “[t]he First Amendment requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.” Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 341 (1974) (emphasis added); id., at 342 (noting the need to protect some falsehoods to ensure that “the freedoms of speech and press [receive] that ‘breathing space’ essential to their fruitful exercise” (quoting NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 433 (1963))). An example of such “breathing space” protection is the requirement that a public official seeking compensatory damages for defamation prove by clear and convincing evidence that false statements were made with knowledge or reckless disregard of their falsity. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 279-280, 285 (1964).
It is at least consistent with these “breathing space” principles that we have never held that the entire class of objectively baseless litigation may be enjoined or declared unlawful even though such suits may advance no First Amendment interests of their own. Instead, in cases like Bill Johnson's and Professional Real Estate Investors, our holdings limited regulation to suits that were both objectively baseless and subjectively motivated by an unlawful purpose. But we need not resolve whether objectively baseless litigation requires any “breathing room” protection, for what is at issue here are suits that are not baseless in the first place. Instead, as an initial matter, we are dealing with the class of reasonably based but unsuccessful lawsuits. But whether this class of suits falls outside the scope of the First Amend-merit’s Petition Clause at the least presents a difficult constitutional question, given the following considerations.
First, even though all the lawsuits in this class are unsuccessful, the class nevertheless includes a substantial proportion of all suits involving genuine grievances because the genuineness of a grievance does not turn on whether it succeeds. Indeed, this is reflected by our prior cases which have protected petitioning whenever it is genuine, not simply when it triumphs. See, e. g., Professional Real Estate Investors, 508 U. S., at 58-61 (protecting suits from antitrust liability whenever they are objectively or subjectively genuine); Pennington, 381 U. S., at 670 (shielding from antitrust immunity any “concerted effort to influence public officials”). Nor does the text of the First Amendment speak in terms of successful petitioning — it speaks simply of “the right of the people... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Second, even unsuccessful but reasonably based suits advance some First Amendment interests. Like successful suits, unsuccessful suits allow the “ ‘public airing of disputed facts,’” Bill Johnson’s, supra, at 743 (quoting Balmer, Sham Litigation and the Antitrust Law, 29 Buffalo L. Rev. 39, 60 (1980)), and raise matters of public concern. They also promote the evolution of the law by supporting the development of legal theories that may not gain acceptance the first time around. Moreover, the ability to lawfully prosecute even unsuccessful suits adds legitimacy to the court system as a designated alternative to force. See Andrews, A Right of Access to Court Under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment: Defining the Right, 60 Ohio St. L. J. 557, 656 (1999) (noting the potential for avoiding violence by the filing of unsuccessful claims).
Finally, while baseless suits can be seen as analogous to false statements, that analogy does not directly extend to suits that are unsuccessful but reasonably based. For even if a suit could be seen as a kind of provable statement, the fact that it loses does not mean it is false. At most it means the plaintiff did not meet its burden of proving its truth. That does not mean the defendant has proved — or could prove — the contrary.
Because the Board confines its penalties to unsuccessful suits brought with a retaliatory motive, however, we must also consider the significance of that particular limitation, which is fairly included within the question presented. See 534 U. S. 1074 (2002) (granting certiorari on whether the Board “may impose liability on an employer for filing a losing retaliatory lawsuit, even if the employer could show the suit was not objectively baseless” (emphasis added)).
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In the context of employer-filed lawsuits, we previously indicated that retaliatory suits are those “filed in retaliation for the exercise of the employees’ [NLRA] §7 rights.” Bill Johnson’s, 461 U. S., at 747. Because we did not specifically address what constitutes “retaliation,” however, the precise scope of that term was not defined. The Board’s view is that a retaliatory suit is one “brought with a motive to interfere with the exercise of protected [NLRA §]7 rights.” Brief for Respondent NLRB 46 (emphasis added). As we read it, however, the Board’s definition broadly covers a substantial amount of genuine petitioning.
For example, an employer may file suit to stop conduct by a union that he reasonably believes is illegal under federal law, even though the conduct would otherwise be protected under the NLRA. As a practical matter, the filing of the suit may interfere with or deter some employees’ exercise of NLRA rights. Yet the employer’s motive may still reflect only a subjectively genuine desire to test the legality of the conduct. Indeed, in this very case, the Board’s first basis for finding retaliatory motive was the fact that petitioner’s suit related to protected conduct that petitioner believed was unprotected. App. to Pet. for Cert. 59a-60a. If such a belief is both subjectively genuine and objectively reasonable, then declaring the resulting suit illegal affects genuine petitioning.
The Board also claims to rely on evidence of antiunion animus to infer retaliatory motive. Brief for Respondent NLRB 47. Yet ill will is not uncommon in litigation. Cf. Professional Real Estate Investors, 508 U. S., at 69 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (“We may presume that every litigant intends harm to his adversary”). Disputes between adverse parties may generate such ill will that recourse to the courts becomes the only legal and practical means to resolve the situation. But that does not mean such disputes are not genuine. As long as a plaintiff’s purpose is to stop conduct he reasonably believes is illegal, petitioning is genuine both objectively and subjectively. See id., at 60-61.
Even in other First Amendment contexts, we have found it problematic to regulate some demonstrably false expression based on the presence of ill will. For example, we invalidated a criminal statute prohibiting false statements about public officials made with ill will. See Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64, 73-74 (1964) (“Debate on public issues will not be uninhibited if the speaker must run the risk that it will be proved in court that he spoke out of hatred”). Indeed, the requirement that private defamation plaintiffs prove the falsity of speech on matters of public concern may indirectly shield much speech concealing ill motives. See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Hepps, 475 U. S. 767, 776-777 (1986); see also Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U. S. 46, 53 (1988) (prohibiting use of ill motive to create liability for speech in the realm of public debate about public figures).
For these reasons, the difficult constitutional question we noted earlier, supra, at 531-533, is not made significantly easier by the Board’s retaliatory motive limitation since that limitation fails to exclude a substantial amount of petitioning that is objectively and subjectively genuine.
The final question is whether, in light of the important goals of the NLRA, the Board may nevertheless burden an unsuccessful but reasonably based suit when it concludes the suit was brought with a retaliatory purpose. As explained above, supra, at 525-526, we answered a similar question in the negative in the antitrust context. And while the burdens on speech at issue in this case are different from those at issue in Professional Real Estate Investors, we are still faced with a difficult constitutional question: namely, whether a class of petitioning may be declared unlawful when a substantial portion of it is subjectively and objectively genuine.
In a prior labor law case, we avoided a similarly difficult First Amendment issue by adopting a limiting construction of the relevant NLRA provision. See Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Constr. Trades Council, 485 U. S. 568, 575 (1988). At issue there was the scope of § 8(b)(4) of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(4), which limits unions from “threatening], coerc[ing], or restraining] any person engaged in commerce or in an industry affecting commerce” with respect to certain prohibited purposes. § 158(b)(4)(ii). The Board read this provision to cover hand-billing that urged customers not to shop at a mall where the purpose of the handbilling was to convince the mall’s proprietor to influence a tenant to quit dealing with a nonunion contractor. 485 U. S., at 574. A prior case had held that the same statutory prohibition on threats, coercion, and restraints was “'nonspecific, indeed vague,’ and [thus] should be interpreted with ‘caution’ and not given a ‘broad sweep.’ ” Id., at 578 (quoting NLRB v. Drivers, 362 U. S. 274, 290 (I960)). Likewise, in DeBartolo, we found that the statutory provisions and their legislative history indicated no clear intent to reach the handbilling in question, 485 U. S., at 578-588, and so we simply read the statute not to cover it, thereby avoiding the First Amendment question altogether, id., at 588.
Here, the relevant NLRA provision is § 8(a)(1), 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(1), which prohibits employers from “interferfing] with, restraining], or coercing] employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in [29 U. S. C. §]157.” Section 157 provides, in relevant part:
“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection....”
Section 158(a)(l)’s prohibition on interfering, restraining, or coercing in connection with the above rights is facially as broad as the prohibition at issue in DeBartolo. And while it might be read to reach the entire class of suits the Board has deemed retaliatory, it need not be read so broadly. Indeed, even considered in context, there is no suggestion that these provisions were part of any effort to cover that class of suits. See §§ 158(a)(2)-(5) (generally prohibiting employers from interfering with the formation and administration of a union, from discriminating in employment practices based on union membership, from discharging employees who provide testimony or file charges under the NLRA, and from refusing to bargain collectively with employee representatives).
Because there is nothing in the statutory text indicating that § 158(a)(1) must be read to reach all reasonably based but unsuccessful suits filed with a retaliatory purpose, we decline to do so. Because the Board’s standard for imposing liability under the NLRA allows it to penalize such suits, its standard is thus invalid. We do not decide whether the Board may declare unlawful any unsuccessful but reasonably based suits that would not have been filed but for a motive to impose the costs of the litigation process, regardless of the outcome, in retaliation for NLRA protected activity, since the Board’s standard does not confine itself to such suits. Likewise, we need not decide what our dicta in Bill Johnson’s may have meant by “retaliation.” 461 U. S., at 747; see supra, at 527-528. Finally, nothing in our holding today should be read to question the validity of common litigation sanctions imposed by courts themselves — such as those authorized under
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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.
CHIEF Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
An Iowa police officer stopped petitioner Knowles for speeding, but issued him a citation rather than arresting him. The question presented is whether such a procedure authorizes the officer, consistently with the Fourth Amendment, to conduct a foil search of the car. We answer this question "no.”
Knowles was stopped in Newton, Iowa, after having been clocked driving 43 miles per hour on a road where the speed limit was 25 miles per hour. The police officer issued a citation to Knowles, although under Iowa law he might have arrested him. The officer then conducted a foil search of the car, and under the driver’s seat he found a bag of marijuana and a “pot pipe.” Knowles was then arrested and charged with violation of state laws dealing with controlled substances.
Before trial, Knowles moved to suppress the evidence so obtained. He argued that the search could not be sustained under the "search incident to arrest” exception recognized in United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), because he had not been placed under arrest.. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the police officer conceded that he had neither Knowles’ consent nor probable cause to conduct the search. He relied on Iowa law dealing with such searches.
Iowa Code Ann. § 321.485(l)(a) (West 1997) provides that Iowa peace officers having cause to believe that a person has violated any traffic or motor vehicle equipment law may arrest the person and immediately take the person before a magistrate. Iowa law also authorizes the far more usual practice of issuing a citation in lieu of arrest or in lieu of continued custody after an initial arrest. See Iowa Code Ann. §805.1(1) (West Supp. 1997). Section 805.1(4) provides that the issuance of a citation in lieu of an arrest “does not affect the officer’s authority to conduct an otherwise lawful search.” The Iowa Supreme Court has interpreted this provision as providing authority to officers to conduct a full-blown search of an automobile and driver in those cases where police elect not to make a custodial arrest and instead issue a citation — that is, a search incident to citation. See State v. Meyer, 543 N. W. 2d 876, 879 (1996); State v. Becker, 458 N. W. 2d 604, 607 (1990).
Based on this authority, the trial court denied the motion to suppress and found Knowles guilty. The Supreme Court of Iowa, sitting en bane, affirmed by a divided vote. 569 N. W. 2d 601 (1997). Relying on its earlier opinion in State v. Doran, 563 N. W. 2d 620 (1997), the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the search under a bright-line “search incident to citation” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, reasoning that so long as the arresting officer had probable cause to make a custodial arrest, there need not in fact have been a custodial arrest. We granted certiorari, 523 U. S. 1019 (1998), and we now reverse.
The State contends that Knowles has challenged Iowa Code’s §805.1(4) only “on its face” and not “as applied,” in which case, the argument continues, his challenge would run afoul of Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968). But in his motion to suppress, Knowles argued that “[bjeeause the officer had no probable cause and no search warrant, and the search cannot otherwise be justified under the Fourth Amendment, the search of the car was unconstitutional.” App. 7. Knowles did not argue below, and does not argue here, that the statute could never be lawfully applied. The question we therefore address is whether the search at issue, authorized as it was by state law, nonetheless violates the Fourth Amendment.
In Robinson, supra, we noted the two historical rationales for the “search incident to arrest” exception: (1) the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody, and (2) the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial. 414 U. S., at 234. See also United States v. Edwards, 415 U. S. 800, 802-803 (1974); Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 762-763 (1969); Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367 (1964); Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 30 (1926); Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392 (1914). But neither of these underlying rationales for the search incident to arrest exception is sufficient to justify the search in the present case.
We have recognized that the first rationale — officer safety — is “‘both legitimate and weighty,’” Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U. S. 408, 412 (1997) (quoting Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U. S. 106, 110 (1977) (per curiam)). The threat to officer safety from issuing a traffic citation, however, is a good deal less than in the ease of a custodial arrest. In Robinson, we stated that a custodial arrest involves “danger to an officer” because of “the extended exposure which follows the taking of a suspect into custody and transporting him to the police station.” 414 U. S., at 234-235. We recognized that “[t]he danger to the police officer flows from the faet of the arrest, and its attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty, and not from the grounds for arrest.” Id., at 234, n. 5. A routine traffic stop, on the other hand,' is a relatively brief encounter and “is more analogous to a so-called ‘Terry stop’ . . . than to a formal arrest.” Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 439 (1984). See also Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 296 (1973) (“Where there is no formal arrest... a person might well be less hostile to the police and less likely to take conspicuous, immediate steps to destroy incriminating evidence”).
This is not to say that the concern for officer safety is absent in the ease of a routine traffic stop. It plainly is not. See Mimms, supra, at 110; Wilson, supra, at 413-414. But while the concern for officer safety in this context may justify the “minimal” additional intrusion of ordering a driver and passengers out of the car, it does not by itself justify the often considerably greater intrusion attending a full field-type search. Even without the search authority Iowa urges, officers have other, independent bases to search for weapons and protect themselves from danger. For example, they may order out of a vehicle both the driver, Mimms, swpra, at Ill, and any passengers, Wilson, supra, at 414; perform a “patdown” of a driver and any passengers upon reasonable suspicion that they may be armed and dangerous, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968); conduct a “Terry patdown” of the passenger compartment of a vehicle upon reasonable suspicion that an occupant is dangerous and may gain immediate control of a weapon, Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1049 (1983); and even conduct a full search of the passenger compartment, including any containers therein, pursuant to a custodial arrest, New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454, 460 (1981).
Nor has Iowa shown the second justification for the authority to search incident to arrest — the need to discover and preserve evidence. Once Knowles was stopped for speeding and issued a citation, all the evidence necessary to prosecute that offense had been obtained. No further evidence of excessive speed was going to be found either on the person of the offender or in the passenger compartment of the car.
Iowa nevertheless argues that a “search incident to citation” is justified because a suspect who is subject to a routine traffic stop may attempt to hide or destroy evidence related to his identity (e. g., a driver’s license or vehicle registration), or destroy evidence of another, as yet undetected crime. As for the destruction of evidence relating to identity, if a police officer is not satisfied with the identification furnished by the driver, this may be a basis for arresting him rather than merely issuing a citation. As for destroying evidence of other crimes, the possibility that an officer would stumble onto evidence wholly unrelated to the speeding offense seems remote.
In Robinson, we held that the authority to conduct a full field search as incident to an arrest was a “bright-line rule,” which was based on the concern for officer safety and destruction or loss of evidence, but which did not depend in every case upon the existence of either concern. Here we are asked to extend that “bright-line rule” to a situation where the concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent and the concern for destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all. We decline to do so. The judgment of the- Supreme Court of Iowa is reversed, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Iowa law permits the issuance of a citation in lieu of arrest for most offenses for which an accused person would be "eligible for bail.” See Iowa Code Ann. §805.1(1) (West Supp. 1997). In addition to traffic and motor vehicle equipment violations, this would permit the issuance of a citation in lieu of arrest for such serious felonies as second-degree burglary, §713.5 (West Supp. 1997), and first-degree theft, §714.2(1) (West 1993), both bailable offenses under Iowa law. See §811.1 (West Supp. 1997) (listing all nonbailable offenses). The practice in Iowa of permitting citation in lieu of arrest is consistent with law reform efforts. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 5.2(h), p. 99, and n. 151 (3d ed. 1996).
Iowa also contends that Knowles’ challenge is precluded because he failed to seek review of a separate decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, which affirmed his conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia in violation of a city ordinance. That decision, Iowa argues, resulted from the same search at issue here, rejected the same Fourth Amendment challenge Knowles now makes, and, under principles of res judicata, bars his present challenge. Even if Knowles’ failure to seek certiorari review of this decision could preclude his present challenge, Iowa waived this argument by failing to raise it in its brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari. See this Court’s Rule 15.2; Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U. S. 808, 816 (1985) (“Nonjurisdietional defects of this sort should be brought to our attention no later than in respondent’s brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari; if not, we consider it within our discretion to deem the defect waived”).
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.
Burns International Security Services, Inc. (Burns), replaced another employer, the Wackenhut Corp. (Wackenhut), which had previously provided plant protection services for the Lockheed Aircraft Service Co. (Lockheed) located at the Ontario International Airport in California. When Burns began providing security service, it employed 42 guards; 27 of them had been employed by Wackenhut. Burns refused, however, to bargain with the United Plant Guard Workers of America (UPG) which had been certified after a National Labor Relations Board (Board) election as the exclusive bargaining representative of Wackenhut’s employees less than four months earlier. The issues presented in this case are whether Burns refused to bargain with a union representing a majority of employees in an appropriate unit and whether the National Labor Relations Board could order Burns to- observe the terms of a collective-bargaining contract signed by the union and Wackenhut that Burns had not voluntarily assumed. Resolution turns to a great extent on the precise facts involved here.
I
The Wackenhut Corp. provided protection services at the Lockheed plant for five years before Burns took over this task. On February 28, 1967, a few months before the changeover of guard employers, a majority of the Wackenhut guards selected the union as their exclusive bargaining representative in a Board election after Waekenhut and the union had agreed that the Lockheed plant was the appropriate bargaining unit. On March 8, the Regional Director certified the union as the exclusive bargaining representative for these employees, and, on April 29, Wackenhut and the union entered into a three-year collective-bargaining contract.
Meanwhile, since Wackenhut’s one-year service agreement to provide security protection was due to expire on June 30, Lockheed had called for bids from various companies supplying these services, and both Burns and Wackenhut submitted estimates. At a pre-bid conference attended by Burns on May 15, a representative of Lockheed informed the bidders that Wackenhut’s guards were represented by the union, that the union had recently won a Board election and been certified, and that there was in existence a collective-bargaining contract between Wackenhut and the union. App. 4-5, 126. Lockheed then accepted Burns’ bid, and on May 31 Wackenhut was notified that Burns would assume responsibility for protection services on July 1. Burns chose to retain 27 of the Wackenhut guards, and it brought in 15 of its own guards from other Burns locations.
During June, when Burns hired the 27 Wackenhut guards, it supplied them with membership cards of the American Federation of Guards (AFG), another union with which Burns had collective-bargaining contracts at other locations, and informed them that they had to become AFG members to work for Burns, that they would not receive uniforms otherwise, and that Burns “could not live with” the existing contract between Wackenhut and the union. On June 29, Burns recognized the AFG on the theory that it had obtained a card majority. On July 12, however, the UPG demanded that Burns recognize it as the bargaining representative of Burns’ employees at Lockheed and that Burns honor the collective-bargaining agreement between it and Wackenhut. When Burns refused, the UPG filed unfair labor practice charges, and Burns responded by challenging the appropriateness of the unit and by denying its obligation to bargain.
The Board, adopting the trial examiner’s findings and conclusions, found the Lockheed plant an appropriate unit and held that Burns had violated §§ 8 (a)(2) and 8 (a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. §§ 158 (a)(2), 158 (a)(1), by unlawfully recognizing and assisting the AFG, a rival of the UPG; and that it had violated §§ 8 (a) (5) and 8(a)(1), 29 U. S. C. §§158 (a)(5), 158 (a)(1), by failing to recognize and bargain with the UPG and by refusing to honor the collective-bargaining agreement that had been negotiated between Wackenhut and UPG.
Burns did not challenge the § 8 (a) (2) unlawful assistance finding in the Court of Appeals but sought review of the unit determination and the order to bargain and observe the pre-existing collective-bargaining contract. The Court of Appeals accepted the Board’s unit determination and enforced the Board’s order insofar as it related to the finding of unlawful assistance of a rival union and the refusal to bargain, but it held that the Board had exceeded its powers in ordering Burns to honor the contract executed by Wackenhut. Both Burns and the Board petitioned for certiorari, Burns challenging the unit determination and the bargaining order and the Board maintaining its position that Burns was bound by the Wackenhut contract, and we granted both petitions, though we declined to review the propriety of the bargaining unit, a question which was presented in No. 71-198. 404 U. S. 822 (1971).
II
We address first Burns’ alleged duty to bargain with the union, and in doing so it is well to return to the specific provisions of the Act, which courts and the Board alike are bound to observe. Section 8 (a)(5), as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (a) (5), makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer “to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees, subject to the provisions of section 159 (a) of this title.” Section 159 (a) provides that “ [representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining....” Because the Act itself imposes a duty to bargain with the representative of a majority of the employees in an appropriate unit, the initial issue before the Board was whether the charging union was such a bargaining representative.
The trial examiner first found that the unit designated by the regional director was an appropriate unit for bargaining. The unit found appropriate was defined as “[a] 11 full-time and regular part-time employees of [Burns] performing plant protection duties as determined in Section 9 (b) (3) of the [National Labor Relations] Act at Lockheed, Ontario International Airport; excluding office clerical employees, professional employees, supervisors, and all other employees as defined in the Act.” This determination was affirmed by the Board, accepted by the Court of Appeals, and is not at issue here because pretermitted by our limited grant of certiorari.
The trial examiner then found, inter alia, that Burns “had in its employ a majority of Wackenhut’s former employees,” and that these employees had already expressed their choice of a bargaining representative in an election held a short time before. Burns was therefore held to have a duty to bargain, which arose when it selected as its work force the employees of the previous employer to perform the same tasks at the same place they had worked in the past.
The Board, without revision, accepted the trial examiner’s findings and conclusions with respect to the duty to bargain, and we see no basis for setting them aside. In an election held but a few months before, the union had been designated bargaining agent for the employees in the unit and a majority of these employees had been hired by Burns for work in the identical unit. It is undisputed that Burns knew all the relevant facts in this regard and was aware of the certification and of the existence of a collective-bargaining contract. In these circumstances, it was not unreasonable for the Board to conclude that the union certified to represent all employees in the unit still represented a majority of the employees and that Burns could not reasonably have entertained a good-faith doubt about that fact. Burns’ obligation to bargain with the union over terms and conditions of employment stemmed from its hiring of Wackenhut’s employees and from the recent election and Board certification. It has been consistently held that a mere change of employers or of ownership in the employing industry is not such an “unusual circumstance” as to affect the force of the Board's certification within the normal operative period if a majority of employees after the change of ownership or management were employed by the preceding employer. NLRB v. Downtown Bakery Corp., 330 F. 2d 921, 925 (CA6 1964); NLRB v. McFarland, 306 F. 2d 219, 221 (CA10 1962); NLRB v. Auto Ventshade, Inc., 276 F. 2d 303, 307 (CA5 1960) ; NLRB v. Lander Shoe Corp., 211 F. 2d 284, 286 (CA1 1954); NLRB v. Armato, 199 F. 2d 800, 803 (CA7 1952) ; South Carolina Granite Co., 58 N. L. R. B. 1448, 1463-1464 (1944), enforced sub nom. NLRB v. Blair Quarries, Inc., 152 F. 2d 25 (CA4 1945); Northwest Glove Co., 74 N. L. R. B. 1697, 1700 (1947); Johnson Ready Mix Co., 142 N. L. R. B. 437, 442 (1963).
It goes without saying, of course, that Burns was not entitled to upset what it should have accepted as an established union majority by soliciting representation cards for another union and thereby committing the unfair labor practice of which it was found guilty by the Board. That holding was not challenged here and makes it imperative that the situation be viewed as it was when Burns hired its employees for the guard unit, a majority of whom were represented by a Board-certified union. See NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U. S. 575, 609, 610-616 (1969).
It would be a wholly different case if the Board had determined that because Burns’ operational structure and practices differed from those of Wackenhut, the Lockheed bargaining unit was no longer an appropriate one. Likewise, it would be different if Burns had not hired employees already represented by a union certified as a bargaining agent, and the Board recognized as much at oral argument. But where the bargaining' unit remains unchanged and a majority of the employees hired by the new employer are represented by a recently certified bargaining agent there is little basis for faulting the Board’s implementation of the express mandates of § 8 (a) (5) and § 9 (a) by ordering the employer to bargain with the incumbent union. This is the view of several courts of appeals and we agree with those courts. NLRB v. Zayre Corp., 424 F. 2d 1159, 1162 (CA5 1970) ; Tom-A-Hawk Transit, Inc. v. NLRB, 419 F. 2d 1025, 1026-1027 (CA7 1969); S. S. Kresge Co. v. NLRB, 416 F. 2d 1225, 1234 (CA6 1969); NLRB v. McFarland, 306 F. 2d, at 220.
Ill
It does not follow, however, from Burns’ duty to bargain that it was bound to observe the substantive terms of the collective-bargaining contract the union had negotiated with Wackenhut and to which Burns had in no way agreed. Section 8 (d) of the Act expressly provides that the existence of such bargaining obligation “does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession." Congress has consistently declined to interfere with free collective bargaining and has preferred that device, or voluntary arbitration, to the imposition of compulsory terms as a means of avoiding or terminating labor disputes. In its report accompanying the 1935 Act, the Senate Committee on Education and Labor stated:
“The committee wishes to dispel any possible false impression that this bill is designed to compel the making of agreements or to permit governmental supervision of their terms. It must be stressed that the duty to bargain collectively does not carry with it the duty to reach an agreement, because the essence of collective bargaining is that either party shall be free to decide whether proposals made to it are satisfactory.” S. Rep. No. 573, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 (1935).
This Court immediately noted this fundamental theme of the legislation: “[The Act] does not compel any agreement whatever.... The theory of the Act is that free opportunity for negotiation with accredited representatives of employees is likely to promote industrial peace and may bring about the adjustments and agreements which the Act in itself does not attempt to compel.” NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 45 (1937). See also NLRB v. American National Insurance Co., 343 U. S. 395, 401-02 (1952); Teamsters Local 857 v. NLRB, 365 U. S. 667, 676-677 (1961).
Section 8 (d), 29 U. S. C. § 158 (d), made this policy an express statutory mandate, and was enacted in 1947 because Congress feared that “the present Board has gone very far, in the guise of determining whether or not employers had bargained in good faith, in setting itself up as the judge of what concessions an employer must make and of the proposals and counterproposals that he may or may not make.... [UJnless Congress writes into the law guides for the Board to follow, the Board may attempt to carry this process still further and seek to control more and more the terms of collective bargaining agreements.” H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 19-20 (1947).
This history was reviewed in detail and given controlling effect in H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U. S. 99 (1970). There this Court, while agreeing that the employer violated §8 (a)(5) by adamantly refusing to agree to a dues checkoff, intending thereby to frustrate the consummation of any bargaining agreement, held that the Board had erred in ordering the employer to agree to such a provision:
“[W]hile the Board does have power... to require employers and employees to negotiate, it is without power to compel a company or a union to agree to any substantive contractual provision of a collective-bargaining agreement.
“It would be anomalous indeed to hold that while § 8 (d) prohibits the Board from relying on a refusal to agree as the sole evidence of bad-faith bargaining, the Act permits the Board to compel agreement in that same dispute. The Board’s remedial powers under § 10 of the Act are broad, but they are limited to carrying out the policies of the Act itself. One of these fundamental policies is freedom of contract.” 397 U. S., at 102, 108 (citations omitted).
These considerations, evident from the explicit language and legislative history of the labor laws, underlay the Board’s prior decisions, which until now have consistently held that, although successor employers may be bound to recognize and bargain with the union, they are not bound by the substantive provisions of a collective-bargaining contract negotiated by their predecessors but not agreed to or assumed by them. Rohlik, Inc., 145 N. L. R. B. 1236, 1242 n. 15 (1964); General Extrusion Co., 121 N. L. R. B. 1165, 1168 (1958); Jolly Giant Dumber Co., 114 N. L. R. B. 413, 414 (1955); Slater System Maryland, Inc., 134 N. L. R. B. 865, 866 (1961); Matter of ILWU (Juneau Spruce), 82 N. L. R. B. 650, 658-659 (1949), enforced, 189 F. 2d 177 (CA9 1951), aff’d on other grounds, 342 U. S. 237 (1952). As the Court of Appeals said in this case, “In none of the previous successorship cases has the Board ever reached that result. The successor has always been held merely to have the duty of bargaining with his predecessor’s union.” 441 F. 2d, at 915.
The Board, however, has now departed from this view and argues that the same policies that mandate a continuity of bargaining obligation also require that successor employers be bound to the terms of a predecessor’s collective-bargaining contract. It asserts that the stability of labor relations will be jeopardized and that employees will face uncertainty and a gap in the bargained-for terms and conditions of employment, as well as the possible loss of advantages gained by prior negotiations, unless the new employer is held to have assumed, as a matter of federal labor law, the obligations under the contract entered into by the former employer. Recognizing that under normal contract principles a party would not be bound to a contract in the absence of consent, the Board notes that in John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Livingston, 376 U. S. 543, 550 (1964), the Court declared that “a collective bargaining agreement is not an ordinary contract” but is, rather, an outline of the common law of a particular plant or industry. The Court held in Wiley that although the predecessor employer which had signed a collective-bargaining contract with the union had disappeared by merger with the successor, the union could compel the successor to arbitrate the extent to which the successor was obligated under the collective-bargaining agreement. The Board contends that the same factors that the Court emphasized in Wiley, the peaceful settlement of industrial conflicts and “protection [of] the employees [against] a sudden change in the employment relationship,” id., at 549, require that Burns be treated under the collective-bargaining contract exactly as Wackenhut would have been if it had continued protecting the Lockheed plant.
We do not find Wiley controlling in the circumstances here. Wiley arose in the context of a § 301 suit to compel arbitration, not in the context of an unfair labor practice proceeding where the Board is expressly limited by the provisions of §8(d). That decision emphasized “[t]he preference of national labor policy for arbitration as a substitute for tests of strength before contending forces” and held only that the agreement to arbitrate, “construed in the context of a national labor policy,” survived the merger and left to the arbitrator, subject to judicial review, the ultimate question of the extent to which, if any, the surviving company was bound by other provisions of the contract. Id., at 549, 551.
Wiley’s limited accommodation between the legislative endorsement of freedom of contract and the judicial preference for peaceful arbitral settlement of labor disputes does not warrant the Board’s holding that the employer commits an unfair labor practice unless he honors the substantive terms of the pre-existing contract. The present case does not involve a § 301 suit; nor does it involve the duty to arbitrate. Rather, the claim is that Burns must be held bound by the contract executed by Wackenhut, whether Burns has agreed to it or not and even though Burns made it perfectly clear that it had no intention of assuming that contract. Wiley suggests no such open-ended obligation. Its narrower holding dealt with a merger occurring against a background of state law that embodied the general rule that in merger situations the surviving corporation is liable for the obligations of the disappearing corporation. See N. Y. Stock Corp. Law §90 (1951); 15 W. Fletcher, Private Corporations § 7121 (1961 rev. ed.). Here there was no merger or sale of assets, and there were no dealings whatsoever between Wackenhut and Burns. On the contrary, they were competitors for the same work, each bidding for the service contract at Lockheed. Burns purchased nothing from Wackenhut and became liable for none of its financial obligations. Burns merely hired enough of Wackenhut’s employees to require it to bargain with the union as commanded by § 8 (a)(5) and § 9 (a). But this consideration is a wholly insufficient basis for implying either in fact or in law that Burns had agreed or must be held to have agreed to honor Wackenhut’s collective-bargaining contract.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that the Board failed to heed the admonitions of the H. K. Porter case. Preventing industrial strife is an important aim of federal labor legislation, but Congress has not chosen to make the bargaining freedom of employers and unions totally subordinate to this goal. When a bargaining impasse is reached, strikes and lockouts may occur. This bargaining freedom means both that parties need not make any concessions as a result of Government compulsion and that they are free from having contract provisions imposed upon them against their will. Here, Burns had notice of the existence of the Wackenhut collective-bargaining contract, but it did not consent to be bound by it. The source of its duty to bargain with the union is not the collective-bargaining contract but the fact that it voluntarily took over a bargaining unit that was largely intact and that had been certified within the past year. Nothing in its actions, however, indicated that Burns was assuming the obligations of the contract, and “allowing the Board to compel agreement when the parties themselves are unable to agree would violate the fundamental premise on which the Act is based — private bargaining under governmental supervision of the procedure alone, without any official compulsion over the actual terms of the contract.” H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U. S., at 108.
We also agree with the Court of Appeals that holding either the union or the new employer bound to the substantive terms of an old collective-bargaining contract may result in serious inequities. A potential employer may be willing to take over a moribund business only if he can make changes in corporate structure, composition of the labor force, work location, task assignment, and nature of supervision. Saddling such an employer with the terms and conditions of employment contained in the old collective-bargaining contract may make these changes impossible and may discourage and inhibit the transfer of capital. On the other hand, a union may have made concessions to a small or failing employer that it would be unwilling to make to a large or economically successful firm. The congressional policy manifest in the Act is to enable the parties to negotiate for any protection either deems appropriate, but to allow the balance of bargaining advantage to be set by economic power realities. Strife is bound to occur if the concessions that must be honored do not correspond to the relative economic strength of the parties.
The Board’s position would also raise new problems, for the successor employer would be circumscribed in exactly the same way as the predecessor under the collective-bargaining contract. It would seemingly follow that employees of the predecessor would be deemed employees of the successor, dischargeable only in accordance with provisions of the contract and subject to the grievance and arbitration provisions thereof. Burns would not have been free to replace Wackenhut’s guards with its own except as the contract permitted. Given the continuity of employment relationship, the pre-existing contract’s provisions with respect to wages, seniority-rights, vacation privileges, pension and retirement fund benefits, job security provisions, work assignments and the like would devolve on the successor. Nor would the union commit a § 8 (b) (3) unfair labor practice if it refused to bargain for a modification of the agreement effective prior to the expiration date of the agreement. A successor employer might also be deemed to have inherited its predecessor’s pre-existing contractual obligations to the union that had accrued under past contracts and that had not been discharged when the business was transferred. “[A] successor may well acquire more liabilities as a result of Burns than appear on the face of a contract.” Finally, a successor will be bound to observe the contract despite good-faith doubts about the union’s majority during the time that the contract is a bar to another representation election, Ranch-Way, Inc, 183 N. L. R. B. No. 116 (1970). For the above reasons, the Board itself has expressed doubts as to the general applicability of its Burns rule.
In many cases, of course, successor employers will find it advantageous not only to recognize and bargain with the union but also to observe the pre-existing contract rather than to face uncertainty and turmoil. Also, in a variety of circumstances involving a merger, stock acquisition, reorganization, or assets purchase, the Board might properly find as a matter of fact that the successor had assumed the obligations under the old contract. Cf. Oilfield Maintenance Co., 142 N. L. R. B. 1384 (1963). Such a duty does not, however, ensue as a matter of law from the mere fact than an employer is doing the same work in the same place with the same employees as his predecessor, as the Board had recognized until its decision in the instant case. See cases cited supra, at 284. We accordingly set aside the Board’s finding of a § 8 (a)(5) unfair labor practice insofar as it rested on a conclusion that Burns was required to but did not honor the collective-bargaining contract executed by Wackenhut.
IV
It therefore follows that the Board’s order requiring Burns to “give retroactive effect to all the clauses of said [Wackenhut] contract and, with interest of 6 percent, make whole its employees for any losses suffered by reason of Respondent’s [Burns’] refusal to honor, adopt and enforce said contract” must be set aside. We note that the regional director’s charge instituting this case asserted that “[o]n or about July 1, 1967, Respondent [Burns] unilaterally changed existing wage rates, hours of employment, overtime wage rates, differentials for swing shift and graveyard shift, and other terms and conditions of employment of the employees in the appropriate unit...,” App. 113, and that the Board’s opinion stated that “[t]he obligation to bargain imposed on a successor-employer includes the negative injunction to refrain from unilaterally changing wages and other benefits established by a prior collective-bargaining agreement even though that agreement had expired. In this respect, the successor-employer’s obligations are the same as those imposed upon employers generally during the period between collective-bargaining agreements.” App. 8-9. This statement by the Board is consistent with its prior and subsequent cases that hold that whether or not a successor employer is bound by its predecessor’s contract, it must not institute terms and conditions of employment different from those provided in its predecessor’s contract, at least without first bargaining with the employees’ representative. Overnite Transportation Co., 157 N. L. R. B. 1185 (1966), enforced sub nom. Overnite Transportation Co. v. NLRB, 372 F. 2d 765 (CA4), cert. denied, 389 U. S. 838 (1967); Valleydale Packers, Inc., 162 N. L. R. B. 1486 (1967), enforced sub nom. NLRB v. Vaileydale Packers, Inc., 402 F. 2d 768 (CA5 1968); Michaud Bus Lines, Inc., 171 N. L. R. B. 193 (1968); Emerald Maintenance, Inc., 188 N. L. R. B. No. 139 (1971). Thus, if Burns, without bargaining to impasse with the union, had paid its employees on and after July 1 at a rate lower than Wackenhut had paid under its contract, or otherwise provided terms and conditions of employment different from those provided in the Wackenhut collective-bargaining agreement, under the Board’s view, Burns would have committed a § 8 (a) (5) unfair labor practice and would have been subject to an order to restore to employees what they had lost by this so-called unilateral change. See Overnite Transportation Co., supra; Emerald Maintenance, Inc., supra.
Although Burns had an obligation to bargain with the union concerning wages and other conditions of employment when the union requested it to do so, this case is not like a §8 (a)(5) violation where an employer unilaterally changes a condition of employment without consulting a bargaining representative. It is difficult to understand how Burns could be said to have changed unilaterally any pre-existing term or condition of employment without bargaining when it had no previous relationship whatsover to the bargaining unit and, prior to July 1, no outstanding terms and conditions of employment from which a change could be inferred. The terms on which Burns hired employees for service after July 1 may have differed from the terms extended by Wackenhut and required by the collective-bargaining contract; but it does not follow that Burns changed its terms and conditions of employment when it specified the initial basis on which employees were hired on July 1.
Although a successor employer is ordinarily free to set initial terms on which it will hire the employees of a predecessor, there will be instances in which it is perfectly clear that the new employer plans to retain all of the employees in the unit and in which it will be appropriate to have him initially consult with the employees’ bargaining representative before he fixes terms. In other situations, however, it may not be clear until the successor employer has hired his full complement of employees that he has a duty to bargain with a union, since it will not be evident until then that the bargaining representative represents a majority of the employees in the unit as required by § 9 (a) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 159 (a). Here, for example, Burns’ obligation to bargain with the union did not mature until it had selected its force of guards late in June. The Board quite properly found that Burns refused to bargain on July 12 when it rejected the overtures of the union. It is true that the wages it paid when it began protecting the Lockheed plant on July 1 differed from those specified in the Wackenhut collective-bargaining agreement, but there is no evidence that Burns ever unilaterally changed the terms and conditions of employment it had offered to potential employees in June after its obligation to bargain with the union became apparent. If the union had made a request to bargain after Burns had completed its hiring and if Burns had negotiated in good faith and had made offers to the union which the union rejected, Burns could have unilaterally initiated such proposals as the opening terms and conditions of employment on July 1 without committing an unfair labor practice. Cf. NLRB v. Katz, 369 U. S. 736, 745 n. 12 (1962); NLRB v. Fitzgerald Mills Corp., 313 F. 2d 260, 272-273 (CA2) cert. denied, 375 U. S. 834 (1963); NLRB v. Southern Coach & Body Co., 336 F. 2d 214, 217 (CA5 1964). The Board’s order requiring Burns to make whole its employees for any losses suffered by reason of Burns’ refusal to honor and enforce the contract, cannot therefore be sustained on the ground that Burns unilaterally changed existing terms and conditions of employment, thereby committing an unfair labor practice which required monetary restitution in these circumstances.
Affirmed.
A Burns executive later admitted in the unfair-labor-practice proceeding that Burns was aware of the union’s status, the unit certification, and the collective-bargaining contract after the May 15 meeting. App. 105.
In regard to this latter finding, the Board stated:
“The question before us thus narrows to whether the national labor policy embodied in the Act requires the successor-employer to take over and honor a collective-bargaining agreement negotiated on behalf of the employing enterprise by the predecessor. We hold that, absent unusual circumstances, the Act imposes such an obligation.
“We find, therefore, that Burns is bound to that contract as if it were a signatory thereto, and that its failure to maintain the contract in effect is violative of Sections 8 (d) and 8 (a) (5) of the Act.”
Cf. § 9 (c) (3) of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. § 159 (c) (3), which provides that “[n]o election shall be directed in any bargaining unit or any subdivision within which in the preceding twelve-month period, a valid election shall have been held.” See NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U. S. 575, 599 n. 14 (1969).
Where an employer remains the same, a Board certification carries with it an almost conclusive presumption that the majority representative status of the union continues for a reasonable time, usually a year. See Brooks v. NLRB, 348 U. S. 96, 98-99 (1954). After this period, there is a rebuttable presumption of majority representation. Celanese Corp. of America, 95 N. L. R. B. 664, 672 (1951). If there is a change of employers, however, and an almost complete turnover of employees, the certification may not bar a challenge if the successor employer is not bound by the collective-bargaining contract, particularly if the new employees are represented by another union or if the old unit is ruled an accretion to another unit. Cf. McGuire v. Humble Oil & Refining Co., 355 F. 2d 352 (CA2), cert. denied, 384 U. S. 988 (1966). See n. 5, infra.
The Court of Appeals was unimpressed with the asserted differences between Burns’ and Wackenhut’s operations: “All of the important factors which the Board has used and the courts have approved are present in the instant case: ‘continuation of the same types of product lines, departmental organization, employee identity and job functions.’... Both Burns and Wackenhut are nationwide organizations; both performed the identical services at the same facility; although Burns used its own supervisors, their functions and responsibilities were similar to those performed by their predecessors; and finally, and perhaps most significantly, Burns commenced performance of the contract with 27 former Wackenhut employees out of its total complement of 42.” 441 F. 2d 911, 915 (1971) (citation omitted). Although the labor policies of the two companies differed somewhat, the Board’s determination that the bargaining unit remained appropriate after the changeover meant that Burns would face essentially the same labor relations environment as Wackenhut: it would confront the same union representing most of the same employees in the same unit.
The Board has never held that the National Labor Relations Act itself requires that an employer who submits the winning bid for a service contract or who purchases the assets of a business be obligated to hire all of the employees of the predecessor though it is possible that such an obligation might be assumed by the employer. But cf. Chemrock Corp., 151 N. L. R. B. 1074 (1965). However, an employer who declines to hire employees solely because they are members of a union commits a § 8 (a) (3) unfair labor practice. See K. B. & J. Young’s Super Markets, Inc. v. NLRB, 377 F. 2d 463 (CA9), cert. denied, 389 U. S. 841 (1967); NLRB v. New England Tank Industries, Inc., 302 F. 2d 273 (CA1), cert. denied, 371 U. S. 875 (1962); Piasecki Aircraft
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the obligation of prisoners who claim denial of their federal rights while incarcerated to exhaust prison grievance procedures before seeking judicial relief. Plaintiff-respondent Ronald Nussle, an inmate in a Connecticut prison, brought directly to court, without filing an inmate grievance, a complaint charging that corrections officers singled him out for a severe beating, in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.” Nussle bypassed the grievance procedure despite a provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), 110 Stat. 1321-73, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) (1994 ed., Supp. V), that directs: “No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that §1997e(a) governs only conditions affecting prisoners generally, not single incidents, such as corrections officers’ use of excessive force, actions that immediately affect only particular prisoners. Nussle defends the Second Circuit’s judgment, but urges that the relevant distinction is between excessive force claims, which, he says, need not be pursued administratively, and all other claims, which, he recognizes, must proceed first through the prison grievance process. We reject both readings and hold, in line with the text and purpose of the PLRA, our precedent in point, and the weight of lower court authority, that §1997e(a)’s exhaustion requirement applies to all prisoners seeking redress for prison circumstances or occurrences.
I
Respondent Ronald Nussle is an inmate at the Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut. App. 38. According to his complaint, corrections officers at the prison subjected him to “a prolonged and sustained pattern of harassment and intimidation” from the time of his arrival there in May 1996. Id., at 39. Nussle alleged that he was singled out because he was “perceived” to be a friend of the Governor of Connecticut, with whom corrections officers were feuding over labor issues. Ibid.
Concerning the episode in suit, Nussle asserted that, on or about June 15,1996, several officers, including defendant-petitioner Porter, ordered Nussle to leave his cell, “placed him against a wall and struck him with their hands, kneed him in the back, [and] pulled his hair.” Ibid. Nussle alleged that the attack was unprovoked and unjustified, and that the officers told him they would kill him if he reported the beating. Ibid.
Then, as now, the Connecticut Department of Correction provided a grievance system for prisoners. See id., at 5-18. Under that system, grievances must be filed within 30 days of the “occurrence.” Id., at 11. Rules governing the grievance process include provisions on confidentiality and against reprisals. Id., at 17-18.
Without filing a grievance, on June 10, 1999, Nussle commenced an action in Federal District Court under 42 U. S. C. § 1983; he filed suit days before the three-year statute of limitations ran out on the § 1983 claim. Nussle charged, principally, that the corrections officers’ assault violated his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, as made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. App. 38. The District Court, relying on § 1997e(a), dismissed Nussle’s complaint for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Nussle v. Willette, 3:99CV1091(AHN) (D. Conn., Nov. 22, 1999), App. 43.
Construing § 1997e(a) narrowly because it is an exception “to the general rule of non-exhaustion in § 1983 cases,” the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the District Court’s judgment; the appeals court held that “exhaustion of administrative remedies is not required for [prisoner] claims of assault or excessive force brought under § 1983.” Nussle v. Willette, 224 F. 3d 95, 106 (2000). Section 1997e(a) requires administrative exhaustion of inmates’ claims “with respect to prison conditions,” but contains no definition of the words “prison conditions.” The appeals court found the term “scarcely free of ambiguity.” Id., at 101. For purposes of the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement, the court concluded, the term was most appropriately read to mean “'circumstances affecting everyone in the area,”’ rather than “ ‘single or momentary matter[s],’ such as beatings . . . directed at particular individuals.” Ibid, (quoting Booth v. Churner, 206 F. 3d 289, 300-301 (CA3 2000) (Noonan, J., concurring and dissenting), aff’d on other grounds, 532 U. S. 731 (2001)).
The Court of Appeals found support for its position in the PLRA’s legislative history. Floor statements, “overwhelmingly suggested]” that Congress sought to curtail suits qualifying as “frivolous” because of their “subject matter,” e. g., suits over “insufficient storage locker space,” “a defective haircut,” or “being served chunky peanut butter instead of the creamy variety.” 224 F. 3d, at 105 (internal quotation marks omitted). Actions seeking relief from corrections officer brutality, the Second Circuit stressed, are not of that genre. Further, the Court of Appeals referred to pre-PLRA decisions in which this Court had “disaggre-gate[d] the broad category of Eighth Amendment claims so as to distinguish [for proof of injury and mens rea purposes] between ‘excessive force’ claims, on the one hand, and ‘conditions of confinement’ claims, on the other.” Id., at 106 (citing Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U. S. 1 (1992), and Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U. S. 825 (1994)).
In conflict with the Second Circuit, other Federal Courts of Appeals have determined that prisoners alleging assaults by prison guards must meet § 1997e(a)’s exhaustion requirement before commencing a civil rights action. See Smith v. Zachary, 255 F. 3d 446 (CA7 2001); Higginbottom v. Carter, 223 F. 3d 1259 (CA11 2000); Booth v. Churner, 206 F. 3d 289 (CA3 2000); Freeman v. Francis, 196 F. 3d 641 (CA6 1999). We granted certiorari to resolve the intercircuit conflict, 532 U. S. 1065 (2001), and now reverse the Second Circuit’s judgment.
II
Ordinarily, plaintiffs pursuing civil rights claims under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 need not exhaust administrative remedies before filing suit in court. See Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 516 (1982). Prisoner suits alleging constitutional deprivations while incarcerated once fell within this general rule. See Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249, 251 (1971) (per curiam).
In 1980, however, Congress introduced an exhaustion prescription for suits initiated by state prisoners. See Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 94 Stat. 352, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1997e (1994 ed.). This measure authorized district courts to stay a state prisoner’s §1983 action “for a period of not to exceed 180 days” while the prisoner exhausted available “plain, speedy, and effective administrative remedies.” § 1997e(a)(l). Exhaustion under the 1980 prescription was in large part discretionary; it could be ordered only if the State’s prison grievance system met specified federal standards, and even then, only if, in the particular case, the court believed the requirement “appropriate and in the interests of justice.” §§ 1997e(a) and (b). We described this provision as a “limited exhaustion requirement” in McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U. S. 140, 150-151 (1992), and thought it inapplicable to prisoner suits for damages when monetary relief was unavailable through the prison grievance system.
In 1996, as part of the PLRA, Congress invigorated the exhaustion prescription. The revised exhaustion provision, titled “Suits by prisoners,” states: “No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) (1994 ed., Supp. V).
The current exhaustion provision differs markedly from its predecessor. Onee within the discretion of the district court, exhaustion in cases covered by §1997e(a) is now mandatory. See Booth v. Churner, 532 U. S. 731, 739 (2001). All “available” remedies must now be exhausted; those remedies need not meet federal standards, nor must they be “plain, speedy, and effective.” See ibid.; see also id., at 740, n. 5. Even when the prisoner seeks relief not available in grievance proceedings, notably money damages, exhaustion is a prerequisite to suit. See id., at 741. And unlike the previous provision, which encompassed only § 1983 suits, exhaustion is now required for all “action[s]... brought with respect to prison conditions,” whether under §1983 or “any other Federal law.” Compare 42 U. S. C. § 1997e (1994 ed.) with 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a) (1994 ed., Supp. V). Thus federal prisoners suing under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), must first exhaust inmate grievance procedures just as state prisoners must exhaust administrative processes prior to instituting a § 1983 suit.
Beyond doubt, Congress enacted § 1997e(a) to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner suits; to this purpose, Congress afforded corrections officials time and opportunity to address complaints internally before allowing the initiation of a federal case. In some instances, corrective action taken in response to an inmate’s grievance might improve prison administration and satisfy the inmate, thereby obviating the need for litigation. Booth, 532 U. S., at 737. In other instances, the internal review might “filter out some frivolous claims.” Ibid. And for eases ultimately brought to court, adjudication could be facilitated by an administrative record that clarifies the contours of the controversy. See ibid.; see also Madigan, 503 U. S., at 146.
Congress described the cases covered by § 1997e(a)’s exhaustion requirement as “actionfs] . . . brought with respect to prison conditions.” Nussle’s case requires us to determine what the §1997e(a) term “prison conditions” means, given Congress’ failure to define the term in the text of the exhaustion provision. We are guided in this endeavor by the PLRA’s text and context, and by our prior decisions relating to “[s]uits by prisoners,” § 1997e.
As to precedent, the pathmarking opinion is McCarthy v. Bronson, 500 U. S. 136 (1991), which construed 28 U. S. C. § 636(b)(1)(B) (1988 ed.), a Judicial Code provision authorizing district judges to refer to magistrate judges, inter alia, “prisoner petitions challenging conditions of confinement.” The petitioning prisoner in McCarthy argued that § 636(b)(1)(B) allowed nonconsensual referrals “only when a prisoner challenges ongoing prison conditions.” 500 U. S., at 138. The complaint in McCarthy targeted no “ongoing prison conditions”; it homed in on “an isolated incident” of excessive force. Ibid. For that reason, according to the McCarthy petitioner, nonconsensual referral of his case was impermissible. Id., at 138-139.
We did not “quarrel with” the prisoner’s assertion in McCarthy that “the most natural reading of the phrase ‘challenging conditions of confinement,’ when viewed in isolation, would not include suits seeking relief from isolated episodes of unconstitutional conduct.” Id., at 139. We nonetheless concluded that the petitioner’s argument failed upon reading the phrase “in its proper context.” Ibid. We found no suggestion in § 636(b)(1)(B) that Congress meant to divide prisoner petitions “into subcategories.” Ibid. “On the contrary,” we observed, “when the relevant section is read in its entirety, it suggests that Congress intended to authorize the nonconsensual reference of all prisoner petitions to a magistrate.” Ibid. The Federal Magistrates Act, we noted, covers actions of two kinds: challenges to “conditions of confinement”; and “applications for habeas corpus relief.” Id., at 140. Congress, we concluded, “intended to include in their entirety th[ose] two primary categories of suits brought by prisoners.” Ibid.
“Just three years before [§ 636(b)(1)(B)] was drafted,” we explained.in McCarthy, “our opinion in Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475 (1973), had described [the] two broad categories of prisoner petitions: (1) those challenging the fact or duration of confinement itself; and (2) those challenging the conditions of confinement.” Ibid. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475 (1973), left no doubt, we further stated in McCarthy, that “the latter category unambiguously embraced the kind of single episode cases that petitioner’s construction would exclude.” 500 U. S., at 141. We found it telling that Congress, in composing the Magistrates Act, chose language “that so clearly paralleled] our Preiser opinion.” Id., at 142. We considered it significant as well that the purpose of the Magistrates Act — to lighten the caseload of overworked district judges — would be thwarted by opening the door to satellite litigation over “the precise contours of [the] suggested exception for single episode cases.” Id., at 143.
As in McCarthy, we here read the term “prison conditions” not in isolation, but “in its proper context.” Id., at 139. The PLRA exhaustion provision is captioned “Suits by prisoners,” see § 1997e; this unqualified heading scarcely aids the argument that Congress meant to bisect the universe of prisoner suits. See ibid.; see also Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224, 234 (1998) (“[T]he title of a statute and the heading of a section are tools available for the resolution of a doubt about the meaning of a statute.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
This Court generally “presume[s] that Congress expects its statutes to be read in conformity with th[e] Court’s precedents.” United States v. Wells, 519 U. S. 482, 495 (1997). That presumption, and the PLRA’s dominant concern to promote administrative redress, filter out groundless claims, and foster better prepared litigation of claims aired in court, see Booth, 532 U. S., at 737, persuade us that § 1997e(a)’s key words “prison conditions” are properly read through the lens of McCarthy and Preiser. Those decisions tug strongly away from classifying suits about prison guards’ use of excessive force, one or many times, as anything other than actions “with respect to prison conditions.”
Nussle places principal reliance on Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U. S. 1 (1992), and Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U. S. 825, 835-836 (1994), and the Second Circuit found support for its position in those cases as well, 224 F. 3d, at 106. Hudson held that to sustain a claim of excessive force, a prisoner need not show significant injury. 503 U. S., at 9. In so ruling, the Court did indeed distinguish excessive force claims from “conditions of confinement” claims; to sustain a claim of the latter kind “significant injury” must be shown. Id., at 8-9. Hudson also observed that a “conditions of confinement” claim may succeed if a prisoner demonstrates that prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference,” id., at 8 (citing Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U. S. 294, 298 (1991)), while a prisoner alleging excessive force must demonstrate that the defendant acted “maliciously and sadistically to cause harm,” Hudson, 503 U. S., at 7. Farmer similarly distinguished the mental state that must be shown to prevail on an excessive force claim, i. e., “purposeful or knowing conduct,” from the lesser mens rea requirement governing “conditions of confinement” claims, i. e., “deliberate indifference.” 511 U. S., at 835-836. We do not question those decisions and attendant distinctions in the context in which they were made. But the question presented here is of a different order.
Hudson and Farmer trained solely and precisely on proof requirements: what injury must a plaintiff allege and show; what mental state must a plaintiff plead and prove. Proof requirements once a case is in court, however, do not touch or concern the threshold inquiry before us: whether resort to a prison grievance process must precede resort to a court. We have no reason to believe that Congress meant to release the evidentiary distinctions drawn in Hudson and Farmer from their moorings and extend their application to the otherwise invigorated exhaustion requirement of § 1997e(a). Such an extension would be highly anomalous given Congress’ elimination of judicial discretion to dispense with exhaustion and its deletion of the former constraint that administrative remedies must be “plain, speedy, and effective” before exhaustion could be required. See supra, at 524; Booth, 532 U. S., at 739; cf. id., at 740-741 (“Congress’s imposition of an obviously broader exhaustion requirement makes it highly implausible that it meant to give prisoners a strong inducement to skip the administrative process simply by limiting prayers for relief to money damages not offered through administrative grievance mechanisms.”).
Nussle contends that Congress added the words “prison conditions” to the text of §1997e(a) specifically to exempt excessive force claims from the now mandatory exhaustion requirement; he sees that requirement as applicable mainly to “ ‘prison conditions’ claims that may be frivolous as to subject matter,” 224 F. 3d, at 106, See Brief for Respondent 2, 26-27. It is at least equally plausible, however, that Congress inserted “prison conditions” into the exhaustion provision simply to make it clear that preincarceration claims fall outside § 1997e(a), for example, a Title VII claim against the prisoner’s preincarceration employer, or, for that matter, a § 1983 claim against his arresting officer.
Furthermore, the asserted distinction between excessive force claims that need not be exhausted, on the one hand, and exhaustion-mandatory “frivolous” claims on the other, see id., at 2,26-27, is untenable, for “[e]xcessive force claims can be frivolous,” Smith, 255 F. 3d, at 452 (“Inmates can allege they were subject to vicious nudges.”), and exhaustion serves purposes beyond weeding out frivolous allegations, see supra, at 524-525.
Other infirmities inhere in the Second Circuit’s disposition. See McCarthy, 500 U. S., at 143 (“Petitioner’s definition would generate additional work for the district courts because the distinction between cases challenging ongoing conditions and those challenging specific acts of alleged misconduct will often be difficult to identify.”). As McCarthy emphasized, in the prison environment a specific incident may be symptomatic rather than aberrational. Id., at 143-144. An unwarranted assault by a corrections officer may be reflective of a systemic problem traceable to poor hiring practices, inadequate training, or insufficient supervision. See Smith, 255 F. 3d, at 449. Nussle himself alleged in this very case not only the beating he suffered on June 15, 1996; he also alleged, extending before and after that date, “a prolonged and sustained pattern of harassment and intimidation by corrections officers.” App. 39. Nussle urges that his case could be placed in the isolated episode category, but he might equally urge that his complaint describes a pattern or practice of harassment climaxing in the alleged beating. It seems unlikely that Congress, when it included in the PLRA a firm exhaustion requirement, meant to leave the need to exhaust to the pleader’s option. Cf. Preiser, 411 U. S., at 489-490 (“It would wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent to hold that [prisoners] could evade this [exhaustion] requirement by the simple expedient of putting a different label on their pleadings.”).
Under Nussle’s view and that of the Second Circuit, moreover, bifurcation would be normal when a prisoner sues both a corrections officer alleged to have used excessive force and the supervisor who allegedly failed adequately to monitor those in his charge. Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. The officer alone could be taken directly to court; the charge against the supervisor would proceed first through the internal grievance process. Similarly split proceedings apparently would be in order, under the Second Circuit’s decision, when the prisoner elects to pursue against the same officers both discrete instance and ongoing conduct charges.
Finally, we emphasize a concern over and above the complexity augured by the Second Circuit’s disposition: Scant sense supports the single occurrence, prevailing circumstance dichotomy. Why should a prisoner have immediate access to court when a guard assaults him on one occasion, but not when beatings are widespread or routine? See Smith, 255 F. 3d, at 450. Nussle’s distinction between excessive force claims and all other prisoner suits, see supra, at 520, presents a similar anomaly. Do prison authorities have an interest in receiving prompt notice of, and opportunity to take action against, guard brutality that is somehow less compelling than their interest in receiving notice and an opportunity to stop other types of staff wrongdoing? See Preiser, 411 U. S., at 492 (“Since [the] internal problems of state prisons involve issues so peculiarly within state authority and expertise, the States have an important interest in not being bypassed in the correction of those problems.”).
* * *
For the reasons stated, we hold that the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement applies to all inmate suits about prison life, whether they involve general circumstances or particular episodes, and whether they allege excessive force or some other wrong. Cf. Wilson, 501 U. S., at 299, n. 1. Accordingly, 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 Second Circuit has held that §1988 actions in Connecticut are governed by that State’s three-year statute of limitations for tort actions. Williams v. Walsh, 558 F. 2d 667, 670 (1977).
Another provision of the PLRA, 18 U. S. C. § 3626(g)(2) (1994 ed., Supp. V), the court observed, does define “prison conditions.” Nussle v. Willette, 224 F. 3d 95, 101 (CA2 2000). That provision, which concerns prospective relief, defines “prison conditions” to mean “the conditions of confinement or the effects of actions by government officials on the lives of persons confined in prison.” The Second Circuit found the § 3626(g)(2) definition “no less ambiguous” than the bare text of § 1997e(a). Neither of the alternative § 3626(g)(2) formulations, the court said, would be used in “everyday” speech to describe “particular instances of assault or excessive force.” Id., at 102. But see Booth v. Churner, 206 F. 3d 289, 294-295 (CA3 2000), aff’d on other grounds, 532 U. S. 731 (2001) (reading § 3626(g)(2) to cover all prison conditions and corrections officer actions that “make [prisoners’] lives worse”). The Second Circuit ultimately concluded that it would be improper, in any event, automatically to import §3626(g)(2)’s “definition of ‘civil actions brought with respect to prison conditions’ into 42 U. S. C. § 1997e(a)” because the two provisions had “distinct statutory purposes.” 224 F. 3d, at 105.
The parties dispute the meaning of a simultaneously enacted provision, § 3626(g)(2), which concerns prospective relief, and for that purpose, defines the expression “civil action with respect to prison conditions.” See supra, at 522, n. 2 (noting, inter alia, divergent constructions of Second and Third Circuits). We rest our decision on the meaning of “prison conditions” in the context of § 1997e, and express no definitive opinion on the proper reading of § 3626(g)(2).
In reaching its decision, the Second Circuit referred to its “obligation to construe statutory exceptions narrowly, in order to give full effect to the general rule of non-exhaustion in §1983.” 224 F. 3d, at 106 (citing City of Edmonds v. Oxford House, Inc., 514 U. S. 725, 731-732 (1995), and Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 508 (1982)). The Second Circuit did not then have available to it our subsequently rendered decision in Booth v. Churner, 532 U. S. 731 (2001). Booth held that § 1997e(a) mandates initial recourse to the prison grievance process even when a prisoner seeks only money damages, a remedy not available in that process. See id., at 741. In so ruling, we observed that “Congress . . . may well have thought we were shortsighted” in failing adequately to recognize the utility of the administrative process to satisfy, reduce, or clarify prisoner grievances. Id., at 737. While the canon on which the Second Circuit relied may be dependable in other contexts, the PLRA establishes a different regime. For litigation within § 1997e(a)’s compass, Congress has replaced the “general rule of non-exhaustion” with a general rule of exhaustion.
Title 28 U. S. C. § 636(b)(1)(B) provides in relevant part:
“(b)(1) Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary—
“a judge may . . . designate a magistrate to conduct hearings, including evidentiary hearings, and to submit to a judge of the court proposed findings of fact and recommendations for the disposition, by a judge of the court,... of applications for posttrial relief made by individuals convicted of criminal offenses and of prisoner petitions challenging conditions of confinement.”
Other provisions of § 1997e that refer to “prison conditions” would have less scope under the Second Circuit’s construction of the term. Section 1997e(c)(l) provides for dismissal on the court’s own initiative of “any action brought with respect to prison conditions” that is “frivolous [or] malicious.” No specific incident complaint would be subject to that prescription under the view that such suits do not implicate “prison conditions.” Further, § 1997e(f)(l) provides that pretrial proceedings in “any action brought with respect to prison conditions” may be held at the prison via telephone, video conference, or other telecommunications technology so that the prisoner need not be physically transferred to participate. Surely such arrangements would be appropriate in Nussle’s case and others of its genre. But on what authority would these practical procedures rest if cases like Nussle’s do not qualify as actions regarding “prison conditions”?
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.
Me. Justice Maeshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this case is the validity of two Virginia statutes that limit the right of nonresidents and aliens to catch fish in the territorial waters of the Commonwealth.
I
Persons or corporations wishing to fish commercially in Virginia must obtain licenses. Section 28.1-81.1 of the Virginia Code (§81.1) (Supp. 1976), enacted in 1975, limits the issuance of commercial fishing licenses to United States citizens. Under this law, participants in any licensed partnership, firm, or association must be citizens. A fishing business organized in corporate form may be licensed only if it is chartered in this country; American citizens own and control at least 75% of its stock; and its president, board chairman, and controlling board majority are citizens.
Section 28.1-60 of the Virginia Code (§ 60) (Supp. 1976) governs licensing of nonresidents of Virginia to fish for menhaden, an inedible but commercially valuable species of fin fish. Section 60 allows nonresidents who meet the citizenship requirements of § 81.1 to obtain licenses to fish for menhaden in the three-mile-wide belt of Virginia’s territorial sea off the Commonwealth’s eastern coastline. At the same time, however, § 60 prohibits nonresidents from catching menhaden in the Virginia portion of Chesapeake Bay.
Appellee Seacoast Products, Inc., is one of three companies that dominate the menhaden industry. The other two firms, unlike Seacoast, have fish-processing plants in Virginia and are owned by American citizens. Hence, they are not affected by either of the restrictions challenged in this case. Seacoast was founded in New Jersey in 1911 and maintains its principal offices in that State; it is incorporated in Delaware and qualified to do business in Virginia. The other appellees are subsidiaries of Seacoast; they are incorporated and maintain plants and offices in States other than Virginia. In 1973, the family of Seacoast’s founder sold the business to Hanson Trust, Ltd., a United Kingdom company almost entirely owned by alien stockholders. Seacoast continued its operations unchanged after the sale. All of its officers, directors, boat captains, and crews are American citizens, as are over 95% of its plant employees.
At the time of its sale, Seacoast’s fishing vessels were enrolled and licensed American-flag ships. See infra, at 272-274. Under 46 U. S. C. §§ 808, 835, the transfer of these vessels to a foreign-controlled corporation required the approval of the Department of Commerce. This was granted unconditionally over the opposition of Seacoast’s competitors after a full public hearing that considered the effect of the transfer on fish conservation and management, on American workers and consumers, and on competition and other social and economic concerns. See 38 Fed. Reg. 29239-29240 (1973); 39 Fed. Reg. 7819, 33812-33813 (1974); App. 29-32. Following this approval, appellees’ fishing vessels were re-enrolled and relicensed pursuant to 46 U. S. C. §§ 251-252, 263. They remain subject to all United States laws governing maritime commerce.
In past decades, although not recently, Seacoast had operated processing plants in Virginia and was thereby entitled to fish in Chesapeake Bay as a resident. Tr. of Oral Arg. 28-29, 34. More recently, Seacoast obtained nonresident menhaden licenses as restricted by § 60 to waters outside Chesapeake Bay. In 1975, however, § 81.1 was passed by the Virginia Legislature, c. 338, 1975 Va. Acts, and appellant James E. Douglas, Jr., the Commissioner of Marine Resources for Virginia, denied appellees’ license applications on the basis of the new law. Seacoast and its subsidiaries were thereby completely excluded from the Virginia menhaden fishery.
Appellees accordingly filed a complaint in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeking to have §§60 and 81.1 declared unconstitutional and their enforcement enjoined. A three-judge court was convened and it struck down both statutes. It held that the citizenship requirement of § 81.1 was pre-empted by the Bartlett Act, 16 U. S. C. § 1081 et seq., and that the residency restriction of § 60 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We noted probable jurisdiction of the Commissioner’s appeal, 425 U. S. 949 (1976), and we affirm.
II
Seacoast advances a number of theories to support affirmance of the judgment below. See Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 387 n. 13 (1975); Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 475 n. 6 (1970). Among these is the claim that the Virginia statutes are pre-empted by federal enrollment and licensing laws for fishing vessels. The United States has filed a brief as amicus curiae supporting this contention. Although the claim is basically constitutional in nature, deriving its force from the operation of the Supremacy Clause, Art. VI, cl. 2, it is treated as “statutory” for purposes of our practice of deciding statutory claims first to avoid unnecessary constitutional adjudications. See Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 528, 549 (1974). Since we decide the case on this ground, we do not reach the constitutional issues raised by the parties.
The well-known principles of pre-emption have been rehearsed only recently in our decisions. See, e. g., Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 525-526 (1977); De Canas v. Bica, 424 U. S. 351 (1976). No purpose would be served by repeating them here. It is enough to note that we deal in this case with federal legislation arguably superseding state law in a “field which... has been traditionally occupied by the States.” Jones v. Rath Packing Co., supra, at 525. Preemption accordingly will be found only if “ 'that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.' Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947).” Ibid. We turn our focus, then, to the congressional intent embodied in the enrollment and licensing laws.
A
The basic form for the comprehensive federal regulation of trading and fishing vessels was established in the earliest days of the Nation and has changed little since. Ships engaged in trade with foreign lands are “registered,” a documentation procedure set up by the Second Congress in the Act of Dec. 31, 1792, 1 Stat. 287, and now codified in 46 U. S. C., c. 2. “The purpose of a register is to declare the nationality of a vessel... and to enable her to assert that nationality wherever found.” The Mohawk, 3 Wall. 566, 571 (1866); Anderson v. Pacific Coast S. S. Co., 225 U. S. 187, 199 (1912). Vessels engaged in domestic or coastwise trade or used for fishing are “enrolled” under procedures established by the Enrollment and Licensing Act of Feb. 18, 1793, 1 Stat. 305, codified in 46 U. S. C., c. 12. “The purpose of an enrollment is to evidence the national character of a vessel... and to enable such vessel to procure a... license.” The Mohawk, supra; Anderson v. Pacific Coast S. S. Co., supra.
A “license,” in turn, regulates the use to which a vessel may be put and- is intended to prevent fraud on the revenue of the United States. See 46 U. S. C. §§ 262, 263, 319, 325; 46 CFR § 67.01-13 (1976). The form of a license is statutorily mandated: “license is hereby granted for the... [vessel] to be employed in carrying on the (... 'coasting trade,’ 'whale fishery,’'mackerel fishery,’ or 'cod fishery,’ as the case may be), for one year from the date hereof, and no longer.” 46 U. S. C. § 263. The law also provides that properly enrolled and licensed vessels “and no others, shall be deemed vessels of the United States entitled to the privileges of vessels employed in the coasting trade or fisheries.” § 251. Appellees’ vessels were granted licenses for the “mackerel fishery” after their transfer was approved by the Department of Commerce.
The requirements for enrollment and registration are the same. 46 U. S. C. §252; The Mohawk, supra, at 571-572. Insofar as pertinent here, enrolled and registered vessels must meet identification, measurement, and safety standards, generally must be built in the United States, and must be owned by citizens. An exception to the latter rule permits a corporation having alien stockholders to register or enroll ships if it is organized and chartered under the laws of the United States or of any State, if its president or chief executive officer and the chairman of its board of directors are American citizens, and if no more of its directors than a minority of the number necessary to constitute a quorum are noncitizens. 46 U. S. C. § 11; 46 CFR § 67.03-5 (a) (1976). The Shipping Act, 1916, further limits foreign ownership of American vessels by requiring the Secretary of Commerce to approve any transfer of an American-owned vessel to noncitizens. 46 U. S. C. § 808.
B
Deciphering the intent of Congress is often a difficult task, and to do so with a law the vintage of the Enrollment and Licensing Act verges on the impossible. There is virtually no surviving legislative history for the Act. What we do have, however, is the historic decision of Mr. Chief Justice John Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824), rendered only three decades after passage of the Act. Gibbons invalidated a discriminatory state regulation of shipping as applied to vessels federally licensed to engage in the coasting trade. Although its historic importance lies in its general discussion of the commerce power, Gibbons also provides substantial illumination on the narrower question of the intended meaning of the Licensing Act.
The case challenged a New York law intended to encourage development of steamboats by granting Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston the exclusive right to operate steam-powered vessels in all of the State’s territorial waters. The right to navigate steamboats between Elizabethtown Point, N. J., and New York City was, by assignment from Fulto'n and Livingston, granted to Aaron Ogden. Thomas Gibbons began operating two passenger ferries in violation of Ogden’s sub-monopoly. Gibbons’ steamboats had been enrolled and granted “license... to be employed in carrying on the coasting trade” under the Enrollment and Licensing Act. Id., at 203.
Ogden nevertheless obtained an injunction from the New York courts enforcing the monopoly by restraining Gibbons from running his ferries in New York waters. Chancellor James Kent rejected Gibbons’ pre-emption claim based upon his federal licenses. Kent found that the sole purpose of the license was to “giv[e] to the vessel an American character,” i. e., to establish its nationality as an American-flag ship. This would have reduced various duties and taxes assessed under federal law, but in Kent’s view, it did not oust the power of the State to regulate the use of chattels within its borders. 4 Johns. Ch. 150, 156-159 (1819). The highest state court affirmed, ruling that “the only effect” of the license was “to determine [the vessel’s] national character, and the rate of duties which she is to pay.” 17 Johns. 488, 509 (1820).
On appeal to this Court, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall held that the rights granted to Gibbons by federal law superseded the conflicting state-created rights asserted by Ogden. Marshall first considered the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause. He concluded that “[e]ommerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior,” 9 Wheat., at 194, and that “[t]he power of Congress..., whatever it may be, must be exercised within the territorial jurisdiction of the several States.” Id., at 196’. The Court next defined the nature of the commerce power: “the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed.” Ibid. Ogden’s claim that the States may exercise concurrent power over commerce, or even exercise their police powers, where that exercise conflicts with express federal law was rejected. Id., at 200-210.
The Court then turned to the question whether “the laws of New-York” did “come into collision with an act of Congress” so that “the acts of New-York must yield to the law of Congress.” Id., at 210. Mr. Chief Justice Marshall found the conflict unquestionable: “To the Court it seems very clear, that the whole act on the subject of the coasting trade, according to those principles which govern the construction of statutes, implies, unequivocally, an authority to licensed vessels to carry on the coasting trade.” Id., at 212. The license granted to Gibbons under the Act “must be understood to be what it purports to be, a legislative authority to [Gibbons’] steamboat... 'to be employed in carrying on the coasting trade, for one year from this date.’ ” Id., at 214. The Court rejected Ogden’s argument — and the holding of the New York courts — that the license “gives no right to trade; and that its sole purpose is to confer the American character.” Ibid. Finally, the Court decided that the statutory phrase “coasting trade” encompassed the carriage of passengers for hire as well as the transport of goods. Id., at 215-219.
Although Gibbons is written in broad language which might suggest that the sweep of the Enrollment and Licensing Act ousts all state regulatory power over federally licensed vessels, neither the facts before the Court nor later interpretations extended that far. Gibbons did not involve an absolute ban on steamboats in New York waters. Rather, the monopoly law allowed some steam vessels to ply their trade while excluding others that were federally licensed. The case struck down this discriminatory treatment. Subsequent decisions spelled out the negative implication of Gibbons: that States may impose upon federal licensees reasonable, nondiscriminatory conservation and environmental protection measures otherwise within their police power.
For example, in Smith v. Maryland, 18 How. 71 (1855), the Court upheld a conservation law which limited the fishing implements that could be used by a federally licensed vessel to take oysters from state waters. The Court held that an “enrolment and license confer no immunity from the operation of valid laws of a State,” id., at 74, and that the law was valid because the State “may forbid all such acts as would render the public right [of fishery] less valuable, or destroy it altogether,” id., at 75. At the same time, the Court explicitly reserved the question of the validity of a statute discriminating against nonresidents. Ibid. To the same effect is the holding in Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U. S. 240 (1891). There, state law prohibited the use by any person of certain types of fishing tackle in specified areas. Though Manchester was a Rhode Island resident basing a claim on his federal fisheries license, the Court held that the statute
“was evidently passed for the preservation of the fish, and makes no discrimination in favor of citizens of Massachusetts and against citizens of other States.... [T]he statute may well be considered as an impartial and reasonable regulation... and the subject is one which a State may well be permitted to regulate within its territory, in the absence of any regulation by the United States. The preservation of fish... is for the common benefit; and we are of opinion that the statute is not repugnant to the Constitution and the laws of the United States.” Id,., at 265.
More recently, the same principle was applied in Huron Portland Cement Co. v. Detroit, 362 U. S. 440 (1960), where we held that the city’s Smoke Abatement Code was properly applicable to licensed vessels. Relying on earlier cases, we noted that “[t]he mere possession of a federal license... does not immunize a ship from the operation of the normal incidents of local police power.” Id., at 447. As an “[e]venhanded local regulation to effectuate a legitimate local public interest,” id., at 443, the ordinance was valid.
Although it is true that the Court’s view in Gibbons of the intent of the Second Congress in passing the Enrollment and Licensing Act is considered incorrect by commentators, its provisions have been repeatedly re-enacted in substantially the same form. We can safely assume that Congress was aware of the holding, as well as the criticism, of a case so renowned as Gibbons. We have no doubt that Congress has ratified the statutory interpretation of Gibbons and its progeny. See Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 414 n. 8 (1975); Snyder v. Harris, 394 U. S. 332, 339 (1969); Francis v. Southern Pacific Co., 333 U. S. 445, 449-450 (1948). We consider, then, its impact on the Virginia statutes challenged in this case.
c
The federal licenses granted to Seacoast are, as noted above, identical in pertinent part to Gibbons’ licenses except that they cover the “mackerel fishery” rather than the “coasting trade.” Appellant contends that because of the difference this case is distinguishable from Gibbons. He argues that Gibbons upheld only the right of the federal licensee, as an American-flag vessel, to navigate freely in state territorial waters. He urges that Congress could not have intended to grant an additional right to take fish from the waters of an unconsenting State. Appellant points out that the challenged statutes in no way interfere with the navigation of Seacoast’s fishing boats. They are free to cross the State’s waters in search of fish in jurisdictions where they may lawfully catch them, and they may transport fish through the State’s waters with equal impunity.
Appellant’s reading of Gibbons is too narrow. Gibbons emphatically rejects the argument that the license merely establishes the nationality of the vessel. That function is performed by the enrollment. 9 Wheat., at 214. Rather, the license “implies, unequivocally, an authority to licensed vessels to carry on” the activity for which they are licensed. Id., at 212. In Gibbons, the “authority... to carry on” the licensed activity included not only the right to navigate in, or to travel across, state waters, but also the right to land passengers in New York and thereby provide an economically valuable service. The right to perform that additional act of landing cargo in the State — which gave the license its real value — was part of the grant of the right to engage in the “coasting trade.” See Harman v. Chicago, 147 U. S. 396, 405 (1893).
The same analysis applies to a license to engage in the mackerel fishery. Concededly, it implies a grant of the right to navigate in state waters. But, like the trading license, it must give something more. It must grant “authority... to carry on” the “mackerel fishery.” And just as Gibbons and its progeny found a grant of the right to trade in a State without discrimination, we conclude that appellees have been granted the right to fish in Virginia waters on the same terms as Virginia residents.
Moreover, 46 U. S. C. § 251 states that properly documented vessels “and no others” are “entitled to the privileges of vessels employed in the coasting trade or fisheries.” Referring to this section, Gibbons held: “[T]hese privileges... cannot be enjoyed, unless the trade may be prosecuted. The grant of the privilege... convey [s] the right [to carry on the licensed activity] to which the privilege is attached.” 9 Wheat., at 213. Thus, under § 251 federal licensees are “entitled” to the same “privileges” of fishery access as a State affords to its residents or citizens.
Finally, our interpretation of the license is reaffirmed by the specific discussion in Gibbons of the section granting the license, now 46 U. S. C. § 263. The Court pointed out that “a license to do any particular thing, is a permission or authority to do that thing; and if granted by a person having power to grant it, transfers to the grantee the right to do whatever it purports to authorize. It certainly transfers to him all the right which the grantor can transfer, to do what is within the terms of the license.” 9 Wheat., at 213-214. Gibbons recognized that the “grantor” was Congress. Id., at 213. Thus Gibbons expressly holds that the words used by Congress in the vessel license transfer to the licensee “all the •right” which Congress has the power to convey. While appellant may be correct in arguing that at earlier times in our history there was some doubt whether Congress had power under the Commerce Clause to regulate the taking of fish in state waters, there can be no question today that such power exists where there is some effect on interstate commerce. Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146 (1971); Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U. S. 241 (1964); Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942). The movement of vessels from one State to another in search of fish, and back again to processing plants, is certainly activity which Congress could conclude affects interstate commerce. Cf. Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U. S. 385, 403-406 (1948). Accordingly, we hold that, at the least, when Congress re-enacted the license form in 1936, using language which, according to Gibbons, gave licensees “all the right which the grantor can transfer,” it necessarily extended the license to cover the taking of fish in state waters, subject to valid state conservation regulations.
D
Application of the foregoing principles to the present case is straightforward. Section 60 prohibits federally licensed vessels owned by nonresidents of Virginia from fishing in the Chesapeake Bay. Licensed ships owned by noncitizens are prevented by § 81.1 from catching fish anywhere, in the Commonwealth. On the other hand, Virginia residents are permitted to fish commercially for menhaden subject only to seasonal and other conservation restrictions not at issue here. The challenged statutes thus deny appellees their federally granted right to engage in fishing activities on the same terms as Virginia residents. They violate the “indisputable” precept that “no State may completely exclude federally licensed commerce.” Florida Lime & Avocado Growers v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132, 142 (1963). They must fall under the Supremacy Clause.
Appellant seeks to escape this conclusion by arguing that the Submerged Lands Act, 67 Stat. 29, 43 U. S. C. §§ 1301-1315, and a number of this Court’s decisions recognize that the States have a title or ownership interest in the fish swimming in their territorial waters. It is argued that because the States “own” the fish, they can exclude federal licensees. The contention is of no avail.
The Submerged Lands Act does give the States “title,” “ownership,” and “the right and power to manage, administer, lease, develop, and use” the lands beneath the oceans and natural resources in the waters within state territorial jurisdiction. 43 U. S. C. §1311 (a). But when Congress made this grant pursuant to the Property Clause of the Constitution, see Alabama v. Texas, 347 U. S. 272 (1954), it expressly retained for the United States “all constitutional powers of regulation and control” over these lands and waters “for purposes of commerce, navigation, national defense, and international affairs.” United States v. Louisiana, 363 U. S. 1, 10 (1960); see 43 U. S. C. § 1314 (a). Since the grant of the fisheries license is made pursuant to the commerce power, see supra, at 281-282; Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365, 377 (1883), the Submerged Lands Act did not alter its pre-emptive effect. Certainly Congress did not repeal by implication, in the broad language of the Submerged Lands Act, the Licensing Act requirement of equal treatment for federal licensees.
In any event, “[t]o put the claim of the State upon title is,” in Mr. Justice Holmes’ words, “to lean upon a slender reed.” Missouri v. Holland, 252 U. S. 416, 434 (1920). A State does not stand in the same position as the owner of a private game preserve and it is pure fantasy to talk of “owning” wild fish, birds, or animals. Neither the States nor the Federal Government, any more than a hopeful fisherman or hunter, has title to these creatures until they are reduced to possession by skillful capture. Ibid.; Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U. S. 519, 539-540 (1896) (Field, J., dissenting). The “ownership” language of cases such as those cited by appellant must be understood as no more than a 19th-century legal fiction expressing “the importance to its people that a State have power to preserve and regulate the exploitation of an important resource.” Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U. S., at 402; see also Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410, 420-421 (1948). Under modern analysis, the question is simply whether the State has exercised its police power in conformity with the federal laws and Constitution. As we have demonstrated above, Virginia has failed to do so here.
Ill
Our decision is very much in keeping with sound policy considerations of federalism. The business of commercial fishing must be conducted by peripatetic entrepreneurs moving, like their quarry, without regard for state boundary lines. Menhaden that spawn in the open ocean or in coastal waters of a Southern State may swim into Chesapeake Bay and live there for their first summer, migrate south for the following winter, and appear off the shores of New York or Massachusetts in succeeding years. A number of coastal States have discriminatory fisheries laws, and with all natural resources becoming increasingly scarce and more valuable, more such restrictions would be a likely prospect, as both protective and retaliatory measures. Each State’s fishermen eventually might be effectively limited to working in the territorial waters of their residence, or in the federally controlled fishery beyond the three-mile limit. Such proliferation of residency requirements for commercial fishermen would create precisely the sort of Balkanization of interstate commercial activity that the Constitution was intended to prevent. See, e. g., H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525, 532-539 (1949); cf. Allenberg Cotton Co. v. Pittman, 419 U. S. 20 (1974). We cannot find that Congress intended to allow any such result given the well-known construction of federal vessel licenses in Gibbons.
For these reasons, we conclude that §§60 and 81.1 are preempted by the federal Enrollment and Licensing Act. Insofar as these state laws subject federally licensed vessels owned by nonresidents or aliens to restrictions different from those applicable to Virginia residents and American citizens, they must fall under the Supremacy Clause. As we have noted above, however, reasonable and evenhanded conservation measures, so essential to the preservation of our vital marine sources of food supply, stand unaffected by our decision.
The judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.
Section 28.1-81.1 provides:
“Licenses for taking of fish restricted to United States citizens.— (a) No commercial.license for the taking of food fish or fish for the manufacture into fish meal, fish oil, fish scrap or other purpose shall be granted to any person not a citizen of the United States, nor to any firm, partnership, or association unless each participant therein shall be a citizen of the United States, nor to any corporation unless the same be a citizen of the United States as hereinafter defined. This requirement shall be in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other requisite to the issuance of a license imposed by this chapter or any other provision of the Code of Virginia as amended from time to time.
“ (b) Within the meaning of this section, no corporation shall be deemed a citizen of the United States unless seventy-five per centum of the interest therein shall be owned by citizens of the United States and unless its president or other chief executive officer and the chairman of its board of directors are citizens of the United States and unless no more of its directors than a minority of the number necessary to constitute a quorum are noncitizens and the corporation is organized under the laws of the United States or of a state, territory, district, or possession thereof.
“(c) Seventy-five per centum of the interest in a corporation shall not be deemed to be owned by citizens of the United States (i) if the title to seventy-five per centum of its stock is not vested in such citizens free from any trust or fiduciary obligation in favor of any person not a citizen of the United States; or (ii) if seventy-five per centum of the voting power in such corporation is not vested in citizens of the United States; or (iii) if, through any contract or understanding, it is so arranged that more than twenty-five per centum of the voting power in such corporation may be exercised, directly or indirectly, in behalf of any person who is not a citizen of the United States; or (iv) if by any other means whatsoever control of any interest in the corporation in excess of twenty-five per centum is conferred upon or permitted to be exercised by any person who is not a citizen of the United States.”
Section 28.1-60 provides in pertinent part:
“Nonresidents generally. — (1) Catching fish for oil or guano prohibited. — No nonresident of this State shall take or catch any fish, in the waters of the Commonwealth, or in the waters under its joint jurisdiction, for the purpose of converting the same into oil, fish scrap, fish meal or guano, except as hereinafter provided; nor shall any nonresident be concerned or interested with any resident as partner or otherwise, except as a stockholder in a domestic corporation, in taking or catching fish in any of the waters of this State to be manufactured into oil, fish scrap, fish meal or guano, or in such manufacture, except as hereinafter provided.
“(2) Resident not to be interested. — Nor shall any resident of this State be concerned or interested with any nonresident as partner or otherwise, except as stockholder in a domestic corporation, in taking or catching fish in any of the waters of this State to be manufactured into oil, fish scrap, fish meal or guano, or in such manufacture, except as hereinafter provided, or knowingly permit any nonresident to use his name for either purpose.
“(3) License for taking menhaden fish. — A nonresident person, firm or corporation may take or catch the fish known as'menhaden,' within the three-mile limit on the seacoast of Virginia and east of a straight line drawn from Cape Charles Lighthouse to Cape Henry Lighthouse for the purpose of converting the same into oil, fish scrap, fish meal or guano between the third Monday of May and the third Friday of November, inclusive, of each year; provided such person, firm or corporation has applied for and obtained license to take and catch such fish within the above-defined area and in accordance with the following requirements.
“(6) Penalty for violation. — Any person, firm or corporation violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
The menhaden industry is, in terms of landed tonnage, the largest fishery in the United States, accounting for about 45% of our total commercial fish catch. The 1975 harvest was valued at about $50 million fresh and $80 million after processing. Menhaden are processed and used for industrial purposes including the manufacture of antibiotics, poultry and animal feed, paint, soap, lubricants, and, in Canada and Europe, margarine. The fish spend much of their life cycle in coastal estuaries or shallow water close to the ocean shore. Indeed, over 95% of the 1.8 billion pounds of menhaden taken in 1975 were caught within three miles of the coast. The fish are only found far offshore in deep water during the winter months along the South Atlantic coast. In March, they begin a northward migration traveling up the east coast in enormous schools, with some ultimately reaching north of Cape Cod. Most of the fish reverse this migration path in the fall. It is feasible to fish commercially for menhaden only during the migratory period when they are in large, dense schools close to the surface. Estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay are important nurturing grounds for the species. See U. S. Department of Commerce, Fisheries of the United States, 1975, pp. 18, 37 (1976); App. 24-25, 32-33, 73-89, 92-113.
Appellant’s contention that the District Court should have abstained in this case to allow the Virginia courts to decide the validity of the statutes is without merit. Appellant suggests that under recent decisions, e. g., In re Griffiths, 413 U. S. 717 (1973); Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634 (1973); Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971), the alienage classification established in § 81.1 might well be ruled unconstitutional by the state courts as applied to individual resident aliens. That result is certainly plausible. See Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410 (1948). It is also irrelevant.
Abstention is proper in this context only where it can be "fairly concluded that the underlying state statute is susceptible of an interpretation that might avoid the necessity for constitutional adjudication.” Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U. S. 51, 55 (1973). But appellant’s suggestion would not resolve any of the claims raised by appellees. In such circumstances, it is the “solemn responsibility” of “all levels of the federal judiciary to give due respect to a suitor’s choice of a federal forum for the hearing and decision of his federal constitutional claims.” Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 248 (1967).
Appellees argue in addition that federal fisheries law constitutes a comprehensive regulatory scheme not admitting of conflicting state laws. They also urge that the Virginia statutes violate the Equal Protection and Commerce Clauses and interfere with federal control of international relations.
The claim is, of course, statutory in the sense that it depends on interpretation of an Act of Congress, and like any
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:
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J
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sc_issuearea
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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.
PER CURIAM.
The Court has held that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding," District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), and that this "Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States," McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 750, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010). In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining "whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment." 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N.E.3d 688, 691 (2015).
The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they "were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment's enactment."
Id., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693. This is inconsistent with Heller 's clear statement that the Second Amendment "extends ... to ... arms ... that were not in existence at the time of the founding." 554 U.S., at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
The court next asked whether stun guns are "dangerous per se at common law and unusual," 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 694, in an attempt to apply one "important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms," Heller, 554 U.S., at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ; see ibid. (referring to "the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons' "). In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are "unusual" because they are "a thoroughly modern invention." 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693-694. By equating "unusual" with "in common use at the time of the Second Amendment's enactment," the court's second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.
Finally, the court used "a contemporary lens" and found "nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military." 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 694. But Heller rejected the proposition "that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected." 554 U.S., at 624-625, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court's precedent. Consequently, the petition for a writ of certiorari and the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice ALITO, with whom Justice THOMAS joins, concurring in the judgment.
After a "bad altercation" with an abusive boyfriend put her in the hospital, Jaime Caetano found herself homeless and "in fear for [her] life." Tr. 31, 38 (July 10, 2013). She obtained multiple restraining orders against her abuser, but they proved futile. So when a friend offered her a stun gun "for self-defense against [her] former boy friend," 470 Mass. 774, 776, 26 N.E.3d 688, 690 (2015), Caetano accepted the weapon.
It is a good thing she did. One night after leaving work, Caetano found her ex-boyfriend "waiting for [her] outside." Tr. 35. He "started screaming" that she was "not gonna [expletive deleted] work at this place" any more because she "should be home with the kids" they had together. Ibid. Caetano's abuser towered over her by nearly a foot and outweighed her by close to 100 pounds. But she didn't need physical strength to protect herself. She stood her ground, displayed the stun gun, and announced: "I'm not gonna take this anymore.... I don't wanna have to [use the stun gun on] you, but if you don't leave me alone, I'm gonna have to." Id., at 35-36. The gambit worked. The ex-boyfriend "got scared and he left [her] alone." Id., at 36.
It is settled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms that applies against both the Federal Government and the States. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008) ; McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010). That right vindicates the "basic right" of "individual self-defense." Id., at 767, 130 S.Ct. 3020 ; see Heller, supra, at 599, 628, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Caetano's encounter with her violent ex-boyfriend illustrates the connection between those fundamental rights: By arming herself, Caetano was able to protect against a physical threat that restraining orders had proved useless to prevent. And, commendably, she did so by using a weapon that posed little, if any, danger of permanently harming either herself or the father of her children.
Under Massachusetts law, however, Caetano's mere possession of the stun gun that may have saved her life made her a criminal. See Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140, § 131J (2014). When police later discovered the weapon, she was arrested, tried, and convicted. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conviction, holding that a stun gun "is not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection" because it was "not in common use at the time of [the Second Amendment's] enactment." 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693.
This reasoning defies our decision in Heller, which rejected as "bordering on the frivolous" the argument "that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment." 554 U.S., at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783. The decision below also does a grave disservice to vulnerable individuals like Caetano who must defend themselves because the State will not.
I
The events leading to Caetano's prosecution occurred sometime after the confrontation between her and her ex-boyfriend. In September 2011, police officers responded to a reported shoplifting at an Ashland, Massachusetts, supermarket. The store's manager had detained a suspect, but he identified Caetano and another person in the parking lot as potential accomplices. Police approached the two and obtained Caetano's consent to search her purse. They found no evidence of shoplifting, but saw Caetano's stun gun. Caetano explained to the officers that she had acquired the weapon to defend herself against a violent ex-boyfriend.
The officers believed Caetano, but they arrested her for violating Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140, § 131J, "which bans entirely the possession of an electrical weapon," 470 Mass., at 775, 26 N.E.3d, at 689. When Caetano moved to dismiss the charge on Second Amendment grounds, the trial court denied the motion.
A subsequent bench trial established the following undisputed facts. The parties stipulated that Caetano possessed the stun gun and that the weapon fell within the statute's prohibition. The Commonwealth also did not challenge Caetano's testimony that she possessed the weapon to defend herself against the violent ex-boyfriend. Indeed, the prosecutor urged the court "to believe the defendant." Tr. 40. The trial court nonetheless found Caetano guilty, and she appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
The Supreme Judicial Court rejected Caetano's Second Amendment claim, holding that "a stun gun is not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection." 470 Mass., at 775, 26 N.E.3d, at 689. The court reasoned that stun guns are unprotected because they were "not 'in common use at the time' of enactment of the Second Amendment," id., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693 (quoting Heller, supra, at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ), and because they fall within the "traditional prohibition against carrying dangerous and unusual weapons," 470 Mass., at 779, 26 N.E.3d, at 692 (citing Heller, supra, at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ).
II
Although the Supreme Judicial Court professed to apply Heller, each step of its analysis defied Heller 's reasoning.
A
The state court repeatedly framed the question before it as whether a particular weapon was " 'in common use at the time' of enactment of the Second Amendment." 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693 ; see also id., at 779, 780, 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 692, 693, 694. In Heller, we emphatically rejected such a formulation. We found the argument "that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment" not merely wrong, but "bordering on the frivolous." 554 U.S., at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Instead, we held that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding ." Ibid. (emphasis added). It is hard to imagine language speaking more directly to the point. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court did not so much as mention it.
Instead, the court seized on language, originating in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939), that " 'the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time." ' " 470 Mass., at 778, 26 N.E.3d, at 692 (quoting Heller, supra, at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 in turn quoting Miller, supra, at 179, 59 S.Ct. 816 ). That quotation does not mean, as the court below thought, that only weapons popular in 1789 are covered by the Second Amendment. It simply reflects the reality that the founding-era militia consisted of citizens "who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty," Heller, 554 U.S., at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 and that the Second Amendment accordingly guarantees the right to carry weapons "typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes," id., at 625, 128 S.Ct. 2783. While stun guns were not in existence at the end of the 18th century, the same is true for the weapons most commonly used today for self-defense, namely, revolvers and semiautomatic pistols. Revolvers were virtually unknown until well into the 19th century, and semiautomatic pistols were not invented until near the end of that century. Electronic stun guns are no more exempt from the Second Amendment's protections, simply because they were unknown to the First Congress, than electronic communications are exempt from the First Amendment, or electronic imaging devices are exempt from the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 582 (citing Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 849, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997), and Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35-36, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) ). As Heller aptly put it: "We do not interpret constitutional rights that way." 554 U.S., at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
B
The Supreme Judicial Court's holding that stun guns may be banned as "dangerous and unusual weapons" fares no better. As the per curiam opinion recognizes, this is a conjunctive test: A weapon may not be banned unless it is both dangerous and unusual. Because the Court rejects the lower court's conclusion that stun guns are "unusual," it does not need to consider the lower court's conclusion that they are also "dangerous." See ante, at 1027 - 1028. But make no mistake-the decision below gravely erred on both grounds.
1
As to "dangerous," the court below held that a weapon is "dangerous per se" if it is " 'designed and constructed to produce death or great bodily harm' and 'for the purpose of bodily assault or defense.' " 470 Mass., at 779, 26 N.E.3d, at 692 (quoting Commonwealth v. Appleby, 380 Mass. 296, 303, 402 N.E.2d 1051, 1056 (1980) ). That test may be appropriate for applying statutes criminalizing assault with a dangerous weapon. See ibid., 402 N.E.2d, at 1056. But it cannot be used to identify arms that fall outside the Second Amendment. First, the relative dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant when the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for lawful purposes. See Heller, supra, at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (contrasting " 'dangerous and unusual weapons' " that may be banned with protected "weapons ... 'in common use at the time' "). Second, even in cases where dangerousness might be relevant, the Supreme Judicial Court's test sweeps far too broadly. Heller defined the "Arms" covered by the Second Amendment to include " 'any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.' " 554 U.S., at 581, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Under the decision below, however, virtually every covered arm would qualify as "dangerous."
Were there any doubt on this point, one need only look at the court's first example of "dangerous per se" weapons: "firearms." 470 Mass., at 779, 26 N.E.3d, at 692. If Heller tells us anything, it is that firearms cannot be categorically prohibited just because they are dangerous. 554 U.S., at 636, 128 S.Ct. 2783. A fortiori, stun guns that the Commonwealth's own witness described as "non-lethal force," Tr. 27, cannot be banned on that basis.
2
The Supreme Judicial Court's conclusion that stun guns are "unusual" rested largely on its premise that one must ask whether a weapon was commonly used in 1789. See 470 Mass., at 780-781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693-694. As already discussed, that is simply wrong. See supra, at 1030 - 1031.
The court also opined that a weapon's unusualness depends on whether "it is a weapon of warfare to be used by the militia." 470 Mass., at 780, 26 N.E.3d, at 693. It asserted that we followed such an approach in Miller and "approved its use in Heller ." 470 Mass., at 780, 26 N.E.3d, at 693. But Heller actually said that it would be a "startling reading" of Miller to conclude that "only those weapons useful in warfare are protected." 554 U.S., at 624, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Instead, Miller and Heller recognized that militia members traditionally reported for duty carrying "the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home," and that the Second Amendment therefore protects such weapons as a class, regardless of any particular weapon's suitability for military use. 554 U.S., at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ; see id., at 624-625, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Indeed, Heller acknowledged that advancements in military technology might render many commonly owned weapons ineffective in warfare. Id., at 627-628, 128 S.Ct. 2783. But such "modern developments ... cannot change our interpretation of the right." Ibid.
In any event, the Supreme Judicial Court's assumption that stun guns are unsuited for militia or military use is untenable. Section 131J allows law enforcement and correctional officers to carry stun guns and Tasers, presumably for such purposes as nonlethal crowd control. Subduing members of a mob is little different from "suppress[ing] Insurrections," a traditional role of the militia. U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 15; see also ibid. (militia may be called forth "to execute the Laws of the Union"). Additionally, several branches of the U.S. armed services equip troops with electrical stun weapons to "incapacitate a target without permanent injury or known side effects." U.S. Army, Project Manager Close Combat Systems, PD Combat Munitions: Launched Electrode Stun Device (LESD), http://www.pica.army.mil/pmccs/combatmunitions/nonlethalsys/taserx26e.html (all Internet materials as last visited Mar. 18, 2016); see U.S. Marine Corps Administrative Message 560/08 (Oct. 2, 2008) (Marine Corps guidance for use of Tasers), http://www.marines.mil/News/Messages/MessagesDisplay/tabid/13286/Article/113024/marine-corps-training-and-use-of-human-electro-muscular-incapacitation-hemi-dev.aspx; Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW) Reference Book 3 (2012) (Department of Defense report stating that "[m]ultiple Services employ" Tasers), http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a565971.pdf.
C
As the foregoing makes clear, the pertinent Second Amendment inquiry is whether stun guns are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes today . The Supreme Judicial Court offered only a cursory discussion of that question, noting that the " 'number of Tasers and stun guns is dwarfed by the number of firearms.' " 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693. This observation may be true, but it is beside the point. Otherwise, a State would be free to ban all weapons except handguns, because "handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home." Heller, supra, at 629, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
The more relevant statistic is that "[h]undreds of thousands of Tasers and stun guns have been sold to private citizens," who it appears may lawfully possess them in 45 States. People v. Yanna, 297 Mich.App. 137, 144, 824 N.W.2d 241, 245 (2012) (holding Michigan stun gun ban unconstitutional); see Volokh, Nonlethal Self-Defense, (Almost Entirely) Nonlethal Weapons, and the Rights To Keep and Bear Arms and Defend Life, 62 Stan. L. Rev. 199, 244 (2009) (citing stun gun bans in seven States); Wis. Stat. § 941.295 (Supp. 2015) (amended Wisconsin law permitting stun gun possession); see also Brief in Opposition 11 (acknowledging that "approximately 200,000 civilians owned stun guns" as of 2009). While less popular than handguns, stun guns are widely owned and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense across the country. Massachusetts' categorical ban of such weapons therefore violates the Second Amendment.
III
The lower court's ill treatment of Heller cannot stand. The reasoning of the Massachusetts court poses a grave threat to the fundamental right of self-defense. The Supreme Judicial Court suggested that Caetano could have simply gotten a firearm to defend herself. 470 Mass., at 783, 26 N.E.3d, at 695. But the right to bear other weapons is "no answer" to a ban on the possession of protected arms. Heller, 554 U.S., at 629, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Moreover, a weapon is an effective means of self-defense only if one is prepared to use it, and it is presumptuous to tell Caetano she should have been ready to shoot the father of her two young children if she wanted to protect herself. Courts should not be in the business of demanding that citizens use more force for self-defense than they are comfortable wielding.
Countless people may have reservations about using deadly force, whether for moral, religious, or emotional reasons-or simply out of fear of killing the wrong person. See Brief for Arming Women Against Rape & Endangerment as Amicus Curiae 4-5. "Self-defense," however, "is a basic right." McDonald, 561 U.S., at 767, 130 S.Ct. 3020. I am not prepared to say that a State may force an individual to choose between exercising that right and following her conscience, at least where both can be accommodated by a weapon already in widespread use across the Nation.
* * *
A State's most basic responsibility is to keep its people safe. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself. To make matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her of a criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life. The Supreme Judicial Court then affirmed her conviction on the flimsiest of grounds. This Court's grudging per curiam now sends the case back to that same court. And the consequences for Caetano may prove more tragic still, as her conviction likely bars her from ever bearing arms for self-defense. See Pet. for Cert. 14.
If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe.
Specifically, the statute prohibits the possession of any "portable device or weapon from which an electrical current, impulse, wave or beam may be directed, which current, impulse, wave or beam is designed to incapacitate temporarily, injure or kill." Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140, § 131J (2014). The statute includes exceptions for law-enforcement officers and weapon suppliers, who may possess electrical weapons "designed to incapacitate temporarily." Ibid. Violations are punishable by a fine of $500 to $1,000, imprisonment of 6 months to 2 ½ years, or both. Ibid.
Stun guns like Caetano's "are designed to stun a person with an electrical current" by running a current between two metal prongs on the device and placing the prongs in direct contact with the person. 470 Mass. 774, 775, n. 2, 26 N.E.3d 688, 689, n. 2 (2015). A similar device, popularly known by the brand name "Taser," shoots out wires tipped with electrodes that can deliver an electrical current from a distance. Tr. 25-26. Tasers can also be used like a stun gun without deploying the electrodes-a so-called "dry stun." Id., at 26. As the Commonwealth's witness testified at trial, these sorts of electrical weapons are "non-lethal force" "designed to incapacitate"-"not kill"-a target. Id., at 27.
Stun guns are plainly "bearable arms." As Heller explained, the term includes any "[w]eapo[n] of offence" or "thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands," that is "carr[ied] ... for the purpose of offensive or defensive action." 554 U.S., at 581, 584, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (internal quotation marks omitted).
See J. Bilby, A Revolution in Arms: A History of the First Repeating Rifles 23 (2006). Samuel Colt did not patent his famous revolver until 1836. Ibid.
See Firearms: An Illustrated History 166 (2014); see also W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development 524-529, 531-534 (9th ed. 1910) (discussing revolvers and self-loading semiautomatic pistols as "modern pistols").
The court below also noted that Massachusetts no longer requires a license to possess mace or pepper spray. 470 Mass., at 783, 26 N.E.3d, at 695. But the law was changed in 2014, after Caetano was convicted. A spray can also be foiled by a stiff breeze, while a stun gun cannot.
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
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sc_issuearea
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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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This suit was brought in the Federal District Court under the head of diversity jurisdiction to recover for a wrongful death suffered in an automobile accident in Louisiana. The plaintiff, a Texas domiciliary, was the mother of the victim, her illegitimate son. Had the Texas wrongful death statute been applicable, it would, as construed, have authorized the action. But summary judgment was granted on the ground that under Louisiana law the mother had no right of action for the death of her illegitimate son. The Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting the claim that the discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 379 F. 2d 545. We granted the petition for a writ of certiorari, 389 U. S. 969, in order to hear the case along with Levy v. Louisiana, ante, p. 68.
Louisiana follows a curious course in its sanctions against illegitimacy. A common-law wife is allowed to sue under the Louisiana wrongful death statute. When a married woman gives birth to an illegitimate child, he is, with a few exceptions, conclusively presumed to be legitimate. Louisiana makes no distinction between legitimate children and illegitimate children where incest is concerned. A mother may inherit from an illegitimate child whom she has acknowledged and vice versa. If the illegitimate son had a horse that was killed by the defendant and then died himself, his mother would have a right to sue for the loss of that property. If the illegitimate son were killed in an industrial accident at his place of employment, the mother would be eligible for recovery under the Louisiana Workmen’s Compensation Act, if she were a dependent of his. Yet it is argued that since the legislature is dealing with “sin,” it can deal with it selectively and is not compelled to adopt comprehensive or even consistent measures. See McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 191. In this sense the present case is different from the Levy case, where by mere accident of birth the innocent, although illegitimate, child was made a “nonperson” by the legislature, when it came to recovery of damages for the wrongful death of his mother.
Yet we see no possible rational basis (Morey v. Doud, 354 U. S. 457, 465-466) for assuming that if the natural mother is allowed recovery for the wrongful death of her illegitimate child, the cause of illegitimacy will be served. It would, indeed, be farfetched to assume that women have illegitimate children so that they can be compensated in damages for their death. A law which creates an open season on illegitimates in the area of automobile accidents gives a windfall to tortfeasors. But it hardly has a causal connection with the “sin,” which is, we are told, the historic reason for the creation of the disability. To say that the test of equal protection should be the “legal” rather than the biological relationship is to avoid the issue. For the Equal Protection Clause necessarily limits the authority of a State to draw such “legal” lines as it chooses.
Opening the courts to suits of this kind may conceivably be a temptation to some to assert motherhood fraudulently. That problem, however, concerns burden of proof. Where the claimant is plainly the mother, the State denies equal protection of the laws to withhold relief merely because the child, wrongfully killed, was born to her out of wedlock.
Reversed.
Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann. Art. 4675 (1952).
The Court of Appeals so indicated in this case. 379 F. 2d, at 546, n. 2. See Galveston, H. & S. A. R. Co. v. Walker, 48 Tex. Civ. App. 52, 106 S. W. 705 (1907).
The applicable statutory provision is set out in Levy v. Louisiana, ante, at 69, n. 1. As the Court of Appeals noted, Article 2315 of the Louisiana Civil Code, providing for wrongful death recovery, gives a cause of action to “the surviving father and mother of the deceased, or either of them. . . .” The statute does not state “legitimate” father or “legitimate” mother, but the Louisiana courts have held that a decedent must be legitimate in order for an ascendant or sibling to recover for his death. Youchican v. Texas & P. R. Co., 147 La. 1080, 86 So. 551 (1920); Buie v. Hester, 147 So. 2d 733 (Ct. App. La. 1962). See also Green v. New Orleans, S. & G. I. R. Co., 141 La. 120, 74 So. 717 (1917); Jackson v. Lindlom, 84 So. 2d 101 (Ct. App. La. 1955). See also Vaughan v. Dalton-Lard Lumber Co., 119 La. 61, 43 So. 926 (1907).
Chivers v. Couch Motor Lines, 159 So. 2d 544 (Ct. App. La. 1964).
La. Civ. Code Ann. Art. 184 (1952). See Lambert v. Lambert, 164 So. 2d 661 (Ct. App. La. 1964); Harris v. Illinois Central R. Co., 220 F. 2d 734 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1955); cf. Lewis v. Powell, 178 So. 2d 769 (Ct. App. La. 1965).
La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:78 (1952).
La. Civ. Code Ann. Arts. 918, 922 (1952).
La. Civ. Code Ann. Arts. 2315, 922 (1952 and Supp. 1967).
La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§23:1231, 23:1252, 23:1253 (1964); Thompson v. Vestal Lumber & Mfg. Co., 208 La. 83, 119, 22 So. 2d 842, 854 (1945); see Note, 20 Tulane L. Rev. 145 (1945).
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 motions for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petitions for writs of certiorari are granted. The judgments of the Supreme Court of Washington are vacated and the cases remanded to that court for reconsideration in the light of Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, and Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510.
Mr. Justice Black dissents.
Mr. Justice Harlan dissents for the reasons stated in Mr. Justice Black’s dissenting opinion in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 532, and Mr. Justice White’s dissenting opinion in Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, 138.
Mr. Justice White dissents for the reasons stated in his dissenting opinions in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 540, and Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, 138.
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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, administratrix of the estate of her son Daniel Gillespie, brought this action in federal court against the respondent shipowner-employer to recover damages for Gillespie’s death, which was alleged to have occurred when he fell and was drowned while working as a seaman on respondent’s ship docked in Ohio. She claimed a right to recover for the benefit of herself and of the decedent’s dependent brother and sisters under the Jones Act, which subjects employers to liability if by negligence they cause a seaman’s injury or death. She also claimed a right of recovery under the Ohio wrongful death statute because the vessel allegedly was not seaworthy as required by the “general maritime law.” The complaint in addition sought damages for Gillespie’s pain and suffering before he died,, based on the Jones Act and the general maritime law, causes of action which petitioner said survived Gillespie’s death by force of the Jones Act itself and the Ohio survival statute, respectively. The District Judge, holding that the Jones Act supplied the exclusive remedy, on motion of respondent struck all parts of the complaint which referred to the Ohio statutes or to unseaworthiness. He also struck all reference to recovery for the benefit of the brother and sisters of the decedent, who respondent had argued were not beneficiaries entitled to recovery under the Jones Act while their mother was living.
Petitioner immediately appealed to the Court of Appeals. Respondent moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that.the ruling appealed from was not a “final” decision of the District Court as required by 28 U. S. C. § 1291 (1958 ed.). Thereupon petitioner admin-istratrix, this time joined by the brother and sisters, filed in the Court of Appeals a petition for mandamus or other appropriate writ commanding the District Judge to vacate his original order and enter a new one either denying the motion to strike or in the alternative granting the motion but including also “the requisite written statement to effectively render his said order appealable within the provisions of 28 U. S. C. A. § 1292 (b),” a statute providing for appeal of certain interlocutory orders. Without definitely deciding whether mandamus would have been appropriate in this case or deciding the “close” question of appealability, the Court of Appeals proceeded to determine the controversy “on the merits as though it were submitted on an appeal”; this the court said it felt free to do since its resolution of the merits did not prejudice respondent in any way, because it sustained respondent’s contentions by denying the petition for mandamus and affirming the District Court’s order. 321 F. 2d 518. Petitioner brought the case here, and we granted certio-rari. 375 U. S. 962.
I.
In this.Court respondent joins petitioner in urging us to hold that 28 U. S. C. § 1291 (1958 ed.) does not require us to dismiss this case and that we can and should decide the validity of the. District Court’s order to strike. We agrée. Under § 129Í an appeal may be taken from any “final” order of a district court. But as this Court often has pointed out, a decision “final” within the meaning of § 1291 does not necessarily mean the last order possible to be made in a case. Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 545. And our casés long have recognized that whether a ruling is “final” within the meaning of § 1291 is frequently so close a question that decision of that issue either way can be supported with equally forceful arguments, and that it is impossible to devise a formula to resolve all marginal cases coming within what might well be called the “twilight zone” of finality. Because of this difficulty this Court has held that the requirement of finality is to be given a “practical rather than a technical construction.” Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., supra, 337 U. S., at 546. See also Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S. 294, 306; Bronson v. Railroad Co., 2 Black 524, 531; Forgay v. Conrad, 6 How. 201, 203. Dickinson v. Petroleum Conversion Corp., 338 U. S. 507, 511, pointed out that in deciding the question of finality the most important competing considerations are “the inconvenience and costs of piecemeal review on the one hand and the danger of denying justice by delay on the other.” Such competing considerations are shown by the record in the case before us. It is true that the review of this case by the Court of Appeals could be called “piecemeal”; but it does not appear that the inconvenience and cost of trying this case will be greater because the Court of Appeals decided. the issues raised instead of compelling the parties to go to trial with them unanswered. We cannot say that the Court of Appeals chose wrongly under the circumstances. And it seems clear now that the case is before us that the eventual costs, as all the parties recognize, will certainly be less if we now pass on the questions presented here rather than send the ease back with those issues undecided. Moreover, delay of perhaps a number of years in having the brother’s and sisters’ rights determined might work a great injustice on them, since the claims for recovery for their benefit have been effectively cut off so long as the District. Judge’s ruling stands. And while their claims are not formally severable so as to make the court’s order unquestionably appealable as to them, cf. Dickinson v. Petroleum Conversion Corp., supra, there certainly is ample reason to view their claims as severable in deciding the issue of finality, particularly since the brother and sisters were separate parties in the petition for extraordinary relief. Cf. Swift & Co. Packers v. Compania Colombiana Del Caribe, S. A., 339 U. S. 684, 688-689; Gumbel v. Pitkin, 113 U. S. 545, 548. Furthermore, in United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U. S. 373, 377, this Court contrary to its usual practice reviewed a trial court’s refusal to permit proof of certain items of damages in a case not yet fully tried, because the ruling was “fundamental. to the further conduct of the, case.” For these same reasons this Court reviewed such a ruling in Land v. Dollar, 330 U. S. 731, 734, n. 2, and Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U. S. 682, 685, n. 3, where, as here, the case had not yet been fully tried. And see Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., supra, 337 U. S., at 545-547. We think that the questions presented here are equally “fundamental to the further conduct of the case.” It is true that if the District Judge had certified the case to the Court of Appeals under 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (b) (1958 ed.), the appeal unquestionably would have been proper; in light of the circumstances we believe that the Court of Appeals properly implemented the same policy Congress sought to promote in § 1292 (b) by treating this obviously marginal case as final, and appealable under 28 U. S. C. § 1291 (1958 ed.). We therefore proceed to consider the correctness of the Court of Appeals’ judgment.
II.
In 1930 this Court held in Lindgren v. United States, 281 U. S. 38, that in passing § 33 of the Merchant Marine Act, 1920, now 46 U. S. C. § 688 (1958 ed.), commonly called the Jones Act, Congress provided an exclusive right of action for the death of seamen killed in the course of their employment, superseding all state death statutes which might otherwise be applied to maritime deaths, and, since the Act gave recovery only for negligence, precluding any possible recovery based on a theory of unseaworthiness. A strong appeal is now made that we overrule Lindgren because it is said to be unfair and incongruous in the light of some of our later cases which have liberalized the rights of seamen and nonseamen to recover on a theory of unseaworthiness for injuries, though not for death. No one of these cases, however, has cast doubt on the correctness of the interpretation of the Jones Act in Lindgren, based as it was on a careful study of the Act in the context of then-existing admiralty principles, decisions and statutes. The opinion in Lindgren particularly pointed out that prior to the Jones Act there had existed no federal right of action by statute or under the general maritime law to recover damages for wrongful death of a seaman, though some of the States did by statute authorize a right of recovery which admiralty would enforce. Congress, the Lindgren Court held, passed the Jones Act in order to give a uniform right of recovery for the death of every seaman. “It is plain,” the Court went on to say, “that the Merchant Marine Act is one of general application intended to bring about the uniformity in the exercise of admiralty jurisdiction required by the Constitution, and necessarily supersedes the application of the death statutes of the several States.” 281 U. S., at 44. Thirty-four years have passed since the Lindgren decision, and Congress has let the Jones Act stand with the interpretation this Court gave it. The decision was a reasonable one then. It provided the same remedy for injury or death for all seamen, the remedy that was and is provided for railroad workers in the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. Whatever may be this Court’s special responsibility for fashioning rules in maritime affairs, we do not believe that we should now disturb the settled plan of rights and liabilities established by the Jones Act.
Petitioner argues further that even if the only available remedy for death is under the Jones Act, the District Judge erred in refusing, to hold that the Jones Act provides for damages for death for the benefit of the brother and sisters of the decedent as well as for the mother. Their right of recovery, if any, depends on § 1 of the FELA, 45 U. S. C. § 51 (1958 ed.), which provides that recovery of damages for death shall be:
“for the benefit of the surviving widow or husband and children of such employee; and, if none, then of such employee’s parents; and, if none, then of the next of kin dependent upon such employee . . . .”
In Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Wells-Dickey Trust Co., 275 U. S. 161, 163, this Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Brandéis, held that this provision creates “three classes of possible beneficiaries. But the liability is in the alternative. It is to one of the three; not to the several classes collectively.” We are asked to overrule this case so as to give a right of recovery for the benefit of all the members of all three classes in every case of death. Both courts below refused to do so, and we agree. It is enough to say that we adhere to the Wells-Dickey holding, among other reasons because we agree that this interpretation of the Act -is plainly correct. Cf. Poff v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 327 U. S. 399.
One other aspect of this case remains to be mentioned. The complaint sought to recover damages for the estate because “decedent suffered severe personal injuries which caused him excruciating pain and mental anguish prior to his death.” Petitioner contends that the seaman’s claim for páin and suffering survives his death and can be brought on a theory of unseaworthiness by force of" the Ohio survival statute. The District Judge struck the reference to the Ohio survival statute from the complaint, and the Court of Appeals held that there was “no substantial basis, in this case,” for a claim for pain and suffering prior to death. There is,, of course, no doubt that the Jones Act through § 9 of the FELA, 45 U. S. C. § 59 (1958 ed.), provides for survival after the death of' the seaman of “[a]ny right of action given by this chapter,” i. e.j of his claim based on a theory of negligence. And we may assume, as we .have in the past, that after ■ death of the injured person a' state survival statute can preserve the cause of action for unseaworthiness, which would not survive under the genéral maritime law. In holding that petitioner had not stated a claim entitling her to recovery for the decedent’s pain and suffering the Court of Appeals relied on The Corsair, 145 U. S. 335, 348, a case brought in a federal court to recover damages under a Louisiana survival statute for alleged, pain and suffering prior to death by drowning where there was an interval of “about ten minutes” between the accident and death. The Court held shch damages could not be recovered there, saying:
“. . . there is no averment from which we .can gather that these pains and sufferings were not substantially cotemporaneous with her death.and inseparable as matter of law from it.”
Plainly this Court did not hold in The Corsair that damages cannot ever be recovered for physical and mental pain suffered prior to death by drowning. The case held merely that the averments of the plaintiff there did not justify awarding such damages in an action under the Louisiana survival statute. The Court’s language certainly did not preclude allowance of such damages in all circumstances under other laws, or even under the Louisiana statute in a case where pain and suffering were “not substantially cotemporaneous with . . . death and inseparable as matter of law from it.” In this day of liberality in allowing amendment of pleadings to achieve the ends of justice, the issue whether the decedent’s estate could recover here,for pain and suffering prior to death should not have been decided finally by the Court of Appeals on the basis of mere pleading. Therefore the question whether damages can be recovered for pain and suffering prior to death on the facts of this case will remain open. In all other respects the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
41 Stat. 1007, 46 U. S. C. § 688 (1958 ed.):
“Any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may; at his election,- maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States modifying or extending the common-law right or remedy in cases of personal injury to railway employees shall apply; and in case of the death of any seaman as a result of any such personal injury the personal representative of such seaman may maintain an action for damages at law with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States conferring or regulating the right of action for death in the case of railway employees shall be applicable. Jurisdiction in such actions shall be under the court of the district in which the defendant employer resides or in which his principal office is located.”
Ohio Rev. Code § 2125.01.
Ohio Rev. Code §2305.21.
“The courts of appeals shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States ... except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court.”
Section 1292 (b) provides:
“When a district judge, in making in a civil action an order not otherwise appealable under this section, shall be of the opinion that such order involves a controlling question of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion and that an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation, he shall so state in writing in such order. The Court of Appeals may thereupon, in its discretion, permit . an appeal to be taken from such order, if application is made to it within ten days after the entry of the order: Provided, however, That application for an appeal hereunder shall not stay proceedings in the district court unless .the district judge or the Court of Appeals or a judge thereof shall so order.”
321 F. 2d 518,532.
No review is sought in this Court of the denial of the petition for mandamus»
See, e. g., The Tungus v. Skovgaard, 358 U. S. 588, 595, n. 9; Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406; Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U. S. 85; Mahnich v. Southern S. S. Co., 321 U. S. 96.
Chelentis v. Luckenbach S. S. Co., 247 U. S. 372; The Harrisburg, 119 U. S. 199; cf. The Osceola, 189 U. S. 158.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Kierejewski, 261 U. S. 479; Western Fuel Co. v. Garcia, 257 U. S. 233; cf. The Hamilton, 207 U. S. 398.
35 Stat. 65, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §§51-60 (1958 ed.).
See Fitzgerald v. United States Lines Co., 374 U. S. 16, 20-21, and cases there cited.
36 Stat. 291, 45 U. S. C. § 59 (1958 ed.):
“Any right of action given by this chapter to a person suffering ' injury shall survive to his or her personal representative, for the benefit of the surviving widow or husband and children- of such employee, and, if none, then of such employee’s parents; and, if none, then of the next of kin. dependent upon .such employee, but in such cases there shall be only one recovery for. the same injury.”
“Presumably any claims, based on unseaworthiness, for damages accrued prior to the decedent’s death would survive, at least if a pertinent state statute is effective to bring about a survival of the seaman’s right.” Kernan v. American Dredging Co., 355 U. S. 426, 430, n. 4. See also Curtis v. A. Garcia y Cia., 241 F. 2d 30, 36-37. (C. A. 3d Cir.); Holland v. Steag, Inc., 143 F. Supp. 203, 205-206 (D. C. D. Mass.).
Cf. Just v. Chambers, 312 U. S. 383.
Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc., 287 U. S. 367.
See Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 15; Foman v. Davis, 371 U. S. 178; United States v. Hougham, 364 U. S. 310; cf. Conley v. Gibson, 355 U. S. 41.
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
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
A state Administrative Law Judge determined that petitioner University of Tennessee (hereafter petitioner or University) was not motivated by racial prejudice in seeking to discharge respondent. The question presented is whether this finding is entitled to preclusive effect in federal court, where respondent has raised discrimination claims under various civil rights laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., and 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
h-i
In 1981, petitioner informed respondent, a black employee of the University’s Agricultural Extension Service, that he would be discharged for inadequate work performance and misconduct on the job. Respondent requested a hearing under the Tennessee Uniform Administrative Procedures Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 4-5-101 et seq. (1985), to contest his proposed termination. Prior to the start of the hearing, respondent also filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, alleging that his proposed discharge was racially motivated and seeking relief under Title VII and other civil rights statutes, including 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The relief sought included damages, an injunction prohibiting respondent’s discharge, and classwide relief from alleged patterns of discrimination by petitioner.
The District Court initially entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the University from taking any job action against respondent, but later lifted this order and permitted the state administrative proceeding to go forward. App. to Pet. for Cert. A27. There followed a hearing at which an administrative assistant to the University’s Vice President for Agriculture presided as an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). The focus of the hearing was on 10 particular charges that the University gave as grounds for respondent’s discharge. Respondent denied these charges, which he contended were motivated by racial prejudice, and also argued that the University’s subjecting him to the charges violated his rights under the Constitution, Title VII, and other federal statutes. The ALJ held that he lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate respondent’s federal civil rights claims, but did allow respondent to present, as an affirmative defense, evidence that the charges against him were actually motivated by racial prejudice and hence not a proper basis for his proposed discharge. Id., at A44-45.
After hearing extensive evidence, the ALJ found that the University had proved some but not all of the charges against respondent, and that the charges were not racially motivated. Id., at A177-179. Concluding that the proposed discharge of respondent was too severe a penalty, the ALJ ordered him transferred to a new assignment with supervisors other than those with whom he had experienced conflicts. Id., at A179-181. Respondent appealed to the University’s Vice President for Agriculture, who affirmed the ALJ’s ruling. Id., at A33-35. The Vice President stated that his review of the record persuaded him that the proposed discharge of respondent had not been racially motivated. Id., at A34.
Respondent did not seek review of these administrative proceedings in the Tennessee courts; instead, he returned to federal court to pursue his civil rights claims. There, petitioner moved for summary judgment on the ground that respondent’s suit was an improper collateral attack on the ALJ’s ruling, which petitioner contended was entitled to pre-clusive effect. The District Court agreed, holding that the civil rights statutes on which respondent relied “were not intended to afford the plaintiff a means of relitigating what plaintiff has heretofore litigated over a five-month period.” Id., at A32.
Respondent appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which reversed the District Court’s judgment. 766 F. 2d 982 (1985). As regards respondent’s Title VII claim, the Court of Appeals looked for guidance to our decision in Kremer v. Chemical Construction Corp., 456 U. S. 461 (1982). While Kremer teaches that final state-court judgments are entitled to full faith and credit in Title VII actions, it indicates that unreviewed determinations by state agencies stand on a different footing. The Sixth Circuit found the following passage from Kremer directly on point:
“EEOC review [pursuant to 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(b)] of discrimination charges previously rejected by state agencies would be pointless if the federal courts were bound by such agency decisions. Batiste v. Furnco Constr. Corp., 503 F. 2d 447, 450, n. 1 (CA7 1974), cert. denied, 420 U. S. 928 (1975). Nor is it plausible to suggest that Congress intended federal courts to be bound further by state administrative decisions than by decisions of the EEOC. Since it is settled that decisions by the EEOC do not preclude a trial de novo in federal court, it is clear that unreviewed administrative determinations by state agencies also should not preclude such review even if such a decision were to be afforded pre-clusive effect in a State’s own courts. Garner v. Giarrusso, 571 F. 2d 1330 (CA5 1978), Batiste v. Furnco Constr. Corp., supra; Cooper v. Philip Morris, Inc., 464 F. 2d 9 (CA6 1972); Voutsis v. Union Carbide Corp., 452 F. 2d 889 (CA2 1971), cert. denied, 406 U. S. 918 (1972).” Id., at 470, n. 7.
The court accordingly held that res judicata did not foreclose a trial de novo on respondent’s Title VII claim.
The Sixth Circuit found the question of applying preclusion principles to respondent’s claims under § 1983 and other civil rights statutes a more difficult question. It held that 28 U. S. C. § 1738, which concerns the preclusive effect of “judicial proceedings of any [state] court,” does not require that federal courts be bound by the unreviewed findings of state administrative agencies. The court also declined to fashion a federal common law of preclusion, declaring that “[a]t least implicit in the legislative history of section 1983 is the recognition that state determination of issues relevant to constitutional adjudication is not an adequate substitute for full access to federal court.” 766 F. 2d, at 992. The court recognized that a similar argument for denying res judicata effect to state-court judgments in subsequent § 1983 actions was rejected in Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S. 90 (1980), and Migra v. Warren City School District Board of Education, 465 U. S. 75 (1984), but distinguished those cases as based on the explicit command of § 1738.
We granted certiorari to consider petitioner’s contention that the Sixth Circuit erred in holding that state administrative factfinding is never entitled to preclusive effect in actions under Title VII or the Reconstruction civil rights statutes. 474 U. S. 1004 (1985).
I — I I — I
Title 28 U. S. C. § 1738 governs the preclusive effect to be given the judgments and records of state courts, and is not applicable to the unreviewed state administrative factfind-ing at issue in this case. However, we have frequently fashioned federal common-law rules of preclusion in the absence of a governing statute. See, e. g., Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U. S. 322 (1979); Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation, 402 U. S. 313 (1971); Chicot County Drainage Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, 308 U. S. 371 (1940); Stoll v. Gottlieb, 305 U. S. 165 (1938); Gunter v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 200 U. S. 273, 289-291 (1906). Although § 1738 is a governing statute with regard to the judgments and records of state courts, because § 1738 antedates the development of administrative agencies it clearly does not represent a congressional determination that the decisions of state administrative agencies should not be given preclusive effect. Accordingly, we will consider whether a rule of preclusion is appropriate, first with respect to respondent’s Title VII claim, and next with respect to his claims under the Constitution and the Reconstruction civil rights statutes.
Ill
Under 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(b), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in investigating discrimination charges, must give “substantial weight to final findings and orders made by State or local authorities in proceedings commenced under State or local [employment discrimination] law.” As we noted in Kremer, 456 U. S., at 470, n. 7, it would make little sense for Congress to write such a provision if state agency findings were entitled to preclusive effect in Title VII actions in federal court.
Moreover, our decision in Chandler v. Roudebush, 425 U. S. 840 (1976), strongly supports respondent’s contention that Congress intended one in his position to have a trial de novo on his Title VII claim. In Chandler, we held that a federal employee whose discrimination claim was rejected by her employing agency after an administrative hearing was entitled to a trial de novo in federal court on her Title VII claim. After reviewing in considerable detail the language of Title VII and the history of the 1972 amendments to the statute, we concluded:
“The legislative history of the 1972 amendments reinforces the plain meaning of the statute and confirms that Congress intended to accord federal employees the same right to a trial de novo [following administrative proceedings] as is enjoyed by private-sector employees and employees of state governments and political subdivisions under the amended Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Id., at 848.
Like the plaintiff in Chandler, the respondent in this case pursued his Title VII action following an administrative proceeding at which the employing agency rejected a discrimination claim. It would be contrary to the rationale of Chandler to apply res judicata to deny respondent a trial de novo on his Title VII claim.
Invoking the presumption against implied repeal, petitioner distinguishes Chandler as involving a federal agency determination not entitled to full faith and credit under § 1738. Reply Brief for Petitioners 16. This argument is based on the erroneous premise that § 1738 applies to state administrative proceedings. See Part II, supra. The question actually before us is whether a common-law rule of preclusion would be consistent with Congress’ intent in enacting Title VII. On the basis of our analysis in Kremer and Chandler of the language and legislative history of Title VII, we conclude that the Sixth Circuit correctly held that Congress did not intend unreviewed state administrative proceedings to have preclusive effect on Title VII claims.
> 1 — (
This Court has held that § 1738 requires that state-court judgments be given both issue and claim preclusive effect in subsequent actions under 42 U. S. C. §1983. Allen v. McCurry, supra (issue preclusion); Migra v. Warren City School District Board of Education, supra (claim preclusion). Those decisions are not controlling in this case, where § 1738 does not apply; nonetheless, they support the view that Congress, in enacting the Reconstruction civil rights statutes, did not intend to create an exception to general rules of preclusion. As we stated in Allen:
“[Njothing in the language of §1983 remotely expresses any congressional intent to contravene the common-law rules of preclusion or to repeal the express statutory requirements of the predecessor of 28 U. S. C. § 1738. . . .
“Moreover, the legislative history of § 1983 does not in any clear way suggest that Congress intended to repeal or restrict the traditional doctrines of preclusion.” 449 U. S., at 97-98.
The Court’s discussion in Allen suggests that it would have reached the same result even in the absence of § 1738. We also see no reason to suppose that Congress, in enacting the Reconstruction civil rights statutes, wished to foreclose the adaptation of traditional principles of preclusion to such subsequent developments as the burgeoning use of administrative adjudication in the 20th century.
We have previously recognized that it is sound policy to apply principles of issue preclusion to the factfinding of administrative bodies acting in a judicial capacity. In a unanimous decision in United States v. Utah Construction & Mining Co., 384 U. S. 394 (1966), we held that the fact-finding of the Advisory Board of Contract Appeals was binding in a subsequent action in the Court of Claims involving a contract dispute between the same parties. We explained:
“Although the decision here rests upon the agreement of the parties as modified by the Wunderlich Act, we note that the result we reach is harmonious with general principles of collateral estoppel. Occasionally courts have used language to the effect that res judicata principles do not apply to administrative proceedings, but such language is certainly too broad. . When an administrative agency is acting in a judicial capacity and resolves disputed issues of fact properly before it which the parties have had an adequate opportunity to litigate, the courts have not hesitated to apply res judicata to enforce repose.” Id., at 421-422 (1966) (footnotes omitted).
Thus, Utah Construction, which we subsequently approved in Kremer v. Chemical Construction Co., 456 U. S., at 484-485, n. 26, teaches that giving preclusive effect to administrative factfinding serves the value underlying general principles of collateral estoppel: enforcing repose. This value, which encompasses both the parties’ interest in avoiding the cost and vexation of repetitive litigation and the public’s interest in conserving judicial resources, Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S., at 94, is equally implicated whether factfinding is done by a federal or state agency.
Having federal courts give preclusive effect to the fact-finding of state administrative tribunals also serves the value of federalism. Significantly, all of the opinions in Thomas v. Washington Gas Light Co., 448 U. S. 261 (1980), express the view that the Full Faith and Credit Clause compels the States to give preclusive effect to the factfindings of an administrative tribunal in a sister State. Id., at 281 (opinion of Stevens, J.); 287-289 (White, J., concurring in judgment); 291-292 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). The Full Faith and Credit Clause is of course not binding on federal courts, but we can certainly look to the policies underlying the Clause in fashioning federal common-law rules of preclusion. “Perhaps the major purpose of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is to act as a nationally unifying force,” id., at 289 (White, J., concurring in judgment), and this purpose is served by giving preclusive effect to state administrative factfinding rather than leaving the courts of a second forum, state or federal, free to reach conflicting results. Accordingly, we hold that when a state agency “acting in a judicial capacity ... resolves disputed issues of fact properly before it which the parties have had an adequate opportunity to litigate,” Utah Construction & Mining Co., supra, at 422, federal courts must give the agency’s factfinding the same preclusive effect to which it would be entitled in the State’s courts.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Respondent’s complaint also included claims under 42 U. S. C. §§ 1981, 1985, 1986, and 1988, as well as the First, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments. App. 17.
The hearing continued intermittently for more than five months, involved more than 100 witnesses and 150 exhibits, and generated over 5,000 pages of transcript. App. to Pet. for Cert. A27.
In Kremer, an employee filed a Title VII discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which pursuant to 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5 referred the case to the New York State Division of Human Rights, the agency charged with administering the State’s employment discrimination laws. The state agency rejected the employee’s discrimination claim, a judgment that was affirmed both at the agency appellate level and by a reviewing state court. The employee then brought a Title VII action, in which the employer raised a res judicata defense. This Court held that under 28 U. S. C. § 1738 the state court’s judgment affirming the state agency’s finding of no discrimination was entitled to preclu-sive effect in the employee’s Title VII action.
Title 28 U. S. C. § 1738 provides in pertinent part:
“The records and judicial proceedings of any court of any . . . State, Territory or Possession [of the United States], or copies thereof, shall be proved or admitted in other courts within the United States and its Territories and Possessions by the attestation of the clerk and seal of the court annexed, if a seal exists, together with a certificate of a judge of the court that the said attestation is in proper form.
“Such . . . 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 fact that respondent requested the administrative hearing rather than being compelled to participate in it does not weigh in favor of preclusion. “[T]he legislative history of Title VII manifests a congressional intent to allow an individual to pursue independently his rights under both Title VII and other applicable state and federal statutes.” Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U. S. 36, 48 (1974) (footnote omitted).
As one respected authority on administrative law has observed:
“The law of res judicata, much more than most other segments of law, has rhyme, reason, and rhythm — something in common with good poetry. Its inner logic is rather satisfying. It consists entirely of an elaboration of the obvious principle that a controversy should be resolved once, not more than once. The principle is as much needed for administrative decisions as for judicial decisions. To the extent that administrative adjudications resemble courts’ decisions — a very great extent — the law worked out for courts does and should apply to agencies.” 4 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise §21.9, p. 78 (2d ed. 1983).
The Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 83, p. 269 (1982), reaches a similar conclusion:
“Where an administrative forum has the essential procedural characteristics of a court, ... its determinations should be accorded the same finality that is accorded the judgment of a court. The importance of bringing a legal controversy to conclusion is generally no less when the tribunal is an administrative tribunal than when it is a court.”
Congress of course may decide, as it did in enacting Title VII, that other values outweigh the policy of according finality to state administrative factfinding. See Part III, supra.
Respondent argues against preclusion on the grounds that the administrative hearing in this case did not satisfy the standard set out in Utah Construction & Mining Co., Brief for Respondent 39-76, and that the ALJ’s factfinding would not be given preclusive effect in the Tennessee courts, id., at 99-105. These contentions were not passed upon below, and we leave them for resolution on remand.
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 GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court.
Should employees and employers be allowed to agree that any disputes between them will be resolved through one-on-one arbitration? Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?
As a matter of policy these questions are surely debatable. But as a matter of law the answer is clear. In the Federal Arbitration Act, Congress has instructed federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms-including terms providing for individualized proceedings. Nor can we agree with the employees' suggestion that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) offers a conflicting command. It is this Court's duty to interpret Congress's statutes as a harmonious whole rather than at war with one another. And abiding that duty here leads to an unmistakable conclusion. The NLRA secures to employees rights to organize unions and bargain collectively, but it says nothing about how judges and arbitrators must try legal disputes that leave the workplace and enter the courtroom or arbitral forum. This Court has never read a right to class actions into the NLRA-and for three quarters of a century neither did the National Labor Relations Board. Far from conflicting, the Arbitration Act and the NLRA have long enjoyed separate spheres of influence and neither permits this Court to declare the parties' agreements unlawful.
I
The three cases before us differ in detail but not in substance. Take Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris. There Ernst & Young and one of its junior accountants, Stephen Morris, entered into an agreement providing that they would arbitrate any disputes that might arise between them. The agreement stated that the employee could choose the arbitration provider and that the arbitrator could "grant any relief that could be granted by... a court" in the relevant jurisdiction.
App. in No. 16-300, p. 43. The agreement also specified individualized arbitration, with claims "pertaining to different [e]mployees [to] be heard in separate proceedings." Id., at 44.
After his employment ended, and despite having agreed to arbitrate claims against the firm, Mr. Morris sued Ernst & Young in federal court. He alleged that the firm had misclassified its junior accountants as professional employees and violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and California law by paying them salaries without overtime pay. Although the arbitration agreement provided for individualized proceedings, Mr. Morris sought to litigate the federal claim on behalf of a nationwide class under the FLSA's collective action provision, 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). He sought to pursue the state law claim as a class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.
Ernst & Young replied with a motion to compel arbitration. The district court granted the request, but the Ninth Circuit reversed this judgment. 834 F.3d 975 (2016). The Ninth Circuit recognized that the Arbitration Act generally requires courts to enforce arbitration agreements as written. But the court reasoned that the statute's "saving clause," see 9 U.S.C. § 2, removes this obligation if an arbitration agreement violates some other federal law. And the court concluded that an agreement requiring individualized arbitration proceedings violates the NLRA by barring employees from engaging in the "concerted activit[y]," 29 U.S.C. § 157, of pursuing claims as a class or collective action.
Judge Ikuta dissented. In her view, the Arbitration Act protected the arbitration agreement from judicial interference and nothing in the Act's saving clause suggested otherwise. Neither, she concluded, did the NLRA demand a different result. Rather, that statute focuses on protecting unionization and collective bargaining in the workplace, not on guaranteeing class or collective action procedures in disputes before judges or arbitrators.
Although the Arbitration Act and the NLRA have long coexisted-they date from 1925 and 1935, respectively-the suggestion they might conflict is something quite new. Until a couple of years ago, courts more or less agreed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced according to their terms. See, e.g., Owen v. Bristol Care, Inc., 702 F.3d 1050 (C.A.8 2013) ; Sutherland v. Ernst & Young LLP, 726 F.3d 290 (C.A.2 2013) ; D.R. Horton, Inc. v. NLRB, 737 F.3d 344 (C.A.5 2013) ; Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348, 173 Cal.Rptr.3d 289, 327 P.3d 129 (2014) ; Tallman v. Eighth Jud. Dist. Court, 131 Nev.Adv.Op. 71, 359 P.3d 113 (2015) ; 808 F.3d 1013 (C.A.5 2015) (case below in No. 16-307).
The National Labor Relations Board's general counsel expressed much the same view in 2010. Remarking that employees and employers "can benefit from the relative simplicity and informality of resolving claims before arbitrators," the general counsel opined that the validity of such agreements "does not involve consideration of the policies of the National Labor Relations Act." Memorandum GC 10-06, pp. 2, 5 (June 16, 2010).
But recently things have shifted. In 2012, the Board-for the first time in the 77 years since the NLRA's adoption-asserted that the NLRA effectively nullifies the Arbitration Act in cases like ours. D.R. Horton, Inc., 357 N.L.R.B. 2277. Initially, this agency decision received a cool reception in court. See D.R. Horton, 737 F.3d, at 355-362. In the last two years, though, some circuits have either agreed with the Board's conclusion or thought themselves obliged to defer to it under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). See 823 F.3d 1147 (C.A.7 2016) (case below in No. 16-285); 834 F.3d 975 (case below in No. 16-300) ; NLRB v. Alternative Entertainment, Inc., 858 F.3d 393 (C.A.6 2017). More recently still, the disagreement has grown as the Executive has disavowed the Board's (most recent) position, and the Solicitor General and the Board have offered us battling briefs about the law's meaning. We granted certiorari to clear the confusion. 580 U.S. ----, 137 S.Ct. 809, 196 L.Ed.2d 595 (2017).
II
We begin with the Arbitration Act and the question of its saving clause.
Congress adopted the Arbitration Act in 1925 in response to a perception that courts were unduly hostile to arbitration. No doubt there was much to that perception. Before 1925, English and American common law courts routinely refused to enforce agreements to arbitrate disputes. Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U.S. 506, 510, n. 4, 94 S.Ct. 2449, 41 L.Ed.2d 270 (1974). But in Congress's judgment arbitration had more to offer than courts recognized-not least the promise of quicker, more informal, and often cheaper resolutions for everyone involved. Id., at 511, 94 S.Ct. 2449. So Congress directed courts to abandon their hostility and instead treat arbitration agreements as "valid, irrevocable, and enforceable." 9 U.S.C. § 2. The Act, this Court has said, establishes "a liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements." Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24, 103 S.Ct. 927, 74 L.Ed.2d 765 (1983) (citing Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 395, 87 S.Ct. 1801, 18 L.Ed.2d 1270 (1967) ); see id., at 404, 87 S.Ct. 1801 (discussing "the plain meaning of the statute" and "the unmistakably clear congressional purpose that the arbitration procedure, when selected by the parties to a contract, be speedy and not subject to delay and obstruction in the courts").
Not only did Congress require courts to respect and enforce agreements to arbitrate; it also specifically directed them to respect and enforce the parties' chosen arbitration procedures. See § 3 (providing for a stay of litigation pending arbitration "in accordance with the terms of the agreement"); § 4 (providing for "an order directing that... arbitration proceed in the manner provided for in such agreement"). Indeed, we have often observed that the Arbitration Act requires courts "rigorously" to "enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms, including terms that specify with whom the parties choose to arbitrate their disputes and the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted." American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 570 U.S. 228, 233, 133 S.Ct. 2304, 186 L.Ed.2d 417 (2013) (some emphasis added; citations, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted).
On first blush, these emphatic directions would seem to resolve any argument under the Arbitration Act. The parties before us contracted for arbitration. They proceeded to specify the rules that would govern their arbitrations, indicating their intention to use individualized rather than class or collective action procedures. And this much the Arbitration Act seems to protect pretty absolutely. See AT & T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333, 131 S.Ct. 1740, 179 L.Ed.2d 742 (2011) ; Italian Colors, supra ; DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 577 U.S. ----, 136 S.Ct. 463, 193 L.Ed.2d 365 (2015). You might wonder if the balance Congress struck in 1925 between arbitration and litigation should be revisited in light of more contemporary developments. You might even ask if the Act was good policy when enacted. But all the same you might find it difficult to see how to avoid the statute's application.
Still, the employees suggest the Arbitration Act's saving clause creates an exception for cases like theirs. By its terms, the saving clause allows courts to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements "upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract." § 2. That provision applies here, the employees tell us, because the NLRA renders their particular class and collective action waivers illegal. In their view, illegality under the NLRA is a "ground" that "exists at law... for the revocation" of their arbitration agreements, at least to the extent those agreements prohibit class or collective action proceedings.
The problem with this line of argument is fundamental. Put to the side the question whether the saving clause was designed to save not only state law defenses but also defenses allegedly arising from federal statutes. See 834 F.3d, at 991-992, 997 (Ikuta, J., dissenting). Put to the side the question of what it takes to qualify as a ground for "revocation" of a contract. See Concepcion, supra, at 352-355, 131 S.Ct. 1740 (THOMAS, J., concurring); post, at 1632 - 1633 (THOMAS, J., concurring). Put to the side for the moment, too, even the question whether the NLRA actually renders class and collective action waivers illegal. Assuming (but not granting) the employees could satisfactorily answer all those questions, the saving clause still can't save their cause.
It can't because the saving clause recognizes only defenses that apply to "any" contract. In this way the clause establishes a sort of "equal-treatment" rule for arbitration contracts. Kindred Nursing Centers L.P. v. Clark, 581 U.S. ----, ----, 137 S.Ct. 1421, 1426, 197 L.Ed.2d 806 (2017). The clause "permits agreements to arbitrate to be invalidated by 'generally applicable contract defenses, such as fraud, duress, or unconscionability.' " Concepcion, 563 U.S., at 339, 131 S.Ct. 1740. At the same time, the clause offers no refuge for "defenses that apply only to arbitration or that derive their meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at issue." Ibid. Under our precedent, this means the saving clause does not save defenses that target arbitration either by name or by more subtle methods, such as by "interfer[ing] with fundamental attributes of arbitration." Id., at 344, 131 S.Ct. 1740 ; see Kindred Nursing, supra, at 1621, 137 S.Ct., at 1426.
This is where the employees' argument stumbles. They don't suggest that their arbitration agreements were extracted, say, by an act of fraud or duress or in some other unconscionable way that would render any contract unenforceable. Instead, they object to their agreements precisely because they require individualized arbitration proceedings instead of class or collective ones. And by attacking (only) the individualized nature of the arbitration proceedings, the employees' argument seeks to interfere with one of arbitration's fundamental attributes.
We know this much because of Concepcion. There this Court faced a state law defense that prohibited as unconscionable class action waivers in consumer contracts. The Court readily acknowledged that the defense formally applied in both the litigation and the arbitration context. 563 U.S., at 338, 341, 131 S.Ct. 1740. But, the Court held, the defense failed to qualify for protection under the saving clause because it interfered with a fundamental attribute of arbitration all the same. It did so by effectively permitting any party in arbitration to demand classwide proceedings despite the traditionally individualized and informal nature of arbitration. This "fundamental" change to the traditional arbitration process, the Court said, would "sacrific[e] the principal advantage of arbitration-its informality-and mak[e] the process slower, more costly, and more likely to generate procedural morass than final judgment." Id., at 347, 348, 131 S.Ct. 1740. Not least, Concepcion noted, arbitrators would have to decide whether the named class representatives are sufficiently representative and typical of the class; what kind of notice, opportunity to be heard, and right to opt out absent class members should enjoy; and how discovery should be altered in light of the classwide nature of the proceedings. Ibid. All of which would take much time and effort, and introduce new risks and costs for both sides. Ibid. In the Court's judgment, the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace.
Of course, Concepcion has its limits. The Court recognized that parties remain free to alter arbitration procedures to suit their tastes, and in recent years some parties have sometimes chosen to arbitrate on a classwide basis. Id., at 351, 131 S.Ct. 1740. But Concepcion's essential insight remains: courts may not allow a contract defense to reshape traditional individualized arbitration by mandating classwide arbitration procedures without the parties' consent. Id., at 344-351, 131 S.Ct. 1740 ; see also Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 684-687, 130 S.Ct. 1758, 176 L.Ed.2d 605 (2010). Just as judicial antagonism toward arbitration before the Arbitration Act's enactment "manifested itself in a great variety of devices and formulas declaring arbitration against public policy," Concepcion teaches that we must be alert to new devices and formulas that would achieve much the same result today. 563 U.S., at 342, 131 S.Ct. 1740 (internal quotation marks omitted). And a rule seeking to declare individualized arbitration proceedings off limits is, the Court held, just such a device.
The employees' efforts to distinguish Concepcion fall short. They note that their putative NLRA defense would render an agreement "illegal" as a matter of federal statutory law rather than "unconscionable" as a matter of state common law. But we don't see how that distinction makes any difference in light of Concepcion's rationale and rule. Illegality, like unconscionability, may be a traditional, generally applicable contract defense in many cases, including arbitration cases. But an argument that a contract is unenforceable just because it requires bilateral arbitration is a different creature. A defense of that kind, Concepcion tells us, is one that impermissibly disfavors arbitration whether it sounds in illegality or unconscionability. The law of precedent teaches that like cases should generally be treated alike, and appropriate respect for that principle means the Arbitration Act's saving clause can no more save the defense at issue in these cases than it did the defense at issue in Concepcion. At the end of our encounter with the Arbitration Act, then, it appears just as it did at the beginning: a congressional command requiring us to enforce, not override, the terms of the arbitration agreements before us.
III
But that's not the end of it. Even if the Arbitration Act normally requires us to enforce arbitration agreements like theirs, the employees reply that the NLRA overrides that guidance in these cases and commands us to hold their agreements unlawful yet.
This argument faces a stout uphill climb. When confronted with two Acts of Congress allegedly touching on the same topic, this Court is not at "liberty to pick and choose among congressional enactments" and must instead strive " 'to give effect to both.' " Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 551, 94 S.Ct. 2474, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974). A party seeking to suggest that two statutes cannot be harmonized, and that one displaces the other, bears the heavy burden of showing " 'a clearly expressed congressional intention' " that such a result should follow. Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S.A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U.S. 528, 533, 115 S.Ct. 2322, 132 L.Ed.2d 462 (1995). The intention must be " 'clear and manifest.' " Morton, supra, at 551, 94 S.Ct. 2474. And in approaching a claimed conflict, we come armed with the "stron[g] presum[ption]" that repeals by implication are "disfavored" and that "Congress will specifically address" preexisting law when it wishes to suspend its normal operations in a later statute. United States v. Fausto, 484 U.S. 439, 452, 453, 108 S.Ct. 668, 98 L.Ed.2d 830 (1988).
These rules exist for good reasons. Respect for Congress as drafter counsels against too easily finding irreconcilable conflicts in its work. More than that, respect for the separation of powers counsels restraint. Allowing judges to pick and choose between statutes risks transforming them from expounders of what the law is into policymakers choosing what the law should be. Our rules aiming for harmony over conflict in statutory interpretation grow from an appreciation that it's the job of Congress by legislation, not this Court by supposition, both to write the laws and to repeal them.
Seeking to demonstrate an irreconcilable statutory conflict even in light of these demanding standards, the employees point to Section 7 of the NLRA. That provision guarantees workers
"the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." 29 U.S.C. § 157.
From this language, the employees ask us to infer a clear and manifest congressional command to displace the Arbitration Act and outlaw agreements like theirs.
But that much inference is more than this Court may make. Section 7 focuses on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. It may permit unions to bargain to prohibit arbitration. Cf. 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U.S. 247, 256-260, 129 S.Ct. 1456, 173 L.Ed.2d 398 (2009). But it does not express approval or disapproval of arbitration. It does not mention class or collective action procedures. It does not even hint at a wish to displace the Arbitration Act-let alone accomplish that much clearly and manifestly, as our precedents demand.
Neither should any of this come as a surprise. The notion that Section 7 confers a right to class or collective actions seems pretty unlikely when you recall that procedures like that were hardly known when the NLRA was adopted in 1935. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 didn't create the modern class action until 1966; class arbitration didn't emerge until later still; and even the Fair Labor Standards Act's collective action provision postdated Section 7 by years. See Rule 23-Class Actions, 28 U.S.C. App., p. 1258 (1964 ed., Supp. II); 52 Stat. 1069; Concepcion, 563 U.S., at 349, 131 S.Ct. 1740 ; see also Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 700-701, 99 S.Ct. 2545, 61 L.Ed.2d 176 (1979) (noting that the "usual rule" then was litigation "conducted by and on behalf of individual named parties only"). And while some forms of group litigation existed even in 1935, see 823 F.3d, at 1154, Section 7's failure to mention them only reinforces that the statute doesn't speak to such procedures.
A close look at the employees' best evidence of a potential conflict turns out to reveal no conflict at all. The employees direct our attention to the term "other concerted activities for the purpose of... other mutual aid or protection." This catchall term, they say, can be read to include class and collective legal actions. But the term appears at the end of a detailed list of activities speaking of "self-organization," "form[ing], join[ing], or assist [ing] labor organizations," and "bargain[ing] collectively." 29 U.S.C. § 157. And where, as here, a more general term follows more specific terms in a list, the general term is usually understood to " 'embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.' " Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105, 115, 121 S.Ct. 1302, 149 L.Ed.2d 234 (2001) (discussing ejusdem generis canon); National Assn. of Mfrs. v. Department of Defense, 583 U.S. ----, ----, 138 S.Ct. 617, 628-629, 199 L.Ed.2d 501 (2018). All of which suggests that the term "other concerted activities" should, like the terms that precede it, serve to protect things employees "just do" for themselves in the course of exercising their right to free association in the workplace, rather than "the highly regulated, courtroom-bound 'activities' of class and joint litigation." Alternative Entertainment, 858 F.3d, at 414-415 (Sutton, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis deleted). None of the preceding and more specific terms speaks to the procedures judges or arbitrators must apply in disputes that leave the workplace and enter the courtroom or arbitral forum, and there is no textually sound reason to suppose the final catchall term should bear such a radically different object than all its predecessors.
The NLRA's broader structure underscores the point. After speaking of various "concerted activities" in Section 7, Congress proceeded to establish a regulatory regime applicable to each of them. The NLRA provides rules for the recognition of exclusive bargaining representatives, 29 U.S.C. § 159, explains employees' and employers' obligation to bargain collectively, § 158(d), and conscribes certain labor organization practices, §§ 158(a)(3), (b). The NLRA also touches on other concerted activities closely related to organization and collective bargaining, such as picketing, § 158(b)(7), and strikes, § 163. It even sets rules for adjudicatory proceedings under the NLRA itself. §§ 160, 161. Many of these provisions were part of the original NLRA in 1935, see 49 Stat. 449, while others were added later. But missing entirely from this careful regime is any hint about what rules should govern the adjudication of class or collective actions in court or arbitration. Without some comparably specific guidance, it's not at all obvious what procedures Section 7 might protect. Would opt-out class action procedures suffice? Or would opt-in procedures be necessary? What notice might be owed to absent class members? What standards would govern class certification? Should the same rules always apply or should they vary based on the nature of the suit? Nothing in the NLRA even whispers to us on any of these essential questions. And it is hard to fathom why Congress would take such care to regulate all the other matters mentioned in Section 7 yet remain mute about this matter alone-unless, of course, Section 7 doesn't speak to class and collective action procedures in the first place.
Telling, too, is the fact that when Congress wants to mandate particular dispute resolution procedures it knows exactly how to do so. Congress has spoken often and clearly to the procedures for resolving "actions," "claims," "charges," and "cases" in statute after statute. E.g., 29 U.S.C. §§ 216(b), 626 ; 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-5(b), (f)(3)-(5). Congress has likewise shown that it knows how to override the Arbitration Act when it wishes-by explaining, for example, that, "[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law,... arbitration may be used... only if" certain conditions are met, 15 U.S.C. § 1226(a)(2) ; or that "[n]o predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable" in other circumstances, 7 U.S.C. § 26(n)(2) ; 12 U.S.C. § 5567(d)(2) ; or that requiring a party to arbitrate is "unlawful" in other circumstances yet, 10 U.S.C. § 987(e)(3). The fact that we have nothing like that here is further evidence that Section 7 does nothing to address the question of class and collective actions.
In response, the employees offer this slight reply. They suggest that the NLRA doesn't discuss any particular class and collective action procedures because it merely confers a right to use existing procedures provided by statute or rule, "on the same terms as [they are] made available to everyone else." Brief for Respondent in No. 16-285, p. 53, n. 10. But of course the NLRA doesn't say even that much. And, besides, if the parties really take existing class and collective action rules as they find them, they surely take them subject to the limitations inherent in those rules-including the principle that parties may (as here) contract to depart from them in favor of individualized arbitration procedures of their own design.
Still another contextual clue yields the same message. The employees' underlying causes of action involve their wages and arise not under the NLRA but under an entirely different statute, the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA allows employees to sue on behalf of "themselves and other employees similarly situated," 29 U.S.C. § 216(b), and it's precisely this sort of collective action the employees before us wish to pursue. Yet they do not offer the seemingly more natural suggestion that the FLSA overcomes the Arbitration Act to permit their class and collective actions. Why not? Presumably because this Court held decades ago that an identical collective action scheme (in fact, one borrowed from the FLSA) does not displace the Arbitration Act or prohibit individualized arbitration proceedings. Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 32, 111 S.Ct. 1647, 114 L.Ed.2d 26 (1991) (discussing Age Discrimination in Employment Act). In fact, it turns out that "[e]very circuit to consider the question" has held that the FLSA allows agreements for individualized arbitration. Alternative Entertainment, 858 F.3d, at 413 (opinion of Sutton, J.) (collecting cases). Faced with that obstacle, the employees are left to cast about elsewhere for help. And so they have cast in this direction, suggesting that one statute (the NLRA) steps in to dictate the procedures for claims under a different statute (the FLSA), and thereby overrides the commands of yet a third statute (the Arbitration Act). It's a sort of interpretive triple bank shot, and just stating the theory is enough to raise a judicial eyebrow.
Perhaps worse still, the employees' theory runs afoul of the usual rule that Congress "does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions-it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes." Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 468, 121 S.Ct. 903, 149 L.Ed.2d 1 (2001). Union organization and collective bargaining in the workplace are the bread and butter of the NLRA, while the particulars of dispute resolution procedures in Article III courts or arbitration proceedings are usually left to other statutes and rules-not least the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arbitration Act, and the FLSA. It's more than a little doubtful that Congress would have tucked into the mousehole of Section 7's catchall term an elephant that tramples the work done by these other laws; flattens the parties' contracted-for dispute resolution procedures; and seats the Board as supreme superintendent of claims arising under a statute it doesn't even administer.
Nor does it help to fold yet another statute into the mix. At points, the employees suggest that the Norris-LaGuardia Act, a precursor of the NLRA, also renders their arbitration agreements unenforceable. But the Norris-LaGuardia Act adds nothing here. It declares "[un]enforceable" contracts that conflict with its policy of protecting workers' "concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." 29 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103. That is the same policy the NLRA advances and, as we've seen, it does not conflict with Congress's statutory directions favoring arbitration. See also Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970) (holding that the Norris-LaGuardia Act's anti-injunction provisions do not bar enforcement of arbitration agreements).
What all these textual and contextual clues indicate, our precedents confirm. In many cases over many years, this Court has heard and rejected efforts to conjure conflicts between the Arbitration Act and other federal statutes. In fact, this Court has rejected every such effort to date (save one temporary exception since overruled), with statutes ranging from the Sherman and Clayton Acts to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Credit Repair Organizations Act, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Italian Colors, 570 U.S. 228, 133 S.Ct. 2304, 186 L.Ed.2d 417 ; Gilmer, 500 U.S. 20, 111 S.Ct. 1647, 114 L.Ed.2d 26 ; CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U.S. 95, 132 S.Ct. 665, 181 L.Ed.2d 586 (2012) ; Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989) (overruling Wilko v. Swan, 346 U.S. 427, 74 S.Ct. 182, 98 L.Ed. 168 (1953) ); Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220, 107 S.Ct. 2332, 96 L.Ed.2d 185 (1987). Throughout, we have made clear that even a statute's express provision for collective legal actions does not necessarily mean that it precludes " 'individual attempts at conciliation' " through arbitration. Gilmer, supra, at 32, 111 S.Ct. 1647. And we've stressed that the absence of any specific statutory discussion of arbitration or class actions is an important and telling clue that Congress has not displaced the Arbitration Act. CompuCredit, supra, at 103-104, 132 S.Ct. 665 ; McMahon, supra, at 227, 107 S.Ct. 2332 ; Italian Colors, supra, at 234, 133 S.Ct. 2304. Given so much precedent pointing so strongly in one direction, we do not see how we might faithfully turn the other way here.
Consider a few examples. In Italian Colors, this Court refused to find a conflict between the Arbitration Act and the Sherman Act because the Sherman Act (just like the NLRA) made "no mention of class actions" and was adopted before Rule 23 introduced its exception to the "usual rule" of "individual" dispute resolution. 570 U.S., at 234, 133 S.Ct. 2304 (internal quotation marks omitted). In Gilmer, this Court "had no qualms in enforcing a class waiver in an arbitration agreement even though" the Age Discrimination in Employment Act "expressly permitted collective legal actions." Italian Colors, supra, at 237, 133 S.Ct. 2304 (citing Gilmer, supra, at 32, 111 S.Ct. 1647 ). And in CompuCredit, this Court refused to find a conflict even though the Credit Repair Organizations Act expressly provided a "right to sue," "repeated[ly]" used the words "action" and "court" and "class action," and even declared "[a]ny waiver" of the rights it provided to be "void." 565 U.S., at 99-100, 132 S.Ct. 665 (internal quotation marks omitted). If all the statutes in all those cases did not provide a congressional command sufficient to displace the Arbitration Act, we cannot imagine how we might hold that the NLRA alone and for the first time does so today.
The employees rejoin that our precedential story is complicated by some of this Court's cases interpreting Section 7 itself. But, as it turns out, this Court's Section 7 cases have usually involved just what you would expect from 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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Per Curiam.
In this case, the Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury in a Federal Employers’ Liability Act case that its award to the plaintiff should reflect the present value of any future losses the plaintiff should sustain. Because such an instruction is required as a matter of federal law, we reverse.
On December 11, 1978, respondent, a railroad policeman, was permanently disabled in a fall from a railroad car that he was inspecting for evidence of vandalism. Alleging that the fall was the result of petitioner’s negligence, he brought suit under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), 35 Stat. 65, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §51 et seq., in the Circuit Court of the city of St. Louis. Respondent introduced evidence that his future wage losses resulting from his injuries would, over the course of his lifetime, amount to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million.
Petitioner requested that the judge submit to the jury the following instruction:
“If you find in favor of Plaintiff and decide to make an award for any loss of earnings in the future, you must take into account the fact that the money awarded by you is being received all at one time instead of over a period of time extending into the future and that Plaintiff will have the use of this money in a lump sum. You must, therefore, determine the present value or present worth of the money which you award for such future loss.”
The trial judge refused to submit the instruction because such an instruction was not provided for in the Missouri Approved Instructions promulgated by the Supreme Court of Missouri for use in FELA cases. Accordingly, the jury instructions on damages were limited to the following:
“If you find the issues in favor of plaintiff, then you must award plaintiff such sum as you believe will fairly and justly compensate plaintiff for any damages you believe he sustained and is reasonably certain to sustain in the future as a result of the fall on December 11, 1978 mentioned in the evidence. Any award you make is not subject to income tax.”
The jury found that the fall was the result of petitioner’s negligence and awarded respondent $1 million in damages.
The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed. 674 S. W. 2d 165 (1984). Rejecting petitioner’s contention that the failure to instruct the jury on present value was error, the court held that a present-value instruction was inappropriate as a matter of Missouri law. The court’s ruling was in accord with two previous opinions of the Missouri Supreme Court holding that because the Missouri Approved Instructions do not call for a present-value instruction in FELA cases, such an instruction may not be given. Bair v. St. Louis-San Francisco B. Co., 647 S. W. 2d 507 (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Burlington Northern Inc. v. Bair, 464 U. S. 830 (1983); Dunn v. St. Louis-San Francisco R. Co., 621 S. W. 2d 245 (1981) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Burlington Northern R. Co. v. Dunn, 454 U. S. 1145 (1982).
As a general matter, FELA cases adjudicated in state courts are subject to state procedural rules, but the substantive law governing them is federal. Although the Court’s decisions in this area “point up the impossibility of laying down a precise rule to distinguish ‘substance’ from ‘procedure,’” Brown v. Western R. Co. of Alabama, 338 U. S. 294, 296 (1949), it is settled that the propriety of jury instructions concerning the measure of damages in an FELA action is an issue of “substance” determined by federal law. Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Liepelt, 444 U. S. 490, 493 (1980). Accordingly, petitioner’s contention that it was entitled to a jury instruction on present value cannot be dismissed on the ground that such an instruction is not to be found in the Missouri Approved Instructions. Whether such an instruction should have been given is a federal question.
Not only is it a federal question, but it is also one to which existing law provides a clear answer. Nearly 70 years ago, this Court held that a defendant in an FELA case is entitled to have the jury instructed that “when future payments or other pecuniary benefits are to be anticipated, the verdict should be made up on the basis of their present value only.” Chesapeake & Ohio R. Co. v. Kelly, 241 U. S. 485, 491 (1916). The rationale for such an instruction is simple:
“The damages should be equivalent to compensation for the deprivation of the reasonable expectation of pecuniary benefits that would have resulted from the continued life of the deceased. ... So far as a verdict is based upon the deprivation of future benefits, it will afford more than compensation if it be made up by aggregating the benefits without taking account of the earning power of the money that is presently to be awarded. It is self-evident that a given sum of money in hand is worth more than the like sum of money payable in the future.” Id., at 489.
We have never disapproved of Kelly or its rationale. The Federal Courts of Appeals have continued to rely on Kelly as a definitive statement of the law applicable to FELA cases, see, e. g., Beanland v. Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co., 480 F. 2d 109, 115 (CA8 1973), and we have ourselves recently reaffirmed our adherence to Kelly’s principle that damages awards in suits governed by federal law should be based on present value. See Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer, 462 U. S. 523, 536-537 (1983). Although our decision in Jones & Laughlin makes clear that no single method for determining present value is mandated by federal law and that the method of calculating present value should take into account inflation and other sources of wage increases as well as the rate of interest, it is equally clear that an utter failure to instruct the jury that present value is the proper measure of a damages award is error. The Missouri courts’ refusal to allow instruction of FELA juries on present value is thus at odds with federal law. The petition for a writ of certiorari is therefore granted, and the judgment is
Reversed.
Justice Powell 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:
|
H
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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.
Pro se petitioner Prunty seeks leave to proceed informa pauperis under Rule 39 of this Court. We deny this request as frivolous pursuant to Rule 39.8. Prunty is allowed until November 2, 1999, within which to pay the docketing fees required by Rule 38 and to submit his petition in compliance with this Court’s Rule 33.1. We also direct the Clerk not to accept any further petitions for certiorari from Prunty in noncriminal matters unless he first pays the docketing fee required by Rule 38 and submits his petitions in compliance with Rule 33.1.
Prunty has abused this Court’s certiorari process. On April 19, 1999, we invoked Rule 39.8 to deny Prunty in forma pauperis status with respect to a petition for certio-rari. See Prunty v. Holschuh, 526 U. S. 1063. At that time, Prunty had filed eight petitions for certiorari, all of which were both frivolous and had been denied without recorded dissent. The instant petition for certiorari thus brings Prunty’s total number of frivolous filings to 10.
We enter the order barring prospective filings for the reasons discussed in Martin v. District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 506 U. S. 1 (1992) (per curiam). Prunty’s abuse of the writ of certiorari has been in noncriminal cases, and we limit our sanction accordingly. The order therefore will not prevent Prunty from petitioning to challenge criminal sanctions which might be imposed on him. The order will, however, allow this Court to devote its limited resources to the claims of petitioners who have not abused our processes.
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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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 petitions for writs of certiorari are granted, except that in No. 84 the writ is granted as to petitioner Franzese only and denied as to the other petitioners, and in No. 317 the petition is granted as to petitioners Mirro and McDonnell only and denied as to the other petitioners. The judgments of the Courts of Appeals in these cases are vacated, and the cases remanded to the respective District Courts for further proceedings in conformity with Alderman v. United States, Ivanov v. United States, and Butenko v. United States, ante, p. 165. It is not evident from the records in some of these cases whether the surveillances at issue were unlawful. It may be that the overhearings in some instances were not achieved by trespass, see Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967); Desist v. United States, ante, p. 244, and Kaiser v. New York, ante, p. 280, or for some other reasons were not unlawful. As we held in Alderman, Ivanov, and Butenko, ante, at 170, n. 3, “the District Court must develop the relevant facts and decide if the Government’s electronic surveillance was unlawful.” Of course, a finding by the District Court that the surveillance was lawful would make disclosure and further proceedings unnecessary. Similarly, it is not clear that each petitioner has standing to assert the illegality of the surveillance or of the introduction of its fruits. As in Alderman, Ivanov, and Butenko, these issues are to be resolved by the District Courts in the first instance.
Mr. Justice Black dissents, except in Nos. 895 and 911, in the consideration and disposition of which he took no part.
Mr. Justice White took no part in the consideration or disposition of Nos. 546, 895, and 911.
Mr. Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or disposition of Nos. 28, 106, 129, 168, 271, 546, 895, and 911.
We read the papers filed by the United States in these two cases as stating that the surveillances neither invaded the premises of the other petitioners nor overheard their conversations.
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:
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A
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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 Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases present a narrow question with several related issues. May the Attorney General, as the executive head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, after taking into custody active alien Communists on warrants, charging either membership in a group that advocates the overthrow by force of this Government or inclusion in sny prohibited classes of aliens, continue them in custody without bail, at his discretion pending determination as to their deportability, under § 23 of the Internal Security Act? Differing views of the Courts of Appeals led us to grant certiorari. 342 U. S. 807, 810.
I. Facts. — The four petitioners in case No. 35 were arrested under warrants, issued after the enactment of the Internal Security Act of 1950, charging each with being an alien who was a member of the Communist Party of the United States. The warrants directed that they be held in custody, pending determination of deportability. Petitions for habeas corpus were promptly filed alleging that the detention without bond was in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment to the-Constitution of the United States, and that § 20 of the Immigration Act, as amended, was also unconstitutional. See note 5, supra. The allegation appears below.
Respondent filed returns defending his orders of detention on the ground that there was reasonable cause to believe that petitioners’ release would be prejudicial to the public interest and would endanger the welfare and safety of the United States. These returns were countered by petitioners with allégations of their many years’ residence spent in this country without giving basis for fear of action by them inimical to the public'welfare during the pendency of their deportation proceedings, their integration into community life through marriage and family connections, and their meticulous adherence to the terms of previous bail, allowed under a former warrant charging deportability. See note 8, supra. On consideration of these undenied allegations, the trial court determined that the Director had not been shown to have abused his discretion. This order was reversed on the ground that the Director “must state some fact upon which a reasonable person could logically conclude that the denial of bail is required to protect the country or to secure the alleged alien’s presence for deportation should an order to that effect be the result of the hearing.”
On rehearing, the Director made allegation, supported by affidavits, that the Service’s dossier of each petitioner contained evidence, indicating to him that each was at the time of arrest a member of the Communist Party of the United States and had since 1930 participated or was then actively participating in the Party’s indoctrination of others to the prejudice of the public interest. There was no denial of these allegations by any of the petitioners, except Hyun, or any assertion that any of them had completely severed all Communist affiliations or connections. As to Hyun the denial was formal and did not include any affidavit denying the facts státed in the Director’s affidavit. As the allegations are set out by the Court of Appeals in the carefully detailed opinion of Circuit Judge Stephens, we refrain from any further restatement here. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s determination that there was substantial evidence to support the discretion exercised in denying bail.
Respondent Zydok, in case No. 136, was arrested in August 1949 under a recent warrant charging that he was subject to deportation as an alien with membership in an organization advocating the violent overthrow of the Government. Act of October 16, 1918, as amended, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 137. At that time he was released on $2,000 bail. Later a deportation hearing was held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service but this Court’s decision in Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33, necessitated a second deportation hearing.
After the effective date, September 23, 1950, of the Internal Security Act of 1950, respondent was again taken into custody by petitioner on the 1949 warrant, pursuant to radiogram direction from the Acting Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization referring to § 20 of the Immigration Act of 1917, as amended by § 23 of the Internal Security Act. The respondent was held without bail by petitioner under an order from the Acting Commissioner of Immigration. The rearrest was based on § 22 of the Internal Security Act of 1950 which provides for the deportation of aliens who are members of or affiliated with the Communist Party. 8 U. S. C. (Supp. IV) § 137.
Thereupon respondent filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Easteni District of Michigan, challenging the validity of his detention without bail. The District Court found that petitioner was an alien and had been and was on arrest a member of the Communist Party. The court determined that there had been no abuse of administrative discretion in refusing bail and denied the petition for habeas corpus.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the District Court, holding that in determining denial of bail the Attorney General could not rest on membership alone in the Communist Party but was under the duty to consider also the likelihood that the alien would appear when ordered to do so under the circumstances as developed in the habeas corpus hearing. The court thought the failure of the Attorney General to allow bail was an abuse of discretion.
That court agreed that the District Court was correct in finding that Zydok was a member of the Communist Party and had been in 1949 the financial secretary of its Hamtramck Division. The respondent’s testimony justifies thé District Court’s finding set out in the margin. The record shows other information in the files of the Attorney General, such as attendance at closed meetings of the Party and the Michigan State Convention. The opinion succinctly sets out the facts concerning respondent’s integration into American life. We adopt that statement. It was said:
“Discretion does not mean decision upon one particular fact or set of facts. It means rather a just and proper decision in view of all the attending circumstances. The Styria v. Morgan, 186 U. S. 1, 9, 22 S. Ct. 731, 46 L. Ed. 1027. There are many circumstances which involve decision.” 187 F. 2d 802, 803.
The Court of Appeals concluded.:
“We think that a fair consideration of the factors above set out in their aggregate require that appeb. lant should have been granted bail in some reasonable amount. This view is more nearly in accordance with the spirit of our institutions as it relates even to those who seek protection from the laws which they incongruously seek to destroy. See Carlson v. Landon, Dist. Director, 9 Cir., 186 F. 2d 183; United States ex rel. Potash v. Dist. Director, 2 Cir., 169 F. 2d 747, 752.” Id., at 804.
II. The Issues. — Petitioners in No. 35, the Carlson case, and respondent in No. 136, the Zydok case, seek respectively reversal or affirmance principally on the same grounds. It is urged that the denial of bail to each was arbitrary and capricious, a violation of the Fifth Amendment; that where there is no evidence to justify a fear of unavailability for the hearings or for the carrying out of a possible judgment of deportation, denial of bail under the circumstances of these cases is an abuse of discretion and violates a claimed right to reasonable bail secured by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Zydok urges, also, that, there was an abuse.of discretion in rearresting him, when there was no change of circumstances, after his previous release under bond on the same warrant. There are other minor contentions as to irregularities in the proceedings that appear to us immaterial to our cbnsideration of these cases.
The basis for the deportation of presently undesirable aliens resident in. the United States is not questioned and requires no reexamination. When legally admitted, they have come at the Nation’s invitation, as visitors or permanent residents, to share with us the opportunities and satisfactions of our land. As such visitors and foreign nationals they are entitled.in their persons and effects to the protection of our laws. So long, however, as aliens fail to obtain and maintain citizenship by naturalization, they remain subject to the plenary power of Congress to expel them under the sovereign right to determine what noncitizens shall be permitted to remain within our borders.
Changes in world politics and in our internal economy bring legislative adjustments affecting the rights of various. classes of aliens to admission and deportation. The passage of the Internal Security Act of 1950 marked such a change of attitude toward alien members- of the Communist Party of the United States. Theretofore there was a provision for the deportation of alien anarchists and other aliens, who are or were members of organizations devoted to the overthrow by force and violence of.the Government of the United States, but the Internal Security Act made Communist membership alone of aliens a sufficient ground for deportation. The reasons for the exercise of power are summarized in Title I of the Internal Security Act. It is sufficient here to print § 2 (15). We have no doubt that the doctrines and practices of Communism clearly enough teach the use of force to achieve political control to give constitutional basis, according to any theory of reasonableness or arbitrariness, for Congress to éxpel known alien Communists under its power to regulate the exclusion, admission and expulsion. of aliens. Congress had before it evidence of resident aliens' leadership in Communist domestic activities sufficient to furnish reasonable ground for action against alien resident Communists. The bar against the admission of Communists cannot be differentiated as a matter of power from that against anarchists upheld unanimously half a century ago in the exclusion of Turner. Since “[i]t is thoroughly established that Congress has power to order the deportation of aliens whose presence in the country it deems hurtful,” the fact that petitioners, and respondent Zydok, were made deportable after entry is immaterial. They are deported for what they are now, not for what they were. Otherwise, when an alien once legally became a denizen of this country he could not be deported for any reason of which he had not been forewarned at the time of entry. Mankind is not vouchsafed sufficient foresight to justify requiring a country to permit its continuous occupation in peace 'or war by legally admitted aliens, even though they never violate the laws in effect at their entry. The protection of citizenship is open to those who qualify for its privileges. The lack of a clause in the Constitution specifically empowering such action has never been held to render Congress impotent to deal as a sovereign with resident aliens.
TIL Constitutionality. — A. Arbitrary, capricious, abuse of discretion. — The power to expel aliens, being essentially a power of the political branches of government, the legislative and executive, may be exercised entirely through executive officers,.“with" such opportunity for judicial review of their action as Congress may see fit to authorize or permit.” This power is, of course, subject to judicial intervention under the “paramount law of the. Constitution.”
Deportation is not a criminal proceeding and has never been held to be punishment.. No jury sits. Ño.judicial review is guaranteed by the Constitution. Since deportation is a particularly drastic remedy where aliens have become absorbed into our community life, Congress has been careful to provide for full hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service before deportation. Such legislative provision requires that those charged with that responsibility exercise it in a manner consistent with due process. Detention is necessarily a part of this deportation procedure. Otherwise aliens arrested for deportation would have opportunities to hurt the United States during the pendency of deportation proceedings. Of course purpose to injure could not be imputed generally ■to all aliens subject to deportation, so discretion was placed by the 1950 Act in the Attorney General to detain aliens without bail, as set out in note 5, supra.
The change in language seems to have originated in H. R. 10, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., introduced by Representative Sam Hobbs of Alabama on January 3, 1949. It was intended to clarify the procedure in dealing with deportees and to “expressly authorize the Attorney General, in his discretion, to hold arrested aliens in custody.” The' need for clarification arose from varying interpretations of the authority to grant bail under the former bail provision. Note 31, supra. In Prentis v. Manoogian, 16 F. 2d 422, 424, the Court of Appeals for ’the ’Sixth Circuit had held that by the earlier provision “Congress intended to grant to the alien a right, and that its failure to follow with some such phrase as 'at the discretion' of the com,-missioner’ vests thé discretion to avail himself of the opportunity afforded in the alien, and not the discretion to allow bail in the commissioner or director.” On the other hand in United States ex rel. Zapp v. District Director, 120 F. 2d 762, the Court of. Appeals for the Second Circuit construed the provision to the contrary. It said:
“The natural interpretation of the language used, that the alien'may be released under a bond,’ would indicate that the release is discretionary with the Attorney General; and that appears to be borne out by other provisions of this section,' as well as other-sections of the immigration laws, where the choice of words appears to have significance.” P. 765.
In the later case of United States ex rel. Potash v. District Director, 169 F. 2d 747, the same court applied its Zapp opinion to explain that the Service’s discretion as to bail was not untrammeled but subject to judicial review. It was in the light of these cases that Congress 'inserted in the bail provisions the phrase “in the discretion of the Attorney General,” the lack of which very phrase the Manoogian case held made bail a right of the detained alien. The present statute does not grant bail as a matter of right.
The Government does not urge that the Attorney General’s discretion is not subject to any judicial review, but merely that his discretion can be overturned only on a showing of clear abuse. We proceed on the basis suggested by the Government. It is first to be observed that the language of the reports is emphatic in explaining Congréss’ intention to make the Attorney General’s exercise of discretion presumptively correct and unassailable except for abuse. We think the discretion reposed in the Attorney General is at least as great as that found by the Second Circuit in the Potash case, supra, to be in him under the former bail provision. It can only be overridden where it is clearly shown that it “was without a reasonable foundation.”
The four petitioners in the Carlson case were active hi Communist work. In the Zydok case the only evidence is membership, in the Party, attendance at closed sessions and the holding of the office of financial secretary of its Hamtramck Division. This evidence goes beyond unexplained membership and shows a degree, minor perhaps in Zydok’s case, of participation in Communist activities. As the purpose of the Internal Security Act to deport all alien Communists as a menace to the security of the United States is established by the Internal Security Act itself, Title I, § 2, we conclude that the discretion as to bail in the Attorney General was certainly broad enough to justify his detention of all these parties without bail as a menace to the public interest. As all alien Communists are deportable, like Anarchists, because of Congress’ understanding of their attitude toward the use of force and violence in such a constitutional democracy as ours to accomplish their political aims, evidence of membership plus personal activity in supporting and extending the Party’s philosophy concerning violence gives adequate' ground for detention. It cannot be expected that the Government should be required in addition to show specific acts of sabotage or incitement to subversive action. Such an exercise of discretion is well within that heretofore approved in Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 537, 541. There is no evidence or contention that all persons arrested as deport-able under § 22 of the Internal Security Act, note 4, supra, for Communist membership are denied bail. In fact, a report filed with this Court by the Department of Justice •in 'this case at our request shows allowance of bail in the large majority of cases. The refusal of bail in these cases is not arbitrary or capricious or an abuse of power. There is no denial of the due process of the Fifth Amendment under circumstances where there is reasonable apprehension of hurt from aliens charged with a philosophy of violence against this Government.
.B. Delegation of Legislative Power. — This leaves for consideration the constitutionality of this delegation of authority. We consider first the objection to the alleged unbridled delegation of legislative power in that the Attorney General is left without standards to determine when to admit to bail and when to detain. It is familiar law that in such ah examination the entire Act is to be looked at and the meaning of the words determined by their surroundings and connections. Congress can only legislate so far. as is reasonable and practicable, and must leave to executive officers the authority to accomplish its purpose. Congress need not make specific standards for each subsidiary executive action in carrying out'a policy. The bail provision applies to many classes of deportable aliens other than those named in the classes listed in § 22 of the Internal Security Act. See note 4, supra. A wide range of discretion in the Attorney General as to bail is required to meet the varying situations arising from the many • aliens in this country.
The policy and standards as to what aliens are subject to deportation are, in general, clear and definite. 8 U. S. C. §§ 137 and 155. Specifically when dealing with alien Communists, as in these cases, the legislative standard for deportation is definite. See notes 3 and 4, supra. In carrying out that policy the Attorney General is not left with untrammeled discretion as to bail. Courts review his determination. Hearings are had, and he must justify his refusal of bail by reference to the legislative scheme to eradicate the evils of Communist activity. The legislative judgment of evils calling for the 1950 amendments to deportation legislation is set out in the introductory sections of the Subversive Activities Control Act. So far as.pertinent to these proceedings, the. new legislation was designed to eliminate the subversive activities of resident aliens who seek to inculcate the doctrine of force and violence into the political philosophy of the American people. To this end provision was made for the detention and deportation of certain noncitizens, including merpbers of the Communist Party. When in the judgment of the Attorney General an alien Communist may so conduct himself pending deportation hearings as to aid in carrying out the objectives of the world communist movement, that alien may be detained. Compare Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414, and Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U. S. 503, 515. This is a permissible delegation of legislative power because the-executive judgment is limited by adequate standards. The authority to detain without bail is to be exercised within the framework of the Subversive Activities Control Act to guard against Communist activities pending deportation hearings. Cf. Mahler v. Eby, 264 U. S. 32, 40. We do not see that such discretion violates the Due Process Clause of-the Fifth Amendment.
C. Violation of Eighth Amendment. — The contention is álso advanced that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, note 9, supra, compels the allowance of bail in a reasonable amount. We have in the preceding sections of.this opinion set out why this'refusal of bail is not an abuse of power; arbitrary or capricious, and why the delegation of discretion to the Attorney General is not unconstitutional. Here we meet the argument that the Constitution requires by the Eighth Amendment, note 9, supra, the same reasonable bail for alien Communists under deportation charges as it accords citizens charged with bailable criminal offenses. Obviously the cases cited by the applicants for habeas corpus fail flatly to Support this argument. We have found none that do.
The bail clause was lifted with slight, changes from the English Bill of Rights Act. In England that clause has never been thought to accord a right to bail in all cases, but merely to provide that bail shall not be excessive in those cases where it is proper to grant bail. When this clause was carried over into our Bill of Rights, nothing was said that indicated any different concept. The Eighth Amendment has not prevented Congress from defining the classes of cases in which bail shall be allowed in this country. Thus in criminal cases bail is not compulsory where the punishment may be death. Indeed, the very language of the Amendment fails to say all arrests must be bailable. We think, clearly, here that the Eighth Amendment does not require that bail be allowed under the circumstances of these cases.
It should be noted that the problem of habeas corpus after unusual delay in deportation hearings is not involved in this case. Cf. United States ex rel. Potash v. District Director, 169 F. 2d 747, 751.
IY. Rearrest. — Finally, respondent Zydok argues that his rearrest on the outstanding warrant, after he had once been released, on bail, was improper. The inquiry on habeas- corpus is limited to the propriety of Zydok’s present detention. McNally v. Hill, 293 U. S. 131, 136. While the Attorney General has made a satisfactory showing that he has good cause for detaining Zydok without bail, no order based on a new warrant has been entered. Zydok did not allow the proceedings to run along but objected promptly by habeas corpus to detention under the warrant. It has been said that the rule in criminal cases is that a warrant once executed is exhausted. This guards against precipitate rearrest. Where, however, the rearrest comes after the discovery of error in release, á new wárrant is not necessarily required. State cases have held that an escaped person or one who secured his release by trick may be rearrested without a new warrant. Although a warrant for rearrest is required by statute, when a convicted person is paroled his status on violation of the parole is the same as that of an escaped prisoner. When a prisoner is out on bond he is still under court control, though the bounds of his confinement are enlarged. His bondsmen are his jailers. While the bailsmen may arrest without warrant, the court proceeds under bench warrant to retake a prisoner. Cf. 18 U. S. C. § 3143.
Although in a civil proceeding for deportation the same branch of government issues and executes the warrant, we think the better practice is to require in those cases also a new warrant.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals in the Zydok case will be vacated and the cause remanded to the District Court for further proceedings in accordance.with this opinion, with directions to order the release of the respondent Zydok unless within a reasonable time in the discretion of the court he is rearrested under a new warrant.
No. 35 is affirmed; No. 136 is vacated.
Reorganization Plan No. V, 54 Stat. 1238.
Sec. 19 of an Act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence of aliens in, the United States, 39 Stat. 889, February 5, 1917, as amended 8 U. S. C. § 155:
“... any alien who shall have entered or who shall be found in the United States in violation of this chapter, or in violation of any other law of the United States;... shall, upon the warrant of the Attorney General, be taken into custody and deported....”
Act of October 16, 1918, 40 Stat. 1012, as amended, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 137, see note 15, infra:
“(c) Aliens who believe in, advise, advocate, or teach, or who are members of or affiliated with any organization, association, society, or group, that believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches: (1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States or of all forms of law....”
Internal Security Act of 1950, September 23, 1950, § 22, subsection 4 (a), amending the Act of October 16, 1918, see 8 U. S. C. § 137:
“Any alien who was at the time of entering the United States, or has been at any time thereafter, a member of any one of the classes of aliens enumerated in section 1 (1) or section 1 (3) of this Act. or... a member of any one of the classes of aliens enumerated in section 1 (2) of this Act, shall, upon the warrant of the Attorney General, be taken into custody and deported in the manner provided in the Immigration Act of February 5, 1917. The provisions of this section shall be applicable to the classes of aliens mentioned in this Act, irrespective of the time of their entry into the United States.”
Id., § 22:
“That any alien who is a member of any one of the following classes shall be excluded from admission into the United States:
“(1) Aliens who seek to enter the United.States whether solely, principally, or incidentally, to engage in activities which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States;
“ (2) Aliens who, at any time, shall be or shall have been members of any of the following classes:
“(A) Aliens who are anarchists;
“(B) Aliens who advocate or teach, or who are members of or affiliated with any organization that advocates or teaches, opposition to all organized government;
“(C) Aliens who are members of or affiliated with (i) the Communist Party of the United States, (ii) any other totalitarian party of the 'United States, (iii) the Communist Political Association, (iv) the Communist or óther totalitarian party of any State of the United States, of any foreign state; or of any political or geographical subdivision of any foreign state; (v) 'any section, subsidiary, branch, affiliate, or subdivision of any such association or party; or (vi) the direct predecessors or successors of any such association or party, regardless of what name such group or organization may have used, may now bear, or may hereafter adopt;
“(F) Aliens who advocate or teach or who are members of or affiliated with any organization that advocates or teaches (i) the ■overthrow by force or violence or other unconstitutional means of-the Government of the United States or of all forms of law;....
- “(3) Aliens with respect to whom there is reason-to believe that such aliens would, after entry, be likely to (A) engage in activities which would be prohibited by the laws of the United States relating to espionage, sabotage, public disorder, or in other activity subversive to the national security; (B) engage in any activity a purpose of which is the opposition to, or the control or overthrow of, the Government of the United States by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means; or (C) organize, join, affiliate with, or participate in the activities of any organization which is registered or required to be registered under section 7 of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950.”
Internal Security Act of 1950, § 23:
“... Pending final determination of the deportability of any alien taken into custody under warrant of the Attorney General,' such alien may, in the discretion of the Attorney General (1) be continued in custody; or (2) be released under bond in the amount of not less than $500, with security approved by the Attorney General; or (3) be released on conditional parole.
See § 22 (1), Internal Security Act, note 4, supra.
See note 5, supra.
Before the passage of the Internal Security Act the four petitioners had been arrested and admitted. to bail on warrants charging membership in groups advocating the overthrow of the Government by force and violence. In our view of the issues now here, these former happenings are immaterial to our consideration of this writ of certiorari.
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
“That section 20 of the Immigration Act of February 5, 1917, as amended by section 23 of Public Law 831, 81st Congress (commonly known as Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950) and section 1 of the Act of October 16, 1918 (8 U. S. C. 137), as amended, are, and each of them is, unconstitutional and void in that they deprive persons, including petitioner, of liberty and property without due process of law, in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in that they abridge the freedom of persons, including petitioner, of speech, the press and assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, in violation'of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and in that they purport to authorize indefinite detention of persons, including petitioner, without bond prior to final determination of deportability.”
Carlson v. Landon, 186 F. 2d 183, 186; Stevenson v. Landon, 186 F. 2d 190.
Id., at 189.
28 U. S. C. § 2248:
“The allegations- of a return to the writ of habeas corpus or of an answer to an order to show cause in a habeas corpus proceeding, if not traversed, shall be accepted as true except, to the extent that' the judge finds from the evidence that they are not true.”
Carlson v. Landon, 187 F. 2d 991.
Quite properly, we think, - no question is raised as to the applicability of the Internal Security Act amendments relating to membership in the Communist Party and allowance of bail, notes 4 and 5, supra, to detention under a warrant based on 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 137 (c), note 3, supra. Cf. Internal Security Act, 64 Stat. 987, Title I, § 2.
“That the petitioner, while under cross-examination by the Chief Assistant United States Attorney, was a consistently evasive witness and his evasive demeanor in testifying in relation to his communistic activities convinces this Court that he is knowingly and wilfully participating in the Communist movement.”
187 F. 2d at 803:
“Appellant was seventeen years.'of age when he arrived in this country from Poland in 1913. Since then he has lived continuously in the State of Michigan. He has been a waiter in an English speaking restaurant in Hamtramck, Mich., for seventeen years and for a great part of that time he was head waiter. He owns his own home in Detroit and has a family consisting of his wife, two sons, a daughter, and five grandchildren. Both sons served in the armed services of the United States in World War II. His children and grandchildren were born in this country and his daughter married here. During World War II while appellant was head waiter in the restaurant he sold about $50,000.00 worth of U. S. War Bonds and during that period he donated blood on seven occasions to the Red Cross for the United States Army.
“Before his second arrest and while he was at large on bail he reported regularly to the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Service. The record'fails to disclose that he has violated any law or that he is engaged or is likely to engage in, any subversive activities.”
Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651, 659; Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, 707; Bugajewitz v. Adams, 228 U. S. 585; Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U. S. 276, 280; United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U. S. 304, 318; Eichenlaub v. Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 521, 528; III Hackworth’s Digest of international Law 725 (1942).
For example compare Act of December 17, 1943, 57 Stat. 600, with Act of May 6, 1882, 22 Stat. 58.
See note 4, supra. The extension of the proscription of residence to aliens believing in the overthrow of Government by force or violence has been progressive, as can be readily observed by following the successive enactments of laws to regulate the residence of aliens since the Act of February 5, 1917, 39 Stat. 874. See 8 U. S. C. §§ 137 and 155.
“(15) The Communist movement in the United States is an organization numbering thousands of adherents, rigidly and ruthlessly disciplined. Awaiting and seeking to advance a moment when the United States may be so far extended by foreign engagements, so far divided in counsel, or so far in industrial or financial straits, that overthro-y of the Government of the United States by force and violence may seem possible of achievement, it seeks converts far and wide by an extensive system of schooling and indoctrination. Such preparations by Communist organizations in other countries have aided in supplanting existing governments. The Communist organization in the United States, pursuing its stated objectives, the recent successes of Communist methods in other countries, and the nature and control of the world Communist movement itself, present á clear and present danger to the security of the United States and to the existence of free American institutions, and make it necessary that Congress, in order to provide for the common defense, to preserve the sovereignty of the United States as an independent nation, and' to guarantee to each State a republican form of government, enact appropriate legislation recognizing the existence- of such world-wide conspiracy and designed to prevent it from accomplishing its purpose in the United States.”
I Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, 106, 120, 141, 144, 151; Lenin, Collected Works (1930), Vol. XVIII, pp. 279-280; Lenin, The State and Revolution, August, 1917, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow (1949), 28, 30, 33. Translations furnished indicate the same attitude on the part of Stalin. Collected Works, Vol. I, pp. 131-137, 185-205, 241-246; Vol. Ill, pp. 367-370. And see Leites, The. Operational Code of the Politburo (1950), c. xiii, “Violence.” See also Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States, S. Rep. No. 1515, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Part 3, Subversives, c. I, B, Alien Control; c. II, C, Deportation of Subversive Aliens.
Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279; Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118, Mr. Justice Douglas concurring at 165.
Bugajewitz v. Adams, 228 U. S. 585, 591; Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U. S. 276, 280.
Mahler v. Eby, 264 U. S. 32, 39:
“[Congress] was, in the exercise of its unquestioned right, only seeking to rid the country of persons who had shown by their career that their continued presence here would not make' for the safety or welfare of society.” See also Eichenlaub v. Shaughnessy, 338 U
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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case arises from more than a decade of controversy between Railroad Transfer Service, Inc., and the City of Chicago Over the city’s persistent efforts to regulate Transfer’s business, under contract with the railroads, of daily transporting by motor vehicle thousands of interstate railroad passengers between the city’s rail terminals. In 1955 the railroads hired Transfer to replace another motor carrier in performing this interterminal transfer service. Bent on blocking this replacement, the city then amended Chapter 28 of its Municipal Code, which had before been primarily directed at regulating taxicab companies, to require that new companies seeking to perform the transfer service obtain licenses from the city by demonstrating, among other things, their ability to satisfy the public convenience and necessity. Because the city threatened to fine Transfer and arrest its drivers if it pperated without a city license for each vehicle, Transfer, without attempting to obtain such licenses, and the railroads brought suit against the city to challenge the validity of the public-convenience-and-necessity section of the ordinance. In Chicago v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 357 U. S. 77, rejecting the city’s argument that the challenge was premature, we held that section “completely invalid insofar as it applies to Transfer . . . .” Id at 89.
In 1959, after our decision in Atchison, the city repealed the invalid section, added some new provisions, and amended or left unchanged others which clearly applied to Transfer but were not specifically dealt with in our Atchison opinion. The amended ordinance, still making it unlawful for Transfer to operate without obtaining licenses from the city, provides that an applicant for a license must, among other things: pay a license fee, hire only Chicago residents as its drivers, maintain its principal place of business in Chicago, and file a detailed written application. Upon receipt of an application, the city must investigate the applicant’s “character and reputation ... as a law -abiding citizen” and his “financial ability” to render “safe and comfortable” service, to replace and maintain equipment, and to pay all judgments arising out of vehicle operation. If the city, finds that the applicant is “qualified” and that the vehicle for which the license is sought is in “safe and proper condition,” the amended ordinance requires the city to issue the license. Licenses are valid for only one year, and under the amended ordinance a licensee must annually go through this detailed application procedure. ’Outstanding licenses are revocable on a number of grounds at the city’s discretion. Finally, the ordinance provides a fine of up to $100 for each violation of any of its provisions and specifies that each day such violation continues shall be deemed a separate offense.
With the ordinance thus amended, the city in 1960 demanded that Transfer apply for licenses. Transfer did so, after unsuccessfully attempting to pay the license fees under protest, and .then brought this present lawsuit against the city, asking the District Court to declare the above-mentioned provisions of the ordinance invalid as unconstitutional burdens on interstate commerce and as unconstitutional attempts to regulate in an area preempted by the Interstate Commerce Act, 24 Stat. 379, as amended, 49 U. S. C. § 1 et seq. While the case was pending, the city again demanded that Transfer cease and desist operations unless it “fully complied” with the ordinance and again amended its ordinance to impose new requirements on Transfer such as filing detailed financial reports and opening its books and records for city inspection. Nevertheless, the District Court dismissed Transfer’s action as premature. Because Transfer had continued to operate by paying its license fees into court and because the city had taken no further action to enforce its ordinance, the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding Transfer’s complaint premature and the ordinance valid on its face. 358 F. 2d 55. We granted certiorari to consider these two holdings and conclude that the action is not premature and that the ordinance is invalid.
First. The prematurity arguments which the city makes here are similar to. the ones it made and we rejected in Atchison. Though the city argues that some of the challenged provisions of the ordinance do not apply to Transfer, the Court of Appeals clearly considered them applicable. Though the city argues that it does not retain as much power to deny Transfer a license as Transfer fears, it is clear that “the City claims at least some power ... to decide whether a motor carrier may transport passengers from, one station to another.” 357 U. S., at 85 (emphasis added)>. That was enough in Atchison to enable Transfer to attack the public-convenience-and-necessity requirement, even though the city there disclaimed any power to deny a license because of economic considerations. It is enough here. It is difficult to imagine a controversy more actual, alive, and ripe than this one. It has lasted for more than a decade. Though Transfer obtained its 1960 licenses after it filed this lawsuit to challenge the ordinance, it has continued to operate only by paying the license fees into court. The city has continually — and even while this case was pending — amended its ordinance to regulate Transfer further and has continually demanded that Transfer fully comply with the ordinance. Though the city-now disclaims any power to “stop” Transfer’s operations, it does not give up its power under the ordinance to fine Transfer and arrest its drivers for operating without licenses or its power to revoke- for discretionary reasons all licenses which Transfer may obtain. In short, although Transfer continues to operate, it is only at the city’s reluctant sufferance. If the ordinance is invalid insofar as it applies to Transfer, then, as we said in Atchison, “that company was not obligated to apply for a . . . [license] and submit to the administrative procedures incident thereto before bringing this action.” 357 U. S., at 89.
Second. The rationale of Atchison compels our holding that the provisions of the ordinance now challenged by Transfer cannot be validly applied to it. In Atchison, recognizing that Transfer’s “service is an integral part of interstate railroad transportation authorized and subject to regulation under the Interstate Commerce Act,” id., at 89, we pointed to various provisions of the Act which in our view completely precluded the city “from exercising any veto power over such transfer service,” id., at 85 (emphasis added). The Act, as we said in Atchison, gives the railroads, not the city, the “discretion to determine who may transfer interstate passengers and baggage between railroad terminals.” Id., at 84-85. That power, that discretion, is precisely what the comprehensive licensing scheme of the amended ordinance purports to reserve to the city. It matters not that the city no longer seeks to exercise that power by requiring a showing of public convenience and necessity. The total effect of the current ordinancé on Transfer’s operations and the burdens it places on interstate commerce are the same. As we recognized in Atchison, the city retains authority to insist that Transfer 'obey “general safety regulations” such as traffic-signals and speed limits. Id., at 88. Many of the provisions of the current ordinance, such as the requirements that Transfer maintain its principal place of business in Chicago, have its drivers reside in Chicago, file annually the most detailed financial reports, and open its books and records for city inspection, bear no resemblance to general safety regulations such as trafile signals and speed limits. Other provisions, if standing alone and enforced by means other than this particular licensing program, might possibly be justified as safety regulations. Castle v. Hayes Freight Lines, 348 U. S. 61. But we need not decide that question now, for here each of these provisions is an integral part of, and cannot be divorced from, the comprehensive licensing scheme that the city seeks to impose as a whole on Transfer. See Adams Express Co. v. New York, 232 U. S. 14. Here the city seeks to enforce each and all of these related requirements by denial of a license for noncompliance and then criminal sanctions for operation without a license. This is the “veto power” which Atchison held the city may not exercise.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Harlan would affirm the judgment below substantially for the reasons given in the opinion of Chief Judge Hastings for the Court of Appeals, 358 F. 2d 55.
§ 28-2. (The provisions herein cited are from the current Municipal Code.)
No vehicle may be licensed until it has been inspected by the city and found to be “in safe operating condition and to have adequate . . . facilities which are clean and in good repair for the comfort'and convenience of passengers” (§28-4), unless it has at least two doors on each side (§28-4.1), and unless the licensee has a specified amount of public liability, property damage, and workmen’s compensation insurance evidenced by policies filed with the city (§28-12). The validity of these provisions is not specifically challenged by Transfer.
Section 28-7 imposes an annual fee of $40 for each terminal vehicle, clearly defined in § 28-1 (p) to include Transfer’s vehicles, and provides that such fee “shall be applied to the cost of issuing such license, including, without being limited to, the investigations, inspections and supervision necessary therefor, and to the cost of regulating all operations of public passenger vehicles . . . .”
Provisions of Chapter 28 require that drivers be public chauffeurs licensed by the city, §§28-1(1), 28-9, and several provisions of Chapter 28.1 appear to make residence in the city a condition to being licensed as a chauffeur, e. g., §§28.1-3, 28.1-9, and 28.1-14.
Section 28-5.1, added for the first time in 1959.
Section 28-5, describing the information to be contained in the application, was amended in 1959 to'provide:
“If the applicant is affiliated or to become affiliated or identified with any person [defined elsewhere to. include a corporation] by . . . service agreement, the application shall contain the full name, Chicago business address and telephone number of said affiliate, and a copy of the. agreement with said affiliate, if .any, shall be filed with the application.”
Since Transfer operates under a service contract with the railroads,. it is conceivable that the railroads might be considered affiliates of Transfer. However, it is clear that the provisions of the ordinance requiring an affiliate to maintain its principal place of business in Chicago, to register with the Commissioner, to carry certain insurance, and to comply with all provisions of the ordinance and-rules issued by the Commissioner, §§ 28-5.1, 28-12.1, 28 — 13.1, cannot be validly applied to the railroads, and the city does not now suggest that they can.
§28-6:
“Upon receipt of an application for a public passenger vehicle license the commissioner shall cause an investigation to be made of the character and reputation of the applicant as a law abiding citizen; the financial ability of the applicant to. render safe and comfortable transportation service, to maintain or replace the equipment for such service and to pay all judgments and awards which may be rendered for any cause arising out of the operation of a public passenger vehicle during the license period. If the commissioner shall find that the application, and all other statements and docu- ■ , merits required to be filed with said application have been properly ^Xecuted, and that the applicant is qualified to pursue the occupation of a cabman or coachman [defined in § 28-1 (m) to include- the proprietor of a terminal vehicle], the commissioner shall issue to him and in his name a license for each public passenger vehicle applied for, to terminate on the Slst day of December following the date of issue, provided that each said vehicle is registered in applicant’s name and is in safe and proper condition at the time the license is issued.” The italicized sentence was added in 1959.
Prior to 1963 a license was subject to discretionary revocation only if it was obtained by an application in which a material fact was omitted or stated falsely. § 28-15.1. This section was amended in 1963 to authorize revocation also where a licensee fails “to carry out any representation made to the Commissioner before the issuance of such license,” and to make clear that revocation under this section may extend to all licenses held by a person who obtains any single license by misrepresentation.
Under §28-14, the city’s, vehicle commissioner may suspend a license at any time that a vehicle becomes “unsafe for operation or . . . unfit for public use,” and “[i]n determining whether any . . . vehicle is unfit for public use the commissioner shall give consideration to its'" effect on the health, comfort and convenience of passengers and its public appearance on the streets of the city.”
§ 28-32.
The city also ordered Transfer’s drivers to submit to medical examinations and fingerprinting.
§28-30.1:
“Every cabman, corporation and affiliate shall keep and provide accurate books and records of account of his operations at his place of business in the city. On or before May 1 of each year, every cabman, corporation and affiliate shall file with the Commissioner a profit and loss statement for the preceding calendar year, showing all his earnings and expenditures for operation, maintenance and repair of property, depreciation expense, premiums paid for workmen’s compensation and public liability insurance, and taxes paid for unemployment insurance and social security, and all state and local license fees, property taxes and Federal income taxes, and a balance sheet taken at the close of said year.
“The Commissioner , . . shall have access to the property, books, contracts, accounts and records during normal business hours at said place of business, for such information as may be required for the effective administration and enforcement of the provisions of this chapter ....
“In addition to the foregoing reports, each cabman shall within thirty days after the six months’ period ended December 81 and within thirty days after the six months’ period ended June 80 of each year file a sworn statement with the Commissioner showing his gross fares collected and his operating expenses for the six months immediately preceding said dates.”
The italicized provisions were added in 1963. As first enacted in 1959, the section was applicable only to taxicab companies.
For instance, the city argues that § 28-30.1 does not apply to Transfer. But, as the Court of Appeals apparently recognized, the 1963 amendments of this section make its first two paragraphs applicable to Transfer. See note 11, supra.
The city argues that its commissioner may only consider the so-called “safety factors” specifically enumerated in § 28-6 in determining whether Transfer is “qualified” to perform the interterminal service. See n. 7, supra. Transfer, perhaps understandably, is afraid that the word “qualified” gives the commissioner unlimited discretion to consider the very same nonsafety factors that he previously could consider under the invalid public-convenience-and-necessity provision.
At the same time the city was assuring the District Court that its threat to stop Transfer was an “idle” one, it was adding a new provision to the ordinance which seems custom-tailored to make Transfer’s already precarious position more .precarious. Section 28-31.2, added in 1963, provides':
“No license which has been. revoked, surrendered, cancelled or not applied for within a period of seven months after such license application is due, shall hereafter be issued.”
The city argues 'that Transfer cannot challenge the principal-place-of-business requirement because Transfer now has its principal, and only, place of business jn Chicago. The provision quoted in n. 14, supra, makes, it clear that neither Transfer, which might want to change its place-of business, nor the railroads, which might want to hire another transfer agent or perform the service themselves, can afford to make any change prior to challenging the plaee-of-business requirement. Under § 28-15, “ [i] f any licensee abandons his . . . place of business in the city ... all his licenses shall be revoked.” After such revocation, no new licenses may be issued.
In particular, we mentioned 49 U. S. C. §§ 1 (4) and 3 (4) requiring the railroads to provide, reasonable and proper facilities for the transfer of passengers between terminals, § 15 (3) giving the Interstate Commerce Commission power to establish such service, and § 302 (c) (2) providing that the interterminal service conducted by any motor carrier under contract with a railroad shall be regarded as transportation performed by the railroad and shall be subject to the same comprehensive scheme of regulation which applies to such transportation. Furthermore,. under a proviso of § 302 (c), the ICC retains power to treat interterminal service as motor carrier service under §304 for the purpose of regulating “qualifications and maximum hours of service of employees and safety of operation and equipment.”
Although, at the time we decided Atchison, the ICC had pot adopted any special regulations for interterminal transfer service, we there noted that it could do so at any time under the Act, id., at 86-87, arid since then, the ICC has, indeed, promulgated under § 304 certain safety regulations which are specifically applicable to motor carriers engaged in such service. See generally 49 CFR §190.1 et-seq.
In Atchison we- noted that the city retains authority to “exact reasonable fees for . . . use of the local streets.” Id., at 88. The license fees exacted here, however, were for the purpose of enforcing this invalid licensing scheme. See note 3, supra. Transfer cannot be compelled to pay them.
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
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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 is an action by a shipowner, Italia Societa per Azioni di Navigazione (Italia), against a contracting stevedore company, Oregon Stevedoring Company (Oregon), to recover indemnity for breach of the stevedore’s implied warranty of workmanlike service. The issue presented is whether the warranty is breached where the stevedore has ■ nonnegligently supplied defective equipment which injures one of its employees during the course of stevedoring operations.
I.
The petitioner, Italia, is the owner of the vessel M. S. Antonio Pacinotti. The respondent, Oregon, agreed to render stevedoring services for Italia in all ports along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Under the contract between the companies Oregon was to have exclusive rights to and control over the loading and discharge of cargoes aboard Italia’s vessels and was to “furnish all necessary labor and supervision and all ordinary gear for the performance of [these] services . . . , including winch drivers and usual appliances used for stevedoring.” Italia was to furnish and maintain in safe and efficient working condition suitable booms, winches, blocks, steam, lights and so forth. The agreement provided that the stevedoring company would be responsible for damage to the ship, cargo, and for injury or death of any person caused by its negligence, and that the steamship company would be responsible for the injury or death of any person or damage to property arising from its negligence or by reason of failure of the ship’s gear and equipment.
During the course of Oregon’s stevedoring operations in Portland, one of its longshoreman employees, Griffith, was injured on the M. S. Antonio Pacinotti when a tent rope snapped. The rope, permanently attached to a hatch tent used to protect cargo from rain, was furnished by Oregon pursuant to its obligation to supply ordinary gear necessary for the performance of stevedoring services. The injured longshoreman sued the shipowner in a state court for negligence and unseaworthiness and recovered a judgment against Italia upon a general verdict. Italia satisfied the judgment and thereupon brought this suit in a Federal District Court for indemnity from Oregon. The District Court found that the basis for Griffith’s recovery was not negligence on the part of the shipowner but a condition of unseaworthiness created by the rope supplied by Oregon, which was found defective and unfit for its intended use. However, the District Court disallowed indemnity because Italia had failed to prove negligence on the part of the stevedore company, since the defective condition of the rope was not apparent. That court viewed the contractual provision rendering Oregon liable for injuries caused by its negligence as an express disclaimer against an implied warranty of workmanlike service. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with one judge dissenting, affirmed, but solely on the ground that a stevedore’s implied warranty of workmanlike service is not breached in the absence of a showing of negligence in supplying defective equipment. 310 F. 2d 481. Because of a conflict between this decision and the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Booth S. S. Co. v. Meier & Oelhaf Co., 262 F. 2d 310, and the importance of the question involved, we granted certiorari. 372 U. S. 963. For the reasons stated below, we have determined that the absence of negligence on the part of a stevedore who furnishes defective equipment is not fatal to the shipowner’s claim of indemnity based on the stevedore’s implied warranty of workmanlike service.
In Ryan v. Pan-Atlantic Corp., 350 U. S. 124, the landmark decision in this area, it was established that a stevedoring contractor who enters into a service agreement with a shipowner is liable to indemnify the owner for damages sustained as a result of the stevedore’s improper stowage of cargo. Although the agreement between the shipowner and stevedore was silent on the subject of warranties and standards of performance, the Court found that the essence of the stevedore’s contract is to perform “properly and safely.” “Competency and safety . . . are inescapable elements of the service undertaken.” This undertaking is the stevedore’s “warranty of workmanlike service that is comparable to a manufacturer’s warranty of the soundness of its manufactured product,” 350 U. S., at 133-134, a warranty generally deemed to cover defects not attributable to a manufacturer’s negligence. See also Crumady v. The J. H. Fisser, 358 U. S. 423, 428-429.
The Court further distinguished in Ryan between contract and tort actions, stating that the shipowner’s suit for indemnification was not changed “from one for a breach of contract to one for a tort simply because recovery may turn upon the standard of the performance of petitioner’s stevedoring service,” 350 U. S., at 134, and pointedly declined to characterize the stevedore’s conduct as negligent, notwithstanding that discussion in the opinion below centered on concepts of active and passive negligence on the part of the shipowner and stevedore. Although in Ryan the stevedore was negligent, he was not found liable for negligence as such but because he failed to perform safely, a basis for liability including negligent and nonnegligent conduct alike.
Subsequent decisions have made clear that the stevedore’s obligation to perform with reasonable safety extends not only to the stowage and handling of cargo but also to the use of equipment incidental thereto, Weyerhaeuser S. S. Co. v. Nacirema Operating Co., 355 U. S. 563, including defective equipment supplied by the shipowner, Crumady v. The J. H. Fisser, supra, cf. Waterman S. S. Corp. v. Dugan & McNamara, Inc., 364 U. S. 421, and that the shipowner’s negligence is not fatal to recovery against the stevedore. “ [I] n the area of contractual indemnity an application of the theories of ‘active’ or ‘passive’ as well as ‘primary’ or ‘secondary’ negligence is inappropriate.” Weyerhaeuser, supra, at 569. And last Term in Reed v. The Yaka, 373 U. S. 410, we assumed, without deciding, that a shipowner could recover over from a stevedore for breach of warranty even though the injury-cáusing defect was latent and the stevedore without fault. We think that the stevedore’s implied warranty of workmanlike performance applied in these cases is sufficiently broad to include the respondent’s failure to furnish safe equipment pursuant to its contract with the shipowner, notwithstanding that the stevedore would not be liable in tort for its conduct.
Oregon argues, however, that the imposition in Ryan of liability on the stevedore in warranty rather than tort was necessitated by the Court’s previous decision in Halcyon Lines v. Haenn Ship Ceiling & Refitting Corp., 342 U. S. 282, which held that maritime principles of contribution between joint tortfeasors prevailing in collision cases were not applicable in suits for contribution by a shipowner against stevedore companies. It further urges that negligence on the part of the stevedore company or its employees was present in all the above cases, and that the Court characterized the warranty in post-Ryan decisions as one entailing an obligation to perform with reasonable safety and reasonable competency. However, the stevedore’s obligation established in Ryan was not merely an escape from the no-recovery consequences of Halcyon, as is evidenced by the fact that recovery of contribution between joint tortfeasors and recovery of indemnity for breach of warranty proceed on two wholly distinct theories and produce disparate results. See American Stevedores v. Porello, 330 U. S. 446. Recovery in contribution is imposed by law and is measured by the relative fault of the joint tortfeasors or shared equally between them, The North Star, 106 U. S. 17; The Max Morris, 137 U. S. 1; Halcyon Lines v. Haenn Ship Ceiling Refitting Corp., supra; while recovery in indemnity for breach of the stevedore’s warranty is based upon an agreement between the shipowner and stevedore and is not necessarily affected or defeated by the shipowner’s negligence, whether active or passive, primary or secondary. Weyerhaeuser S. S. Co. v. Nacirema Operating Co., supra. And the description of the stevedore’s obligation as one of performance with reasonable safety is not a reference to the reasonable-man test pertaining to negligence, but a delineation of the scope of the stevedore’s implied contractual duties. The implied warranty to supply reasonably safe equipment may be satisfied with less than absolutely perfect equipment; however, the issue of breach of the undertaking does not turn on whether the contractor knew or should have known that his equipment was safe, but on whether the equipment was in fact safe and fit for its intended use. As the Court has aptly said with respect to the shipowner’s duty to furnish a seaworthy vessel, a duty which is imposed by law:
“What has been said is not to suggest that the owner is obligated to furnish an accident-free ship. The duty is absolute, but it is a duty only to furnish a vessel and appurtenances reasonably fit for their intended use. The standard is not perfection, but reasonable fitness; not a ship that will weather every conceivable storm or withstand every imaginable peril of the sea, but a vessel reasonably suitable for her intended service.” Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, Inc., 362 U. S. 539, 550.
We do not believe a rope designed to withstand three to five times the pressure exerted on it when it gave way satisfies the standard of reasonable safety. And the District Court specifically found that the rope was unfit for the purpose for which it was intended and that the injury to Griffith was the natural consequence of its breakage.
Oregon, a specialist in stevedoring, was hired to load and unload the petitioner’s vessels and to supply the ordinary equipment necessary for these operations. The defective rope which created the condition of unseaworthiness on the vessel and rendered the shipowner liable to the stevedore’s employee was supplied by Oregon, and the stevedoring operations in the course of which the longshoreman was injured were in the hands of the employees of Oregon. Not only did the agreement between the shipowner place control of the operations on the stevedore company, but Oregon was also charged under the contract with the supervision of these operations. Although none of these factors affect the shipowner’s primary liability to the injured employee of Oregon, since its duty to supply a seaworthy vessel is strict and nondelegable, and extends to those who perform the unloading and loading portion of the ship’s work, Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U. S. 85, cf. Pope & Talbot v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406, they demonstrate that Oregon was in a far better position than the shipowner to avoid the accident. The shipowner defers to the qualification of the stevedoring contractor in the selection and use of equipment and relies on the competency of the stevedore company.
True the defect here was latent and the stevedore free of negligent conduct in supplying the rope. But latent defects may be attributable to improper manufacture or fatigue due to long use and may be discoverable by subjecting the equipment to appropriate tests. Further the stevedore company which brings its gear on board knows the history of its prior use and is in a position to establish retirement schedules and periodic retests so as to discover defects and thereby insure safety of operations. See Booth S. S. Co. v. Meier & Oelhaf Co., supra. It is considerations such as these that underlie a manufacturer’s or seller’s obligation to supply products free of defects and a shipowner’s obligation to furnish a seaworthy vessel. They also serve to render a tort standard of negligence inapplicable to the stevedore’s liability under its warranty of workmanlike service. For they illustrate that liability should fall upon the party best situated to adopt preventive measures and thereby to reduce the likelihood of injury. Where, as here, injury-producing and defective equipment is under the supervision and control of the stevedore, the shipowner is powerless to minimize the risk; the stevedore is not.
Where the shipowner is liable to the employees of the stevedore company as well as its employees for failing to supply a vessel and equipment free of defects, regardless of negligence, we do not think it unfair or unwise to require the stevedore to indemnify the shipowner for damages sustained as a result of injury-producing defective equipment supplied by a stevedore in furtherance of its contractual obligations. See Alaska S. S. Co. v. Petterson, 347 U. S. 396, 401 (dissenting opinion).
Both sides press upon us their interpretation of the law in regard to the scope of warranties in nonsales contracts, such as contracts of bailment and service agreements. But we deal here with a suit for indemnification based upon a maritime contract, governed by federal law, American Stevedores, Inc., v. Porello, supra, in an area where rather special rules governing the obligations and liability of shipowners prevail, rules that are designed to minimize the hazards encountered by seamen, to compensate seamen for the accidents that inevitably occur, and to minimize the likelihood of such accidents. By placing the burden ultimately on the company whose default caused the injury, Reed v. The Yaka, 373 U. S. 410, 414, we think our decision today is in furtherance of these objectives.
II.
The District Court declined to pass on the issue decided above since it found that the implied warranty of workmanlike performance was negated by the provision in the agreement rendering Oregon liable for personal injuries resulting from its negligence. The Court of Appeals declined to pass on the latter question, its finding that the warranty did not extend to nonnegligent conduct rendering a resolution of it unnecessary. The effect of the express assumption of liability for negligence provision in the contract on the existence of the implied warranty has not been briefed or argued in this Court. Accordingly, the issue remains for the Court of Appeals to decide. The judgment below is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.'
The contract reads:
"It is mutually agreed between the parties hereto, that tbp Steve-doring Company will act as stevedores, and that they will with all possible dispatch, load and/or discharge all cargoes of vessels owned, chartered, controlled, or managed by the Steamship Company at all Columbia and Willamette River ports as directed. And it is agreed that the Steamship Company will grant to the said Stevedoring Company the exclusive rights of handling all such cargoes as before mentioned under the terms of this agreement . . . .”
Paragraph VIII of the agreement states:
“The Stevedoring Company will be responsible for damage to the ship and its equipment, and for damage to cargo or loss of cargo over-side, and for injury to or death of any person caused by its negligence, provided, however, when such damage occurs to the ship or its equipment, or where such damage or loss occurs to cargo, the ship’s officers or other authorized representatives call the same to the attention of the Stevedoring Company at the time of occurrence. The Steamship Company shall be responsible for injury to or death of any person or for any damage to or loss of property arising through the negligence of the Steamship Company or any of its agents or employees, or by reason of the failure of ship’s gear and/or equipment.”
The shipowner is liable for unseaworthiness, regardless of negligence, whenever the ship or its gear is not reasonably fit for the purpose for which it was intended and this liability extends to longshoremen and others who work aboard the vessel, including those in the employ of contracting stevedore companies. Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U. S. 85; Pope & Talbot v. Hawn, 346 U. S. 406; Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, 362 U. S. 539. If the owner engages others who supply the equipment necessary for stevedoring operations, he must still answer to the longshoreman if the gear proves to be un-seaworthy. Alaska S. S. Co. v. Petterson, 347 U. S. 396. This liability is strict and nondelegable. Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, supra; Mahnich v. Southern S. S. Co., 321 U. S. 96.
George v. Willman, 379 P. 2d 103 (Alaska); Hessler v. Hillwood Mfg. Co., 302 F. 2d 61 (C. A. 6th Cir.); Green v. American Tobacco Co., 154 So. 2d 169 (Fla.); Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, 32 N. J. 358, 161 A. 2d 69. See Frumer and Friedman, Products Liability, § 10.01, and cases cited therein; Uniform Sales Act, Uniform Laws Annotated (1950 ed.), §15 (1); Uniform Commercial Code, Uniform Laws Annotated (1962 ed.), §2-315. See generally Williston, Sales, §237 (Rev. ed. 1948 and Supp. 1963).
Palazzolo v. Pan-Atlantic S. S. Corp., 211 F. 2d 277 (C. A. 2d Cir.):
“Judgment on the action for indemnity over was awarded to Ryan. We think this error. The trial judge found Pan-Atlantic guilty of negligence in that its ‘cargo officer did not properly perform his admitted duty to supervise the safe and careful loading of the vessel.’ However, Ryan created the hazardous condition by its improper stowage of the pulp paper rolls at Georgetown. We think the improper stowage the primary and active cause of the accident. Under our holdings . . . indemnity over is recoverable where, as here, the employer’s negligence was the ‘sole’ ‘active’ or ‘primary’ cause of the accident.” Id., at 279.
If the stevedore is liable in warranty for supplying defective, injury-producing equipment, of course the provisions of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 44 Stat. 1424, as amended, 33 U. S. C. §§ 901-950, are no bar to recovery. This question was fully resolved in Ryan v. Pan-Atlantic Corp., supra, at 130: “The Act nowhere expressly excludes or limits a shipowner’s right, as a third person, to insure itself against such a liability either by a bond of indemnity, or the contractor’s own agreement to save the shipowner harmless.” See also Reed v. The Yaka, supra.
See Crawford v. Pope & Talbot, Inc., 206 F. 2d 784 (C. A. 3d Cir.); Rich v. United States, 177 F. 2d 688 (C. A. 2d Cir.); McFall v. Compagnie Maritime Belge, S. A., 304 N. Y. 314, 107 N. E. 2d 463. See generally Weinstock, The Employer’s Duty to Indemnify Shipowners For Damages Recovered By Harbor Workers, 103 U. of Pa. L. Rev. 321 (1954).
Cf. Calderola v. Cunard S. S. Co., 279 F. 2d 475 (C. A. 2d Cir.); Orlando v. Prudential S. S. Corp., 313 F. 2d 822 (C. A. 2d Cir.).
Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, supra, at 100. Hugev v. Dampskisaktieselskabet Int’l, 170 F. Supp. 601, 609-611, aff’d sub norm. Metropolitan Stevedore Co. v. Dampskisaktieselskabet Int’l, 274 F. 2d 875 (C. A. 9th Cir.), cert. denied, 363 U. S. 803; Revel v. American Export Lines, 162 F. Supp. 279, 286-287, aff’d, 266 F. 2d 82 (C. A. 4th Cir.).
“The function of the doctrine of unseaworthiness and the corollary doctrine of indemnification is allocation of the losses caused by shipboard injuries to the enterprise, and within the several segments of the enterprise, to the institution or institutions most able to minimize the particular risk involved.” DeGioia v. United States Lines, 304 F. 2d 421, 426 (C. A. 2d Cir.). And see Ferrigno v. Ocean Transport Ltd., 309 F. 2d 445 (C. A. 2d Cir.).
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellee Milan Yuitch, a licensed physician, was indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for producing and attempting to produce abortions in violation of D. C. Code Ann. § 22-201 (1967). Before trial, the district judge granted Vuitch’s motion to dismiss the indictments on the ground that the District of Columbia abortion law was unconstitutionally vague. 305 F. Supp. 1032 (DC 1969). The United States appealed to this Court under the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. § 3731. We postponed decision on jurisdiction to the hearing on the merits, 397 U. S. 1061, and requested the parties to brief and argue specified questions on that issue. 399 U. S. 923. We hold that we have jurisdiction and that the statute is not unconstitutionally vague. We reverse.
I
The first question is whether we have jurisdiction under the Criminal Appeals Act to entertain this direct appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. That Act gives us jurisdiction over direct appeals from district court judgments “in all criminal cases . . . dismissing any indictment . . . where such decision ... is based upon the invalidity ... of the statute upon which the indictment ... is founded.” 18 U. S. C. § 3731. The decision appealed from is a dismissal of indictments on the ground that the District of Columbia abortion law, on which the indictments were based, is unconstitutionally vague. This abortion statute, D. C. Code Ann. § 22-201, is an Act of Congress applicable only in the District of Columbia and we suggested that the parties argue whether a decision holding unconstitutional such a statute is appealable directly to this Court under the Criminal Appeals Act. The literal wording of the Act plainly includes this statute, even though it applies only to the District. A piece of legislation so limited is nevertheless a “statute” in the sense that it was duly enacted into law by both Houses of Congress and was signed by the President. And the Criminal Appeals Act contains no language that purports to limit or qualify the term “statute.” On the contrary, the Act authorizes Government appeals from district courts to the Supreme Court in “all criminal cases” where a district court judgment dismissing an indictment is based upon the invalidity of the statute on which the indictment is founded.
An examination of the legislative history of the Criminal Appeals Act and its amendments suggests no reason why we should depart from the Act’s literal meaning and exclude District of Columbia (hereafter sometimes D. C.) statutes from its coverage. The committee reports and floor debates contain no discussion indicating that the term “statute” does not include statutes applicable only to the District of Columbia. We therefore conclude that we have jurisdiction over this appeal under the Criminal Appeals Act.
Our Brother Harlan has argued in dissent that we do not have jurisdiction over this direct appeal. He suggests that such a result is supported by the decision in United States v. Burroughs, 289 U. S. 159 (1933), the policy underlying the Criminal Appeals Act, and the canon of construction that statutes governing direct appeals to this Court should be strictly construed.
It is difficult to see how the Burroughs decision lends much force to his argument, since that case held only that the term “district court” in the Criminal Appeals Act did not include the then-existing Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Id., at 163-164. The dissent goes on to suggest the Act should be construed in light of the congressional purpose of avoiding “inconsistent enforcement of criminal laws.” Post, at 92. This purpose would not be served by our refusing to decide this case now after it has been orally argued. In the last several years, abortion laws have been repeatedly attacked as unconstitutionally vague in both state and federal courts with widely varying results. A number of these cases are now pending on our docket. A refusal to accept jurisdiction here would only compound confusion for doctors, their patients, and law enforcement officials. As this case makes abundantly clear, a ruling on the validity of a statute applicable only to the District can contribute to great disparities and confusion in the enforcement of criminal laws. Finally, my Brother Harlan’s dissent also appears to rely on the fact that this Court has never accepted jurisdiction over a direct appeal under the Criminal Appeals Act involving the validity of a District of Columbia statute. Post, at 93. Since this Court has never either accepted or rejected jurisdiction of such an appeal, it is difficult to see how the complete absence of precedent in this Court lends any weight whatever to his argument. Neither previous cases nor the purpose behind the Criminal Appeals Act provides any satisfactory reason why the term “statute” should not include those statutes applicable only in the District of Columbia.
One other procedural problem remains. We asked the parties to brief the question whether the Government could have appealed this case to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit under D. C. Code Ann. § 23-105 (Supp. 1970), and, if so, whether we should refuse to entertain the appeal here as a matter of sound judicial administration. That D. C. Code provision states:
“In all criminal prosecutions the United States . . . shall have the same right of appeal that is given to the defendant . ,
The relationship between the Criminal Appeals Act and this Code section was considered in Carroll v. United States, 354 U. S. 394, 411 (1957), where the Court concluded:
“[C]riminal appeals by the Government in the District of Columbia are not limited to the categories set forth in 18 U. S. C. § 3731 [the Criminal Appeals Act], although as to cases of the type covered by that special jurisdictional statute, its explicit directions will prevail over the general terms of [D. C. Code Ann. § 23-105 (Supp. 1970) ]
Since we have concluded above that this appeal is covered by the Criminal Appeals Act, it would seem to follow from Carroll that the Act's provisions control and no appeal could have been taken to the Court of Appeals. Although Carroll seems to be dispositive, it has been suggested that it may now be limited by United States v. Sweet, 399 U. S. 517 (1970), which contains some language suggesting that the Government may be empowered to take an appeal to the Court of Appeals under § 23-105 even when a direct appeal would be proper here under the Criminal Appeals Act. Id., at 518. We do not elaborate upon that suggestion. We only hold that once an appeal is properly here under the Criminal Appeals Act, we should not refuse to consider it because it might have been taken to another court.
II
We turn now to the merits. Appellee Milan Yuitch was indicted for producing and attempting to produce abortions in violation of D. C. Code Ann. § 22-201. That Act provides in part:
“Whoever, by means of any instrument, medicine, drug or other means whatever, procures or produces, or attempts to procure or produce an abortion or miscarriage on any woman, unless the same were done as necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or health and under the direction of a competent licensed practitioner of medicine, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary not less than one year or not more than ten years . . .
Without waiting for trial, the District Judge dismissed the indictments on the ground that the abortion statute was unconstitutionally vague. In his view, set out substantially in full below, the statute was vague for two principal reasons:
1. The fact that once an abortion was proved a physician “is presumed guilty and remains so unless a jury can be persuaded that his acts were necessary for the preservation of the woman’s life or health.”
2. The presence of the “ambivalent and uncertain word ‘health.’ ”
In concluding that the statute places the burden of persuasion on the defendant once the fact of an abortion has been proved, the court relied on Williams v. United States, 78 U. S. App. D. C. 147, 138 F. 2d 81 (1943). There the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the prosecution was not required to prove as part of its case in chief that the operation was not necessary to preserve life or health. Id., at 147, 149, 138 F. 2d, at 81, 83. The court indicated that once the prosecution established that an abortion had been performed the defendant was required “to come forward with evidence which with or without other evidence is sufficient to create a reasonable doubt of guilt.” Id., at 150, 138 F. 2d, at 84. The District Court here appears to have read Williams as holding that once an abortion is proved, the burden of persuading the jury that it was legal (i. e., necessary to the preservation of the mother’s life or health) is cast upon the physician. Whether or not this is a correct reading of Williams, we believe it is an erroneous interpretation of the statute. Certainly a statute that outlawed only a limited category of abortions but “presumed” guilt whenever the mere fact of abortion was established, would at the very least present serious constitutional problems under this Court's previous decisions interpreting the Fifth Amendment. Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463 (1943); Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 36 (1969). But of course statutes should be construed whenever possible so as to uphold their constitutionality.
The statute does not outlaw all abortions, but only those which are not performed under the direction of a competent, licensed physician, and those not necessary to preserve the mother’s life or health. It is a general guide to the interpretation of criminal statutes that when an exception is incorporated in the enacting clause of a statute, the burden is on the prosecution to plead and prove that the defendant is not within the exception. When Congress passed the District of Columbia abortion law in 1901 and amended it in 1953, it expressly authorized physicians to perform such abortions as are necessary to preserve the mother’s “life or health.” Because abortions were authorized only in more restrictive circumstances under previous D. C. law, the change must represent a judgment by Congress that it is desirable that women be able to obtain abortions needed for the preservation of their lives or health. It would be highly anomalous for a legislature to authorize abortions necessary for life or health and then to demand that a doctor, upon pain of one to ten years’ imprisonment, bear the burden of' proving that an abortion he performed fell within that category. Placing such a burden of proof on a doctor would be peculiarly inconsistent with society’s notions of the responsibilities of the medical profession. Generally, doctors are encouraged by society’s expectations, by the strictures of malpractice law and by their own professional standards to give their patients such treatment as is necessary to preserve their health. We are unable to believe that Congress intended that a physician be required to prove his innocence. We therefore hold that under D. C. Code Ann. § 22-201, the burden is on the prosecution to plead and prove that an abortion was not “necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or health.”
There remains the contention that the word “health” is so imprecise and has so uncertain a meaning that it fails to inform a defendant of the charge against him and therefore the statute offends the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. See, e. g., Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451 (1939). We hold that it does not. The trial court apparently felt that the term was vague because there “is no indication whether it includes varying degrees of mental as well as physical health.” 305 F. Supp., at 1034. It is true that the legislative history of the statute gives no guidance as to whether “health” refers to both a patient’s mental and physical state. The term “health” was introduced into the law in 1901 when the statute was enacted in substantially its present form. The House Report on the bill contains no discussion of the term “health” and there was no Senate report. Nor have we found any District of Columbia cases prior to this District Court decision that shed any light on the question. Since that decision, however, the issue has been considered in Doe v. General Hospital of the District of Columbia, 313 F. Supp. 1170 (DC 1970). There District Judge Waddy construed the statute to permit abortions “for mental health reasons whether or not the patient had a previous history of mental defects.” Id., at 1174-1175. The same construction was followed by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in further proceedings in the same case. 140 U. S. App. D. C. 149 and 153, 434 F. 2d 423 and 427 (1970). We see no reason why this interpretation of the statute should not be followed. Certainly this construction accords with the general usage and modern understanding of the word “health,” which includes psychological as well as physical well-being. Indeed Webster’s Dictionary, in accord with that common usage, properly defines health as the “[s]tate of being . . . sound in body [or] mind.” Viewed in this light, the term “health” presents no problem of vagueness. Indeed, whether a particular operation is necessary for a patient’s physical or mental health is a judgment that physicians are obviously called upon to make routinely whenever surgery is considered.
We therefore hold that properly construed the District of Columbia abortion law is not unconstitutionally vague, and that the trial court erred in dismissing the indictments on that ground. Appellee has suggested that there are other reasons why the dismissal of the indictments should be affirmed. Essentially, these arguments are based on this Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965). Although there was some reference to these arguments in the opinion of the court below, we read it as holding simply that the statute was void for vagueness because it failed in that court’s language to “give that certainty which due process of law considers essential in a criminal statute.” 305 F. Supp., at 1034. Since that question of vagueness was the only issue passed upon by the District Court it is the only issue we reach here. United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188 (1939); United States v. Petrillo, 332 U. S. 1 (1947); United States v. Blue, 384 U. S. 251, 256 (1966).
The judgment is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Stewart, and Mr. Justice White join in Part I of this opinion. The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice HarlaN, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice BlackmuN join in Part II of this opinion.
The Act states in pertinent part:
“An appeal may be taken by and on behalf of the United States from the district courts direct to the Supreme Court of the United States in all criminal cases in the following instances:
“From a decision or judgment setting aside, or dismissing any indictment or information, or any count thereof, where such decision or judgment is based upon the invalidity or construction of the statute upon which the indictment or information is founded.” 18 U. S. C. § 3731.
See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 8113, 59th Cong., 2d Sess.; H. R. Rep. No. 2119, 59th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. Rep. No. 45 and S. Rep. No. 868, 77th Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 2052, 77th Cong., 2d Sess.
The District Judge stated:
“It is suggested that these words ['as necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or health’] are not precise; that, as interpreted, they improperly limit the physician in carrying out his professional responsibilities; and that they interfere with a woman’s right to avoid childbirth for any reason. The word ‘health’ is not defined and in fact remains so vague in its interpretation and the practice under the act that there is no indication whether it includes varying degrees of mental as well as physical health. While the law generally has been careful not to interfere with medical judgment of competent physicians in treatment of individual patients, the physician in this instance is placed in a particularly unconscionable position under the conflicting and inadequate interpretations of the D. C. abortion statute now prevailing. The Court of Appeals established by such early cases as Peckham v. United States, 96 U. S. App. D. C. 312, 226 F. 2d 34 (1955), cert. denied 350 U. S. 912, 76 S. Ct. 195, 100 L. Ed. 800, and Williams v. United States, 78 U. S. App. D. C. 147, 138 F. 2d 81, 153 A. L. R. 1213 (1943), that upon the Government establishing that a physician committed an abortion, the burden shifted to the physician to justify his acts. In other words, he is presumed guilty and remains so unless a jury can be persuaded that his acts were necessary for the preservation of the woman’s life or health. These holdings, which may well offend the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, as interpreted in recent decisions such as Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 89 S. Ct. 1532, 23 L. Ed. 2d 57 (1969), and United States v. Gainey, 380 U. S. 63, 85 S. Ct. 754, 13 L. Ed. 2d 658 (1965), also emphasize the lack of necessary precision in this criminal statute. The jury’s acceptance or nonacceptance of an individual doctor’s interpretation of the ambivalent and uncertain word ‘health’ should not determine whether he stands convicted of a felony, facing ten years’ imprisonment. His professional judgment made in good faith should not be challenged. There is no clear standard to guide either the doctor, the jury or the Court. No body of medical knowledge delineates what degree of mental or physical health or combination of the two is required to make an abortion conducted by a competent physician legal or illegal under the Code. . . .” 305 F. Supp. 1032, 1034.
The trial court also cited Peckham v. United States, 96 U. S. App. D. C. 312, 226 F. 2d 34 (1955), as dealing with the D. C. abortion law. However, the opinion in that case does not discuss the burden of proof under the statute.
Before 1901 the existing statute allowed abortion only “for the purpose of preserving the life of any woman pregnant.” W. Abert & B. Lovejoy, The Compiled Statutes in Force in the District of Columbia, c. XVI, § 15, p. 159 (1894).
H. R. Rep. No. 1017, 56th Cong., 1st Sess.
Our Brother Douglas appears to fear that juries might convict doctors in any abortion case simply because some jurors believe all abortions are evil. Of course such a danger exists in all criminal cases, not merely those involving abortions. But there are well-established methods defendants may use to protect themselves against such jury prejudice: continuances, changes of venue, challenges to prospective jurors on voir dire, and motions to set aside verdicts which may have been produced by prejudice. And of course a court should always set aside a jury verdict of guilt when there is not evidence from which a jury could find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
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:
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E
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sc_issuearea
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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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This controversy started with a union demand on behalf of the nonoperating employees for a general 25-cent-per-hour wage increase and a requirement of six months’ advance notice of impending layoffs and abolition of job positions. The demand was made of virtually all Class I railroads, including Florida East Coast Railway Co. (hereinafter called FEC). The dispute underwent negotiations and mediation as required by the Railway Labor Act. When those procedures proved unsuccessful, a Presidential Emergency Board was created under § 10 of the Act, which after hearings recommended a general pay increase of about 10 cents per hour and a requirement of at least five days’ notice before job abolition. In June 1962, this settlement was accepted by all the carriers except FEC. Thereupon, further mediation was invoked under the Act but again no settlement was reached. The Act makes no provision for compulsory arbitration. Section 5 First does, however, provide for voluntary arbitration at the suggestion of the National Mediation Board. The suggestion was made but both the unions and FEC refused. Further negotiations were unsuccessful and on January 23, 1963, the nonoperating unions struck. When that happened, most operating employees refused to cross the picket lines.
FEC shut down for a short period; and then on February 3, 1963, resumed operations by employing supervisory personnel and replacements to fill the jobs of the strikers and of those operating employees who would not cross the picket lines. FEC made individual agreements with the replacements concerning their rates of pay, rules and working agreements on terms substantially different from those in the outstanding collective bargaining agreements with the various unions. Thereafter, FEC proposed formally to abolish all the existing collective bargaining agreements and to substitute another agreement -that would make rather sweeping departures in numerous respects from the existing collective bargaining agreements. Negotiations between FEC and the unions broke down. The unions then invoked the mediation services of the National Mediation Board relative to the proposed changes, but the carrier refused. The unions thereafter agreed to submit the underlying dispute — the one concerning wages and notice — to arbitration. But FEC refused arbitration and shortly thereafter established another new agreement by unilateral action and operated under it until the present action was instituted by the United States in 1964 — a suit charging that the unilateral promulgation of the new agreement violated the Act. The nonoperating unions intervened as plaintiffs and hearings were held. Meanwhile, the Court of Appeals decided Florida East Coast R. Co. v. Brotherhood of R. Trainmen, 336 F. 2d 172, a parallel injunctive suit brought against FEC by an operating union and similarly complaining of FEC’s unilateral promulgation of the new agreement. That court held that FEC had violated the Act by its unilateral abrogation of the existing collective bargaining agreements. It ruled, however, that FEC could unilaterally institute such changes in its existing agreements as the District Court found to be “reasonably necessary to effectuate its right to continue to run its railroad under the strike conditions.” 336 F. 2d, at 182. The District Court thereafter entered injunctions in the Trainmen case, and in the present case, requiring FEC to abide by all the rates of pay, rules, and working conditions specified in the existing collective bargaining agreements until the termination of the statutory mediation procedure “except upon specific authorization of this Court after a finding of reasonable necessity therefor upon application of the FEC to this Court.”
Thereupon FEC filed an application for approval of some departures from its existing agreements with its nonoperating unions. The District Court, after hearings, granted some requests and denied others. Thus it permitted FEC to exceed the ratio of apprentices to journeymen and age limitations established by the collective bargaining agreements, to contract out certain work, and to use supervisory personnel to perform certain specified jobs where it appeared that trained personnel were unavailable. The District Court denied FEC’s request that it be permitted to disregard completely craft and seniority district restrictions, that it be allowed to use supervisors to perform craft work whenever it desired, that it be relieved of the duty to provide seniority rosters,, that it be permitted to contract out work whenever trained personnel were unavailable, and that the union shop be declared void and unenforceable as to employees hired after January 23, 1963. Both sides appealed. The Court of Appeals affirmed on the basis of its decision in the Trainmen case. 348 F. 2d 682. The unions, the United States, and FEC each petitioned for a writ of certiorari which we granted. 382 U. S. 1008.
The controversy centers around § 2 Seventh of the Act, which provides:
“No carrier, its officers or agents shall change the rates of pay, rules, or working conditions of its employees, as a class as embodied in agreements except in the manner prescribed in such agreements or in section 6 of this Act.”
The demand for a 25-cent-per-hour wage increase and for six months’ advance notice of impending layoffs and job abolitions was a major dispute covered by § 2 Seventh (Elgin, J. & E. R. Co. v. Burley, 325 U. S. 711, 723) and it had proceeded through all the major dispute procedures required by the Act without settlement. The unions, having made their demands and having exhausted all the procedures provided by Congress, were therefore warranted in striking. For the strike has been the ultimate sanction of the union, compulsory arbitration not being provided.
At that juncture self-help was also available to the carrier as we held in Locomotive Engineers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 372 U. S. 284; 291: “. . . both parties, having exhausted all of the statutory procedures, are relegated to self-help in adjusting this dispute . . . .”
The carrier’s right of self-help is underlined by the public service aspects of its business. “More is involved than the settlement of a private controversy without appreciable consequences to the public.” Virginian Ry. v. Federation, 300 U. S. 515, 552. The Interstate Commerce Act, 24 Stat. 379, as amended, places a responsibility on common carriers by rail to provide transportation. The duty runs not to shippers alone but to the public. In our complex society, metropolitan areas in particular might suffer a calamity if rail service for freight or for passengers were stopped. Food and other critical supplies might be dangerously curtailed; vital services might be impaired; whole metropolitan communities might be paralyzed.
We emphasize these aspects of the problem not to say that the carrier’s duty to operate is absolute, but only to emphasize that it owes the public reasonable efforts to maintain the public service at all times, even when beset by labor-management controversies and that this duty continues even when all the mediation provisions of the Act have been exhausted and self-help becomes available to both sides of the labor-management controversy.
If all that were involved were the pay increase and the notice to be given on layoffs or job abolition, the problem would be simple. The complication arises because the carrier, having undertaken to keep its vital services going with a substantially different labor force, finds it necessary or desirable to make other changes in the collective bargaining agreements. Thus we find FEC in this case anxious to exceed the ratio of apprentices to journeymen and the age limitations in the collective bargaining agreements, to make changes in the contracting-out provisions, to disregard requirements for trained personnel, to discard craft and seniority restrictions, the union shop provision, and so on. Each of these technically is included in the words “rules, or working conditions of its employees, as a class as embodied in agreements” within the meaning of § 2 Seventh of the Act. It is, therefore, argued with force that each of these issues must run the same gantlet of negotiation and mediation, as did the pay and notice provisions that gave rise to this strike.
The practical effect of that conclusion would be to bring the railroad operations to a grinding halt. For the procedures of the Act are purposely long and drawn out, based on the hope that reason and practical considerations will provide in time an agreement that resolves the dispute. If, therefore, § 2 Seventh is applicable after a lawful strike has been called and after lawful self-help has been invoked by the carrier, the right of self-help might well become unilateral to the workers alone, and denied the carrier. For when a carrier improvises and employs an emergency labor force it may or may not be able to comply with the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, drafted to meet the sophisticated requirements of a trained and professional labor force. The union remains the bargaining representative of all the employees in the designated craft, whether union members or not. Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U. S. 192. All these employees of the railroad are entitled to the benefits of the collective bargaining agreement, and the carrier may not supersede the agreement by individual contracts even though particular employees are willing to enter into them. See Telegraphers v. Ry. Express Agency, 321 U. S. 342, 347. But when a strike occurs, both the carrier’s right of self-help and its duty to operate, if reasonably possible, might well be academic if it could not depart from the terms and conditions of the collective bargaining agreement without first following the lengthy course the Act otherwise prescribes.
At the same time, any power to change or revise the basic collective agreement must be closely confined and supervised. These collective bargaining agreements are the product of years of struggle and negotiation; they represent the rules governing the community of striking employees and the carrier. That community is not destroyed by the strike, as the strike represents only an interruption in the continuity of the relation. Were a strike to be the occasion for a carrier to tear up and annul, so to speak, the entire collective bargaining agreement, labor-management relations would revert to the jungle. A carrier could then use the occasion of a strike over a simple wage and hour dispute to make sweeping changes in its work-rules so as to permit operation on terms which could not conceivably have been obtained through negotiation. Having made such changes, a carrier might well have little incentive to reach a settlement of the dispute that led to the strike. It might indeed have a strong reason to prolong the strike and even break the union. The temptation might be strong to precipitate a strike in order to permit the carrier to abrogate the entire collective bargaining agreement on terms most favorable to it. The processes of bargaining and mediation called for by the Act would indeed become a sham if a carrier could unilaterally achieve what the Act requires be done by the other orderly procedures.
While the carrier has the duty to make all reasonable efforts to continue its operations during a strike, its power to make new terms and conditions governing the new labor force is strictly confined, if the spirit of the Railway Labor Act is to be honored. The Court of Appeals used the words “reasonably necessary.” We do not disagree, provided that “reasonably necessary” is construed strictly. The carrier must respect the continuing status of the collective bargaining agreement and make only such changes as are truly necessary in light of the inexperience and lack of training of the new labor force or the lesser number of employees available for the continued operation. The collective bargaining agreement remains the norm; the burden is on the carrier to show the need for any alteration of it, as respects the new and different class of employees that it is required to employ in order to maintain that continuity of operation that the law requires of it.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Fortas took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
§ 6, 44 Stat. 582, as amended, 48 Stat. 1197, 45 U. S. C. § 156 (1964 ed.); § 5 First, 44 Stat. 580, as amended, 48 Stat. 1195, 45 U. S. C. § 155 First (1964 ed.).
44 Stat. 586, as amended, 48 Stat. 1197, 45 U. S. C. §160 (1964 ed.).
44 Stat. 580, as amended, 48 Stat. 1195, 45 U. S. C. § 155 First (1964 ed.).
We have no doubt that the United States had standing to bring this action. Section 2 Tenth, 48 Stat. 1189, 45 U. S. C. § 152 Tenth (1964 ed.), makes it the duty of the United States attorney to “institute in the proper court and to prosecute ... all necessary proceedings for the enforcement” of § 2 (emphasis added) which FEC is here charged with violating. See United States v. Republic Steel Corp., 362 U. S. 482, 491-492.
48 Stat. 1188, 45 U. S. C. §152 Seventh (1964 ed.).
49 U. S. C. § 1 (4) (1964 ed.) provides in part:
“It shall be the duty of every common carrier subject to this chapter to provide and furnish transportation upon reasonable request therefor, and to establish reasonable through routes with other such carriers, and just and reasonable rates, fares, charges, and classifications applicable thereto; . . .”
49 U. S. C. §1 (11) (1964 ed.) provides in part:
“It shall be the duty of every carrier by railroad subject to this chapter to furnish safe and adequate car service and to establish, observe, and enforce just and reasonable rules, regulations, and practices with respect to car service; . . .”
49 U. S. C. §8 (1964 ed.) provides in part:
“In case any common carrier subject to the provisions of this chapter shall do, cause to be done, or permit to be done any act, matter, or thing in this chapter prohibited or declared to be unlawful, or shall omit to do any act, matter, or thing in this chapter required to be done, such common carrier shall be liable to the person or persons injured thereby for the full amount of damages sustained in consequence of any such violation of the provisions of this chapter . . . .”
In this connection, it bears emphasis that the District Court’s authorization to deviate in part from the collective bargaining agreement would, as FEC readily concedes, terminate at the conclusion of the strike. At that time, the terms of the earlier collective bargaining agreement, except as modified by any new agreement of the parties, would be fully in force.
If FEC had precipitated the strike by refusing to arbitrate, then it would be barred by Trainmen v. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 321 U. S. 50, from obtaining injunctive relief in the courts since it would have failed to make “every reasonable effort” to settle the dispute within the meaning of §8 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 72, 29 U. S. C. § 108 (1964 ed.). And we assume that seeking relief from provisions of the collective bargaining agreements would have fallen under the same ban. But in the instant ease both FEC and the unions refused voluntary arbitration and the strike followed. Later the unions changed their mind and agreed to arbitration, FEC refusing. But by then the strike was on and the right to “self-help” had accrued. If an issue concerning the good faith of a party in refusing a pre-strike opportunity to arbitrate were presented, different considerations would apply.
Moreover, since the justification for permitting the carrier to depart from the terms of the collective bargaining agreement lies in its duty to continue to serve the public, a district court called upon to grant a carrier’s relief from provisions of the collective bargaining agreement should satisfy itself that the carrier is engaged in a good-faith effort to restore service to the public and not, e. g., using the strike to curtail that service.
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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. Chief Justice Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a question concerning the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court to impose certain conditions upon a strike injunction issued in a railway labor dispute.
The essential facts are not complicated. The respondent Railroads operate a 302-mile branch between Wichita Falls, Texas, and Forgan, Oklahoma. The line was originally operated with steam locomotives capable of only short runs, and this necessitated the stationing of five way-freight crews along the route. After longer-range diesel locomotives were purchased to replace the steam equipment, the Railroads issued general orders which doubled the length of the way-freight runs, thereby eliminating-the jobs of two of the five way-freight crews and changing the home or away-from-home terminals of the remaining crews.
The petitioner Brotherhoods, representing the engineers, firemen, conductors and brakemen affected, protested the issuance of the orders and invoked the services of the National Mediation Board. Nonetheless, the Railroads put the change into effect. After the Board advised the parties that it did not consider the dispute one subject to mediation, the unions called a strike. On the same day the Railroads filed a complaint for injunctive relief in the Federal District Court and obtained a temporary restraining order. The Railroads then submitted the dispute to the National Railroad Adjustment Board, to National Committees and Disputes Committees established by the collective bargaining agreements, and to the National Mediation Board. They amended their complaint in the District Court to allege the various submissions.
After a hearing, the District Court granted the injunction pending decision by the Adjustment Board, but it did so upon certain conditions which are the subject of the controversy before us. These conditions required that the Railroads either (1) restore the situation which existed prior to the General Orders, or (2) pay the employees adversely affected by the orders, the wages they would have received had the orders not been issued.
' Both sides appealed, the unions from the injunction against the strike, and the Railroads from the conditions requiring preservation of the status quo. The Court of Appeals sustained the injunction but vacated the conditions, holding that the District Court had no power to attach them. 266 F. 2d 335. In so holding, the Court of Appeals reasoned that imposition of conditions of this character involved a preliminary judgment on the merits of a “minor dispute,” the resolution of which is committed by the Railway Labor Act, § 3 (i), 48 Stat. 1189, 45 U. S. C. § 153, to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Adjustment Board. The question of a district judge’s jurisdiction to impose this type of condition upon an injunction issued to preserve the Adjustment Board’s jurisdiction is both recurring and important in the field of labor-management relations. Consequently, we granted certiorari, but limited the grant to this issue.
This Court held in Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River & Ind. R. Co., 353 U. S. 30, that a Federal District Court may enjoin strikes arising out of “minor disputes” — generally speaking, disputes relating to construction of a contract — when they have been properly submitted to the National Railroad Adjustment Board. We concluded that such an injunction does not fall within the prohibitions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U. S. C. § 101 et seq., because of the superseding purpose of the Railway Labor Act to establish a system of compulsory arbitration for this type of dispute, a purpose which might be frustrated if strikes could not be enjoined during the consideration of such a dispute by the Board. This case presents a further question as to nature of the relief which may be granted under the Chicago River rule — specifically, whether the injunction granted the Railroad may be qualified by conditions imposed by the District Court under traditional equitable considerations.
If the District Court is free to exercise the typical powers of a court of equity, it has the power to impose conditions requiring maintenance of the status quo. Conditions of this nature traditionally may be made the price of relief when the injunctive powers of the court are invoked and the conditions are necessary to do justice between the parties. “The award of an interlocutory injunction by courts of equity has never been regarded as strictly a matter of right, even though irreparable injury may otherwise result to the plaintiff. . . . [The court] will avoid . . . injury so far as may be, by attaching conditions to the award. . . .” Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414, 440. “[I]t is the duty of a court of equity granting injunctive relief to do so upon conditions that will protect all . . . whose interests the injunction may affect.” Inland Steel Co. v. United States, 306 U. S. 153, 157. Since the power to condition relief is essential to ensure that extraordinary equitable remedies will not become the engines of injustice, it would require the clearest legislative direction to justify the truncation of that power.
Such direction, if it exists, presumably must be derived from the Railway Labor Act itself, and since that Act contains no express provisions circumscribing the equitable powers of the court, such limitations, if any, must be created by clear implication.
The Court of Appeals found the limiting legislative direction in the provision of the Railway Labor Act granting exclusive primary jurisdiction over “minor disputes” to the National Railroad Adjustment Board. Its theory was that the conditions imposed by the District Court constituted a preliminary decision on the merits of the parties’ dispute and therefore encroached upon the jurisdiction of the Board.
It is true that the federal courts ought not act in such a way as to infringe upon the jurisdiction of the Board, Order of Conductors v. Pitney, 326 U. S. 561. But neither this principle nor the Pitney case itself leads us to the Court of Appeals’ conclusion.
In Pitney, we held that the District Court in exercise of its equity powers ancillary to its jurisdiction as a railroad reorganization court under 11 U. S. C. § 205, should not have granted a permanent injunction finally determining the merits of a dispute which was within the jurisdiction of the Board, but that, instead, it should have withheld such relief pending a determination by the Board.
In the case at bar, however, there was no determination of the merits of the dispute by the District Court. Nothing in the record of the proceedings in the District Court suggests that any view on the merits was considered. Instead, the record affirmatively discloses that the district judge was quite aware that it was not his function to construe the contractual provisions upon which the parties relied for their respective positions on the merits. In sum, the judge was scrupulous to avoid encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the Board.
The Court of Appeals apparently concluded that a decision on the merits was inherent in the very conditioning of the injunction. It is true that a District Court must make some examination of the nature of the dispute before conditioning relief since not all disputes coming before the Adjustment Board threaten irreparable injury and justify the attachment of a condition. To fulfill its function the District Court must also consider the hardships, if any, that would arise if the employees were required to await the Board’s sometimes long-delayed decisions without recourse to a strike. But this examination of the nature of the dispute is so unlike that which the Adjustment Board will make of the merits of the same dispute, and is for such a dissimilar purpose, that it could not interfere with the later consideration of the grievance by the Adjustment Board.
Moreover, such an examination is inherent in the grant of the injunction itself. Yet it is settled, since Chicago River, that an injunction may issue to preserve the Board’s jurisdiction. We think that, in logic, we must hold that the conditions are proper also, at least where they are designed not only to promote the interests of justice, but also to preserve the jurisdiction of the Board.
It is not difficult to perceive how the conditions imposed in this case could be deemed to serve to protect the jurisdiction of the Board. The dispute out of which the judicial controversy arose does not merely concern rates of pay or job assignments, but rather involves the discharge of employees from positions long held and the dislocation of others from their homes. From the point of view of these employees, the critical point in the dispute may be when the change is made, for, by the time of the frequently long-delayed Board decision, it might well be impossible to make them whole in any realistic sense. If this be so, the action of the district judge, rather than defeating the Board’s jurisdiction, would operate to preserve that jurisdiction by preventing injury so irreparable that a decision of the Board in the unions’ favor would be but an empty victory.
It is true that preventing the Railroad from instituting the change imposed upon it the burden of maintaining what-may be a less efficient and more costly operation. The balancing of these competing claims of irreparable hardship is, however, the traditional function of the equity court, the exercise of which is reviewable only for abuse of discretion. And although respondents maintain that there has been such an abuse in this case, scrutiny of the record does not persuade us that the evidence was insufficient to support the judge’s action.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Stewart, while agreeing with the Court that the District Court had power to condition the issuance of the injunction, would vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case to that court for consideration of respondents’ contention that the District Court’s action involved an abuse of discretion.
The order granting certiorari limits our review to the following question:
“Whether a district court under circumstances where a dispute arising under the Railway Labor Act has been submitted by a railroad to the National Railroad Adjustment Board and an injunction against a strike by employees is sought on authority of Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River and Ind. RR Co., 353 U. S. 30, may on the granting of an injunction impose reasonable conditions designed to protect the employees against a harmful change in working conditions during pendency of the dispute before the Adjustment Board by ordering that the railroad restore the status quo, or, in the alternative, pay the employees the amount they would have been paid had changes in working conditions giving rise to the dispute not been made.” 361 U. S. 810.
See Elgin, J. & E. R. Co. v. Burley, 325 U. S. 711, 723; Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River & Ind. R. Co., 353 U. S. 30, 33-34.
We did not decide in Chicago River, and we do not decide here, whether a federal court can, during the pendency of a dispute before the Board, enjoin a carrier from effectuating the changes which gave rise to and constitute the subject matter of-the dispute, independently of any suit by the railroad for equitable relief. As we read the order of the District Court, this case does not involve independent relief for the union.
See 2 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence, 51, 57-59 (5th ed. 1941); 1 Story, Equity Jurisprudence, §§ 69-76 (14th ed. 1918); Central Kentucky Natural Gas Co. v. Railroad Comm’n, 290 U. S. 264, 271.
The judge said at one stage of the proceeding,
“Now, let us see where we are. There is a contract. We have not analyzed the contract because it is useless for us to analyze it because regardless of what conclusion we reach about the provisions of that contract we have no right to enforce its provisions or deny its provisions. Those conditions can be determined first only by the Railroad Adjustment Act, ....
“This Court is without power to construe that contract, which the defendants claim has been broken by the company.” R. 316-317.
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Per Curiam.
In 1995, the Montana Legislature enacted a statute restricting the performance of abortions to licensed physicians. 1995 Mont. Laws, ch. 321, §2 (codified at Mont. Code Ann. § 50-20-109 (1995)). Similar rules exist in 40 other States in the Nation. The Montana law was challenged almost immediately by respondents, who are a group of licensed physicians and one physician-assistant practicing in Montana. The District Court denied respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that they had not established any likelihood of prevailing on their claim that the law imposed an “undue burden” within the meaning of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992). 906 F. Supp. 561, 567 (Mont. 1995). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the District Court’s judgment, holding that respondents had shown a “fair chance of success on the merits” of their claim, and thus had met the threshold requirement for preliminary injunctive relief under Circuit precedent. 94 F. 3d 566, 567-568 (1996). The case was remanded to the District Court with instructions to reconsider the “balance of hardships” and determine whether entry of a preliminary injunction was ultimately warranted. Ibid. The District Court has not yet reconsidered the merits of the preliminary injunction motion, but it has entered (based on the parties’ stipulations) an injunction pending appeal pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 62(c), and has postponed its hearing on the preliminary injunction motion until our disposition of petitioner’s certiorari petition. Order Granting Injunction Pending Appeal, No. CV 95-083-GF-PGH (Mont., Nov. 5, 1996), App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a-32a. As a consequence, Montana’s physician-only requirement is unenforceable at the present time against respondent Susan Cahill, who is the only nonphysician licensed to perform abortions in Montana.
The Court of Appeals’ conclusion that respondents had established a “fair chance of success on the merits” of their constitutional challenge is inconsistent with our treatment of the physician-only requirement at issue in Casey. That requirement involved only the provision of information to patients, and not the actual performance of abortions, yet we nonetheless held — overruling our prior holding in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc., 462 U. S. 416, 448 (1983) — that the limitation to physicians was valid. Casey, supra, at 884-885. We found that “[s]ince there is no evidence on this record that requiring a doctor to give the information as provided by the statute would amount in practical terms to a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion, ... it is not an undue burden.” 505 U. S., at 884-885 (emphasis added). The District Court, quoting this precise passage, held: “There exists insufficient evidence in the record to support the conclusion [that] the requirement that a licensed physician perform an abortion would amount, ‘in practical terms, to a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.’ Accordingly, it is unlikely that [respondents] will prevail upon their suggestion that the requirement constitutes an ‘undue burden’ within the meaning of Casey.” 906 F. Supp., at 567 (quoting Casey, supra, at 884 (emphasis added)).
The Court of Appeals never contested this District Court conclusion that there was “insufficient evidence” in the record that the requirement posed a “‘substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.’” Instead, it held that the physician-only requirement was arguably invalid because its purpose, according to the Court of Appeals, may have been to create a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions. 94 F. 3d, at 567. But even assuming the correctness of the Court of Appeals’ implicit premise — that a legislative purpose to interfere with the constitutionally protected right to abortion without the effect of interfering with that right (here it is uncontested that there was insufficient evidence of a “substantial obstacle” to abortion) could render the Montana law invalid — there is no basis for finding a vitiating legislative purpose here. We do not assume unconstitutional legislative intent even when statutes produce harmful results, see, e. g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 246 (1976); much less do we assume it when the results are harmless. One searches the Court of Appeals’ opinion in vain for any mention of any evidence suggesting an unlawful motive on the part of the Montana Legislature. If the motion at issue here were a defendant’s motion for summary judgment, and if the plaintiff’s only basis for proceeding with the suit were a claim of improper legislative purpose, one would demand some evidence of that improper purpose in order to avoid a nonsuit. And what is at issue here is not even a defendant’s motion for summary judgment, but a plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunctive relief, as to which the requirement for substantial proof is much higher. “It frequently is observed that a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary and drastic remedy, one that should not be granted unless the movant, by a clear showing, carries the burden of persuasion.” 11A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2948, pp. 129-130 (2d ed. 1995) (emphasis added; footnotes omitted).
Respondents claim in this Court that the Montana law must have had an invalid purpose because “all health evidence contradicts the claim that there is any health basis” for the law. Brief in Opposition 7. Respondents contend that “the only extant study comparing the complication rates for first-trimester abortions performed by [physician-assistants] with those for first-trimester abortions performed by physicians found no significant difference.” Ibid. But this line of argument is squarely foreclosed by Casey itself. In the course of upholding the physician-only requirement at issue in that case, we emphasized that “[o]ur cases reflect the fact that the Constitution gives the States broad latitude to decide that particular functions may be performed only by licensed professionals, even if an objective assessment might suggest that those same tasks could be 'performed by others.” 505 U. S., at 885 (emphasis added). Respondents fall back on the fact that an antiabortion group drafted the Montana law. But that says nothing significant about the legislature’s purpose in passing it.
Today’s dissent, for its part, claims that “there is substantial evidence indicating that the sole purpose of the statute was to target a particular licensed professional” (respondent Susan Cahill). Post, at 979-980. It is true that the law “targeted” Cahill in the sense that she was the only nonphy-sician performing abortions at the time it was passed. But it is difficult to see how that helps rather than harms respondents’ case. The dissent does not claim that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder, nor was that the basis on which the Court of Appeals relied. (Such a contention would be implausible as applied to a provision so commonplace as to exist in 40 other States, see n. 1, supra.) And the basis on which the Court of Appeals did rely (that the purpose of the law may have been to create a “substantial obstacle” to abortion) is positively contradicted by the fact that only a single practitioner is affected. That is especially so since under the old scheme Cahill could only perform abortions with a licensed physician (who also performs abortions) present, see Brief in Opposition 4, meaning that no woman seeking an abortion would be required by the new law to travel to a different facility than was previously available. All this strongly supports the District Court’s finding, after hearing testimony, that there was insufficient evidence that the law created a “substantial obstacle” to abortion. And there is simply no evidence that the legislature intended the law to do what it plainly did not do.
The Court of Appeals’ decision is also contradicted by our repeated statements in past cases — none of which was so much as cited by the Court of Appeals, despite the District Court’s discussion of two of them — that the performance of abortions may be restricted to physicians. We first expressed this view (although it was not necessary to our holding) in Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 165 (1973), saying that “[t]he State may define the term ‘physician,’... to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined.” We reiterated this view in Connecticut v. Menillo, 423 U. S. 9, 11 (1975) (per curiam), where, in the course of holding that the Federal Constitution posed no bar to the conviction of a person with no medical training for the performance of an abortion, we said that “prosecutions for abortions conducted by nonphysicians infringe upon no realm of personal privacy secured by the Constitution against state interference.” Finally, in Akron, in the course of striking down a requirement that licensed physicians rather than other medical personnel provide specified information to patients (the holding overruled in Casey), we emphasized that our prior cases “left no doubt that, to ensure the safety of the abortion procedure, the States may mandate that only physicians perform abortions.” 462 U. S., at 447 (citing Roe, supra, at 165, and Menillo, supra, at 11).
Respondents urge us to ignore the error in the Court of Appeals’ judgment because the case comes to us prior to the entry of a final judgment in the lower courts. It is true that we are ordinarily reluctant to exercise our certiorari jurisdiction in that circumstance. See, e.g., Hamilton-Brown Shoe Co. v. Wolf Brothers & Co., 240 U. S. 251, 258 (1916). But our cases make clear that there is no absolute bar to review of nonfinal judgments of the lower federal courts, see, e. g., Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 98 (1976); United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U. S. 373, 377 (1945); see also R. Stern, E. Gressman, S. Shapiro, & K. Geller, Supreme Court Practice §4.18 (7th ed. 1993) (citing cases), and we conclude here that reversal of the Court of Appeals’ judgment in a summary disposition is appropriate, for two reasons. First, as already noted, the Court of Appeals’ decision is clearly erroneous under our precedents. Second, the lower court’s judgment has produced immediate consequences for Montana — in the form of a Rule 62(c) injunction against implementation of its law pending the District Court’s resolution of respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction — and has created a real threat of such consequences for the six other States in the Ninth Circuit that have physician-only requirements. Indeed, plaintiffs in the Ninth Circuit seeking to challenge those States’ laws may well be able to meet the threshold “fair chance of success” requirement for a preliminary injunction merely by alleging an improper purpose for the physician-only rule, since, as noted above, the Court of Appeals did not appear to rely on any evidence suggesting an unlawful motive on the part of the Montana Legislature.
For the foregoing reasons, we grant the petition for certio-rari, 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. Admin. Code Rules 420-5-l-.01(2)(k), 420-5-l-.03(2)(a) (Supp. 1990) (limiting performance of abortions to “physicians duly licensed in the State of Alabama;” which in turn requires meeting the criteria in Ala. Code §34-24-70 (Supp. 1996)); Alaska Stat. Ann. §§08.64.200, 18.16.010(a)(1) (1996); Ark. Code Ann. § 5-61-101(a) (1993); id., § 17-95-403 (1995); Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. §123405 (West 1996) (as interpreted under prior statutory designation in 74 Op. Cal. Atty. Gen. 101 (1991)); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 12-36-107 (1991 and Supp. 1996); id., §§ 18-6-101(1), 18-6-102 (1986); Conn. Agencies Regs. § 19-13-D54(a) (1997) (limiting performance of abortions to “person[s] licensed to practice medicine and surgery in the State of Connecticut,” which in turn requires meeting the criteria in Conn. Gen. Stat. §20-10 (Supp. 1997)); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 24, §§1720, 1790(a) (Supp. 1996); Fla. Stat. §§390.001(l)(a), 390.001(3) (1993); id., §§458.311, 459.0055 (1991 and Supp. 1997); Ga. Code Ann. § 16-12-141(a) (1996); id., §43-34-27 (1994); Haw. Rev. Stat. §§453-4, 453-16(a)(1) (1993); Idaho Code §18-608 (1997); id., §§54-1803(3), 54-1803(4) (1994); Ill. Comp. Stat., eh. 225, §60/11 (1993); id., eh. 720, §§510/2(2), 510/ 3.1 (1993); Ind. Code §§ 16-18-2-202,16-18-2-282,16-34-2-l(l)(A) (1993); id., §25-22.5-3-1 (1995); Iowa Code §148.3 (Supp. 1997); id., §707.7 (Supp. 1997); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§311.571, 311.750 (Michie 1995); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §37:1272 (West Supp. 1997); id., §§40:1299.35.1, 40:1299.35.2(A) (West 1992); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 22, §1598(3)(A) (1992); id.. Tit. 32, §§2571, 3271 (Supp. 1996); Md. Health Code Ann. §20-208 (1996); Md. Health Occ. Code Ann. § 14-307 (Supp. 1995); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 112, §§ 2,12K, 12L, 12M (1996); Minn. Stat. §§ 145.412, subd. 1(1), 147.02 (1989) (limiting performance of abortions to licensed physicians and “physieianfs] in training under the supervision of... licensed physieian[s]”); Miss. Code Ann. § 73-25-3 (1995); id., §97-3-3(1) (1994) (as interpreted in Spears v. State, 278 So. 2d 443 (Miss. 1973)); Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 188.015(5), 188.020 (1996); id., §334.031 (1989); Neb. Rev. Stat. §28-335 (1995); id., §71-1,104 (Supp. 1996); Nev. Rev. Stat. §442.250(l)(a) (1991); id., §630.160 (1995); N. J. Admin. Code § 13:35-4.2(b) (1997) (limiting performance of abortions to “physieian[s] licensed to practice medicine and surgery in the State of New Jersey,” which in turn requires meeting the criteria in N. J. Stat. Ann. §§45:9-6, 45:9-7 (West 1991), and N. J. Stat. Ann. §45:9-8 (West Supp. 1997)); N. M. Stat. Ann. §§30-5-l(C), 30-5-3 (1994) (as interpreted in N. M. Op. Atty. Gen. 90-19 (1990)); N. M. Stat. Ann. §61-6-11 (1996); N. C. Gen. Stat. §14-45.1(a) (1993); id., §90-9 (Supp. 1996); N. D. Cent. Code §14-02.1-04(1) (1991); id., §43-17-18 (1993); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2919.11 (1996); id., §§4731.091, 4731.41 (1994); Okla. Stat., Tit. 59, §493.1 (Supp. 1997); id., Tit. 63, §1-731(A) (1997); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§3203, 3204(a) (1983 and Supp. 1997); 63 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§271.6, 422.28 (1996); R. I. Code R. 14.000.009, 600.1 (1996) (limiting performance of abortions to “physicians licensed under the [applicable provisions of Rhode Island law],” which in turn requires meeting the criteria in R. I. Gen. Laws § 5-37-2 (1995)); S. C. Code Ann. § 40-47-90 (Supp. 1996) (as implemented by S. G. Code Ann. Regs. §§81-80, 81-81, 81-90 (Supp. 1996)); S. C. Code Ann. §§44-41-10(b), 44-41-20 (1985); S. D. Codified Laws §34-23A-l(4) (Supp. 1997); id., §§34-23A-3, 34-23A-4, 34-23A-5 (1994); id., §36-4-11 (Supp. 1997); Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 245.010(b) (1992); Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 4495b, § 3.04 (Vernon Supp. 1997); Utah Code Ann. §§58-67-302, 58-68-302 (Supp. 1996); id., §76-7-302(1) (1995); Va. Code Ann. §§18.2-71, 18.2-72, 18.2-73, 18.2-74 (1996); id., §54.1-2930 (1994); Wash. Rev. Code §§9.02.110, 9.02.120, 9.02.170(4) (Supp. 1997); id., §§18.57.020, 18.71.050 (Supp. 1997); Wis. Stat. §448.01(5) (1988); id., § 940.15(5) (1996); Wyo. Stat. § 33-26-303 (Supp. 1996); id., § 35-6-111 (1994).
Since the record does not support a conclusion that “the legislature’s predominant motive,” post, at 980, was to create a “substantial obstacle” to abortion, it is quite unnecessary to address “whether the Court of Appeals misread this Court’s opinions in Miller [v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900 (1995),] and Shaw,” post, at 981.
The dissent says that the Court of Appeals did not resolve any important issue of law in this ease, but instead merely remanded to the District Court after “determining] that a further inquiry into the facts [was] appropriate.” Post, at 981. We disagree. The Court of Appeals expressly found, and it was necessary to its disposition, that respondents had shown a “fair chance of success” on their claim of undue burden. 94 F. 3d 566, 567-568 (CA9 1996). As already explained, that determination of law is inconsistent with our precedents.
See Alaska Stat. Ann. §§08.64.200, 18.16.010(a)(1) (1996); Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. §123405 (West 1996) (as interpreted under prior statutory designation in 74 Op. Cal. Atty. Gen. 101 (1991)); Haw. Rev. Stat. §§453-4, 453-16(a)(l) (1993); Idaho Code §18-608 (1997); id., §§54-1803(3), 54-1803(4) (1994); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 442.250(l)(a) (1991); id., §630.160 (1995); Wash. Rev. Code §§9.02.110, 9.02.120, 9.02.170(4) (Supp. 1997); id., §§ 18.57.020, 18.71.050 (Supp. 1997).
The dissent contends that some States which restrict the performance of abortions to licensed physicians may define “licensed physician” to include “physician-assistant” when the latter works under the former’s supervision; thus, the dissent says, the Court of Appeals’ decision may not in fact be inconsistent with the physician-only regimes of other States. Post, at 980-981. But the provisions of state law to which the dissent points reflect the general definition of what qualifies as the “authorized practice” of medicine, without making any specific reference to abortion. See, e.g., Fla. Stat. §§ 458.303(l)(a), 458.327(1), 458.347 (1991 and Supp. 1997); post, at 980-981, n. 7 (citing statutes). Thus, for example, under Florida law, the performance of an abortion by a physician-assistant would not constitute “practicing] medicine . . . without a license” for purposes of the felony defined in Fla. Stat. Ann. §458.327(1) (Supp. 1997), but there is no reason to think it would not violate the more specific prohibition on the performance of abortions by persons other than “a doctor of medicine or osteopathic medicine licensed by the state under chapter 458 or chapter 459,” Fla. Stat. §§390.001(l)(a), 390.001(3) (1993). A formal opinion by the Attorney General of California has reached precisely this conclusion under that State’s law: “[W]e cannot accept the notion that the Legislature meant to gainsay th[e] carefully tailored and highly specific determination [that abortions should be performed by licensed physicians] when it . . . adopted the general language of the Physician Assistant Practice Act.” 74 Op. Cal. Atty. Gen. 101, 108 (1991).
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
A jury found petitioner guilty of unfair competition and awarded respondent $50,000 in compensatory damages and $4.5 million in punitive damages. The District Court held that the punitive damages award did not violate the Federal Constitution. The Court of Appeals concluded that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to reduce the amount of punitive damages.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 4a. The issue in this case is whether the Court of Appeals applied the wrong standard of review in considering the constitutionality of the punitive damages award.
I
The parties are competing tool manufacturers. In the 1980’s, Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. (Leatherman or respondent), introduced its Pocket Survival Tool (PST). The Court of Appeals described the PST as an
“ingenious multi-function pocket tool which improves on the classic ‘Swiss army knife’ in a number of respects. Not the least of the improvements was the inclusion of pliers, which, when unfolded, are nearly equivalent to regular full-sized pliers.... Leatherman apparently largely created and undisputedly now dominates the market for multi-function pocket tools which generally resemble the PST.” Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. v. Cooper Industries, 199 F. 3d 1009, 1010 (CA9 1999).
In 1995, Cooper Industries, Inc. (Cooper or petitioner), decided to design and market a competing multifunction tool. Cooper planned to copy the basic features of the PST, add a few features of its own, and sell the new tool under the name “ToolZall.” Cooper hoped to capture about 5% of the multifunction tool market. The first ToolZall was designed to be virtually identical to the PST, but the design was ultimately modified in response to this litigation. The controversy to be resolved in this case involves Cooper’s improper advertising of its original ToolZall design.
Cooper introduced the original ToolZall in August 1996 at the National Hardware Show in Chicago. At that show, it used photographs in its posters, packaging, and advertising materials that purported to be of a ToolZall but were actually of a modified PST. When those materials were prepared, the first of the ToolZalls had not yet been manufae-tured. A Cooper employee created a ToolZall “mock-up” by grinding the Leatherman trademark from handles and pliers of a PST and substituting the unique fastenings that were to be used on the ToolZall. At least one of the photographs was retouched to remove a curved indentation where the Leatherman trademark had been. The photographs were used, not only at the trade show, which normally draws an audience of over 70,000 people, but also in the marketing materials and catalogs used by Cooper’s sales force throughout the United States. Cooper also distributed a touched-up line drawing of a PST to its international sales representatives.
Shortly after the trade show, Leatherman filed this action asserting claims of trade-dress infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising under § 48(a) of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act), 60 Stat. 441, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1125(a) (1994 ed. and Supp. V), and a common-law claim of unfair competition for advertising and selling an “imitation” of the PST. In December 1996, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting Cooper from marketing the ToolZall and from using pictures of the modified PST in its advertising. Cooper withdrew the original ToolZall from the market and developed a new model with plastic coated handles that differed from the PST. In November 1996, it had antieipatorily sent a notice to its sales personnel ordering a recall of all promotional materials containing pictures of the PST, but it did not attempt to retrieve the materials it had sent to its customers until the following April. As a result, the offending promotional materials continued to appear in catalogs and advertisements well into 1997.
After a trial conducted in October 1997, the jury returned a verdict that answered several special interrogatories. With respect to the Lanham Act infringement claims, the jury found that Leatherman had trademark rights in the overall appearance of the PST and that the original Tool-Zall infringed those rights but that the infringement had not damaged Leatherman. It then found that the modified ToolZall did not infringe Leatherman’s trademark rights in the PST. With respect to the advertising claims, it found Cooper guilty of passing off, false advertising, and unfair competition and assessed aggregate damages of $50,000 on those claims. It then answered “Yes” to the following interrogatory:
“Has Leatherman shown by clear and convincing evidence that by engaging in false advertising or passing off, Cooper acted with malice, or showed a reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm and has acted with a conscious indifference to Leatherman’s rights?” App. 18.
Because it answered this question in the affirmative, the jury was instructed to determine the “amount of punitive damages [that] should be awarded to Leatherman.” Ibid. The jury awarded $4.5 million. Ibid.
After the jury returned its verdict, the District Court considered, and rejected, arguments that the punitive damages were “grossly excessive” under our decision in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559 (1996). See App. to Pet. for Cert. 24a. It then entered its judgment, which provided that 60% of the punitive damages would be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Account of the State of Oregon. The judgment also permanently enjoined Cooper from marketing its original ToolZall in the United States or in 22 designated foreign countries.
On appeal, Cooper challenged both the District Court’s injunction against copying the PST and the punitive damages award. The Court of Appeals issued two opinions. In its published opinion it set aside the injunction. Leather- man Tool Group, Inc. v. Cooper Industries, Inc., supra. It held that the overall appearance of the PST was not protected under the trademark laws because its distinguishing features, and the combination of those features, were functional. Accordingly, even though Cooper had deliberately copied the PST, it acted lawfully in doing so.
In its unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals affirmed the punitive damages award. It first rejected Cooper’s argument that the Oregon Constitution, which has been interpreted to prohibit awards of punitive damages for torts that impose liability for speeeh, precluded the jury’s award of such damages in this ease. It then reviewed the District Court’s finding that the award “was proportional and fair, given the nature of the conduct, the evidence of intentional passing off, and the size of an award necessary to create deterrence to an entity of Cooper’s size” and concluded “that the award did not violate Cooper’s due process rights” under the Federal Constitution. App. to Pet. for Cert. 3a, judgt. order reported at 205 F. 3d 1351 (CA9 1999). It noted that the “passing off” in this case was “very unusual” because “even assuming PST is a superior product,” no superior features of the PST were perceivable in the photographs. App. to Pet. for Cert. 3a. “Any customer who bought based on what the photographs showed would have received essentially that for which he or she paid.” Ibid. Thus, Cooper’s use of the photographs of the PST did not involve “the same sort of potential harm to Leatherman or to customers as that which may arise from traditional passing off.” Id., at 4a. The Court of Appeals made clear, however, that it did not condone the passing off. “[A]t a minimum,” it observed, “[the passing off] gave Cooper an unfair advantage” by allowing it to use Leatherman’s work product “to obtain a ‘mock-up’ more cheaply, easily, and quickly” than if it had waited until its own product was ready. Ibid. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals concluded, “the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to reduce the amount of punitive damages.” Ibid.
Cooper’s petition for a writ of certiorari asked us to decide whether the Court of Appeals reviewed the constitutionality of the punitive damages award under the correct standard and also whether the award violated the criteria we articulated in Gore. We granted the petition to resolve confusion among the Courts of Appeals on the first question. 531 U. S. 923 (2000). We now conclude that the constitutional issue merits de novo review. Because the Court of Appeals applied an “abuse of discretion” standard, we remand the case for determination of the second question under the proper standard.
II
Although compensatory damages and punitive damages are typically awarded at the same time by the same decision-maker, they serve distinct purposes. The former are intended to redress the concrete loss that the plaintiff has suffered by reason of the defendant’s wrongful conduct. See Restatement (Second) of Torts §908, pp. 453-454 (1979); Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U.S. 1, 54 (1991) (O’Connor, J., dissenting). The latter, which have been described as “quasi-criminal,” id., at 19, operate as “private fines” intended to punish the defendant and to deter future wrongdoing. A jury’s assessment of the extent of a plaintiff’s injury is essentially a factual determination, whereas its imposition of punitive damages is an expression of its moral condemnation. See Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 350 (1974) (“[Punitive damages] are not compensation for injury. Instead, they are private fines levied by civil juries to punish reprehensible conduct and to deter its future occurrence”); Haslip, 499 U.S., at 54 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“DPjunitive damages are specifically designed to exact punishment in excess of actual harm to make clear that the defendant’s misconduct was especially reprehensible”).
Legislatures have extremely broad discretion in defining criminal offenses, Schall v. Martin, 467 U.S. 253, 268-269, n. 18 (1984), and in setting the range of permissible punishments for each offense, ibid.; Solem, v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 290 (1983). Judicial decisions that operate within these legislatively enacted guidelines are typically reviewed for abuse of discretion. See, e. g., Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 96, 99-100 (1996); cf. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 481 (2000) (it is permissible “for judges to exercise discretion... in imposing a judgment within the range prescribed by statute”).
As in the criminal sentencing context, legislatures enjoy broad discretion in authorizing and limiting permissible punitive damages awards. Cf. Gore, 517 U.S., at 568 (“States necessarily have considerable flexibility in determining the level of punitive damages that they will allow in different classes of cases and in any particular case”). A good many States have enacted statutes that place limits on the permissible size of punitive damages awards. When juries make particular awards within those limits, the role of the trial judge is “to determine whether the jury’s verdict is within the confines set by state law, and to determine, by reference to federal standards developed under Rule 59, whether a new trial or remittitur should be ordered.” Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257, 279 (1989). If no constitutional issue is raised, the role of the appellate court, at least in the federal system, is merely to review the trial court’s “determination under an abuse-of-diseretion standard.” Ibid.
Despite the broad discretion that States possess with respect to the imposition of criminal penalties and punitive damages, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution imposes substantive limits on that discretion. That Clause makes the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishments applicable to the States. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) (per curiam). The Due Process Clause of its own force also prohibits the States from imposing “grossly excessive” punishments on tortfeasors, Gore, 517 U.S., at 562; TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp., 509 U.S. 443, 453-455 (1993) (plurality opinion).
The Court has enforced those limits in eases involving deprivations of life, Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 787, 801 (1982) (death is not “a valid penalty under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments for one who neither took life, attempted to take life, nor intended to take life”); Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 592 (1977) (opinion of White, J.) (sentence of death is “grossly disproportionate” and excessive punishment for the crime of rape); deprivations of liberty, Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S., at 279, 303 (life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for nonviolent felonies is “significantly disproportionate”); and deprivations of property, United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321, 324 (1998) (punitive forfeiture of $357,144 for violating reporting requirement was “grossly disporportional” to the gravity of the offense); Gore, 517 U.S., at 585-586 ($2 million punitive damages award for failing to advise customers of minor pre-delivery repairs to new automobiles was “grossly excessive” and therefore unconstitutional).
In these cases, the constitutional violations were predicated on judicial determinations that the punishments were “grossly disproportional to the gravity of,.. defendants’] offense[s].” Bajakajian, 524 U.S., at 334; see also Gore, 517 U.S., at 585-586; Solem, 463 U.S., at 303; Coker, 433 U.S., at 592 (opinion of White, J.). We have recognized that the relevant constitutional fine is “inherently imprecise,” Ba- jakajian, 524 U.S., at 336, rather than one “marked by a simple mathematical formula,” Gore, 517 U.S., at 582. But in deciding whether that line has been crossed, we have focused on the same general criteria: the degree of the defendant’s reprehensibility or culpability, see, e.g., Bajakajian, 524 U.S., at 337; Gore, 517 U.S., at 575-580; Solem, 463 U.S., at 290-291; Enmund, 458 U.S., at 798; Coker, 433 U.S., at 598 (opinion of White, J.); the relationship between the penalty and the harm to the victim caused by the defendant’s actions, see, e. g., Bajakajian, 524 U.S., at 339; Gore, 517 U.S., at 580-583; Solem, 463 U.S., at 293; Enmund, 458 U.S., at 796; Coker, 433 U.S., at 598 (opinion of White, J.); and the sanctions imposed in other eases for comparable misconduct, see, e. g., Bajakajian, 524 U.S., at 340-343; Gore, 517 U.S., at 583-585; Solem, 463 U.S., at 291; Enmund, 458 U.S., at 789-796; Coker, 433 U. S., at 593-597 (opinion of White, J.). Moreover, and of greatest relevance for the issue we address today, in each of these eases we have engaged in an independent examination of the relevant criteria. See, e. g., Bajakajian, 524 U.S., at 337-344; Gore, 517 U.S., at 575-586; Solem, 463 U.S., at 295-300; Enmund, 458 U.S., at 788-801; Coker, 433 U.S., at 592-600 (opinion of White, J.).
In Bajakajian, we expressly noted that the courts of appeals must review the proportionality determination “de novo” and specifically rejected the suggestion of the respondent, who had prevailed in the District Court, that the trial judge’s determination of excessiveness should be reviewed only for an abuse of discretion. “The factual findings made by the district courts in conducting the excessiveness inquiry, of course, must be accepted unless clearly erroneous.... But the question whether a fine is constitutionally excessive calls for the application of a constitutional standard to the facts of a particular case, and in this context de novo review of that question is appropriate.” 524 U.S., at 336-337, n. 10 (citing Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 697 (1996)).
Likewise, in Ornelas, we held that trial judges’ determinations of reasonable suspicion and probable cause should be reviewed de novo on appeal. The reasons we gave in support of that holding are equally applicable in this ease. First, as we observed in Ornelas, the precise meaning of concepts like “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause” cannot be articulated with precision; they are “fluid concepts that take their substantive content from the particular contexts in which the standards are being assessed.” Id., at 696. That is, of course, also a characteristic of the concept of “gross excessiveness.” Second, “the legal rules for probable cause and reasonable suspicion acquire content only through application. Independent review is therefore necessary if appellate courts are to maintain control of, and to clarify, the legal principles.” Id., at 697. Again, this is also true of the general criteria set forth in Gore; they will acquire more meaningful content through case-by-case application at the appellate level. “Finally, de novo review tends to unify precedent” and “ ‘stabilize the law.’ ” 517 U.S., at 697-698. Justice Breyer made a similar point in his concurring opinion in Gore:
“Requiring the application of law, rather than a decision-maker’s caprice, does more than simply provide citizens notice of what actions may subject them to punishment; it also helps to assure the uniform general treatment of similarly situated persons that is the essence of law itself.” 517 U. S., at 587.
Our decisions in analogous cases, together with the reasoning that produced those decisions, thus convince us that courts of appeals should apply a de novo standard of review when passing on district courts’ determinations of the constitutionality of punitive damages awards.
I — I t — ( HH
Unlike the measure of actual damages suffered, which presents a question of historical or predictive fact, see, e. g., [St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Craft, 237 U. S. 648 (1915)], the level of punitive damages is not really a ‘fact’ ‘tried' by the jury.” Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415, 459 (1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Because the jury’s award of punitive damages does not constitute a finding of “fact,” appellate review of the district court’s determination that an award is consistent with due process does not implicate the Seventh Amendment concerns raised by respondent and its amicus. See Brief for Respondent 18-24; Brief for Association of Trial Lawyers of America as Amicus Curiae 17-20. Our decisions in Gasperini and Hetzel v. Prince William County, 523 U.S. 208 (1998) (per curiam), both of which concerned compensatory damages, are not to the contrary.
It might be argued that the deterrent function of punitive damages suggests that the amount of such damages awarded is indeed a “fact” found by the jury and that, as a result, the Seventh Amendment is implicated in appellate review of that award. Some scholars, for example, assert that punitive damages should be used to compensate for the underdeter-rence of unlawful behavior that will result from a defendant’s evasion of liability. See Polinsky & Shavell, Punitive Damages: An Economic Analysis, 111 Harv. L. Rev. 869, 890-891 (1998) (in order to obtain optimal deterrence, “punitive damages should equal the harm multiplied by... the ratio of the injurer’s chance of escaping liability to his chance of being found liable”); see also Ciraolo v. New York, 216 F. 3d 236, 244-245 (CA2 2000) (Calabresi, J., concurring). “The efficient deterrence theory thus regards punitive damages as merely an augmentation of compensatory damages designed to achieve economic efficiency.” Galanter & Luban, Poetic Justice: Punitive Damages and Legal Pluralism, 42 Am. U. L. Rev. 1393, 1449 (1993).
However attractive such an approach to punitive damages might be as an abstract policy matter, it is clear that juries do not normally engage in such a finely tuned exercise of deterrence calibration when awarding punitive damages. See Sunstein, Sehkade, & Kahneman, Do People Want Optimal Deterrence?, 29 J. Legal Studies 237, 240 (2000). After all, deterrence is not the only purpose served by punitive damages. See supra, at 432. And there is no dispute that, in this ease, deterrence was but one of four concerns the jury was instructed to consider when setting the amount of punitive damages. Moreover, it is not at all obvious that even the deterrent function of punitive damages can be served only by economically “optimal deterrence.” “[C]iti-zens and legislators may rightly insist that they are willing to tolerate some loss in economic efficiency in order to deter what they consider morally offensive conduct, albeit cost-beneficial morally offensive conduct; efficiency is just one consideration among many." Galanter & Luban, 42 Am. U. L. Rev., at X450.
Differences in the institutional competence of trial judges and appellate judges are consistent with our conclusion. In Gore, we instructed courts evaluating a punitive damages award’s consistency with due process to consider three criteria: (1) the degree or reprehensibility of the defendant’s misconduct, (2) the disparity between the harm (or potential harm) suffered by the plaintiff and the punitive damages award, and (3) the difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable eases. 517 U.S., at 574-575. Only with respect to the first Gore inquiry do the district courts have a somewhat superior vantage over courts of appeals, and even then the advantage exists primarily with respect to issues turning on witness credibility and demeanor. Trial courts and appellate courts seem equally capable of analyzing the second factor. And the third Gore criterion, which calls for a broad legal comparison, seems more suited to the expertise of appellate courts. Considerations of institutional competence therefore fail to tip the balance in favor of deferential appellate review.
IV
It is possible that the standard of review applied by the Court of Appeals will affect the result of the Gore analysis in only a relatively small number of cases. See Brief for Respondent 46-48; Brief for Association of American Railroads as Amicus Curiae 18; see also Gasperini, 518 U.S., at 448 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Nonetheless, it does seem likely that in this ease a thorough, independent review of the District Court’s rejection of petitioner’s due process objections to the punitive damages award might well have led the Court of Appeals to reach a different result. Indeed, our own consideration of each of the three Gore factors reveals a series of questionable conclusions by the District Court that may not survive de novo review.
When the jury assessed the reprehensibility of Cooper’s misconduct, it was guided by instructions that characterized the deliberate copying of the PST as wrongful. The jury’s selection of a penalty to deter wrongful conduct may, therefore, have been influenced by an intent to deter Cooper from engaging in such copying in the future. Similarly, the District Court’s belief that Cooper acted unlawfully in deliberately copying the PST design might have influenced its consideration of the first Gore factor. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a. But, as the Court of Appeals correctly held, such copying of the functional features of an unpatented product is lawful. See TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., ante, p. 23. The Court of Appeals recognized that the District Court’s award of attorney’s fees could not be supported if based on the premise that the copying was unlawful, but it did not consider whether that improper predicate might also have undermined the basis for the jury’s large punitive damages award.
In evaluating the second Gore factor, the ratio between the size of the award of punitive damages and the harm caused by Cooper’s tortious conduct, the District Court might have been influenced by respondent’s submission that it was not the actual injury — which the jury assessed at $50,000 — that was relevant, but rather “the potential harm Leatherman would have suffered had Cooper succeeded in its wrongful conduct.” See Brief for Respondent 7; see also Record Doc. No. 328, p. 23. Respondent calculated that “potential harm” by referring to the fact that Cooper had anticipated “gross profits of approximately $3 million during the first five years of sales.” Brief for Respondent 7; see also Record Doe. No. 323, at 23. Even if that estimate were correct, however, it would be unrealistic to assume that all of Cooper’s sales of the ToolZall would have been attributable to its misconduct in using a photograph of a modified PST in its initial advertising materials. As the Court of Appeals pointed out, the picture of the PST did not misrepresent the features of the original ToolZall and could not have deceived potential customers in any significant way. Its use was wrongful because it enabled Cooper to expedite the promotion of its tool, but that wrongdoing surely could not be treated as the principal cause of Cooper’s entire sales volume for a 5-year period.
With respect to the third Gore factor, respondent argues that Cooper would have been subject to a comparable sanction under Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act. Brief for Respondent 49. In a suit brought by a State under that Act, a civil penalty of up to $25,000 per violation may be assessed. Ore. Rev. Stat. §646.642(3) (1997). In respondent’s view, each of the thousands of pieces of promotional material containing a picture of the PST that Cooper distributed warranted the maximum fine. Brief for Respondent 49. Petitioner, on the other hand, argues that its preparation of a single “mock-up” for use in a single distribution would have been viewed as a single violation under the state statute. Reply Brief for Petitioner 2-3. The Court of Appeals expressed no opinion on this dispute. It did, however, observe that the unfairness in Cooper’s use of the picture apparently had nothing to do with misleading customers but was related to its inability to obtain a “mock-up” quickly and cheaply. App. to Pet. for Cert. 3a. This observation is more consistent with the single-violation theory than with the notion that the statutory violation would have been sanctioned with a multimillion dollar fine.
We have made'these comments on issues raised by application of the three Gore guidelines to the facts of this case, not to prejudge the answer to the constitutional question, but rather to illustrate why we are persuaded that the Court of Appeals’ answer to that question may depend upon the standard of review. The de novo standard should govern its decision. Because the Court of Appeals applied a less demanding standard in this ease, we vacate the judgment and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The ToolZall was marked with a different name than the PST, was held together with different fasteners, and, in the words of the Court of Appeals, “included a serrated blade and certain other small but not particularly visible differences.” Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. v. Cooper Industries, 199 F. 3d 1009, 1010 (CA9 1999).
To “create” the drawing, a Cooper manager photocopied a line-art drawing of a PST and then “whited out” Leatherman’s trademark. App. 43-47.
Because this holding removed the predicate for the award of fees wider the Laiiham Act, see n. 2, supra, the Court of Appeals set aside that award and directed the District Court, on remand, to consider whether the evidence of passing off, standing alone, was sufficient to warrant a fee award. The Court of Appeals noted that the jury verdict form did not distinguish between passing off as a Laiiham Act claim and passing off as a matter of state law. Although a fee award under § 35(a) could not be supported unless the federal statute was violated, there is no reason to believe that any possible difference between federal and state passing off would affect the constitutionality of the punitive damages award.
Respondent and its amicus at times appear to conflate the question of the proper standard for reviewing the District Court’s due process determination with the question of the substantive standard for determining the jury award’s conformity with due process in the first instance. See Brief for Arthur F. McEvoy as Amicus Cuñas 13 (“[0]n appeal the litigant’s objection to the substance of the jury’s holding — whether on liability or damages — should be evaluated under a ‘rational factfinder’ standard..Brief for Respondent 13. The former is the question we agreed to review. The latter question has already been answered in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559 (1996). Thus, our rejection in TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp., 509 U. S. 443 (1993), of “heightened scrutiny” of punitive damages awards, see id., at 456, is not only wholly consistent with our decision today, it is irrelevant to our resolution of the question presented.
See also Sunstein, Kahneman, & Schkade, Assessing Punitive Damages (With Notes on Cognition and Valuation in Law), 107 Yale L. J. 2071,2074 (1998) ("[P]unitive damages may have a retributive or expressive function, designed to embody social outrage at the action of serious wrongdoers”).
See Gore, 517 U.S., at 614-619 (Ginsbtjrg, J., dissenting). Since our decision in Gore, four additional States have added punitive damages caps: Alabama, Alaska, North Carolina, and Ohio. See Ala. Code §6-11-21 (Supp. 2000); Alaska Stat. Ann. §09.17.020 (2000); N. C. Gen. Stat. § ID-25 (1999); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2315.21 (Supp. 2000).
In Browning-Ferris, the petitioner did argue that the award violated the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment, but we held the Clause inapplicable to punitive damages. The petitioner’s reliance on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was unavailing because that argument had not been raised in the District Court, the Court of Appeals, or the certiorari petition. See 492 U.S., at 276-277.
Although disagreeing with the specific holding in Coker, Chief Justice Burger and then-JusncE Rehnquist accepted the proposition that the “concept of disproportionality bars the death penalty for minor crimes.” 433 U.S., at 604 (Burger, C. J., dissenting).
Contrary to respondent's assertion, Brief for Respondent 12-13, our decision today is supported by our reasoning in Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U.S. 1, 20-21 (1991). In that case, we emphasized the importance of appellate review to ensuring that a jury’s award of punitive damages comports with due process. See id., at 20-21 (“[AJppellate review makes certain that the punitive damages are reasonable in their amount and rational in light of their purpose to punish what has occurred and to deter its repetition”).
Respondent argues that our decision in Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, 512 U. S. 415 (1994), rests upon the assumption that punitive damages awards are findings of fact. In that case, we held that the Oregon Constitution, which prohibits the reexamination of any “fact tried by a jury,” Ore. Const., Art. VII, §3, violated due process because it did not allow for any review of the constitutionality of punitive damages awards. Respondent claims that, because we considered this provision of the Oregon Constitution to cover punitive damages, we implicitly held that punitive damages are a ‘Tact tried by a jury.” Brief for Respondent 27-28. It was the Oregon Supreme Court’s interpretation of that provision, however, and not our own, that compelled the treatment of punitive damages as covered. See Oberg, 512 U.S., at 427; see also Van Lorn v. Schneiderman, 187 Ore. 89, 93, 210 P. 2d 461, 462 (1949) (construing the Oregon Constitution).
Nor does the historical material upon which respondent relies so extensively, see Brief for Respondent 19-24, conflict with our decision to require de novo review. Most of the sources respondent cites merely stand for the proposition that, perhaps because it is a fact-sensitive undertaking, determining the amount of punitive damages should be left to the discretion of the jury. See, e. g., Barry v. Edmunds, 116 U.S. 550, 565 (1886) (“[lit is the peculiar function of the jury” to set the amount of punitive damages); Day v. Woodworth, 13 How. 363, 371 (1852) (punitive damages should be “left to the discretion of the jury”). They do not, however, indicate that the amount of punitive damages imposed by the jury is itself a “fact” within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment’s Reexamination Clause. See Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415, 432 (1996) (distinguishing between the “Trial by Jury” Clause, which “bears... on the allocation of trial functions between judge and jury,” and the “Reexamination” Clause, which “controls the allocation of authority to review verdicts”); see also id., at 447-448 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (same).
In any event, punitive damages have evolved somewhat since the time of respondent's sources. Until well into the 19th century, punitive damages frequently operated to compensate for intangible injuries, compensation which was not otherwise available under the narrow conception of compensatory damages prevalent at the time. See Haslip, 499 U. S., at 61 (O’Connok, J., dissenting); see also Note, Exemplary Damages in the Law of Torts, 70 Harv. L. Rev. 517,520 (1957) (observing a “vacillation” in the 19th-century cases between “compensatory” and “punitive” theories of “exemplary damages”). As the types of compensatory damages
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this litigation is whether the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 49 Stat. 449, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq., pre-empts enforcement by a state authority, acting as the owner of a construction project, of an otherwise lawful prehire collective-bargaining agreement negotiated by private parties.
I
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) is an independent government agency charged by the Massachusetts Legislature with providing water-supply services, sewage collection, and treatment and disposal services for the eastern half of Massachusetts. Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 92 App., § 1-1 et seq. (1993). Following a lawsuit arising out of its failure to prevent the pollution of Boston Harbor, in alleged violation of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 86 Stat. 816, as amended, 33 U. S. C. § 1251 et seq., MWRA was ordered to clean up the harbor. See United States v. Metropolitan Dist. Comm’n, 757 F. Supp. 121, 123 (Mass. 1991). The cleanup project was expected to cost $6.1 billion over 10 years. 935 F. 2d 345, 347 (CA1 1991). The District Court required construction to proceed without interruption, making no allowance for delays from causes such as labor disputes. App. 71 (Affidavit of Richard D. Fox, Director of the Program Management Division of MWRA). MWRA has primary responsibility for the project. Under its enabling statute and the Commonwealth’s public-bidding laws, MWRA provides the funds for construction (assisted by state and federal grants), owns the sewage-treatment facilities to be built, establishes all bid conditions, decides all contract awards, pays the contractors, and generally supervises the project. See 935 F. 2d, at 347 (citing Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 92 App., §1-1 et seq. (1993). Mass. Gen. Laws §§ 149:44A to 149:44I, and 30:39M (1990)).
In the spring of 1988, MWRA selected Kaiser Engineers, Inc., as its project manager. Kaiser was to be primarily in charge of managing and supervising construction activity. Kaiser also was to advise MWRA on the development of a labor-relations policy that would maintain worksite harmony, labor-management peace, and overall stability throughout the duration of the project. To that end, Kaiser suggested to MWRA that Kaiser be permitted to negotiate an agreement with the Building and Construction Trades Council and affiliated organizations (BCTC) that would assure labor stability over the life of the project. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 91-274, p. 75a (MWRA Pet. App.). MWRA accepted Kaiser’s suggestion, and Kaiser accordingly proceeded to negotiate the Boston Harbor Wastewater Treatment Facilities Project Labor Agreement (Agreement). Ibid. The Agreement included: recognition of BCTC as the exclusive bargaining agent for all craft employees; use of specified methods for resolving all labor-related disputes; a requirement that all employees be subject to union-security provisions compelling them to become union members within seven days of their employment; the primary use of BCTC’s hiring halls to supply the project’s craft labor force; a 10-year no-strike commitment; and a requirement that all contractors and subcontractors agree to be bound by the Agreement. 935 F. 2d, at 348. See generally MWRA Pet. App. 107a (full text of Agreement). MWRA’s board of directors approved and adopted the Agreement in May 1989 and directed that Bid Specification 13.1 be incorporated into its solicitation of bids for work on the project. 935 F. 2d, at 347. Bid Specification 13.1 provides in pertinent part:
“[E]ach successful bidder and any and all levels of subcontractors, as a condition of being awarded a contract or subcontract, will agree to abide by the provisions of the Boston Harbor Wastewater Treatment Facilities Project Labor Agreement as executed and effective May 22, 1989, by and between Kaiser ... on behalf of [MWRA] and [BCTC] . . . and will be bound by the provisions of that agreement in the same manner as any other provision of the contract.” MWRA Pet. App. 141a-142a.
In March 1990, a contractors’ association not a party to this litigation filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) contending that the Agreement violated the NLRA. The NLRB General Counsel refused to issue a complaint, finding: (1) that the Agreement is a valid prehire agreement under § 8(f) of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. § 158(f), which authorizes such agreements in the construction industry; and (2) that the Agreement’s provisions limiting work on the project to contractors who agree to abide by the Agreement are lawful under the construction-industry proviso to § 8(e), 29 U. S. C. § 158(e). This proviso sets forth an exception from § 8(e)’s prohibition against “hot cargo” agreements that require an employer to refrain from doing business with any person not agreeing to be bound by a prehire agreement. Building & Trades Council (Kaiser Engineers, Inc.), Case 1-CE-71, NLRB Advice Memo, June 25, 1990, MWRA Pet. App. 88a.
Also in March 1990, respondent Associated Builders and Contractors of Massachusetts/Rhode Island, Inc. (ABC), an organization representing nonunion construction-industry employers, brought this suit against MWRA, Kaiser, and BCTC, seeking, among other things, to enjoin enforcement of Bid Specification 13.1. ABC alleged pre-emption under the NLRA, pre-emption under § 514(c) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 88 Stat. 897, 29 U. S. C. § 1144(c) (ERISA), violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, conspiracy to reduce competition in violation of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1, and various state-law claims. Only NLRA pre-emption is at issue here.
The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts rejected each of ABC’s claims and denied its motion for a preliminary injunction. MWRA Pet. App. 76a-83a. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed and directed entry of a preliminary injunction restraining the use of Bid Specification 13.1, reaching only the issue of NLRA pre-emption. 135 LRRM 2713 (1990). The Court of Appeals subsequently granted a petition for rehearing en banc, vacating the panel opinion. MWRA Pet. App. 84a. Upon rehearing en banc, the Court of Appeals, by a 3-to-2 vote, again reversed the judgment of the District Court, once more reaching only the pre-emption issue. 935 F. 2d, at 359-360. The court held that MWRA’s intrusion into the bargaining process was pervasive and not the sort of peripheral regulation that would be permissible under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959). See 935 F. 2d, at 353. It also held that Bid Specification 13.1 was pre-empted under Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976), because MWRA was regulating activities that Congress intended to be unrestricted by governmental power. Because of the importance of the issue, we granted certiorari, 504 U. S. 908 (1992).
II
The NLRA contains no express pre-emption provision. Therefore, in accordance with settled pre-emption principles, we should not find MWRA’s bid specification pre-empted “ ‘ “unless it conflicts with federal law or would frustrate the federal scheme, or unless [we] discern from the totality of the circumstances that Congress sought to occupy the field to the exclusion of the States.’”” Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 747-748 (1985) (citations omitted). We are reluctant to infer pre-emption. See Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 516 (1992); Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947). “Consideration under the Supremacy Clause starts with the basic assumption that Congress did not intend to displace state law.” Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 746 (1981). With these general principles in mind, we turn to the particular pre-emption doctrines that have developed around the NLRA.
In Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S., at 748, we noted: “The Court has articulated two distinct NLRA pre-emption principles.” The first, “Garmon preemption,” see San Diego Building Trades Council v. Gar-mon, supra, forbids state and local regulation of activities that are “protected by § 7 of the [NLRA], or constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8.” 359 U. S., at 244. See also Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485, 498-499 (1953) (“[W]hen two separate remedies are brought to bear on the same activity, a conflict is imminent”). Garmon pre-emption prohibits regulation even of activities that the NLRA only arguably protects or prohibits. See Wisconsin Dept. of Industry v. Gould Inc., 475 U. S. 282, 286 (1986). This rule of pre-emption is designed to prevent conflict between, on the one hand, state and local regulation and, on the other, Congress’ “integrated scheme of regulation,” Garmon, 359 U. S., at 247, embodied in §§7 and 8 of the NLRA, which includes the choice of the NLRB, rather than state or federal courts, as the appropriate body to implement the Act. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S., at 748-749, and n. 26.
In Garmon, this Court held that a state court was precluded from awarding damages to employers for economic injuries resulting from peaceful picketing by labor unions that had not been selected by a majority of employees as their bargaining agent. 359 U. S., at 246. The Court said: “Our concern is with delimiting areas of conduct which must be free from state regulation if national policy is to be left unhampered.” Ibid. In Gould, we held that the NLRA pre-empts a statute that disqualifies from doing business with the State persons who have violated the NLRA three times within a 5-year period. We emphasized there that “the Garmon rule prevents States not only from setting forth standards of conduct inconsistent with the substantive requirements of the NLRA, but also from providing their own regulatory or judicial remedies for conduct prohibited or arguably prohibited by the Act.” 475 U. S., at 286 (citing 359 U. S., at 247).
A second pre-emption principle, “Machinists preemption,” see Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S., at 147, prohibits state and municipal regulation of areas that have been left “ ‘to be controlled by the free play of economic forces.’” Id., at 140 (citation omitted). See also Golden State Transit Corp. v. Los Angeles, 475 U. S. 608, 614 (1986) (Golden State I); Golden State Transit Corp. v. Los Angeles, 493 U. S. 103, 111 (1989) (Golden State II). Machinists pre-emption preserves Congress’ “intentional balance ‘“between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests.’”” Golden State I, 475 U. S., at 614 (citations omitted).
In Machinists, we held that the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission could not designate as an unfair labor practice under state law a concerted refusal by a union and its members to work overtime, because Congress did not mean such self-help activity to be regulable by the States. 427 U. S., at 148-150. We said that it would frustrate Congress’ intent to “sanction state regulation of such economic pressure deemed by the federal Act ‘desirabl[y] . . . left for the free play of contending economic forces . . . .” Id., at 150 (citation omitted). In Golden State I, we applied the Machinists doctrine to hold that the city of Los Angeles was pre-empted from conditioning renewal of a taxicab operating license upon the settlement of a labor dispute. 475 U. S., at 618. We reiterated the principle that a “local government ... lacks the authority to ‘ “introduce some standard of properly ‘balanced’ bargaining power” ... or to define “what economic sanctions might be permitted negotiating parties in an ‘ideal’ or ‘balanced’ state of collective bargaining.”’” Id., at 619 (quoting Machinists, 427 U. S., at 149-150) (internal citation omitted). In Golden State II, supra, we determined that the taxicab employer who was challenging the city’s conduct in Golden State I was entitled to maintain an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 for compensatory damages against the city. In so holding, we stated that the Machinists rule created a zone free from all regulations, whether state or federal. 493 U. S., at 112.
III
When we say that the NLRA pre-empts state law, we mean that the NLRA prevents a State from regulating within a protected zone, whether it be a zone protected and reserved for market freedom, see Machinists, or for NLRB jurisdiction, see Garmon. A State does not regulate, however, simply by acting within one of these protected areas. When a State owns and manages property, for example, it must interact with private participants in the marketplace. In so doing, the State is not subject to pre-emption by the NLRA, because pre-emption doctrines apply only to state regulation.
Our decisions in this area support the distinction between government as regulator and government as proprietor. We have held consistently that the NLRA was intended to supplant state labor regulation, not all legitimate state activity that affects labor. In Machinists, for example, we referred to Congress’ pre-emptive intent to “leave some activities unregulated,” 427 U. S., at 144 (emphasis added), and held that the activities at issue — workers deciding together to refuse overtime work — were not “regulable by States,” id., at 149 (emphasis added). In Golden State I, we held that the reason Los Angeles could not condition renewal of a taxicab franchise upon settlement of a labor dispute was that “Machinists pre-emption ... precludes state and municipal regulation ‘concerning conduct that Congress intended to be unregulated.’” 475 U. S., at 614 (emphasis added) (quoting Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S., at 749). We refused to permit the city’s exercise of its regulatory power of license nonrenewal to restrict Golden State’s right to use lawful economic weapons in its dispute with its union. See 475 U. S., at 615-619. As petitioners point out, a very different case would have been presented had the city of Los Angeles purchased taxi services from Golden State in order to transport city employees. Brief for Petitioners 35. In that situation, if the strike had produced serious interruptions in the services the city had purchased, the city would not necessarily have been pre-empted from advising Golden State that it would hire another company if the labor dispute were not resolved and services resumed by a specific deadline.
In Gould, we rejected the argument that the State was acting as proprietor rather than regulator for purposes of Garmon pre-emption when the State refused to do business with persons who had violated the NLRA three times within five years. We noted in doing so that in that case, “debarment ... serves plainly as a means of enforcing the NLRA.” 475 U. S., at 287. We said there that “[t]he State concedes, as we think it must, that the point of the statute is to deter labor law violations”; we concluded that “[n]o other purpose could credibly be ascribed.” Ibid.
Respondents quote the following passage from Gould, arguing that it stands for the proposition that the State as proprietor is subject to the same pre-emption limitations as the State as regulator:
“Nothing in the NLRA, of course, prevents private purchasers from boycotting labor law violators. But government occupies a unique position of power in our society, and its conduct, regardless of form, is rightly subject to special restraints. Outside the area of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, it is far from unusual for federal law to prohibit States from making spending decisions in ways that are permissible for private parties .... The NLRA, moreover, has long been understood to protect a range of conduct against state but not private interference .... The Act treats state action differently from private action not merely because they frequently take different forms, but also because in our system States simply are different from private parties and have a different role to play.” Id., at 290.
The above passage does not bear the weight that respondents would have it support. The conduct at issue in Gould was a state agency’s attempt to compel conformity with the NLRA. Because the statute at issue in Gould addressed employer conduct unrelated to the employer’s performance of contractual obligations to the State, and because the State’s reason for such conduct was to deter NLRA violations, we concluded: “Wisconsin ‘simply is not functioning as a private purchaser of services,’ . . . [and therefore,] for all practical purposes, Wisconsin’s debarment scheme is tantamount to regulation.” Id., at 289. We emphasized that we were “not say[ing] that state purchasing decisions may never be influenced by labor considerations.” Id., at 291.
The conceptual distinction between regulator and purchaser exists to a limited extent in the private sphere as well. A private actor, for example, can participate in a boycott of a supplier on the basis of a labor policy concern rather than a profit motive. See id., at 290. The private actor under such circumstances would be attempting to “regulate” the suppliers and would not be acting as a typical proprietor. The fact that a private actor may “regulate” does not mean, of course, that the private actor may be “pre-empted” by the NLRA; the Supremacy Clause does not require pre-emption of private conduct. Private actors therefore may “regulate” as they please, as long as their conduct does not violate the law. As the above passage in Gould makes clear, however, States have a qualitatively different role to play from private parties. Ibid. When the State acts as regulator, it performs a role that is characteristically a governmental rather than a private role, boycotts notwithstanding. Moreover, as regulator of private conduct, the State is more powerful than private parties. These distinctions are far less significant when the State acts as a market participant with no interest in setting policy.
In Gould, we did not address fully the implications of these distinctions. We left open the question whether a State may act without offending the pre-emption principles of the NLRA when it acts as a proprietor and its acts therefore are not “tantamount to regulation” or policymaking. As explained more fully below, we now answer this question in the affirmative.
IV
Permitting the States to participate freely in the marketplace is not only consistent with NLRA pre-emption principles generally but also, in these cases, promotes the legislative goals that animated the passage of the §§8(e) and (f) exceptions for the construction industry. In 1959, Congress amended the NLRA to add § 8(f) and modify § 8(e). Section 8(f) explicitly permits employers in the construction industry — but no other employers — to enter into prehire agreements. Prehire agreements are collective-bargaining agreements providing for union recognition, compulsory union dues or equivalents, and mandatory use of union hiring halls, prior to the hiring of any employees. 935 F. 2d, at 356; Jim McNeff, Inc. v. Todd, 461 U. S. 260, 265-266 (1983). The 1959 amendment adding a proviso to subsection (e) permits a general contractor’s prehire agreement to require an employer not to hire other contractors performing work on that particular project site unless they agree to become bound by the terms of that labor agreement. See Woelke & Romero Framing, Inc. v. NLRB, 456 U. S. 645, 657 (1982). Section 8(f) contains a final proviso that permits employees, once hired, to utilize the NLRB election process under §§9(c) and (e) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §§ 159(c) and (e), if they wish to reject the bargaining representative or to cancel the union security provisions of the prehire agreement. See NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U. S. 335, 345 (1978).
It is undisputed that the Agreement between Kaiser and BCTC is a valid labor contract under §§8(e) and (f). As noted above, those sections explicitly authorize this type of contract between a union and an employer like Kaiser, which is engaged primarily in the construction industry, covering employees engaged in that industry.
Of course, the exceptions provided for the construction industry in §§8(e) and (f), like the prohibitions from which they provide relief, are not made specifically applicable to the State. This is because the State is excluded from the definition of the term “employer” under the NLRA, see 29 U. S. C. § 152(2), and because the State, in any event, is acting not as an employer but as a purchaser in this case. Nevertheless, the general goals behind passage of §§ 8(e) and (f) are still relevant to determining what Congress intended with respect to the State and its relationship to the agreements authorized by these sections.
It is evident from the face of the statute that in enacting exemptions authorizing certain kinds of project labor agreements in the construction industry, Congress intended to accommodate conditions specific to that industry. Such conditions include, among others, the short-term nature of employment which makes posthire collective bargaining difficult, the contractor’s need for predictable costs and a steady supply of skilled labor, and a longstanding custom of prehire bargaining in the industry. See S. Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 28, 55-56 (1959); H. R. Rep. No. 741, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 19-20 (1959).
There is no reason to expect these defining features of the construction industry to depend upon the public or private nature of the entity purchasing contracting services. To the extent that a private purchaser may choose a contractor based upon that contractor’s willingness to enter into a pre-hire agreement, a public entity as purchaser should be permitted to do the same. Confronted with such a purchaser, those contractors who do not normally enter such agreements are faced with a choice. They may alter their usual mode of operation to secure the business opportunity at hand, or seek business from purchasers whose perceived needs do not include a project labor agreement. In the absence of any express or implied indication by Congress that a State may not manage its own property when it pursues its purely proprietary interests, and where analogous private conduct would be permitted, this Court will not infer such a restriction. See, e. g., Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S., at 746 (“Consideration under the Supremacy Clause starts with the basic assumption that Congress did not intend to displace state law”). Indeed, there is some force to petitioners’ argument, Brief for Petitioners 25, that denying an option to public owner-developers that is available to private owner-developers itself places a restriction on Congress’ intended free play of economic forces identified in Machinists.
V
In the instant case, MWRA acted on the advice of a manager hired to organize performance of a cleanup job over which, under Massachusetts law, MWRA is the proprietor. There is no question but that MWRA was attempting to ensure an efficient project that would be completed as quickly and effectively as possible at the lowest cost. As petitioners note, moreover, Brief for Petitioners 26, the challenged action in this litigation was specifically tailored to one particular job, the Boston Harbor cleanup project. There is therefore no basis on which to distinguish the incentives at work here from those that operate elsewhere in the construction industry, incentives that this Court has recognized as legitimate. See Woelke & Romero Framing Co. v. NLRB, 456 U. S., at 662, and n. 14.
We hold today that Bid Specification 13.1 is not government regulation and that it is therefore subject to neither Garmon nor Machinists pre-emption. Bid Specification 13.1 constitutes proprietary conduct on the part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which legally has enforced a valid project labor agreement. As Chief Judge Breyer aptly noted in his dissent in the Court of Appeals, “when the MWRA, acting in the role of purchaser of construction services, acts just like a private contractor would act, and conditions its purchasing upon the very sort of labor agreement that Congress explicitly authorized and expected frequently to find, it does not ‘regulate’ the workings of the market forces that Congress expected to find; it exemplifies them.” 935 F. 2d, at 361.
Because we find that Bid Specification 13.1 is not preempted by the NLRA, it follows that a preliminary injunction against enforcement of this bid specification was improper. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand these cases for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Massachusetts competitive-bidding laws require MWRA to state its preference for a contract term, such as a project labor agreement, in the form of a bid specification. These laws, which MWRA’s Enabling Act explicitly incorporates, see Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 92 App., § 1—8(g) (1993) (incorporating Mass. Gen. Laws §§30:39M, and 149:44A to 149:44H), require that the competitive-bidding process be carried out by the awarding authority. See Modern Continental Constr. Co. v. Lowell, 391 Mass. 829, 836, 465 N. E. 2d 1173, 1177-1178 (1984).
Respondents suggest in their brief, Brief for Respondents 22, n. 12, that under H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U. S. 99, 103 (1970), § 8(d) of the NLRA expressly prohibits the conduct of MWRA at issue in this case. The Court of Appeals did not rely on this section of the statute, nor did we grant certiorari on this question. We therefore decline the invitation to address the application, if any, of § 8(d) to Bid Specification 13.1.
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.
Per Curiam.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted habeas relief to Robert Van Hook on the ground that he did not receive effective assistance of counsel during the sentencing phase of his capital trial. Because we think it clear that Van Hook’s attorneys met the constitutional minimum of competence under the correct standard, we grant the petition and reverse.
I
On February 18, 1985, Van Hook went to a Cincinnati bar that catered to homosexual men, hoping to find someone to rob. He approached David Self, and after the two spent several hours drinking together they left for Self’s apartment. There Van Hook “lured Self into a vulnerable position” and attacked him, first strangling him until he was unconscious, then killing him with a kitchen knife and mutilating his body. State v. Van Hook, 39 Ohio St. 3d 256, 256-257, 530 N. E. 2d 883, 884 (1988) (statement of the case). Before fleeing with Self’s valuables, Van Hook attempted to cover his tracks, stuffing the knife and other items into the body and smearing fingerprints he. had left behind. Six weeks later, police found him in Florida, where he confessed.
Van Hook was indicted in Ohio for aggravated murder, with one capital specification, and aggravated robbery. He waived his right to a jury trial, and a three-judge panel found him guilty of both charges and the capital specification. At the sentencing hearing, the defense called eight mitigation witnesses, and Van Hook himself gave an unsworn statement. After weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the trial court imposed the death penalty. The Ohio courts affirmed on direct appeal, id., at 265, 530 N. E. 2d, at 892; State v. Van Hook, No. C-85-0565, 1987 WL 11202 (Ohio App., May 13, 1987) (per curiam), and we denied certiorari, Van Hook v. Ohio, 489 U. S. 1100 (1989). Van Hook also sought state postconviction relief, which the Ohio courts denied. State v. Van Hook, No. C-910505, 1992 WL 308350 (Ohio App., Oct. 21, 1992) (per curiam), appeal denied, 66 Ohio St. 3d 1440, 608 N. E. 2d 1085, rehearing denied, 66 Ohio St. 3d 1470, 611 N. E. 2d 328 (1993); State v. Van Hook, 70 Ohio St. 3d 1216, 639 N. E. 2d 1199 (1994).
Van Hook filed this federal habeas petition in 1995. The District Court denied relief on all 17 of his claims. Van Hook v. Anderson, No. C-1-94-269 (SD Ohio, Aug. 7, 2003), App. to Pet. for Cert. 123a, 163a. A panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed, concluding that Van Hook’s confession was unconstitutionally obtained under Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981). See Van Hook v. Anderson, 444 F. 3d 830, 832 (2006). The en banc Sixth Circuit vacated that ruling, holding the confession was proper, and it remanded the case to the panel to consider Van Hook’s other claims. See Van Hook v. Anderson, 488 F. 3d 411, 428 (2007). Van Hook petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which we denied. Van Hook v. Hudson, 552 U. S. 1023 (2007).
On remand, the panel granted Van Hook habeas relief again, but on different grounds, holding that his attorneys were ineffective during the penalty phase because they did not adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence, neglected to secure an independent mental-health expert, and requested and relied on a presentence investigation report without objecting to damaging evidence it contained. See Van Hook v. Anderson, 535 F. 3d 458, 461 (2008). The en banc Sixth Circuit again vacated the panel’s opinion, but rather than hearing the ease a second time it remanded for the panel to revise its opinion. See Van Hook v. Anderson, 560 F. 3d 523, 524 (2009). In its third opinion, the panel— relying on guidelines published by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2003 — granted relief to Van Hook on the sole ground that his lawyers performed deficiently in investigating and presenting mitigating evidence. See id., at 525. The State petitioned for a writ of certiorari. We grant the petition and reverse.
II
Because Van Hook filed his federal habeas petition before April 24, 1996, the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 do not apply. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U. S. 320, 327 (1997). Even without the Act’s added layer of deference to state-court judgments, we cannot agree with the Court of Appeals that Van Hook is entitled to relief.
A
The Sixth Amendment entitles criminal defendants to the “‘effective assistance of counsel’” — that is, representation that does not fall “below an objective standard of reasonableness” in light of “prevailing professional norms.” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 686, 688 (1984) (quoting McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 771, n. 14 (1970)). That standard is necessarily a general one. “No particular set of detailed rules for counsel’s conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions regarding how best to represent a criminal defendant.” 466 U. S., at 688-689. Restatements of professional standards, we have recognized, can be useful as “guides” to what reasonableness entails, but only to the extent they describe the professional norms prevailing when the representation took place. Id., at 688.
The Sixth Circuit ignored this limiting principle, relying on ABA guidelines announced 18 years after Van Hook went to trial. See 560 F. 3d, at 526-528 (quoting ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases 10.7, comment., pp. 81-83 (rev. ed. 2003)). The ABA standards in effect in 1985 described defense counsel’s duty to investigate both the merits and mitigating circumstances in general terms: “It is the duty of the lawyer to conduct a prompt investigation of the circumstances of the case and to explore all avenues leading to facts relevant to the merits of the case and the penalty in the event of conviction.” 1 ABA Standards for Criminal Justice 4-4.1, p. 4-53 (2d ed. 1980). The accompanying two-page commentary noted that defense counsel have “a substantial and important role to perform in raising mitigating factors,” and that “[information concerning the defendant’s background, education, employment record, mental and emotional stability, family relationships, and the like, will be relevant, as will mitigating circumstances surrounding the commission of the offense itself.” Id., at 4-55.
Quite different are the ABA’s 131-page “Guidelines” for capital defense counsel, published in 2003, on which the Sixth Circuit relied. Those directives expanded what had been (in the 1980 Standards) a broad outline of defense counsel’s duties in all criminal cases into detailed prescriptions for legal representation of capital defendants. They discuss the duty to investigate mitigating evidence in exhaustive detail, specifying what attorneys should look for, where to look, and when to begin. See ABA Guidelines 10.7, comment., at 80-85. They include, for example, the requirement that counsel’s investigation cover every period of the defendant’s life from “the moment of conception,” id., at 81, and that counsel contact “virtually everyone . . . who knew [the defendant] and his family” and obtain records “concerning not only the client, but also his parents, grandparents, siblings, and children,” id., at 83. Judging counsel’s conduct in the 1980’s on the basis of these 2003 Guidelines — without even pausing to consider whether they reflected the prevailing professional practice at the time of the trial — was error.
To make matters worse, the Court of Appeals (following Circuit precedent) treated the ABA’s 2003 Guidelines not merely as evidence of what reasonably diligent attorneys would do, but as inexorable commands with which all capital defense counsel “‘must fully comply.’” 560 F. 3d, at 526 (quoting Dickerson v. Bagley, 453 F. 3d 690, 693 (CA6 2006)). Strickland stressed, however, that “American Bar Association standards and the like” are “only guides” to what reasonableness means, not its definition. 466 U. S., at 688. We have since regarded them as such. See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510, 524 (2003). What we have said of state requirements is a fortiori true of standards set by private organizations: “[W]hile States are free to impose whatever specific rules they see fit to ensure that criminal defendants are well represented, we have held that the Federal Constitution imposes one general requirement: that counsel make objectively reasonable choices.” Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U. S. 470, 479 (2000).
B
Van Hook insists that the Sixth Circuit’s missteps made no difference because his counsel were ineffective even under professional standards prevailing at the time. He is wrong.
Like the Court of Appeals, Van Hook first contends that his attorneys began their mitigation investigation too late, waiting until he was found guilty — only days before the sentencing hearing — to dig into his background. See 560 F. 3d, at 528. But the record shows they started much sooner. Between Van Hook’s indictment and his trial less than three months later, they contacted their lay witnesses early and often: They spoke nine times with his mother (beginning within a week after the indictment), once with both parents together, twice with an aunt who lived with the family and often cared for Van Hook as a child, and three times with a family friend whom Van Hook visited immediately after the crime. App. to Pet. for Cert. 380a-383a, 384a-387a. As for their expert witnesses, they were in touch with one more than a month before trial, and they met with the other for two hours a week before the trial court reached its verdict. Id., at 382a, 386a. Moreover, after reviewing his military history, they met with a representative of the Veterans Administration seven weeks before trial and attempted to obtain his medical records. Id., at 381a, 386a. And they looked into enlisting a mitigation specialist when the trial was still five weeks away. Id., at 386a. The Sixth Circuit, in short, was simply incorrect in saying Van Hook’s lawyers waited until the “last minute.” 560 F. 3d, at 528. Cf. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 395 (2000) (counsel waited “until a week before the trial” to prepare for the sentencing phase).
Nor was the scope of counsel’s investigation unreasonable. The Sixth Circuit said Van Hook’s attorneys found only “a little information about his traumatic childhood experience,” 560 F. 3d, at 528, but that is a gross distortion. The trial court learned, for instance, that Van Hook (whose parents were both “heavy drinkers”) started drinking as a toddler, began “barhopping” with his father at age 9, drank and used drugs regularly with his father from age 11 forward, and continued abusing drugs and alcohol into adulthood. App. to Pet. for Cert. 310a-312a, 323a-326a, 328a-330a, 373a. The court also heard that Van Hook grew up in a “ ‘combat zone’ He watched his father beat his mother weekly, saw him hold her at gunpoint and knifepoint, “observed” episodes of “sexual violence” while sleeping in his parents’ bedroom, and was beaten himself at least once. Id., at 321a, 338a-339a, 371a. It learned that Van Hook, who had “fantasies about killing and war” from an early age, was deeply upset when his drug and alcohol abuse forced him out of the military, and attempted suicide five times (including a month before the murder), id., at 351a-353a, 372a. And although the experts agreed that Van Hook did not suffer from a “mental disease or defect,” the trial court learned that Van Hook’s borderline personality disorder and his consumption of drugs and alcohol the day of the crime impaired “his ability to refrain from the [crime],” id., at 303a, and that his “explosion]” of “senseless and bizarre brutality” may have resulted from what one expert termed a “homosexual panic,” id., at 376a.
Despite all the mitigating evidence the defense did present, Van Hook and the Court of Appeals fault his counsel for failing to find more. What his counsel did discover, the argument goes, gave them “reason to suspect that much worse details existed,” and that suspicion should have prompted them to interview other family members — his stepsister, two uncles, and two aunts — as well as a psychiatrist who once treated his mother, all of whom “could have helped his counsel narrate the true story of Van Hook’s childhood experiences.” 560 F. 3d, at 528. But there comes a point at which evidence from more distant relatives can reasonably be expected to be only cumulative, and the search for it distractive from more important duties. The ABA Standards prevailing at the time called for Van Hook’s counsel to cover several broad categories of mitigating evidence, see 1 ABA Standards 4-4.1, comment., at 4-55, which they did. And given all the evidence they unearthed from those closest to Van Hook’s upbringing and the experts who reviewed his history, it was not unreasonable for his counsel not to identify and interview every other living family member or every therapist who once treated his parents. This is not a case in which the defendant’s attorneys failed to act while potentially powerful mitigating evidence stared them in the face, cf. Wiggins, 539 U. S., at 525, or would have been apparent from documents any reasonable attorney would have obtained, cf. Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U. S. 374, 389-393 (2005). It is instead a case, like Strickland itself, in which defense counsel’s “decision not to seek more” mitigating evidence from the defendant’s background “than was already in hand” fell “well within the range of professionally reasonable judgments.” 466 U. S., at 699.
What is more, even if Van Hook’s counsel performed deficiently by failing to dig deeper, he suffered no prejudice as a result. See id., at 694. As the Ohio court that rejected Van Hook’s state habeas petition found, the affidavits submitted by the witnesses not interviewed show their testimony would have added nothing of value. See State v. Van Hook, No. C-910505, 1992 WL 308350, *2. Only two witnesses even arguably would have added new, relevant information: One of Van Hook’s uncles noted that Van Hook’s mother was temporarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, and Van Hook’s stepsister mentioned that his father hit Van Hook frequently and tried to kill Van Hook’s mother. App. to Pet. for Cert. 227a, 232a. But the trial court had already heard — from Van Hook’s mother herself — that she had been “under psychiatric care” more than once. Id., at 340a. And it was already aware that his father had a violent nature, had attacked Van Hook’s mother, and had beaten Van Hook at least once. See also id., at 305a (noting that Van Hook “suffered from a significant degree of neglect and abuse” throughout his “chaotic” childhood). Neither the Court of Appeals nor Van Hook has shown why the minor additional details the trial court did not hear would have made any difference.
On the other side of the scales, moreover, was the evidence of the aggravating circumstance the trial court found: that Van Hook committed the murder alone in the course of an aggravated robbery. See Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2929.04(A)(7) (Lexis 2006). Van Hook’s confession made clear, and he never subsequently denied, both that he was the sole perpetrator of the crime and that “[h]is intention from beginning to end was to rob [Self] at some point in their evening’s activities.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 295a; see id., at 276a-278a, 294a. Nor did he arrive at that intention on a whim: Van Hook had previously pursued the same strategy— of luring homosexual men into secluded settings to rob them — many times since his teenage years, and he employed it again even after Self’s murder in the weeks before his arrest. See id., at 279a, 295a, 374a. Although Van Hook apparently deviated from his original plan once the offense was underway — going beyond stealing Self’s goods to killing him and disfiguring the dead body — that hardly helped his cause. The Sixth Circuit, which focused on the number of aggravating factors instead of their weight, see 560 F. 3d, at 530; cf. Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2929.04(B), gave all this evidence short shrift, leading it to overstate further the effect additional mitigating.evidence might have had.
* * *
The petition for certiorari and the motion for leave to proceed informa pauperis are granted. 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 narrow grounds for our opinion should not be regarded as accepting the legitimacy of a less categorical use of the Guidelines to evaluate post-2003 representation. For that to be proper, the Guidelines must reflect “[prevailing norms of practice,” Strickland, 466 U. S., at 688, and “standard practice,” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510, 524 (2003), and must not be so detailed that they would “interfere with the constitutionally protected independence of counsel and restrict the wide latitude counsel must have in making tactical decisions,” Strickland, supra, at 689. We express no views on whether the 2003 Guidelines meet these criteria.
In his brief in this Court, Van Hook also alludes to his counsel’s failure to obtain an independent mental-health expert and their reliance on (and failure to object to harmful evidence in) a presentence investigation report — grounds on which the Sixth Circuit panel previously relied but which it abandoned in its final opinion. See supra, at 6. Van Hook now concedes, however, that neither ground is a “basis for issuing the writ,” Brief in Opposition 5; see also id., at 7, and accordingly we do not address them.
In addition to the evidence the Sixth Circuit said his attorneys overlooked, Van Hook alleges that his lawyers failed to provide the expert witnesses with a “complete set of relevant records or [his] complete psycho-social history.” Brief in Opposition 4. But he offers no support for that assertion. He further claims that his counsel failed to obtain or present records of his military service and prior hospitalizations, but the record shows that they did review the former, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 380a, and that the trial court learned (from one of the written expert reports) all the relevant information Van Hook says it would have gleaned from the latter, see id., at 373a-377a.
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 KENNEDYdelivered the opinion of the Court.
This case arises from an antitrust challenge to the actions of a state regulatory board. A majority of the board's members are engaged in the active practice of the profession it regulates. The question is whether the board's actions are protected from Sherman Act regulation under the doctrine of state-action antitrust immunity, as defined and applied in this Court's decisions beginning with Parker v. Brown,317 U.S. 341, 63 S.Ct. 307, 87 L.Ed. 315 (1943).
I
A
In its Dental Practice Act (Act), North Carolina has declared the practice of dentistry to be a matter of public concern requiring regulation. N.C. Gen.Stat. Ann. § 90-22(a) (2013). Under the Act, the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners (Board) is "the agency of the State for the regulation of the practice of dentistry." § 90-22(b).
The Board's principal duty is to create, administer, and enforce a licensing system for dentists. See §§ 90-29 to 90-41. To perform that function it has broad authority over licensees. See § 90-41. The Board's authority with respect to unlicensed persons, however, is more restricted: like "any resident citizen," the Board may file suit to "perpetually enjoin any person from... unlawfully practicing dentistry." § 90-40.1.
The Act provides that six of the Board's eight members must be licensed dentists engaged in the active practice of dentistry. § 90-22. They are elected by other licensed dentists in North Carolina, who cast their ballots in elections conducted by the Board. Ibid.The seventh member must be a licensed and practicing dental hygienist, and he or she is elected by other licensed hygienists. Ibid. The final member is referred to by the Act as a "consumer" and is appointed by the Governor. Ibid.All members serve 3-year terms, and no person may serve more than two consecutive terms. Ibid. The Act does not create any mechanism for the removal of an elected member of the Board by a public official. See ibid.
Board members swear an oath of office, § 138A-22(a), and the Board must comply with the State's Administrative Procedure Act, § 150B-1 et seq.,Public Records Act, § 132-1 et seq.,and open-meetings law, § 143-318.9 et seq.The Board may promulgate rules and regulations governing the practice of dentistry within the State, provided those mandates are not inconsistent with the Act and are approved by the North Carolina Rules Review Commission, whose members are appointed by the state legislature. See §§ 90-48, 143B-30.1, 150B-21.9(a).
B
In the 1990's, dentists in North Carolina started whitening teeth. Many of those who did so, including 8 of the Board's 10 members during the period at issue in this case, earned substantial fees for that service. By 2003, nondentists arrived on the scene. They charged lower prices for their services than the dentists did. Dentists soon began to complain to the Board about their new competitors. Few complaints warned of possible harm to consumers. Most expressed a principal concern with the low prices charged by nondentists.
Responding to these filings, the Board opened an investigation into nondentist teeth whitening. A dentist member was placed in charge of the inquiry. Neither the Board's hygienist member nor its consumer member participated in this undertaking. The Board's chief operations officer remarked that the Board was "going forth to do battle" with nondentists. App. to Pet. for Cert. 103a. The Board's concern did not result in a formal rule or regulation reviewable by the independent Rules Review Commission, even though the Act does not, by its terms, specify that teeth whitening is "the practice of dentistry."
Starting in 2006, the Board issued at least 47 cease-and-desist letters on its official letterhead to nondentist teeth whitening service providers and product manufacturers. Many of those letters directed the recipient to cease "all activity constituting the practice of dentistry"; warned that the unlicensed practice of dentistry is a crime; and strongly implied (or expressly stated) that teeth whitening constitutes "the practice of dentistry." App. 13, 15. In early 2007, the Board persuaded the North Carolina Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners to warn cosmetologists against providing teeth whitening services. Later that year, the Board sent letters to mall operators, stating that kiosk teeth whiteners were violating the Dental Practice Act and advising that the malls consider expelling violators from their premises.
These actions had the intended result. Nondentists ceased offering teeth whitening services in North Carolina.
C
In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an administrative complaint charging the Board with violating § 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 38 Stat. 719, as amended, 15 U.S.C. § 45. The FTC alleged that the Board's concerted action to exclude nondentists from the market for teeth whitening services in North Carolina constituted an anticompetitive and unfair method of competition. The Board moved to dismiss, alleging state-action immunity. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) denied the motion. On appeal, the FTC sustained the ALJ's ruling. It reasoned that, even assuming the Board had acted pursuant to a clearly articulated state policy to displace competition, the Board is a "public/private hybrid" that must be actively supervised by the State to claim immunity. App. to Pet. for Cert. 49a. The FTC further concluded the Board could not make that showing.
Following other proceedings not relevant here, the ALJ conducted a hearing on the merits and determined the Board had unreasonably restrained trade in violation of antitrust law. On appeal, the FTC again sustained the ALJ. The FTC rejected the Board's public safety justification, noting, inter alia,"a wealth of evidence... suggesting that non-dentist provided teeth whitening is a safe cosmetic procedure." Id.,at 123a.
The FTC ordered the Board to stop sending the cease-and-desist letters or other communications that stated nondentists may not offer teeth whitening services and products. It further ordered the Board to issue notices to all earlier recipients of the Board's cease-and-desist orders advising them of the Board's proper sphere of authority and saying, among other options, that the notice recipients had a right to seek declaratory rulings in state court.
On petition for review, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the FTC in all respects. 717 F.3d 359, 370 (2013). This Court granted certiorari. 571 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 1491, 188 L.Ed.2d 375 (2014).
II
Federal antitrust law is a central safeguard for the Nation's free market structures. In this regard it is "as important to the preservation of economic freedom and our free-enterprise system as the Bill of Rights is to the protection of our fundamental personal freedoms." United States v. Topco Associates, Inc.,405 U.S. 596, 610, 92 S.Ct. 1126, 31 L.Ed.2d 515 (1972). The antitrust laws declare a considered and decisive prohibition by the Federal Government of cartels, price fixing, and other combinations or practices that undermine the free market.
The Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.,serves to promote robust competition, which in turn empowers the States and provides their citizens with opportunities to pursue their own and the public's welfare. See FTC v. Ticor Title Ins. Co.,504 U.S. 621, 632, 112 S.Ct. 2169, 119 L.Ed.2d 410 (1992). The States, however, when acting in their respective realm, need not adhere in all contexts to a model of unfettered competition. While "the States regulate their economies in many ways not inconsistent with the antitrust laws," id.,at 635-636, 112 S.Ct. 2169, in some spheres they impose restrictions on occupations, confer exclusive or shared rights to dominate a market, or otherwise limit competition to achieve public objectives. If every duly enacted state law or policy were required to conform to the mandates of the Sherman Act, thus promoting competition at the expense of other values a State may deem fundamental, federal antitrust law would impose an impermissible burden on the States' power to regulate. See Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland,437 U.S. 117, 133, 98 S.Ct. 2207, 57 L.Ed.2d 91 (1978); see also Easterbrook, Antitrust and the Economics of Federalism, 26 J. Law & Econ. 23, 24 (1983).
For these reasons, the Court in Parker v. Browninterpreted the antitrust laws to confer immunity on anticompetitive conduct by the States when acting in their sovereign capacity. See 317 U.S., at 350-351, 63 S.Ct. 307. That ruling recognized Congress' purpose to respect the federal balance and to "embody in the Sherman Act the federalism principle that the States possess a significant measure of sovereignty under our Constitution." Community Communications Co. v. Boulder,455 U.S. 40, 53, 102 S.Ct. 835, 70 L.Ed.2d 810 (1982). Since 1943, the Court has reaffirmed the importance of Parker's central holding. See, e.g., Ticor, supra,at 632-637, 112 S.Ct. 2169; Hoover v. Ronwin,466 U.S. 558, 568, 104 S.Ct. 1989, 80 L.Ed.2d 590 (1984); Lafayette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co.,435 U.S. 389, 394-400, 98 S.Ct. 1123, 55 L.Ed.2d 364 (1978).
III
In this case the Board argues its members were invested by North Carolina with the power of the State and that, as a result, the Board's actions are cloaked with Parkerimmunity. This argument fails, however. A nonsovereign actor controlled by active market participants-such as the Board-enjoys Parkerimmunity only if it satisfies two requirements: "first that 'the challenged restraint... be one clearly articulated and affirmatively expressed as state policy,' and second that 'the policy... be actively supervised by the State.' " FTC v. Phoebe Putney Health System, Inc.,568 U.S. ----, ----, 133 S.Ct. 1003, 1010, 185 L.Ed.2d 43 (2013)(quoting California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U.S. 97, 105, 100 S.Ct. 937, 63 L.Ed.2d 233 (1980)). The parties have assumed that the clear articulation requirement is satisfied, and we do the same. While North Carolina prohibits the unauthorized practice of dentistry, however, its Act is silent on whether that broad prohibition covers teeth whitening. Here, the Board did not receive active supervision by the State when it interpreted the Act as addressing teeth whitening and when it enforced that policy by issuing cease-and-desist letters to nondentist teeth whiteners.
A
Although state-action immunity exists to avoid conflicts between state sovereignty and the Nation's commitment to a policy of robust competition, Parkerimmunity is not unbounded. "[G]iven the fundamental national values of free enterprise and economic competition that are embodied in the federal antitrust laws,'state action immunity is disfavored, much as are repeals by implication.' " Phoebe Putney, supra,at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1010(quoting Ticor, supra,at 636, 112 S.Ct. 2169).
An entity may not invoke Parkerimmunity unless the actions in question are an exercise of the State's sovereign power. See Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc.,499 U.S. 365, 374, 111 S.Ct. 1344, 113 L.Ed.2d 382 (1991). State legislation and "decision[s] of a state supreme court, acting legislatively rather than judicially," will satisfy this standard, and "ipso factoare exempt from the operation of the antitrust laws" because they are an undoubted exercise of state sovereign authority. Hoover, supra,at 567-568, 104 S.Ct. 1989.
But while the Sherman Act confers immunity on the States' own anticompetitive policies out of respect for federalism, it does not always confer immunity where, as here, a State delegates control over a market to a non-sovereign actor. See Parker, supra,at 351, 63 S.Ct. 307 ("[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"). For purposes of Parker,a nonsovereign actor is one whose conduct does not automatically qualify as that of the sovereign State itself. See Hoover, supra,at 567-568, 104 S.Ct. 1989. State agencies are not simply by their governmental character sovereign actors for purposes of state-action immunity. See Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar,421 U.S. 773, 791, 95 S.Ct. 2004, 44 L.Ed.2d 572 (1975)("The fact that the State Bar is a state agency for some limited purposes does not create an antitrust shield that allows it to foster anticompetitive practices for the benefit of its members"). Immunity for state agencies, therefore, requires more than a mere facade of state involvement, for it is necessary in light of Parker's rationale to ensure the States accept political accountability for anticompetitive conduct they permit and control. See Ticor,504 U.S., at 636, 112 S.Ct. 2169.
Limits on state-action immunity are most essential when the State seeks to delegate its regulatory power to active market participants, for established ethical standards may blend with private anticompetitive motives in a way difficult even for market participants to discern. Dual allegiances are not always apparent to an actor. In consequence, active market participants cannot be allowed to regulate their own markets free from antitrust accountability. See Midcal, supra,at 106, 100 S.Ct. 937("The national policy in favor of competition cannot be thwarted by casting [a] gauzy cloak of state involvement over what is essentially a private price-fixing arrangement"). Indeed, prohibitions against anticompetitive self-regulation by active market participants are an axiom of federal antitrust policy. See, e.g.,Allied Tube & Conduit Corp. v. Indian Head, Inc.,486 U.S. 492, 501, 108 S.Ct. 1931, 100 L.Ed.2d 497 (1988); Hoover, supra,at 584, 104 S.Ct. 1989(Stevens, J., dissenting) ("The risk that private regulation of market entry, prices, or output may be designed to confer monopoly profits on members of an industry at the expense of the consuming public has been the central concern of... our antitrust jurisprudence"); see also Elhauge, The Scope of Antitrust Process, 104 Harv. L.Rev. 667, 672 (1991). So it follows that, under Parkerand the Supremacy Clause, the States' greater power to attain an end does not include the lesser power to negate the congressional judgment embodied in the Sherman Act through unsupervised delegations to active market participants. See Garland, Antitrust and State Action: Economic Efficiency and the Political Process, 96 Yale L.J. 486, 500 (1986).
Parkerimmunity requires that the anticompetitive conduct of nonsovereign actors, especially those authorized by the State to regulate their own profession, result from procedures that suffice to make it the State's own. See Goldfarb, supra,at 790, 95 S.Ct. 2004; see also 1A P. Areeda & H. Hovencamp, Antitrust Law ¶ 226, p. 180 (4th ed. 2013) (Areeda & Hovencamp). The question is not whether the challenged conduct is efficient, well-functioning, or wise. See Ticor, supra,at 634-635, 112 S.Ct. 2169. Rather, it is "whether anticompetitive conduct engaged in by [nonsovereign actors] should be deemed state action and thus shielded from the antitrust laws." Patrick v. Burget,486 U.S. 94, 100, 108 S.Ct. 1658, 100 L.Ed.2d 83 (1988).
To answer this question, the Court applies the two-part test set forth in California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc.,445 U.S. 97, 100 S.Ct. 937, 63 L.Ed.2d 233, a case arising from California's delegation of price-fixing authority to wine merchants. Under Midcal,"[a] state law or regulatory scheme cannot be the basis for antitrust immunity unless, first, the State has articulated a clear policy to allow the anticompetitive conduct, and second, the State provides active supervision of [the] anticompetitive conduct." Ticor, supra,at 631, 112 S.Ct. 2169(citing Midcal, supra,at 105, 100 S.Ct. 937).
Midcal's clear articulation requirement is satisfied "where the displacement of competition [is] the inherent, logical, or ordinary result of the exercise of authority delegated by the state legislature. In that scenario, the State must have foreseen and implicitly endorsed the anticompetitive effects as consistent with its policy goals." Phoebe Putney,568 U.S., at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1013. The active supervision requirement demands, inter alia,"that state officials have and exercise power to review particular anticompetitive acts of private parties and disapprove those that fail to accord with state policy." Patrick, supra,486 U.S., at 101, 108 S.Ct. 1658.
The two requirements set forth in Midcalprovide a proper analytical framework to resolve the ultimate question whether an anticompetitive policy is indeed the policy of a State. The first requirement-clear articulation-rarely will achieve that goal by itself, for a policy may satisfy this test yet still be defined at so high a level of generality as to leave open critical questions about how and to what extent the market should be regulated. See Ticor, supra,at 636-637, 112 S.Ct. 2169. Entities purporting to act under state authority might diverge from the State's considered definition of the public good. The resulting asymmetry between a state policy and its implementation can invite private self-dealing. The second Midcalrequirement-active supervision-seeks to avoid this harm by requiring the State to review and approve interstitial policies made by the entity claiming immunity.
Midcal's supervision rule "stems from the recognition that '[w]here a private party is engaging in anticompetitive activity, there is a real danger that he is acting to further his own interests, rather than the governmental interests of the State.' " Patrick, supra,at 100, 108 S.Ct. 1658. Concern about the private incentives of active market participants animates Midcal' s supervision mandate, which demands "realistic assurance that a private party's anticompetitive conduct promotes state policy, rather than merely the party's individual interests." Patrick, supra,at 101, 108 S.Ct. 1658.
B
In determining whether anticompetitive policies and conduct are indeed the action of a State in its sovereign capacity, there are instances in which an actor can be excused from Midcal's active supervision requirement. In Hallie v. Eau Claire, 471 U.S. 34, 45, 105 S.Ct. 1713, 85 L.Ed.2d 24 (1985), the Court held municipalities are subject exclusively to Midcal's " 'clear articulation' " requirement. That rule, the Court observed, is consistent with the objective of ensuring that the policy at issue be one enacted by the State itself. Hallieexplained that "[w]here the actor is a municipality, there is little or no danger that it is involved in a private price-fixing arrangement. The only real danger is that it will seek to further purely parochial public interests at the expense of more overriding state goals." 471 U.S., at 47, 105 S.Ct. 1713. Halliefurther observed that municipalities are electorally accountable and lack the kind of private incentives characteristic of active participants in the market. See id.,at 45, n. 9, 105 S.Ct. 1713. Critically, the municipality in Hallieexercised a wide range of governmental powers across different economic spheres, substantially reducing the risk that it would pursue private interests while regulating any single field. See ibid.That Hallieexcused municipalities from Midcal's supervision rule for these reasons all but confirms the rule's applicability to actors controlled by active market participants, who ordinarily have none of the features justifying the narrow exception Hallieidentified. See 471 U.S., at 45, 105 S.Ct. 1713.
Following Goldfarb,Midcal,and Hallie,which clarified the conditions under which Parkerimmunity attaches to the conduct of a nonsovereign actor, the Court in Columbia v. Omni Outdoor Advertising, Inc.,499 U.S. 365, 111 S.Ct. 1344, 113 L.Ed.2d 382, addressed whether an otherwise immune entity could lose immunity for conspiring with private parties. In Omni,an aspiring billboard merchant argued that the city of Columbia, South Carolina, had violated the Sherman Act-and forfeited its Parkerimmunity-by anticompetitively conspiring with an established local company in passing an ordinance restricting new billboard construction. 499 U.S., at 367-368, 111 S.Ct. 1344. The Court disagreed, holding there is no "conspiracy exception" to Parker. Omni, supra,at 374, 111 S.Ct. 1344.
Omni,like the cases before it, recognized the importance of drawing a line "relevant to the purposes of the Sherman Act and of Parker: prohibiting the restriction of competition for private gain but permitting the restriction of competition in the public interest." 499 U.S., at 378, 111 S.Ct. 1344. In the context of a municipal actor which, as in Hallie,exercised substantial governmental powers, Omnirejected a conspiracy exception for "corruption" as vague and unworkable, since "virtually all regulation benefits some segments of the society and harms others" and may in that sense be seen as " 'corrupt.' " 499 U.S., at 377, 111 S.Ct. 1344. Omnialso rejected subjective tests for corruption that would force a "deconstruction of the governmental process and probing of the official 'intent' that we have consistently sought to avoid." Ibid.Thus, whereas the cases preceding it addressed the preconditions of Parkerimmunity and engaged in an objective, ex anteinquiry into nonsovereign actors' structure and incentives, Omnimade clear that recipients of immunity will not lose it on the basis of ad hoc and ex postquestioning of their motives for making particular decisions.
Omni's holding makes it all the more necessary to ensure the conditions for granting immunity are met in the first place. The Court's two state-action immunity cases decided after Omnireinforce this point. In Ticorthe Court affirmed that Midcal's limits on delegation must ensure that "[a]ctual state involvement, not deference to private price-fixing arrangements under the general auspices of state law, is the precondition for immunity from federal law." 504 U.S., at 633, 112 S.Ct. 2169. And in Phoebe Putneythe Court observed that Midcal's active supervision requirement, in particular, is an essential condition of state-action immunity when a nonsovereign actor has "an incentive to pursue [its] own self-interest under the guise of implementing state policies." 568 U.S., at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1011(quoting Hallie, supra,at 46-47, 105 S.Ct. 1713). The lesson is clear: Midcal's active supervision test is an essential prerequisite of Parkerimmunity for any nonsovereign entity-public or private-controlled by active market participants.
C
The Board argues entities designated by the States as agencies are exempt from Midcal's second requirement.
That premise, however, cannot be reconciled with the Court's repeated conclusion that the need for supervision turns not on the formal designation given by States to regulators but on the risk that active market participants will pursue private interests in restraining trade.
State agencies controlled by active market participants, who possess singularly strong private interests, pose the very risk of self-dealing Midcal's supervision requirement was created to address. See Areeda & Hovencamp ¶ 227, at 226. This conclusion does not question the good faith of state officers but rather is an assessment of the structural risk of market participants' confusing their own interests with the State's policy goals. See Patrick,486 U.S., at 100-101, 108 S.Ct. 1658.
The Court applied this reasoning to a state agency in Goldfarb. There the Court denied immunity to a state agency (the Virginia State Bar) controlled by market participants (lawyers) because the agency had "joined in what is essentially a private anticompetitive activity" for "the benefit of its members." 421 U.S., at 791, 792, 95 S.Ct. 2004. This emphasis on the Bar's private interests explains why Goldfarb,though it predates Midcal,considered the lack of supervision by the Virginia Supreme Court to be a principal reason for denying immunity. See 421 U.S., at 791, 95 S.Ct. 2004; see also Hoover,466 U.S., at 569, 104 S.Ct. 1989(emphasizing lack of active supervision in Goldfarb); Bates v. State Bar of Ariz.,433 U.S. 350, 361-362, 97 S.Ct. 2691, 53 L.Ed.2d 810 (1977)(granting the Arizona Bar state-action immunity partly because its "rules are subject to pointed re-examination by the policymaker").
While Halliestated "it is likely that active state supervision would also not be required" for agencies, 471 U.S., at 46, n. 10, 105 S.Ct. 1713, the entity there, as was later the case in Omni,was an electorally accountable municipality with general regulatory powers and no private price-fixing agenda. In that and other respects the municipality was more like prototypical state agencies, not specialized boards dominated by active market participants. In important regards, agencies controlled by market participants are more similar to private trade associations vested by States with regulatory authority than to the agencies Hallieconsidered. And as the Court observed three years after Hallie,"[t]here is no doubt that the members of such associations often have economic incentives to restrain competition and that the product standards set by such associations have a serious potential for anticompetitive harm." Allied Tube,486 U.S., at 500, 108 S.Ct. 1931. For that reason, those associations must satisfy Midcal's active supervision standard. See Midcal,445 U.S., at 105-106, 100 S.Ct. 937.
The similarities between agencies controlled by active market participants and private trade associations are not eliminated simply because the former are given a formal designation by the State, vested with a measure of government power, and required to follow some procedural rules. See Hallie, supra,at 39, 105 S.Ct. 1713(rejecting "purely formalistic" analysis). Parkerimmunity does not derive from nomenclature alone. When a State empowers a group of active market participants to decide who can participate in its market, and on what terms, the need for supervision is manifest. See Areeda & Hovencamp ¶ 227, at 226. The Court holds today that a state board on which a controlling number of decisionmakers are active market participants in the occupation the board regulates must satisfy Midcal's active supervision requirement in order to invoke state-action antitrust immunity.
D
The State argues that allowing this FTC order to stand will discourage dedicated citizens from serving on state agencies that regulate their own occupation. If this were so-and, for reasons to be noted, it need not be so-there would be some cause for concern. The States have a sovereign interest in structuring their governments, see Gregory v. Ashcroft,501 U.S. 452, 460, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991), and may conclude there are substantial benefits to staffing their agencies with experts in complex and technical subjects, see Southern Motor Carriers Rate Conference, Inc. v. United States,471 U.S. 48, 64, 105 S.Ct. 1721, 85 L.Ed.2d 36 (1985). There is, moreover, a long tradition of citizens esteemed by their professional colleagues devoting time, energy, and talent to enhancing the dignity of their calling.
Adherence to the idea that those who pursue a calling must embrace ethical standards that derive from a duty separate from the dictates of the State reaches back at least to the Hippocratic Oath. See generally S. Miles, The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine (2004). In the United States, there is a strong tradition of professional self-regulation, particularly with respect to the development of ethical rules. See generally R. Rotunda & J. Dzienkowski, Legal Ethics: The Lawyer's Deskbook on Professional Responsibility (2014); R. Baker, Before Bioethics: A History of American Medical Ethics From the Colonial Period to the Bioethics Revolution (2013). Dentists are no exception. The American Dental Association, for example, in an exercise of "the privilege and obligation of self-government," has "call[ed] upon dentists to follow high ethical standards," including "honesty, compassion, kindness, integrity, fairness and charity." American Dental Association, Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct 3-4 (2012). State laws and institutions are sustained by this tradition when they draw upon the expertise and commitment of professionals.
Today's holding is not inconsistent with that idea. The Board argues, however, that the potential for money damages will discourage members of regulated occupations from participating in state government. Cf. Filarsky v. Delia,566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 1657, 1666, 182 L.Ed.2d 662 (2012)(warning in the context of civil rights suits that the "the most talented candidates will decline public engagements if they do not receive the same immunity enjoyed by their public employee counterparts"). But this case, which does not present a claim for money damages, does not offer occasion to address the question whether agency officials, including board members, may, under some circumstances, enjoy immunity from damages liability. See Goldfarb,421 U.S., at 792, n. 22, 95 S.Ct. 2004; see also Brief for Respondent 56. And, of course, the States may provide for the defense and indemnification of agency members in the event of litigation.
States, furthermore, can ensure Parkerimmunity is available to agencies by adopting clear policies to displace competition; and, if agencies controlled by active market participants interpret or enforce those policies, the States may provide active supervision. Precedent confirms this principle. The Court has rejected the argument that it would be unwise to apply the antitrust laws to professional regulation absent compliance with the prerequisites for invoking Parkerimmunity:
"[Respondents] contend that effective peer review is essential to the provision of quality medical care and that any threat of antitrust liability will prevent physicians from participating openly and actively in peer-review proceedings. This argument, however, essentially challenges the wisdom of applying the antitrust laws to the sphere of medical care, and as such is properly directed to the legislative branch. To the extent that Congress has declined to exempt medical peer review from the reach of the antitrust laws, peer review is immune from antitrust scrutiny only if the State effectively has made this conduct its own." Patrick,486 U.S. at 105-106, 108 S.Ct. 1658(footnote omitted).
The reasoning of Patrick v. Burgetapplies to this case with full force, particularly in light of the risks licensing boards dominated by market participants may pose to the free market. See generally Edlin & Haw, Cartels by Another Name: Should Licensed Occupations Face Antitrust Scrutiny? 162 U. Pa. L.Rev. 1093 (2014).
E
The Board does not contend in this Court that its anticompetitive conduct was actively supervised by the State or that it should receive Parkerimmunity on that basis.
By statute, North Carolina delegates control over the practice of dentistry to the Board. The Act, however, says nothing about teeth whitening, a practice that did not exist when it was passed. After receiving complaints from other dentists about the nondentists' cheaper services, the Board's dentist members-some of whom offered whitening services-acted to expel the dentists' competitors from the market. In so doing the Board relied upon cease-and-desist letters threatening criminal liability, rather than any of the powers at its disposal that would invoke oversight by a politically accountable official. With no active supervision by the State, North Carolina officials may well have been unaware that the Board had decided teeth whitening constitutes "the practice of dentistry" and sought to prohibit those who competed against dentists from participating in the teeth whitening market. Whether or not the Board exceeded its powers under North Carolina law, cf. Omni,499 U.S., at 371-372, 111 S.Ct. 1344, there is no evidence here of any decision by the State to initiate or concur with the Board's actions against the nondentists.
IV
The Board does not claim that the State exercised active, or indeed any, supervision over its conduct regarding nondentist teeth whiteners; and, as a result, no specific supervisory systems can be reviewed here. It suffices to note that the inquiry regarding active supervision is flexible and context-dependent. Active supervision need not entail day-to-day involvement in an agency's operations or micromanagement of its every decision. Rather, the question is whether the State's review mechanisms provide "realistic assurance" that a nonsovereign actor's anticompetitive conduct "promotes state policy, rather than merely the party's individual interests." Patrick, supra,at 100-101, 108 S.Ct. 1658; see also Ticor,504 U.S., at 639-640, 112 S.Ct. 2169.
The Court has identified only a few constant requirements of active supervision: The supervisor must review the substance of the anticompetitive decision, not merely the procedures followed to produce it, see Patrick,486 U.S., at 102-103, 108 S.Ct. 1658; the supervisor must have the power to veto or modify particular decisions to ensure
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a companion case to Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman, ante, p. 233. Like the petitioner in that case, petitioner Brent Ray Brewer claims that the former Texas capital sentencing statute impermissibly prevented his sentencing jury from giving meaningful consideration to constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence.
In Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989) (Penry I), we held that jury instructions that merely articulated the Texas “special issues,” without directing the jury “to consider fully Penry’s mitigating evidence as it bears on his personal culpability,” did not provide his sentencing jury with an adequate opportunity to decide whether that evidence might provide a legitimate basis for imposing a sentence other than death. Id., at 323. We characterized the evidence of Penry’s mental retardation and history of childhood abuse as a “two-edged sword,” because “it may diminish his blameworthiness for his crime even as it indicates that there is a probability that he will be dangerous in the future.” Id., at 324.
As an overview of the cases both preceding and following Penry I demonstrates, we have long recognized that a sentencing jury must be able to give a “‘reasoned moral response’” to a defendant’s mitigating evidence — particularly that evidence which tends to diminish his culpability — when deciding whether to sentence him to death. Id., at 323; see also Abdul-Kabir, ante, at 246-256,260-263. This principle first originated in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), in which we held that sentencing juries in capital cases “must be permitted to consider any relevant mitigating factor,” id., at 112 (emphasis added). In more recent years, we have repeatedly emphasized that a Penry violation exists whenever a statute, or a judicial gloss on a statute, prevents a jury from giving meaningful effect to mitigating evidence that may justify the imposition of a life sentence rather than a death sentence. See Abdul-Kabir, ante, at 260-263. We do so again here, and hold that the Texas state court’s decision to deny relief to Brewer under Penry I was both "contrary to” and “involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, ás determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d).
I
In 1991, Brewer was convicted of murder committed during the course of a robbery. At sentencing, he introduced several different types of mitigating evidence, including
“that he had a bout with depression three months before the murder; that he was briefly hospitalized for that depression; that his co-defendant, a woman with whom he was apparently obsessed, dominated and manipulated him; that he had been abused by his father; that he had witnessed his father abuse his mother; and that he had abused drugs.” Brewer v. Dretke, 442 F. 3d 273, 275 (CA5 2006) (per curiam,) (footnotes omitted).
As a result of a strategic decision on his counsel’s part, Brewer neither secured nor presented any expert psychological or psychiatric testimony.
At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, Brewer submitted several additional instructions designed to give effect to the mitigating evidence he did present. App. 81-87. The trial judge rejected all of his proposed instructions and instead instructed the jury to answer only two special issues:
“‘Do you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the conduct of the defendant, BRENT RAY BREWER, that caused the death of the deceased, Robert Doyle Laminack, was committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased would result?
“‘Do you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a probability that the defendant, BRENT RAY BREWER, would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?’ ” 442 F. 3d, at 277.
In closing argument, the prosecutor emphasized that Brewer’s violent response to his father’s extensive physical abuse of both Brewer and his mother supported an affirmative answer to the “future dangerousness” special issue. In contrast, he deemphasized any mitigating effect that such evidence should have on the jury’s determination of Brewer’s fate:
“And, you know, folks, you can take a puppy, and you can beat that puppy and you can make him mean, but if that dog bites, he is going to bite the rest of his life, for whatever reason.
“Whatever got him to this point, he is what he is today. And that will never change. That will never change. “All that’s happened to this time or all those years cannot change the violence and the cold, cold-bloodedness that he’s exhibited right here. Not one tear. Not one tear, because life means nothing to him. Zero.
“You go back, you look at the evidence and you decide, not because of a poor family and not because of the survivors, because of the evidence that you see that he has shown.” App. 118.
The prosecutor stressed that the jurors lacked the power to exercise moral judgment in determining Brewer’s sentence, admonishing them that “[y]ou don’t have the power to say whether [Brewer] lives or dies. You answer the questions according to the evidence, mu[ch] like you did at the guilt or innocence [sic]. That’s all.” Id., at 114. Ultimately, the jury answered both special issues in the affirmative, and Brewer was sentenced to death.
Brewer’s conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal. Brewer v. State, No. 71,307 (Tex. Crim. App., June 22,1994) (en banc), App. 122-171. He then filed an application for state postconviction relief, which the CCA denied on January 31, 2001, over the dissent of three judges. Ex parte Brewer, 50 S. W. 3d 492 (2001) {per curiam order).
Brewer subsequently filed a federal habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. After requesting supplemental briefing concerning Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U. S. 274 (2004), the District Court granted conditional relief. Brewer v. Dretke, No. Civ.A.2:01-CV-0112-J (Aug. 2,2004), App. 185-213. On March 1, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the judgment of the District Court and rendered its own judgment denying the petition. 442 F. 3d, at 282. We granted certiorari. 549 U. S. 974 (2006).
II
Like the petitioner in Abdul-Kabir, Brewer contends that the same constitutional error that infected Penry’s sentencing hearing occurred in his trial. We agree. As did Penry’s, Brewer’s mitigating evidence served as a “two-edged sword” because it tended to confirm the State’s evidence of future dangerousness as well as lessen his culpability for the crime. Penry 1, 492 U. S., at 324. It may well be true that Brewer’s mitigating evidence was less compelling than Penry’s, but, contrary to the view of the CCA, that difference does not provide an acceptable justification for refusing to apply the reasoning in Penry I to this case. There is surely a reasonable likelihood that the jurors accepted the prosecutor’s argument at the close of the sentencing hearing that all they needed to decide was whether Brewer had acted deliberately and would likely be dangerous in the future, necessarily disregarding any independent concern that, given Brewer’s troubled background, he may not be deserving of a death sentence.
Also unpersuasive in distinguishing the instant case from others to which Penry I applies is the Fifth Circuit’s explanation regarding the lack of expert evidence in Brewer’s case (as compared to that presented by the petitioner in AbdulKabir) and its distinction between mental illness and mental retardation. In its opinion reversing the District Court’s conditional grant of habeas relief, the Court of Appeals noted that, under its precedents, “[t]he only instances in which mental illness has given rise to Penry I violations involve those where the illness in question is chronic and/or immutable [as in the case of mental retardation].” 442 F. 3d, at 280. The court also emphasized the lack of expert psychiatric evidence in this case, contrasting the record below with that in Abdul-Kabir, and concluded that Brewer “came nowhere near to producing evidence sufficient for us to grant relief.” 442 F. 3d, at 281. Nowhere in our Penry line of cases have we suggested that the question whether mitigating evidence could have been adequately considered by the jury is a matter purely of quantity, degree, or immutability. Rather, we have focused on whether such evidence has mitigating relevance to the special issues and the extent to which it may diminish a defendant’s moral culpability for the crime. The transient quality of such mitigating evidence may make it more likely to fall in part within the ambit of the special issues; however, as we explained in Penry I, such evidence may still have “relevance to the defendant’s moral culpability beyond the scope of the special verdict questions.” 492 U. S., at 322 (citing and quoting Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U. S. 164, 185 (1988) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment)).
Ill
Under the narrowest possible reading of our opinion in Penry I, the Texas special issues do not provide for adequate consideration of a defendant’s mitigating evidence when that evidence functions as a “two-edged sword.” As the District Court explained in its opinion granting habeas corpus relief in this case:
“The mitigating evidence presented may have served as a basis for mercy even if a jury decided that the murder was committed deliberately and that Petitioner posed a continuing threat. Without an instruction, much less a special issue on mitigation, this evidence was out of the jury’s reach. Given the nature of the mitigating evidence before the jury and the lack of any instruction on mitigation, there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied its instructions in a way that prevented the consideration of the mitigating evidence. Reviewing the evidence in light of the special issues, a jury would be very hard pressed to see the evidence presented as anything but aggravating. Failure to submit an instruction on mitigation evidence was an unreasonable application of federal law and Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, habeas relief on this issue is conditionally granted.” No. Civ.A.2:01-CV-Q112-J, at 9, App. 196.
In reversing the District Court’s grant of habeas relief, and rejecting that court’s conclusion that Brewer’s mitigating evidence was effectively “out of the jury’s reach,” the Court of Appeals miseharacterized the law as demanding only that such evidence be given “sufficient mitigating effect,” and improperly equated “sufficient effect” with “full effect.” This is not consistent with the reasoning of our opinion issued after Penry’s resentencing (and before the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in this case). See Penry v. Johnson, 532 U. S. 782 (2001) (Penry II). Like the “‘constitutional relevance’ ” standard that we rejected in Tennard, a “sufficient effect” standard has “no foundation in the decisions of this Court.” 542 U. S., at 284.
For reasons not supported by our prior precedents, but instead dictated by what until quite recently has been the Fifth Circuit’s difficult Penry jurisprudence, the Court of Appeals concluded that Brewer’s evidence of mental illness and substance abuse could not constitute a Penry violation. It further concluded that “evidence of a troubled childhood may, as a result of its temporary character, fall sufficiently within the ambit of” the special issues. 442 F. 3d, at 280. For the reasons explained above, as well as in our opinion in Abdul-Kabir, these conclusions fail to heed the warnings that have repeatedly issued from this Court regarding the extent to which the jury must be allowed not only to consider such evidence, or to have such evidence before it, but to respond to it in a reasoned, moral manner and to weigh such evidence in its calculus of deciding whether a defendant is truly deserving of death. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
[For dissenting opinion of The Chief Justice, see ante, p. 265; for dissenting opinion of Justice Scalia, see ante, p. 280.]
On direct appeal, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) summarized the same evidence as follows:
“1) Appellant was not mentally retarded, but was involuntarily committed on January 1,1990, for ‘major depression, single episode, without psychotic features, polysubstance abuse.’ The examining physician based his opinion on a suicide note appellant wrote to his mother. On January 25, appellant signed a request for voluntary admission to Big Springs State Hospital for fourteen days.
“2) Appellant came from an abused background where he was ignored by both his father and step-father. He did not have a relationship or live with his real father until after he was fifteen-years old. Appellant’s father hit him on several occasions, once with the butt of a pistol and once with a flashlight. Appellant’s father frequently beat his mother. Appellant’s father had once told him, ‘If you ever draw your hand back, you’d better kill me because I’ll kill you.’
“3) Appellant had smoked marijuana when he was a teenager.” Brewer v. State, No. 71,307 (June 22, 1994), p. 15, App. 140 (footnotes omitted).
The CCA’s opinion on direct appeal provides the only meaningful explanation by a Texas state court as to why Brewer’s Penry I claim was denied. See n. 5, infra. When Brewer raised the same claim in his state postconviction proceedings, the trial court set forth, and the CCA adopted, a one-sentence ruling embracing the holding previously made on direct appeal: “The ... special issues ... were an adequate vehicle for the jury’s consideration of the mitigating evidence . . . .” App. 176; Ex parte Brewer, 50 S. W. 3d 492, 493 (2001) (per curiam).
Judge Price filed a dissent to the order dismissing Brewer’s postconviction application for relief, joined by Judges Johnson and Holcomb. Id., at 493-495. In the dissenters’ view, Brewer had alleged a colorable claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, based on his counsel’s failure to procure a mental health expert who could have examined him in preparation for trial. Id., at 493.
For example, the prosecution introduced the testimony of a police officer who had been called to quell a family dispute as evidence of Brewer’s violent character. App. 6-15. The prosecution also introduced testimony from a doctor who treated Brewer’s father after Brewer struck him with a broom handle in response to his father’s attack on his mother. Id., at 23-25.
The CCA’s opinion purporting to distinguish Penry I simply stated: “We conclude the second punishment issue provided an adequate vehicle for the jurors to give effect to appellant’s mitigating evidence. We have held a stay in a mental hospital does not evidence a ‘long term mental illness which would affect appellant’s ability to conform to the requirements of society.’ Joiner [v. State, 825 S. W. 2d 701, 707 (1992) (en banc)]. As in Joiner, the evidence shows no more than appellant’s threat to commit suicide and a stay at a hospital on one occasion. Id. Further, appellant’s evidence of drug abuse and an abusive homelife was given effect within the scope of the punishment issues. Ex parte Ellis, 810 S. W. 2d 208, 211-212 (Tex. Cr. App. 1991) (drug addiction); Goss v. State, 826 S. W. 2d 162, 166 (Tex. Cr. App. 1992) (abusive household).” No. 71,307, at 15, App. 141.
In neither its opinion in this case nor in Joiner did the CCA explain why Brewer’s evidence was not the same kind of “two-edged sword” as Penry’s, other than to suggest that it was less persuasive. 492 U. S., at 324.
“It’s not a matter of life and death. It’s whether it was deliberate. Was this act deliberate? Will he continue to commit violent acts? That’s all you answer. And every one of you people told me you would base that not upon the result, but upon what the evidence dictates you must do.” App. 115 (paragraph break omitted).
The Court of Appeals explained: “For the mitigating evidence to be within the effective reach of the jury in answering the special issues, the special interrogatories must be capable of giving relevant evidence constitutionally sufficient mitigating effect. Whether that sufficiency requires that the evidence be given ‘full/ or merely ‘some/ mitigating effect has been the subject of considerable discussion in this court, but ultimately the distinction is only one of semantics, because regardless of what label is put on the word ‘effect/ it is indisputable that the effect must be constitutionally ‘sufficient.’ Even if the requirement is called ‘full,’ it means nothing more than ‘sufficient.’” Brewer v. Dretke, 442 F. 3d 273, 278-279 (CA5 2006) (per curiam) (footnote omitted).
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 issue presented in this case is whether the United States is entitled to recover, out of assets acquired by a debtor after his adjudication of bankruptcy, post-petition interest on a tax assessment which (under § 17 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act, 30 Stat. 544, 550, as amended, 11 U. S. C. § 35) was not discharged in the bankruptcy proceedings. The essential facts are not in dispute. Petitioner incurred withholding and federal insurance contributions taxes during the fourth quarter of 1951 but failed to pay those taxes when due. In March 1952, an assessment of those taxes was made against petitioner. On July 6, 1953, petitioner filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy and was adjudicated a bankrupt in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The District Director of Internal Revenue filed a claim in the bankruptcy proceedings for the assessed amount owed by petitioner, and the United States received a small distribution out of the assets of the bankruptcy estate. Petitioner was granted a discharge in bankruptcy in October 1953, and the case was closed in June 1954.
In 1957, petitioner filed claims for refund of income taxes paid for the years 1953 and 1954, which resulted in his being allowed a credit for income taxes and interest in respect of those years. On March 7,1958, the Director of Internal Revenue applied the entire 1953 credit and part of the 1954 credit to the balance of the assessment of the withholding and F. I. C. A. taxes owed for 1951, plus interest to date — including interest which had accrued during the period between the filing of petitioner’s petition in bankruptcy (July 6, 1953) and the date of payment (March 7, 1958). This post-petition interest, which totals about $795, is the subject of the present controversy. Petitioner did not question the Director’s right to collect from assets acquired by petitioner after bankruptcy the unpaid principal of the tax debt and the pre-petition interest. However, contending that he was not liable for interest accruing on the assessment after his petition in bankruptcy was filed, petitioner brought suit in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of California for refund of that portion of the interest. The District Court held that petitioner’s personal liability for post-petition interest on the unpaid taxes was not discharged by the bankruptcy proceedings, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Due to an apparent conflict between circuits and the potentially recurring nature of the question involved, we granted certiorari, 375 U. S. 920. We affirm the decision below.
Section 17 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 35, provides in relevant part:
“A discharge in bankruptcy shall release a bankrupt from all of his provable debts, whether allowable in full or in part, except such as (1) are due as a tax levied by the United States . . . .”
It is undisputed that, under § 17, petitioner remained personally liable after his discharge for that part of the principal amount of the tax debt and pre-petition interest not satisfied out of the bankruptcy estate. The courts below held that, under § 17, petitioner also remained personally liable for post-petition interest on the tax debt, and we find no substantial reason to reverse that holding. Initially, one would assume that Congress, in providing that a certain type of debt should survive bankruptcy proceedings as a personal liability of the debtor, intended personal liability to continue as to the interest on that debt as well as to its principal amount. Thus, it has never been seriously suggested that a creditor whose claim is not provable against the trustee in bankruptcy loses his right to interest in a post-bankruptcy action brought against the debtor personally. In most situations, interest is considered to be the cost of the use of the amounts owing a creditor and an incentive to prompt repayment and, thus, an integral part of a continuing debt. Interest on a tax debt would seem to fit that description. Thus, logic and reason indicate that post-petition interest on a tax claim excepted from discharge by § 17 of the Act should be recoverable in a later action against the debtor personally, and there is no evidence of any congressional intent to the contrary.
Petitioner suggests that the Government might have ignored the bankruptcy proceeding entirely and later brought suit upon its undischarged claim against petitioner personally and collected both principal and interest. But petitioner asserts that once the Government filed a claim in the bankruptcy proceeding, its rights became limited to the recovery of unpaid sums allowed by the trustee, not including post-petition interest. This argument is based on § 6873 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, which provides:
“Any portion of a claim for taxes allowed in . . . any proceeding under the Bankruptcy Act which is unpaid shall be paid by the taxpayer upon notice and demand from the Secretary or his delegate after the termination of such proceeding.”
We find no indication in the wording or history of § 6873 (a) that the section was meant to limit the Government’s right to continuing interest on an undischarged and unpaid tax liability. Nor is petitioner aided by the now-familiar principle that one main purpose of the Bankruptcy Act is to let the honest debtor begin his financial life anew. As the Court of Appeals noted, § 17 is not a compassionate section for debtors. Rather, it demonstrates congressional judgment that certain problems — e. g., those of financing government — override the value of giving the debtor a wholly fresh start. Congress clearly intended that personal liability for unpaid tax debts survive bankruptcy. The general humanitarian purpose of the Bankruptcy Act provides no reason to believe that Congress had a different intention with regard to personal liability for the interest on such debts.
Finally, petitioner urges that we consider the present case in light of the decision in New York v. Saper, 336 U. S. 328. As to claims against the trustee in bankruptcy, the general rule for liquidation of the bankruptcy estate has long been that a creditor will be allowed interest only to the date of the petition in bankruptcy. Sexton v. Dreyfus, 219 U. S. 339. In New York v. Saper, supra, this Court held that the general rule applies to claims against the trustee for taxes as well as for other debts. But the instant case concerns the debtor’s personal liability for post-petition interest on a debt for taxes which survives bankruptcy to the extent that it is not paid out of the estate. Petitioner asserts that the traditional rule which denies post-petition interest as a claim against the bankruptcy estate also applies to discharge the debtor from personal liability for such interest even if the underlying tax debt is not discharged by § 17. We hold that it does not so apply.
The basic reasons for the rule denying post-petition interest as a claim against the bankruptcy estate are the avoidance of unfairness as between competing creditors and the avoidance of administrative inconvenience. These reasons are inapplicable to an action brought against the debtor personally. In the instant case, collection of post-petition interest cannot inconvenience administration of the bankruptcy estate, cannot delay payment from the estate unduly, and cannot diminish the estate in favor of high interest creditors at the expense of other creditors. In New York v. Saper, supra, the Court found the reasons for the traditional rule applicable and held that post-petition interest on a claim for taxes was not' to be allowed against the bankruptcy estate. Here, we find the reasons — and thus the rule — inapplicable, and we hold that post-petition interest on an unpaid tax debt not discharged by § 17 remains, after bankruptcy, a personal liability of the debtor.
Affirmed.
The remainder was distributed to petitioner.
See United States v. Mighell, 273 F. 2d 682 (C. A. 10th Cir. 1959).
One reason for refusing to make taxes dischargeable is the desire to prevent tax evasion. See 83 Cong. Rec. 9106 (1938).
See American Iron & Steel Mfg. Co. v. Seaboard Air Line R. Co., 233 U. S. 261, 266:
“And it is true, as held in Tredegar Co. v. Seaboard Ry., 183 Fed. Rep. 289, 290, that as a general rule, after property of an insolvent is in custodia legis interest thereafter accruing is not allowed on debts payable out of the fund realized by a sale of the property. But that is not because the claims had lost their interest-bearing quality during that period, but is a necessary and enforced rule of distribution, due to the fact that in case of receiverships the assets are generally insufficient to pay debts in full. If all claims were of equal dignity and all bore the same rate of interest, from the date of the receivership to the date of final distribution, it would be immaterial whether the dividend was calculated on the basis of the principal alone or of principal and interest combined. But some of the debts might carry a high rate and some a low rate, and hence inequality would result in the payment of interest which accrued during the delay incident to collecting and distributing the funds. As this delay was the act of the law, no one should thereby gain an advantage or suffer a loss. For that and like reasons, in case funds are not sufficient to pay claims of equal dignity, the distribution is made only on the basis of the principal of the debt. But that rule did not prevent the running of interest during the Receivership; and if as a result of good fortune or good management, the estate proved sufficient to discharge the claims in full, interest as well as principal should be paid.”
See also Vanston Bondholders Protective Committee v. Green, 329 U. S. 156, 164:
“Accrual of simple interest on unsecured claims in bankruptcy was prohibited in order that the administrative inconvenience of continuous reeomputation of interest causing recomputation of claims could be avoided. Moreover, different creditors whose claims bore diverse interest rates or were paid by the bankruptcy court on different dates would suffer neither gain nor loss caused solely by delay.” Because the traditional rule rests upon such practical considerations, it has been suggested that:
“The principle that interest stops running from the date of the filing of the petition in bankruptcy should be understood as a rule of liquidation practice rather than as a rule of substantive law.” 3 Collier, Bankruptcy (14th ed., 1961) 1858.
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.
Invoking the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. § 3731, the Government appeals from a dismissal of a two-count information charging appellee with violations of the Civil Rights Act, 18 U. S. C. § 242.
The District Court construed the information to charge that appellee, an officer in a Florida state prison, whipped certain prisoners entrusted to his custody “for the purpose and with the intent of disciplining said prisoners.” The District Court held that mere disciplinary action by state prison officials is no offense under the Civil Rights Act, supra, and dismissed the information. 108 F. Supp. 266.
On appeal, the Government predicates its argument for reversal upon the assumption that the information charges far more than the District Court found it charged. The Government construes the information to charge that appellee wilfully extorted confessions of violations of prison rules from the prisoners and wilfully inflicted illegal summary punishment upon them, in violation of the laws of Florida and the Constitution of the United States. Thus, the Government’s appeal — the theory of the prosecution — is based upon a construction of the information which differs significantly from the construction which the District Court has placed upon it.
The Criminal Appeals Act, supra, strictly limits the scope of our jurisdiction over this appeal. We may only entertain questions relating to the construction of the Civil Rights Act, supra, and its applicability to this information. We cannot re-examine the information and construe it de novo, for we are bound by the District Court’s construction. United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188 (1939).
Under the Criminal Appeals Act, we have the power to remand this case to the Court of Appeals if we are of the “opinion” that the appeal “should have been taken to a court of appeals.” 18 U. S. C. § 3731. We think this case is appropriate for the exercise of the power which Congress has entrusted to our discretion. The initial issue — and a critical issue — raised by the Government’s appeal obviously involves questions relating to the correctness of the District Court’s construction of the information and not to that court’s interpretation of the scope of the Civil Rights Act, supra. Those questions cannot be resolved in a direct appeal to this Court, but they can be reviewed should the case be remanded to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Accordingly, we remand this appeal to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings in that court.
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:
|
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 Federal Power Commission seeks certiorari from an interlocutory order of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which defers that court’s review of the Commission order at issue pending completion of a certain evidentiary investigation by the Commission directed by the court. The Commission challenges the authority of the Court of Appeals to order the investigation under the statutory review provision involved, § 19 (b) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 831, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b), and, in any event, contends that the Court of Appeals abused its discretion in the circumstances of this case.
The underlying case involves plans for coping with a natural gas shortage being experienced by respondent Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp. (Transco). The shortage is said to require curtailment of contracted natural gas deliveries by Transco to its customers during periods of high demand. The curtailment plans concern methods of allocating the shortfall among the various customers. The curtailment plan immediately at issue was submitted by Transco to cover the period of November 1974 to November 1975. This interim plan was filed in September 1974, and was the result of a settlement agreement negotiated between Transco and its various customers. The agreement provided for a plan of allocation of natural gas supplies among Transco’s customers during periods of shortage, and a monetary compensation scheme under which customers receiving more gas than the systemwide average would compensate customers who received less natural gas than the average. The Commission rejected the proposed plan, determining that the compensation scheme would be violative of the Natural Gas Act. The Commission held that the compensation scheme would violate (1) § 4 (a) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717c (a), which requires a pipeline’s jurisdictional rate to be based on the pipeline’s cost of service plus a reasonable rate of return; (2) § 4 (b) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717c (b), which prohibits undue discrimination in rates among similarly situated customers; and (3) § 7 (c) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717f (c), which requires persons engaging in resales of natural gas in interstate commerce first to obtain a certificate of public convenience and necessity.
Thereafter, Transco and several of the parties to the settlement agreement sought review of the Commission’s determination. Following oral argument on the petition for review, the Court of Appeals, “desiring to be more fully informed about the 'crisis’ on the Transco system before reviewing questions pertaining to its solution,” entered an order sua sponte directing the parties to submit certain information concerning Transco’s natural gas reserves. After receiving responses to this order, and noting the refusal of the Commission to certify the accuracy of the data supplied by Transco regarding its reserves of natural gas, the court directed the parties to show cause why it should not order the Commission to conduct an immediate investigation of Transco’s claim of reduced reserves. Thereafter, the Court of Appeals, observing that evidence of “actual shortage both underlies the concept of curtailment and justifies its application,” issued the proposed order. That order directed the Commission to complete and report to the court an investigation “of Transco’s claims of reduced reserves by immediate subpoena of Transco’s books and records pertaining to all gas supplies in which it has any legal interest . . . and by field investigation [which] has determined the extent of the reduced reserves and the bona fides of Transco and its suppliers in meeting their past and future contract commitments. . . .” The court further directed that its decision reviewing the Commission’s order would be deferred pending the investigation and report, and that the investigation and report should be made by the Commission within 30 days.
It is this interlocutory order for which the Commission petitions for review by this Court. The Commission first argues that the Court of Appeals has overstepped the bounds of its reviewing authority in ordering this investigation by the Commission, and that in doing so the court has unwarrantedly interfered with the internal functional autonomy of an independent administrative agency. Additionally, the Commission argues, the Court of Appeals has abused its discretion in ordering the factual inquiry by the Commission in the circumstances presented by this case. The Commission maintains that the extent of Transco’s natural gas shortage is not material to the legal issues — concerning the lawfulness of the proposed compensation scheme — which presently confront the Court of Appeals. This is said to be particularly true where, as here, the Commission has disapproved the proposed interim plan for dealing with the alleged shortage of gas. Finally, the Commission argues that it is impossible to comply with the order, as such a complex investigation would require much longer than the 30 days allowed.
First. We agree with the Commission that the challenged order, although interlocutory in nature, is properly reviewable by this Court pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1254 (1). Clearly the effect of the order is immediate and irreparable, and any review by this Court of the propriety of the order must be immediate to be meaningful.
Second. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the existence of an actual shortage of gas supplies forms the factual predicate necessary to the Commission's assertion of authority under its transportation jurisdiction, § 1 (b) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717 (b), to approve the curtailment of gas already contracted for. FPC v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 406 U. S. 621 (1972). Certainly that court could properly conclude that the Commission would have abused its discretion had it approved curtailment plans in the absence of evidence whereby it “could have reasonably believed” the shortage to exist, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402, 416 (1971), and that “substantial evidence” in the record is necessary to support any such finding by the Commission.
Third. We are of the view, however, that the Court of Appeals overstepped the bounds of its reviewing authority in issuing the order presently before us. First, we have consistently expressed the view that ordinarily review of administrative decisions is to be confined to “consideration of the decision of the agency . . . and of the evidence on which it was based.” United States v. Carlo Bianchi & Co., 373 U. S. 709, 714-715 (1963). “[T]he focal point for judicial review should be the administrative record already in existence, not some new record made initially in the reviewing court.” Camp v. Pitts, 411 U. S. 138, 142 (1973). If the decision of the agency “is not sustainable on the administrative record made, then the . . . decision must be vacated and the matter remanded ... for further consideration.” Id., at 143. Clearly it is this mode of review that is contemplated by the statute providing for judicial review of Commission decisions, § 19 (b) of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b). Secondly, although we have recognized that a court reviewing decisions of the Federal Power Commission sits as a court vested with equity powers and “may authorize the Commission in proper cases to take new evidence,” Mobil Oil Corp. v. FPC, 417 U. S. 283, 311-312 (1974), it is nevertheless true that ordinarily this will require a remand to. the agency in order that it can exercise its administrative discretion in deciding how, in light of internal organizational considerations, it may best proceed to develop the needed evidence and how its prior decision should be modified in light of such evidence as develops. Certainly this is the procedure contemplated by the review statute, which provides that the Commission “may modify its findings as to the facts by reason of the additional evidence so taken,” and that “such modified or new findings, ... if supported by substantial evidence, shall be conclusive . . . .” 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b). At least in the absence of substantial justification for doing otherwise, a reviewing court may not, after determining that additional evidence is requisite for adequate review, proceed by dictating to the agency the methods, procedures, and time dimension of the needed inquiry and ordering the results to be reported to the court without opportunity for further consideration on the basis of the new evidence by the agency. Such a procedure clearly runs the risk of “propel [ling] the court into the domain which Congress has set aside exclusively for the administrative agency.” SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U. S. 194, 196 (1947). “The Court, it is true, has power To affirm, modify, or set aside’ the order of the Commission ‘in whole or in part.’ . . . But that authority is not power to exercise an essentially administrative function.” FPC v. Idaho Power Co., 344 U. S. 17, 21 (1952).
Fourth. We are unable to determine with certainty, from this vantage point and on the partial record now before us, whether the evidence regarding Transco’s actual shortage with which the instant order is concerned is absolutely essential to a decision by the Court of Appeals on the issues presently before that court for review. Although Judge MacKinnon in his separate statement was apparently of the view that it was not, it is at least conceivable that the Court of Appeals could determine that the lawfulness of the proposed compensation scheme is partially a function of the actual severity of the shortage. Cf. FPC v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., supra. Accordingly, the court below is free on remand either to proceed to the merits of the issues presented by the compensation scheme and only thereafter deal with the adequacy of the record in regard to the evidence of shortage, or immediately to remand the case to the Commission for the required inquiry. It is apparent that under neither alternative need the Court of Appeals’ ability fully and effectively to review the administrative process regarding the implementation of curtailment plans and their underlying factual premises be relinquished.
Fifth. In light of the immediacy of the natural gas shortage problem with which the Commission is attempting to cope, the already protracted nature of review proceedings in this case, and the potential importance of a resolution on the merits of the compensation issues presented by the instant case, swift and priority consideration of this case by the Court of Appeals on remand is merited.
Accordingly, the petition for certiorari is' granted, the order of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
MR. Justice Stewart and Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Although neither the petitioning Commission nor the two respondents who have filed responses to the petition for certiorari have addressed the issue, it appears that the underlying controversy is not now moot even though it concerns an interim plan covering a period of time that has by now expired. The Court of Appeals earlier granted a motion by Transco and ordered the interim plan into effect pending that court’s review of the Commission’s order disallowing the plan. Consolidated Edison Co. v. FPC, 167 U. S. App. D. C. 134, 143, 511 F. 2d 372, 381 (1974). The court ordered that the compensation payments under the plan be paid into an escrow account pending review of the Commission’s determination that the compensation scheme was unlawful. Ibid. Therefore, it appears that at the least the disposition of these payments into the escrow account will be affected by the Court of Appeals’ ultimate judgment on the merits of the case.
This argument appears to accord with the views of Judge Mac-Kinnon which are set forth in a separate statement accompanying the challenged order. Judge MacKinnon expressed the view that the extent of the shortage is “peripheral,” although “not wholly irrelevant” to the legal issues confronting the Court of Appeals. ' He indicated that he would instead first reach the merits, affirm the order of the Commission, and then direct that the Commission make the complex factual inquiry regarding the shortage “prior to passing on any subsequent curtailment plan.”
Section 19 (b) of the Natural Gas Act provides:
"Any party to a proceeding under this chapter aggrieved by an order issued by the Commission in such proceeding may obtain a review of such order in the court of appeals of the United States for any circuit wherein the natural-gas company to which the order relates is located or has its principal place of business, or in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [Circuit], by filing in such court, within sixty days after the order of the Commission upon the application for rehearing, a written petition praying that the order of the Commission be modified or set aside in whole or in part. A copy of such petition shall forthwith be transmitted by the cleric of the court to any member of the Commission and thereupon the Commission shall file with the court the record upon which the order complained of was entered, as provided in section 2112 of Title 28. Upon the filing of such petition such court shall have jurisdiction, which upon the filing of the record with it shall be exclusive, to affirm, modify, or set aside such order in whole or in part. No objection to the order of the Commission shall be considered by the court unless such objection shall have been urged before the Commission in the application for rehearing unless there is reasonable ground for failure so to do. The finding of the Commission as to the facts, if supported by substantial evidence, shall be conclusive. If any party shall apply to the court for leave to adduce additional evidence, and shall show to the satisfaction of the court that such additional evidence is material and that there were reasonable grounds for failure to adduce such evidence in the proceedings before the Commission, the court may order such additional evidence to be taken before the Commission and to be adduced upon the hearing in such manner and upon such terms and conditions as to the court may seem proper. The Commission may modify its findings as to the facts by reason of the additional evidence so taken, and it shall file with the court such modified or new findings, which if supported by substantial evidence, shall be conclusive, and its recommendation, if any, for the modification or setting aside of the original order. The judgment and decree of the court, affirming, modifying, or setting aside, in whole or in part, any such order of the Commission, shall be final, subject to review by the Supreme Court of the United States upon certiorari or certification as provided in sections 346 and 347 of Title 28.”
We do not find the reasons stated by the Court of Appeals, largely that the Commission “has been long on notice” that data supporting the claimed existence of shortage was necessary, to be in the circumstances presented sufficient justification for the court's order.
See Mississippi Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. FPC, 522 F. 2d 1345 (CA5 1975).
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. Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted the writ in this case to consider a narrow but important question in the application of the federal perjury statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621: whether a witness may be convicted of perjury for an answer, under oath, that is literally true but not responsive to the question asked and arguably misleading by negative implication.
Petitioner is the sole owner of Samuel Bronston Productions, Inc., a company that between 1958 and 1964, produced motion pictures in various European locations. For these enterprises, Bronston Productions opened bank accounts in a number of foreign countries; in 1962, for example, it had 37 accounts in five countries. As president of Bronston Productions, petitioner supervised transactions involving the foreign bank accounts.
In June 1964, Bronston Productions petitioned for an arrangement with creditors under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 701 et seq. On June 10, 1966, a referee in bankruptcy held a § 21 (a) hearing to determine, for the benefit of creditors, the extent and location of the company’s assets. Petitioner’s perjury conviction was founded on the answers given by him as a witness at that bankruptcy hearing, and in particular on the following colloquy with a lawyer for a creditor of Bronston Productions:
“Q. Do you have any bank accounts in Swiss banks, Mr. Bronston?
“A. No, sir.
“Q. Have you ever?
“A. The company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich.
“Q. Have you any nominees who have bank accounts in Swiss banks?
“A. No, sir.
“Q. Have you ever?
“A. No, sir.”
It is undisputed that for a period of nearly five years, between October 1959 and June 1964, petitioner had a personal bank account at the International Credit Bank in Geneva, Switzerland, into which he made deposits and upon which he drew checks totaling more than $180,000. It is likewise undisputed that petitioner’s answers were literally truthful, (a) Petitioner did not at the time of questioning have a Swiss bank account, (b) Bronston Productions, Inc., did have the account in Zurich described by petitioner, (c) Neither at the time of questioning nor before did petitioner have nominees who had Swiss accounts. The Government’s prosecution for perjury went forward on the theory that in order to mislead his questioner, petitioner answered the second question with literal truthfulness but unresponsively addressed his answer to the company’s assets and not to his own — thereby implying that he had no personal Swiss bank account at the relevant time.
At petitioner’s trial, the District Court instructed the jury that the “basic issue” was whether petitioner “spoke his true belief.” Perjury, the court stated, “necessarily involves the state of mind of the accused” and “essentially consists of wilfully testifying to the truth of a fact which the defendant does not believe to be true”; petitioner’s testimony could not be found “wilfully” false unless at the time his testimony was given petitioner “fully understood the questions put to him but nevertheless gave false answers knowing the same to be false.” The court further instructed the jury that if petitioner did not understand the question put to him and for that reason gave an unresponsive answer, he could not be convicted of perjury. Petitioner could, however, be convicted if he gave an answer “not literally false but when considered in the context in which it was given, nevertheless constitute [d] a false statement.” The jury began its deliberations at 11:30 a. m. Several times it requested exhibits or additional instructions from the court, and at one point, at the request of the jury, the District Court repeated its instructions in full. At 6:10 p. m., the jury returned its verdict, finding petitioner guilty on the count of perjury before us today and not guilty on another charge not here relevant.
In the Court of Appeals, petitioner contended, as he had in post-trial motions before the District Court, that the key question was imprecise and suggestive of various interpretations. In addition, petitioner contended that he could not be convicted of perjury on the basis of testimony that was concededly truthful, however unresponsive. A divided Court of Appeals held that the question was readily susceptible of .a responsive reply and that it adequately tested the defendant’s belief in the veracity of his answer. The Court of Appeals further held that, “[f]or the purposes of 18 U. S. C. § 1621, an answer containing half of the truth which also constitutes a lie by negative implication, when the answer is intentionally given in place of the responsive answer called for by a proper question, is perjury.” 453 F. 2d 555, 559. In this Court, petitioner renews his attack on the specificity of the question asked him and the legal sufficiency of his answer to support a conviction for perjury. The problem of the ambiguity of the question is not free from doubt, but we need not reach that issue. Even assuming, as we do, that the question asked petitioner specifically focused on petitioner’s personal bank accounts, we conclude that the federal perjury statute cannot be construed to sustain a conviction based on petitioner’s answer.
The statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621, substantially identical in its relevant language to its predecessors for nearly a century, is “a federal statute enacted in an effort to keep the course of justice free from the pollution of perjury.” United States v. Williams, 341 U. S. 58, 68 (1951). We have held that the general federal perjury provision is applicable to federal bankruptcy proceedings. Hammer v. United States, 271 U. S. 620 (1926). The need for truthful testimony in a § 21 (a) bankruptcy proceeding is great, since the proceeding is “a searching inquiry into the condition of the estate of the bankrupt, to assist in discovering and collecting the assets, and to develop facts and circumstances which bear upon the question of discharge.” Travis v. United States, 123 F. 2d 268, 271 (CA10 1941). Here, as elsewhere, the perpetration of perjury “well may affect the dearest concerns of the parties before a tribunal. .. .” United States v. Norris, 300 U. S. 564, 574 (1937).
There is, at the outset, a serious literal problem in applying § 1621 to petitioner’s answer. The words of the statute confine the offense to the witness who “willfully . . . states . . . any material matter which he does not believe to be true.” Beyond question, petitioner’s answer to the crucial question was not responsive if we assume, as we do, that the first question was directed at personal bank accounts. There is, indeed, an implication in the answer to the second question that there was never a personal bank account; in casual conversation this interpretation might reasonably be drawn. But we are not dealing with casual conversation and the statute does not make it a criminal act for a witness to willfully state any material matter that implies any material matter that he does not believe to be true.
The Government urges that the perjury statute be construed broadly to reach petitioner’s answer and thereby fulfill its historic purpose of reinforcing our adversary factfinding process. We might go beyond the precise words of the statute if we thought they did not adequately express the intention of Congress, but we perceive no reason why Congress would intend the drastic sanction of a perjury prosecution to cure a testimonial mishap that could readily have been reached with a single additional question by counsel alerb — as every examiner ought to be — to the incongruity of petitioner’s unresponsive answer. Under the pressures and tensions of interrogation, it is not uncommon for the most earnest witnesses to give answers that are not entirely responsive. Sometimes the witness does not understand the question, or may in an excess of caution or apprehension read too much or too little into it. It should come as no surprise that a participant in a bankruptcy proceeding may have something to conceal and consciously tries to do so, or that a debtor may be embarrassed at h'is plight and yield information reluctantly. It is the responsibility of the lawyer to probe ; testimonial interrogation, and cross-examination in particular, is a probing, prying, pressing form of inquiry. If a witness evades, it is the lawyer’s responsibility to recognize the evasion and to bring the witness back to the mark, to flush out the whole truth with the tools of adversary examination.
It is no answer to say that here the jury found that petitioner intended to mislead his examiner. A jury should not be permitted to engage in conjecture whether an unresponsive answer, true and complete on its face, was intended to mislead or divert the examiner; the state of mind of the witness is relevant only to the extent that it bears on whether “he does not believe [his answer] to be true.” To hold otherwise would be to inject a new and confusing element into the adversary testimonial system we know. Witnesses would be unsure of the extent of their responsibility for the misunderstandings and inadequacies of examiners, and might well fear having that responsibility tested by a jury under the vague rubric of “intent to mislead” or “perjurv by implication.” The seminal modern treatment of the history of the offense concludes that one consideration of policy overshadowed all others during the years when perjury first emerged as a common-law offense: “that the measures taken against the offense must not be so severe as to discourage witnesses from appearing or testifying.” Study of Perjury, reprinted in Report of New York Law Revision Commission, Legis. Doc. No. 60, p. 249 (1935). A leading 19th century commentator, quoted by Dean Wigmore, noted that the English law “throws every fence round a person accused of perjury,” for
“the obligation of protecting witnesses from oppression, or annoyance, by charges, or threats of charges, of having borne false testimony, is far paramount to that of giving even perjury its deserts. To repress that crime, prevention is better than cure: and the law of England relies, for this purpose, on the means provided for detecting and exposing the crime at the moment of commission, — such as publicity, cross-examination, the aid of a jury, etc.; and on the infliction of a severe, though not excessive punishment, wherever the commission of the crime has been clearly proved.” W. Best, Principles of the Law of Evidence § 606 (C. Chamberlayne ed. 1883).
See J. Wigmore, Evidence 275-276 (3d ed. 1940). Addressing the same problem, Montesquieu took as his starting point the French tradition of capital punishment for perjury and the relatively mild English punishment of the pillory. He thought the disparity between the punishments could be explained because the French did not permit the accused to present his own witnesses, while in England “they admit of witnesses on both sides, and the affair is discussed in some measure between them; consequently false witness is there less dangerous, the accused having a remedy against the false witnesses, which he has not in France.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, quoted in Study of Perjury, supra, p. 253.
Thus, we must read § 1621 in light of our own and the traditional Anglo-American judgment that a prosecution for perjury is not the sole, or even the primary, safeguard against errant testimony. While “the lower federal courts have not dealt with the question often,” and while their expressions do not deal with unresponsive testimony and are not precisely in point, “it may be said that they preponderate against the respondent’s contention.” United States v. Norris, 300 U. S., at 576. The cases support petitioner’s position that the perjury statute is not to be loosely construed, nor the statute invoked simply because a wily witness succeeds in derailing the questioner — so long as the witness speaks the literal truth. The burden is on the questioner to pin the witness down to the specific object of the questioner’s inquiry. United States v. Wall, 371 F. 2d 398 (CA6 1967); United States v. Slutzky, 79 F. 2d 504 (CA3 1935); Galanos v. United States, 49 F. 2d 898 (CA6 1931); United States v. Cobert, 227 F. Supp. 915 (SD Cal. 1964).
The Government does not contend that any misleading or incomplete response must be sent to the jury to determine whether a witness committed perjury because he intended to sidetrack his questioner. As the Government recognizes, the effect of so unlimited an interpretation of §1621 would be broadly unsettling. It is said, rather, that petitioner’s testimony falls within a more limited category of intentionally misleading responses with an especially strong tendency to mislead the questioner. In the federal cases cited above, the Government tells us the defendants gave simple negative answers “that were both entirely responsive and entirely truthful .... In neither case did the defendant — as did petitioner here — make affirmative statements of one fact that in context constituted denials by negative implication of a related fact.” Thus the Government isolates two factors which are said to require application of the perjury statute in the circumstances of this case: the unresponsiveness of petitioner’s answer and the affirmative cast of that answer, with its accompanying negative implication.
This analysis succeeds in confining the Government’s position, but it does not persuade us that Congress intended to extend the coverage of § 1621 to answers unresponsive on their face but untrue only by “negative implication.” Though perhaps a plausible argument can be made that unresponsive answers are especially likely to mislead, any such argument must, we think, be predicated upon the questioner's being aware of the unresponsiveness of the relevant answer. Yet, if the questioner is aware of the unresponsiveness of the answer, with equal force it can be argued that the very unresponsiveness of the answer should alert counsel to press on for the information he desires. It does not matter that the unresponsive answer is stated in the affirmative, thereby implying the negative of the question actually posed; for again, by hypothesis, the examiner’s awareness of unresponsiveness should lead him to press another question or reframe his initial question with greater precision. Precise questioning is imperative as a predicate for the offense of perjury.
It may well be that petitioner's answers were not guileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade. Nevertheless, we are constrained to agree with Judge Lumbard, who dissented from the judgment of the Court of Appeals, that any special problems arising from the literally true but unresponsive answer are to be remedied through the “questioner’s acuity” and not by a federal perjury prosecution.
Reversed.
18 U. S. C. § 1621 provides:
“Whoever, having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true, is guilty of perjury, and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined not more than $2,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States.”
Under § 334 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 734, the court must hold a first meeting of creditors within a limited period of time after the Chapter XI petition is filed. Section 336,11 U. S. C. § 736, provides that the judge or court-appointed referee shall preside at the meeting and “shall examine the debtor or cause him to be examined and hear witnesses on any matter relevant to the proceeding.”
Section 21 (a) of the Act, 11 U. S. C. § 44 (a), is applicable to a Chapter XI proceeding because it is a provision of Chapters I through VII “not inconsistent with or in conflict with the provisions of [Chapter XI].” 11 U. S. C. §702. Section 21 (a) provides, in pertinent part, that “[t]he court may, upon application of any officer, bankrupt, or creditor, by order require any designated persons ... to appear before the court ... to be examined concerning the acts, conduct, or property of a bankrupt.” Numerous statements of the broad scope of a § 21 (a) inquiry are collected in 2 W. Collier, Bankruptcy ¶ 21.11 (14th ed. 1971). The officers of a bankrupt may be required to undergo a § 21 (a) examination even if they are not still officers at the time of filing. Id., ¶ 21.09. If it appears that the interest of a witness is adverse to the party calling him to testify, under § 21 (j), 11 U. S. C. § 44 (j), the party may examine the witness as if under cross-examination, and the examining party is not bound by the witness’ testimony. 1A W. Collier, Bankruptcy ¶ 5.22 (14th ed. 1972).
The District Court gave the following example “as an illustration only”:
“[I]f it is material to ascertain how many times a person has entered a store on a given day and that person responds to such a question by saying five times when in fact he knows that he entered the store 50 times that day, that person may be guilty of perjury even though it is technically true that he entered the store five times.”
The illustration given by the District Court is hardly comparable to petitioner’s answer; the answer “five times” is responsive to the hypothetical question and contains nothing to alert the questioner that he may be sidetracked. See infra, at 358. Moreover, it is very doubtful that an answer which, in response to a specific quantitative inquiry, baldly understates a numerical fact can be described as even “technically true.” Whether an answer is true must be determined with reference to the question it purports to answer, not in isolation. An unresponsive answer is unique in this respect because its unresponsiveness by definition prevents its truthfulness from being tested in the context of the question — unless there is to be speculation as to what the unresponsive answer “implies.” See infra, at 359.
Petitioner’s answer is not to be measured, by the same standards applicable to criminally fraudulent or extortionate statements. In that context, the law goes “rather far in punishing intentional creation of false impressions by a selection of literally true representations, because the actor himself generally selects and arranges the representations.” In contrast, “under our system of adversary questioning and cross-examination the scope of disclosure is largely in the hands of counsel and presiding officer.” A. L. I. Model Penal Code §208.20, Comment (Tent. Draft No. 6, 1957, p. 124).
Arguably, the questioner will assume there is some logical justification for the unresponsive answer, since competent witnesses do not usually answer in irrelevancies. Thus the questioner may conclude that the unresponsive answer is given only because it is intended to make a statement — a negative statement — relevant to the question asked. In this ease, petitioner’s questioner may have assumed that petitioner denied having a personal account in Switzerland; only this unspoken denial would provide a logical nexus between inquiry directed to petitioner’s personal account and petitioner’s adverting, in response, to the company account in Zurich.
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
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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.
Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether the habeas corpus statute, 28 U. S. C. §2254, confers jurisdiction on the federal courts to consider collateral challenges to state-court judgments involuntarily terminating parental rights.
I
The facts of this case are described in detail in In re William L., 477 Pa. 322, 383 A. 2d 1228, cert. denied sub nom. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children’s Services, 439 U. S. 880 (1978), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision terminating the parental rights of petitioner Marjorie Lehman with respect to three sons born in 1963, 1965, and 1969. In 1971, Ms. Lehman discovered that she was pregnant again. Because of housing and other problems related to the care of her sons, Ms. Lehman voluntarily placed them in the legal custody of the Lycoming County Children’s Services Agency, and it placed them in foster homes.
. Although Ms. Lehman visited her sons monthly, she did not request their return until 1974. At that point, the Lycoming County Children’s Services Agency initiated parental termination proceedings. In those proceedings, the Orphan’s Court Division of the Lycoming County Court of Common Pleas heard testimony from Agency caseworkers, a psychologist, nutrition aides, petitioner, and the three sons. The judge concluded: “[I]t is absolutely clear to the court that, by reason of her very limited social and intellectual development combined with her five-year separation from the children, the mother is incapable of providing minimal care, control and supervision for the three children. Her incapacity cannot and will not be remedied.” In re Lehman, Nos. 2986, 2987, and 2988, p. 4 (Ct. Common Pleas, Lycoming County, Pa., June 3, 1976). The court therefore declared that petitioner’s parental rights respecting the three sons were terminated.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the termination order based on “parental incapacity, which does not involve parental misconduct.” In re William L., supra, at 331, 383 A. 2d, at 1232. It held that the legislature’s power to protect the physical and emotional needs of children authorized termination in the absence of serious harm or risk of serious harm to the children and in the absence of parental misconduct. The court stressed that, “[i]n the instant cases, the basis for termination is several years of demonstrated parental incapacity . . . .” Ibid. It also held that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague either on its face or as applied.
Petitioner sought this Court’s review in a petition for certiorari rather than by appeal. We denied the petition. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children’s Services, 439 U. S. 880 (1978). Petitioner then filed the instant proceeding on January 16, 1979, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, seeking a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §§ 2241 and 2254. Petitioner requested (i) a declaration of the invalidity of the Pennsylvania statute under which her parental rights were terminated; (ii) a declaration that petitioner was the legal parent of the children; and (iii) an order releasing the children to her custody unless within 60 days an appropriate state court judicially determined that the best interest of the children required that temporary custody remain with the State.
The District Court dismissed the petition without a hearing. Relying primarily on Sylvander v. New England Home for Little Wanderers, 584 F. 2d 1103 (CA1 1978), the court concluded that “the custody maintained by the Respondent over the three Lehman children is not that type of custody to which the federal habeas corpus remedy may be addressed.” Lehman v. Lycoming County Children’s Services Agency, Civ. No. 79-65 (MD Pa. 1979), reprinted in App. to Pet. for Cert. 135a, 147 a.
Sitting en banc, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the District Court’s order of dismissal by a divided vote of six to four. 648 F. 2d 135 (1981). No majority opinion was written. A plurality of four, in an opinion written by Judge Garth, concluded that “disputes of the nature addressed here and which essentially involve no more than the question of who shall raise a child to maturity, do not implicate the federal interest in personal liberty sufficiently to warrant the extension of federal habeas corpus.” Id., at 146. In support of this conclusion, Judge Garth reasoned that “[i]t is not the liberty interest of the children that is sought to be protected in such a case, but only the right of the particular parent to raise them.” Id., at 140 (footnote omitted).
A second plurality of four, in an opinion written by Judge Adams wrote that it “would appear to be both unwise and impolitic for the federal courts to uncover a whole new font of jurisdiction. . . .” Id., at 151. He would have disposed of the case on the ground that Ms. Lehman did not have standing to assert a habeas corpus action on behalf of her children. See id., at 151-155. This view was based on the conclusion that once a parent’s rights have been terminated in a state proceeding, a parent is no longer presumed to represent the interest of the child. See id., at 153-154.
The question presented to this Court can be stated more fully as whether federal habeas corpus jurisdiction, under § 2254, may be invoked to challenge the constitutionality of a state statute under which a State has obtained custody of children and has terminated involuntarily the parental rights of their natural parent. As this is a question of importance not heretofore considered by this Court, and one over which the Circuits are/ divided, we granted certiorari. 454 U. S. 813 (1981). We now affirm.
II
A
Petitioner seeks habeas corpus collateral review by a federal court of the Pennsylvania decision. Her application was filed under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a):
“The Supreme Court, a Justice thereof, a circuit judge, or a district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.”
Although the language of § 2254(a), especially in light of § 2241, suggests that habeas corpus is available only to challenge the convictions of prisoners actually in the physical custody of the State, three modern cases have extended it to other situations involving challenges to state-court decisions. The first of these cases is Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U. S. 236 (1963), in which the Court allowed a parolee to challenge his conviction by a habeas petition. The Court considered the parolee in “custody” for purposes of § 2254(b) because “the custody and control of the Parole Board involve significant restraints on petitioner’s liberty . . . which are in addition to those imposed by the State upon the public generally.” 371 U. S., at 242. And in Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234 (1968), the Court allowed the writ in a challenge to a state-court judgment even though the prisoner, incarcerated at the time the writ was filed, had finished serving his sentence during the proceedings. The custody requirement had, of course, been met at the time the writ was filed, and the case was not moot because Carafas was subject to “‘collateral consequences’” as a result of his conviction, id., at 237, and “is suffering, and will continue to suffer, serious disabilities . . . .” Id., at 239. Most recently, in Hensley v. Municipal Court, 411U. S. 345 (1973), the Court allowed the writ to be used to challenge a state-court conviction even though the defendant had been released on his own recognizance after sentencing but prior to the commencement of his incarceration. The Court held that the defendant was in the custody of the State for purposes of § 2254(b) because he was “subject to restraints ‘not shared by the public generally,”’ 411 U. S., at 351 (citation omitted) — indeed, his arrest was imminent.
Thus, although the scope of the writ of habeas corpus has been extended beyond that which the most literal reading of the statute might require, the Court has never considered it a generally available federal remedy for every violation of federal rights. Instead, past decisions have limited the writ’s availability to challenges to state-court judgments in situations where — as a result of a state-court criminal conviction — a petitioner has suffered substantial restraints not shared by the public generally. In addition, in each of these cases the Court considered whether the habeas petitioner was “in custody” within the meaning of §2254.
Ms. Lehman argues that her sons are involuntarily in the custody of the State for purposes of § 2254 because they are in foster homes pursuant to an order issued by a state court. Her sons, of course, are not prisoners. Nor do they suffer any restrictions imposed by a state criminal justice system. These factors alone distinguish this case from all other cases in which this Court has sustained habeas challenges to state-court judgments. Moreover, although the children have been placed in foster homes pursuant to an order of a Pennsylvania court, they are not in the “custody” of the State in the sense in which that term has been used by this Court in determining the availability of the writ of habeas corpus. They are in the “custody” of their foster parents in essentially the same way, and to the same extent, other children are in the custody of their natural or adoptive parents. Their situation in this respect differs little from the situation of other children in the public generally; they suffer no unusual restraints not imposed on other children. They certainly suffer no restraint on liberty as that term is used in Hensley and Jones, and they suffer no “collateral consequences” — like those in Carafas — sufficient to outweigh the need for finality. The “custody” of foster or adoptive parents over a child is not the type of custody that traditionally has been challenged through federal habeas. Ms. Lehman simply seeks to relitigate, through federal habeas, not any liberty interest of her sons, but the interest in her own parental rights.
Although a federal habeas corpus statute has existed ever since 1867, federal habeas has never been available to challenge parental rights or child custody. Indeed, in two cases, the Court refused to allow the writ in such instances. Matters v. Ryan, 249 U. S. 375 (1919); In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586 (1890). These decisions rest on the absence of a federal question, but the opinions suggest that federal habeas corpus is not available to challenge child custody. Moreover, federal courts consistently have shown special solicitude for state interests “in the field of family and family-property arrangements.” United States v. Yazell, 382 U. S. 341, 352 (1966). Under these circumstances, extending the federal writ to challenges to state child-custody decisions — challenges based on alleged constitutional defects collateral to the actual custody decision — would be an unprecedented expansion of the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts.
B
Federalism concerns and the exceptional need for finality in child-custody disputes argue strongly against the grant of Ms. Lehman’s petition. The writ of habeas corpus is a major exception to the doctrine of res judicata, as it allows relitigation of a final state-court judgment disposing of precisely the same claims. Because of this tension between the State’s interest in finality and the asserted federal interest, federal courts properly have been reluctant to extend the writ beyond its historic purpose. As Judge Campbell noted in Sylvander v. New England Home for Little Wanderers:
“Federal habeas involves a substantial thrust by the federal system into the sphere normally reserved to the states and hence a change in the federal-state balance. This is so because the federal habeas remedy, as recently fashioned, offers a federal forum regardless of what state proceedings have already taken place and in effect allows a single federal district judge to overrule the judgment of the highest state court, unfettered by the constraints of collateral estoppel and res judicata.” 584 F. 2d, at 1111-1112.
The State’s interest in finality is unusually strong in child-custody disputes. The grant of federal habeas would prolong uncertainty for children such as the Lehman sons, possibly lessening their chances of adoption. It is undisputed that children require secure, stable, long-term, continuous relationships with their parents or foster parents. There is little that can be as detrimental to a child’s sound development as uncertainty over whether he is to remain in his current “home,” under the care of his parents or foster parents, especially when such uncertainty is prolonged. Extended uncertainty would be inevitable in many cases if federal courts had jurisdiction to relitigate state custody decisions.
l — l 1 — I
Petitioner argues that habeas corpus should be available to her because it has been used as a procedure in child-custody cases in various States and in England. She notes that, in Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U. S., at 238-240, the Court indicated that in construing the habeas statute, reference may be made to the common law and to practices in the States and in England. It is true that habeas has been used in child-custody cases in England and in many of the States. See id., at 239-240, and nn. 8, 12, and 13, citing Ford v. Ford, 371 U. S. 187 (1962); Boardman v. Boardman, 135 Conn. 124, 138, 62 A. 2d 521, 528 (1948); Ex parte Swall, 36 Nev. 171, 174, 134 P. 96, 97 (1913); Ex parte M‘Clellan, 1 Dowl. 81 (K. B. 1831); Earl of Westmeath v. Countess of Westmeath, as set out in reporter’s footnote in Lyons v. Blenkin, 1 Jac. 245, 264, 37 Eng. Rep. 842, 848 (Ch. 1821). As these cases illustrate, the term “custody” in 28 U. S. C. §2255 — authorizing federal-court collateral review of federal decisions — could be construed to include the type of custody the Lehman children are subject to, since they are in foster homes pursuant to court orders. But reliance on what may be appropriate within the federal system or within a state system is of little force where — as in this case — a state judgment is attacked collaterally in a federal court. It is one thing to use a proceeding called “habeas corpus” in resolving child-custody disputes within a single system obligated to resolve such disputes. The question in such a case may be which procedure is most appropriate. The system is free to set time limits on the bringing of such actions as well as to impose other requirements to ensure finality and a speedy resolution of disputes in cases involving child custody or termination of parental rights. In this case, however, petitioner would have the federal judicial system entertain a writ that is not time-barred to challenge collaterally a final judgment entered in a state judicial system. In Sylvander v. New England Home for Little Wanderers, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit gave a compelling answer to this argument:
“Federal habeas when applied to persons under state control is a procedure of unique potency within the federal-state framework, having far different and more far-reaching consequences than a state’s utilization of habeas within its own system. State utilization of habeas to test the legal custody of a child is part of the fabric of its reserved jurisdiction over child custody matters. If a habeas remedy were not provided, some other procedure would be needed to effectuate the state’s substantive interest in these relationships. It is purely a matter of procedural detail whether the remedy is called ‘habeas’ or something else. The federal government, however, has no parallel substantive interest in child custody matters that federal habeas would serve. The sole federal interest is in the constitutional issues collateral to such disputes. At bottom, the question is whether these constitutional issues can be adequately raised through the usual channels — appeal, certiorari and the civil rights statutes — or whether the vehicle of federal habeas, with its unique features, is required.” 584 F. 2d, at 1111.
IV
The considerations in a child-custody case are quite different from those present in any prior case in which this Court has sustained federal-court jurisdiction under §2254. The federal writ of habeas corpus, representing as it does a profound interference with state judicial systems and the finality of state decisions, should be reserved for those instances in which the federal interest in individual liberty is so strong that it outweighs federalism and finality concerns. Congress has indicated no intention that the reach of § 2254 encompass a claim like that of petitioner. We therefore hold that § 2254 does not confer federal-court jurisdiction. The decision below, affirming the denial of a writ of habeas corpus, therefore is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Petitioner has never been married. The fathers to these sons voluntarily have relinquished their parental rights in state-court proceedings.
There was no evidence that any of the sons wanted to return to their mother. See Tr. 82, 117-118, 122-125, 127-129.
It has now been over a decade since the sons were removed from the custody of their mother. Frank, the oldest, is now 18, and the case is moot with respect to him since he is free to seek adoption by anyone, including his natural mother. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 25-26. The other two sons, Bill and Mark, are now 12 and 16 respectively.
The judge relied on the Pennsylvania statute which provides, in relevant part:
“The rights of a parent in regard to a child may be terminated after a petition filed on any of the following grounds:
“(2) The repeated and continued incapacity, abuse, neglect or refusal of the parent has caused the child to be without essential parental care, control or subsistence necessary for his physical or mental well-being and the conditions and causes of the incapacity, abuse, neglect or refusal cannot or will not be remedied by the parent.” 23 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 2511(a) (1980).
This decision appeared to have been a strategic one, making possible, in the event this Court did not grant plenary review, the filing of a habeas corpus petition in federal district court without any problem of res judicata on the federal issues as a result of this Court’s summary affirmance or dismissal of the appeal for want of a substantial federal question. At oral argument, however, petitioner’s lawyer also explained that he was confused as to whether he could appeal both the facial attack on the statute and the challenge to the statute as applied, and had therefore chosen the more conservative route of seeking a petition for a writ of certiorari on both issues. See Tr. Oral Arg. 21-22.
Chief Judge Seitz filed a separate concurring opinion. He found the case “most difficult,” noting that “the literal statutory requirements for exercise of section 2254 federal habeas corpus jurisdiction can be said to be satisfied.” 648 F. 2d, at 155. But he nevertheless concurred in the result because habeas corpus has never been used to challenge state child-custody decisions, and “such a major departure from traditional uses of federal habeas corpus to challenge state-court judgments” should “await a congressional directive on the matter.” Id., at 156.
Judge Rosenn, joined by two other judges, dissented. He stressed that “[t]he total extinction of a familial relationship between children and their biological parents is the most drastic measure that a state can impose, short of criminal sanctions.” Id., at 163. Judge Gibbons also filed a dissenting opinion, arguing that there was federal subject-matter jurisdiction and that habeas corpus should be an available remedy because a decision terminating parental rights has ongoing effects. Id., at 177.
The federal courts have split on this issue. Only one court other than the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has addressed the question in a full opinion; in Sylvander v. New England Home far Little Wanderers, 584 F. 2d 1103 (1978), the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that habeas corpus could not be used to avoid the finality of prior state-court child-custody proceedings, with a rationale much like Judge Garth’s in the instant case. Other federal courts have assumed — without full analysis— that habeas jurisdiction lies. See Davis v. Page, 640 F. 2d 599, 602 (CA5 1981) (en banc); Rowell v. Oesterle, 626 F. 2d 437 (CA5 1980).
See 28 U. S. C. § 2241 (empowering federal judges to grant such writs; subsection (c) provides that “[t]he writ of habeas corpus shall not extend to a prisoner unless . . .”) (emphasis added); see also 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b) (“An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall ... be granted unless [state remedies have not been exhausted or are not available, or there are] circumstances rendering such process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner*’) (emphasis added).
When habeas corpus is made available by a federal court to challenge custody by federal entities, federalism concerns are not implicated. The only relevant question then is what federal remedy may be available. The grant of habeas relief in such instances — e. g., Strait v. Laird, 406 U. S. 341 (1972) (inactive Army Reserve member allowed to bring habeas petition to challenge his military obligation); Brownell v. Tom We Shung, 352 U. S. 180, 182-184 (1956) (alien allowed to use habeas to challenge his exclusion from the United States) — is not precedent for the use of federal habeas to challenge judgments of state courts. As Judge Garth noted in his decision below: “[T]he writ assumes even more profound implications when its operation cuts across the federal and state judicial systems. In this latter context, the writ empowers a single federal judge to overrule determinations of federal issues which have been adjudicated by the highest court of a state.” 648 F. 2d, at 139.
Jurisdiction to challenge both state and federal judgments is conferred by §2241. But §2254, conferring general jurisdiction to consider collateral attacks on state judgments, has no relevance to federal habeas proceedings challenging federal custody of nonprisoners. Thus, federal decisions made pursuant to § 2241 constitute no authority for the claim of jurisdiction under § 2254 in this case.
In Hensley, the State would have placed the petitioner behind bars, but was prevented by a stay entered by the state trial court that subsequently was extended by two Justices of this Court. 411 U. S., at 351. Thus, although Hensley held the writ to be available in a case in which there was no actual custody in a state penal institution at the time the writ was filed, the extension was in the context of a person who had a strong claim to be treated as a prisoner for jurisdictional purposes.
See Hensley, 411 U. S., at 345 (“This case requires us to determine whether a person released on his own recognizance is ‘in custody’ within the meaning of the federal habeas corpus statute . . .”); Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S., at 238 (similar); Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U. S., at 236 (similar).
We express no view as to the availability of federal habeas when a child is actually confined in a state institution rather than being at liberty in the custody of a foster parent pursuant to a court order.
At the hearing before the Pennsylvania trial court, petitioner’s lawyer actually stated “[t]his is not a custody proceeding . . . .” Tr. 67.
The Court has considered constitutional challenges to custody or parental-rights proceedings, but these cases have reached the Court on direct review of the final state-court decision, not on federal habeas. See, e. g., Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U. S. 745 (1982).
Justice Blackmun’s dissenting opinion states that the legislative history, though admittedly sparse, supports its interpretation of the scope of § 2254 because “[t]he codification of the writ into federal law indicates no congressional intent to contract its common-law scope.” See post, at 518. But the dissenting opinion cites no legislative history relevant to state-court custody decisions. Moreover, for at least 100 years after passage of the statute in 1867, the writ was not used in child-custody cases. This history strongly suggests that the extension of federal habeas corpus to state custody cases was never contemplated by Congress, nor understood by the Bar to have been an available remedy.
Petitioner maintains that the approval of habeas jurisdiction in this case may be limited. She suggests that it could be available only when the State takes the child away from its natural parents, but not when the State simply determines custody in a routine intrafamily dispute. It is not apparent that such distinctions are possible, either in legal theory or as a practical matter. The circumstances of custody vary widely, though in each disputed ease the child is in the custody of one person — over the objections of someone else — by order of a state court. We see no principled basis for distinguishing between the claim of a natural parent and the claim of grandparents or even the claim of an unrelated person who has been given legal custody that is challenged by a third party. Moreover, the arguments of res judicata and federalism apply with equal force in every collateral attack on a state custody decision in a federal court.
The dissent suggests that comity and federalism concerns cannot inform a court’s construction of a statute in determining a question of jurisdiction over certain kinds of cases. Post, at 522-523. But in Fair Assessment in Real Estate Assn. v. McNary, 454 U. S. 100 (1981), precisely those concerns lead this Court to conclude that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 does not confer jurisdiction on the federal courts to hear suits for tax refunds when state law provides an adequate remedy.
In his decision below, Judge Garth expressed similar views:
“While the ability to avoid res judicata is an extraordinary characteristic of habeas when the relitigation takes place within the same judicial system — that is, when a state court entertains the writ on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a court of that same state — the writ assumes even more profound implications when its operation cuts across the federal and state judicial systems. [T]he assumption of habeas jurisdiction by a federal court on behalf of a party complaining of a judgment rendered against him by a state court, represents an unparalleled assertion of federal authority over the state judicial system. Such an intrusion upon state judicial authority deeply implicates the principles of comity and may impair the smooth workings of our federal system.
“The awesome power of the writ to avoid res judicata, and its implications for our federalism, demand that its use be confined to its proper role: the preservation of individual liberty and the relief from unlawful custody.” 648 F. 2d, at 139.
There is also the danger that “if litigation expenses mount, social workers and charitable organizations . . . may well become less willing to seek placements for children over their parents’ objections, whether rational or irrational, even though in their honest judgment the child’s best interests demand it.” Sylvander v. New England Home for Little Wanderers, 584 F. 2d, at 1112.
In Hensley, this Court observed:
“The custody requirement of the habeas corpus statute is designed to preserve the writ of habeas corpus as a remedy for severe restraints on individual liberty. Since habeas corpus is an extraordinary remedy whose operation is to a large extent uninhibited by traditional rules of finality and federalism, its use has been limited to cases of special urgency, leaving more conventional remedies for cases in which the restraints on liberty are neither severe nor immediate.” 411 U. S., at 351.
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 Alito
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The State of South Carolina brought this original action against the State of North Carolina, seeking an equitable apportionment of the Catawba River. We appointed a Special Master and referred the matter to her, together with the motions of three nonstate entities seeking to intervene in the dispute as parties. South Carolina opposed the motions. After holding a hearing, the Special Master granted the motions and, upon South Carolina’s request, memorialized the reasons for her decision in a First Interim Report. South Carolina then presented exceptions, and we set the matter for argument.
Two of the three proposed intervenors have satisfied the standard for intervention in original actions that we articulated nearly 60 years ago in New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S. 369 (1953) (per curiam). Accordingly, we overrule South Carolina’s exceptions with respect to the Catawba River Water Supply Project (hereinafter CRWSP) and Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC (hereinafter Duke Energy), but we sustain South Carolina’s exception with respect to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina (hereinafter Charlotte).
I
A
We granted leave for South Carolina to file its complaint in this matter two years ago. South Carolina v. North Carolina, 552 U. S. 804 (2007). The gravamen of the complaint is that North Carolina has authorized upstream transfers of water from the Catawba River basin that exceed North Carolina’s equitable share of the river. It has done so, according to the complaint, pursuant to a North Carolina statute that requires any person seeking to transfer more than 2 million gallons of water per day (mgd) from the Catawba River basin to obtain a permit from the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission. See N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 143-215.22L(a)(1) (Lexis 2007); § 143-215.22G(1)(h). Through that agency, the complaint alleges, North Carolina has issued at least two such permits, one to Charlotte for the transfer of up to 33 mgd, and one to the North Carolina cities of Concord and Kannapolis for the transfer of 10 mgd. In addition, the complaint alleges, North Carolina’s permitting statute “grandfathers” a 5 mgd transfer by the CRWSP, and “implicitly authorize[s]” an unknown number of transfers of less than 2 mgd. Complaint ¶¶ 18, 21, 22. South Carolina claims that the net effect of these upstream transfers is to deprive South Carolina of its equitable share of the Catawba River’s water, particularly during periods of drought or low river flow.
South Carolina seeks relief in the form of a decree that equitably apportions the Catawba River between the two States, enjoins North Carolina from authorizing transfers of water from the Catawba River exceeding that State’s equitable share, and declares North Carolina’s permitting statute invalid to the extent it is used to authorize transfers of water from the Catawba River that exceed North Carolina’s equitable share. See generally Complaint, Prayer for Relief ¶¶ 1-3. The complaint does not specify a minimum flow of water that would satisfy South Carolina’s equitable needs, but it does offer a point of reference. In a recent “multistakeholder negotiation process” involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (hereinafter FERC), Duke Energy, and various groups from both States, it was agreed, according to the complaint, that South Carolina should receive from the Catawba River a continuous flow of water of no less than 1,100 cubic feet per second, or about 711 mgd. Complaint ¶ 14.
This negotiated figure may prove unattainable. According to the complaint, natural conditions and periodic fluctuations have caused the Catawba River’s flow to fall below 1,100 cubic feet per second. Duke Energy, which generates hydroelectric power from a series of reservoirs on the Catawba River, developed a model to estimate the river’s flow if the river were not impounded. Id., ¶¶8, 16. The complaint notes that according to Duke Energy’s model, the Catawba River — even in its natural state — often would not deliver into South Carolina a minimum average daily flow of 1,100 cubic feet per second. Id., ¶ 16; App. to Motion of State of South Carolina for Leave To File Complaint, Complaint, and Brief in Support of its Motion for Leave To File Complaint 18. South Carolina contends that North Carolina’s authorization of large transfers of water from the Catawba River basin has exacerbated these conditions.
Shortly after we granted leave to file the complaint, two of the entities named in the complaint — the CRWSP and Duke Energy — filed motions for leave to intervene as parties. The CRWSP sought leave to intervene as a party-defendant, asserting its interest as a “riparian user of the Catawba River” and claiming that this interest was not adequately represented because of the CRWSP’s “interstate nature.” Motion of CRWSP for Leave To Intervene and Brief in Support of Motion 8, 9. Specifically, the CRWSP noted that it is a bistate entity that is jointly owned and regulated by, and supplies water to, North Carolina’s Union County and South Carolina’s Lancaster County. Id., at 9. Duke Energy sought leave to intervene and file an answer, asserting an interest as the operator of 11 dams and reservoirs on the Catawba River that control the river’s flow, as the holder of a 50-year license governing Duke Energy’s hydroelectric power operations, and as the entity that orchestrated the multistakeholder negotiation process culminating in a Comprehensive Relicensing Agreement (CRA) signed by 70 entities from both States in 2006. Duke Energy’s Motion and Brief in Support of Motion To Intervene and File Answer, and Answer 2, 5. This CRA set forth the terms under which Duke Energy has applied to renew its FERC license, id., at 5, and Duke Energy asserted that neither State would represent its “particular amalgam of federal, state and private interests,” id., at 14. South Carolina opposed both motions, and we referred them to the Special Master. 552 U. S. 1160 (2008).
One month later, a third entity named in the complaint, the city of Charlotte, also sought leave to intervene as a party-defendant. In its brief, Charlotte asserted an interest, both as the holder of a permit authorizing the transfer of 33 mgd from the Catawba River basin — the largest single transfer identified in the complaint — and as the potential source of the 10 mgd transfer approved for the cities of Concord and Kannapolis. Motion for Leave To Intervene of City of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Brief in Support of Motion 5, 7. Charlotte argued that North Carolina could not represent the city’s interests effectively because the State was dutybound to represent the interests of all North Carolina users of the Catawba River’s water, including users whose interests were not aligned with Charlotte’s. Id., at 17. South Carolina also opposed Charlotte’s motion, and we referred it to the Special Master. 552 U. S. 1254 (2008).
B
The Special Master held a hearing and issued an order granting all three motions for leave to intervene. At South Carolina’s request, the Special Master set forth her findings and decision as a First Interim Report, and it is this Report to which South Carolina now presents exceptions.
The Special Master recognized that this Court has exercised jurisdiction over nonstate parties in original actions between two or more States. She also recognized that in New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S. 369, the Court considered the “appropriate standard” for a nonstate entity’s motion to intervene in an original action. First Interim Report of Special Master, O. T. 2008, No. 138, Orig., p. 12 (First Interim Rept.). But in attempting to give context to our standard, she looked beyond intervention and considered original actions in which the Court has allowed nonstate entities to be named as defendants by the complaining State. From those examples, the Special Master “distilled the following rule” governing motions to intervene in original actions by non-state entities:
“Although the Court’s original jurisdiction presumptively is reserved for disputes between sovereign states over sovereign matters, non-state entities may become parties to such original disputes in appropriate and compelling circumstances, such as where the non-state entity is the instrumentality authorized to carry out the wrongful conduct or injury for which the complaining state seeks relief, where the non-state entity has an independent property interest that is directly implicated by the original dispute or is a substantial factor in the dispute, where the non-state entity otherwise has a ‘direct stake’ in the outcome of the action within the meaning of the Court’s cases discussed above, or where, together with one or more of the above circumstances, the presence of the non-state entity would advance the 'full exposition’ of the issues.” Id., at 20-21.
Applying this broad rule, the Special Master found that each proposed intervenor had a sufficiently compelling interest to justify intervention. The Special Master rejected South Carolina’s proposal to limit intervention to the remedy phase of this litigation and recommended that this Court grant the motions to intervene.
II
A
Participation by nonstate parties in actions arising under our original jurisdiction is not a new development. Article III, § 2, of the Constitution expressly contemplates suits “between a State and Citizens of another State” as falling within our original jurisdiction, see, e. g., Georgia v. Brailsford, 2 Dall. 402 (1792), and for more than two centuries the Court has exercised that jurisdiction over nonstate parties in suits between two or more States, see New York v. Connecticut, 4 Dall. 1 (1799); Missouri v. Illinois, 180 U. S. 208, 224-225 (1901). Nonstate entities have even participated as parties in disputes between States, such as the one before us now, where the States were seeking equitable apportionment of water resources. See, e. g., Arizona v. California, 460 U. S. 605, 608, n. 1 (1988); Texas v. New Mexico, 343 U. S. 932 (1952); New Jersey v. City of New York, 279 U. S. 823 (1929) (per curiam). It is, thus, not a novel proposition to accord party status to a citizen in an original action between States.
This Court likewise has granted leave, under appropriate circumstances, for nonstate entities to intervene as parties in original actions between States for nearly 90 years. See Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 745, n. 21 (1981). In Oklahoma v. Texas, 258 U. S. 574, 581, 598 (1922), a boundary dispute that threatened to erupt in armed hostilities, the Court allowed individual and corporate citizens to intervene to protect their rights in contested land. See, e. g., Oklahoma v. Texas, 254 U. S. 609 (1920). More recently, the Court has allowed a municipality to intervene in a sovereign boundary dispute, see Texas v. Louisiana, 426 U. S. 465, 466 (1976) (per curiam), and has permitted private corporations to intervene in an original action challenging a State’s imposition of a tax that burdened interstate commerce and contravened the Supremacy Clause, see Maryland v. Louisiana, supra, at 745, n. 21;
In this case, the Special Master crafted a rule of intervention that accounts for the full compass of our precedents. But a compelling reason for allowing citizens to participate in one original action is not necessarily a compelling reason for allowing citizens to intervene in all original actions. We therefore decline to adopt the Special Master’s proposed rule. As the Special Master acknowledged, the Court in New Jersey v. New York, supra, set down the “appropriate standard” for intervention in original actions by nonstate entities. First Interim Rept. 12. We believe the standard that we applied in that case applies equally well here.
In 1929, the State of New Jersey sued the State of New York and city of New York for their diversion of the Delaware River’s headwaters. 345 U. S., at 370. The Court granted the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania leave to intervene and, in 1931, entered a decree enjoining certain diversions of water by the State of New York and the city of New York. Id., at 371. In 1952, the city of New York moved to modify the decree, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania filed oppositions. After the Court referred the matter to a Special Master, the city of Philadelphia sought leave to intervene on the basis of its use of the Delaware River’s water. Id., at 371-372.
This Court denied Philadelphia leave to intervene. Pennsylvania had intervened pro interesse suo “to protect the rights and interests of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania in the Delaware River.” Id., at 374; see also New Jersey v. New York, 283 U. S. 336, 342 (1931). In view of Pennsylvania’s participation, the Court wrote that when a State is “a party to a suit involving a matter of sovereign interest,” it is parens patriae and “ ‘must be deemed to represent all [of] its citizens.’” 345 U. S., at 372-373 (quoting Kentucky v. Indiana, 281 U. S. 163, 173-174 (1930)). This principle serves the twin purposes of ensuring that due respect is given to “sovereign dignity” and providing “a working rule for good judicial administration.” 345 U. S., at 373. The Court, thus, set forth the following standard governing intervention in an original action by a nonstate entity:
“An intervenor whose state is already a party should have the burden of showing some compelling interest in his own right, apart from his interest in a class with all other citizens and creatures of the state, which interest is not properly represented by the state.” Ibid.
On several subsequent occasions the Court has reaffirmed this “general rule.” See Nebraska v. Wyoming, 515 U. S. 1, 21-22 (1995); United States v. Nevada, 412 U. S. 534, 538 (1973) (per curiam); Illinois v. Milwaukee, 406 U. S. 91, 97 (1972).
We acknowledge that the standard for intervention in original actions by nonstate entities is high — and appropriately so. Such actions tax the limited resources of this Court by requiring us “awkwardly to play the role of factfinder” and diverting our attention from our “primary responsibility as an appellate tribunal.” Ohio v. Wyandotte Chemicals Corp., 401 U. S. 493, 498 (1971); Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 762 (1981) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). In order to ensure that original actions do not assume the “dimensions of ordinary class actions,” New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 373, we exercise our original jurisdiction “sparingly” and retain “substantial discretion” to decide whether a particular claim requires “an original forum in this Court,” Mississippi v. Louisiana, 506 U. S. 73, 76 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Respect for state sovereignty also calls for a high threshold to intervention by nonstate parties in a sovereign dispute committed to this Court’s original jurisdiction. Under 28 U. S. C. § 1251, this Court exercises “original and exclusive” jurisdiction to resolve controversies between States that, if arising among independent nations, “would be settled by treaty or by force.” Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46, 98 (1907). This Court has described its original jurisdiction as “delicate and grave,” Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. 1, 15 (1900), and has guarded against its use as a forum in which “a state might be judicially impeached on matters of policy by its own subjects,” New Jersey v. New York, supra, at 373. In its sovereign capacity, a State represents the interests of its citizens in an original action, the disposition of which binds the citizens. Nebraska v. Wyoming, supra, at 22; New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 372-373. A respect for sovereign dignity, therefore, counsels in favor of restraint in allowing nonstate entities to intervene in such disputes. See ibid.; accord, United States v. Texas, 143 U. S. 621, 643 (1892) (“[Exclusive jurisdiction was given to this court, because it best comported with the dignity of a State, that a ease in which it was a party should be determined in the highest, rather than in a subordinate judicial tribunal of the nation”).
That the standard for intervention in original actions by nonstate entities is high, however, does not mean that it is insurmountable. Indeed, as the Special Master correctly recognized, our practice long has been to allow such intervention in compelling circumstances. See Oklahoma v. Texas, 258 U. S., at 581. Over the “strong objections” of three States, for example, the Court allowed Indian tribes to intervene in a sovereign dispute concerning the equitable apportionment of the Colorado River. Arizona v. California, 460 U. S., at 613. The Court did so notwithstanding the Tribes’ simultaneous representation by the United States. Id., at 608-609, 612. And in a boundary dispute among Texas, Louisiana, and the United States, the Court allowed the city of Port Arthur, Texas, to intervene for the purpose of protecting its interests in islands in which the United States claimed title. Texas v. Louisiana, 426 U. S., at 466; Texas v. Louisiana, 416 U. S. 965 (1974). In both of these examples, the Court found compelling interests that warranted allowing nonstate entities to intervene in original actions in which the intervenors were nominally represented by sovereign parties.
B
1
Applying the standard of New Jersey v. New York, supra, here, we conclude that the CRWSP has demonstrated a sufficiently compelling interest that is unlike the interests of other citizens of the States. The CRWSP is an unusual municipal entity, established as a joint venture with the encouragement of regulatory authorities in both States and designed to serve the increasing water needs of Union County, North Carolina, and Lancaster County, South Carolina. It has an advisory board consisting of representatives from both counties, (¿raws its revenues from its bistate sales, and operates infrastructure and assets that are owned by both counties as tenants-in-common. We are told that approximately 100,000 individuals in each State receive their water from the CRWSP and that “roughly half” of the CRWSP’s total withdrawals of water from the Catawba River go to South Carolina consumers. Reply of CRWSP to Exceptions of South Carolina to First Interim Report of Special Master 22 (hereinafter CRWSP Reply). It is difficult to conceive of a more purely bistate entity.
In addition, the CRWSP relies upon authority granted by both States to draw water from the Catawba River and transfer that water from the Catawba River basin. The CRWSP draws all of its water from an intake located below the Lake Wylie dam in South Carolina. South Carolina licensed the CRWSP to withdraw a total of 100 mgd from the Catawba River and issued a certificate to the CRWSP in 1989 authorizing up to 20 mgd to be transferred out of the Catawba River basin. Id., at 6-7; Answer to Bill of Complaint ¶ 21. Lancaster County currently uses approximately 2 mgd of this amount, Union County uses approximately 5 mgd, and the remaining 18 mgd are not used at this time. CRWSP Reply 7. The CRWSP pumps Union County’s allocation across the state border pursuant to a parallel certificate issued by North Carolina authorizing a 5 mgd transfer, ibid., and the complaint specifically identifies this transfer as contributing to South Carolina’s harm, Complaint ¶21. Thus, the CRWSP’s activities depend upon authority conferred by both States.
On these facts, we think it is clear that the CRWSP has carried its burden of showing a compelling interest in the outcome of this litigation that distinguishes the CRWSP from all other citizens of the party States. See New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 373. Apart from its interest as a user of the Catawba River’s water, the CRWSP has made a $30 million investment in its plant and infrastructure, with each participating county incurring approximately half of this cost as debt. Each county is responsible for one-half of the CRWSP’s cost of operations, and the venture is designed to break even from year to year. Any disruption to the CRWSP’s operations would increase — not lessen — the difficulty of our task in achieving a “just and equitable” allocation in this dispute. See Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589, 618 (1945). We believe that the CRWSP has shown a compelling interest in protecting the viability of its operations, which are premised on a fine balance between the joint venture’s two participating counties.
We are further persuaded that neither State can properly represent the interests of the CRWSP in this litigation. See New Jersey v. New York, supra, at 373. The complaint attributes a portion of the total water transfers that have harmed South Carolina to the CRWSP, yet North Carolina expressly states that it “cannot represent the interests of the joint venture.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 54. A moment’s reflection reveals why this is so. In this dispute, as in all disputes over limited resources, each State maximizes its equitable share of the Catawba River’s water only by arguing that the other State’s equitable share must be reduced. See, e. g., Colorado v. New Mexico, 459 U. S. 176, 186-187 (1982). It is thus likely that North Carolina, in response to South Carolina’s demand for a greater share of the Catawba River’s water, will take the position that downstream users — such as Lancaster County — should receive less water. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 52 (“From North Carolina’s perspective, South Carolina is receiving much more water under this negotiated agreement than they could ever hope to achieve in an equitable apportionment action”). The stresses that this litigation would place upon the CRWSP threaten to upset the fine balance on which the joint venture is premised, and neither State has sufficient interest in maintaining that balance to represent the full scope of the CRWSP’s interests.
Accordingly, we believe that the CRWSP should be allowed to intervene to represent its own compelling interests in this litigation. We thus overrule South Carolina’s exception.
2
We conclude, as well, that Duke Energy has demonstrated powerful interests that likely will shape the outcome of this litigation. To place these interests in context, it is instructive to consider the “flexible” process by which we arrive at a “ ‘just and equitable’ apportionment” of an interstate stream. Colorado v. New Mexico, supra, at 183. We do not approach the task in formulaic fashion, New Jersey v. New York, 283 U. S., at 343, but we consider “all relevant factors,” including, but not limited to:
“ ‘physical and climatic conditions, the consumptive use of water in the several sections of the river, the character and rate of return flows, the extent of established uses, the availability of storage water, the practical effect of wasteful uses on downstream areas, [and] the damage to upstream areas as compared to the benefits to downstream areas if a limitation is imposed on the former.’ ” Colorado v. New Mexico, supra, at 183 (quoting Nebraska v. Wyoming, supra, at 618).
In performing this task, there is no substitute for “ ‘the exercise of an informed judgment,’” Colorado v. New Mexico, supra, at 183, and we will not hesitate to seek out the most relevant information from the source best situated to provide it. See Maryland, v. Louisiana, 451 U. S., at 745, n. 21 (allowing intervention of private pipeline companies “in the interest of a full exposition of the issues”).
With these considerations in mind, we turn to Duke Energy’s asserted interests. Duke Energy operates 11 dams and reservoirs in both States that generate electricity for the region and control the flow of the river. The complaint itself acknowledges the relationship between river flow and Duke Energy's operations, noting that a severe drought that ended in 2002 forced Duke Energy to “reduce dramatically” its hydroelectric power generation from the Catawba River. Complaint ¶ 17(c). It is likely that any equitable apportionment of the river will need to take into account the amount of water that Duke Energy needs to sustain its operations and provide electricity to the region, thus giving Duke Energy a strong interest in the outcome of this litigation. See Colorado v. New Mexico, supra, at 188 (noting the appropriateness of considering “the balance of harm and benefit that might result” from a State’s proposed diversion of a river). There is, moreover, no other similarly situated entity on the Catawba River, setting Duke Energy’s interests apart from the class of all other citizens of the States. See New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 373.
Just as important, Duke Energy has a unique and compelling interest in protecting the terms of its existing FERC license and the CRA that forms the basis of Duke Energy’s pending renewal application. Through its dams, Duke Energy controls the flow of the Catawba River under the terms of its 50-year FERC license, which regulates the very subject matter in dispute: the river’s minimum flow into South Carolina. See Order Issuing License (Major), Duke Power Co., Project No. 2232, 20 F. P. C. 360, 371-372 (1958) (Arts. 31 and 32). The CRA, likewise, represents the full consensus of 70 parties from both States regarding the appropriate minimum continuous flow of Catawba River water into South Carolina under a variety of natural conditions and, in times of drought, the conservation measures to be taken by entities that withdraw water from the Catawba River. These factors undeniably are relevant to any “just and equitable apportionment” of the Catawba River, see Colorado v. New Mexico, 459 U. S., at 183, and we are likely to consider them in reaching our ultimate disposition of this case. Thus, we find that Duke Energy has carried its burden of showing unique and compelling interests.
We also have little difficulty in concluding that neither State sufficiently represents these compelling interests. Neither State has signed the CRA or expressed an intention to defend its terms. To the contrary, North Carolina has expressed an intention to seek its modification. Tr. of Oral Arg. 51-52. Given the importance of Duke Energy’s interests and their relevance to our ultimate decision, we believe these interests should be represented by a party in this action, and we find that neither State is situated to do so properly. We believe that Duke Energy should be permitted to represent its own interests.
For these reasons, we agree with the Special Master that Duke Energy should be permitted to intervene, and we overrule South Carolina’s exception in that regard.
3
We conclude, however, that Charlotte has not carried its burden of showing a sufficient interest for intervention in this action. Charlotte is a municipality of North Carolina, and for purposes of this litigation, its transfers of water from the Catawba River basin constitute part of North Carolina’s equitable share. While it is true that the complaint names Charlotte as an entity authorized by North Carolina to carry out a large transfer of water from the Catawba River basin, the complaint does not seek relief against Charlotte directly. Rather, the complaint seeks relief against all North Carolina-authorized transfers of water from the Catawba River basin, “past or future,” in excess of North Carolina’s equitable share. Complaint, Prayer for Relief ¶2. Charlotte, therefore, occupies a class of affected North Carolina users of water, and the magnitude of Charlotte’s authorized transfer does not distinguish it in kind from other members of the class. See New Jersey v. New York, supra, at 373, and n. (noting that Philadelphia represented half of Pennsylvania’s citizens in the watershed). Nor does Charlotte represent interstate interests that fall on both sides of this dispute, as the CRWSP does, such that the viability of Charlotte’s operations in the face of this litigation is called into question. Its interest is solely as a user of North Carolina’s share of the Catawba River’s water.
Charlotte’s interest falls squarely within the category of interests with respect to which a State must be deemed to represent all of its citizens. As we recognized in New Jersey v. New York, a State’s sovereign interest in ensuring an equitable share of an interstate river’s water is precisely the type of interest that the State, as parens patriae, represents on behalf of its citizens. See also United States v. Nevada, 412 U. S., at 539; Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S., at 616. That is why, in New Jersey v. New York, supra, we required that a proposed intervenor show a compelling interest “in his own right,” distinct from the collective interest of “all other citizens and creatures of the state,” whose interest the State presumptively represents in matters of sovereign policy. Id., at 373. We conclude that Charlotte has not carried that burden. Thus, respect for “sovereign dignity” requires us to recognize that North Carolina properly represents Charlotte in this dispute over a matter of uniquely sovereign interest. See ibid.
North Carolina’s own statements only reinforce this conclusion. North Carolina has said that it will defend Charlotte’s authorized 33 mgd transfer. Tr. of Oral Arg. 52-53. The State expressly disagrees with Charlotte’s assertion that the city’s interest is not adequately represented by the State. Brief for State of North Carolina in Opposition to Plaintiff’s Exceptions 22. Indeed, in response to Charlotte’s motion to intervene, North Carolina wrote the following:
“[T]he State must represent the interests of every person that uses water from the North Carolina portion of the Catawba River basin. In fact, the State has a particular concern for its political subdivisions, such as Charlotte, which actually operate the infrastructure to provide water to the State’s citizens.... The State has every reason to defend the [transfers] that it has authorized for the benefit of its citizens. The State cannot agree with any implication that because it represents all of the users of water in North Carolina it cannot, or will not[,] represent the interests of Charlotte in this litigation initiated by South Carolina.” Brief for State of North Carolina in Response to City of Charlotte’s Motion for Leave To Intervene and File Answer 1-2, ¶ 1.
These statements are consistent with North Carolina’s role as parens patriae, and we see no reason that North Carolina cannot represent Charlotte’s interest in this sovereign dispute. See New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 374 (noting that Philadelphia’s interest “is invariably served by the Commonwealth’s position”).
Because we are not persuaded that Charlotte’s interest is sufficiently unique and not properly represented by North Carolina to require the city’s intervention as a party in this litigation, we sustain South Carolina’s exception.
III
We thus overrule South Carolina’s exceptions to the Special Master’s First Interim Report with respect to the CRWSP and Duke Energy, but we sustain South Carolina’s exception with respect to Charlotte.
It is so ordered.
The license was issued in 1958 to Duke Energy’s predecessor by the Federal Power Commission, a predecessor of the FERC. For convenience, we will refer to Duke Energy’s “FERC license” herein.
Charlotte also asserted an interest in protecting the terms of the CRA, to which Charlotte was a signatory but to which North Carolina, which has conflicting duties under § 401 of the Clean Water Act, 86 Stat. 877, as added, 33 U. S. C. § 1341, was not. North Carolina opposed this argument, and the Special Master did not rely on it in recommending that Charlotte’s motion to intervene should be granted. As Charlotte does not reassert this argument here, we do not consider it.
The Chief Justice argues against drawing conclusions from the intervention that we allowed in Oklahoma v. Texas, 254 U. S. 609 (1920). See post, at 283 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). But the circumstances surrounding that dispute fit the “'model case’ ” for invoking this Court’s original jurisdiction, post, at 277, and counsel against inferring from our precedents, as The Chief Justice does with respect to equitable apportionment actions, a rule against nonstate intervention in such “weighty controversies,” ibid.
Accordingly, we need not decide South Carolina’s first exception to the Special Master’s conclusion that intervention is proper “whenever the movant is the 'instrumentality’ authorized to engage in conduct alleged to harm the plaintiff State, has an ‘independent property interest’ at issue in the action, or otherwise has a 'direct stake’ in the outcome of the action.” Exceptions of State of South Carolina to First Interim Report of Special Master and Brief in Support of Exceptions i.
South Carolina has not invoked the Eleventh Amendment as a basis for opposing intervention. It has noted, however, that the proposed intervenors’ claims are, in effect, against South Carolina, and thus has reserved the right to argue that the Eleventh Amendment bars particular forms of relief sought by the proposed intervenors. As in New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S. 369, 372 (1953) (per curiam), we express no view whether the Eleventh Amendment is implicated where a nonstate entity seeks to intervene as a defendant in an original action over a State’s objection.
As a further complication, we are told, Lancaster County has an obligation to provide water service to certain customers in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. CRWSP Reply 6. Thus, South Carolina may not be interested in protecting all uses of Lancaster County’s share of the CRWSP’s water. This additional intermingling of state interests further supports our conclusion that neither State adequately represents the CRWSP’s inherently bistate interests.
Duke Energy is operating under a temporary extension of its 50-year FERC license, which expired in 2008, and the CRA represents Duke Energy’s investment in a new 50-year license.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 does not require a contrary result. This Court’s Rule 17.2 allows the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to be taken as “guides” to procedure in original actions. See Arizona v. California, 460 U. S. 605, 614 (1983). Even if we were to look to the standard for intervention of right in civil matters, Charlotte would not be entitled to intervene in this dispute because an existing party — North Carolina — adequately represents Charlotte’s interest. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 24(a)(2). To the extent that the standard for permissive intervention may be an appropriate guide when a movant presents a sufficiently “important but ancillary concern,” see Arizona, supra, at 614-616, we find no such concern here. North Carolina’s adequate representation of Charlotte and the heightened standard for intervention in original actions, see New Jersey v. New York, 345 U. S., at 373, persuade us not to apply the standard for permissive intervention set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b)(1)(
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:
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K
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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.
Me. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1968, Congress enacted Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which deals with wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance. 18 U. S. C. §§ 2510-2520 (1976 ed.). In this Act Congress, after this Court’s decisions in Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41 (1967), and Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), set out to provide law enforcement officials with some of the tools thought necessary to combat crime without unnecessarily infringing upon the right of individual privacy. See generally S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968). We have had occasion in the past, the most recent being just last Term, to consider exactly how the statute effectuates this balance. This case requires us to construe the statutory requirement that wiretapping or electronic surveillance “be conducted in such a way as to minimize the interception of communications not otherwise subject to interception under this chapter . . . .” 18 U. S.C. §2518(5) (1976 ed.).
Pursuant to judicial authorization which required such minimization, Government agents intercepted all the phone conversations over a particular phone for a period of one month. The District Court for the District of Columbia suppressed all intercepted conversations and evidence derived therefrom in essence because the “admitted knowing and purposeful failure by the monitoring agents to comply with the minimization order was unreasonable . . . even if every intercepted call were narcotic-related.” App. 39. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, concluding that an assessment of the reasonableness of the efforts at minimization first requires an evaluation of the reasonableness of the actual interceptions in light of the purpose of the wiretap and the totality of the circumstances before any inquiry is made into the subjective intent of the agents conducting the surveillance. 170 U. S. App. D. C. 158, 516 F. 2d 751 (1975). We granted certiorari to consider this important question, 434 U. S. 888 (1977), and, finding ourselves in basic agreement with the Court of Appeals, affirm.
I
In January 1970, Government officials applied, pursuant to Title III, for authorization to wiretap a telephone registered to Geneva Jenkins. The supporting affidavits alleged that there was probable cause to believe nine individuals, all named, were participating in a conspiracy to import and distribute narcotics in the Washington, D. C., area and that Geneva Jenkins’ telephone had been used in furtherance of the conspiracy, particularly by petitioner Thurmon, who was then living with Jenkins. The District Court granted the application on January 24, 1970, authorizing agents to “[ijntercept the wire communications of Alphonso H. Lee, Bernis Lee Thurmon, and other persons as may make use of the facilities hereinbefore described.” App. 80. The order also required the agents to conduct the wiretap in “such a way as to ,minimize the interception of communications that are [not] otherwise subject to interception” under the Act and to report to the court every five days “the progress of the interception and the nature of the communication intercepted.” Ibid. Interception began that same day and continued, pursuant to a judicially authorized extension, until February 24, 1970, with the agents making the periodic reports to the judge as required. Upon cessation of the interceptions, search and arrest warrants were executed which led to the arrest of 22 persons and the indictment of 14.
Before trial the defendants, including petitioners Scott and Thurmon, moved to suppress all the intercepted conversations on a variety of grounds. After comprehensive discovery and an extensive series of hearings, the District Court held that the agents had failed to comply with the minimization requirement contained in the wiretap order and ordered suppression of the intercepted conversations and all derivative evidence. The court relied in large part on the fact that virtually all the conversations were intercepted while only 40% of them were shown to be narcotics related. This, the court reasoned, “strongly indicate[d] the indiscriminate use of wire surveillance that was proscribed by Katz[] and Berger.” 331 F. Supp. 233, 247 (DC 1971).
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and remanded, stating that the District Court should not have based its determination upon a general comparison of the number of narcotics-related calls with the total number of calls intercepted, but rather should have engaged in a particularized assessment of. the reasonableness of the agents’ attempts to minimize in light of the purpose of the wiretap and the information available to the agents at the time of interception. 164 U. S. App. D. C. 125, 129, 504 F. 2d 194, 198 (1974).
Upon remand, the District Court again ordered suppression, this time relying largely on the fact that the agents were aware of the minimization requirement, “but made no attempt to comply therewith.” App. 37, 38. “The admitted knowing and purposeful failure by the monitoring agents to comply with the minimization order was unreasonable . . . even if every intercepted call were narcotic-related.” Id., at 39.
The Court of Appeals again reversed, holding that the District Court had yet to apply the correct standard. 170 U. S. App. D. C. 158, 516 F. 2d 751 (1975). The court recognized that the “presence or absence of a good faith attempt to minimize on the part of the agents is undoubtedly one factor to be considered in assessing whether the minimization requirement has been satisfied,” but went on to hold that “the decision on the suppression motion must ultimately be based on the reasonableness of the actual interceptions and not on whether the agents subjectively intended to minimize their interceptions.” Id., at 163, 516 F. 2d, at 756. Then, because of the extended period of time which had elapsed since the commission of the offense in question, that court itself examined the intercepted conversations and held that suppression was not appropriate in this case because the court could not conclude that “some conversation was intercepted which clearly would not have been intercepted had reasonable attempts at minimization been made.” Id., at 164, 516 F. 2d, at 757.
On the remand from the Court of Appeals, following a non jury trial on stipulated evidence which consisted primarily of petitioners’ intercepted conversations, Scott was found guilty of selling and purchasing narcotics not in the original stamped package, see 26 U. S. C. §4704 (a) (1964 ed.), and Thurmon of conspiracy to sell narcotics, see 26 U. S. C. §§ 7237 (b) and 4705 (a) (1964 ed.). The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, 179 U. S. App. D. C. 281, 551 F. 2d 467 (1977), and we granted certiorari. 434 U. S. 888 (1977).
II
Petitioners’ principal contention is that the failure to make good-faith efforts to comply with the minimization requirement is itself a violation of § 2518 (5). They urge that it is only after an assessment is made of the agents’ good-faith efforts, and presumably a determination that the agents did make such efforts, that one turns to the question of whether those efforts were reasonable under the circumstances. See Reply Brief for Petitioner 4r-5. Thus, argue petitioners, Agent Cooper’s testimony, which is basically a concession that the Government made no efforts which resulted in the non-interception of any call, is dispositive of the matter. The so-called “call analysis,” which was introduced by the Government to suggest the reasonableness of intercepting most of the calls, cannot lead to a contrary conclusion because, having been prepared after the fact by a Government attorney and using terminology and categories which were not indicative of the agents’ thinking at the time of the interceptions, it does not reflect the perceptions and mental state of the agents who actually conducted the wiretap.
The Government responds that petitioners’ argument fails to properly distinguish between what is necessary to establish a statutory or constitutional violation and what is necessary to support a suppression remedy once a violation has been established. In view of the deterrent purposes of the exclusionary rule, consideration of official motives may play some part in determining whether application of the exclusionary rule is appropriate after a statutory or constitutional violation has been established. But the existence vel non of such a violation turns on an objective assessment of the officer’s actions in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him at the time. Subjective intent alone, the Government contends, does not make otherwise lawful conduct illegal or unconstitutional.
We think the Government’s position, which also served as the basis for decision in the Court of Appeals, embodies the proper approach for evaluating compliance with the minimization requirement. Although we have not examined this exact question at great length in any of our prior opinions, almost without exception in evaluating alleged violations of the Fourth Amendment the Court has first undertaken an objective assessment of an officer’s actions in light of the facts and circumstances then known to him. The language of the Amendment itself proscribes only “unreasonable” searches and seizures. In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21-22 (1968), the Court emphasized the objective aspect of the term “reasonable.”
“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, reasonably warrant that intrusion. The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard; would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief’ that the action taken was appropriate?” (Footnotes omitted.)
See also Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 96-97 (1964); Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 102-103 (1959).
We have since held that the fact that the officer does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which provide the legal justification for the officer’s action does not invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that action. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), a suspect was searched incident to a lawful arrest. He challenged the search on the ground that the motivation for the search did not coincide with the legal justification for the search-incident-to-arrest exception. We rejected this argument: “Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which gives rise to the authority to search, it is of no moment that [the officer] did not indicate any subjective fear of the respondent or that he did not himself suspect that respondent was armed.” Id., at 236. The Courts of Appeals which have considered the matter have likewise generally followed these principles, first examining the challenged searches under a standard of objective reasonableness without regard to the underlying intent or motivation of the officers involved.
Petitioners do not appear, however, to rest their argument entirely on Fourth Amendment principles. Rather, they argue in effect that regardless of the search-and-seizure analysis conducted under the Fourth Amendment, the statute regulating wiretaps requires the agents to make good-faith efforts at minimization, and the failure to make such efforts is itself a violation of the statute which requires suppression.
This argument fails for more than one reason. In the first place, in the very section in which it directs minimization Congress, by its use of the word “conducted,” made it clear that the focus was to be on the agents’ actions not their motives. Any lingering doubt is dispelled by the legislative history which, as we have recognized before in another context, declares that § 2515 was not intended “generally to press the scope of the suppression role beyond present search and seizure law.” S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 96 (1968). See Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 175-176 (1969).
III
We turn now to the Court of Appeals’ analysis of the reasonableness of the agents’ conduct in intercepting all of the calls in this particular wiretap. Because of the necessarily ad hoc nature of any determination of reasonableness, there can be no inflexible rule of law which will decide every case. The statute does not forbid the interception of all nonrelevant conversations, but rather instructs the agents to conduct the surveillance in such a manner as to “minimize” the interception of such conversations. Whether the agents have in fact conducted the wiretap in such a manner will depend on the facts and circumstances of each case.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that blind reliance on the percentage of nonpertinent calls intercepted is not a sure guide to the correct answer. Such percentages may provide assistance, but there are surely cases, such as the one at bar, where the percentage of nonpertinent calls is relatively high and yet their interception was still reasonable. The reasons for this may be many. Many of the nonpertinent calls may have been very short. Others may have been one-time only calls. Still other calls may have been ambiguous in nature or apparently involved guarded or coded language. In all these circumstances agents can hardly be expected to know that the calls are not pertinent prior to their termination.
In determining whether the agents properly minimized, it is also important to consider the circumstances of the wiretap. For example, when the investigation is focusing on what is thought to be a widespread conspiracy more extensive surveillance may be justified in an attempt to determine the precise scope of the enterprise. And it is possible that many more of the conversations will be permissibly interceptable because they will involve one or more of the co-conspirators. The type of use to which the telephone is normally put may also have some bearing on the extent of minimization required. For example, if the agents are permitted to tap a public telephone because one individual is thought to be placing bets over the phone, substantial doubts as to minimization may arise if the agents listen to every call which goes out over that phone regardless of who places the call. On the other hand, if the phone is located in the residence of a person who is thought to be the head of a major drug ring, a contrary conclusion may be indicated.
Other factors may also play a significant part in a particular case. For example, it may be important to determine at exactly what point during the authorized period the interception was made. During the early stages of surveillance the agents may be forced to intercept all calls to establish categories of nonpertinent calls which will not be intercepted thereafter. Interception of those same types of calls might be unreasonable later on, however, once the nonpertinent categories have been established and it is clear that this particular conversation is of that type. Other situations may arise where patterns of nonpertinent calls do not appear. In these circumstances it may not be unreasonable to intercept almost every short conversation because the determination of relevancy cannot be made before the call is completed.
After consideration of the minimization claim in this case in the light of these observations, we find nothing to persuade us that the Court of Appeals was wrong in its rejection of that claim. Forty percent of the calls were clearly narcotics related and the propriety of their interception is, of course, not in dispute. Many of the remaining calls were very short, such as wrong-number calls, calls to persons who were not available to come to the phone, and calls to the telephone company to hear the recorded weather message which lasts less than 90 seconds. In a case such as this, involving a wide-ranging conspiracy with a large number of participants, even a seasoned listener would have been hard pressed to determine with any precision the relevancy of many of the calls before they were completed. A large number were ambiguous in nature, making characterization virtually impossible until the completion of these calls. And some of the nonpertinent conversations were one-time conversations. Since these calls did not give the agents an opportunity to develop a category of innocent calls which should not have been intercepted, their interception cannot be viewed as a violation of the minimization requirement.
We are thus left with the seven calls between Jenkins and her mother. The first four calls were intercepted over a three-day period at the very beginning of the surveillance. They were of relatively short length and at least two of them indicated that the mother may have known of the conspiracy. The next two calls, which occurred about a week later, both contained statements from the mother to the effect that she had something to tell Jenkins regarding the “business” but did not want to do so over the phone. The final call was substantially longer and likewise contained a statement which could have been interpreted as having some bearing on the conspiracy, i. e., that one “Reds,” a suspect in the conspiracy, had called to ask for a telephone number. Although none of these conversations turned out to be material to the investigation at hand, we cannot say that the Court of Appeals was incorrect in concluding that the agents did not act unreasonably at the time they made these interceptions. Its judgment is accordingly
Affirmed.
See United States v. Donovan, 429 U. S. 413 (1977), which involved that part of the Act which requires the Government to identify the person, if known, whose conversations are to be intercepted.
The application and subsequent court order identified the subscriber as Geneva Thornton, but that was apparently an alias. 331 F. Supp. 233, 236 (DC 1971).
The word “not” was inadvertently omitted, but the agents apparently understood the intent of the order. Id., at 245 n. 1.
Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967).
Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41 (1967).
The District Court also made a number of other related rulings which were affirmed on appeal. It upheld Title III against a claim that the statute contravened the Fourth Amendment restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures; determined that the application and affidavits were sufficient on their face to establish probable cause; and held that the order complied with the requirements of the statute. Petitioners have not sought review of any of these holdings. The Court of Appeals; also held that Scott could introduce evidence based on conversations in which he did not participate to demonstrate that the intercepted conversations to which he was a party were not seized “in conformity with the order of authorization.” 18 U. S. C. §2518 (10) (a) (iii) (1976 ed.). See 164 U. S. App. D. C., at 127-128, 504 F. 2d, at 196-197.
This conclusion was based on the fact that virtually all calls were intercepted and on the testimony of Special Agent Glennon Cooper, the agent in charge of the investigation, who testified that the only steps taken which actually resulted in the nonreception of a conversation were those taken when the agents discovered the wiretap had inadvertently been connected to an improper line. The court laid particular stress on the following exchange:
“BY THE COURT:
“Q. The question I wish to ask you is this, whether at any time during the course of the wiretap — of the intercept, what if any steps were taken by you or any agent under you to minimize the listening?
“A. Well, as I believe I mentioned before, I would have to say that the only effective steps taken by us to curtail the reception of conversations was in that instance where the line was connected to — misconnected from the correct line and connected to an improper line. We discontinued at that time.
“Q. Do I understand from you then that the only time that you considered minimization was when you found that you had been connected with a wrong number?
“A. That is correct, Your Honor.” App. 179.
The Court of Appeals, with four judges dissenting, denied rehearing and rehearing en banc, 173 U. S. App. D. C. 118, 522 F. 2d 1333 (1975), and we denied certiorari, 425 U. S. 917 (1976). Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice Marshall, and Mr. Justice Powell dissented from the denial of certiorari.
The specific statutes under which petitioners were convicted were repealed in connection with the enactment of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 84 Stat. 1292.
The Government also argues that even if the agents in this ease violated the minimization requirement by intercepting some conversations which could not have reasonably been intercepted, § 2518 (10) requires suppression of only those conversations which were illegally intercepted, not suppression of all the intercepted conversations. See, e. g., United States v. Cox, 462 F. 2d 1293, 1301-1302 (CA8 1972), cert. denied, 417 U. S. 918 (1974); United States v. Sisca, 361 F. Supp. 735, 746-747 (SDNY 1973), aff’d, 503 F. 2d 1337 (CA2), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1008 (1974); United States v. Mainello, 345 F. Supp. 863, 874-877 (EDNY 1972); United States v. LaGorga, 336 F. Supp. 190 (WD Pa. 1971). It also renews its argument that petitioner Scott does not have standing to raise a minimization challenge based upon the interception of conversations to which he was not a party. To permit such a challenge would allow Scott to secure the suppression of evidence against him by showing that the rights of other parties were violated. This, argues the Government, would contravene well-settled principles of Fourth Amendment law, cf. Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223, 230 (1973); Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 197 (1969); Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377 (1968), which clearly apply to Title III cases, see S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 91, 106 (1968); Alderman v. United States, supra, at 175-176.
Given our disposition of this case we find it unnecessary to reach the Government’s contention regarding the sco'pe of the suppression remedy in the event of a violation of the minimization requirement. We also decline to address the Government’s argument with respect to standing. The Government concedes that petitioner Thurmon was a party to some nonnarcotics-related calls and thus has standing to make the arguments advanced herein. Thus, even if we were to decide that Scott has no standing we would be compelled to undertake the decision of these issues. If, on the other hand, we were to decide that Scott does have standing, we would simply repeat exactly the same analysis made with respect to Thurmon’s claim and find against Scott as well. In this circumstance we need not decide the questions of Scott’s standing. See California Bankers Assn. v. Shultz, 416 U. S. 21, 44-45 (1974); Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179, 189 (1973).
The Government also adds that even if subjective intent were the standard, the record does not support the District Court’s conclusion that the agents subjectively intended to violate the statute or the Constitution. It contends that the failure to stop intercepting calls, the interception of which was entirely reasonable, does not support a finding that the agents would have intercepted calls that should not have been intercepted had they been confronted with that situation. We express no view on this matter.
See, e. g., United States v. Bugarin-Casas, 484 F. 2d 853, 854 n. 1 (CA9 1973), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 1136 (1974) (“The fact that the agents were intending at the time they stopped the car to search it in any event . . . does not render the search, supported by independent probable cause, invalid”); Dodd v. Beto, 435 F. 2d 868, 870 (CA5 1970), cert. denied, 404 U. S. 845 (1971); Klingler v. United States, 409 F. 2d 299, 304 (CA8), cert. denied, 396 U. S. 859 (1969); Green v. United States, 386 F. 2d 953, 956 (CA10 1967); Sirimarco v. United States, 315 F. 2d 699, 702 (CA10), cert. denied, 374 U. S. 807 (1963). As is our usual custom, we do not, in citing these or other cases, intend to approve any particular language or holding in them.
This is not to say, of course, that the question of motive plays absolutely no part in the suppression inquiry. On occasion, the motive with which the officer conducts an illegal search may have some relevance in determining the propriety of applying the exclusionary rule. For example, in United States v. Janis, 428 U. S. 433, 458 (1976), we ruled that evidence unconstitutionally seized by state police could be introduced in federal civil tax proceedings because “the imposition of the exclusionary rule ... is unlikely to provide significant, much less substantial, additional deterrence. It falls outside the offending officer’s zone of primary interest.” See also United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U. S. 268, 276-277 (1978). This focus on intent, however, becomes relevant only after it has been determined that the Constitution was in fact violated. We also have little doubt that as a practical matter the judge’s assessment of the motives of the officers may occasionally influence his judgment regarding the credibility of the officers’ claims with respect to what information was or was not available to them at the time of the incident in question. But the assessment and use of motive in this limited manner is irrelevant to our analysis of the questions at issue in this case.
Petitioners argue that the “district court found that the call analysis contained errors of characterization and factual inaccuracies and did not represent information known to the agents at the time of interception.” Brief for Petitioners 25-26. We do not think petitioners have fairly characterized the District Court’s findings, however. The District Court found: “The 'call analysis’ conflicts with the reports and characterizations of the intercepted calls as made and determined by the monitoring agents whose conduct is controlling in this case.” App. 38. This does not suggest that the call analysis was factually erroneous, but rather that the categories used by the attorney who prepared the analysis were not necessarily of the same sort employed by the monitoring agents. This finding would thus have relevance if the critical inquiry focused on the subjective intent of the agents, but it certainly cannot be read as a finding that the general analysis of the calls set forth in the call analysis contains "factual inaccuracies.”
Petitioners intimate that the scope of the investigation was narrower than originally anticipated because the intercepts revealed only local purchases within the Washington area. That certainly has no bearing on what the officers had reasonable cause to believe at the time they made the interceptions, however. And while it is true that the conspiracy turned out to involve mainly local distribution, rather than major interstate and international importation, it is not at all clear that the information garnered through the wiretap reduced the agents’ estimates of the number of people involved or the extent of the drug traffic. In short, there is little doubt on the record that, as the agents originally thought, the conspiracy can fairly be characterized as extensive.
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.
Japan and the United States became involved in a controversy whether the respondent Girard should be tried by a Japanese court for causing the death of a Japanese woman. The basis for the dispute between the two Governments fully appears in the affidavit of Robert Dechert, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, an exhibit to a government motion in the court below, and the joint statement of Secretary of State John Poster Dulles and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, printed as appendices to this opinion, post, pp. 531, 544.
Girard, a Specialist Third Class in the United States Army, was engaged on January 30,1957, with members of his cavalry regiment in a small unit exercise at Camp Weir range area, Japan. Japanese civilians were present in the area, retrieving expended cartridge cases. Girard and another Specialist Third Class were ordered to guard a machine gun and some items of clothing that had been left nearby. Girard had a grenade launcher on his rifle. He placed an expended 30-caliber cartridge case in the grenade launcher and projected it by firing a blank. The expended cartridge case penetrated the back of a Japanese woman gathering expended cartridge cases and caused her death.
The United States ultimately notified Japan that Girard would be delivered to the Japanese authorities for trial. Thereafter, Japan indicted him for causing death by wounding. Girard sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The writ was denied, but Girard was granted declaratory relief and an injunction against his delivery to the Japanese authorities. 152 F. Supp. 21. The petitioners appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and, without awaiting action by that court on the appeal, invoked the jurisdiction of this Court under 28 U. S. C. § 1254 (1). Girard filed a cross-petition for certiorari to review the denial of the writ of habeas corpus. We granted both petitions. U. S. Supreme Court Rule 20; 354 U. S. 928.
A Security Treaty between Japan and the United States, signed September 8, 1951, was ratified by the Senate on March 20, 1952, and proclaimed by the President effective April 28, 1952. Article III of the Treaty authorized the making of Administrative Agreements between the two Governments concerning “[t]he conditions which shall govern the disposition of armed forces of the United States of America in and about Japan...” Expressly acting under this provision, the two Nations, on February 28, 1952, signed an Administrative Agreement covering, among other matters, the jurisdiction of the United States over offenses committed in Japan by members of the United States armed forces, and providing that jurisdiction in any case might be waived by the United States. This Agreement became effective on the same date as the Security Treaty (April 28, 1952) and was considered by the Senate before consent was given to the Treaty.
Article XVII, paragraph 1, of the Administrative Agreement provided that upon the coming into effect of the “Agreement between the Parties to the North Atlantic Treaty regarding the Status of their Forces,” signed June 19, 1951, the United States would conclude with Japan an agreement on criminal jurisdiction similar to the corresponding provisions of the NATO Agreement. The NATO Agreement became effective August 23, 1953, and the United States and Japan signed on September 29, 1953, effective October 29, 1953, a Protocol Agreement pursuant to the covenant in paragraph 1 of Article XVII.
Paragraph 3 of Article XVII, as amended by the Protocol, dealt with criminal offenses in violation of the laws of both Nations and provided:
“3. In cases where the right to exercise jurisdiction is concurrent the following rules shall apply:
“(a) The military authorities of the United States shall have the primary right to exercise jurisdiction over members of the United States armed forces or the civilian component in relation to
“(i) offenses solely against the property or security of the United States, or offenses solely against the person or property of another member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component or of a dependent;
“(ii) offenses arising out of any act or omission done in the performance of official duty.
“(b) In the case of any other offense the authorities of Japan shall have the primary right to exercise jurisdiction.
“(c) If the State having the primary right decides not to exercise jurisdiction, it shall notify the authorities of the other State as soon as practicable. The authorities of the State having the primary right shall give sympathetic consideration to a request from the authorities of the other State for a waiver of its right in cases where that other State considers such waiver to be of particular importance.”
Article XXVI of the Administrative Agreement established a Joint Committee of representatives of the United States and Japan to consult on all matters requiring mutual consultation regarding the implementation of the Agreement; and provided that if the Committee “... is unable to resolve any matter, it shall refer that matter to the respective Governments for further consideration through appropriate channels.”
In the light of the Senate’s ratification of the Security Treaty after consideration of the Administrative Agreement, which had already been signed, and its subsequent ratification of the NATO Agreement, with knowledge of the commitment to Japan under the Administrative Agreement, we are satisfied that the approval of Article III of the Security Treaty authorized the making of the Administrative Agreement and the subsequent Protocol embodying the NATO Agreement provisions governing jurisdiction to try criminal offenses.
The United States claimed the right to try Girard upon the ground that his act, as certified by his commanding officer, was “done in the performance of official duty” and therefore the United States had primary jurisdiction. Japan insisted that it had proof that Girard’s action was without the scope of his official duty and therefore that Japan had the primary right to try him.
The Joint Committee, after prolonged deliberations, was unable to agree. The issue was referred to higher authority, which authorized the United States representatives on the Joint Committee to notify the appropriate Japanese authorities, in accordance with paragraph 3 (c) of the Protocol, that the United States had decided not to exercise, but to waive, whatever jurisdiction it might have in the case. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense decided that this determination should be carried out. The President confirmed their joint conclusion.
A sovereign nation has exclusive jurisdiction to punish offenses against its laws committed within its borders, unless it expressly or impliedly consents to surrender its jurisdiction. The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon, 7 Cranch 116, 136. Japan’s cession to the United States of jurisdiction to try American military personnel for conduct constituting an offense against the laws of both countries was conditioned by the covenant of Article XVII, section 3, paragraph (c) of the Protocol that
“... The authorities of the State having the primary right shall give sympathetic consideration to a request from the authorities of the other State for a waiver of its right in cases where that other State considers such waiver to be of particular importance.”
The issue for our decision is therefore narrowed to the question whether, upon the record before us, the Constitution or legislation subsequent to the Security Treaty prohibited the carrying out of this provision authorized by the Treaty for waiver of the qualified jurisdiction granted by Japan. We find no constitutional or statutory barrier to the provision as applied here. In the absence of such encroachments, the wisdom of the arrangement is exclusively for the determination of the Executive and Legislative Branches.
The judgment of the District Court in No. 1103 is reversed, and its judgment in No. 1108 is affirmed.
Mr. Justice Douglas took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
APPENDIX A
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
WILLIAM S. GIRARD
United States Army Specialist 3/C, Petitioner vs. CHARLES E. WILSON Secretary of Defense et al, Respondents
H' °* 47-57
AFFIDAVIT WITH RESPECT TO FACTS
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA! CITY AND COUNTY OF PHILADELPHIA! bb‘
ROBERT DECHERT, being first duly sworn, deposes and says:
I am the General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Personnel of my office collect, collate, and maintain files on the arrangements with regard to the exercise of criminal jurisdiction entered into between the United States and foreign countries. I have reviewed and am familiar with the various communications relating to the incident involving Specialist Third Class William S. Girard which occurred in Japan on 30 January 1957 and state, as a result of such review, and upon information and belief, that the facts surrounding that incident are as follows:
The Situation at Camp Weir Firing Range, January 30.
On the afternoon of 30 January 1957, about 30 members of Company F, 8th Cavalry Regiment, were engaged in a small unit exercise at Camp Weir range area, Japan, involving an attack by one squad on a hill defended by another squad. Specialist 3/C William S. Girard was in the “attacking” force. The Commanding Officer of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, COLONEL HERBERT A. JORDAN, states that during the morning he was appalled at the large numbers of Japanese civilian trespassers present in the area and interfering with the conduct of the exercise. He estimates that their number was in excess of 150. In one case a group of six to eight civilians pounced on a machine gun position as soon as the gun ceased firing and, before the gunner could clear his weapon, physically pushed him away from the gun in order to retrieve expended cartridge cases.
The maneuver area consists of approximately eight square miles. It is provided by the Japanese Government for part-time use of United States forces. The Japanese Defense Force uses the same area about 40% of the time. When the area is not in use by either the United States or Japanese armed forces, Japanese civilians are permitted to farm or otherwise use the area. The Japanese civilians of the local village follow the practice of scavenging the expended brass cartridge cases from the maneuver area.
Upon the failure of efforts of military personnel to move the trespassers out of the danger area, Col. Jordan directed that all ball ammunition be withdrawn from the troops, and that blank ammunition be substituted in the afternoon exercise. He also directed that the Japanese police be contacted for assistance in clearing trespassers from the area, so that normal field training might be resumed. Up until the early afternoon, when the shooting incident occurred, this assistance was not forthcoming.
The Shooting Incident.
After one squad had attacked the hill and before the squads had changed their respective positions so that the attacking force became the defending force, and vice versa, two soldiers, Girard and Specialist 3/C Victor N. Nickel, of the “defending” force, were ordered by their platoon leader, SECOND LIEUTENANT BILLY M. MAHON, who was personally directing their activities to guard a machine gun and some items of personal clothing that had been left on a nearby ridge.
GIRARD in an early statement made during the course of the investigation, stated that he was ordered to get the Japanese away. He is quoted as having stated that he did not receive orders to fire at them to get them away. There is no evidence, other than the statement of Girard, that he was ordered to get the Japanese away.
LIEUT. MAHON stated that he was advised that a machine gun and several field jackets had been left on the other side of Hill 655 and that he instructed Specialist 3/C Girard and Specialist 3/C Nickel to guard the machine gun and keep the Japanese from stealing personal equipment. There were about 20 or 30 Japanese in the area; some were near the machine gun. SPECIALIST 3/C VICTOR N. NICKEL said the Japanese were “just collecting the cartridges, so there was no need of chasing them away”.
Girard had a grenade launcher on his rifle. He had been armed with this same weapon during the morning exercises in which he had participated and during which he had fired 80 rounds of ball ammunition. After the two soldiers had arrived on the ridge, Girard, on two occasions, placed an expended 30-caliber cartridge case in the grenade launcher and projected it by firing a blank. At his second shot, a Japanese woman, Mrs. Naka Sakai, fell. An autopsy disclosed that an expended 30-caliber cartridge case had penetrated her back in an upward direction to a depth of 3%-4 inches, causing her death. The exact distance between Girard and the victim at the time of the incident is uncertain. The Japanese witnesses put it about eighteen meters (approximately 20 yards). On one occasion, Girard stepped off what he thought to be the distance and found it to be 29 feet; on other occasions, he has estimated it to be 20-30 yards. Nickel puts it as 25-30 yards. Girard has stated that he did not intentionally point the rifle at the woman and did not believe the cartridge case would injure anyone if it hit them.
According to the U. S. military authorities in Japan, the act of firing an empty shell case from a grenade launcher is not authorized.
ONOSAKI, a Japanese witness, stated that Girard, after enticing him and the victim toward Girard by throwing some brass on the ground and indicating that it was all right for them to pick it up, suddenly shouted for them to get out and thereupon fired one shot in the direction of Onosaki. As the victim was running away, Onosaki stated that Girard, holding his rifle at the waist, fired a second shot at the victim at a distance of about eight to ten meters. This testimony is corroborated in part by other Japanese who were located at a distance of from 100-150 meters.
Both Girard and Nickel have made a number of statements. NICKEL at first denied knowing anything about the incident. GIRARD admitted only that he had fired one round over the heads of the Japanese. Both gradually changed their testimony. NICKEL, but not Girard, admits to throwing brass on the ground. GIRARD admits that he knew his weapon, fired in the manner in which he fired it, was fairly accurate at short ranges, but denies that he knew of its striking power; he further states that he fired from the waist over the woman’s head and did not intend to hit or wound her, but only to scare the Japanese away.
In one statement, NICKEL, after admitting that he had collected a pile of empty cartridges and had on about five occasions thrown them toward the Japanese, the nearest of whom was a little over 10 yards away, has this to say: “To tell you the truth I don’t know if Girard had told you this or not, but Girard told me to throw those cartridges. The purpose was to scare the Japanese off by firing over their heads when they came to pick up the cartridges.” After stating that about six Japanese came down to pick up the cartridges, NICKEL concludes: “He (Girard) stood up carrying the gun, and went about two feet to my right. Japanese people started to run away, probably thinking that they were being chased. This one Mama-San also ran. Then Girard fired holding the gun at his hip... he held the gun at the hip and fired in the direction of the woman... at an angle of about 45 degrees from his body. He fired over the head of this person... I regard myself as a friend of Girard in my company. If I said I saw (the incident), I would be letting him down, so I lied. Then I went to Camp Drew and received various advice from an investigator there. Then I decided to tell the truth. One other reason is that Girard told the investigator that Nickel was watching.”
In this connection, GIRARD says: “... while I was going toward the machine gun, I did talk to Nickel. I do not recall what I talked to him about... but I am positive that nothing was spoken about cartridges... I do not remember telling him to throw some cartridges. If I said I did not positively talk to him about it I’d be telling a lié... what I want to say is, as far as I can remember, I do not recall talking about it.” GIRARD states that he has qualified as a marksman [average shot] and a sharpshooter [better than average shot] with the M-l with which he was armed on the day in question, and that he twice has qualified as an expert with the.45 caliber pistol; that he has seen soldiers fire empty cartridges out of a grenade launcher on about 10 occasions; and he said, “I did not have an exact idea how far an empty cartridge would travel, but I knew that it travelled quite a ways... prior to that incident I knew that the empty cartridge fired like that would travel straight forward.”
At a later time Specialist 3/C Nickel requested that he be permitted to make a further statement with respect to the case. Upon this occasion he stated that Girard had asked him to gather up some empty cartridge cases for the purpose of luring the Japanese people closer to their position; that he and Girard were in a foxhole together and that at Girard’s request, in order to draw the Japanese closer, he, Nickel, threw empty cartridge cases from the foxhole; that Girard said, “throw the brass a little closer”; that Girard motioned with his hands for the brass pickers to come closer and said, “Daijobu”, which meant for them to come closer; that Girard fired at the Japanese man, and then fired at the Japanese woman and shot her; that Girard was in a standing position and fired from the shoulder; that he (Girard) tried to get the Japanese to take the woman’s body away after he shot her; and that Girard told him (Nickel) that if “they” asked how he held his weapon to say he fired from the waist and also to say that “We did not throw any brass.”
The Certificate as to Official Duty
On 7 February 1957 Girard’s commanding officer filed a certificate of official duty with the local Japanese authorities. That certificate read as follows:
COMPANY F
8TH CAVALRY REGIMENT
7 February 1957
SUBJECT: Certificate as to Official Duty
THRU: Provost Marshal Regional Camp Whittington APO 201
TO: Chief Procurator Maebashi District Maebashi City, Honshu, Japan
1. Pursuant to the provisions of paragraph 43 of the Agreed Views of the Criminal Jurisdiction Subcommittee with respect to the Protocol amending Article XVII of the Administrative Agreement between the United States and Japan, I certify that GIRARD, William S, RA 16 452 809, Specialist Third Class, Company F, 8th Cavalry Regiment, APO 201, was in the performance of his official duty at 1350 hours, 30 January 1957, Camp Weir Range Area, when he was involved in the following incident: On 30 January 1957, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, was engaged in routine training at Camp Weir Range Area. Company F was conducting blank firing exercises. Specialist Third Class William S. GIRARD was instructed by his platoon leader to move near a position near an unguarded machine gun to guard the machine gun and items of field equipment that were in the immediate area. GIRARD, following instructions, moved to the designated position near the machine gun. While performing his duties as guard, he fired an expended cartridge case, as a warning, which struck and killed SAKAI, Naka, Kami-Shinden, Somamura, Gumma Prefecture, who had entered the range area for the purpose of gathering expended cartridge cases.
2. The United States will exercise jurisdiction in this case, unless notification is given immediately that proof to the contrary exists.
3. Should this incident result in trial of the above individual by general court-martial, you will be notified of the date of trial in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 45 of the above mentioned Agreed Views.
CARL C. ALLIGOOD 1st Lt. Infantry Commanding
The Japanese Notice of “Existence of Contrary Proof”.
On 9 February 1957 the local Japanese authorities notified the United States commanding officer who had issued the certificate of official duty that they considered that proof contrary to the certificate existed. This notification stated:
MAEBASHI DISTRICT PUBLIC PROCURATOR’S OFFICE
Maebashi, 9 February 1957
TO: Mr. CARL C. ALLIGOOD, 1st Lt Infantry, Command, F Co., 2nd Bn 8th Cavalry Regiment
Re: Notification of the existence of the contrary proof.
Dear Sir:
Reference is made to the letter from you dated on 8 February 1957, regarding to the “On Duty” status of the case involving SP3 GIRARD S. WILLIAM, which we received on 8 February 1957.
This is to inform you that this office considers the proof contrary thereto exists, basing upon our examinations.
/s/ Nagami Sakai
Chief Procurator
Maebashi Public Procurator’s Office
The Japanese Statement in the Criminal Jurisdiction Sub-Committee of the Joint Committee
In accordance with the provisions of Agreed View No. 43, on 16 February 1957 the Japanese brought the matter up in the Joint Committee and requested that it be referred to the Criminal Jurisdiction Subcommittee. On 7 March 1957 the United States representative agreed to this procedure. The matter was discussed in the Subcommittee on 12 March 1957 at which time the Japanese submitted a summary which contained the following:
“He (Girard) and Nickel went to the gun and, about 13.15 hrs he picked up and threw expended cartridge cases in the direction of the slope south of the hill, and, beckoning Hidehara Onozeki (male) and Naka Sakai (female) who had been at a place in the south-west of Hill 655 to gather empty cartridge cases, etc., cried out to them ‘PAPA-SAN, DAIJOBU’, ‘MAMA-SAN, DAIJOBU’ (‘Old man, O.K., old lady, O.K.’), etc. in Japanese and thus let the 2 Japanese pick up expended cartridge cases he had thrown. Then he, pointing to the nearby hole for Naka Sakai, cried out to her in Japanese ‘MAMA-SAN, TAKUSAN-NE’ (‘Old lady, plenty more!’), and hinting thereby that there remained some expended cartridge cases in it, induced her to go to the hole. But, at that moment, Hideharu Onozeki who was picking up expended cartridge cases on the said slope became suspicious of the suspects behaviour and tried to run away. Then the suspect suddenly shouted to Ono-seki 'GE-ROU! HEY!’ and fired a blank shot towards him, placing an expended cartridge case in the grenade launcher attached to the rifle which he had carried with him. Then he cried out 'GE-ROU! HEY! ’ to Naka Sakai who was in the hole, and, when he saw her running off towards the north slope of the hill, he, holding the stock of the rifle under his arm, fired standing a blank shot toward her about eight (8) meters away with an expended cartridge case put in the grenade launcher, just in the same manner as he had done to Hideharu Onozeki, as the result of which he made her sustain a penetrating wound on the left side of her back which proved fatal on the spot because of the loss of blood resulting from a cut in the main artery.”
The Japanese conclusion was stated as follows :
“Sp-3 William S. Girard, the suspect in this case, had been instructed to guard a machine gun and equipment at the time of occurrence of the case. It is evident, however, as shown in the above finding of facts, that the incident arose when he, materially deviating from the performance of such duty of his, wilfully threw expended cartridge cases away towards Naka Sakai and Hideharu Onozeki, and, thus inviting them to come near to him, he fired towards them. Therefore, the incident is not considered to have arisen out of an act or omission done in the performance of official duty.”
Discussions in the Criminal Jurisdiction Subcommittee of the Joint Committee.
At the same time the following exchange occurred:
U. S.: Do you agree that Girard was on duty as a guard, and that the incident arose while he was on such duty?
Japan: We admit that he was on duty, but it is our position that the shooting had no connection with his duty of guarding the machine gun. The act of Girard in throwing out brass and enticing the victim toward him had no connection with guarding the machine gun.
U. S.: Your statement of fact does not take into account Girard’s statement of his intent. That is, that he fired for the purpose of scaring the Japanese away and thus insure the safety of the machine gun.
Japan: The evidence shows that there was no danger to the Machine gun. Nickel made a statement to this effect. Thus, we do not consider that Girard actually fired to protect the machine gun. The Japanese were only picking up brass in the vicinity; they were not interfering in any way with Girard’s mission to guard the machine ■gun. There was thus no necessity or reason for Girard to shoot at them to insure the safety of the machine gun. Its safety was never in danger. Further, according to the statement of Lt. Mahon, firing an empty cartridge from a grenade launcher is not authorized, and any superior of Girard’s observing such an action by Girard would have been obliged to interfere and prevent Girard from firing his weapon in this manner.
U. S.: However, if we give full weight to Girard’s statement, we must conclude that he did, in fact, fire to scare the Japanese away and thus insure safety of the machine gun. He may have been mistaken in believing that it was necessary to act in this manner, but we cannot escape the fact that, according to his own statement, he fired for this purpose. If you were to believe Girard’s statement, would you consider that he was acting in the performance of official duty?
Japan: Your question is based on a supposition that is not supported by the evidence, and we are not prepared to answer it.
U. S.: In determining official duty in this case, is it not important to consider Girard’s intent as disclosed by his own statement?
Japan: In determining that the incident did not arise in the performance of official duty, we considered all the evidence. A number of Japanese witnesses were interrogated immediately after the incident. We considered their testimony as well as the testimony of Girard and Nickel. In determining Girard's intent, it is necessary to consider all the evidence, not just his version of the incident. When all of the evidence is considered, it appears that Girard’s statement that he fired to scare the Japanese away and thus protect the machine gun is not worthy of belief, as the weight of the evidence contradicts Girard’s statement. It is our position that the evidence shows that the firing had no significant connection with the guarding of the machine gun.
Investigation of the Incident.
Investigations of the facts relating to the alleged offense were conducted by both the U. S. Army in Japan, and the local Japanese authorities.
Interpretation of “Official Duty”.
The following interpretation of the term “official duty” appears in a circular of the United States Army Forces, Far East which was published in January 1956:
“The term 'official duty’ as used in Article XVII, Official Minutes, and the Agreed Views is not meant to include all acts by members of the armed forces and civilian component during periods while they are on duty, but is meant to apply only to acts which are required to be done as a function of those duties which the individuals are performing. Thus, a substantial departure from the acts a person is required to perform in a particular duty usually will indicate an act outside of his ‘official duty.’ ”
Action in the Joint Committee.
As a result of lengthy discussions extending from early March to mid-May 1957, it was finally agreed in the Joint Committee that the United States military authorities would notify the appropriate Japanese authorities, in accordance with paragraph 3c of Article XVII of the Administrative Agreement, that the United States had decided not to exercise jurisdiction in the case. This action was thereafter taken.
The Action of the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State.
On June 4, 1957 the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson announced that after careful review of all available facts in the case, they had concluded that the Joint Committee’s agreement that Girard be tried in the courts of Japan was reached in full accord with procedures established by the Treaty and Agreement, and that in order to preserve the integrity of the pledges of the U. S., this determination by the Joint Committee must be carried out.
Present Status of Girard.
At the present time Specialist 3/C Girard is administratively restricted to the limits of Camp Whittington.
Girard voluntarily enlisted in the Regular Army on October 28, 1954 for a three year term which will expire on October 27, 1957.
/s/ ROBERT DECHERT
ROBERT DECHERT
General Counsel
Department of Defense
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 8th day of June 1957.
My commission expires: March 6, 1961.
(SEAL) /s/ LAURA E. LITCHARD
NOTARY PUBLIC
APPENDIX B.
JOINT STATEMENT OF SECRETARY OF STATE, JOHN FOSTER DULLES and SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, CHARLES E. WILSON
The case of U. S. Army Specialist 3rd Class William S. Girard has far-reaching implications, involving as it does the good faith of the United States in carrying out a joint decision reached under procedures established by treaty and agreement with Japan.
The case involves actions by Girard which caused the death of Naka Sakai, a Japanese woman, on January 30, 1957. The issue arose as to whether or not Girard should be tried by U. S. court-martial or by a Japanese court. After careful deliberation in the Joint U. S.-Japan Committee established by the two Governments pursuant to treaty arrangements, the U. S. representative on this Committee was authorized to agree, and on May 16,1957, did agree, that the United States would not exercise its asserted right of primary jurisdiction in this case. In view of this completed action, attempting to prolong the dispute over the jurisdictional issue would create a situation which could basically affect U. S. relations not only with Japan, but also with many other nations.
For these reasons, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson have carefully reviewed all the available facts in the case. They have now concluded that the Joint Committee's agreement that Girard be tried in the courts of Japan was reached in full accord with procedures established by the Treaty and Agreement, and that in order to preserve the integrity of the pledges of the United States, this determination by the Joint Committee must be carried out.
The Secretaries’ review disclosed the following:
The incident occurred in a maneuver area provided by the Japanese Government for part-time use of United States forces. The Japanese Defense Force uses the same area about 40% of the time. When the area is not in use by either the United States or Japanese armed forces, Japanese civilians are permitted to farm or otherwise use the area.
Efforts to keep civilians away from the area during such military exercises have not proved effective. In this particular case, red boundary flags were, as customary, erected as a warning to civilians to keep off, and local authorities were notified of the proposed exercises. But, as was frequently the case, a number of Japanese civilians were in the area gathering empty brass cartridge cases at the time of the incident. These civilians had created such a risk of injury to themselves in the morning exercises when live ammunition was used that the American officer in charge withdrew live ammunition from the troops prior to the afternoon exercises. In the interval between two simulated attacks during the afternoon, Girard and another soldier, Specialist 3rd Class Victor M. Nickel, were ordered by their platoon leader, a Lieutenant, to guard a machine gun and several field jackets at the top of a hill. Girard and Nickel were not issued live ammunition for this duty.
It was while these soldiers were performing this duty that the incident occurred. Mrs. Naka Sakai, a Japanese civilian, died a few moments after being hit in the back by an empty brass rifle shell case fired by Girard from his rifle grenade launcher. She was not over 30 yards from Girard and was going away from him when he fired the rifle. Girard had previously fired similarly in the vicinity of a Japanese man, who was not hit.
Girard’s action in firing empty shell cases from the rifle grenade launcher was not authorized. He asserted that he fired from the waist, intending only to frighten the Japanese civilians. Others stated, but Girard denied, that empty shell cases were thrown out to entice the Japanese to approach.
Under the U. S.-Japanese Security Treaty and Article XVII of the Administrative Agreement under that Treaty, as established by the Protocol adopted September 23, 1953, the authorities of Japan have the prior right to jurisdiction to try members of the United States armed forces for an injury caused to a Japanese national, unless such injury is one “arising out of any act or omission done in the performance of official duty.”
The Japanese authorities have taken the position that Girard’s action in firing the shell cases was outside the scope of his guard duty and was, therefore, not “done in the performance of official duty.”
The Commanding General of Girard’s division certified that Girard’s action was done in the performance of official duty.
In accordance with the procedure established under the Treaty and Administrative Agreement, the disputed matter was, on March 7, 1957, taken before the Joint U. S.-Japan Committee established under the provisions of the Treaty and Administrative Agreement previously referred to.
Various meetings were held between the United States and Japanese representatives on the Joint Committee. As is customary, a representative of the American Embassy in Tokyo also attended these meetings in the capacity of observer. Both sides continued to press their respective claims to primary jurisdiction, and the Committee was unable to reach agreement.
The Commanding General, Far East Command, reported the facts to the Department of the Army, the executive agent for the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense considered having the Joint Committee refer the matter in dispute to the two Governments for settlement, but rejected this procedure as inadvisable under the circumstances. Department of Defense instructions were accordingly issued, through the Department of the Army, to the Far East Command to the effect that the U. S. representative on the Joint Committee should continue to press the claim for jurisdiction, but that, in case of continued deadlock, he was authorized to waive jurisdiction to Japan. After three weeks of additional negotiations, the U. S. representative waived jurisdiction in the name of the United States.
Girard was subsequently indicted by the Japanese judicial authorities for causing a death by wounding — the least serious homicide charge for which he could have been indicted under Japanese law. In determining whether Girard’s actions were in violation of law, all the facts, as presented by both sides, must now be weighed by the Japanese court, just as they would by a U. S. court-martial, if trial were held under U. S. jurisdiction.
In accordance with Public Law 777 of the 84th Congress, the United States Government will pay for counsel chosen by Girard to defend him in this trial. Pursuant to the Administrative Agreement under the Japanese Treaty, Girard will be guaranteed a prompt trial, the right to have representation by counsel satisfactory to him, full information as to all charges against him, the right to confront all witnesses, the right to have his witnesses compelled to attend court, the right to have a competent interpreter, the right of communication with United States authorities, and the presence of a United States representative as an official observer at the trial. This observer is required to report to United
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
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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 is the third of the net worth cases and the first dealing with the Government’s use of extrajudicial statements made by the accused. Petitioner and his wife were jointly tried on five counts charging them with willful attempts to evade and defeat their income taxes for the years 1946 through 1950. A motion for acquittal was granted as to the wife on all five counts, and as to petitioner on the fifth count (for the year 1950). The jury found petitioner guilty on the first four counts, and the conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. 210 F. 2d 496. We granted certiorari in order to pass on the issues raised by the prosecution’s use of defendant’s extrajudicial statements. 347 U. S. 1010.
The Government’s theory was that the increases in the net worth of petitioner and his wife exceeded their reported income for each of the prosecution years, and that these increments represented taxable income. The evidence tended to show that petitioner and his wife were persons of moderate means prior to 1945, and that toward the end of that year petitioner acquired a racing-news service. In the four succeeding years, the prosecution years here in issue, petitioner and his wife acquired a large amount of visible wealth in the form of bank accounts, real estate, securities, and other assets. The evidence, taken as a whole, tended to prove that petitioner and his wife had understated their income for the four-year period by over $190,000.
The issues in this case stem from a statement signed by the petitioner and delivered to the Government agents along with a check, the latter supposedly representing the amount of tax he thought due and owing. The statement, a five-page document, included tables on petitioner’s securities, prior tax returns, living expenses, and a listing of petitioner’s assets for each of the years 1945 through 1949, showing changes in his net worth over the prosecution period. While each of the pages was headed by the names of petitioner and his wife, the statement was signed only by the petitioner. His signature appeared after a clause describing the listing of assets as “my true net worth for the period covered herein.”
Admissibility of the Statement.
Petitioner contends that his net worth statement should not have been admitted in evidence because it was procured pursuant to an understanding between petitioner and a Government agent that the case would be closed and the petitioner granted immunity. See Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1, 14; Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532, 542-543; Wilson v. United States, 162 U. S. 613, 622-623; Sparf and Hansen v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 55. Petitioner’s accountant, who carried on negotiations with this Government agent, testified that the agent had promised to close the case if the net worth statement and a check to cover the tax deficiency were forthcoming, and that he, the accountant, would never have submitted the statement had he not believed that the case would be closed on this basis. The Government agent testified that he was aware of no such understanding and that he had made no promises to close the case. After a pretrial hearing on petitioner’s motion to suppress evidence, the trial judge refused to suppress the net worth statement. During the course of the trial, he refused to hold a hearing outside the presence of the jury to determine preliminarily the statement’s admissibility. He submitted the issue to the jury with the instruction that they were to reject the statement, and all evidence obtained through it, if “trickery, fraud or deceit” were practiced on petitioner or his accountant.
The issue of fraud or deceit on the part of the Government agent was properly submitted to the jury, and the jury, in arriving at its general verdict, could have found from the conflicting evidence that no fraudulent inducement had been offered petitioner or his accountant. Petitioner cannot complain that he was denied a voir dire, cf. United States v. Carignan, 342 U. S. 36, since the trial judge had already held a hearing on this issue in passing on the pretrial motion to suppress evidence. Moreover, the only evidence offered by petitioner in seeking this hearing during the trial was the testimony of petitioner’s accountant, evidence which had been heard in the pretrial hearing and was narrated again to judge and jury after the voir dire had been denied. Under these circumstances, it cannot be said that the refusal to hold a preliminary hearing deprived petitioner of any substantial right.
Corroboration of Petitioner’s Statement.
Petitioner’s second major objection is that his net worth statement, as it related to his opening net worth, was not corroborated — or was insufficiently corroborated — by independent evidence. Petitioner’s statement listed his opening net worth as follows:
Bank account. $1,079.60
Residence . 12,000.00
Automobile . 2,000.00
Total assets $15,079.60
The Government agents credited petitioner with a higher opening net worth:
Cash in banks. $8,058.58
Drug store partnership. 5,618.39
Real estate. 18,600.00
Furniture . 2,000.00
Automobile. 2,000.00
Total. $36,276.97
In determining these opening net worth figures, the Government agents relied in part on figures furnished by petitioner in his net worth statement and in other of his extrajudicial admissions — for the autos, the furniture, and one parcel of real estate. Any variation in these figures would not materially affect the result. , But petitioner further complains that the Government did not corroborate the negative implications of his net worth statement, that he did not have at the end of 1945 any substantial assets — for example, cash on hand — which were not reflected in his or the Government’s net worth computation. The question presented, therefore, is whether there is sufficient independent evidence to corroborate petitioner’s extrajudicial admission that he did not have sufficient assets at the starting point to account for the increases in net worth attributed to him in the prosecution years.
The general rule that an accused may not be convicted on his own uncorroborated confession has previously been recognized by this Court, Warszower v. United States, 312 U. S. 342; Isaacs v. United States, 159 U. S. 487; cf. Miles v. United States, 103 U. S. 304, 311-312, and has been consistently applied in the lower federal courts and in the overwhelming majority of state courts, 127 A. L. R. 1130; 7 Wigmore, Evidence, §§ 2070-2072. Its purpose is to prevent “errors in convictions based upon untrue confessions alone,” Warszower v. United States, supra, at 347; its foundation lies in a long history of judicial experience with confessions and in the realization that sound law enforcement requires police investigations which extend beyond the words of the accused. Confessions may be unreliable because they are coerced or induced, and although separate doctrines exclude involuntary confessions from consideration by the jury, Bram v. United States, supra; Wilson v. United States, supra, further caution is warranted because the accused may be unable to establish the involuntary nature of his statements. Moreover, though a statement may not be “involuntary” within the meaning of this exclusionary rule, still its reliability may be suspect if it is extracted from one who is under the pressure of a police investigation — whose words may reflect the strain and confusion attending his predicament rather than a clear reflection of his past. Finally, the experience of the courts, the police and the medical profession recounts a number of false confessions voluntarily made, Note, 28 Ind. L. J. 374. These are the considerations which justify a restriction on the power of the jury to convict, for this experience with confessions is not shared by the average juror. Nevertheless, because this rule does infringe on the province of the primary finder of facts, its application should be scrutinized lest the restrictions it imposes surpass the dangers which gave rise to them.
The first issue is whether the requirement of corrobora- ■ tion may properly be applied to the crime of tax evasion. The corroboration rule, at its inception, served an extremely limited function. In order to convict of serious crimes of violence, then capital offenses, independent proof was required that someone had indeed inflicted the violence, the so-called corpus delicti. Once the existence of the crime was established, however, the guilt of the accused could be based on his own otherwise uncorroborated confession. But in a crime such as tax evasion there is no tangible injury which can be isolated as a corpus delicti. As to this crime, it cannot be shown that the crime has been committed without identifying the accused. Thus we are faced with the choice either of applying the corroboration rule to this offense and according the accused even greater protection than the rule affords to a defendant in a homicide prosecution, Evans v. United States, 122 F. 2d 461; Murray v. United States, 53 App. D. C. 119, 288 F. 1008, or of finding the rule wholly inapplicable because of the nature of the offense, stripping the accused of this guarantee altogether. We choose to apply the rule, with its broader guarantee, to crimes in which there is no tangible corpus delicti, where the corroborative evidence must implicate the accused in order to show that a crime has been committed. See, e. g., Tabor v. United States, 152 F. 2d 254; United States v. Kertess, 139 F. 2d 923; Ercoli v. United States, 76 U. S. App. D. C. 360, 131 F. 2d 354; Pines v. United States, 123 F. 2d 825; Forte v. United States, 68 App. D. C. 111, 94 F. 2d 236; Tingle v. United States, 38 F. 2d 573; Wynkoop v. United States, 22 F. 2d 799; Daeche v. United States, 250 F. 566.
The next problem presented is whether the statement here involved — the opening net worth — must be corroborated. Although this statement was part of a document which may have admitted an understatement of taxable income, one of the elements of the crime of tax evasion, still it is clear that the statement is not a confession admitting to all the elements of the offense. There is some uncertainty in the lower court opinions as to whether the corroboration requirement applies to mere admissions, see United States v. Kertess, supra, at 929; Ercoli v. United States, supra, 76 U. S. App. D. C., at 362, 131 F. 2d, at 356. But see Warszower v. United States, supra, at 347. We hold the rule applicable to such statements, at least where, as in this case, the admission is made after the fact to an official charged with investigating the possibility of wrongdoing, and the statement embraces an element vital to the Government’s case. Cf. Gulotta v. United States, 113 F. 2d 683, assimilating admissions to confessions but failing to distinguish between admissions before and after the fact as required by the Warszower case. Accord, Duncan v. United States, 68 F. 2d 136; Gordnier v. United States, 261 F. 910.
The negative implications of petitioner’s opening net worth admission formed the cornerstone of the Government’s theory of guilt. Without proof that assets on hand at the beginning of the prosecution period did not account for the alleged net worth increases, the Government could not succeed. Holland v. United States, ante, p. 121. An admission which assumes this importance in the presentation of the prosecution’s case should not go uncorroborated, and this is true whether we consider the statement an admission of one of the formal “elements” of the crime or of a fact subsidiary to the proof of these “elements.” It is the practical relation of the statement to the Government’s case which is crucial, not its theoretical relation to the definition of the offense.
Although we are unable to hold on this record that petitioner’s statement was inadmissible, the evidence is sufficient to cast doubt on the accuracy of his admissions. The unreliability of the statement is illustrated by the great variance between its net worth calculation and the Government’s computation, although petitioner’s consistent erring in his own favor made it not unreasonable for the Government to hold him to his word where it was to the Government’s advantage. On the whole, the statement is one which should be carefully scrutinized in the light of the available independent evidence.
There has been considerable debate concerning the quantum of corroboration necessary to substantiate the existence of the crime charged. It is agreed that the corroborative evidence does not have to prove the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, or even by a preponderance, as long as there is substantial independent evidence that the offense has been committed, and the evidence as a whole proves beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant is guilty. Gregg v. United States, 113 F. 2d 687; Jordan v. United States, 60 F. 2d 4; Forte v. United States, supra; Daeche v. United States, supra. But cf. United States v. Fenwick, 177 F. 2d 488. In addition to differing views on the substantiality of specific independent evidence, the debate has centered largely about two questions: (1) whether corroboration is necessary for all elements of the offense established by admissions alone, compare Ercoli v. United States, supra, and Pines v. United States, supra, with Wynkoop v. United States, supra, and Pearlman v. United States, 10 F. 2d 460, and (2) whether it is sufficient if the corroboration merely fortifies the truth of the confession, without independently establishing the crime charged, compare Pearlman v. United States, supra, and Daeche v. United States, supra, with Pines v. United States, supra, and Forte v. United States, supra. We answer both in the affirmative. All elements of the offense must be established by independent evidence or corroborated admissions, but one available mode of corroboration is for the independent evidence to bolster the confession itself and thereby prove the offense “through” the statements of the accused. Cf. Parker v. State, 228 Ind. 1, 88 N. E. 2d 556.
Under the above standard the Government may provide the necessary corroboration by introducing substantial evidence, apart from petitioner’s admissions, tending to show that petitioner willfully understated his taxable income. This may be accomplished by substantiating the opening net worth directly, since that figure, taken together with the remainder of the net worth computation, amply establishes a consistent understatement by petitioner of his taxable income; and from this the jury could infer willfulness. Two significant items of evidence tend to show that petitioner owned no assets at the starting point in excess of those attributed to him in the Government’s statement. First, a Government official testified that petitioner had filed no income tax returns in the years 1936 through 1939, nontaxable returns for 1940 and 1942, a nonassessable return for 1943, a refundable return for 1944, and a taxable return for 1941. Second, the testimony of a Government agent, touching upon the economic activities of the petitioner in the years immediately preceding the prosecution period, disclosed that prior to 1941 petitioner had been employed as a manager of a racing-news service; that from 1941 to 1945 he worked in a package store for $40 a week; and that for a short time during this latter period his wife worked as a hairdresser. The agent’s testimony, however, was based solely on the extrajudicial statements of the petitioner, and under the standard we have adopted these admissions must be corroborated by substantial independent evidence. The tax returns adequately corroborate petitioner’s statements as to his financial history, and we hold that the two together corroborate the opening net worth. The jury could find from this evidence that petitioner’s resources prior to the prosecution years were such that he could not have amassed a greater store of wealth than the amount credited to him in the Government’s net worth statement. This proof is buttressed somewhat by independent evidence that petitioner had bought a modest home in 1943 for |9,600, paying less than one-third in cash and the balance in installments, and by the fact that petitioner’s wife, who held the bulk of the family’s assets in her name, was a housewife through almost all of the preprosecution years with no significant independent sources of income.
But substantiating the opening net worth is just one method of corroborating these extrajudicial statements. Petitioner’s admissions may also be corroborated by an entirely different line of proof — by independent evidence concerning petitioner’s conduct during the prosecution period, which tends to establish the crime of tax evasion without resort to the net worth computations. The Government’s evidence showed that coincident with petitioner’s opening of the racing-news service, in which he kept no records, petitioner and his wife opened 9 new bank accounts, making their over-all total 14 accounts in 12 banks; that the money in these accounts, which amounted to only $8,000 at the beginning of the prosecution period, varied between $42,000 and $80,000 during the prosecution years; that brokerage accounts, opened by petitioner and his wife in 1947 and 1948 respectively, were worth $9,000 in 1947 and over $41,000 in 1948 and 1949; that petitioner and his wife made new investments in realty during the prosecution period, about $2,000 in 1946, over $14,000 in 1948, and $35,000 in 1949; that other substantial expenditures were made during the prosecution years, $3,750 in U. S. Savings Bonds in 1946, a total investment of $4,768 in new cars in 1947 and 1948, and a $37,000 annuity payment and $3,750 mink coat in 1949. During these same years petitioner’s declared income exceeded his living expenses by less than $3,000. These substantial expenditures, savings and investments might not, of themselves, suffice to support a conviction of tax evasion without evidence of a starting point indicating a lack of funds from which these payments might have come. But this conduct does corroborate the net worth statement by tending to show that the petitioner was understating his income during the prosecution years. We cannot say that there is so little relation between expenditures and income that the Government’s proof of expenditures far in excess of reported income, coupled with proof of a business producing unrecorded amounts of income, fails to corroborate the charge that petitioner’s earnings during the prosecution years exceeded his declared income.
We hold that under either of these two lines of proof sufficient corroboration was shown to permit the case to go to the jury. The circumstances leading up to petitioner’s statement, and the failure of the facts shown therein to mesh with the other evidence adduced by the Government, imposed on the trial judge and the reviewing courts a duty of careful scrutiny. Nevertheless, the independent evidence was strong enough, we believe, to overcome these indicia of unreliability, and we accordingly
Affirm.
Although there had previously been discussion of a civil fraud penalty, this check was apparently meant to cover only the tax liability proper.
The Government also relied on petitioner’s admissions in establishing his living expenses during the prosecution years. But these do not bear on opening net worth and are therefore not fairly within the question presented. Moreover, the variation possible in these figures is too slight to affect the result in any significant respect.
Admissions given under special circumstances, providing grounds for a strong inference of reliability, may not have to be corroborated. Cf. Miles v. United States, supra; State v. Saltzman, 241 Iowa 1373, 44 N. W. 2d 24.
They were made to officials after the offense had been committed. It may be questioned, though, whether these admissions were as basic to the Government’s case as the statements concerning opening net worth, and whether they should therefore be exempted from the requirement of corroboration. But where a fact is sufficiently important that the Government adduces extrajudicial statements of the accused bearing on its existence, and then relies on its existence to sustain the defendant’s conviction, there is need for corroboration. Cf. United States v. Kertess, supra, at 930.
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
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Per Curiam.
The writ of certiorari in this case is dismissed as improvidently granted. See Layne & Bowler Corp. v. Western Well Works, 261 U. S. 387; Estate of Spiegel v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 335 U. S. 701, 707-708; General Box Co. v. United States, 351 U. S. 159, 165.
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 Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The principal question presented by this case is whether a guerrilla organization’s attempt to coerce a person into performing military service necessarily constitutes “persecution on account of . . . political opinion” under § 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as added, 94 Stat. 102, 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(42).
I
Respondent Elias-Zacarias, a native of Guatemala, was apprehended in July 1987 for entering the United States without inspection. In deportation proceedings brought by petitioner Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Elias-Zacarias conceded his deportability but requested asylum and withholding of deportation.
The Immigration Judge summarized Elias-Zacarias’ testimony as follows:
“[A]round the end of January in 1987 [when Elias-Zacarias was 18], two armed, uniformed guerrillas with handkerchiefs covering part of their faces came to his home. Only he and his parents were there. . . . [T]he guerrillas asked his parents and himself to join with them, but they all refused. The guerrillas asked them why and told them that they would be back, and that they should think it over about joining them.
“[Elias-Zacarias] did not want to join the guerrillas because the guerrillas are against the government and he was afraid that the government would retaliate against him and his family if he did join the guerrillas. [H]e left Guatemala at the end of March [1987] . . . because he was afraid that the guerrillas would return.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 40a-41a.
The Immigration Judge understood from this testimony that Elias-Zacarias’ request for asylum and for withholding of deportation was “based on this one attempted recruitment by the guerrillas.” Id., at 41a. She concluded that Elias-Zacarias had failed to demonstrate persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and was not eligible for asylum. See 8 U. S. C. §§ 1101(a)(42), 1158(a). She further concluded that he did not qualify for withholding of deportation.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) summarily dismissed Elias-Zacarias’ appeal on procedural grounds. Elias-Zacarias then moved the BIA to reopen his deportation hearing so that he could submit new evidence that, following his departure from Guatemala, the guerrillas had twice returned to his family’s home in continued efforts to recruit him. The BIA denied reopening on the ground that even with this new evidence Elias-Zacarias had failed to make a prima facie showing of eligibility for asylum and had failed to show that the results of his deportation hearing would be changed.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, treating the BIA’s denial of the motion to reopen as an affirmance on the merits of the Immigration Judge’s ruling, reversed. 921 F. 2d 844 (1990). The court ruled that acts of conscription by a nongovernmental group constitute persecution on account of political opinion, and determined that Elias-Zacarias had a “well-founded fear” of such conscription. Id., at 850-852. We granted certiorari. 500 U. S. 915 (1991).
II
Section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U. S. C. § 1158(a), authorizes the Attorney General, in his discretion, to grant asylum to an alien who is a "refugee" as defined in the Act, i. e., an alien who is unable or unwilling to return to his home country "because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." § 101(a)(42)(A), 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). See INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 423, 428, n. 5 (1987). The BIA's determination that Elias-Zacarias was not eligible for asylum must be upheld if "supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole." 8 U. S. C. § 1105a(a)(4). It can be reversed only if the evidence presented by Elias-Zacarias was such that a reasonable factfinder would have to conclude that the requisite fear of persecution existed. NLRB v. Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co., 306 U. S. 292, 300 (1939).
The Court of Appeals found reversal warranted. In its view, a guerrilla organization's attempt to conscript a person into its military forces necessarily constitutes "persecution on account of. . . political opinion," because "the person resisting forced recruitment is expressing a political opinion hostile to the persecutor and because the persecutors' motive in carrying out the kidnapping is political." 921 F. 2d, at 850. The first half of this seems to us untrue, and the second half irrelevant.
Even a person who supports a guerrilla movement might resist recruitment for a variety of reasons — fear of combat, a desire to remain with one’s family and friends, a desire to earn a better living in civilian life, to mention only a few. The record in the present case not only failed to show a political motive on Elias-Zacarias’ part; it showed the opposite. He testified that he refused to join the guerrillas because he was afraid that the government would retaliate against him and his family if he did so. Nor is there any indication (assuming, arguendo, it would suffice) that the guerrillas erroneously believed that Elias-Zacarias’ refusal was politically based.
As for the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the guerrillas’ “motive in carrying out the kidnapping is political”: It apparently meant by this that the guerrillas seek to fill their ranks in order to carry on their war against the government and pursue their political goals. See 921 F. 2d, at 850 (citing Arteaga v. INS, 836 F. 2d 1227, 1232, n. 8 (CA9 1988)); 921 F. 2d, at 852. But that does not render the forced recruitment “persecution on account of . . . political opinion.” In construing statutes, “we must, of course, start with the assumption that the legislative purpose is expressed by the ordinary meaning of the words used.” Richards v. United States, 369 U. S. 1, 9 (1962); see Cardoza-Fonseca, supra, at 431; INS v. Phinpathya, 464 U. S. 183, 189 (1984). The ordinary meaning of the phrase “persecution on account of . . . political opinion” in § 101(a)(42) is persecution on account of the victim’s political opinion, not the persecutor’s. If a Nazi regime persecutes Jews, it is not, within the ordinary meaning of language, engaging in persecution on account of political opinion; and if a fundamentalist Moslem regime persecutes democrats, it is not engaging in persecution on account of religion. Thus, the mere existence of a generalized “political” motive underlying the guerrillas’ forced recruitment is inadequate to establish (and, indeed, goes far to refute) the proposition that Elias-Zacarias fears persecution on account of political opinion, as §101(a)(42) requires.
Elias-Zacarias appears to argue that not taking sides with any political faction is itself the affirmative expression of a political opinion. That seems to us not ordinarily so, since we do not agree with the dissent that only a “narrow, grudging construction of the concept of ‘political opinion,’ ” post, at 487, would distinguish it from such quite different concepts as indifference, indecisiveness, and risk averseness. But we need not decide whether the evidence compels the conclusion that Elias-Zacarias held a political opinion. Even if it does, Elias-Zacarias still has to establish that the record also compels the conclusion that he has a “well-founded fear” that the guerrillas will persecute him because of that political opinion, rather than because of his refusal to fight with them. He has not done so with the degree of clarity necessary to permit reversal of a BIA finding to the contrary; indeed, he has not done so at all.
Elias-Zacarias objects that he cannot be expected to provide direct proof of his persecutors’ motives. We do not require that. But since the statute makes motive critical, he must provide some evidence of it, direct or circumstantial. And if he seeks to obtain judicial reversal of the BIA’s determination, he must show that the evidence he presented was so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution. That he has not done.
The BIA’s determination should therefore have been upheld in all respects, and we reverse the Court of Appeals’ judgment to the contrary.
It is so ordered.
Quite beside the point, therefore, is the dissent's assertion that "the record in this case is more than adequate to support the cone lusion that this respondent's refusal [to join the guerrillas] was a form of expressive conduct that constituted the statement of a `political opinion," post, at 488 (emphasis added). To reverse the BIA finding we must find that the evidence not only supports that conclusion, but compels it-and also compels the further conclusion that Elias-Zacarias had a well-founded fear that the guerrillas would persecute him because of that political opinion.
The dissent misdescribes the record on this point in several respects. For example, it exaggerates the “well foundedness” of whatever fear Elias-Zacarias possesses, by progressively transforming his testimony that he was afraid the guerrillas would “ ‘take me or kill me,’ ” post, at 484, into, first, “the guerrillas’ implied threat to ‘take’ him or to ‘kill’ him,” post, at 489 (emphasis added), and, then, into the flat assertion that the guerrillas “responded by threatening to ‘take’ or to ‘kill’ him,” post, at 490 (emphasis added). The dissent also erroneously describes it as “undisputed” that the cause of the harm Elias-Zacarias fears, if that harm should occur, will be “the guerrilla organization’s displeasure with his refusal to join them in their armed insurrection against the government.” Post, at 484 (emphasis added). The record shows no such concession by the INS, and all Elias-Zacarias said on the point was that he feared being taken or killed by the guerrillas. It is quite plausible, indeed likely, that the taking would be engaged in by the guerrillas in order to augment their troops rather than show their displeasure; and the killing he feared might well be a killing in the course of resisting being taken.
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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether the State of South Carolina has power to require a Federal Savings and Loan Association located in that State to pay documentary stamp taxes on promissory notes executed by the Association in favor of a Federal Home Loan Bank to cover loans from the Bank to the Association.
Petitioner is a Federal Savings and Loan Association organized under the Home Owners' Loan Act of 1933 and doing business in Laurens, South Carolina. It is also a member, with borrowing privileges, of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Greensboro, North Carolina, which was established under the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932. For the purpose of making mortgage money available in the community which it serves, petitioner Federal Savings and Loan Association has since August 12, 1953, secured “advances,” or loans, from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Greensboro totalling $5,675,000, for which petitioner executed written promissory notes to the Bank as required by the 1932 Act. The State assessed against petitioner documentary stamp taxes on these notes of $2,270 under a state statute imposing a stamp tax on promissory notes at the rate of four cents on each $100. Petitioner paid these taxes under protest and then brought the present action in the state court for refund of the payment, claiming that the imposition of the taxes constituted an unlawful attempt by the State to tax the “advances” of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Greensboro in violation of the provision of the 1932 Act exempting such banks from state taxation. This provision states, in pertinent part: ,
“The bank, including its franchise, its capital, reserves, and surplus, its advances, and its income, shall be exempt from all taxation now or hereafter imposed by the United States ... or by any State . . . .” 12 U. S. C. § 1433. (Emphasis supplied.)
The Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed the judgment upholding the State’s taxing power, basing its affirmance on two grounds. It was of the opinion, first, that the exemption provision of the 1932 Act, although completely exempting the loans of the Federal Home Loan Bank from state taxation, did not cover the stamp taxes on the promissory notes securing the loans because these taxes were imposed upon the borrowing Savings and Loan Association rather than upon the lending Home Loan Bank and for this reason should not be considered taxes on the Bank’s loans within the meaning of the 1932 provision. Secondly, the state court held that regardless of the original scope of the 1932 exemption, that exemption was implicitly repealed as to transactions like this one by the taxation provision of the Home Owners’ Loan Act of 1933. We granted certiorari in order to determine whether the State has imposed a tax forbidden by Congress.
The first question is whether the immunity granted “advances” of the Federal Home Loan Bank by the 1932 Act is broad enough to bar state stamp taxes on this loan transaction. We decided a very similar question in Pittman v. Home Owners' Loan Corp., 308 U. S. 21. There the State of Maryland imposed a stamp tax upon the recording of mortgages at the rate of 10 cents for each $100 of the principal amount of the mortgage indebtedness. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation sought to record a mortgage upon payment of the ordinary recording fee without payment of the additional state stamp tax. The mortgage had been issued to it as security for a loan which the Corporation had made under now defunct provisions of the Home Owners’ Loan Act of 1933; Section 4 (c) of that Act provided that “[t]he Corporation, including ... its loans” shall be exempt “from all taxation . . . now or hereafter imposed . . . by any State” except for real estate taxes. We unanimously affirmed the holding of the state court that this exemption provision, practically identical in language and substance to the exemption in 12 U. S. C. § 1433, precluded application of the recording tax to mortgages securing loans from the Corporation.
The state court in the present case, although drawing no distinction between the terms “loans” and “advances,” nevertheless thought the Pittman decision inapplicable here because in that case the mortgage was presented for recording by the exempt lender itself (the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation) while here the South Carolina tax was assessed against the borrowing petitioner association rather than against the exempt lender (the Home Loan Bank). We distinctly said in Pittman, however, that the fact that the state taxing statute did not require payment of the tax by the lender has “no determining significance,” our reason being that “ 'whoever pays it it is a tax upon the mortgage and that is what is forbidden by the law of the United States.’ ” We went on in Pittman to recognize that the real question was whether the “critical term . . . ‘loans’ . . . should be construed as covering the entire process of lending, the debts which result therefrom and the mortgages given ... as security.” The question here is the' same as to the synonymous term “advances” and as to the promissory notes securing the advances, since the language of the exemption is equally broad. The factors given weight in the Pittman opinion in deciding that the exemption covered the entire loan transaction are also present here. The Act under consideration there required that the loans “be secured by a duly recorded home mortgage” just as here the Act requires the advances to be secured by the note or obligation of the borrower. Here, as we said in Pittman, therefore, the documents sought to be taxed “were indispensable elements in the lending operations authorized by Congress” and were required for the protection of the lending institution. The tax in Pittman was “graded according to the amount of the loan” and here too the face value of the notes is the measure of the tax.
While the question of the breadth of the exemption of “advances” in the 1932 Act thus is persuasively answered by our reasoning in Pittman, the same conclusion is called for by the language and legislative history of that Act as a whole. It set up a system of federally chartered Home Loan Banks for the purpose, as stated in the House and Senate Committee Reports, of placing “long-term funds in the hands of local institutions” in order to alleviate the pressing need of home owners for “low-cost, long-term, installment mortgage money” and to “decrease costs of mortgage money” with a “resulting benefit to home ownership in the form of lower costs and more liberal loans.” It is to this end that the Act authorizes the Federal Home Loan Banks to make “advances” of funds to eligible borrower institutions “upon the note or obligation” of the borrower secured primarily by mortgages on homes. The exemption of these “advances” from taxation obviously is in keeping with the Act’s overall policy of making these mortgage funds available at low cost to home owners. Regardless of who pays the documentary stamp taxes here at issue, the necessary effect of the taxes is to increase the cost of obtaining the advances of funds from the Home Loan Bank to be used in making loans to home owners. In its impact, therefore, this tax, whether nominally imposed on the Bank or on the petitioner, is bound to increase the cost of loans to home owners and thus contravene the basic purpose of Congress in insulating these advances from state taxation. We hold that it was error to construe the exemption provision of the 1932 Act as not broad enough to bar imposition of the State’s stamp taxes on the notes which were an integral part of these loan transactions.
This leaves for consideration the state court’s holding that, in instances where the borrower is a Federal Savings and Loan Association such as petitioner, the exemption conferred upon the entire loan transaction by the 1932 Act was impliedly repealed by the taxation provision in the Home Owners’ Loan Act of 1933. The court based this holding upon the following language of the 1933 Act :
“. . . [N]o State ... or local taxing authority shall impose any tax on such associations or their franchise, capital, reserves, surplus, loans, or income greater than that imposed by such authority on other similar local mutual or cooperative thrift, and home financing institutions.” 12 U. S. C. § 1464 (h).
This provision unequivocally bars discriminatory state taxation of the Federal Savings and Loan Associations. The state court held that this prohibition of discriminatory taxes also impliedly authorizes all nondiscriminatory state taxes imposed on these Federal Associations, thereby to that extent repealing the 1932 exemption. We agree with petitioner, however, that in enacting § 1464 (h) in 1933 Congress did not, either expressly or impliedly, repeal the provision of the 1932 Act which had exempted these loan transactions from state taxation. Clearly there is no express language providing for such repeal, and it is signficant that when other provisions of the 1932 Act were to be superseded by the 1933 Act they were repealed expressly and not by implication. It also would be difficult to think of less apt circumstances for the finding of an implied repeal. These two Acts, both designed to provide home owners with easy credit at low cost, were passed within a year of each other on the basis of the same hearings and when read together form a consistent scheme in which the 1932 exemption provision contributes to the major purpose of low-cost credit precisely as it did before passage of the 1933 Act. Nor is there even an intimation in the legislative history of the 1933 Act of any intention to reduce the scope of the exempt status of Home Loan Banks. Indeed, the only comment that would seem to have any bearing on the matter is the statement in the House and Senate Committee Reports that the 1933 Act was to provide new means of “direct relief to home owners” without “otherwise disturb [ing] the functioning of the Federal home-loan bank system.” Moreover, a construction of the 1933 Act to permit state taxation of these loan transactions when the borrower is a Federal Savings and Loan Association would bring about an incongruous result. The States would still be barred by the exemption provision of the 1932 Act from taxing these transactions when, the borrower is a state-chartered association. To contend that the 1933 Act allows the State to tax Federal Associations on the loan transactions when it is barred by the 1932 Act from similarly taxing state-chartered associations is to urge the very kind of discriminatory taxation which the 1933 Act itself emphatically prohibits. And surely it would be completely unwarranted to construe the 1933 Act, which concerns only Federal Savings and Loan Associations, as eliminating the exemption on Home Loan Bank “advances” when the borrower is a state-chartered institution.
For all these reasons, the more sensible as well as the more natural conclusion is that in the 1933 Act Congress left unimpaired the exemption of these loan transactions from state taxation conferred by the 1932 Act. The judgment of the state court therefore is reversed and the cause remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
48 Stat. 128, 12 U. S. C/ §§ 1461-1468.
47 Stat. 725, 12 U. S. C. §§ 1421-1449.
Code of Laws of South Carolina, §65-688 (1952).
Such suits are authorized by Code of Laws of South Carolina, § 65-2662 (1952).
236 S. C. 2, 112 S. E. 2d 716.
364 U. S. 812.
308 U. S., at 31, citing Federal Land Bank v. Crosland, 261 U. S. 374, 378-379.
308 U. S., at 31.
The fact that the term used throughout the 1932 Act with reference to these transactions is “advances” rather than “loans” is not a significant distinction from Pittman bht merely represents a congressional choice between synonyms, as was indicated by Senator Reed in introducing on the Senate floor the amendment which added the word “advances” to the exemption provision:
“MR. REED. We should not, of course, put the loans of this new bank in the position of being taxable in the several States.” 75 Cong. Ree. 14659. (Emphasis supplied.)
308 U. S., at 32.
308 U. S., at 31.
H. R. Hep. No. 1418, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 8-10; S. Rep. No. 837, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 9-11.
12 U. S. C. §§ 1429-1430b.
See 48 Stat. 129; H. R. Rep. No. 55, 73d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1; S. Rep. No. 91, 73d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1.
H. R. Rep. No. 55, 73d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1; see S. Rep. No. 91, 73d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1.
The 1932 exemption of Home Loan Bank “advances” obviously does not in any way depend upon the fact that the borrower is a Federal Savings and Loan Association, as is made all the more evident by the fact that such Federal Associations did not come into existence until passage of the 1933 Act.
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 Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the issue whether a state statute specifying for males a greater age of majority than it specifies for females denies, in the context of a parent’s obligation for support payments for his children, the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
I
Appellant Thelma B. Stanton and appellee James Lawrence Stanton, Jr., were married at Elko, Nev., in February 1951. At the suit of the appellant, they were divorced in Utah on November 29, 1960. They have a daughter, Sherri Lyn, born in February 1953, and a son, Rick Arlund, born in January 1955. Sherri became 18 on February 12, 1971, and Rick on January 29, 1973.
During the divorce proceedings in the District Court of Salt Lake County, the parties entered into a stipulation as to property, child support, and alimony. The court awarded custody of the children to their mother and incorporated provisions of the stipulation into its findings and conclusions and into its decree of divorce. Specifically, as to alimony and child support, the decree provided:
“Defendant is ordered to pay to plaintiff the sum of $300.00 per month as child support and alimony, $100.00 per month for each child as child support and $100.00 per month as alimony, to be paid on or before the 1st day of each month through the office of the Salt Lake County Clerk.” App. 6.
The appellant thereafter remarried; the court, pursuant to another stipulation, then modified the decree to relieve the appellee from payment of further alimony. The appellee also later remarried.
When Sherri attained 18 the appellee discontinued payments for her support. In May 1973 the appellant moved the divorce court for entry of judgment in her favor and against the appellee for, among other things, support for the children for the periods after each respectively attained the age of 18 years. The court concluded that on February 12,1971, Sherri “became 18 years of age, and under the provisions of [§] 15-2-1 Utah Code Annotated 1953, thereby attained her majority. Defendant is not obligated to plaintiff for maintenance and support of Sherri Lyn Stanton since that date.” App. 23. An order denying the appellant’s motion was entered accordingly. Id., at 24-25.
The appellant appealed to the Supreme Court of Utah. She contended, among other things, that Utah Code Ann. . § 15-2-1 (1953) to the effect that the period of minority for males extends to age 21 and for females to age 18, is invidiously discriminatory and serves to deny due process and equal protection of the laws, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and of the corresponding provisions of the Utah Constitution, namely, Art. I, §§ 7 and 24, and Art. IV, § 1. On this issue, the Utah court affirmed. 30 Utah 2d 315, 517 P. 2d 1010 (1974). The court acknowledged: “There is no doubt that the questioned statute treats men and women differently,” but said that people may be treated differently “so long as there is a reasonable basis for the classification, which is related to the purposes of the act, and it applies equally •and uniformly to all persons within the class.” Id,., at 318, 517 P. 2d, at 1012. The court referred to what it called some “old notions,” namely, “that generally it is the man’s primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials,” ibid.;' that “it is a salutary thing for him to get a good education and/or training before he undertakes those responsibilities,” id., at 319, 517 P. 2d, at 1012; that “girls tend generally to mature physically, emotionally and mentally before boys”; and that “they generally tend to marry earlier,” ibid. It concluded:
“[I]t is our judgment that there is no basis upon which we would be justified in concluding that the statute is so beyond a reasonable doubt in conflict with constitutional provisions that it should be stricken down as invalid.” Id., at 319, 517 P. 2d, at 1013.
If such a change were desirable, the court said, “that is a matter which should commend itself to the attention of the legislature.” Id., at 320, 517 P. 2d, at 1013. The appellant, thus, was held not entitled to support for Sherri for the period after she attained 18, but was entitled to support for Rick “during his minority” unless otherwise ordered by the trial court. Ibid., 517 P. 2d, at 1014.
We noted probable jurisdiction. 419 U. S. 893 (1974).
i — !
The appellee initially suggests that the support issue is moot and that, in any event, the appellant lacks standing. These arguments are related and we reject both of them.
A. The mootness suggestion is based on the propositions that both the appellant and Sherri are now over 21 and that neither possesses rights that “can be affected by the outcome of this proceeding.” Brief for Appellee 9. At the time the case was before us on the jurisdictional statement, the appellee suggested that the case involved a nonjusticiable political question. Appellee’s Motion to Dismiss 6-7. Each approach, of course, overlooks the fact that what is at issue is support for the daughter during her years between 18 and 21. If appellee, under the divorce decree, is obligated for Sherri’s support during that period, it is an obligation that has not been fulfilled, and there is an amount past due and owing from the appellee. The obligation issue, then, plainly presents a continuing live case or controversy. It is neither moot nor nonjusticiable.
B. The suggestion as to standing is that the appellant is not of the age group affected by the Utah statute and that she therefore lacks a personal stake in the resolution of the issue. It is said that when the appellant signed the stipulation as to support payments, she took the Utah law as it was and thus waived, or is estopped from asserting, any right to support payments after the daughter attained age 18.
We are satisfied that it makes no difference whether the appellant’s interest in any obligation of the appellee, under the divorce decree, for Sherri’s support between ages 18 and 21, is regarded as an interest personal to appellant or as that of a fiduciary. The Utah court has described support money as “compensation to a spouse
for the support of minor children.” Anderson v. Anderson, 110 Utah 300, 306, 172 P. 2d 132, 135 (1946). And the right to past due support money appears to be the supplying spouse’s not the child’s. Larsen v. Larsen, 5 Utah 2d 224, 228, 300 P. 2d 596, 598 (1956). See also Baggs v. Anderson, 528 P. 2d 141, 143 (Utah 1974). The appellant, therefore, clearly has a “personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 102 (1968). We see nothing in the stipulation itself that is directed to the question when majority is reached for purposes of. support payments or that smacks of waiver. In addition, the Uniform Civil Liability for Support Act has been in effect in Utah since 1957. Laws of Utah, 1957, c. 110, now codified as Utah Code Ann. §§ 78-45-1 through 78-45-13 (Supp. 1973). Section 78-45-4 specifically provides: “Every woman shall support her child.” This is in addition to the mandate contained in § 78-45-3: “Every man shall support his wife and his child.” “Child” is defined to mean “a son or daughter under the age of twenty-one years.” §78-45-2 (4). And § 78-45-12 states: “The rights herein created are in addition to and not in substitution [of] any other rights.”
The appellant herself thus had a legal obligation under Utah law to support her daughter until Sherri became 21. That obligation, however, obviously was not in derogation of any right she might have against the appellee under the divorce decree. Her interest in the controversy, therefore, is distinct and significant and is one that assures “concrete adverseness” and proper standing on her part.
m
We turn to the merits. The appellant argues that Utah’s statutory prescription establishing different ages of majority for males and females denies equal protection; that it is a classification based solely on sex and affects a child’s “fundamental right” to be fed, clothed, and sheltered by its parents; that no compelling state interest supports the classification; and that the statute can withstand no judicial scrutiny, “close” or otherwise, for it has no relationship to any ascertainable legislative objective. The appellee contends that the test is that of rationality and that the age classification has a rational basis and endures any attack based on equal protection.
We find it unnecessary in this case to decide whether a classification based on sex is inherently suspect. See Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636 (1975); Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U. S. 498 (1975); Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484 (1974); Kahn v. Shevin, 416 U. S. 351 (1974); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971).
Reed, we feel, is controlling here. That case presented an equal protection challenge to a provision of the Idaho probate code which gave preference to males over females when persons otherwise of the same entitlement applied for appointment as administrator of a decedent’s estate. No regard was paid under the statute to the applicants’ respective individual qualifications. In upholding the challenge, the Court reasoned that the Idaho statute accorded different treatment on the basis of sex and that it “thus establishes a classification subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.” Id., at 75. The Clause, it was said, denies to States “the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute.” Id., at 75-76. “A classification 'must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.' Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U. S. 412, 415 (1920).” Id., at 76. It was not enough to save the statute that among its objectives were the elimination both of an area of possible family controversy and of a hearing on the comparative merits of petitioning relatives.
The test here, then, is whether the difference in sex between children warrants the distinction in the appellee’s obligation to support that is drawn by the Utah statute. We conclude that it does not. It may be true, as the Utah court observed and as is argued here, that it is the man's primary responsibility to provide a home and that it is salutary for him to have education and training before he assumes that responsibility; that girls tend to mature earlier than boys; and that females tend to marry earlier than males. The last mentioned factor, however, under the Utah statute loses whatever weight it otherwise might have, for the statute states that “all minors obtain their majority by marriage”; thus minority, and all that goes with it, is abruptly lost by marriage of a person of éither sex at whatever tender age the marriage occurs.
Notwithstanding the “old notions” to which the Utah court referred, we perceive nothing rational in the distinction drawn by § 15-2-1 which, when related to the divorce decree, results in the appellee’s liability for support for Sherri only to age 18 but for Rick to age 21. This imposes “criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute.” A child, male or female, is still a child. No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family, and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522, 535 n. 17 (1975). Women’s activities and responsibilities are increasing and expanding. Coeducation is a fact, not a rarity. The presence of women in business, in the professions, in government and, indeed, in all walks of life where education is a desirable, if not always a necessary, antecedent is apparent and a proper subject of judicial notice. If a specified age of minority is required for the boy in order to assure him parental support while he attains his education and training, so, too, is it for the girl. To distinguish between the two on educational grounds is to be self-serving: if the female is not to be supported so long as the male, she hardly can be expected to attend school as long as he does, and bringing her education to an end earlier coincides with the role-typing society has long imposed. And if any weight remains in this day to the claim of earlier maturity of the female, with a concomitant inference of absence of need for support beyond 18, we fail to perceive its unquestioned truth or its significance, particularly when marriage, as the statute provides, terminates minority for a person of either sex.
Only Arkansas, as far as our investigation reveals, remains with Utah in fixing the age of majority for females at 18 and for males at 21. Ark. Stat. Ann. § 57-103 (1971). See Petty v. Petty, 252 Ark. 1032, 482 S. W. 2d 119 (1972). Furthermore, Utah itself draws the 18-21 distinction only in § 15-2-1 defining minority, and in § 30-1-9 relating to marriage without the consent of parent or guardian. See also § 30-1-2 (4) making void a marriage where the male is under 16 or the female under 14. Elsewhere, in the State’s present constitutional and statutory structure, the male and the female appear to be treated alike. The State’s Constitution provides that the rights of Utah citizens to vote and hold office “shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex,” and that “[b]oth male and female citizens . . . shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights and privileges,” Art. IV, § 1, and, since long before the Nation’s adoption of the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971, did provide that every citizen “of the age of twenty-one years and upwards,” who satisfies durational requirements, “shall be ' entitled to vote.” Art. IV, § 2. Utah’s statutes provide that any citizen over the age of 21 who meets specified nonsex qualifications is “competent to act as a juror,” Utah Code Ann. § 78-46-8, may be admitted to the practice. of law, § 78-51-10, and may act as an incorporator, i 16-10-48, and, if under 21 and in need, may be entitled to public assistance, § 55-15a-17. The ages at which persons may serve in legislative, executive, and judicial offices are the same for males and females. Utah Const., Art. VI; §5, Art. VII, § 3, and Art. VIII, §2. Tobacco may not be sold, purchased, or possessed by persons of either sex under 19 years of age. §§ 76-10-104 and 76-10-105 (see Laws of Utah, 1974, §§ 39-40). No age differential is imposed with respect to the issuance of motor vehicle licenses. § 41-2-10. State adult education programs are open to every person 18 years of age or over. § 53-30-5. The Uniform Gifts to Minors Act is in effect in Utah and defines a minor, for its purposes, as any person “who has not attained the age of twenty-one years.” § 75-15-2.11 (Supp. 1973). Juvenile court jurisdiction extends to persons of either sex under a designated age. §§ 55-10-64 and 55-10-77. Every person over the age of 18 and of sound mind may dispose of his property by will. § 74-1-1. And the Uniform Civil Liability for Support Act, noted above and in effect in Utah since 1957, imposes on each parent an obligation of support of both sons and daughters until age 21. §§ 78-45-2 (4), 78-45-3, and 78-45-4 (Supp. 1973).
This is not to say that § 15-2-1 does not have important effect in application. A “minor” may disaffirm his contracts. § 15-2-2. An “infant” must appear in court by guardian or guardian ad litem. Utah Rule Civ. Proc. 17 (b). A parent has a right of action for injury to, or wrongful death of, “a minor child.” § 78-11-6. A person “[.ujnder the age of majority” is not competent or entitled to serve as an administrator of a decedent’s estate, § 75-4-4, or as the executor of a decedent’s will. §75-3-15 (1). The statute of limitations is tolled while a person entitled to bring an action is “[u]nder the age of majority.” § 78-12-36. Thus, the distinction drawn by § 15-2-1 affects other rights and duties. It has pervasive effect, both direct and collateral.
We therefore conclude that under any test — compelling state interest, or rational basis, or something in between— § 15-2-1, in the context of child support, does not survive an equal protection attack. In that context, no valid distinction between male and female may be drawn.
IV
Our conclusion that in the context of child support the classification effectuated by § 15-2-1 denies the equal protection of the laws, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, does not finally resolve the controversy as between this appellant and this appellee. With the age differential held invalid, it is not for this Court to determine when the appellee’s obligation for his children’s support, pursuant to the divorce decree, terminates under Utah law. The appellant asserts that, with the classification eliminated, the common law applies and that at common law the age of majority for both males and females is 21. The appellee claims that any unconstitutional inequality between males and females is to be remedied by treating males as adults at age 18, rather than by withholding the privileges of adulthood from
women until they reach 21. This plainly is an issue of state law to be resolved by the Utah courts on remand; the issue was noted, incidentally, by the Supreme Court of Utah. 30 Utah 2d, at 319, 517 P. 2d, at 1013. The appellant, although prevailing here on the federal constitutional issue, may or may not ultimately win her lawsuit. See Harrigfeld v. District Court, 95 Idaho 540, 511 P. 2d 822 (1973); Commonwealth v. Butler, 458 Pa. 289, 328 A. 2d 851 (1974); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 542-543 (1942).
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Utah is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
“15-2-1. Period of minority. — The period of minority extends in males to the age of twenty-one years and in females to that of eighteen years; but all minors obtain their majority by marriage.” As is so frequently the case with state statutes, little or no legislative history is available on § 15-2-1. The statute has its roots in a territorial Act approved February 6, 1852, Comp. Laws of Utah, 1876, § 1035.
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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question reserved in McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm’n, 411 U. S. 164, 178 n. 18 (1973): whether the grant of civil jurisdiction to the States conferred by § 4 of Pub. L. 280, 67 Stat. 589, 28 U. S. C. § 1360, is a congressional grant of power to the States to tax reservation Indians except insofar as taxation is expressly excluded by the terms of the statute.
Petitioner Russell Bryan, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, resides in a mobile home on land held in trust by the United States for the Chippewa Tribe on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota. In June 1972, petitioner received notices from the auditor of respondent Itasca County, Minn., that he had been assessed personal property tax liability on the mobile home totaling $147.95. Thereafter, in September 1972, petitioner brought this suit in the Minnesota District Court seeking a declaratory judgment that the State and county were without authority to levy such a tax on personal property of a reservation Indian on the reservation and that imposition of such a tax was contrary to federal law. The Minnesota District Court rejected the contention and entered judgment for respondent county. The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed, 303 Minn. 395, 228 N. W. 2d 249 (1975). We granted certiorari, 423 U. S. 923 (1975), and now reverse.
I
Principles defining the power of States to tax reservation Indians and their property and activities on federally established reservations were clarified in McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm’n, supra. As summarized in its companion case, Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U. S. 145 (1973), McClanahan concluded:
“[I]n the special area of state taxation, absent cession of jurisdiction or other federal statutes permitting it, there has been no satisfactory authority for taxing Indian reservation lands or Indian income from activities carried on within the boundaries of the reservation, and McClanahan... lays to rest any doubt in this respect by holding that such taxation is not permissible absent Congressional consent.” Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, supra, at 148.
McClanahan held that Arizona was disabled in the absence of congressional consent from imposing a state income tax on the income of a reservation Indian earned solely on the reservation. On the authority of McClanahan, Moe v. Salish & Kootenai Tribes, 425 U. S. 463 (1976), held this Term that in the absence of congressional consent the State was disabled from imposing a personal property tax on motor vehicles owned by tribal members living on the reservation, or a vendor license fee applied to a reservation Indian conducting a business for the tribe on reservation land, or a sales tax as applied to on-reservation sales by Indians to Indians.
Thus McClanahan and Moe preclude any authority in respondent county to levy a personal property tax upon petitioner’s mobile home in the absence of congressional consent. Our task therefore is to determine whether § 4 of Pub. L. 280, 28 U. S. C. § 1360, constitutes such consent.
Section 4 (a), 28 U. S. C. § 1360 (a), provides:
“Each of the States... listed in the following table shall have jurisdiction over civil causes of action between Indians or to which Indians are parties which arise in the areas of Indian country listed... to the same extent that such State... has jurisdiction over other civil causes of action, and those civil laws of such State... that are of general application to private persons or private property shall have the same force and effect within such Indian country as they have elsewhere within the State... :
“Minnesota... All Indian country within the State, except the Red Lake Reservation.”
The statute does not in terms provide that the tax laws of a State are among “civil laws... of general application to private persons or private property.” The Minnesota Supreme Court concluded, however, that they were, finding in § 4 (b) of the statute a negative implication of inclusion in § 4 (a) of a general power of tax. Section 4 (b), 28 U. S. C. § 1360 (b), provides:
“Nothing in this section shall authorize the alienation, encumbrance, or taxation of any real or personal property, including water rights, belonging to any Indian or any Indian tribe, band, or community that is held in trust by the United States or is subject to a restriction against alienation imposed by the United States; or shall authorize regulation of the use of such property in a manner inconsistent with any Federal treaty, agreement, or statute or with any regulation made pursuant thereto; or shall confer jurisdiction upon the State to adjudicate, in probate proceedings or otherwise, the ownership, or right to possession of such property or any interest therein.”
The Minnesota Supreme Court reasoned that “unless paragraph (a) is interpreted as a general grant of the power to tax, then the exceptions contained in paragraph (b) are limitations on a nonexistent power.” 303 Minn., at 402, 228 N. W. 2d, at 253. Therefore, the state court held: “Public Law 280 is a clear grant of the power to tax.” Id., at 406, 228 N. W. 2d, at 256. We disagree. That conclusion is foreclosed by the legislative history of Pub. L. 280 and the application of canons of construction applicable to congressional statutes claimed to terminate Indian immunities.
II
The primary concern of Congress in enacting Pub. L. 280 that emerges from its sparse legislative history was with the problem of lawlessness on certain Indian reservations, and the absence of adequate tribal institutions for law enforcement. See Goldberg, Public Law 280: The Limits of State Jurisdiction over Reservation Indians, 22 U. C. L. A. L. Rev. 535, 541-542 (1975). The House Report states:
“These States lack jurisdiction to prosecute Indians for most offenses committed on Indian reservations or other Indian country, with limited exceptions. The applicability of Federal criminal laws in States having Indian reservations is also limited. The United States district courts have a measure of jurisdiction over offenses committed on Indian reservations or other Indian country by or against Indians, but in cases of offenses committed by Indians against Indians that jurisdiction is limited to the so-called 10 major crimes: murder, manslaughter, rape, incest, assault with intent to kill, assault with a dangerous weapon, arson, burglary, robbery, and larceny.
“As a practical matter, the enforcement of law and order among the Indians in the Indian country has been left largely to the Indian groups themselves. In many States, tribes are not adequately organized to perform that function; consequently, there has been created a hiatus in law-enforcement authority that could best be remedied by conferring criminal jurisdiction on States indicating an ability and willingness to accept such responsibility.” H. R. Rep. No. 848, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., 5-6 (1953).
Thus, provision for state criminal jurisdiction over offenses committed by or against Indians on the reservations was the central focus of Pub. L. 280 and is embodied in § 2 of the Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1162.
In marked contrast in the legislative history is the virtual absence of expression of congressional policy or intent respecting § 4’s grant of civil jurisdiction to the States. Of special significance for our purposes, however, is the total absence of mention or discussion regarding a congressional intent to confer upon the States an authority to tax Indians or Indian property on reservations. Neither the Committee Reports nor the floor discussion in either House mentions such authority. This omission has significance in the application of the canons of construction applicable to statutes affecting Indian immunities, as some mention would normally be expected if such a sweeping change in the status of tribal government and reservation Indians had been contemplated by Congress. The only mention of taxation authority is in a colloquy between Mr. Sellery, Chief Counsel of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Congressman Young during House committee hearings on Pub. L. 280. That colloquy strongly suggests that Congress did not mean to grant tax authority to the States:
“Mr. Young. Does your bill limit the provision for Federal assistance to States in defraying.the increased expenses of the courts in connection with the widening of the jurisdiction that the bill encompasses?
“Mr. Sellery. No; it does not.
“Mr. Young. Do you think it would be necessary to provide for some payment, inasmuch as the great portion of Indian lands are not subject to taxation?
“Mr. Sellery.... Generally, the Department’s views are that if we started on the processes of Federal financial assistance or subsidization of law enforcement activities among the Indians, it might turn out to be a rather costly program, and it is a problem which the States should deal with and accept without Federal financial assistance; otherwise there will be some tendency, the Department believes, for the Indian to be thought of and perhaps to think of himself because of the financial assistance which comes from the Federal Government as still somewhat a member of a race or group which is set apart from other citizens of the State. And it is desired to give him and the other citizens of the State the feeling of a conviction that he is in the same status and has access to the same services, including the courts, as other citizens of the State who are not Indians.
“Mr. Young. That would not quite be true, though; would it? Because for the most part he does not pay any taxes.
“Mr. Sellery. No. There is that difference.
“Mr. Young. A rather sizable difference in not paying for the courts or paying for the increased expenses for judicial proceedings.
“Mr. Sellery. The Indians, of course, do pay other forms of taxes. I do not know how the courts of Nevada are supported financially, but the Indians do pay the sales tax and other taxes.
“Mr. Young. But no income tax or corporation tax or profits tax. You understand a large portion of the land is held in trust and therefore is not subject to tax.
“Mr. Sellery. That is correct.
“Mr. Young. So far as my State is concerned, it would be a large burden on existing costs of judicial procedure. I think it is only right that the Federal Government should make some contribution for that. You seem to differentiate. I think there is a differentiation, too, in that they are not paying taxes.
“Mr. Sellery. I will concede your point that they are not paying taxes. The Department has recommended, nevertheless, that no financial assistance be afforded to the States.” App. 55-56.
Piecing together as best we can the sparse legislative history of § 4, subsection (a) seems to have been primarily intended to redress the lack of adequate Indian forums for resolving private legal disputes between reservation Indians, and between Indians and other private citizens, by permitting the courts of the States to decide such disputes; this is definitely the import of the statutory wording conferring upon a State “jurisdiction over civil causes of action between Indians or to which Indians are parties which arise in... Indian country... to the same extent that such State... has jurisdiction over other civil causes of action.” With this as the primary focus of §4 (a), the wording that follows in § 4 (a)— “and those civil laws of such State... that are of general application to private persons or private property shall have the same force and effect within such Indian country as they have elsewhere within the State” — authorizes application by the state courts of their rules of decision to decide such disputes. Cf. 28 U. S. C. § 1652. This construction finds support in the consistent and uncon-tradicted references in the legislative history to “permitting” “State courts to adjudicate civil controversies” arising on Indian reservations, H. R. Rep. No. 848, pp. 5, 6 (emphasis added), and the absence of anything remotely resembling an intention to confer general state civil regulatory control over Indian reservations. In short, the consistent and exclusive use of the terms “civil causes of action,” “aris[ing] on,” “civil laws... of general application to private persons or private property,” and “adjudication],” in both the Act and its legislative history virtually compels our conclusion that the primary intent of § 4 was to grant jurisdiction over private civil litigation involving reservation Indians in state court.
Furthermore, certain tribal reservations were completely exempted from the provisions of Pub. L. 280 precisely because each had a “tribal law-and-order organization that functions in a reasonably satisfactory manner.” H. R. Rep. No. 848, p. 7. Congress plainly meant only to allow state courts to decide criminal and civil matters arising on reservations not so organized. Accordingly, rather than the expansive reading given § 4 (a) by the Minnesota Supreme Court, we feel that the construction we give the section is much more consonant with the revealed congressional intent. Moreover, our construction is consistent with our prior references to § 4 as “the extension of state jurisdiction over civil causes of action by or against Indians arising in Indian country.” Kennerly v. District Court of Montana, 400 U. S. 423, 427 (1971). See also id., at 424 n. 1; id., at 430-431 (Stewart, J., dissenting); Warren Trading Post v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 380 U. S. 685, 687 n. 3 (1965); Menominee Tribe v. United States, 391 U. S. 404, 416 n. 8 (1968) (Stewart, J.; dissenting).
Our construction is also more consistent with Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 78, 25 U. S. C. §§ 1321-1326. Title IV repeals § 7 of Pub. L. 280 and requires tribal consent as a condition to further state assumptions of the jurisdiction provided in 18 U. S. C. § 1162 and 28 U. S. C. § 1360. Section 402 of Title IV, 25 U. S. C. § 1322, tracks the language of § 4 of Pub. L. 280. Section 406 of Title IV, 25 U. S. C. § 1326, which provides for Indian consent, refers to “State jurisdiction acquired pursuant to this subchapter with respect to criminal offenses or civil causes of action....” It is true, of course, that the primary interpretation of § 4 must have reference to the legislative history of the Congress that enacted it rather than to the history of Acts of a later Congress. Nevertheless, Title IV of the 1968 Act is intimately related to § 4, as it provides the method for further state assumptions of the jurisdiction conferred by § 4, and we previously have construed the effect of legislation affecting reservation Indians in light of “intervening” legislative enactments. Moe v. Salish & Kootenai Tribes, 425 U. S., at 472-475. It would be difficult to suppose that Congress in 1968 intended the meaning of § 4 to vary depending upon the time and method by which particular States acquired jurisdiction. And certainly the legislative history of Title IV makes it difficult to construe § 4 jurisdiction acquired pursuant to Title IV as extending general state civil regulatory authority, including taxing power, to govern Indian reservations. Senator Ervin, who offered and principally sponsored Title IV, see Kennerly v. District Court of Montana, supra, at 429 n. 5, referred to § 1360 civil jurisdiction as follows:
“Certain representatives of municipalities have charged that the repeal of [§ 7 of] Public Law 280 would hamper air and water pollution controls and provide a haven for undesirable, unrestricted business establishments within tribal land borders. Not only does this assertion show the lack of faith that certain cities have in the ability and desire of Indian tribes to better themselves and their environment, but, most importantly, it is irrelevant, since Public Law 880 relates primarily to the application of state civil and criminal law in court proceedings, and has no bearing on programs set up by the States to assist economic and environmental development in Indian territory.” (Emphasis added.) Hearing before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, No. 90-23, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 136 (1968).
Ill
Other considerations also support our construction. Today’s congressional policy toward reservation Indians may less clearly than in 1963 favor their assimilation, but Pub. L. 280 was plainly not meant to effect total assimilation. Public L. 280 was only one of many types of assimilationist legislation under active consideration in 1953. H. R. Rep. No. 848, pp. 3-5; Santa Rosa Band of Indians v. Kings County, 532 F. 2d 655, 662 (CA9 1975). And nothing in its legislative history remotely suggests that Congress meant the Act’s extension of civil jurisdiction to the States should result in the undermining or destruction of such tribal governments as did exist and a conversion of the affected tribes into little more than “ 'private, voluntary organizations,’ ” United States v. Mazurie, 419 U. S. 544, 557 (1975) — a possible result if tribal governments and reservation Indians were subordinated to the full panoply of civil regulatory powers, including taxation, of state and local governments. The Act itself refutes such an inference: there is notably absent any conferral of state jurisdiction over the tribes themselves, and § 4 (c), 28 U. S. C. § 1360 (c), providing for the “full force and effect” of any tribal ordinances or customs “heretofore or hereafter adopted by an Indian tribe... if not inconsistent with any applicable civil law of the State,” contemplates the continuing vitality of tribal government.
Moreover, the same Congress that enacted Pub. L. 280 also enacted several termination Acts — legislation which is cogent proof that Congress knew well how to express its intent directly when that intent was to subject reservation Indians to the full sweep of state laws and state taxation. Cf. Board of Comm’rs v. Seber, 318 U. S. 705, 713 (1943); Goudy v. Meath, 203 U. S. 146, 149 (1906). These termination enactments provide expressly for subjecting distributed property “and any income derived therefrom by the individual, corporation, or other legal entity... to the same taxes, State and Federal, as in the case of non-Indians,” 25 U. S. C. §§ 564j, 749, 898, and provide that “all statutes of the United States which affect Indians because of their status as Indians shall no longer be applicable to the members of the tribe, and the laws of the several States shall apply to the tribe and its members in the same manner as they apply to other citizens or persons within their jurisdiction.” 25 U. S. C. §§ 564q, 757, 899; cf. 25 U. S. C. § 726, These contemporaneous termination Acts are in pari materia with Pub. L. 280. Menominee Tribe v. United States, 391 U. S., at 411. Reading this express language respecting state taxation and application of the full range of state laws to tribal members of these contemporaneous termination Acts, the negative inference is that Congress did not mean in § 4 (a) to subject reservation Indians to state taxation. Thus, rather than inferring a negative implication of a grant of general taxing power in § 4 (a) from the exclusion of certain taxation in § 4 (b), we conclude that construing Pub. L. 280 in pari materia with these Acts shows that if Congress in enacting Pub. L. 280 had intended to confer upon the States general civil regulatory powers, including taxation, over reservation Indians, it would have expressly said so.
IV
Additionally, we note that §4(b), excluding “taxation of any real or personal property... belonging to any Indian or any Indian tribe... that is held in trust by the United States or is subject to a restriction against alienation imposed by the United States,” is not obviously the narrow exclusion of state taxation that the Minnesota Supreme Court read it to be. On its face the statute is not clear whether the exclusion is applicable only to taxes levied directly on the trust property specifically, or whether it also excludes taxation on activities taking place in conjunction with such property and income deriving from its use. And even if read narrowly to apply only to taxation levied against trust property directly, § 4 (b) certainly does not expressly authorize all other state taxation of reservation Indians.
Moreover, the express prohibition of any “alienation, encumbrance, or taxation” of any trust property can be read as prohibiting state courts, acquiring jurisdiction over civil controversies involving reservation Indians pursuant to § 4, from applying state laws or enforcing judgments in ways that would effectively result in the “alienation, encumbrance, or taxation” of trust property. Indeed, any other reading of this provision of § 4 (b) is difficult to square with the identical prohibition contained in § 2 (b) of the Act, which applies the same restrictions upon States exercising criminal jurisdiction over reservation Indians. It would simply make no sense to infer from the identical language of § 2 (b) a general power in § 2 (a) to tax Indians in all other respects since § 2 (a) deals only with criminal jurisdiction.
Indeed, § 4 (b) in its entirety may be read as simply a reaffirmation of the existing reservation Indian-Federal Government relationship in all respects save the conferral of state-court jurisdiction to adjudicate private civil causes of action involving Indians. We agree with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that § 4 (b) “is entirely consistent with, and in effect is a reaffirmation of, the law as it stood prior to its enactment.” Kirkwood v. Arenas, 243 F. 2d 863, 865-866 (1957). The absence of more precise language respecting state taxation of reservation Indians is entirely consistent with a general uncertainty in 1953 of the precise limits of state power to tax reservation Indians respecting other than their trust property, and a eon-gressional intent merely to reaffirm the existing law whatever subsequent litigation might determine it to be.
Finally, in construing this “admittedly ambiguous” statute, Board of Comm’rs v. Seber, 318 U. S., at 713, we must be guided by that “eminently sound and vital canon,” Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. Hollowbreast, 425 U. S. 649, 655 n. 7 (1976), that “statutes passed for the benefit of dependent Indian tribes... are to be liberally construed, doubtful expressions being resolved in favor of the Indians.” Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U. S. 78, 89 (1918). See Choate v. Trapp, 224 U. S. 665, 675 (1912); Antoine v. Washington, 420 U. S. 194, 199-200 (1975). This principle of statutory construction has particular force in the face of claims that ambiguous statutes abolish by implication Indian tax immunities. McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm’n, 411 U. S., at 174; Squire v. Capoeman, 351 U. S. 1, 6-7 (1956); Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 366-367 (1930). “This is so because... Indians stand in a special relation to the federal government from which the states are excluded unless the Congress has manifested a clear purpose to terminate [a tax] immunity and allow states to treat Indians as part of the general community.” Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. United States, 319 U. S. 598, 613-614 (1943) (Murphy, J., dissenting). What we recently said of a claim that Congress had terminated an Indian reservation by means of an ambiguous statute is equally applicable here to the respondent’s claim that § 4 (a) of Pub. L. 280 is a clear grant of power to tax, and hence a termination of traditional Indian immunity from state taxation:
“Congress was fully aware of the means by which termination could be effected. But clear-termination language was not employed in the... Act. This being so, we are not inclined to infer an intent to terminate.... A congressional determination to terminate must be expressed on the face of the Act or be clear from the surrounding circumstances and legislative history.” Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U. S. 481, 504-505 (1973).
The judgment of the Minnesota Supreme Court is
Reversed.
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is a federally recognized tribe with a constitution approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Memorandum for United States as Amicus Curiae 2 n. 2. Its reservation was established by the Treaty of Feb. 22, 1855, 10 Stat. 1165.
The McClanahan principle derives from a general pre-emption analysis, 411 U. S., at 172, that gives effect to the plenary and exclusive power of the Federal Government to deal with Indian tribes, United States v. Mazurie, 419 U. S. 544, 554 n. 11 (1975); Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 551-552 (1974); Board of Comm’rs v. Seber, 318 U. S. 705, 715-716 (1943), and “to regulate and protect the Indians and their property against interference even by a state,” id., at 715. This pre-emption analysis draws support from “the ‘backdrop’ of the Indian sovereignty doctrine,” Moe v. Salish & Kootenai Tribes, 425 U. S. 463, 475 (1976); “‘[t]he policy of leaving Indians free from state jurisdiction and control [which] is deeply rooted in the Nation’s history,’ ” McClanahan, 411 U. S., at 168; and the extensive federal legislative and administrative regulation of Indian tribes and reservations, id., at 173-179. “Congress has... acted consistently upon the assumption that the States have no power to regulate the affairs of Indians on a reservation,” Williams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217, 220 (1959), and therefore “‘State laws generally are not applicable to tribal Indians on an Indian reservation except where Congress has expressly provided that State laws shall apply.’ ” McClanahan, supra, at 170-171 (quoting United States Department of the Interior, Federal Indian Law 845 (1958)).
Of course, this pre-emption model usually yields different conclusions as to the application of state laws to tribal Indians who have left or never inhabited federally established reservations, or Indians “who do not possess the usual accoutrements of tribal self-government,” McClanahan, supra, at 167-168; see Mescolero Apache Tribe, 411 U. S., at 148-149.
The State Supreme Court relied upon Omaha Tribe of Indians v. Peters, 382 F. Supp. 421 (1974), aff'd, 516 F. 2d 133 (CA8 1975), where the District Court for the District of Nebraska gave the same construction to Pub. L. 280 in upholding a state income tax levied against reservation Indian income.
Petitioner had not properly raised a claim that his mobile home was in fact annexed to tribal trust land and therefore a part of the real property expressly excluded from taxation by § 4 (b). The Minnesota Supreme Court found, therefore, that the mobile home was personal property taxable as such under Minnesota law.
This House Report and the Senate Report, S. Rep. No. 699, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. (1953), are in all material respects identical. All citations herein are to the House Report.
Section 2 of Pub. L. 280, 18 U. S. C. § 1162, provides:
“State jurisdiction over offenses committed by or against Indians in the Indian country.
“(a) Each of the States or Territories listed in the following table shall have jurisdiction over offenses committed by or against Indians in the areas of Indian! country listed opposite the name of the State or Territory to the same extent that such State or Territory has jurisdiction over offenses committed elsewhere within the State or Territory, and the criminal laws of such State or Territory shall have the same force and effect within such Indian country as they have elsewhere within the State or Territory:
“State or
Territory of Indian country affected
“Minnesota. All Indian country within the State, except the Red Lake Reservation.
“(b) Nothing in this section shall authorize the alienation, encumbrance, or taxation of any real or personal property, including water rights, belonging to any Indian or any Indian tribe, band, or community that is held in trust by the United States or is subject to a restriction against alienation imposed by the United States; or shall authorize regulation of the use of such property in a manner inconsistent with any Federal treaty, agreement, or statute or with any regulation made pursuant thereto; or shall deprive any Indian or any Indian tribe, band, or community of any right, privilege, or immunity afforded under Federal treaty, agreement, or statute with respect to hunting, trapping, or fishing or the control, licensing, or regulation thereof.
“(c) The provisions of sections 1152 and 1153 of this chapter shall not be applicable within the areas of Indian country listed in subsection (a) of this section as areas over which the several States have exclusive jurisdiction.”
99 Cong. Rec. 9962, 10782-10784, 10928 (1953).
See Israel & Smithson, Indian Taxation, Tribal Sovereignty and Economic Development, 49 N. D. L. Rev. 267, 292 (1973).
Unpublished Transcript of Hearings on H. R. 1063 before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. (1953). The transcript was produced by the United States during the briefing of Tonasket v. Washington, 411 U. S. 451 (1973). The portion quoted in the text is reproduced in the Appendix in the instant case.
Cf. Israel & Smithson, supra, n. 8, at 296:
“A fair reading of these two clauses suggests that Congress never intended 'civil laws’ to mean the entire array of state noncriminal laws, but rather that Congress intended ‘civil laws’ to mean those laws which have to do with private rights and status. Therefore, ‘civil laws... of general application to private persons or private property’ would include the laws of contract, tort, marriage, divorce, insanity, descent, etc., but would not include laws declaring or implementing the states’ sovereign powers, such as the power to tax, grant franchises, etc. These are not within the fair meaning of ‘private’ laws.”
Moreover, this interpretation is consistent with the title of Pub. L. 280, H. R. Rep. No. 848, p. 3: “A bill to confer jurisdiction on the States..., with respect to criminal offenses and civil causes of action committed or arising on Indian reservations within such States, and for other purposes” (the other purposes being § 8’s withdrawal from the affected areas of the operation of the Federal Indian Liquor Laws, and §§ 6-7’s provision of a method whereby additional States could assume civil and criminal jurisdiction over Indian reservations). Additionally, this interpretation is buttressed by § 4 (c), which provides that “any tribal ordinance or custom... adopted by an Indian tribe... in the exercise of any authority which it may possess shall, if not inconsistent with any applicable civil law of the State, be given full force and effect in the determination of civil causes of action pursuant to this section” (emphasis added). Finally, reading § 4 (a) as an integrated whole, with the reference to state civil law as intended to provide the rules of decision for the private civil causes of action over which state courts were granted jurisdiction is consistent with § 3 of Pub. L. 280, which codifies § 4 in Title 28 of the United States Code. That Title collects Acts of Congress governing jurisdiction and the judiciary. Section 4 would be expected to be codified in Title 25, governing Indian affairs if general state regulatory power over Indian reservations were being granted. Indeed, § 4 is entitled, as provided in Pub. L. 280 and codified at 28 U. S. C. § 1360, “State civil jurisdiction in actions to which Indians are parties.”
Tribal groups in the affected States which were exempted from the coverage of Pub. L. 280 because they had “reasonably satisfactory law-and-order” organizations, had objected to the extension of state criminal and civil jurisdiction on various grounds. Three of the tribes exempted objected due to their fear of inequitable treatment of reservation Indians in the state courts. H. R. Rep. No. 848, pp. 7-8. Two of the objecting tribes expressed the fear that “the extension of State law to their reservations would result in the loss of various rights.” Id,., at 8. One tribe objected on the ground that its members were “not yet ready to be subjected to State laws.” Ibid. Certainly if abolition of traditional Indian immunity from state taxation, except insofar as expressly excluded, was an anticipated result of Pub. L. 280’s extension of civil jurisdiction, vehement Indian objections on this specific ground would also have been voiced.
The legislative history of Pub. L. 280 does contain a congressional expression that “the Indians of several States have reached a stage of acculturation and development that malees desirable extension of State civil jurisdiction to the Indian country.” H. R. Rep. No. 848, p. 6. But not too much can be made of this un-elaborated statement; its thrust is too difficult to reconcile with the focus of Pub. L. 280 — extending state jurisdiction to those reservations with the least developed and most inadequate tribal legal institutions; presumably those tribes evincing the least “acculturation and development” in terms of the mainstream of American society. See Goldberg, Public Law 280: The Limits of State Jurisdiction over Reservation Indians, 22 U. C. L. A. L. Rev. 535, 543 (1975).
Much has been written on the subject of a devastating impact on tribal governments that might result from an interpretation of § 4 as conferring upon state and local governments general civil regulatory control over reservation Indians. Santa Rosa Band of Indians v. Kings County, 532 F. 2d 655, 662-663, 666-668 (CA9 1975); Goldberg, supra; Note, The Extension of County Jurisdiction Over Indian Reservations in California: Public Law 280 and the Ninth Circuit, 25 Hastings L. J. 1451 (1974); Comment, Indian, Taxation: Underlying Policies and Present Problems, 59 Calif. L. Rev. 1261 (1971). The suggestion is that since tribal governments are disabled under many state laws from incorporating as local units of government, Goldberg, supra, at 581, general regulatory control might relegate tribal
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 Kennedy
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and IV, and an opinion with respect to Part III, in which The Chief Justice, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Scalia join.
Once more we consider the distinction the law has drawn between the elements of a crime and factors that influence a criminal sentence,'Legislatures define crimes in terms of the facts that are their essential elements, and constitutional guarantees attach to these facts. In federal prosecutions, “[n]o person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury” alleging all the elements of the crime. U. S. Const., Amdt. 5; see Hamling v. United States, 418 U. S. 87, 117 (1974). “In all criminal prosecutions,” state and federal, “the accused shall enjoy the right to... trial... by an impartial jury,” U. S. Const., Amdt. 6; see Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 149 (1968), at which the government must prove each element beyond a reasonable doubt, see In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970).
Yet not all facts affecting the defendant’s punishment are elements. After the accused is convicted, the judge may impose a sentence within a range provided by statute, basing it on various facts relating to the defendant and the manner in which the offense was committed. Though these facts may have a substantial impact on the sentence, they are not elements, and are thus not subject to the Constitution’s indictment, jury, and proof requirements. Some statutes also direct judges to give specific weight to certain facts when choosing the sentence. The statutes do not require these facts, sometimes referred to as sentencing factors, to be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or established beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Constitution permits legislatures to make the distinction between elements and sentencing factors, but it imposes some limitations as well. For if it did not, legislatures could evade the indictment, jury, and proof requirements by labeling almost every relevant fact a sentencing factor. The Court described one limitation in this respect two Terms ago in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000): “Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum,” whether the statute calls it an element or a sentencing factor, “must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Fourteen years before, in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79 (1986), the Court had declined to adopt a more restrictive constitutional rule. McMillan sustained a statute that increased the minimum penalty for a crime, though not beyond the statutory maximum, when the sentencing judge found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant had possessed a firearm.
The principal question before us is whether McMillan stands after Apprendi.
I
Petitioner William Joseph Harris sold illegal narcotics out of his pawnshop with an unconcealed semiautomatic pistol at his side. He was later arrested for violating federal drug and firearms laws, including 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1)(A). That statute provides in relevant part:
“[A]ny person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime... uses or carries a firearm, or who, in furtherance of any such crime, possesses a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence or drug trafficking crime—
“(i) be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 5 years;
“(ii) if the firearm is brandished, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 7 years; and
“(iii) if the firearm is discharged, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 10 years.”
The Government proceeded on the assumption that § 924(c)(1)(A) defines a single crime and that brandishing is a sentencing factor to be considered by the judge after the trial. For this reason the indictment said nothing of brandishing and made no reference to subsection (ii). Instead, it simply alleged the elements from the statute’s principal paragraph: that “during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime,” petitioner had “knowingly carried] a firearm.” At a bench trial the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina found petitioner guilty as charged.
Following his conviction, the presentence report recommended that petitioner be given the 7-year minimum because he had brandished the gun. Petitioner objected, citing this Court’s decision in Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227 (1999), and arguing that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, brandishing is an element of a separate offense, an offense for which he had not been indicted or tried. At the sentencing hearing the District Court overruled the objection, found by a preponderance of the evidence that petitioner had brandished the gun, and sentenced him to seven years in prison.
In the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit petitioner again pressed his statutory argument. He added that if brandishing is a sentencing factor as a statutory matter, the statute is unconstitutional in light of Apprendi — even though, as petitioner acknowledged, the judge’s finding did not alter the maximum penalty to which he was exposed. Rejecting these arguments, the Court of Appeals affirmed. 243 F. 3d 806 (2001). Like every other Court of Appeals to have addressed the question, it held that the statute makes brandishing a sentencing factor. Id., at 812; accord, United States v. Barton, 257 F. 3d 433, 443 (CA5 2001); United States v. Carlson, 217 F. 3d 986, 989 (CA8 2000); United States v. Pounds, 230 F. 3d 1317, 1319 (CA11 2000). The court also held that the constitutional argument was foreclosed by McMillan. 243 F. 3d, at 809.
We granted certiorari, 534 U. S. 1064 (2001), and now affirm.
II
We must first answer a threshold question of statutory construction: Did Congress make brandishing an element or a sentencing factor in § 924(c)(1)(A)? In the Government’s view the text in question defines a single crime, and the facts in subsections (ii) and (iii) are considerations for the sentencing judge. Petitioner, on the other hand, contends that Congress meant the statute to define three different crimes. Subsection (ii), he says, creates a separate offense of which brandishing is an element. If petitioner is correct, he was neither indicted nor tried for that offense, and the 7-year minimum did not apply.
So we begin our analysis by asking what § 924(c)(1)(A) means. The statute does not say in so many words whether brandishing is an element or a sentencing factor, but the structure of the prohibition suggests it is the latter. Federal laws usually list all offense elements “in a single sentence” and separate the sentencing factors “into subsections.” Castillo v. United States, 530 U. S. 120, 125 (2000). Here, § 924(c)(1)(A) begins with a lengthy principal paragraph listing the elements of a complete crime — “the basic federal offense of using or carrying a gun during and in relation to” a violent crime or drug offense. Id., at 124. Toward the end of the paragraph is “the word ‘shall,’ which often divides offense-defining provisions from those that specify sentences.” Jones, 526 U. S., at 233. And following “shall” are the separate subsections, which explain how defendants are to “be sentenced.” Subsection (i) sets a catchall minimum and “certainly adds no further element.” Ibid. Subsections (ii) and (iii), in turn, increase the minimum penalty if certain facts are present, and those subsections do not repeat the elements from the principal paragraph.
When a statute has this sort of structure, we can presume that its principal paragraph defines a single crime and its subsections identify sentencing factors. But even if a statute “has a look to it suggesting that the numbered subsections are only sentencing provisions,” id., at 232, the text might provide compelling evidence to the contrary. This was illustrated by the Court’s decision in Jones, in which the federal carjacking statute, which had a similar structure, was interpreted as setting out the elements of multiple offenses.
The critical textual clues in this case, however, reinforce the single-offense interpretation implied by the statute’s structure. Tradition and past congressional practice, for example, were perhaps the most important guideposts in Jones. The fact at issue there — serious bodily injury — is an element in numerous federal statutes, including two on which the carjacking statute was modeled; and the Jones Court doubted that Congress would have made this fact a sentencing factor in one isolated instance. Id., at 235-237; see also Castillo, supra, at 126-127; Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224, 230 (1998). In contrast, there is no similar federal tradition of treating brandishing and discharging as offense elements. In Castillo v. United States, supra, the Court singled out brandishing as a paradigmatic sentencing factor: “Traditional sentencing factors often involve... special features of the manner in which a basic crime was carried out (e. g., that the defendant... brandished a gun).” Id., at 126. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, moreover, brandishing and discharging affect the sentences for numerous federal crimes. See, e. g., United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual §§2A2.2(b)(2), 2B3.1(b)(2), 2B3.2(b)(3)(A), 2E2.1(b)(l), 2L1.1(b)(4) (Nov. 2001). Indeed, the Guidelines appear to have been the only antecedents for the statute’s brandishing provision. The term “brandished” does not appear in any federal offense-defining provision save 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1)(A), and did not appear there until 1998, when the statute was amended to take its current form. The numbered subsections were added then, describing, as sentencing factors often do, “special features of the manner in which” the statute’s “basic crime” could be carried out. Castillo, supra, at 126. It thus seems likely that brandishing and discharging were meant to serve the same function under the statute as they do under the Guidelines.
We might have had reason to question that inference if brandishing or discharging altered the defendant’s punishment in a manner not usually associated with sentencing factors. Jones is again instructive. There the Court accorded great significance to the “steeply higher penalties” authorized by the carjacking statute’s three subsections, which enhanced the defendant’s maximum sentence from 15 years, to 25 years, to life — enhancements the Court doubted Congress would have made contingent upon judicial factfinding. 526 U. S., at 233; see also Castillo, supra, at 131; Almendarez-Torres, supra, at 235-236. The provisions before us now, however, have an effect on the defendant’s sentence that is more consistent with traditional understandings about how sentencing factors operate; the required findings constrain, rather than extend, the sentencing judge’s discretion. Section 924(c)(1)(A) does not authorize the judge to impose “steeply higher penalties” — or higher penalties at all — once the facts in question are found. Since the subsections alter only the minimum, the judge may impose a sentence well in excess of seven years, whether or not the defendant brandished the firearm. The incremental changes in the minimum — from 5 years, to 7, to 10 — are precisely what one would expect to see in provisions meant to identify matters for the sentencing judge’s consideration.
Nothing about the text or history of the statute rebuts the presumption drawn from its structure. Against the single-offense interpretation to which these considerations point, however, petitioner invokes the canon of constitutional avoidance. Under that doctrine, when “a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter.” United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 408 (1909). It is at least an open question, petitioner contends, whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require every fact increasing a federal defendant’s minimum sentence to be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To avoid resolving that question (and possibly invalidating the statute), petitioner urges, we should read § 924(c)(1)(A) as making brandishing an element of an aggravated federal crime.
The avoidance canon played a role in Jones, for the subsections of the carjacking statute enhanced the maximum sentence, and a single-offense interpretation would have implicated constitutional questions later addressed — and resolved in the defendant’s favor — by Apprendi. See Jones, supra, at 243, n. 6 (“[A]ny fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt”). Yet the canon has no role to play here. It applies only when there are serious concerns about the statute’s constitutionality, Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 314, n. 9 (1993), and petitioner’s proposed rule — that the Constitution requires any fact increasing the statutory minimum sentence to be accorded the safeguards assigned to elements — was rejected 16 years ago in McMillan. Petitioner acknowledges as much but argues that recent developments cast doubt on McMillan’s viability. To avoid deciding whether McMillan must be overruled, he says, we should construe the problem out of the statute.
Petitioner’s suggestion that we use the canon to avoid overruling one of our own precedents is novel and, given that McMillan was in place when § 924(c)(1)(A) was enacted, unsound. The avoidance canon rests upon our “respect for Congress, which we assume legislates in the light of constitutional limitations.” Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 191 (1991). The statute at issue in this case was passed when McMillan provided the controlling instruction, and Congress would have had no reason to believe that it was approaching the constitutional line by following that instruction. We would not further the canon’s goal of eliminating friction with our coordinate branch, moreover, if we alleviated our doubt about a constitutional premise we had supplied by adopting a strained reading of a statute that Congress had enacted in reliance on the premise. And if we stretched the text to avoid the question of McMillan's continuing vitality, the canon would embrace a dynamic view of statutory interpretation, under which the text might mean one thing when enacted yet another if the prevailing view of the Constitution later changed. We decline to adopt that approach.
As the avoidance canon poses no obstacle and the interpretive circumstances point in a common direction, we conclude that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, § 924(e)(1)(A) defines a single offense. The statute regards brandishing and discharging as sentencing factors to be found by the judge, not offense elements to be found by the jury.
III
Confident that the statute does just what McMillan said it could, we consider petitioner’s argument that § 924(c)(l)(A)(ii) is unconstitutional because McMillan is no longer sound authority. Stare decisis is not an “inexorable command,” Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 405 (1932) (Brandéis, J., dissenting), but the doctrine is “of fundamental importance to the rule of law,” Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transp., 483 U. S. 468, 494 (1987). Even in constitutional cases, in which stare decisis concerns are less pronounced, we will not overrule a precedent absent a “special justification.” Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 212 (1984).
The special justification petitioner offers is our decision in Apprendi, which, he says, cannot be reconciled with McMillan. Cf. Ring v. Arizona, post, at 609 (overruling Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639 (1990), because “Walton and Apprendi are irreconcilable”). We. do not find the argument convincing. As we shall explain, McMillan and Apprendi are consistent because there is a fundamental distinction between the factual findings that were at issue in those two cases. Apprendi said that any fact extending the defendant’s sentence beyond the maximum authorized by the jury’s verdict would have been considered an element of an aggravated crime — and thus the domain of the jury — by those who framed the Bill of Rights. The same cannot be said of a fact increasing the mandatory minimum (but not extending the sentence beyond the statutory maximum), for the jury’s verdict has authorized the judge to impose the minimum with Or without the finding. As McMillan recognized, a statute may reserve this type of factual finding for the judge without violating the Constitution.
Though defining criminal conduct is a task generally “left to the legislative branch,” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 210 (1977), Congress may not manipulate the definition of a crime in a way that relieves the Government of its constitutional obligations to charge each element in the indictment, submit each element to the jury, and prove each element beyond a reasonable doubt, Jones, 526 U. S., at 240-241; Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 699 (1975). McMillan and Apprendi asked whether certain types of facts, though labeled sentencing factors by the legislature, were nevertheless “traditional elements” to which these constitutional safeguards were intended to apply. Patterson v. New York, supra, at 211, n. 12.
McMillan’s answer stemmed from certain historical and doctrinal understandings about the role of the judge at sentencing. The mid-19th century produced a general shift in this country from criminal statutes “providing fixed-term sentences to those providing judges discretion within a permissible range.” Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 481. Under these statutes, judges exercise their sentencing discretion through “an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information [they] may consider, or the source from which it may come.” United States v. Tucker, 404 U. S. 443, 446 (1972). The Court has recognized that this process is constitutional — and that the facts taken into consideration need not be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e. g., United States v. Watts, 519 U. S. 148, 156 (1997) (per curiam); Nichols v. United States, 511 U. S. 738, 747 (1994); Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241, 246 (1949). As the Court reiterated in Jones: “It is not, of course, that anyone today would claim that every fact with a bearing on sentencing must be found by a jury; we have resolved that general issue and have no intention of questioning its resolution.” 526 U. S., at 248. Judicial factfinding in the course of selecting a sentence within the authorized range does not implicate the indictment, jury-trial, and reasonable-doubt components of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
That proposition, coupled with another shift in prevailing sentencing practices, explains McMillan. In the latter part of the 20th century, many legislatures, dissatisfied with sentencing disparities among like offenders, implemented measures regulating judicial discretion. These systems maintained the statutory ranges and the judge’s factfinding role but assigned a uniform weight to factors judges often relied upon when choosing a sentence. See, e. g., Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 820 (1991). One example of reform, the kind addressed in McMillan, was mandatory minimum sentencing. The Pennsylvania Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Act, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9712 (1982), imposed a minimum prison term of five years when the sentencing judge found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant had possessed a firearm while committing the crime of conviction.
In sustaining the statute the McMillan Court placed considerable reliance on the similarity between the sentencing factor at issue and the facts judges contemplate when exercising their discretion within the statutory range. Given that the latter are not elements of the crime, the Court explained, neither was the former:
“Section 9712 neither alters the maximum penalty for the crime committed nor creates a separate offense calling for a separate penalty; it operates solely to limit the sentencing court’s discretion in selecting a penalty within the range already available to it without the special finding of visible possession of a firearm. Section 9712 ‘ups the ante’ for the defendant only by raising to five years the minimum sentence which may be imposed within the statutory plan.... Petitioners’ claim that visible possession under the Pennsylvania statute is ‘really’ an element of the offenses for which they are being punished... would have at least more superficial appeal if a finding of visible possession exposed them to greater or additional punishment,... but it does not.” 477 U. S., at 87-88 (footnote omitted).
In response to the argument that the Act evaded the Constitution’s procedural guarantees, the Court noted that the statute “simply took one factor that has always been considered by sentencing courts to bear on punishment... and dictated the precise weight to be given that factor.” Id., at 89-90.
That reasoning still controls. If the facts judges consider when exercising their discretion within the statutory range are not elements, they do not become as much merely because legislatures require the judge to impose a minimum sentence when those facts are found — a sentence the judge could have imposed absent the finding. It does not matter, for the purposes of the constitutional analysis, that in statutes like the Pennsylvania Act the “State provides” that a fact “shall give rise both to a special stigma and to a special punishment.” Id., at 108 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Judges choosing a sentence within the range do the same, and “[j]udges, it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves, are part of the State.” Apprendi, supra, at 498 (Scalia, J., concurring). These facts, though stigmatizing and punitive, have been the traditional domain of judges; they have not been alleged in the indictment or proved beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no reason to believe that those who framed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments would have thought of them as the elements of the crime.
This conclusion might be questioned if there were extensive historical evidence showing that facts increasing the defendant’s minimum sentence (but not affecting the maximum) have, as a matter of course, been treated as elements. The evidence on this score, however, is lacking. Statutes like the Pennsylvania Act, which alter the minimum sentence without changing the maximum, were for the most part the product of the 20th century, when legislatures first asserted control over the sentencing judge’s discretion. Courts at the founding (whose views might be relevant, given the contemporaneous adoption of the Bill of Rights, see Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 478-484) and in the mid-19th century (whose views might be relevant, given that sentencing ranges first arose then, see id., at 501-518 (Thomas, J., concurring)) were not as a general matter required to decide whether a fact giving rise to a mandatory minimum sentence within the available range was to be alleged in the indictment and proved to the jury. See King & Klein, Essential Elements, 54 Vand. L. Rev. 1467, 1474-1477 (2001). Indeed, though there is no clear record of how history treated these facts, it is clear that they did not fall within the principle by which history determined what facts were elements. That principle defined elements as “fact[s]... legally essential to the punishment to be inflicted.” United States v. Reese, 92 U. S. 214, 232 (1876) (Clifford, J., dissenting) (citing 1 J. Bishop, Law of Criminal Procedure §81, p. 51 (2d ed. 1872)). This formulation includes facts that, as McMillan put it, “alte[r] the maximum penalty,” 477 U. S., at 87, but it does not include facts triggering a mandatory minimum. The minimum may be imposed with or without the factual finding; the finding is by definition not “essential” to the defendant’s punishment.
McMillan was on firm historical ground, then, when it held that a legislature may specify the condition for a mandatory minimum without making the condition an element of the crime. The fact of visible firearm possession was more like the facts considered by judges when selecting a sentence within the statutory range — facts that, as the authorities from the 19th century confirm, have never been charged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt:
“[Wjithin the limits of any discretion as to the punishment which the law may have allowed, the judge, when he pronounces sentence, may suffer his discretion to be influenced by matter shown in aggravation or mitigation, not covered by the allegations of the indictment. Where the law permits the heaviest punishment, on a scale laid down, to be inflicted, and has merely committed to the judge the authority to interpose its mercy and inflict a punishment of a lighter grade, no rights of the accused are violated though in the indictment there is no mention of mitigating circumstances. The aggravating circumstances spoken of cannot swell the penalty above what the law has provided for the acts charged against the prisoner, and they are interposed merely to check the judicial discretion in the exercise of the permitted mercy. This is an entirely different thing from punishing one for what is not alleged against him.” Bishop, Criminal Procedure § 85, at 54.
Since sentencing ranges came into use, defendants have not been able to predict from the face of the indictment precisely what their sentence will be; the charged facts have simply made them aware of the “heaviest punishment” they face if convicted. Ibid. Judges, in turn, have always considered uncharged “aggravating circumstances” that, while increasing the defendant’s punishment, have not “swell[ed] the penalty above what the law has provided for the acts charged.” Ibid. Because facts supporting a mandatory minimum fit squarely within that description, the legislature’s choice to entrust them to the judge does not implicate the “competition... between judge and jury over... their respective roles,” Jones, 526 U. S., at 245, that is the central concern of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
At issue in Apprendi, by contrast, was a sentencing factor that did “swell the penalty above what the law has provided,” Bishop, supra, §85, at 54, and thus functioned more like a “traditional elemen[t].” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S., at 211, n. 12. The defendant had been convicted of illegal possession of a firearm, an offense for which New Jersey law prescribed a maximum of 10 years in prison. See N. J. Stat. Ann. §§ 2C:39-4(a), 2C:43-6(a)(2) (1995). He was sentenced to 12 years, however, because a separate statute permitted an enhancement when the judge found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant “acted with a purpose to intimidate an individual or group of individuals because of race.” §2C:44-3(e) (Supp. 2001-2002).
The Court held that the enhancement was unconstitutional. “[0]ur cases in this area, and... the history upon which they rely,” the Court observed, confirmed the eonstitu-
tional principle first identified in Jones: “Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” 530 U. S., at 490. Those facts, Apprendi held, were what the Framers had in mind when they spoke of “crimes” and “criminal prosecutions” in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments: A crime was not alleged, and a criminal prosecution not complete, unless the indictment and the jury verdict included all the facts to which the legislature had attached the maximum punishment. Any “fact that... exposes the criminal defendant to a penalty exceeding the maximum he would receive if punished according to the facts reflected in the jury verdict alone,” the Court concluded, id., at 483, would have been, under the prevailing historical practice, an element of an aggravated offense. See id., at 479-481; see also id., at 501-518 (Thomas, J., concurring).
Apprendi's conclusions do not undermine McMillan’s. There was no comparable historical practice of submitting facts increasing the mandatory minimum to the jury, so the Apprendi rule did not extend to those facts. Indeed, the Court made clear that its holding did not affect McMillan at all:
“We do not overrule McMillan. We limit its holding to cases that do not involve the imposition of a sentence more severe than the statutory maximum for the offense established by the jury’s verdict — a limitation identified in the McMillan opinion itself.” 530 U. S., at 487, n. 13.
The sentencing factor in McMillan did not increase “the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum,” 530 U. S., at 490; nor did it, as the concurring opinions in Jones put it, “alter the eongressionally prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed,” 526 U. S., at 253 (Scalia, J., concurring). As the Apprendi Court observed, the McMillan finding merely required the judge to impose “a specific sentence within the range authorized by the jury’s finding that the defendant [was] guilty.” 530 U. S., at 494, n. 19; see also Jones, supra, at 242 (“[T]he Winship issue [in McMillan] rose from a provision that a judge’s finding (by a preponderance) of visible possession of a firearm would require a mandatory minimum sentence for certain felonies, but a minimum that fell within the sentencing ranges otherwise prescribed”).
As its holding and the history on which it was based would suggest, the Apprendi Court's understanding of the Constitution is consistent with the holding in McMillan. Facts extending the sentence beyond the statutory maximum had traditionally been charged in the indictment and submitted to the jury, Apprendi said, because the function of the indictment and jury had been to authorize the State to impose punishment:
“The evidence... that punishment was, by law, tied to the offense... and the evidence that American judges have exercised sentencing discretion within a legally prescribed range... point to a single, consistent conclusion: The judge’s role in sentencing is constrained at its outer limits by the facts alleged in the indictment and found by the jury. Put simply, facts that expose a defendant to a punishment greater than that otherwise legally prescribed were by definition ‘elements’ of a separate legal offense.” 530 U. S., at 483, n. 10.
The grand and petit juries thus form a “ ‘strong and two-fold barrier... between the liberties of the people and the prerogative of the [government].’” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S., at 151 (quoting W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 349 (T. Cooley ed. 1899)). Absent authorization from the trial jury — in the form of a finding, by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, of the facts warranting the extended sentence under the New Jersey statute — the State had no power to sentence the defendant to more than 10 years, the maximum “authorized by the jury’s guilty verdict.” Apprendi, 530 U. S., at 494. “[T]hose facts that determine the maximum sentence the law allows,” then, are necessarily elements of the crime. Id., at 499 (Scalia, J., concurring).
Yet once the jury finds all those facts, Apprendi says that the defendant has been convicted of the crime; the Fifth and Sixth Amendments have been observed; and the Government has been authorized to impose any sentence below the maximum. That is why, as Apprendi noted, “nothing in this history suggests that it is impermissible for judges to exercise discretion — taking into consideration various factors relating both to offense and offender — in imposing a judgment within the range.” Id., at 481. That is also why, as McMillan noted, nothing in this history suggests that it is impermissible for judges to find facts that give rise to a mandatory minimum sentence below “the maximum penalty for the crime committed.” 477 U. S., at 87-88. In both instances the judicial factfinding does not “expose a defendant to a punishment greater than that otherwise legally prescribed.” Apprendi, supra, at 483, n. 10. Whether chosen by the judge or the legislature, the facts guiding judicial discretion below the statutory maximum need not be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt. When a judge sentences the defendant to a mandatory minimum, no less than when the judge chooses a sentence within the range, the grand and petit juries already have found all the facts necessary to authorize the Government to impose the sentence. The judge may impose the minimum, the maximum, or any other sentence within the range without seeking further authorization from those juries — and without contradicting Apprendi.
Petitioner argues, however, that the concerns underlying Apprendi apply with equal or more force to facts increasing the defendant’s minimum sentence. Those factual findings, he contends, often have a greater impact on the defendant than the findings at issue in Apprendi. This is so because when a fact increasing the statutory maximum is found, the judge may still impose a sentence far below that maximum; but when a fact increasing the minimum is found, the judge has no choice but to impose that minimum, even if he or she otherwise would have chosen a lower sentence. Cf. Almendarez-Torres, 523 U. S., at 244-245. Why, petitioner asks, would fairness not also require the latter sort of fact to be alleged in the indictment and found by the jury under a reasonable-doubt standard? The answer is that because it is beyond dispute that the judge’s choice of sentences within the authorized range may be influenced by facts not considered by the jury, a factual finding’s practical effect cannot by itself control the constitutional analysis. The Fifth and Sixth Amendments ensure that the defendant “will never get more punishment than he bargained for when he did the crime,” but they do not promise that he will receive “anything less” than that. Apprendi, supra, at 498 (Scalia, J., concurring). If the grand jury has alleged, and the trial jury has found, all the facts necessary to impose the maximum, the barriers between government and defendant fall. The judge may select any sentence
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
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), as amended by the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), authorizes a qualified beneficiary of an employer’s group health plan to obtain continued coverage under the plan when he might otherwise lose that benefit for certain reasons, such as the termination of employment. The issue in this case is whether 29 U. S. C. § 1162(2)(D)(i) allows an employer to deny COBRA continuation coverage to a qualified beneficiary who is covered under another group health plan at the time he makes his COBRA election. We hold that it does not.
I
On July 16, 1998, respondent Moore Medical Corporation fired James Geissal, who was suffering from cancer. While employed, Geissal was covered under Moore’s group health plan as well as the health plan provided by his wife’s employer, Trans World Airlines (TWA), through Aetna Life Insurance Company.
According to Geissal, soon after he lost his job, Moore told him that he had a right under COBRA to elect to continue coverage under Moore’s plan. Geissal so elected, and made the necessary premium payments for six months. On January 27, 1994, however, Moore informed Geissal it had been mistaken: he was not actually entitled to COBRA benefits because on the date of his election he was already covered by another group health plan, through his wife’s employer.
Geissal then brought this suit against Moore, the Group Benefit Plan of Moore Medical Group, Herbert Walker (an administrator of the plan), and Sedgwick Lowndes (another administrator) (collectively, Moore). Geissal charged Moore with violating COBRA by renouncing an obligation to provide continuing health benefits coverage (Count I); he further claimed that Moore was estopped to deny him continuation coverage because it had misled him to think that he was entitled to COBRA coverage (Count II), that Moore’s misrepresentation amounted to a waiver of any right to assert a reading of the plan provisions that would deprive him of continuation coverage (Count III), and, finally, that Walker had violated COBRA by failing to provide him with certain plan documents (Count IV).
After limited discovery, Geissal moved for partial summary judgment on Counts I and II of the complaint. He argued that Moore’s reliance upon 29 U. S. C. § 1162(2)(D)(i) as authority to deny him COBRA continuation coverage was misplaced. Although that subsection provides that an employer may cancel COBRA continuation coverage as of “[t]he date on which the qualified beneficiary first becomes, after the date of the election .. . covered under any other group health plan (as an employee or otherwise),” Geissal was first covered under the TWA plan before he elected COBRA continuation coverage, not after. In any event, Geissal maintained, Moore was estopped to deny him health benefits, because he had detrimentally relied upon its assurances that he was entitled to them. While the summary judgment motion was pending, Geissal died of cancer, and petitioner Bonnie Geissal, his wife and personal representative of his estate, replaced him as plaintiff.
The Magistrate Judge hearing the ease first rejected Moore's arguments that Geissal lacked standing and that Aetna was a necessary party under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19(a). The Magistrate concluded that even if Moore was correct that Geissal had no claim for compensatory damages because Aetna paid all of the medical bills, Geissal could seek statutory damages under 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a)(1). The Magistrate held that Aetna was not a necessary party to the suit, since complete relief could be granted between Moore and Geissal without joining Aetna, a verdict in Geissal’s favor would not subject Moore to the risk of inconsistent or double obligations, and Aetna's joinder was not necessary to determine primacy as between the two plans.
The Magistrate denied summary judgment for Geissal, however, and instead sua sponte granted partial summary judgment on Counts I and II in favor of Moore, concluding that an employee with coverage under another group health plan as of the date he elects COBRA continuation coverage is ineligible for COBRA coverage under § 1162(2)(D)(i), and that James Geissal presented insufficient evidence of detrimental reliance on Moore’s representation that he was entitled to benefits under COBRA. The Magistrate also found that there was no significant difference between the terms of coverage under Aetna’s plan and Moore’s; they differed only in the amount of their respective deductibles, and there was no evidence that Aetna’s plan excluded or limited coverage for James Geissal’s condition.
The Magistrate then granted Geissal’s unopposed motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) for the entry of final judgment on Counts I and II, and so enabled Geissal to seek immediate review of the Magistrate’s decision. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, 114 F. 3d 1458 (1997), and we granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1086 (1998), to resolve a conflict among the Circuits on whether an employer may deny COBRA continuation coverage under its health plan to an otherwise eligible beneficiary covered under another group health plan at the time he elects coverage under COBRA.
II
A
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, Pub. L. 99-272,100 Stat. 82,222-287, amended the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, among other statutes. The amendments to ERISA require an employer who sponsors a group health plan to give the plan’s “qualified beneficiaries” the opportunity to elect “continuation coverage” under the plan when the beneficiaries might otherwise lose coverage upon the occurrence of certain “qualifying events,” including the death of the covered employee, the termination of the covered employee’s employment (except in cases of gross misconduct), and divorce or legal separation from the covered employee. 29 U. S. C. § 1163. Thus, a “qualified beneficiary” entitled to make a COBRA election may be a “covered employee” (someone covered by the employer’s plan because of Ms own employment), or a covered employee’s spouse or dependent child who was covered by the plan prior to the occurrence of the “qualifying event.” §1167(3).
COBRA demands that the continuation coverage offered to qualified beneficiaries be identical to what the plan provides to plan beneficiaries who have not suffered a qualifying event. § 1162(1). The statute requires plans to advise beneficiaries of their rights under COBRA both at the com-meneement of coverage and within 14 days of learning of a qualifying event, § 1166(a), after which qualified beneficiaries have 60 days to elect continuation coverage, § 1165(1). If a qualified beneficiary makes a COBRA election, continuation coverage dates from the qualifying event, and when the event is termination or reduced hours, the maximum period of coverage is generally 18 months; in other eases, it is generally 36. § 1162(2)(A). The beneficiary who makes the election must pay for what he gets, however, up to 102 percent of the “applicable premium” for the first 18 months of continuation coverage, and up to 150 percent thereafter. § 1162(3). The “applicable premium” is usually the cost to the plan of providing continuation coverage, regardless of who usually pays for the insurance benefit. § 1164. Benefits may cease if the qualified beneficiary fails to pay the premiums, § 1162(2)(C), and an employer may terminate it for certain other reasons, such as discontinuance of the group health plan entirely, §1162(2)(B). COBRA coverage may also cease on
“[t]he date on which the qualified beneficiary first becomes, after the date of the election—
“(i) covered under any other group health plan (as an employee or otherwise), which does not contain any exclusion or limitation with respect to any preexisting condition of such beneficiary, or
“(ii) entitled to benefits under title XVIII of the Social Security Act.” § 1162(2)(D).
B
Moore, like the Magistrate, believes that James GeissaPs coverage under the TWA plan defeats the claim for COBRA coverage after his election to receive it. As Moore reads § 1162(2)(D)(i), it is not relevant when a qualified beneficiary first obtains other health insurance coverage; instead, Moore submits, all that matters is whether, at any time after the date of election, the beneficiary is covered by another group health plan. In any event, Moore claims, James Geissal first became covered under the TWA plan only after his COBRA election, because it was only at that moment that his TWA coverage became primary.
Moore’s reading, however, will not square with the text. Section 1162(2)(D)(i) does not provide that the employer is excused if the beneficiary “is” covered or “remains” covered on or after the date of the election. Nothing in § 1162(2)(D)(i) says anything about the hierarchy of policy obligations, or otherwise suggests that it might matter whether the coverage of another group health plan is primary. So far as this case is concerned, what is crucial is that § 1162(2)(D)(i) does not speak in terms of “coverage” that might exist or continue; it speaks in terms of an event, the event of “beeom[ing] covered.” This event is significant only if it occurs, and “first” occurs, at a time “after the date of the election.” It is undisputed that both before and after James Geissal elected COBRA continuation coverage he was continuously a beneficiary of TWA’s group health plan. Because he was thus covered before he made his COBRA election, and so did not “first become” covered under the TWA plan after the date of election, Moore could not cut off his COBRA coverage under the plain meaning of § 1162(2)(D)(i).
Moore argues, to the contrary, that there is a reasonable sense in which a beneficiary does “first becom[e]” covered under a pre-existing plan “after the date of the election,” even when prior coverage can be said to persist after the election date: the first moment of coverage on the day following the election is the moment of first being covered after the date of the election. See National Cos. Health Benefit Plan v. St. Joseph’s Hosp., Inc., 929 F. 2d 1558, 1570 (CA11 1991) (“[I]t is immaterial when the employee acquires other group health coverage; the only relevant question is when, after the election date, does that other coverage take effect. In the case of an employee covered by preexisting group health coverage, . . . the first time after the election date that the employee becomes covered by a group health plan other than the employer’s plan is the moment after the election date”). But that reading ignores the condition that the beneficiary must “first beeom[e]” covered after election, robbing the modifier “first” of any consequence, thereby equating “first becomes ... covered” with “remains covered.” It transforms the novelty of becoming covered for the first time into the continuity of remaining covered over time.
Moore argues, further, that even if our reading of the statute is more faithful to its plain language, Congress could not have meant to give a qualified beneficiary something more than the right to preserve the status quo as of the date of the qualifying event. Moore points out that if the phrase “first becomes covered . . . after” the date of election does not apply to any coverage predating election, then the beneficiary is quite free to claim continuation coverage even if he has obtained entirely new group coverage between the qualifying event and the election; in that case, on our reading, COBRA would not be preserving the circumstances as of the date of the qualifying event.
That the plain reading does not confine COBRA strictly to guardianship of the status quo is, of course, perfectly true, though it is much less certain whether this fact should count against the plain reading (even assuming that the obvious reading would be vulnerable to such an objection, see Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 135 (1991)). The statute is neither east expressly in terms of the status quo, nor does it speak to the status quo on the date of the qualifying event except with reference to the coverage subject to election. Nor does a beneficiary’s decision to take advantage of another group policy not previously in effect carry any indicia of the sort of windfall Congress presumably would have disapproved. Since the beneficiary has to pay for whatever COBRA coverage he obtains, there is no reason to assume that he will make an election for coverage he does not need, whether he is covered by another policy in place before the qualifying event or one obtained after it but before his election.
Still, it is true that if during the interim between the qualifying event and election a beneficiary gets a new job, say, with health coverage (having no exclusion or limitation for his condition), he will have the benefit of COBRA, whereas he will not have it if his new job and coverage come after the election date. Do we classify this as an anomaly or merely a necessary consequence of the need to draw a line somewhere? For the sake of argument we might call it an anomaly, but that would only balance it against the anomaly of Moore’s own position, which defies not only normal language usage but the expectations of common sense: since an election to continue coverage is retroactive to the date of the qualifying event, under Moore’s reading of § 1162(2)(D)(i) an election that is ineffective to bring about continuation coverage for the roughly 18 (or 36) month statutory period would nonetheless have the surprising effect of providing continuation coverage for the period of weeks, or even days, between the event and the election. One wonders why Congress would have wanted to create such a strange scheme. Thus, assuming that our reading of § 1162(2)(D)(i) produces an anomaly, so does Moore’s.
But this is not all, for the anomalous consequences of Moore’s position are not exhausted without a look at the interpretative morass to which it has led in practice. To support its thesis that Congress meant individuals situated like James Geissal to be ineligible for COBRA benefits, Moore points to a statement in the House Reports on the original COBRA bill, that “[t]he Committee [on Ways and Means] is concerned with reports of the growing number of Americans without any health insurance coverage and the decreasing willingness of our.Nation’s hospitals to provide care to those who cannot afford to pay.” H. R. Rep. No. 99-241, pt. 1, p. 44 (1985); see 114 F. 3d, at 1463 (quoting House Report). Of course, if this concern (expressed in one House Committee Report) were thought to be a legitimate limit on the meaning of the statute as enacted, there would be no COBRA coverage for any beneficiary who had “any health insurance” on the date of election, or obtained “any” thereafter. But neither Moore nor any court rejecting the plain reading has gone quite so far. Instead, that draconian alternative has been averted by a nontextual compromise.
The compromise apparently alludes to the proviso that § 1162(2)(D)(i) applies so as to authorize termination of COBRA coverage only if the coverage provided by the other group health plan “does not contain any exclusion or limitation with respect to any preexisting condition of such beneficiary.” Moore urges us to hold, as some Courts of Appeals have done, that although Congress generally intended to deny COBRA coverage to individuals with other group insurance on the election date, there will still be COBRA eligibility in such eases if there is a “significant gap” between the coverage offered by the employer’s plan and that offered by the beneficiary’s other group health plan. See 114 F. 3d, at 1464-1465; accord, National Cos. Health Benefit Plan v. St. Joseph's Hosp., Inc., 929 F. 2d, at 1571; Brock v. Primedica, Inc., 904 F. 2d 295, 297 (CA5 1990). When there is such a gap, some courts have explained, it cannot be said that the employee is truly “covered” by his pre-existing insurance coverage. See 114 F. 3d, at 1463; National Cos. Health Benefit Plan v. St. Joseph’s Hosp., Inc., supra, at 1571.
This “significant gap” approach to § 1162(2)(D)(i) is plagued with difficulties, however, beginning with the sheer absence of any statutory support for it. Section 1162(2)(D)(i) makes no mention of what to do when a person’s other coverage is generally inadequate or inferior; instead, it provides merely that coverage under a later acquired group health plan will not terminate COBRA rights when that plan limits or excludes coverage for a pre-existing condition of the beneficiary. The proviso applies not when there is a “gap” or difference between the respective coverages of the two policies, but when the later acquired group coverage excludes or limits coverage specific to the beneficiary’s pre-existing condition. It is this “gap” between different coverage provisions of the non-COBRA plan, not a gap between the coverage provisions of the COBRA plan and the non-COBRA plan, that Congress was legislating about.
But even leaving textual inadequacy aside, there is further trouble under the “significant gap” approach. Needless to say, when the proviso (as written) arguably does apply, its applicability is easy to determine. Once the beneficiary’s pre-existing condition is identified, a court need only look among the terms of the later policy for an exclusion or hmitation peculiar to that condition. If either is found, COBRA continuation coverage is left undisturbed; if neither is found, the consequence of obtaining this later insurance is automatic. Applying the significant gap rule, on the other hand, requires a very different kind of determination, essentially one of social policy. Once a gap is found, the court must then make a judgment about the adequacy of medical insurance under the later group policy, for this is the essence of any decision about whether the gap between the two regimes of coverage is “significant” enough. This is a powerful point against the gap interpretation for two reasons. First, the required judgment is so far unsuitable for courts that we would expect a clear mandate before inferring that Congress meant to foist it on the judiciary. What is even more strange, however, is that Congress would have meant to inject the courts into the policy arena, evaluating the adequacy of non-COBRA coverage that happened to be in place prior to the COBRA election, while at the same time intending to limit the judicial intrusion, and leave the beneficiary to the unmediated legal consequences of the terms of the non-COBRA coverage that happened to become effective after the election. One just cannot credibly attribute such oddity to congressional intent.
In sum, there is no justification for disparaging the clarity of § 1162(2)(D)(i). The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the ease is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
On November 8,1994, the District Court granted the plaintiffs motion to dismiss Lowndes without prejudice.
Pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 636(c), the parties agreed to have a magistrate judge conduct all proceedings in this case.
This subsection provides that a beneficiary may seek relief under 29 TI S. C. § 1132(c), which provides that a plan administrator who fails to comply with a beneficiary’s request for plan information within 30 days of the request is personally liable to that beneficiary in the amount of up to $100 a day from the date of the failure.
Before us, Moore suggests that Geissal lacks standing to maintain this suit. They assert that Aetna has paid all of the medical bills, and that the only apparent difference between the Aetna and Moore policies was a $350 difference in their respective deductibles, a difference far exceeded by the premiums Geissal would owe for COBRA coverage if successful. Despite Moore’s assertions to the contrary, however, nothing in the record indicates one way or another whether Aetna has fully reimbursed Geissal for James Geissal’s medical bills. Geissal’s counsel represented at oral argument that at a minimum there are unpaid medical bills incurred on a trip to the Greek Islands. Quite apart from this, we cannot tell from the record whether Geissal may be entitled to recover from Moore even if sometime later Aetna would have a claim against Geissal to recover the insurance costs that it paid.
Compare Lutheran Hosp., Inc. v. Business Men’s Assurance Co., 51 F. 3d 1308 (CA7 1995) (an employer may not cease providing COBRA continuation coverage under its plan merely because its former employee has pre-existing coverage under another group health plan), and Oakley v. City of Longmont, 890 F. 2d 1128 (CA10 1989) (same), cert. denied, 494 U. S. 1082 (1990), with National Cos. Health Benefit Plan v. St. Joseph’s Hosp., Inc., 929 F. 2d 1558 (CA11 1991) (an employer may suspend the COBRA continuation coverage of a former employee who had pre-existing coverage under another group health plan), and Brock v. Primedica, Inc., 904 F. 2d 295 (CA5 1990) (same).
Employers with fewer than 20 employees are exempt from COBRA’s requirements. 29 U. S. C. § 1161(b).
Under § 1166(a)(2), an employer has a duty to report most qualifying events, including the termination of employment, to its group health plan administrator within 30 days of the qualifying event.
When originally enacted, § 1162(2)(D)(i) provided that coverage could cease when a qualified beneficiary “first becomes, after the date of the election ... a covered employee under any other group health plan,” and a separate provision, § 1162(E), provided that in the case of an individual who was a qualified beneficiary as the result of being a spouse of a covered employee, coverage could cease on “the date on which the beneficiary remarries and becomes covered under a group health plan.” COBRA, Pub. L. 99-272, 100 Stat. 228. Congress later struck § 1162(E) and amended subsection (i) to provide that coverage could cease when a qualified beneficiary “first becomes, after the date of the election... covered under any other group health plan (as an employee or otherwise).” Tax Reform Act of 1986, Pub. L. 99-514, 100 Stat. 2938-2989. Congress again amended subsection (i) in 1989, when it added the qualification, “which does not contain any exclusion or limitation with respect to any preexisting condition of such beneficiary.” Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, Pub. L. 101-239, 103 Stat. 2297, 2432. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-191, 110 Stat. 2087-2088, amended § 1162(2)(D)(i) yet again by inserting before “, or”: “(other than such an exclusion or limitation which does not apply to (or is satisfied by) such beneficiary by reason of chapter 100 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, part 7 of subtitle B of title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or title XXVII of this Act).” The 1996 amendment was not in effect at the time this case arose.
Moore also argues that Congress could not have intended to render COBRA eligible those individuals with pre-existing coverage under another health plan at the time of election, because such individuals who in fact elect COBRA coverage are typically high risk. As a result, Moore contends, covering them under COBRA tends to increase an employer’s overall cost of providing a group health plan, and may cause some employers to cease offering a group health plan entirely. This may or may not be true. If substantiated, the argument would be considered in construing the scope of a vague provision; § 1162(2)(D)(i), however, is not vague.
The lower courts have disagreed about whether this “significant gap” interpretation should be made by evaluating the actual expenses an employee incurs as a result of COBRA cancellation, or by comparing the policies’ provisions in light of the information available to the employer on the day of the COBRA election. See 114 F. 3d, at 1464-1465 (comparing approaches).
The unlikelihood, indeed, appears overwhelming when one considers that the same comparison would have to be made when the beneficiary was covered under Medicare, which is treated like a separate group plan for present purposes, see § 1162(2)(D)(ii).
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a novel question concerning § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The setting, in a nutshell: A covered State passed a law adopting a new election practice, obtained the preclearance required by § 5, and held an election. Soon thereafter, the law under which the election took place was invalidated by the State’s highest court on the ground that it violated a controlling provision of the State’s Constitution. The question presented: Must the State obtain fresh preclearance in order to reinstate the election practice prevailing before enactment of the law struck down by the State’s Supreme Court? We hold that, for §5 purposes, the invalidated law never gained “force or effect.” Therefore, the State’s reversion to its prior practice did not rank as a “change” requiring preclearance.
I
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973 et seq., “was designed by Congress to banish the blight of racial discrimination in voting, which ha[d] infected the electoral process in parts of our country for nearly a century.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 308 (1966). In three earlier statutes, passed in 1957,1960, and 1964, Congress had empowered the Department of Justice (DOJ or Department) to combat voting discrimination through “case-by-case litigation.” Id., at 313. These lawsuits, however, made little headway. Voting-rights suits were “unusually onerous to prepare” and the progress of litigation was “exceedingly slow,” in no small part due to the obstructionist tactics of state officials. Id., at 314. Moreover, some States “resorted to the extraordinary stratagem of contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination in the face of adverse federal court decrees.” Id., at 335.
The VRA reflected Congress’ determination that “sterner and more elaborate measures” were needed to counteract these formidable hindrances. Id., at 309. Sections 4 and 5 impose the most stringent of the Act’s remedies. Under §4(b), as amended, a State or political subdivision is a so-called “covered jurisdiction” if, on one of three specified coverage dates: (1) it maintained a literacy requirement or other “test or device” as a prerequisite to voting, and (2) fewer than 50% of its voting-age citizens were registered to vote or voted in that year’s Presidential election. 42 U. S. C. § 1973b(b). Section 4(a) suspends the operation of all such “test[s] or devicefs]” in covered jurisdictions. §1973b(a). Section 5 requires covered jurisdictions to obtain what has come to be known as “preclearance” from the District Court for the District of Columbia or the DOJ before “enact[ing] or seeking] to administer” any alteration of their practices or procedures affecting voting. § 1973c(a).
A change will be precleared only if it “neither has the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, or [because of membership in a language minority group].” Ibid. An election practice has the “effect” of “denying or abridging the right to vote” if it “lead[s] to a retrogression in the position of racial [or language] minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.” Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130, 141 (1976). See also Young v. Fordice, 520 U. S. 273, 276 (1997); 28 CFR §51.54 (2007). As amended in 2006, the statute defines “purpose” to include “any discriminatory purpose.” 120 Stat. 581, codified at 42 U. S. C. § 1973c(c).
Congress took the extraordinary step of requiring covered jurisdictions to preclear all changes in their voting practices because it “feared that the mere suspension of existing tests [in § 4(a)] would not completely solve the problem, given the history some States had of simply enacting new and slightly different requirements with the same discriminatory effect.” Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544,548 (1969). By putting the burden on covered jurisdictions to demonstrate that future changes would not be discriminatory, § 5 served to “shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 328.
Sections 4 and 5 were originally scheduled to lapse once a covered jurisdiction complied with § 4(a)’s ban on the use of tests and devices for five years. See 79 Stat. 438. Finding continuing discrimination in access to the ballot, however, Congress renewed and expanded §§ 4 and 5 on four occasions, most recently in 2006. Sections 4 and 5 are now set to expire in 2031, see 42 U. S. C. § 1973b(a)(8), but a covered jurisdiction may “bail out” at any time if it satisfies certain requirements, see § 1973b(a)(l).
II
The voting practice at issue in this litigation is the method used to fill midterm vacancies on the Mobile County Commission, the governing body of Mobile County, Alabama. Composed of three members elected by separate districts to four-year terms, the Commission has the power to levy taxes, make appropriations, and exercise other countywide executive and administrative functions. See Ala. Code § 11— 3-11 (1975).
We set out first, as pivotal to our resolution of this ease, a full account of two disputes over the means of filling midterm vacancies on the Commission. The first occurred between 1985 and 1988; the second began in 2004 and culminates in the appeal now before us.
A
Alabama is a covered jurisdiction with a coverage date of November 1, 1964. See 30 Fed. Reg. 9897 (1965). As of that date, Alabama law provided that midterm vacancies on all county commissions were to be filled by gubernatorial appointment. See Ala. Code §12-6 (1958). The relevant provision was later recodified without substantive change as Ala. Code § 11-3-6 (1975), which stated:
“In case of a vacancy, it shall be filled by appointment by the governor, and the person so appointed shall hold office for the remainder of the term of the commissioner in whose place he is appointed.”
In 1985, however, the state legislature passed a “local law” providing that any vacancy on the Mobile County Commission occurring “with twelve months or more remaining on the term of the vacant seat” would be filled by special election rather than gubernatorial appointment. 1985 Ala. Acts no. 85-237 (1985 Act). The DOJ precleared this new law in June 1985.
The first midterm opening on the Commission postpassage of the 1985 Act occurred in 1987, when the seat for District One — a majority African-American district — became vacant. In accord with the 1985 Act, the Governor called a special election. A Mobile County voter, Willie Stokes, promptly filed suit in state court seeking to enjoin the election. The 1985 Act, he alleged, violated Art. IV, § 105, of the Alabama Constitution, which provides that no “local law... shall be enacted in any case which is provided for by a general law.” On Stokes’s reading, the 1985 Act conflicted with § 105 because the Act addressed a matter already governed by Ala. Code §11-3-6.
The state trial court rejected Stokes’s argument and entered judgment for the state defendants. Stokes immediately appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court and sought an order staying the election pending that court’s decision. The requested stay was denied, and the special election went forward in June 1987. The winner, Samuel Jones, took office as District One’s Commissioner in July 1987. Approximately 14 months later, however, in September 1988, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s judgment. Finding that the 1985 Act “clearly offend[ed] §105 of the [Alabama] Constitution,” the court declared the Act unconstitutional. Stokes v. Noonan, 534 So. 2d 237, 238-239.
The Alabama Supreme Court’s decree cast grave doubt on the legitimacy of Jones’s election and, consequently, on his continued tenure in office. The Governor, however, defused any potential controversy by immediately invoking his authority under Ala. Code § 11-3-6 and appointing Jones to the Commission.
B
The next midterm vacancy on the Commission did not occur until October 2005, when Jones — who had been reelected every four years since 1988 — was elected mayor of the city of Mobile. Once again, the method of filling the vacancy became the subject of litigation. In 2004, the state legislature had passed (and the DOJ had precleared) an amendment to Ala. Code § 11-3-6 providing that vacancies on county commissions were to be filled by gubernatorial appointment “[u]nless a local law authorizes a special election.” 2004 Ala. Acts no. 2004-455 (2004 Act). When the 2005 vacancy arose, three Mobile County voters and Alabama state legislators — appellees Yvonne Kennedy, James Buskey, and William Clark (hereinafter Kennedy) — filed suit against Alabama’s Governor, Bob Riley, in state court. The 2004 Act’s authorization of local laws providing for special elections, they urged, had revived the 1985 Act and cured its infirmity under § 105 of the Alabama Constitution. Adopting Kennedy’s view, the state trial court ordered Governor Riley to call a special election.
While the Governor’s appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court was pending, Mobile County’s election officials obtained preclearance of procedures for a special election, scheduled to take place in January 2006. In November 2005, however, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s order. Holding that the 2004 Act “provide[d] for prospective application only” and thus did not resurrect the 1985 Act, Alabama’s highest court ruled that “Governor Riley [wa]s authorized to fill the vacancy on the Mobile County Commission by appointment.” Riley v. Kennedy, 928 So. 2d 1013,1017. Governor Riley promptly exercised that authority by appointing Juan Chastang.
The day after the Alabama Supreme Court denied rehearing, Kennedy commenced the instant suit in Federal District Court. Invoking §5, she sought declaratory relief and an injunction barring Governor Riley from filling the Commission vacancy by appointment unless and until Alabama gained preclearance of the decisions in Stokes and Kennedy. As required by § 5, a three-judge District Court convened to hear the suit. See 42 U. S. C. §1973c(a); Allen, 393 U. S., at 563.
In August 2006, the three-judge court, after a hearing, granted the requested declaration. The court observed first that for purposes of §5’s preclearance requirement, “[cjhanges are measured by comparing the new challenged practice with the baseline practice, that is, the most recent practice that is both precleared and in force or effect.” 445 F. Supp. 2d 1333, 1336 (MD Ala.). It then determined that the 1985 Act’s provision requiring special elections had been both precleared and put into “force or effect” with the special election of Jones in 1987. It followed, the District Court reasoned, that the gubernatorial appointment called for by Stokes and Kennedy ranked as a change from the baseline practice; consequently “the two [Alabama Supreme Court] decisions... should have been precleared before they were implemented.” 445 F. Supp. 2d, at 1336.
Deferring affirmative relief, the District Court gave the State 90 days to obtain preclearance of Stokes and Kennedy. 445 F. Supp. 2d, at 1336. Without conceding that preclearance was required, the State submitted the decisions to the DOJ. Finding that the State had failed to prove that the reinstatement of gubernatorial appointment would not be retrogressive, the Department denied preclearance. See App. to Motion to Dismiss or Affirm 2a-8a. “The African-American voters of District 1,” the DOJ explained, “enjoy the opportunity to elect minority candidates of their choice” under the 1985 Act. Id., at 6a. A change to gubernatorial appointment would be retrogressive because it “would transfer this electoral power to a state official elected by a statewide constituency whose racial make-up and electoral choices regularly differ from those of the voters of District 1.” Ibid.
After the State unsuccessfully sought DOJ'reconsideration, Kennedy returned to the District Court and filed a motion for further relief. On May 1, 2007, the District Court ruled that “Governor Bob Riley’s appointment of Juan Chastang to the Mobile County Commission... was unlawful under federal law” and vacated the appointment. App. to Juris. Statement la-2a. Governor Riley filed a notice of appeal in the District Court on May 18, 2007, and a jurisdictional statement in this Court on July 17, 2007. In November 2007, we postponed a determination of jurisdiction until our consideration of the case on the merits. 552 U. S. 1035.
In the meantime, a special election was held in Mobile County in October 2007 to fill the vacancy resulting from the District Court’s order vacating Chastang’s appointment. Chastang ran in the election but was defeated by Merceria Ludgood, who garnered nearly 80% of the vote. See Certification of Results, Special Election, Mobile County (Oct. 16, 2007), http://records.mobile-county.net/ViewImagesPDFAll. Aspx?ID=2007081288 (as visited May 22, 2008, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). Ludgood continues to occupy the District One seat on the Commission. Her term will expire in November 2008.
Ill
Before reaching the merits of Governor Riley’s appeal, we first take up Kennedy’s threshold objection. The appeal, Kennedy urges, must be dismissed as untimely.
Section 5 provides that “any appeal” from the decision of a three-judge district court “shall lie to the Supreme Court.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973c(a). Such an appeal must be filed within 60 days of the District Court’s entry of a final judgment. See 28 U. S. C. § 2101(b). Kennedy maintains that Governor Riley’s May 18, 2007 notice of appeal came too late because the District Court’s August 2006 order qualified as a final judgment. If Kennedy’s characterization is correct, then Governor Riley’s time to file an appeal expired in October 2006, and his appeal must be dismissed. But if, as Governor Riley maintains, the District Court did not issue a final judgment until the order vacating Chastang’s appointment on May 1, 2007, then the Governor filed his appeal well within the required time.
A final judgment is “one which ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” Catlin v. United States, 324 U. S. 229, 233 (1945). The District Court’s August 2006 order declared that the Alabama Supreme Court’s decisions in Stokes and Kennedy required preclearance, but that order left unresolved Kennedy’s demand for injunctive relief. We have long held that an order resolving liability without addressing a plaintiff’s requests for relief is not final. See Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U. S. 737, 742-743 (1976). See also 15B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure §3915.2, p. 271 (2d ed. 1992).
Resisting the conclusion these authorities indicate, Kennedy maintains that the August 2006 order ranked as a final decision for two reasons. First, she contends, that order conclusively settled the key remedial issue, for it directed Governor Riley to seek preclearance of the Alabama Supreme Court’s decisions in Stokes and Kennedy. See Brief for Appellees 26-27. This argument misapprehends the District Court’s order: Far from requiring the Governor to seek preclearance, the District Court expressly allowed for the possibility that he would elect not to do so. See 445 F. Supp. 2d, at 1337 (“Defendant Riley is to keep the court informed of what action, if any, the State decides to take....” (emphasis added)). Second, Kennedy notes that the District Court directed entry of its August 2006 order “as a final judgment pursuant to Rule 58 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,” ibid. See Brief for Appellees 27. “The label used by the District Court,” however, “cannot control [an] order’s appealability.” Sullivan v. Finkelstein, 496 U. S. 617, 628, n. 7 (1990). See also Wetzel, 424 U. S., at 741-743.
Because the District Court did not render its final judgment until May 1, 2007, Governor Riley’s May 18 notice of appeal was timely. We therefore proceed to the merits.
IV
Prior to 1985, Alabama filled midterm vacancies on the Mobile County Commission by gubernatorial appointment. The 1985 Act adopted a different practice — special elections. That new practice was used in one election only, held in 1987. The next year, the Alabama Supreme Court determined, in Stokes v. Noonan, that the Act authorizing special elections was invalid under the State’s Constitution. Properly framed, the issue before us is whether § 5 required Alabama to obtain preclearance before reinstating the practice of gubernatorial appointment in the wake of the decision by its highest court invalidating the special-election law.
It is undisputed that a “change” from election to appointment is a change “with respect to voting” and thus covered by § 5. See Allen, 393 U. S., at 569-570; Presley v. Etowah County Comm’n, 502 U. S. 491, 502-503 (1992). We have also stated that the preclearance requirement encompasses “voting changes mandated by order of a state court.” Branch v. Smith, 538 U. S. 254, 262 (2003). See also Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U. S. 255, 265-266, and n. 16 (1982). The question is whether, given the circumstances here presented, any “change” within the meaning of § 5 occurred in this case.
In order to determine whether an election practice constitutes a “change” as that term is defined in our § 5 precedents, we compare the practice with the covered jurisdiction’s “baseline.” We have defined the baseline as the most recent practice that was both precleared and “in force or effect”— or, absent any change since the jurisdiction’s coverage date, the practice that was “in force or effect” on that date. See Young, 520 U. S., at 282-283. See also Presley, 502 U. S., at 495. The question is “whether a State has ‘enact[ed]’ or is ‘seeking] to administer’ a ‘practice or procedure’ that is ‘different’ enough” from the baseline to qualify as a change. Young, 520 U. S., at 281 (quoting 42 U. S. C. § 1973c).
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the 1985 Act was never “in force or effect” within the meaning of § 5. At all relevant times, therefore, the baseline practice for filling midterm vacancies on the Commission was the pre-1985 practice of gubernatorial appointment. The State’s reinstatement of that practice thus did not constitute a change requiring preclearance.
A
We have directly addressed the § 5 term of art “in force or effect” on three prior occasions. As will become clear, these precedents do not control this case because they differ in a critical respect. They do, however, provide the starting point for our inquiry.
In Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379 (1971), the question was what practice had been “in force or effect” in the city of Canton, Mississippi, on that State’s §5 coverage date, November 1, 1964. A 1962 state law required selection of city aldermen by at-large elections rather than by ward. Canton, however, “ignored the mandate [of the statute] in the conduct of the 1965 municipal elections and, as in 1961, elected aldermen by wards.” Id., at 394. In the 1969 election, the city sought to switch to at-large elections. We held that this move was a change requiring preclearance because election by ward was “the procedure in fact ‘in force or ef-. feet’ in Canton on November 1, 1964.” Id., at 395.
We endeavored to determine in Perkins the voting procedure that would have been followed on the coverage date, November 1, 1964. Two choices were apparent: the state law on the books since 1962 calling for at-large elections, or the practice Canton actually used, without challenge, in 1965 — election by wards. We picked the 1965 practice as the more likely indicator of the practice Canton would have employed had it held an election on the coverage date, just seven months earlier. See id., at 394-395.
Similarly, in City of Lockhart v. United States, 460 U. S. 125 (1983), the question was what practice had been “in force or effect” in Lockhart, Texas, on the relevant §5 coverage date, November 1, 1972. For more than 50 years, without challenge, the city had used a “numbered-post” system to elect its city council. See id., at 182, n. 6. A group of plaintiffs nonetheless contended that the numbered-post system was never “in force or effect” because it lacked state-law authorization. We noted that the validity of the numbered-post system under state law was “not entirely clear.” Id., at 132. Relying on Perkins, we considered the uncertain state of Texas law “irrelevant,” for “[t]he proper comparison [wa]s between the new system and the system actually in effect on November 1, 1972, regardless of what state law might have required.” 460 U. S., at 132 (footnote omitted).
Finally, in Young v. Fordice, decided in 1997, the question was whether a provisional voter registration plan implemented by Mississippi election officials had been “in force or effect.” Believing that the state legislature was about to amend the relevant law, the officials had prepared and obtained preclearance for a new voter registration scheme. See 520 U. S., at 279. Roughly one-third of the State’s election officials implemented the plan, registering around 4,000 voters. See id., at 278, 283. As it turned out, however, the state legislature failed to pass the amendment, and the voters who had registered under the provisional plan were required to reregister. See id., at 278. When the case reached us, we rejected the argument that “the [provisional [p]lan, because it was precleared by the Attorney General, became part of the baseline against which to judge whether a future change must be precleared.” Id., at 282. Regarding the provisional plan as a “temporary misapplication of state law,” we held that, for § 5 purposes, the plan was “never ‘in force or effect.’ ” Ibid. We emphasized that the officials who implemented the provisional plan “did not intend to administer an unlawful plan” and that they abandoned it “as soon as its unlawfulness became apparent.” Id., at 283. We also noted that the provisional plan had been used for only 41 days and that the State “held no elections” during that period. Ibid.
B
Perkins and Lockhart established that an election practice may be “in force or effect” for § 5 purposes despite its illegality under state law if, as a practical matter, it was “actually in effect.” Lockhart, 460 U. S., at 132. Our more recent decision in Young, however, qualified that general rule: A practice best characterized as nothing more than a “temporary misapplication of state law,” we held, is not “ ‘in force or effect,’” even if actually implemented by state election officials. 520 U. S., at 282.
If the only relevant factors were the length of time a practice was in use and the extent to which it was implemented, this would be a close case falling somewhere between the two poles established by our prior decisions. On one hand, as in Young, the 1985 Act was a “temporary misapplication” of state law: It was on the books for just over three years and applied as a voting practice only once. In Lockhart, by contrast, the city had used the numbered-post system “for over 50 years without challenge.” 460 U. S., at 132, n. 6. (Perkins is a less clear case: The city failed to alter its practice in response to changed state law for roughly seven years, but only a single election was held during that period. See 400 U. S., at 394.) On the other hand, in Young no election occurred during the time the provisional registration plan was in use, while in this case one election was held under the later invalidated 1985 Act.
We are convinced, however, that an extraordinary circumstance not present in any past case is operative here, impelling the conclusion that the 1985 Act was never “in force or effect”: The Act was challenged in state court at first opportunity, the lone election was held in the shadow of that legal challenge, and the Act was ultimately invalidated by the Alabama Supreme Court.
These characteristics plainly distinguish the present case from Perkins and Lockhart. The state judiciary had no involvement in either of those cases, as the practices at issue were administered without legal challenge of any kind. And in Lockhart, we justified our unwillingness to incorporate a practice’s legality under state law into the §5 “force or effect” inquiry in part on this ground: “We doubt[ed] that Congress intended” to require “the Attorney General and the District Court for the District of Columbia” to engage in “speculation as to state law.” 460 U. S., at 133, n. 8. Here, in contrast, the 1985 Act’s invalidity under the Alabama Constitution has been definitively established by the Alabama Supreme Court.
The prompt legal challenge and the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision not only distinguish this case from Perkins and Lockhart; they also provide strong cause to conclude that, in the context of § 5, the 1985 Act was never “in force or effect.” A State’s highest court is unquestionably “the ultimate exposito[r] of state law.” Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 691 (1975). And because the prerogative of the Alabama Supreme Court to say what Alabama law is merits respect in federal forums, a law challenged at first opportunity and invalidated by Alabama’s highest court is properly regarded as null and void ab initio, incapable of effecting any change in Alabama law or establishing a voting practice for §5 purposes. Indeed, Kennedy and the United States appear to concede that the 1985 Act would not have been “in force or effect” had the Alabama Supreme Court stayed the 1987 election pending its decision in Stokes (or simply issued its decision sooner). See Brief for Appellees 51; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 23-24.
There is no good reason to hold otherwise simply because Alabama’s highest court, proceeding at a pace hardly uncommon in litigated controversies, did not render its decision until after an election was held. In this regard, we have recognized that practical considerations sometimes require courts to allow elections to proceed despite pending legal challenges. Cf. Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U. S. 1, 5-6 (2006) (per curiam) (“Given the imminence of the election and the inadequate time to resolve the factual disputes, our action today shall of necessity allow the election to proceed without an injunction suspending the [challenged] rules.”).
Ruling as Kennedy and the United States urge, moreover, would have the anomalous effect of binding Alabama to an unconstitutional practice because of a state trial court’s error. If the trial court had gotten the law of Alabama right, all agree, there would have been no special election and no tenable argument that the 1985 Act had ever gained “force or effect.” But the trial court misconstrued the State’s law and, due to that court’s error, an election took place. That sequence of events, the District Court held, made the Act part of Alabama’s § 5 baseline. No precedent of this Court calls for such a holding.
The District Court took care to note that its decision “d[id] not in any way undermine [Stokes and Kennedy] under state law.” 445 F. Supp. 2d, at 1337. In some theoretical sense, that may be true. Practically, however, the District Court’s decision gave controlling effect to the erroneous trial court decision and rendered the Alabama Supreme Court’s corrections inoperative. Alabama’s Constitution, that State’s Supreme Court determined, required that, in the years here involved, vacancies on the Mobile County Commission be filled by appointment rather than special election. Nothing inherent in the practice of -appointment violates the Fifteenth Amendment or the VRA. The DOJ, however, found that a change from special elections to appointment had occurred in District One, and further found that the change was retrogressive, hence barred by § 5. The District Court’s final decision, tied to the DOJ determination, thus effectively precluded the State from reinstating gubernatorial appointment, the only practice consistent with the Alabama Constitution pre-2006. Indeed, Kennedy’s counsel forthrightly acknowledged that the position she defends would “loc[k] into place” an unconstitutional practice. Tr. of Oral Arg. 32.
The dissent, too, appears to concede that its reading of § 5 would bind Alabama to an unconstitutional practice because of an error by the state trial court. See post, at 435. But it contends that this imposition is no more “offensive to state sovereignty” than “effectively requiring a State to administer a law it has repealed,” post, at 436 — a routine consequence of § 5. The result described by the dissent, however, follows directly from the Constitution’s instruction that a state law may not be enforced if it conflicts with federal law. See Art. VI, cl. 2. Section 5 prohibits States from making retrogressive changes to their voting practices, and thus renders any such changes unenforceable. To be sure, this result constrains States’ legislative freedom. But the rule advocated by the dissent would effectively preclude Alabama’s highest court from applying to a state law a provision of the State Constitution entirely harmonious with federal law. That sort of interference with a state supreme court’s ability to determine the content of state law, we think it plain, is a burden of a different order.
This burden is more than a hypothetical concern. The realities of election litigation are such that lower state courts often allow elections to proceed based on erroneous interpretations of state law later corrected on appeal. See, e.g., Akins v. Secretary of State, 154 N. H. 67, 67-68, 74, 904 A. 2d 702, 703,708 (2006) (preelection challenge rejected by a state trial court but eventually sustained in a postelection decision by the State Supreme Court); Cobb v. State Canvassing Bd., 2006-NMSC-034, ¶¶ 1-17,140 N. M. 77, 79-83 (same); Maryland Green Party v. Maryland Bd. of Elections, 377 Md. 127, 137-139, 832 A. 2d 214,220-221 (2003) (same); O’Callaghan v. State, 914 P. 2d 1250,1263-1264 (Alaska 1996) (same); Peloza v. Freas, 871 P. 2d 687, 688, 692 (Alaska 1994) (same). We decline to adopt a rigid interpretation of “in force or effect” that would deny state supreme courts the opportunity to correct similar errors in the future.
C
Although our reasoning and the particular facts of this case should make the narrow scope of our holding apparent, we conclude with some cautionary observations. First, the presence of a judgment by Alabama’s highest court declaring the 1985 Act invalid under the State Constitution is critical to our decision. We do not suggest the outcome would be the same if a potentially unlawful practice had simply been abandoned by state officials after initial use in an election. Cf. Perkins, 400 U. S., at 395. Second, the 1985 Act was challenged the first time it was invoked and struck down shortly thereafter. The same result would not necessarily follow if a practice were invalidated only after enforcement without challenge in several previous elections. Cf. Young, 520 U. S., at 283 (“[T]he simple fact that a voting practice is unlawful under state law does not show, entirely by itself, that the practice was never fin force or effect.’... A State, after all, might maintain in effect for many years a plan that technically... violated some provision of state law.”). Finally, the consequence of the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in Stokes was to reinstate a practice — gubernatorial appointment — identical to the State’s §5 baseline. Preclearance might well have been required had the court instead ordered the State to adopt a novel practice.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter joins, dissenting.
Voting practices in Alabama today are vastly different from those that prevailed prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973 et seq. Even though many of those changes are, at least in part, the consequence of vigorous and sustained enforcement of the VRA, it may well be true that today the statute is maintaining strict federal controls that are not as necessary or appropriate as they once were. The principal events at issue in this case occurred in the 1980’s, when the State’s transition from a blatantly discriminatory regime was well underway.
Nevertheless, since Congress recently decided to renew the VRA, and our task is to interpret that statute, we must give the VRA the same generous interpretation that our cases have consistently endorsed throughout its history. In my judgment, the Court’s decision today is not faithful to those cases or to Congress’ intent to give § 5 of the VRA,
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of our Constitution guarantee that a person brought to trial in any state or federal court must be afforded the right to the assistance of counsel before he can be validly convicted and punished by imprisonment. In Faretta v. California, 422 U. S. 806 (1975), we decided that the defendant also “has a constitutional right to proceed without counsel when he voluntarily and intelligently elects to do so.” Id., at 807. Although that statement arguably embraces the entire judicial proceeding, we also phrased the question as whether a State may “constitutionally hale a person into its criminal courts and there force a lawyer upon him, even when he insists that he wants to conduct his own defense.” Ibid. Our conclusion in Faretta extended only to a defendant’s “constitutional right to conduct his own defense.” Id., at 836. Accordingly, our specific holding was confined to the right to defend oneself at trial. We now address the different question whether the reasoning in support of that holding also applies when the defendant becomes an appellant and assumes the burden of persuading a reviewing court that the conviction should be reversed. We have concluded that it does not.
I
Martinez describes himself as a self-taught paralegal with 25 years’ experience at 12 different law firms. See App. 13. While employed as an office assistant at a firm in Santa Ana, California, Martinez was accused of converting $6,000 of a client’s money to his own use. He was charged in a two-count information with grand theft and the fraudulent appropriation of the property of another. He chose to represent himself at trial before a jury, because he claimed “‘there wasn’t an attorney on earth who’d believe me once he saw my past [criminal record].’ ” Id., at 15. The jury acquitted him on Count 1, grand theft, but convicted him on Count 2, embezzlement. The jury also found that he had three prior convictions; accordingly, under California’s “three strikes” law, the court imposed a mandatory sentence of 25-years-to-life in prison. See Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§ 667(d) and (e)(2) (West 1999). Martinez filed a timely notice of appeal as well as a motion to represent himself and a waiver of counsel. The California Court of Appeal denied his motion, and the California Supreme Court denied his application for a writ of mandate. While the California Supreme Court did not issue an opinion in this ease, the Court of Appeal previously had explained:
“There is no constitutional right to self-representation on the initial appeal as of right. The right to counsel on appeal stems from the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, not from the Sixth Amendment, which is the foundation on which Faretta is based. The denial of self-representation at this level does not violate due process or equal protection guarantees.” People v. Scott, 64 Cal. App. 4th 550, 554, 75 Cal. Rptr. 2d 315, 318 (1998).
We granted certiorari because Martinez has raised a question on which both state and federal courts have expressed conflicting views. 526 U. S. 1064 (1999). We now affirm.
II
The Faretta majority based its conclusion on three interrelated arguments. First, it examined historical evidence identifying a right of self-representation that had been protected by federal and state law since the beginning of our Nation, 422 U. S., at 812-817. Second, it interpreted the structure of the Sixth Amendment, in the light of its English and colonial background, id., at 818-832. Third, it concluded that even though it “is undeniable that in most criminal prosecutions defendants could better defend with counsel's guidance than by their own unskilled efforts,” a knowing and intelligent waiver “must be honored out of That respect for the individual which is the lifeblood of the law.’ Illinois v. Allen, 397 U. S. 337, 350-351 [(1970)].” Id., at 834. Some of the Court’s reasoning is applicable to appellate proceedings as well as to trials. There are, however, significant distinctions.
The historical evidence relied upon by Faretta as identifying a right of self-representation is not always useful because it pertained to times when lawyers were scarce, often mistrusted, and not readily available to the average person accused of crime. For one who could not obtain a lawyer, self-representation was the only feasible alternative to asserting no defense at all. Thus, a government’s recognition of an indigent defendant’s right to represent himself was comparable to bestowing upon the homeless beggar a “right” to take shelter in the sewers of Paris. Not surprisingly, early precedent demonstrates that this “right” was not always used to the defendant’s advantage as a shield, but rather was often employed by the prosecution as a sword. The principal ease cited in Faretta is illustrative. In Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U. S. 269 (1942), the Court relied on the existence of the right of self-representation as the basis for finding that an unrepresented defendant had waived his right to a trial by jury.
It has since been recognized, however, that an indigent defendant in a criminal trial has a constitutional right to the assistance of appointed counsel, see Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963). Thus, an individual’s decision to represent himself is no longer compelled by the necessity of choosing self-representation over incompetent or nonexistent representation; rather, it more likely reflects a genuine desire to “ 'conduct his own cause in his own words.’ ” Faretta, 422 U. S., at 823 (footnote omitted). Therefore, while Faretta is correct in concluding that there is abundant support for the proposition that a right to self-representation has been recognized for centuries, the original reasons for protecting that right do not have the same force when the availability of competent counsel for every indigent defendant has displaced the need — although not always the desire — for self-representation.
The scant historical evidence pertaining to the issue of self-representation on appeal is even less helpful. The Court in Faretta relied upon the description of the right in §35 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 92, which states that “the parties may plead and manage their own causes personally or by the assistance of such counsel. . . .” 422 U. S., at 812. It is arguable that this language encompasses appeals as well as trials. Assuming it does apply to appellate proceedings, however, the statutory right is expressly limited by the phrase “as by the rules of the said courts.” 1 Stat. 92. Appellate courts have maintained the discretion to allow litigants to “manage their own causes” — and some such litigants have done so effectively. That opportunity, however, has been consistently subject to each court’s own rules.
We are not aware of any historical consensus establishing a right of self-representation on appeal. We might, nonetheless, paraphrase Faretta and assert: No State or Colony ever forced counsel upon a convicted appellant, and no spokesman ever suggested that such a practice would be tolerable or advisable. 422 U. S., at 832. Such negative historical evidence was meaningful to the Faretta Court, because the fact that the “[dog] had not barked” arguably demonstrated that early lawmakers intended to preserve the “long-respected right of self-representation” at trial. Ibid. Historical silence, however, has no probative foree in the appellate context because there simply was no long-respected right of self-representation on appeal. In fact, the right of appeal itself is of relatively recent origin.
Appeals as of right in federal courts were nonexistent for the first century of our Nation, and appellate review of any sort was “rarely allowed.” Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651, 656, n. 3 (1977). The States, also, did not generally recognize an appeal as of right until Washington became the first to constitutionalize the right explicitly in 1889. There was similarly no right to appeal in criminal eases at common law, and appellate review of any sort was “limited” and “rarely used.” Thus, unlike the inquiry in Faretta, the historical evidence does not provide any support for an affirmative constitutional right to appellate self-representation.
The Faretta majority’s reliance on the structure of the Sixth Amendment is also not relevant. The Sixth Amendment identifies the basic rights that the accused shall enjoy in “all criminal prosecutions.” They are presented strictly as rights that are available in preparation for trial and at the trial itself. The Sixth Amendment does not include any right to appeal. As we have recognized, “[t]he right of appeal, as we presently know it in criminal cases, is purely a creature of statute.” Abney, 431 U. S., at 656. It necessarily follows that the Amendment itself does not provide any basis for finding a right to self-representation on appeal.
The Faretta majority’s nontextual interpretation of the Sixth Amendment also included an examination of British criminal jurisprudence and a reference to the opprobrious trial practices before the Star Chamber. 422 U. S., at 821-824. These inquiries into historical English practices, however, again do not provide a basis for extending Faretta to the appellate process, because there was no appeal from a criminal conviction in England until 1907. See Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, 21 (1956) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment); 7 Edw. VII, ch. 23 (1907). Indeed, none of our many cases safeguarding the rights of an indigent appellant has placed any reliance on either the Sixth Amendment or on Faretta. See, e. g., Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, 356-358 (1963); Griffin, 351 U. S., at 12.
Finally, the Faretta majority found that the right to self-representation at trial was grounded in part in a respect for individual autonomy. See 422 U. S., at 834. This consideration is, of course, also applicable to an appellant seeking to manage his own case. As we explained in Faretta, at the trial level “[t]o force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him.” Ibid. On appellate review, there is surely a similar risk that the appellant will be skeptical of whether a lawyer, who is employed by the same government that is prosecuting him, will serve his cause with undivided loyalty. Equally true on appeal is the related observation that it is the appellant personally who will bear the consequences of the appeal. See ibid.
In light of our conclusion that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to appellate proceedings, any individual right to self-representation on appeal based on autonomy principles must be grounded in the Due Process Clause. Under the practices that prevail in the Nation today, however, we are entirely unpersuaded that the risk of either disloyalty or suspicion of disloyalty is a sufficient concern to conclude that a constitutional right of self-representation is a necessary component of a fair appellate proceeding. We have no doubt that instances of disloyal representation are rare. In both trials and appeals there are, without question, cases in which counsel’s performance is ineffective. Even in those cases, however, it is reasonable to assume that counsel’s performance is more effective than what the unskilled appellant could have provided for himself.
No one, including Martinez and the Faretta majority, attempts to argue that as a rule pro se representation is wise, desirable, or efficient. Although we found in Faretta that the right to defend oneself at trial is “fundamental” in nature, id., at 817, it is clear that it is representation by counsel that is the standard, not the exception. See Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U. S. 285, 307 (1988) (noting the “strong presumption against” waiver of right to counsel). Our experience has taught us that “a pro se defense is usually a bad defense, particularly when compared to a defense provided by an experienced criminal defense attorney.”
As the Faretta opinion recognized, the right to self-representation is not absolute. The defendant must “ Voluntarily and intelligently”’ elect to conduct his own defense, 422 U. S., at 835 (quoting Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464-465 (1938)), and most courts require him to do so in a timely manner. He must first be “made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation.” 422 U. S., at 835. A trial judge may also terminate self-representation or appoint “standby counsel” — even over the defendant’s objection — if necessary. Id., at 834, n. 46. We have further held that standby counsel may participate in the trial proceedings, even without the express consent of the defendant, as long as that participation does not “seriously undermin[e]” the “appearance before the jury” that the defendant is representing himself. McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U. S. 168, 187 (1984). Additionally, the trial judge is under no duty to provide personal instruction on courtroom procedure or to perform any legal “chores” for the defendant that counsel would normally carry out. Id., at 183-184. Even at the trial level, therefore, the government’s interest in ensuring the integrity and efficiency of the trial at times outweighs the defendant’s interest in acting as his own lawyer.
In the appellate context, the balance between the two competing interests surely tips in favor of the State. The status of the accused defendant, who retains a presumption of innocence throughout the trial process, changes dramatically when a jury returns a guilty verdict. We have recognized this shifting focus and noted:
“[T]here are significant differences between the trial and appellate stages of a criminal proceeding. The purpose of the trial stage from the State’s point of view is to convert a criminal defendant from a person presumed innocent to one found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt....
“By contrast, it is ordinarily the defendant, rather than the State, who initiates the appellate process, seeking not to fend off the efforts of the State’s prosecutor but rather to overturn a finding of guilt made by a judge or a jury below.” Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 610 (1974).
In the words of the Faretta majority, appellate proceedings are simply not a case of “halting] a person into its criminal courts.” 422 U. S., at 807.
The requirement of representation by trained counsel implies no disrespect for the individual inasmuch as it tends to benefit the appellant as well as the court. Courts, of course, may still exercise their discretion to allow a lay person to proceed pro se. We already leave to the appellate courts’ discretion, keeping “the best interests of both the prisoner and the government in mind,” the decision whether to allow a pro se appellant to participate in, or even to be present at, oral argument. Price v. Johnston, 334 U. S. 266, 284 (1948). Considering the change in position from defendant to appellant, the autonomy interests that survive a felony conviction are less compelling than those motivating the decision in Faretta. Yet the overriding state interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice remains as strong as at the trial level. Thus, the States are clearly within their discretion to conclude that the government’s interests outweigh an invasion of the appellant’s interest in self-representation.
Ill
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that neither the holding nor the reasoning in Faretta requires California to recognize a constitutional right to self-representation on direct appeal from a criminal conviction. Our holding is, of course, narrow. It does not preclude the States from recognizing such a right under their own constitutions. Its impact on the law will be minimal, because a lay appellant’s rights to participate in appellate proceedings have long been limited by the well-established conclusions that he has no right to be present during appellate proceedings, Schwab v. Berggren, 143 U. S. 442 (1892), or to present oral argument, Price, 334 U. S., at 285-286. Meanwhile the rules governing appeals in California, and presumably those in other States as well, seem to protect the ability of indigent litigants to make pro se filings. See, e. g., People v. Wende, 25 Cal. 3d 436, 440, 600 P. 2d 1071, 1074 (1979); see also Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738 (1967). In requiring Martinez, under these circumstances, to accept against his will a state-appointed attorney, the California courts have not deprived him of a constitutional right. Accordingly, the judgment of the California Supreme Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
See, e. g., Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45 (1932); Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963); Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25 (1972).
Compare Myers v. Collins, 8 F. 3d 249, 252 (CA5 1993) (finding right of self-representation extends to appeals); Campbell v. Blodgett, 940 F. 2d 549 (CA9 1991) (same); Chamberlain v. Ericksen, 744 F. 2d 628, 630 (CA8 1984) (same); Commonwealth v. Rogers, 537 Pa. 581, 583, 645 A. 2d 223, 224 (1994) (same); State v. Van Pelt, 305 Ark. 125, 127, 810 S. W. 2d 27, 28 (1991) (same); Webb v. State, 274 Ind. 540, 542, 412 N. E. 2d 790, 792 (1980) (same); Webb v. State, 533 S. W. 2d 780, 784 (Tex. Crim. App. 1976) (same), with United States v. Gillis, 773 F. 2d 549, 560 (CA4 1985) (finding no right of self-representation on appeal); Lumbert v. Finley, 735 F. 2d 239, 246 (CA7 1984) (same); Hill v. State, 656 So. 2d 1271, 1272 (Fla. 1995) (same); State v. Gillespie, 898 S. W. 2d 738 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1994) (same).
“The colonists brought with them an appreciation of the virtues of self-reliance and a traditional distrust of lawyers. When the Colonies were first settled, ‘the lawyer was synonymous with the cringing Attorneys-General and Solidtors-General of the Crown and the arbitrary Justices of the King’s Court, all bent on the conviction of those who opposed the King’s prerogatives, and twisting the law to secure convictions.’ This prejudice gained strength in the Colonies where ‘distrust of lawyers became an institution.’ Several Colonies prohibited pleading for hire in the 17th century. The prejudice persisted into the 18th century as ‘the lower classes came to identify lawyers with the upper class.’ The years of Revolution and Confederation saw an upsurge of antilawyer sentiment, a ‘sudden revival, after the War of the Revolution, of the old dislike and distrust of lawyers as a class.’ ” Faretta, 422 U. S., at 826-827 (footnotes omitted).
Similarly, in the state eases cited by the Court in Faretta, see 422 U. S., at 813, n. 9, the defendant’s right to represent himself was often the predicate for upholding the waiver of an important right. See, e. g., Mackreth v. Wilson, 31 Ala. App. 191, 193, 15 So. 2d 112, 113 (1943) (failure of the defendant to request counsel equaled an “election” to proceed pro se); Lockard v. State, 92 Idaho 813, 822, 451 P. 2d 1014, 1023 (1969) (court relied on defendant’s right of self-representation to uphold an uncounseled guilty plea, despite claims that it was coerced); People v. Nelson, 47 Ill. 2d 570, 268 N. E. 2d 2, 3 (1971) (defendant’s pro se status is predicate for upholding waiver of indictment and jury trial and also to uphold guilty plea); Allen v. Commonwealth, 324 Mass. 558, 562-563, 87 N. E. 2d 192, 195 (1949) (life sentence upheld despite fact that indigent defendant was unable to procure counsel); Westberry v. State, 254 A. 2d 44, 46 (Me. 1969) (guilty plea upheld because defendant failed to claim indigency or to request counsel); State v. Hollman, 232 S. C. 489, 499, 102 S. E. 2d 873, 878 (1958) (right of defendant to represent himself used as basis for finding he had no right to appointed counsel). But see State v. Thomlinson, 78 S. D. 235, 237, 100 N. W. 2d 121, 122 (1960) (vacating conviction based on court’s failure to allow defendant to represent himself); State v. Penderville, 2 Utah 2d 281, 287, 272 P. 2d 195, 199 (1954) (same); Cappetta v. State, 204 So. 2d 913, 918 (Fla. App. 1967) (same), rerid, State v. Cappetta, 216 So. 2d 749, 760 (Fla. 1968) (finding voluntary and intelligent waiver of right to proceed pro sé).
See, e. g., SEC v. Sloan, 436 U. S. 103 (1978) (pro se respondent argued, briefed, and prevailed in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and this Court).
A. Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze, in The Complete Sherlock Holmes 383, 400 (1938).
See Lobsenz, A Constitutional Right to An Appeal: Guarding Against Unacceptable Risks of Erroneous Conviction, 8 U. Puget Sound L. Rev. 375,376 (1985). Although Washington was the first State to constitution-alize an appeal as of right, almost all of the States historically had some form of discretionary appellate review. See generally L. Orfield, Criminal Appeals in America 215-231 (1939).
1J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 308-310 (1883).
Some critics argue that the right to proceed pro se at trial in certain cases is akin to allowing the defendant to waive his right to a fair trial. See, e. g., United States v. Farhad, 190 F. 3d 1097, 1106-1107 (CA9 1999) (Reinhardt, J., concurring specially), cert. pending, No. 99-7127.
Decker, The Sixth Amendment Right to Shoot Oneself in the Foot: An Assessment of the Guarantee of Self-Representation Twenty Years after Faretta, 6 Seton Hall Const. L. J. 483, 598 (1996).
See id., at 544-550 (collecting 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:
|
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 INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919 (1983), this Court held unconstitutional the congressional-veto provision in §244 (c)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 66 Stat. 216, as amended, 8 U. S. C. § 1254(c)(2), and found it severable from the remainder of that Act. Petitioners, 14 commercial airlines, in the present case contend that provisions protecting employees in the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (Act), 92 Stat. 1705 (codified at various sections of Title 49 U. S. C. App.), are ineffective because § 43(f)(3) of the Act, 92 Stat. 1752, 49 U. S. C. App. § 1552(f)(3), similarly subjects to a legislative veto implementing regulations issued by the Department of Labor (DOL). We granted certiorari, 475 U. S. 1044 (1986), to consider whether that legislative-veto provision is severable from the remainder of the Act.
1 — H
After 40 years of extensive regulation of the commercial-airline industry by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), Congress in 1978 decided to make “a major change and fundamental redirection as to the manner of regulation of interstate and overseas air transportation so as to place primary emphasis on competition.” S. Rep. No. 95-631, p. 52 (1978). Congress abandoned the industrywide fare structure gradually, § 37(a), 49 U. S. C. App. § 1482(d); altered the procedures by which airlines could enter new markets, §§7 and 8, 49 U. S. C. App. §§ 1371(c) and (d); and phased out the regulatory power of the CAB, eliminating the agency altogether in 1984, § 40(a), 49 U. S. C. App. §§ 1551(a)(1)(A) and (a)(3).
Congress sought to ensure that the benefits to the public flowing from this deregulation would not be “paid for” by airline employees who had relied on the heavily regulated nature of the industry in deciding to accept and to retain positions with commercial air carriers. In order to assist employees dislocated as a result of deregulation, Congress enacted an Employee Protection Program (EPP) as §43 of the Act, 49 U. S. C. App. §1552. The EPP provides for benefits, in the event of work force reductions, to “protected employees,” who are defined as employees who had been employed by a certified carrier for at least four years as of October 24, 1978, the date the Act became effective. §§ 43(d) and (h)(1).
The first part of the EPP establishes a monthly compensation program. If an airline is forced to make severe work force reductions or to enter bankruptcy as a result of deregulation, furloughed or terminated eligible “protected employees” are entitled to federally provided monthly assistance payments. §§43(a)-(c), (e). The Secretary of Labor is directed to promulgate guidelines to be used in determining the amount of the monthly assistance payments. §43 (b)(1). The assistance, however, is expressly made “subject to such amounts as are provided in appropriation Acts.” § 43 (a)(1). No funds have ever been appropriated and the assistance program has never become operative. It is not at issue here except insofar as it is relevant to the intent of Congress in providing a legislative veto.
The second portion of the EPP imposes on airlines certified under the prior regulatory system a “duty to hire” protected employees. If a protected employee is “furloughed or otherwise terminated,” other than for cause, within 10 years of the enactment date of the statute, that employee has a “first right of hire, regardless of age, in his occupational specialty” with any carrier, covered by the section, who is “hiring additional employees.” A hiring airline is permitted, however, first to recall any of its own previously furloughed employees. § 43(d)(1). The Act also places on the Secretary the responsibility to assist protected employees in finding other employment and empowers the Secretary to require air carriers to file information necessary to provide this assistance. § 43(d)(2).
The Secretary “may issue, amend, and repeal such rules and regulations as may be necessary for the administration of [the EPP].” § 43(f)(1). The Act provides that the rule containing the guidelines for monthly assistance payments and “any other rules or regulations which the Secretary deems necessary to carry out this section shall be promulgated within six months after October 24,1978.” § 43(f)(2). Congress also included a “report and wait” provision, specifying that no final rule or regulation may be issued until 30 legislative days after it has been submitted to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation. § 43(f)(3). Finally, the EPP contains the legislative-veto provision which gave rise to this litigation. It declares that any final rule issued pursuant to §43 shall be submitted to Congress and shall become effective after 60 legislative days, unless during that 60-day period either House of Congress adopts a resolution disapproving the rule. § 43(f)(3).
II
Petitioners are certified carriers subject to the duty-to-hire provisions of the Act and to the regulations promulgated by the Secretary. They challenged the EPP in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, contending that the legislative-veto provision in § 43 is unconstitutional under Chadha, and that the entire program must be invalidated because the veto provision is nonseverable from the rest of the EPP. Respondent employee unions intervened on behalf of the Secretary. The District Court granted summary judgment for petitioners, striking down the entire EPP, but leaving the remainder of the Act intact. Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Donovan, 594 F. Supp. 92 (1984). It held the legislative-veto provision unconstitutional and ruled that it could not be severed from the EPP. Respondents appealed the finding of nonseverability. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, holding that the legislative-veto clause is severable from the remainder of the EPP program. Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Donovan, 247 U. S. App. D. C. 132, 766 F. 2d 1550 (1985). We agree and affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I — I I — I ) — I
“[A] court should refrain from invalidating more of the statute than is necessary.... ‘[Wjhenever an act of Congress contains unobjectionable provisions separable from those found to be unconstitutional, it is the duty of this court to so declare, and to maintain the act in so far as it is valid.’” Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U. S. 641, 652 (1984) (plurality opinion), quoting El Paso & Northeastern R. Co. v. Gutierrez, 215 U. S. 87, 96 (1909). The standard for determining the severability of an unconstitutional provision is well established: “ ‘Unless it is evident that the Legislature would not have enacted those provisions which are within its power, independently of that which is not, the invalid part may be dropped if what is left is fully operative as a law.’” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 108 (1976) (per curiam), quoting Champlin Refining Co. v. Corporation Comm’n of Oklahoma, 286 U. S. 210, 234 (1932). Accord: Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U. S., at 653; INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S., at 931-932; United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570, 585 (1968).
Congress could not have intended a constitutionally flawed provision to be severed from the remainder of the statute if the balance of the legislation is incapable of functioning independently. See, e. g., Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44, 70-72 (1922) (Future Trading Act held nonseverable because valid and invalid provisions so intertwined that the Court would have to rewrite the law to allow it to stand). This is not a concern, however, when the invalid provision is a legislative veto, which by its very nature is separate from the operation of the substantive provisions of a statute. Indeed, when Congress enacted legislative-veto provisions, it contemplated that activity under the legislation would take place so long as Congress refrained from exercising that power. The independent operation of a statute in the absence of a legislative-veto provision thus could be said to indicate little about the intent of Congress regarding severability of the veto.
The more relevant inquiry in evaluating severability is whether the statute will function in a manner consistent with the intent of Congress. In considering this question in the context of a legislative veto, it is necessary to recognize that the absence of the veto necessarily alters the balance of powers between the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Federal Government. Thus, it is not only appropriate to evaluate the importance of the veto in the original legislative bargain, but also to consider the nature of the delegated authority that Congress made subject to a veto. Some delegations of power to the Executive or to an independent agency may have been so controversial or so broad that Congress would have been unwilling to make the delegation without a strong oversight mechanism. The final test, for legislative vetos as well as for other provisions, is the traditional one: the unconstitutional provision must be severed unless the statute created in its absence is legislation that Congress would not have enacted.
The inquiry is eased when Congress has explicitly provided for severance by including a severability clause in the statute. This Court has held that the inclusion of such a clause creates a presumption that Congress did not intend the validity of the statute in question to depend on the validity of the constitutionally offensive provision. See INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S., at 932; Champlin Refining Co. v. Corporation Comm’n of Oklahoma, 286 U. S., at 235. In such a case, unless there is strong evidence that Congress intended otherwise, the objectionable provision can be excised from the remainder of the statute. In the absence of a severability clause, however, Congress’ silence is just that — silence—and does not raise a presumption against severability. See Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 672, 684 (1971) (plurality opinion); United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S., at 585, n. 27.
In this case, the parties disagree as to whether there is a severability clause applicable to the EPP. We need not resolve this question, for there is no need to resort to a presumption in order to find the legislative-veto provision sever-able in this case. There is abundant indication of a clear congressional intent of severability both in the language and structure of the Act and in its legislative history.
I — l
A
Congress’ intent that the EPP’s first-hire provisions should survive in the absence of the legislative-veto provision is suggested strongly by the affirmative duty the statute places directly on air carriers. The first-hire portion of the EPP establishes in detail an obligation to hire protected employees that scarcely needs the adoption of regulations by the Secretary, and thus leaves little of substance to be subject to a veto. Section 43(d), 49 U. S. C. App. § 1552(d), designates the recipients of this “first right of hire,” namely, employees defined by the Act as “protected,” who are furloughed or terminated, other than for cause, during the first 10 years of deregulation. It also specifies the class of carriers that are obligated and the extent of the obligation. Carriers previously regulated by the CAB have a duty to hire protected employees before they hire any other person, although they may first recall their own employees. The preference is limited to an individual’s occupational specialty and applies without regard to age. The language of these provisions is sufficiently unambiguous to notify carriers of their responsibilities and sufficiently detailed to require little further action on the part of the Secretary.
Congress did direct the Secretary to take certain actions with regard to the EPP’s first-hire provisions: he is to estáb-lish and periodically to publish a list of available jobs, to “make every effort” to assist protected employees in finding employment, and to encourage negotiations in rehiring and seniority. He also may require air carriers to file data necessary to fulfill these duties. §§ 43(d)(2) and (3). These obligations on the part of the Secretary are obviously designed merely to facilitate the obligation to hire imposed upon certain carriers, and their ancillary nature is further evidence that Congress delegated only limited substantive discretion to the Secretary. With this subsidiary role allotted to the Secretary, the veto provision could affect only the relatively insignificant actions he might take in connection with the duty-to-hire program. There is thus little reason to believe that Congress contemplated the possibility of vetoing any of these actions and one can infer that Congress would have been satisfied with the duty-to-hire provisions even without preserving the opportunity to veto the DOL’s regulations.
Moreover, Congress did not link specifically the operation of the first-hire provisions to the issuance of regulations. While the Secretary is explicitly directed to promulgate, by rule, guidelines for the assistance payments authorized by the EPP, § 43(b)(1), there is no similar command with regard to the duty-to-hire provisions. The Act simply provides that the Secretary “may” issue such regulations as are necessary to the administration of the program. § 43(f)(1). A duty to hire that is not dependent upon the issuance of regulations is unlikely to be dependent upon an opportunity for Congress to veto those regulations.
The regulations eventually promulgated by the DOL, 29 CFR §220.01 et seq. (1986), support the conclusion that Congress itself elaborated most of the details necessary for the first-hire program. The regulations reiterate the statutory requirements and provide a limited administrative appeal for ascertaining eligibility in the event of a dispute, §220.26, but are otherwise silent as to a mechanism for enforcing the right of hire. The primary focus is on mechanical details —notices to be sent, information to be published, and procedures to be followed. See, e. g., §§220.23, 220.25, and 220.27. Most importantly, in the regulations themselves the DOL acknowledges the duty to hire imposed directly by the Act, for the regulations are made effective subject to the proviso that “nothing in these regulations shall preclude the exercise of statutory rights and duties between October 24,1978 [the enactment date of the Act], and the effective date of these regulations.” § 220.01(g).
Not only do the first-hire provisions stand on their own, independent of any need for extensive regulations, but, should Congress object to the regulations issued, it retains a mechanism for the expression of its disapproval that reduces any disruption of congressional oversight caused by severance of the veto provision. The EPP’s “report and wait” provision in the statute requires the Secretary to forward regulations to the Transportation Committees of both Chambers of Congress and to wait 30 days before issuing them as final regulations. § 43(f)(3). This interval gives Congress an opportunity to review the regulations and either.to attempt to influence the agency’s decision, or to enact legislation preventing the regulations from taking effect.
In arguing that the legislative veto is nonseverable, petitioners place great significance on the fact that the EPP is the only section of the Act to delegate authority to the DOL and only rules issued pursuant to that section are subject to the veto. We find this emphasis misplaced. The EPP is the only aspect of the Act concerned with labor protection and thus naturally is the only provision to involve the DOL. The fact that this is the only veto in the Act is unremarkable given the nature of the rest of the statute. Although it did not remove completely the need for regulation, the Act is primarily a “deregulatory” statute and, aside from the EPP, did not create any new programs requiring congressional oversight. Moreover, the absence of a veto clause in other provisions of the Act indicates nothing about whether Congress regarded the clause as essential to the duty-to-hire provisions of § 43.
B
The legislative history of the EPP supports the conclusion that Congress would have enacted the duty-to-hire provisions even without a legislative-veto provision by revealing that Congress regarded labor protection as an important feature of the Act, while it paid scant attention to the legislative-veto provision. The bill passed by the Senate contained protections for employees that later became the heart of the labor provisions in the final Act — monetary compensation for lost wages and relocation expenses, and a hiring preference within the industry. The sponsors of the primary deregulation bill, S. 689, introduced during the first session of the 95th Congress were optimistic that deregulation would lead to an increase in the number of jobs, and that bill did not contain employee protections. But in response to union testimony that the existing protections were inadequate, and the support for labor-protection provisions expressed by administration witnesses, the compensation program and first-hire provisions were added as §22 of S. 2493, the bill introduced in the second session. With the inclusion of the labor provisions, the bill was viewed as “strik[ing] the proper balance between the legitimate demands of industry, consumers, labor, and management.” 124 Cong. Rec. 10654 (1978) (remarks of Sen. Percy).
The Senate Committee Report expressed its reasons for providing protection for individual airline employees as follows:
“[A]n individual employee will be able to do little to adjust to the new structure. Many airline employees have given most of their working lives to the air transportation industry and have too much invested to leave it now. In many cases, a job shift even within the industry would be costly because of lost seniority. Older employees looking for a new job might encounter difficulties because of their age. Since employees will not be ab[l]e to adjust in the sense their employers can, the Committee believes that a reasonable program of transition assistance should be provided.
"... Because it is the public who will benefit from the regulatory reform provided for in this bill, the public should be willing to assume reasonably close to the full cost of such reform, including the cost of transition for any dislocated employees. The Committee believes that the Congress, on behalf of the American people, must insure that the benefits to the public which result from its decision to alter substantially the regulation of air transportation are not paid for by a minority— the airline employees and their families who have relied on the present system.” S. Rep. No. 95-631, p. 114 (1978).
In contrast to this extensive discussion of employee protection, the Committee paid scant attention to legislative oversight. When it did show concern with retaining control over the form the program would take, it was in the context of the compensation program, not the duty to hire:
“Eligible employees who lost their jobs would be entitled to monthly assistance payments for a maximum of 3 years or until they were reemployed, whichever occurred first. The amount of such payment would be equal to a percentage of former wages, as determined by regulations promulgated by the Department of Labor. These regulations will be subject to congressional re view. The committee considered setting statutory percentage figures and maximum dollar amounts, but concluded that the Secretary of Labor, after consultation with the Secretary of Transportation, will be in a better position to determine the appropriate amounts. The committee intends that the percentages chosen will result in compensation payments that are less than the employees’ after-tax income in order to preserve maximum incentives for employees to secure comparable work.” Id., at 116-117 (emphasis added).
In introducing S. 2493 on the floor, Senator Cannon discussed the EPP, but did not mention the legislative-veto power, or make note of any need for congressional oversight. 124 Cong. Rec. 10647-10649 (1978). The summary of the bill printed in the record similarly omitted any indication that the legislation contained a veto. Id., at 10649. The employment provisions were discussed extensively during the floor debate on airline deregulation and support for the duty-to-hire requirement was repeatedly voiced. Several amendments modifying the monthly assistance program, both to restrict and to liberalize payments, were offered, but there was no attempt to alter the duty-to-hire program. The most dramatic endorsement of the EPP as a whole came in response to an amendment offered by Senator Hatch that would have eliminated the EPP completely. The Senate resoundingly rejected the amendment by the lopsided vote of 85-7. Id., at 10679, 10682. In contrast to this emphasis on the substantive aspects of the EPP, neither supporters nor opponents of the bill ever mentioned the legislative-veto provision on the floor of the Senate.
The House bill, H. R. 12611, which lacked a legislative-veto provision, contained even more encompassing protections for displaced employees. In its § 32, it provided protections for airline workers identical to those in the rail industry and stipulated that no new authority granted by the Act could be exercised by a carrier unless the Secretary certified that employees would be protected. The House adopted this bill without apparent controversy over the labor provisions and, despite the broad delegation of power to the Secretary, without any mention of congressional oversight. 124 Cong. Rec. 30661-30708 (1978).
The bill that emerged from the Conference Committee contained a version of the EPP “basically the same as the Senate bill.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1779, p. 105 (1978) (listing the differences). The debate on the final bill again illustrates the relative unimportance of the legislative-veto provision in this legislation. The only discussion of the EPP reflected wholesale approval of the program, with many Members stressing their support for the provisions, or regrets that the EPP provisions were not even stronger. One comment alone — in fact, the only such comment made during the entire deliberation on the Act — concerned the legislative veto. This was an endorsement of the provision by Representative Levitas, which is best understood as an expression of his general support for legislative-veto provisions rather than a judgment that oversight was particularly important to the EPP.
V
The language and structure of the EPP and its legislative history provide an uncontradicted view of congressional intent with regard to severance of the legislative-veto provisions from the duty-to-hire program. This evidence leads to the conclusion that any concerns about the operation of the EPP related principally to the financial-assistance program. Even this concern was minimal. The emphasis during deliberations on the Act was placed overwhelmingly on the substantive provisions of the statute, with scant attention paid to any need for congressional oversight. In the almost total absence of any contrary refrain, we cannot conclude that Congress would have failed to enact the Airline Deregulation Act, including the EPP’s first-hire program, if the legislative veto had not been included. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
A protected employee is “eligible” for monthly assistance if he has been deprived of employment or adversely affected with respect to compensation as a result of a “qualifying dislocation.” Any employee terminated for cause is ineligible. § 43(a). A “qualifying dislocation” is a bankruptcy or “major contraction” of an air carrier previously certified by the CAB occurring during the first 10 complete calendar years following enactment of the Act, the major cause of which is the change in regulatory structure provided by the Act. § 43(h)(2). A major contraction is defined as a work force reduction of at least 772% within a 12-month period. § 43(h)(4).
If both Houses adopt an approval resolution during the 60-day period, the rule becomes effective immediately. § 43(f)(3).
The Act became law on October 24, 1978. In March 1979, the Secretary proposed regulations for both the financial-assistance and duty-to-hire provisions of the EPP. 44 Fed. Reg. 19146. Revised proposed regulations relating only to the duty to hire were published in September 1982. 47 Fed. Reg. 41304. The final rules were promulgated and submitted to Congress in November 1983, 48 Fed. Reg. 52854, and but for this litigation would have become effective.
The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the District Court for consideration of petitioners’ remaining challenges to the DOL regulations. These are not at issue here. 247 U. S. App. D. C. 132, 137, 766 F. 2d 1550, 1565 (1985). The District Court sustained all but one of the regulations. 632 F. Supp. 178 (1986). It remanded to the Secretary “for further explanation” of the issue whether 29 CFR § 220.21(a)(1) (1986), dealing with the initial hiring age of flight officers and pilots, was valid in the light of the carriers’ obligation to maintain air safety. 632 F. Supp., at 184. The Court of Appeals reversed in part. 258 U. S. App. D. C. 89, 809 F. 2d 930 (1987) (Table). In an unpublished memorandum it held that the remand of this issue was inappropriate because “Congress made it absolutely clear,” § 43(d)(1), that the hiring preference should apply “regardless of age.” The Court of Appeals remanded for agency clarification of a different issue: the scope of the exception to the duty to hire created by an equal-opportunity agreement as established by 29 CFR §§220.29 and 220.01(j) (1986). With the exception of these provisions, the duty-to-hire regulations are now in force.
Petitioners contend that the Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction because the District Court held “an Act of Congress unconstitutional,” which holding must therefore be appealed directly to this Court pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1252. The issue at hand, however, is not the constitutionality of the remaining provisions, but their severability from the unconstitutional legislative-veto provision, which is a question of legislative intent. The appeal was properly taken to the Court of Appeals pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §1291. See EEOC v. Allstate Insurance Co., 467 U. S. 1232 (1984); Heckler v. Edwards, 465 U. S. 870, 885 (1984).
See Hearings on the Supreme Court Decision in INS v. Chadha and Its Implications for Congressional Oversight and Agency Rulemaking, before the Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 98th Cong., 1st Sess., 138 (1983) (remarks of Rep. Berman) (“[I]t’s hard for me to envision a statutory enactment that probably couldn’t be viewed as fully operative, even though the legislative veto was struck down. It would just be a different kind of operation that Congress contemplated”).
Petitioners argue that the Court of Appeals formulated a completely new standard for severability. They rest this argument on the court’s statement that an invalid portion of a statute may be severed unless, “as the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals would put it,” it is proved “that Congress would have preferred no airline employee protection provision at all to the existing provision sans the veto provision.” 246 U. S. App. D. C., at 143, 766 F. 2d, at 1561. See Gulf Oil Corp. v. Dyke, 734 F. 2d 797, 804 (Temp. Emerg. Ct. App.), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 852 (1984). Petitioners interpret this statement as a signal that the court asked whether Congress would have enacted some form of protection for airline employees, rather than whether Congress would have enacted the same protections currently found in the Act. Any such inquiry, of course, would be tautological, as Congress’ intent to enact a statute on the subject is apparent from the existence of the EPP in the Act. We find the Court of Appeals’ language to be completely consistent with the established severability standard. Even if one had doubts, when the court’s analysis is viewed in its entirety, it is plain that the correct standard was applied in this case.
The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 does not contain a severability clause, but it amends the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, 72 Stat. 731, which does contain such a clause. See § 1504, 72 Stat. 811; see also note following 49 U. S. C. App. § 1301 (Separability of Provisions). The applicability of this clause to § 43 is in doubt, however, because, unlike many sections of the Deregulation Act, the EPP does not amend provisions of the Aviation Act or any other pre-existing statute, but instead establishes a new program. See note following 49 U. S. C. App. § 1552 (Codification: “Section il was enacted as part of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, and not as part of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 which comprises this chapter”).
A similar conclusion was reached in McDonald v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 625 F. Supp. 762, 766 (SDNY 1986), which sustained a private action brought by an individual pilot claiming the defendant carrier wrongfully denied him first right of hire under § 43.
The independent functioning of the Act’s first-hire provisions stands in contrast to the important role of the Secretary in the monthly assistance program. The Secretary is the individual responsible for making the payments to individuals found by the Secretary to be eligible protected employees. § 43(a)(1). The Act designates that monthly assistance payments shall be made until the employee obtains other employment, for a maximum of 72 months, § 43(e), but delegates to the Secretary the task of determining the amount of the payments. He is directed by the Act to issue guidelines to be used by him in determining the amount of each monthly assistance payment for each class and craft of employees. § 43 (b)(1). He also has the responsibility to determine and reimburse “reasonable moving expenses” and losses resulting from the sale of a principal residence at a price below its fair market value. § 43(c). The compensation program, however, could be controlled through appropriations, see §43 (a)(1), which diminishes the need for Congress to retain other means of preventing the Secretary’s regulations from taking effect.
In addition, the rule establishing guidelines for assistance payments is the sole rule mentioned explicitly in § 43(f)(2), which requires the Secretary to promulgate the rules necessary to “carry out” the section within six months after enactment of the Act.
The 95th Congress, which enacted the Airline Deregulation Act, frequently incorporated “report and wait” provisions into statutes. For a compilation of these, see Congressional Research Service, C. Norton, 1976-1977 Congressional Acts Authorizing Prior Review, Approval or Disapproval of Proposed Executive Actions, Report No. 78-117 G, pp. 19-26 (1978); Congressional Research Service, C. Norton, 1978 Congressional Acts Authorizing Congressional Approval or Disapproval of Proposed Executive Actions, Report No. 79-46 G, pp. 16-41 (1979).
In Sibbach v. Wilson & Co., 312 U. S. 1 (1941), the Court approved Rule 35 of the then newly promulgated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which had been subject to a “report and wait” provision stipulating that the Rules “shall not take effect until they shall have been reported to Congress by the Attorney General at the beginning of a regular session thereof and until after the close of such session.” Act of June 19,1934, ch. 651, § 2, 48 Stat. 1064. The Court stated approvingly: “The value of the reservation of the power to examine proposed rules, laws and regulations before they become effective is well understood by Congress. It is frequently, as here, employed to make sure that the action under the delegation sqifares with the Congressional purpose.” 312 U. S., at 15. The statute at issue in INS v. Chadha also included notification procedures and a delay period, which this Court said would resemble a “report and wait” provision absent the one-House veto it found invalid. 462 U. S., at 935, n. 9.
See, e. g., §33(a), 92 Stat. 1732 (CAB’s duty to implement program ensuring adequate air service to small communities); § 12, 92 Stat. 1716 (CAB’s authority to issue rules modifying automatic entry program); §§ 6 and 33(a), 92 Stat. 1709 and 1738 (Secretary of Transportation’s and FAA Administrator’s duty to establish aircraft safety standards).
As petitioners acknowledge, the Act has the stated purpose of placing “maximum reliance on competitive market forces.” § 3(a)(4), 92 Stat. 1706, 49 U. S. C. App. § 1302(a)(4). See Brief for Petitioners 29-30.
See Hearings on S. 292 and S. 689, Regulatory Reform in Air Transportation, before the Subcommittee on Aviation of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 110 (1977) (Senate Deregulation Hearings) (remarks of Sen. Kennedy); id., at pt. 4, p. 1844 (remarks of Sen. Cannon). During floor debate on the final Act, Senator Kennedy stated that “the indicators are all positive, and employment will continue to increase as the carriers respond to the changes and new opportunities deregulation has brought.” 124 Cong. Rec. 37419 (1978). See also id., at 10677 (statement of Sen. Cannon).
Labor protections had been provided in the airline industry in merger cases. A typical formula for employee protection included four years of supplemental compensation for those whose new jobs were at a lower salary, a dismissal allowance for up to five years for those losing their jobs, depending on length of service, and an integration of seniority lists. See United-Capital Merger Case, 33 C.A.B. 307, 342-347 (1961); Allegheny-Mohawk Merger Case, 59 C.A.B. 22, 31-40 (1972).
Union leaders urged that protections were needed in the event of bankruptcies and route discontinuations, similar to those afforded employees in the railroad industry. See, e. g., Interstate Commerce Act, 49 U. S. C. § 11347 (railroad merger approval subject to “a fair arrangement” to protect employees, including provisions that employees will not be in a worse position with regard to employment for four years); Rail Passenger Service Act, 45 U. S. C. §§ 565(a) and (b) (similar protections for employees affected by route discontinuations). See Senate Deregulation Hearings, pt. 2, p. 717 (statement of Frank E. Fitzsimmons, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters); id., at pt. 3, p. 1320 (statement of William G. Mahoney, counsel to several airline labor unions).
Charles L. Sch
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:
|
M
|
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.
Me. Justice Burton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a companion case to No. 393, Labor Board v. Denver Building Trades Council (the Denver case), ante, p. 675, and No. 108, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. Labor Board (the Greenwich case), ante, p. 694.
The principal question is whether, under the following circumstances, a union engaged in an unfair labor practice within the meaning of § 8 (b) (4) (A) of the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 : On the day before the effective date of that amendment, the union ordered its members, who were working on a dwelling renovation project, to engage in a strike, where an object thereof was to force the owner of the dwelling to cancel a contract for the installation of wall and floor coverings; and then for several days, on and after the effective date of the amendment, the strike was continued under the same conditions which created it and for the same objective. For the reasons hereafter stated, we hold that an unfair labor practice was engaged in on and after the effective date of the amendment.
For some years before March, 1947, Ira A. Watson Company, a Rhode Island corporation (here called Watson's), operated a general retail store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, including a department for the sale and installation of wall and floor coverings. Since that time Watson’s has operated a specialty store devoted to those activities. At about the same time, Local 74, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, A. F. of L. (here called the union), and its business agent, Jack Henderson (respectively the petitioners in the instant case), asked Watson’s to enter into a closed-shop agreement with the union recognizing it as the bargaining agent of Watson’s installation employees. None of its employees were members of the union and Watson’s declined to enter the agreement. Thereupon, from the latter part of March until about August 28, 1947, petitioners maintained a picket in front of Watson’s store carrying a placard. This announced, over the name of the union, that Watson’s was “unfair to organized labor” or later “This store employs non-union labor.” Watson’s sometimes sold wall or floor coverings without installing them and, at other times, it insisted upon installing such coverings as a condition of their sale. When the installations were made by Watson’s, the work was done by nonunion men.
August 7,1947, George D. Stanley, who owned a dwelling near Chattanooga, contracted with D. F. Parker to improve and renovate it. Parker was to furnish and supervise the workmen and select the materials. Stanley was to pay the wages of the workmen, the cost of the materials, and a ten per cent commission to Parker on both. Parker was a member of the union and he hired union members to do the carpentry work. If the wall and floor coverings desired by Stanley had been available in Chattanooga elsewhere than at Watson’s, Parker would have purchased them from such source and would have employed union men to install them. However, neither Parker nor Stanley could find such coverings in Chattanooga except at Watson’s and Watson’s insisted on installing them as a condition of their sale. Although knowing that Watson’s would use nonunion men to make the installations, Stanley, with Parker’s implied consent, contracted with Watson’s for the purchase and installation of the coverings. Watson’s began its installation Sunday, August 17, when there were no other workmen present. Monday and Tuesday, apparently with Parker’s approval, the installation continued during regular working hours. Wednesday, two of the union carpenters stopped work for half an hour because of the presence on the job of the nonunion installation workers. Parker, however, induced the carpenters to resume work. This situation came to the attention of the union and, on Thursday, August 21, Henderson came to the project and told the four union carpenters who were working there that they could not continue to work with nonunion men or where nonunion men were employed. At that hour, none of Watson’s men were present but the installation of coverings contracted for by Stanley with Watson’s had not been completed. The union men finished their day’s work but, in compliance with the instructions thus issued by petitioners, did not return on the following days. Watson’s men returned and completed their work by August 28, and the entire renovation was finished by the end of August. The unfinished carpentry work was done by two of the four union men who had been on the job and who returned without the knowledge or consent of petitioners. On August 22, 1947, § 8 .(b) (4) (A) took effect.
Watson’s promptly filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board based upon the continuance of the above strike by petitioners on and after August 22. The Regional Director issued a complaint charging the union and Henderson with engaging in an unfair labor practice as defined in § 8 (b) (4) (A). Pursuant to § 10 (l), the Regional Director petitioned the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee for injunctive relief. This relief was denied on the ground that the conduct complained of took place before August 22 and was at that time lawful. 74 F. Supp. 499.
After hearings before an examiner, the Board, with one member dissenting, affirmed the rulings of its examiner, attached his intermediate report to its decision, 80 N. L. R. B. 533, 540, and adopted his findings, conclusions and recommendations with additions and modifications. It ordered the union and Henderson to—
“Cease and desist from engaging in or inducing the members of Local 74 to engage in a strike or a concerted refusal in the course of their employment to perform services for any employer, where an object thereof is to require any employer or other person to cease doing business with Ira A. Watson, doing business as Watson’s Specialty Store.” Id., at 539.
The dissent was on the ground that the effect of the actions complained of upon interstate commerce was so remote and insubstantial and the controversy was so local in character that it was undesirable for the Board to exercise federal power in relation to it. Id., at 540. On a review under § 10 (e), the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered enforcement of the order. 181 F. 2d 126. We granted certiorari. 340 U. S. 902. See Labor Board v. Denver Building Trades Council, ante, at p. 681.
1. Petitioners contest the jurisdiction of the Board on the ground of the insufficiency of the effect of the actions complained of upon interstate commerce. We conclude that the findings in the intermediate report, adopted by the Board and accepted by the court below, are sufficient to sustain the Board’s jurisdiction. Denver case, ante, at pp. 683-685. From March to September, 1947, Watson’s purchased about $93,000 worth of goods. Thirty-three percent was shipped to it in interstate business. Thirty percent more had been manufactured outside of Tennessee. Watson’s sales and installation jobs came to about $100,000 of which eight percent represented sales and installations outside of the State. The Board also referred to the fact that Watson’s operated a system of 26 or 27 retail stores in seven different states, of which the Chattanooga store apparently was an integral part.
2. The complaint was not against the picketing at Watson’s store from March to August 28, 1947. See Labor Board v. International Rice Milling Co., ante, p. 665. The complaint was directed against petitioners’ extension of their activities to the Stanley project by there ordering a strike, or concerted cessation of work, on the part of Stanley’s union carpenters with an object of forcing Stanley to cancel his installation contract with Watson’s. Section 8 (c) is not applicable. This strike was ordered by Henderson in person. The union and he both engaged in and ordered the strike. The carpenters, as individual employees are not charged with an unfair labor practice. The charge is confined to the actions of the labor organization and its agent in engaging in, ordering and continuing a strike for a proscribed object after Congress had made such conduct an unfair labor practice.
3. As determined in the Denver case, it is enough that one of the objects of the action complained of was to force Stanley to cancel Watson’s contract. It does not immunize such action from § 8 (b) (4) (A) to show that it also had as an object the enforcement of a rule of the union that its members should not work on a project on which nonunion men were employed. The statute did not require, the individual carpenters to remain on this job. It did, however, make it an unfair labor practice for the union or its agent to engage in a strike, as they did here, when an object of doing so was to force the project owner to cancel his installation contract with Watson’s.
4. Even assuming that, if petitioners had engaged in such a strike or had induced the union carpenters to take part in it on and after August 22, 1947, it would have been an unfair labor practice under the new amendment, petitioners contend that their actions all took place before August 22, and that they did nothing on or after that date which is proscribed by § 8 (b) (4) (A). The answer turns on what actually took place on and after August 22. As to that the Board concluded:
“Nor is it material . . . that the labor dispute had its origin before the effective date of the amended Act, for we are convinced that it was continued and prolonged after the effective date by the very same factors which originally created it and for the same original objective which, as found above, Section 8 (b) (4) (A) declares unlawful. Thus, at material times both before and after the effective date of the amendments ... (2) the Respondents’ [here petitioners] strike order, which admittedly was never rescinded, was outstanding and effectively prevented the carpenters from officially working on the job as long as Watson’s men were also working; . . . .” 80 N. L. R. B. at 537-538.
We agree with the court below in sustaining that conclusion.
5. We have considered the remaining questions raised by petitioners, based on constitutional or other grounds, and have resolved them in favor of sustaining the Board and the court below. This case has not been rendered moot by the completion of the renovation project. The complaint was against petitioners’ use of secondary pressure upon Watson’s in a manner proscribed by the statute. The use of such pressure on this renovation project was merely a sample of what might be repeated elsewhere if not prohibited. The underlying dispute between petitioners and Watson’s has not been shown to have been resolved.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Jackson are of the opinion that the judgment should be reversed.
61 Stat. 140-141, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. III) § 158 (b) (4) (A). For text see Labor Board v. Denver Building Trades Council, ante, p. 677, note 1.
The Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, was enacted into law June 23, 1947, but Title I, containing § 8 (b) (4) (A), took effect 60 days later. 61 Stat. 152, 162, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill), note following §151.
The complaint originally also charged violations of § 8 (b) (1) (A) but the Board dismissed those allegations and they are not before us.
61 Stat. 149-150, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill) § 160 (Z). For text see Labor Board v. Denver Building Trades Council, ante, p. 682, note 10.
61 Stat. 147-148, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill) § 160 (e).
The examiner expressed doubt as to whether the carpenters were employees of Parker or of Stanley but decided to assume that they . were employees of Stanley. 80 N. L. R. B. at 544, n. 12.
61 Stat. 142, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill) § 158 (c). For text see the Denver case, ante, p. 690, note 20.
The examiner found that Henderson testified credibly that this rule applied whether or not the nonunion men were physically present at the moment. It was enough that nonunion men were employed on the project. Henderson, therefore, applied the rule here because, although Watson’s men were absent from the project on August 21, 1947, Watson’s installation contract was not yet complete, and it was clear that its completion would mean the return of nonunion men to the project. Henderson testified also that the rule applied even to the employment of nonunion labor which did not come under the jurisdiction of Local 74. 80 N. L. R. B. at 546, 553, n. 33.
In the proceedings for an injunction under § 10 (1) the District Court so held. Its decision, however, was based upon the affidavits before it rather than upon the record before the Board, and its conclusion did not bind the Board in the proceeding on the merits. 74 F. Supp. 499, and see Labor Board v. Denver Building Trades Council, ante, pp. 681-683.
Petitioners gain nothing from § 102: “No provision of this title [which includes § 8 (b) (4) (A)] shall be deemed to make an unfair labor practice any act which was performed prior to the date of the enactment of this Act [June 23, 1947] which did not constitute an unfair labor practice prior thereto . . . .” 61 Stat. 152, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill), note following § 158.
For a comparable result relating to a labor dispute which commenced before the taking effect of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, see Jeffery-De Witt Insulator Co. v. Labor Board, 91 F. 2d 134.
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 Rutledge
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Not often, since the decision in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, is this Court asked to create a new substantive legal liability without legislative aid and as at the common law. This case of first impression here seeks such a result. It arises from the following circumstances.
Early one morning in February, 1944, John Etzel, a soldier, was hit and injured by a truck of the Standard Oil Company of California at a street intersection in Los Angeles. The vehicle was driven by Boone, an employee of the company. At the Government’s expense of $123.45 Etzel was hospitalized, and his soldier’s pay of $69.31 was continued during his disability. Upon the payment of $300 Etzel released the company and Boone “from any and all claims and demands which I now have or may hereafter have, on account of or arising out of” the accident.
From these facts the novel question springs whether the Government is entitled to recover from the respondents as tort-feasors the amounts expended for hospitalization and soldier’s pay, as for loss of Etzel’s services. A jury being waived, the District Court made findings of fact and conclusions of law in the Government’s favor upon all the issues, including those of negligence and contributory negligence. Judgment was rendered accordingly. 60 F. Supp. 807. This the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, 153 F. 2d 958, and we granted certiorari because of the novelty and importance of the principal question. 329 U. S. 696.
As the case reaches us, a number of issues contested in the District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals have been eliminated. Remaining is the basic question of respondents’ liability for interference with the government-soldier relation and consequent loss to the United States, together with questions whether this issue is to be determined by federal or state law and concerning the effect of the release. In the view we take of the case it is not necessary to consider the questions relating to the release, for we have reached the conclusion that respondents are not liable for the injuries inflicted upon the Government.
We agree with the Government’s view that the creation or negation of such a liability is not a matter to be determined by state law. The case in this aspect is governed by the rule of Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U. S. 363, and National Metropolitan Bank v. United States, 323 U. S. 454, rather than that of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, supra. In the Clearfield case, involving liabilities arising out of a forged indorsement of a check issued by the United States, the Court said: “The authority to issue the check had its origin in the Constitution and the statutes of the United States and was in no way dependent on the laws of Pennsylvania or of any other state. Cf. Board of Commissioners v. United States, 308 U. S. 343; Royal Indemnity Co. v. United States, 313 U. S. 289. The duties imposed upon the United States and the rights acquired by it as a result of the issuance find their roots in the same federal sources. Cf. Deitrick v. Greaney, 309 U. S. 190; D’Oench, Duhme & Co. v. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp., 315 U. S. 447. In the absence of an applicable Act of Congress it is for the federal courts to fashion the governing rule of law according to their own standards.” 318 U. S. at 366-367.
Although the Clearfield case applied these principles to a situation involving contractual relations of the Government, they are equally applicable in the facts of this case where the relations affected are noncontractual or tortious in character.
Perhaps no relation between the Government and a citizen is more distinctively federal in character than that between it and members of its armed forces. To whatever extent state law may apply to govern the relations between soldiers or others in the armed forces and persons outside them or nonfederal governmental agencies, the scope, nature, legal incidents and consequences of the relation between persons in service and the Government are fundamentally derived from federal sources and governed by federal authority. See Tarble’s Case, 13 Wall. 397; Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U. S. 487. So also we think are interferences with that relationship such as the facts of this case involve. For, as the Federal Government has the exclusive power to establish and define the relationship by virtue of its military and other powers, equally clearly it has power in execution of the same functions to protect the relation once formed from harms inflicted by others.
Since also the Government’s purse is affected, as well as its power to protect the relationship, its fiscal powers, to the extent that they are available to protect it against financial injury, add their weight to the military basis for excluding state intrusion. Indeed, in this aspect the case is not greatly different from the Clearfield case or from one involving the Government’s paramount power of control over its own property, both to prevent its unauthorized use or destruction and to secure indemnity for those injuries.
As in the Clearfield case, moreover, quite apart from any positive action by Congress, the matter in issue is neither primarily one of state interest nor exclusively for determination by state law within the spirit and purpose of the Erie decision. The great object of the Erie case was to secure in the federal courts, in diversity cases, the application of the same substantive law as would control if the suit were brought in the courts of the state where the federal court sits. It was the so-called “federal common law” utilized as a substitute for state power, to create and enforce legal relationships in the area set apart in our scheme for state rather than for federal control, that the Erie decision threw out. Its object and effect were thus to bring federal judicial power under subjection to state authority in matters essentially of local interest and state control.
Conversely there was no purpose or effect for broadening state power over matters essentially of federal character or for determining whether issues are of that nature. The diversity jurisdiction had not created special problems of that sort. Accordingly the Erie decision, which related only to the law to be applied in exercise of that jurisdiction, had no effect, and was intended to have none, to bring within the governance of state law matters exclusively federal, because made so by constitutional or valid congressional command, or others so vitally affecting interests, powers and relations of the Federal Government as to require uniform national disposition rather than diversified state rulings. Cf. Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U. S. at 366-368. Hence, although federal judicial power to deal with common-law problems was cut down in the realm of liability or its absence governable by state law, that power remained unimpaired for dealing independently, wherever necessary or appropriate, with essentially federal matters, even though Congress has not acted affirmatively about the specific question.
In this sense therefore there remains what may be termed, for want of a better label, an area of “federal common law” or perhaps more accurately “law of independent federal judicial decision,” outside the constitutional realm, untouched by the Erie decision. As the Government points out, this has been demonstrated broadly not only by the Clearfield and National Metropolitan Bank cases, but also by other decisions rendered here since the Erie case went down, whether or not the Government is also correct in saying the fact was foreshadowed the same day by Hinderlider v. La Plata Co., 304 U. S. 92, 110, in a unanimous opinion delivered likewise by Mr. Justice Brandéis.
It is true, of course, that in many situations, and apart from any supposed influence of the Erie decision, rights, interests and legal relations of the United States are determined by application of state law, where Congress has not acted specifically. “In our choice of the applicable federal rule we have occasionally selected state law.” Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U. S. at 367. The Government, for instance, may place itself in a position where its rights necessarily are determinable by state law, as when it purchases real estate from one whose title is invalid by that law in relation to another’s claim. Cf. United States v. Fox, 94 U. S. 315. In other situations it may fairly be taken that Congress has consented to application of state law, when acting partially in relation to federal interests and functions, through failure to make other provision concerning matters ordinarily so governed. And in still others state law may furnish convenient solutions in no way inconsistent with adequate protection of the federal interest.
But we do not undertake to delimit or categorize the instances where it is properly to be applied outside the Erie aegis. It is enough for present purposes to point out that they exist, cover a variety of situations, and generally involve matters in which application of local law not only affords a convenient and fair mode of disposition, but also is either inescapable, as in the illustration given above, or does not result in substantially diversified treatment where uniformity is indicated as more appropriate, in view of the nature of the subject matter and the specific issues affecting the Government’s interest.
Whether or not, therefore, state law is to control in such a case as this is not at all a matter to be decided by application of the Erie rule. For, except where the Government has simply substituted itself for others as successor to rights governed by state law, the question is one of federal policy, affecting not merely the federal judicial establishment and the groundings of its action, but also the Government’s legal interests and relations, a factor not controlling in the types of cases producing and governed by the Erie ruling. And the answer to be given necessarily is dependent upon a variety of considerations always relevant to the nature of the specific governmental interests and to the effects upon them of applying state law. These include not only considerations of federal supremacy in the performance of federal functions, but of the need for uniformity and, in some instances, inferences properly to be drawn from the fact that Congress, though cognizant of the particular problem, has taken no action to change long-settled ways of handling it.
Leaving out of account, therefore, any supposed effect of the Erie decision, we nevertheless are of opinion that state law should not be selected as the federal rule for governing the matter in issue. Not only is the government-soldier relation distinctively and exclusively a creation of federal law, but we know of no good reason why the Government’s right to be indemnified in these circumstances, or the lack of such a right, should vary in accordance with the different rulings of the several states, simply because the soldier marches or today perhaps as often flies across state lines.
Furthermore, the liability sought is not essential or even relevant to protection of the state’s citizens against tortious harms, nor indeed for the soldier’s personal indemnity or security, except in the remotest sense, since his personal rights against the wrongdoer may be fully protected without reference to any indemnity for the Government’s loss. It is rather a liability the principal, if not the only, effect of which would be to make whole the federal treasury for financial losses sustained, flowing from the injuries inflicted and the Government’s obligations to the soldier. The question, therefore, is chiefly one of federal fiscal policy, not of special or peculiar concern to the states or their citizens. And because those matters ordinarily are appropriate for uniform national treatment rather than diversified local disposition, as well where Congress has not acted affirmatively as where it has, they are more fittingly determinable by independent federal judicial decision than by reference to varying state policies.
We turn, finally, to consideration of the policy properly to be applied concerning the wrongdoer, whether of liability or of continued immunity as in the past. Here the Government puts forward interesting views to support its claim of responsibility. It appeals first to the great principle that the law can never be wholly static. Growth, it urges, is the life of the law as it is of all living things. And in this expansive and creative living process, we are further reminded, the judicial institution has had and must continue to have a large and pliant, if also a restrained and steady, hand. Moreover, the special problem here has roots in the ancient soil of tort law, wherein the chief plowman has been the judge, notwithstanding his furrow may be covered up or widened by legislation.
Bringing the argument down to special point, counsel has favored us with scholarly discussion of the origins and foundations of liabilities considered analogous and of their later expansion to include relations not originally comprehended. These embrace particularly the liabilities created by the common law, arising from tortious injuries inflicted upon persons standing in various special legal relationships, and causing harm not only to the injured person but also, as for loss of services and assimilated injuries, to the person to whom he is bound by the relation’s tie. Such, for obvious examples, are the master’s rights of recovery for loss of the services of his servant or apprentice; the husband’s similar action for interference with the marital relation, including loss of consortium as well as the wife’s services; and the parent’s right to indemnity for loss of a child’s services, including his action for a daughter’s seduction.
Starting with these long-established instances, illustrating the creative powers and functions of courts, the argument leads on in an effort to show that the government-soldier relation is, if not identical, still strongly analogous; that the analogies are not destroyed by any of the variations, some highly anomalous, characterizing one or more of the settled types of liability; and that an exertion of creative judicial power to bring the government-soldier relation under the same legal protection against tortious interferences by strangers would be only a further and a proper exemplification of the law’s capacity to catch up with the times. Further elaboration of the argument’s details would be interesting, for the law has no more attractive scene of action than in the broad field compendiously labeled the law of torts, and within it perhaps none more engrossing than those areas dealing with these essentially human and highly personal relations.
But we forego the tendered opportunity. For we think the argument ignores factors of controlling importance distinguishing the present problem from those with which the Government seeks to bring it into companionate disposition. These are centered in the very fact that it is the Government’s interests and relations that are involved, rather than the highly personal relations out of which the assertedly comparable liabilities arose; and in the narrower scope, as compared with that allowed courts of general common-law jurisdiction, for the action of federal courts in such matters.
We would not deny the Government’s basic premise of the law’s capacity for growth, or that it must include the creative work of judges. Soon all law would become antiquated strait jacket and then dead letter, if that power were lacking. And the judicial hand would stiffen in mortmain if it had no part in the work of creation. But in the federal scheme our part in that work, and the part of the other federal courts, outside the constitutional area is more modest than that of state courts, particularly in the freedom to create new common-law liabilities, as Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins itself witnesses. See also United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32.
Moreover, as the Government recognizes for one phase of the argument but ignores for the other, we have not here simply a question of creating a new liability in the nature of a tort. For grounded though the argument is in analogies drawn from that field, the issue comes down in final consequence to a question of federal fiscal policy, coupled with considerations concerning the need for and the appropriateness of means to be used in executing the policy sought to be established. The tort law analogy is brought forth, indeed, not to secure a new step forward in expanding the recognized area for applying settled principles of that law as such, or for creating new ones. It is advanced rather as the instrument for determining and establishing the federal fiscal and regulatory policies which the Government’s executive arm thinks should prevail in a situation not covered by traditionally established liabilities.
Whatever the merits of the policy, its conversion into law is a proper subject for congressional action, not for any creative power of ours. Congress, not this Court or the other federal courts, is the custodian of the national purse. By the same token it is the primary and most often the exclusive arbiter of federal fiscal affairs. And these comprehend, as we have said, securing the treasury or the government against financial losses however inflicted, including requiring reimbursement for injuries creating them, as well as filling the treasury itself.
Moreover Congress without doubt has been conscious throughout most of its history that the Government constantly sustains losses through the tortious or even criminal conduct of persons interfering with federal funds, property and relationships. We cannot assume that it has been ignorant that losses long have arisen from injuries inflicted on soldiers such as occurred here. The case therefore is not one in which, as the Government argues, all that is involved is application of “a well-settled concept of legal liability to a new situation, where that new situation is in every respect similar to the old situation that originally gave rise to the concept . . . Among others, one trouble with this is that the situation is not new, at any rate not so new that Congress can be presumed not to have known of it or to have acted in the light of that knowledge.
When Congress has thought it necessary to take steps to prevent interference with federal funds, property or relations, it has taken positive action to that end. We think it would have done so here, if that had been its desire. This it still may do, if or when it so wishes.
In view of these considerations, exercise of judicial power to establish the new liability not only would be intruding within a field properly within Congress’ control and as to a matter concerning which it has seen fit to take no action. To accept the challenge, making the liability effective in this case, also would involve a possible element of surprise, in view of the settled contrary practice, which action by Congress would avoid, not only here but in the many other cases we are told may be governed by the decision.
Finally, if the common-law precedents relied on were more pertinent than they are to the total problem, particularly in view of its federal and especially its fiscal aspects, in none of the situations to which they apply was the question of liability or no liability within the power of one of the parties to the litigation to determine. In them the courts stood as arbiters between citizens, neither of whom could determine the outcome or the policy properly to be followed. Here the United States is the party plaintiff to the suit. And the United States has power at any time to create the liability. The only question is which organ of the Government is to make the determination that liability exists. That decision, for the reasons we have stated, is in this instance for the Congress, not for the courts. Until it acts to establish the liability, this Court and others should withhold creative touch.
The judgment is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter concurs in the result.
The instrument of release recited that the payment “is not, and is not to be construed as” an admission of liability.
The Government’s petition for certiorari asserted that “upwards of 450 instances of negligently inflicted injuries upon soldiers of the United States, requiring hospitalization at Government expense, and the payment of compensation during incapacitation, have been reported by the War Department to the Department of Justice in the past three years,” and that additional instances were being reported to the War Department at the rate of approximately 40 a month.
The suit also was said to be representative of a number already commenced, e. g., United States v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 64 F. Supp. 289 (E. D. N. C.), dismissed on the ground that no master-servant relationship existed, and United States v. Klein, 153 F. 2d 55 (C. C. A. 8), an action to recover hospital and medical expenses incurred as a result of an injury to a Civilian Conservation Corps employee, dismissed for the reason that the United States Employees’ Compensation Act, 5 U. S. C. § 751 et seq., was held to afford the Government a method of recoupment, concededly not available here.
Including the issues of negligence and contributory negligence, as to which a stipulation of record on the appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals states that evidence other than that set forth in the stipulation is omitted “for the reason that appellants are not making any point on appeal as to the insufficiency of the evidence. either to prove negligence or the absence of contributory negligence.”
Although the District Court refused to find that Etzel as a soldier was “as such, a servant of the plaintiff,” respondents designated as the points on appeal on which they intended to rely: That the United States had no cause of action or right to recover for the compensation paid Etzel or for the medical and hospital expenditures; that he “was not an employee of the plaintiff nor was plaintiff his master nor did the relation of employer or employee exist between them”; and that his release was effective to end “all right to recover for lost wages or medical or hospital expenses.”
The Circuit Court of Appeals, considering that at the outset it was “confronted with the problem of what law should apply,” said: “Aside from any federal legislation conferring a right of subrogation or indemnification upon the United States, it would seem that the state rules of substantive common law would govern an action brought by the United States in the role of a private litigant. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, 71, 78; United States v. Moscow-Idaho Seed Co., supra [92 F. 2d 170], at pages 173, 174.” 153 F. 2d at 960. The court then indicated agreement with appellant that California’s statutory law, namely, § 49 of the Civil Code, was controlling and concluded that the Government’s case “must fail for two reasons: first, because the government-soldier relation is not within the scope of § 49 of the Code, and, second, because the government is not a ‘master’ and the soldier is not a ‘servant’ within the meaning of the Code section.” 153 F. 2d at 961.
The court further concluded, however, that Etzel’s release “covered his lost wages and medical expenses as elements of damage,” and therefore was effective to discharge all liability, including any right of subrogation in the United States “without statutory authority.” Finally the opinion stated: “. . . it seems clear that Congress did not intend that for tortious injuries to a soldier in time of war, the government should be subrogated to the soldier’s claims for damages.” Id. at 963.
See note 3. The Government’s claim, of course, is not one for subrogation. It is rather for an independent liability owing directly to itself as for deprivation of the soldier’s services and “indemnity” for losses caused in discharging its duty to care for him consequent upon the injuries inflicted by appellants. See Robert Marys’s Case, Vol. 5, Part 9 Co. Rep. at 113a. It is, in effect, for tortious interference by a third person with the relation between the Government and the soldier and consequent harm to the Government’s interest, rights and obligations in that relation, not simply to subrogation to the soldier’s rights against the tort-feasors.
We may assume that the release was not effective to discharge any liability owing independently to the Government, cf. note 5, although fully effective as against any claim by the soldier. Only if such an independent liability were found to exist would any issue concerning the release be reached.
Including the powers of Congress to “provide for the common Defence,” “raise and support Armies,” and “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, as well as “To declare War” and “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers . . . .” Ibid.
The decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals seems to have been predicated upon the assumption that Congress could override any contrary rule of state law and that the California law governs only in the absence of Congress’ affirmative action. See note 4 supra.
See U. S. Const., Art. IV, §3, cl. 2: “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States . . ."; Camfield v. United States, 167 U. S. 518, 524: “. . . the Government has, with respect to its own lands, the rights of an ordinary proprietor, to maintain its possession and to prosecute trespassers”; United States v. Walter, 263 U. S. 15, 17: “The United States can protect its property by criminal laws . . . .”
Board of Commissioners v. United States, 308 U. S. 343; Deitrick v. Greaney, 309 U. S. 190; Royal Indemnity Co. v. United States, 313 U. S. 289; D’Oench, Duhme & Co. v. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp., 315 U. S. 447; United States v. Allegheny County, 322 U. S. 174; Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392. See also discussion in Notes, Federal Common Law in Government Action for Tort (1946) 41 Ill. L. Rev. 551; Exceptions to Erie v. Tompkins: The Survival of Federal Common Law (1946) 59 Harv. L. Rev. 966.
If the ruling followed, that the waters of an interstate stream must be equitably apportioned among the states through which it flows in the arid regions of the West, is not properly to be characterized as merely one of “federal common law,” it marks off at any rate another area for federal judicial decision not dependent on application of state law or, indeed, upon the existence of federal legislation.
The problem of the Government’s immunity to suit is different, of course, from that of the nature of the substantive rights it may acquire, for example, by the purchase of property as against claims of others for which there may or may not be available a legal remedy against it.
See Blair v. Commissioner, 300 U. S. 5; Reconstruction Finance Corp. v. Beaver County, 328 U. S. 204.
That is, if potential added liability ever can be considered as having effect to deter the commission of negligent torts, the imposition of liability to indemnify the Government in addition to indemnifying the soldier conceivably could be thought to furnish some additional incentive for avoiding such harms.
See note 5 supra.
As to the ancient action for loss of services, existent in Braeton’s day, see Wigmore, Interference With Social Relations (1887) 21 Amer. L. Rev. 764; VIII Holdsworth, A History of English Law (2d ed., 1937) 427-430; II Id., 459-464; IV Id., 379-387; Pollock, The Law of Torts (13th ed.) 234-239; Clerk & Lindsell on Torts (8th ed.) 201-212.
Extension of the action per quod servitium amisit to domestic relations, upon a fictional basis, took place as early as 1653. Norton v. Jason, Style 398; see Winfield, Textbook of the Law of Tort (2d ed.) 257.
Analogies are drawn concerning the nature of the relation both on the basis of status, underlying the earlier forms of liability, and on that of its asserted contractual character, in the latter instance to the rather far-fetched extent of regarding the drafted soldier as having entered into a “contract implied in law.”
E. g., in the fiction of loss of services involved in the father’s action for a daughter’s seduction and in the husband’s action for loss of consortium. Compare Serjeant Manning’s oft-quoted statement that “the quasi fiction of servitium amisit affords protection to the rich man, whose daughter occasionally makes his tea, but leaves without redress the poor man, whose child, as here, is sent, unprotected, to earn her bread amongst strangers.” Note to Grinnell v. Wells, 7 Man. & Gr. at p. 1044.
That is, in the phase stressing that the question is not to be determined by applying state law, the emphasis is put upon the federal aspect of the ease, but in that advancing the thesis of liability for acceptance as the federal rule, stress goes to the tort grounding of the argument.
The Government does not contend that the liability sought has existed heretofore. It frankly urges the creation of a new one. The only decision determining the matter, which has come to our attention, in addition to the cases cited above in note 2, is that of the High Court of Australia in Commonwealth v. Quince, 68 C. L. R. 227, aff’g, (1943) Q. S. R. 199, denying liability. See also Attorney-General v. Valle-Jones, [1935] 2 K. B. 209, reaching a contrary result, in which however the principal issue apparently went by concession.
See, e. g., 35 Stat. 1097, 18 U. S. C. §94 (enticing desertion from the military or naval service); 35 Stat. 1097, 18 U. S. C. § 95 (enticing workmen from arsenals or armories); 35 Stat. 1097, 18 U. S. C. § 99 (robbery of personal property belonging to the United States); 35 Stat. 1097, 18 U. S. C. § 100 (embezzlement of property belonging to the United States).
Of course it has not been necessary for Congress to pass statutes imposing civil liability in those situations where it has been understood since the days of the common law that the sovereign is protected from tortious interference. Thus, trespass on land belonging to the United States is a civil wrong to be remedied in the courts. Cotton v. United States, 11 How. 229.
Necessarily such an element or effect often, if not always, exists whenever a new liability is created, as at common law, in the nature of responsibility for tort. This, however, could not be made an invariably controlling consideration in cases presenting common-law issues concerning such liabilities to tribunals whose business it is primarily to decide them, for to do this would forestall all growth in the law except by legislative action. The factor, however, is one generally to be taken into account and weighed against the social need dictating the new responsibility, in cases squarely presenting those issues and not complicated, as this case is, by considerations arising from distributions of power in the federal system.
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.
Wheelock Bros., Inc., a private motor carrier, sued in the Court of Claims to recover just compensation for an alleged temporary taking of its properties and business by the United States pursuant to Executive Order No. 9462. 9 Fed. Reg. 10071 (1944). The Court of Claims entered judgment awarding Wheelock Bros., Inc., just compensation in an amount less than that claimed. 115 Ct. Cl. 733, 88 F. Supp. 278 (1950). We granted certio-rari on the petitions of both parties. 340 U. S. 808 (1950).
While the action was pending in the Court of Claims, Congress passed the Motor Carrier Claims Commission Act, providing that that Commission “shall hear and determine, according to law, existing claims against the United States arising out of the taking by the United States of possession or control of any of the motor-carrier transportation systems described in Executive Order Numbered 9462 . . . .” Section 2. Within the time provided in the Act and before entry of judgment in the Court of Claims, Wheelock Bros., Inc., filed its claim with the Commission.
At the threshold, we are met with the question whether the Court of Claims had jurisdiction to enter judgment in this case. Congress, in § 6 of the Motor Carrier Claims Commission Act, expressly provided:
“The jurisdiction of the Commission over claims presented to it as provided in section 2 of this Act shall be exclusive; but nothing in this Act shall prevent any person who does not elect to present his claim to the Commission from pursuing any other remedy available to him.”
Wheelock Bros., Inc., by filing its claim with the Commission, did elect to present it to that tribunal. The Commission’s jurisdiction over the claim being “exclusive,” the Court of Claims was without jurisdiction to enter judgment in this case. For this reason, the judgment below is vacated and the case is remanded to the Court of Claims with instructions to dismiss the claim in that court.
It is so ordered.
62 Stat. 1222 (1948), as amended, 62 Stat. 1289, 1290 (1948), 63 Stat. 80 (1949).
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 Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases focus upon §6501 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U. S. C. § 6501. Subsection (a) of that statute establishes a general 3-year period of limitations “after the return was filed” for the assessment of income and certain other federal taxes. Subsection (c)(1) of §6501, however, provides an exception to the 3-year period when there is “a false or fraudulent return with the intent to evade tax.” The tax then may be assessed “at any time.”
The issue before us is the proper application of §§ 6501(a) and (c)(1) to the situation where a taxpayer files a false or fraudulent return but later files a nonfraudulent amended return. May a tax then be assessed more than three years after the filing of the amended return?
l-H
No. 82-11*58. Petitioners Ernest Badaracco, Sr., and Ernest Badaracco, Jr., were partners in an electrical contracting business. They filed federal partnership and individual income tax returns for the calendar years 1965-1969, inclusive. “[F]or purposes of this case,” these petitioners concede the “fraudulent nature of the original returns.” App. 37a.
In 1970 and 1971, federal grand juries in New Jersey subpoenaed books and records of the partnership. On August 17, 1971, petitioners filed nonfraudulent amended returns for the tax years in question and paid the additional basic taxes shown thereon. Three months later, petitioners were indicted for filing false and fraudulent returns, in violation of §7206(1) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. §7206(1). Each pleaded guilty to the charge with respect to the 1967 returns, and judgments of conviction were entered. United States v. Badaracco, Crim. No. 766-71 (NJ). The remaining counts of the indictment were dismissed.
On November 21,1977, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue mailed to petitioners notices of deficiency for each of the tax years in question. He asserted, however, only the liability under § 6653(b) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. § 6653(b), for the addition to tax on account of fraud (the so-called fraud “penalty”) of 50% of the underpayment in the basic tax. See App. 5a.
Petitioners sought redetermination in the United States Tax Court of the asserted deficiencies, contending that the Commissioner’s action was barred by § 6501(a). They claimed that § 6501(c)(1) did not apply because the 1971 filing of nonfraudulent amended returns caused the general 3-year period of limitations specified in § 6501(a) to operate; the deficiency notices, having issued in November 1977, obviously were forthcoming only long after the expiration of three years from the date of filing of the nonfraudulent amended returns.
The Tax Court, in line with its then-recent decision in Klemp v. Commissioner, 77 T. C. 201 (1981), appeal pending, No. 81-7744 (CA9), agreed with petitioners. 42 TCM 573 (1981), ¶ 81, 404 P-H Memo TC.
No. 82-1509. Petitioner Deleet Merchandising Corp. filed timely corporation income tax returns for the calendar years 1967 and 1968. The returns as so filed, however, did not report certain receipts derived by the taxpayer from its printing supply business. On August 9, 1973, Deleet filed amended returns for 1967 and 1968 disclosing the receipts that had not been reported. Although the taxpayer corporation itself was not charged with criminal tax violations, and although no formal criminal investigation was initiated as to it, there were criminal and civil investigations that centered on certain former officers of the taxpayer. After the completion of those investigations, the Commissioner, on December 14, 1979, issued a notice of deficiency to Deleet. App. 71a. The notice asserted deficiencies in tax and additions under § 6653(b) for 1967 and 1968.
Deleet paid the alleged deficiencies and brought suit for their refund in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. On its motion for summary judgment, Deleet contended that the Commissioner’s action was barred by § 6501(a). It claimed that no deficiencies or additions could be assessed more than three years after the amended returns were filed, regardless of whether the original returns were fraudulent.
The District Court agreed and granted summary judgment for Deleet. 535 F. Supp. 402 (1981). It relied on the Tax Court’s decision in Klemp v. Commissioner, supra, and on Dowell v. Commissioner, 614 F. 2d 1263 (CA10 1980), cert. pending, No. 82-1873.
The Appeals. The Government appealed each case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The cases were heard and decided together. That court, by a 2-to-l vote, reversed the decision of the Tax Court in Badaracco and the judgment of the District Court in Deleet. 693 F. 2d 298 (1982). The Third Circuit’s ruling is consistent with the Fifth Circuit’s holding in Nesmith v. Commissioner, 699 F. 2d 712 (1983), cert. pending, No. 82-2008. The Second Circuit has ruled otherwise. See Britton v. United States, 532 F. Supp. 275 (Vt. 1981), affirmance order, 697 F. 2d 288 (CA2 1982). See also Espinoza v. Commissioner, 78 T. C. 412 (1982). Because of the conflict, we granted certiorari, 461 U. S. 925 (1983).
l — i f —
Our task here is to determine the proper construction of the statute of limitations Congress has written for tax assessments. This Court long ago pronounced the standard: “Statutes of limitation sought to be applied to bar rights of the Government, must receive a strict construction in favor of the Government.” E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Davis, 264 U. S. 456, 462 (1924). See also Lucas v. Pilliod Lumber Co., 281 U. S. 245, 249 (1930). More recently, Judge Roney, in speaking for the former Fifth Circuit, has observed that “limitations statutes barring the collection of taxes otherwise due and unpaid are strictly construed in favor of the Government.” Lucia v. United States, 474 F. 2d 565, 570 (1973).
We naturally turn first to the language of the statute. Section 6501(a) sets forth the general rule: a 3-year period of limitations on the assessment of tax. Section 6501(e)(1)(A) (first introduced as § 275(c) of the Revenue Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 745) provides an extended limitations period for the situation where the taxpayer’s return nonfraudulently omits more than 25% of his gross income; in a situation of that kind, assessment now is permitted “at any time within 6 years after the return was filed.”
Both the 3-year rule and the 6-year rule, however, explicitly are made inapplicable in circumstances covered by § 6501(c). This subsection identifies three situations in which the Commissioner is allowed an unlimited period within which to assess tax. Subsection (c)(1) relates to “a false or fraudulent return with the intent to evade tax” and provides that the tax then may be assessed “at any time.” Subsection (c)(3) covers the case of a failure to file a return at all (whether or not due to fraud) and provides that an assessment then also may be made “at any time.” Subsection (c)(2) sets forth a similar rule for the case of a “willful attempt in any manner to defeat or evade tax” other than income, estate, and gift taxes.
All these provisions appear to be unambiguous on their face, and it therefore would seem to follow that the present cases are squarely controlled by the clear language of § 6501(c)(1). Petitioners Badaracco concede that they filed initial returns that were “false or fraudulent with the intent to evade tax.” Petitioner Deleet, for present purposes, upon this review of its motion for summary judgment, is deemed to have filed false or fraudulent returns with the intent to evade tax. Section 6501(c)(1), with its unqualified language, then allows the tax to be assessed “at any time.” Nothing is present in the statute that can be construed to suspend its operation in the light of a fraudulent filer’s subsequent repentant conduct. Neither is there anything in the wording of § 6501(a) that itself enables a taxpayer to reinstate the section’s general 3-year limitations period by filing an amended return. Indeed, as this Court recently has noted, Hillsboro National Bank v. Commissioner, 460 U. S. 370, 378-380, n. 10 (1983), the Internal Revenue Code does not explicitly provide either for a taxpayer’s filing, or for the Commissioner’s acceptance, of an amended return; instead, an amended return is a creature of administrative origin and grace. Thus, when Congress provided for assessment at any time in the case of a false or fraudulent “return,” it plainly included by this language a false or fraudulent original return. In this connection, we note that until the decision of the Tenth Circuit in Dowell v. Commissioner, 614 F. 2d 1263 (1980), cert. pending, No. 82-1873, courts consistently had held that the operation of § 6501 and its predecessors turned on the nature of the taxpayer’s original, and not his amended, return.
The substantive operation of the fraud provisions of the Code itself confirms the conclusion that § 6501(c)(1) permits assessment at any time in fraud cases regardless of a taxpayer’s later repentance. It is established that a taxpayer who submits a fraudulent return does not purge the fraud by subsequent voluntary disclosure; the fraud was committed, and the offense completed, when the original return was prepared and filed. See, e. g., United States v. Habig, 390 U. S. 222 (1968); Plunkett v. Commissioner, 465 F. 2d 299, 302-303 (CA7 1972). “Any other result would make sport of the so-called fraud penalty. A taxpayer who had filed a fraudulent return would merely take his chances that the fraud would not be investigated or discovered, and then, if an investigation were made, would simply pay the tax which he owed anyhow and thereby nullify the fraud penalty.” George M. Still, Inc. v. Commissioner, 19 T. C. 1072, 1077 (1953), aff’d, 218 F. 2d 639 (CA2 1955). In short, once a fraudulent return has been filed, the case remains one “of a false or fraudulent return,” regardless of the taxpayer’s later revised conduct, for purposes of criminal prosecution and civil fraud liability under § 6653(b). It likewise should remain such a case for purposes of the unlimited assessment period specified by § 6501(c)(1).
We are not persuaded by Deleet’s suggestion, Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, p. 15, that § 6501(c)(1) should be read merely to suspend the commencement of the limitations period while the fraud remains uncorrected. The Tenth Circuit, in Dowell v. Commissioner, supra, made an observation to that effect, stating that the 3-year limitations period was “put in limbo” pending further taxpayer action. 614 F. 2d, at 1266. The language of the statute, however, is contrary to this suggestion. Section 6501(c)(1) does not “suspend” the operation of § 6501(a) until a fraudulent filer makes a voluntary disclosure. Section 6501(c)(1) makes no reference at all to § 6501(a); it simply provides that the tax may be assessed “at any time.” And § 6501(a) itself contains no mechanism for its operation when a fraudulent filer repents. By its very terms, it does not apply to a case, such as one of “a false or fraudulent return,” that is “otherwise provided” for in § 6501. When Congress intends only a temporary suspension of the running of a limitations period, it knows how unambiguously to accomplish that result. See, e. g., §§ 6503(a)(1), (a)(2), (b), (c), and (d).
The weakness of petitioners’ proposed statutory construction is demonstrated further by its impact on § 6501(e)(1)(A), which provides an extended limitations period whenever a taxpayer’s return nonfraudulently omits more than 25% of his gross income.
Under petitioners’ reasoning, a taxpayer who fraudulently omits 25% of his gross income gains the benefit of the 3-year limitations period by filing an amended return. Yet a taxpayer who nonfraudulently omits 25% of his gross income cannot gain that benefit by filing an amended return; instead, he must live with the 6-year period specified in § 6501(e) (1)(A). We agree with the conclusion of the Court of Appeals in the instant cases that Congress could not have intended to “create a situation in which persons who committed willful, deliberate fraud would be in a better position” than those who understated their income inadvertently and without fraud. 693 P. 2d, at 302.
We therefore conclude that the plain and unambiguous language of § 6501(c)(1) would permit the Commissioner to assess “at any time” the tax for a year in which the taxpayer has filed “a false or fraudulent return,” despite any subsequent disclosure the taxpayer might make. Petitioners attempt to evade the consequences of this language by arguing that their original returns were “nullities.” Alternatively, they urge a nonliteral construction of the statute based on considerations of policy and practicality. We now turn successively to those proposals.
r-H H-4
Petitioners argue that their original returns, to the extent they were fraudulent, were “nullities” for statute of limitations purposes. See Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, pp. 22-27; Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, pp. 32-34. Inasmuch as the original return is a nullity, it is said, the amended return is necessarily “the return” referred to in § 6501(a). And if that return is nonfraudulent, § 6501(c)(1) is inoperative and the normal 3-year limitations period applies. This nullity notion does not persuade us, for it is plain that “the return” referred to in § 6501(a) is the original, not the amended, return.
Petitioners do not contend that their fraudulent original returns were nullities for purposes of the Code generally. There are numerous provisions in the Code that relate to civil and criminal penalties for submitting or assisting in the preparation of false or fraudulent returns; their presence makes clear that a document which on its face plausibly purports to be in compliance, and which is signed by the taxpayer, is a return despite its inaccuracies. See, e. g., §§7207, 6531(3), 6653(b). Neither do petitioners contend that their original returns were nullities for all purposes of § 6501. They contend, instead, that a fraudulent return is a nullity only for the limited purpose of applying § 6501(a). See Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, p. 24; Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, pp. 33-34. The word “return,” however, appears no less than 64 times in § 6501. Surely, Congress cannot rationally be thought to have given that word one meaning in § 6501(a), and a totally different meaning in §§ 6501(b) through (q).
Zellerbach Paper Co. v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 172 (1934), which petitioners cite, affords no support for their argument. The Court in Zellerbach held that an original return, despite its inaccuracy, was a “return” for limitations purposes, so that the filing of an amended return did not start a new period of limitations running. In the instant cases, the original returns similarly purported to be returns, were sworn to as such, and appeared on their faces to constitute endeavors to satisfy the law. Although those returns, in fact, were not honest, the holding in Zellerbach does not render them nullities. To be sure, current Regulations, in several places, e. g., Treas. Reg. §§301.6211-l(a), 301.6402-3(a), 1.451-l(a), and 1.461-l(a)(3)(i) (1983), do refer to an amended return, as does § 6213(g)(1) of the Code itself, 26 U. S. C. § 6213(g)(1) (1976 ed., Supp. V). None of these provisions, however, requires the filing of such a return. It does not follow from all this that an amended return becomes “the return” for purposes of § 6501(a).
We conclude, therefore, that nothing in the statutory language, the structure of the Code, or the decided cases supports the contention that a fraudulent return is a nullity for statute of limitations purposes.
IV
Petitioners contend that a nonliteral reading should be accorded the statute on grounds of equity to the repentant taxpayer and tax policy. “Once a taxpayer has provided the information upon which the Government may make a knowledgeable assessment, the justification for suspending the limitations period is no longer viable and must yield to the favored policy of limiting the Government’s time to proceed against the taxpayer.” Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, p. 12. See also Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, p. 17.
The cases before us, however, concern the construction of existing statutes. The relevant question is not whether, as an abstract matter, the rule advocated by petitioners accords with good policy. The question we must consider is whether the policy petitioners favor is that which Congress effectuated by its enactment of §6501. Courts are not authorized to rewrite a statute because they might deem its effects susceptible of improvement. See TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 194-195 (1978). This is especially so when courts construe a statute of limitations, which “must receive a strict construction in favor of the Government.” E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Davis, 264 U. S., at 462.
We conclude that, even were we free to do so, there is no need to twist § 6501(c)(1) beyond the contours of its plain and unambiguous language in order to comport with good policy, for substantial policy considerations support its literal language. First, fraud cases ordinarily are more difficult to investigate than cases marked for routine tax audits. Where fraud has been practiced, there is a distinct possibility that the taxpayer’s underlying records will have been falsified or even destroyed. The filing of an amended return, then, may not diminish the amount of effort required to verify the correct tax liability. Even though the amended return proves to be an honest one, its filing does not necessarily “re-mov[e] the Commissioner from the disadvantageous position in which he was originally placed.” Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, p. 12.
Second, the filing of a document styled “amended return” does not fundamentally change the nature of a tax fraud investigation. An amended return, however accurate it ultimately may prove to be, comes with no greater guarantee of trustworthiness than any other submission. It comes carrying no special or significant imprimatur; instead, it comes from a taxpayer who already has made false statements under penalty of perjury. A responsible examiner cannot accept the information furnished on an amended return as a substitute for a thorough investigation into the existence of fraud. We see no “tax policy” justification for holding that an amended return has the singular effect of shortening the unlimited assessment period specified in §§ 6501(c)(1) to the usual three years. Fraud cases differ from other civil tax cases in that it is the Commissioner who has the burden of proof on the issue of fraud. See § 7454(a) of the Code, 26 U. S. C. § 7454(a). An amended return, of course, may constitute an admission of substantial underpayment, but it will not ordinarily constitute an admission of fraud. And the three years may not be enough time for the Commissioner to prove fraudulent intent.
Third, the difficulties that attend a civil fraud investigation are compounded where, as in No. 82-1453, the Commissioner’s initial findings lead him to conclude that the case should be referred to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. The period of limitations for prosecuting criminal tax fraud is generally six years. See § 6531. Once a criminal referral has been made, the Commissioner is under well-known restraints on the civil side and often will find it difficult to complete his civil investigation within the normal 3-year period; the taxpayer’s filing of an amended return will not make any difference in this respect. See United States v. La-Salle National Bank, 437 U. S. 298, 311-313 (1978); see also Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, Pub. L. 97-248, § 333(a), 96 Stat. 622. As a practical matter, therefore, the Commissioner frequently is forced to place a civil audit in abeyance when a criminal prosecution is recommended.
We do not find petitioners’ complaint of “unfair treatment” persuasive. Petitioners claim that it is unfair “to forever suspend a Sword of Damocles over a taxpayer who at one time may have filed a fraudulent return, but who has subsequently recanted and filed an amended return providing the Government with all the information necessary to properly assess the tax.” Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, p. 26. See Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, p. 16. But it seems to us that a taxpayer who has filed a fraudulent return with intent to evade tax hardly is in a position to complain of the fairness of a rule that facilitates the Commissioner’s collection of the tax due. A taxpayer who has been the subject of a tax fraud investigation is not likely to be surprised when a notice of deficiency arrives, even if it does not arrive promptly after he files an amended return.
Neither are we persuaded by Deleet’s argument that a literal reading of the statute “punishes” the taxpayer who repentantly files an amended return. See Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, p. 44. The amended return does not change the status of the taxpayer; he is left in precisely the same position he was in before. It might be argued that Congress should provide incentives to taxpayers to disclose their fraud voluntarily. Congress, however, has not done so in § 6501. That legislative judgment is controlling here.
V
Petitioners contend, finally, that a literal reading of § 6501(c) produces a disparity in treatment between a taxpayer who in the first instance files a fraudulent return and one who fraudulently fails to file any return at all. This, it is said, would elevate one form of tax fraud over another.
The argument centers in § 6501(c)(3), which provides that in a case of failure to file a return, the tax may be assessed “at any time.” It is settled that this section ceases to apply once a return has been filed for a particular year, regardless of whether that return is filed late and even though the failure to file a timely return in the first instance was due to fraud. See Bennett v. Commissioner, 30 T. C. 114 (1958), acq., 1958-2 Cum. Bull. 3. See also Rev. Rui. 79-178, 1979-1 Cum. Bull. 435. This, however, does not mean that § 6501 should be read to produce the same result in each of the two situations. From the language employed in the respective subsections of § 6501, we conclude that Congress intended different limitations results. Section 6501(c)(3) applies to a “failure to file a return.” It makes no reference to a failure to file a timely return (cf. §§ 6651(a)(1) and 7203), nor does it speak of a fraudulent failure to file. The section literally becomes inapplicable once a return has been filed. Section 6501(c)(1), in contrast, applies in the case of “a false or fraudulent return.” The fact that a fraudulent filer subsequently submits an amended return does not make the case any less one of a false or fraudulent return. Thus, although there may be some initial superficial plausibility to this argument on the part of petitioners, we conclude that the argument cannot prevail. If the result contended for by petitioners is to be the rule, Congress must make it so in clear and unmistakable language.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals in each of these cases is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Section 6501(a) reads in full:
“Except as otherwise provided in this section, the amount of any tax imposed by this title shall be assessed within 3 years after the return was filed (whether or not such return was filed on or after the date prescribed) or, if the tax is payable by stamp, at any time after such tax became due and before the expiration of 3 years after the date on which any part of such tax was paid, and no proceeding in court without assessment for the collection of such tax shall be begun after the expiration of such period.”
Section 6501(c)(1) reads:
“In the case of a false or fraudulent return with the intent to evade tax, the tax may be assessed, or a proceeding in court for collection of such tax may be begun without assessment, at any time.”
In Klemp, the Tax Court, in a reviewed decision with five judges dissenting on the issue, departed from its earlier holding in Dowell v. Commissioner, 68 T. C. 646 (1977), rev’d, 614 F. 2d 1263 (CA10 1980), cert. pending, No. 82-1873.
Deleet asserts that the filing of its amended returns was voluntary. The taxpayer’s correct tax liability has not yet been determined. Although Deleet has not conceded that its original returns were fraudulent, both the District Court, App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 82-1509, p. 4d, and the Court of Appeals, see 693 F. 2d 298, 299, n. 3 (CA3 1982), assumed, for purposes of Deleet’s summary judgment motion hereinafter referred to, that they were. We must make the same assumption here.
The Tax Court, in cases concerning several of Deleet’s officers, has followed its ruling in Klemp, supra. See Kramer v. Commissioner, 44 TCM 42 (1982), ¶ 82, 308 P-H Memo TC; Elliott Liroff v. Commissioner, 44 TCM 43 (1982), ¶ 82, 309 P-H Memo TC; Derfel v. Commissioner, 44 TCM 45 (1982), ¶82, 311 P-H Memo TC; Richard B. Liroff v. Commissioner, 44 TCM 47 (1982), ¶ 82, 312 P-H Memo TC. See also Galvin v. Commissioner, 45 TCM 221 (1982), ¶ 82, 689 P-H Memo TC.
Subsections (c)(1) and (c)(3) appeared separately only upon the enactment of the 1954 Code. From 1921 until the 1954 Code, they were combined. See, e. g., Revenue Act of 1921, § 250(d), 42 Stat. 265; Internal Revenue Code of 1939, § 276(a).
Under every general income tax statute since 1918, the filing of a false or fraudulent return has indefinitely extended the period of limitations for assessment of tax. See Revenue Act of 1918, § 250(d), 40 Stat. 1083; Revenue Act of 1921, § 250(d), 42 Stat. 265; Revenue Act of 1924, § 278(a), 43 Stat. 299; Revenue Act of 1926, § 278(a), 44 Stat., pt. 2, p. 59; Revenue Act of 1928, § 276(a), 45 Stat. 857; Revenue Act of 1932, § 276(a), 47 Stat. 238; Revenue Act of 1934, § 276(a), 48 Stat. 745; Revenue Act of 1936, § 276(a), 49 Stat. 1726; Revenue Act of 1938, § 276(a), 52 Stat. 540; Internal Revenue Code of 1939, § 276(a).
The significance of the original, and not the amended, return has been stressed in other, but related, contexts. It thus has been held consistently that the filing of an amended return in a nonfraudulent situation does not serve to extend the period within which the Commissioner may assess a deficiency. See, e. g., Zellerbach Paper Co. v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 172 (1934); National Paper Products Co. v. Helvering, 293 U. S. 183 (1934); National Refining Co. v. Commissioner, 1 B. T. A. 236 (1924). It also has been held that the filing of an amended return does not serve to reduce the period within which the Commissioner may assess taxes where the original return omitted enough income to trigger the operation of the extended limitations period provided by § 6501(e) or its predecessors. See, e. g., Houston v. Commissioner, 38 T. C. 486 (1962); Goldring v. Commissioner, 20 T. C. 79 (1953). And the period of limitations for filing a refund claim under the predecessor of § 6511(a) begins to run on the filing of the original, not the amended, return. Kaltreider Construction, Inc. v. United States, 303 F. 2d 366, 368 (CA3), cert. denied, 371 U. S. 877 (1962).
In both Dowell and Klemp, the Commissioner had issued his deficiency notices more than three years after the amended returns were filed but within the extended 6-year period after the original returns were filed. The courts in those cases nonetheless ruled the notices untimely. That result flows necessarily from petitioners’ proposed statutory construction. It seems to us, however, to be unacceptably anomalous.
Petitioners contend that these policy considerations favorable to the Commissioner do not apply on the facts of petitioners’ cases. Brief for Petitioners in No. 82-1453, pp. 33-34; Brief for Petitioner in No. 82-1509, pp. 35-36. This assertion is irrelevant, for the cases involve construction of a statute of limitations, not a question of laches, a defense to which the Government usually is not subject. See United States v. Summerlin, 310 U. S. 414, 416 (1940).
See generally Brennan, The Uncertain Status of Amended Tax Returns, 7 Rev. of Taxation of Individuals 235, 252-264 (1983).
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.
Mb. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case raises the question whether a trial court’s denial of a motion for certification of a class may be reviewed on appeal after the named plaintiff’s personal claim has become “moot.” The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that a named plaintiff, respondent here, who brought a class action challenging the validity of the United States Parole Commission’s Parole Release Guidelines, could continue his appeal of a ruling denying class certification even though he had been released from prison while the appeal was pending. We granted certiorari, 440 U. S. 945 (1979), to consider this issue of substantial significance, under Art. Ill of the Constitution, to class-action litigation, and to resolve the conflict in approach among the Courts of Appeals.
I
In 1973, the United States Parole Board adopted explicit Parole Release Guidelines for adult prisoners. These guidelines establish a "customary range” of confinement for various classes of offenders. The guidelines utilize a matrix, which combines a “parole prognosis” score (based on the prisoner’s age at first conviction, employment background, and other personal factors) and an “offense severity” rating, to yield the “customary” time to be served in prison.
Subsequently, in 1976, Congress enacted the Parole Commission and Reorganization Act (PCRA), Pub. L. 94-233, 90 Stat. 219, 18 U. S. C. §§ 4201-4218. This Act provided the first legislative authorization for paroie release guidelines. It required the newly created Parolé Commission to “promulgate rules and regulations establishing guidelines for the powefr]... to grant or deny an application or recommendation to parole any eligible prisoner.” § 4203. Before releás-ing a prisoner on parole, the Commission must find, “upon consideration of the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the prisoner,” that release “would not depreciate the seriousness of his offense or promote disrespect for the law” and that it “would not jeopardize the public welfare.” § 4206 (a).
Respondent John M. Geraghty was convicted in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois of conspiracy to commit extortion, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1951, and of making false material declarations to a grand jury, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1623 (1976 ed. and Supp. II). On January 25, 1974, two months after initial promulgation of the release guidelines, respondent was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of four, years on the conspiracy count and one year on the false declarations count. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed respondent’s convictions. United States v. Braasch, 505 F. 2d 139 (1974), cert. denied sub nom. Geraghty v. United States, 421 U. S. 910 (1975).
Geraghty later, pursuant to a motion under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, obtained from the District Court a reduction of his sentence to 30 months. The court granted the motion because, in the court’s view, application of the guidelines would frustrate the sentencing judge’s intent with respect to the length of time Geraghty would serve in prison. United States v. Braasch, No. 72 CR 979 (ND Ill., Oct. 9, 1975), appeal dism’d and mandamus denied, 542 F. 2d 442 (CA7 1976).
Geraghty then, applied for release on parole. His first application was denied in January 1976 with the following explanation:
“Your offense behavior has been rated as very high severity. You have a salient factor score of 11. You have been in custody for a total of 4 months. Guidelines established by the Board for adult cases which consider the above factors indicate a range of 26-36 months to be served before release for cases with good institutional program performance and adjustment. After review of all relevant factors and information presented, it is found that a decision at this consideration outside the guidelines does not appear warranted.” App. 5.
If the customary release date applicable to respondent under the guidelines were adhered to, he would not be paroled before serving his entire sentence minus good-time credits. Geraghty applied for parole again in June 1976; that application was denied for the same reasons. He then instituted this civil suit as a class action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging the guidelines as inconsistent with the PCRA and the Constitution, and questioning the procedures by which the guidelines were applied to his case.
Respondent sought certification of a class of “all federal prisoners who are or who will become eligible for release on parole.’’ Id., at 17. Without ruling on Geraghty’s motion, the court transferred the case to the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where respondent was incarcerated. Geraghty continued to press his motion for class certification, but the court postponed ruling on the motion until it was prepared to render a decision on cross-motions for summary judgment.
The District Court subsequently denied Geraghty’s request for class certification and granted summary judgment for petitioners on all the claims Geraghty asserted. 429 F. Supp. 737 (1977). The court regarded respondent’s action as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, to which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 applied only by analogy. It denied class certification as “neither necessary nor appropriate.” 429 F. Supp., at 740. A class action was “necessary” only to avoid mootness. The court found such a consideration not comprehended by Rule 23. It found class certification inappropriate because Geraghty raised certain individual issues and, inasmuch as some prisoners might be benefited by the guidelines, because his claims were not typical of the entire proposed class. 429 F. Supp., at 740-741. On the merits, the court ruled that the guidelines are consistent with the PCRA and do not offend the Ex Post Facto Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 3. 429 F. Supp., at 741-744.
Respondent, individually “and on behalf of a class,” appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. App. 29. Thereafter, another prisoner, Becher, who had been denied parole through application of the guidelines and who was represented by Geraghty’s counsel, moved to intervene. Becher sought intervention to ensure that the legal issue raised by Geraghty on behalf of the class “will not escape review in the appeal in this case.” Pet. to Intervene After Judgment 2. The District Court, concluding that the filing of Geraghty’s notice of appeal had divested it of jurisdiction, denied the petition to intervene. Becher then filed a timely notice of appeal from the denial of intervention. The two appeals were consolidated.
On June 30, 1977, before any brief had been filed in the Court of Appeals, Geraghty was mandatorily released from prison; he had served 22 months of his sentence, and had earned good-time credits for the rest. Petitioners then moved to dismiss the appeals as moot. The appellate court reserved decision of the motion to dismiss until consideration of the merits.
The Court of Appeals, concluding that the litigation was not moot, reversed the judgment of the District Court and remanded the case for further proceedings. 579 F. 2d 238 (CA3 1978). If a class had been certified by the District Court, mootness of respondent Geraghty’s personal claim would not have rendered the controversy moot. See, e. g., Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975). The Court of Appeals reasoned that an erroneous denial of a class certification should not lead to the opposite result. 579 F. 2d, at 248-252. Rather, certification of a “certifiable” class, that erroneously had been denied, relates back to the original denial and thus preserves jurisdiction. Ibid.
On the question whether certification erroneously had been denied, the Court of Appeals held that necessity is not a prerequisite under Rule 23. 579 F. 2d, at 252. The court expressed doubts about the District Court’s finding that class certification was “inappropriate.” While Geraghty raised some claims not applicable to the entire class of prisoners who are or will become eligible for parole, the District Court could have “certified] certain issues as subject to class adjudication, and... limite [d] overbroad classes by the use. of sub-classes.” Id., at 253. Failure “to consider these options constituted a failure properly to exercise discretion.” Ibid. “Indeed, this authority may be exercised sua sponte.” Ibid. The Court of Appeals also held that refusal to certify because of a potential conflict of interest between Geraghty and other members of the putative class was error. The subclass mechanism would have remedied this problem as well. Id., at 252-253. Thus, the Court of Appeals reversed the denial of class certification and remanded the case to the District Court for an initial evaluation of the proper subclasses. Id., at 254. The court also remanded the motion for intervention. Id., at 245, n. 21.
In order to avoid “improvidently dissipating] judicial effort,” id., at 254, the Court of Appeals went on to consider whether the trial court had decided the merits of respondent’s case properly. The District Court’s entry of summary judgment was found to be error because “if Geraghty’s recapitulation of the function and genesis of the guidelines is supported by the evidence,” the guidelines “may well be” unauthorized or unconstitutional. Id., at 259, 268. Thus, the dispute on the merits also was remanded for further factual development.
II
Article III of the Constitution limits federal “judicial Power,” that is, federal-court jurisdiction, to “Cases” and “Controversies.” This.case-or-controversy limitation serves "two complementary” purposes. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968). It limits the business of federal courts to "questions presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of resolution through the judicial process,” and it defines the “role assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power to assure that the federal courts will not intrude into areas committed to the other branches of government.” Ibid. Likewise, mootness has two aspects: “when the issues presented are no longer 'live’ or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome.” Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 496 (1969).
It is clear that the controversy over the validity of the Parole Release Guidelines is still a “live” one between petitioners and at least some members of the class respondent seeks to represent. This is demonstrated by the fact that prisoners currently affected by the guidelines have moved to be substituted, or to intervene, as “named” respondents in this Court. See n. 1, supra. We therefore are concerned here with the second aspect of mootness, that is, the parties’ interest in the litigation. The Court has referred to this concept as the “personal stake” requirement. E. g., Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S. 747, 755 (1976); Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962).
The personal-stake requirement relates to the first purpose of the case-or-controversy doctrine — limiting judicial power to disputes capable of judicial resolution. The Court in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S., at 100-101, stated:
“The question whether a particular person is a proper party to maintain the action does not, by its own force, raise separation of powers problems related to improper judicial interference in areas committed to other branches of the Federal Government.... Thus, in terms of Article III limitations on federal court jurisdiction, the question of standing is related only to whether the dispute sought to be adjudicated will be presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution. It is for that reason that the emphasis in standing problems is on whether the party invoking federal court jurisdiction has ‘a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy/ Baker v. Carr, [369 U. S.], at 204, and whether the dispute touches upon ‘the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests/ Aetna Life Insurance Co. v. Haworth, [300 U. S.], at 240-241.”
See also Schlesinger v. Reservists to Stop the War, 418 U. S. 208, 216-218 (1974).
The “personal stake” aspect of mootness doctrine also serves primarily the purpose of assuring that federal courts are presented with disputes they are capable of resolving. One commentator has defined mootness as “the doctrine of standing set in a time frame: The requisite personal interest that must exist at the commencement of the litigation (standing) must continue throughout its existence (mootness).” Monaghan, Constitutional Adjudication: The Who. and When, 82 Yale L. J. 1363, 1384 (1973).
III
On several occasions the Court has considered the application of the “personal stake” requirement in the class-action context. In Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975), it held that mootness of the named plaintiff’s, individual claim after a class has been duly certified does not render the action moot. It reasoned that “even though appellees... might not again enforce the Iowa durational residency requirement against [the class representative], it is clear that they will enforce it against those persons in the class that appellant sought to represent and that the District Court certified.” Id., at 400. The Court stated specifically that an Art. Ill case or controversy “may exist... between a named defendant and a member of the class represented by the named plaintiff, even though the claim of the named plaintiff has become moot.” Id., at 402.
Although one might argue that Sosna contains at least an implication that the critical factor for Art. Ill purposes is the timing of class certification, other cases, applying a “relation back” approach, clearly demonstrate that timing is not crucial. When the claim on the merits is “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” the named plaintiff may litigate the class certification issue despite loss of his personal stake in the outcome of the litigation. E. g., Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 110, n. 11 (1975). The “capable of repetition, yet evading review” doctrine, to be sure, was developed outside the class-action context. See Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U. S. 498, 514-515 (1911). But it has been applied where the' named plaintiff does have a personal stake at the outset of the lawsuit, and where the claim may arise again with respect to that plaintiff; the litigation then may continue notwithstanding the named plaintiff's current lack of a personal stake. See, e. g., Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U. S. 147, 149 (1975); Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 123-125 (1973). Since the litigant faces some likelihood of becoming involved in the same controversy in the future, vigorous advocacy can be expected to continue.
When, however, there is no chance that the named plaintiff’s expired claim will reoccur, mootness still can be avoided through certification of a class prior to expiration of the named plaintiff’s personal claim. E. g., Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 752-757. See Kremens v. Bart- ley, 431 U. S. 119, 129-130 (1977). Some claims are so inherently transitory that the trial court will not have even enough time to rule on a motion for class certification before the proposed representative’s individual interest expires. The Court considered this possibility in Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S., at 110, n. 11. Gerstein was an action challenging pretrial detention conditions. The Court assumed that the named plaintiffs were no longer in custody awaiting trial at the time the trial court certified a class of pretrial detainees. There was no indication that the particular named plaintiffs might again be subject to pretrial detention. Nonetheless, the case was held not to be moot because:
“The length of pretrial custody cannot be ascertained at the outset, and it may be ended at any time by release on recognizance, dismissal of the charges, or a guilty plea, as well as by acquittal or conviction after trial. It is by no means certain that any given individual, named as plaintiff, would be in pretrial custody long enough for a district judge to certify the class. Moreover, in this case the constant existence of a class of persons suffering the deprivation is certain. The attorney representing the named respondents is a public defender, and we can safely assume that he has other clients with a continuing live interest in the case.” Ibid.
See also Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S., at 402, n. 11.
In two different contexts the Court has stated that the proposed class representative who proceeds to a judgment on the merits may appeal denial of class certification. First, this assumption was “an important ingredient,” Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, ante, at 338, in the rejection of interlocutory appeals, “as of right,” of class' certification denials. Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463, 469, 470, n. 15 (1978). The Court reasoned that denial of class status will not necessarily be the “death knell” of a small-claimant action, since there still remains “the prospect of prevailing on the merits and reversing an order denying class certification.” Ibid.
Second, in United Airlines, Inc. v. McDonald, 432 U. S. 385, 393-395 (1977), the Court held that a putative class member may intervene, for the purpose of appealing the denial of a class certification motion, after the named plaintiffs’ claims have been satisfied and judgment entered in their favor. Underlying that decision was the view that “refusal to certify was subject to appellate review after final judgment at the behest of the named plaintiffs.” Id., at 393. See also Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S., at 469. And today, the Court holds that named plaintiffs whose claims are satisfied through entry of judgment over their objections may appeal the denial of a class certification ruling. Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, ante, p. 326.
Gerstein, McDonald, and Roper are all examples of cases found not to be moot, despite the loss of a “personal stake” in the merits of the litigation by the proposed class representative. The interest of the named plaintiffs in Gerstein was precisely the same as that of Geraghty here. Similarly, after judgment had been entered in their favor, the named plaintiffs in McDonald had no continuing narrow personal stake in the outcome of the class claims. And in Roper the Court points out that an individual controversy is rendered moot, in the strict Art. Ill sense, by payment and satisfaction of a final judgment. Ante, at 333.
These cases demonstrate the flexible character of the Art. III mootness doctrine. As has been noted in the past, Art. III justiciability is “not a legal concept with a fixed content or susceptible of scientific verification.” Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 508 (1961) (plurality opinion). “[T]he justi-ciability doctrine [is] one of uncertain and shifting contours.” Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S., at 97.
IV
Perhaps somewhat anticipating today’s decision in Roper, petitioners argue that the situation presented is entirely different when mootness of the individual claim is caused by “expiration” of the claim, rather than by a judgment on the claim. They assert that a proposed class representative who individually prevails on the merits still has a “personal stake” in the outcome of the litigation, while the named plaintiff whose claim is truly moot does not. In the latter situation, where no class has been certified, there is no party before the court with a live claim, and it follows, it is said, that we have no jurisdiction to consider whether a class should have been certified. Brief for Petitioners 37-39.
We do not find this distinction persuasive. As has been noted earlier, Geraghty’s “personal stake” in the outcome of the litigation is, in a practical sense, no different from that of the putative class representatives in Roper. Further, the opinion in Roper indicates that the approach to take in applying Art. III is issue by issue. “Nor does a confession of judgment by defendants on less than all the issues moot an entire case; other issues in the case may be appealable. We can assume that a district court’s final judgment fully satisfying named plaintiffs’ private substantive claims would preclude their appeal on that aspect of the final judgment; however, it does not follow that this circumstance would terminate the named plaintiffs’ right to take an appeal on the issue of class certification.” Ante, at 333. See also United Airlines, Inc. v. McDonald, 432 U. S., at 392; Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S., at 497.
Similarly, the fact that a named plaintiff’s substantive claims are mooted due to an occurrence other than a judgment on the merits does not mean that all the other issues in the case are mooted. A plaintiff who brings a class action presents two separate issues for judicial resolution. One is the claim on the merits; the other is the claim that he is entitled to represent a class. “The denial of class certification stands as an adjudication of one of the issues litigated,” Roper, ante, at 336. We think that in détermining whether the plaintiff may continue to press the class certification claim, after the claim on the merits “expires,” we must look to the nature of the “personal stake” in the class certification claim. Determining Art, Ill’s “uncertain and shifting contours,” see Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S., at 97, with respect to nontraditional forms of litigation, such as the class action, requires reference to the purposes of the case-or-controversy requirement.
Application of the personal-stake requirement to a procedural claim, such as the right to represent a class, is not automatic or readily resolved. A “legally cognizable interest,” as the Court described it in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S., at 496, in the traditional sense rarely ever exists with respect to the class certification claim. The justifications that led to the development of the class action include the protection of the defendant from inconsistent.obligations, the protection of the interests of absentees, the provision of a convenient and economical means for. disposing of similar lawsuits, and the facilitation of the spreading of litigation costs among numerous litigants with similar claims. See, e. g., Advisory Committee Notes on Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23, 28 U. S. C. App., pp. 427-429; Note, Developments in the Law, Class Actions, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1318, 1321-1323, 1329-1330 (1976). Although the named representative receives certain benefits from the class nature of the action, some of which are regarded as desirable and others as less so, these benefits generally are byproducts of the class-action device. In order to achieve the primary benefits of class suits, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure give the proposed class representative the right to have a class certified if the requirements of the Rules are met. This “right” is more analogous to the private attorney general concept than to the type of interest traditionally thought to satisfy the “personal stake” requirement. See Roper, ante, at 338.
As noted above, the purpose of the “personal stake” requirement is to assure that the case is in a form capable, of judicial resolution. The imperatives of a dispute capable of judicial resolution are sharply presented issues in a concrete factual setting and self-interested parties vigorously advocating opposing positions. Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S., at 753-756; Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S., at 204; Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S., at 503 (plurality opinion). We conclude that these elements can exist with respect to the class certification issue notwithstanding the fact that the named plaintiff’s claim on the merits has expired. The question whether class certification is appropriate remains as a concrete, sharply presented issue. In Sosna v. Iowa it was recognized that a named plaintiff whose claim on the merits expires after class certification may still adequately represent the class. Implicit in that decision was the determination that vigorous advocacy can be assured through means other than the traditional requirement of a “personal stake in the outcome.” Respondent here continues vigorously to advocate his right to have a class certified.
We therefore hold that an action brought on behalf of a class does not become moot upon expiration of the named plaintiff’s substantive claim, even though class certification has been denied. The proposed representative retains a “personal stake” in obtaining class certification sufficient to assure that Art. III values are not undermined. If the appeal results in reversal of the class certification denial, and a class subsequently is properly certified, the merits of the class claim then may be adjudicated pursuant to the holding in Sosna.
Our holding is- limited to the appeal of the denial of the class certification motion. A named plaintiff whose claim expires may not continue to press the appeal on the merits until a class has been properly certified. See Roper, ante, at 336-337. If, on appeal, it is determined that class certification properly was denied, the claim on the merits must be dismissed as moot.
Our conclusion that the controversy here is not moot does not automatically establish that the named plaintiff is entitled to continue litigating the. interests of the class. “[I]t does shift the focus of examination from the elements of justiciability to the ability of the named representative to ‘fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.’ Rule 23 (a).” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S., at 403. We hold only that a case or controversy still exists. The question of who is to represent the class is a separate issue.
We need not decide here whether Geraghty is a proper representative for the purpose of representing the class on the merits.: No class as yet has been certified. Upon remand, the District Court can determine whether Geraghty may continue to press the class claims or whether another representative would be appropriate. We decide only that Geraghty was a proper representative for the purpose of appealing the ruling denying certification of the class that he initially defined. Thus, it was not improper for the Court of Appeals to consider whether the District Court should have granted class certification.
y
We turn now to the question whether the Court of Appeals’ decision on the District Court’s class certification ruling was proper. Petitioners assert that the Court of Appeals erred in requiring the District Court to consider the possibility of certifying subclasses sua sponte. Petitioners strenuously contend that placing the burden of identifying and constructing subclasses on the trial court creates unmanageable difficulties. Brief for Petitioners 43-51. We feel that the Court of Appeals’ decision here does not impose undue burdens on the district courts. Respondent had no real opportunity to request certification of subclasses after the class he proposed was rejected. The District Court denied class certification at the same time it rendered its adverse decision on the merits. Requesting subclass certification at that time would have been a futile act. The District Court was not about to invest effort in deciding the subclass question after it had ruled that no relief on the merits was available. The remand merely gives respondent the opportunity to perform his function in the adversary system. On remand, however, it is not the District Court that is to bear the burden of constructing subclasses. That burden is upon the respondent and it is he who is required to submit proposals to the court. The court has no sua sponte obligation so to act. With this modification, the Court of Appeals’ remand of the case for consideration of subclasses was a proper disposition.
It would be inappropriate for this Court to reach the merits of this controversy in the present posture of the case. Our holding that the case is not moot extends only to the appeal of the class certification denial. If the District Court again denies class certification, and that decision is affirmed, the controversy on the merits will be moot. Furthermore, although the Court of Appeals commented upon the merits for the sole purpose of avoiding waste of judicial resources, it did not reach a final conclusion on the validity of the guidelines. Rather, it held only that summary judgment was improper and remanded for further factual development. Given the interlocutory posture of the case before us, we must defer decision on the merits of respondent’s case until after it is determined affirmatively that a class properly can be certified.
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.
The grant of certiorari also included the question of the validity of the Parole Release Guidelines, an issue left open in United States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 184 (1979). We have concluded, however, that it would be premature to reach the merits of that question at this time. See infra, at 408.
While the petition for a writ of certiorari was pending, respondent Geraghty. filed a motion to substitute as respondents in this Court five prisoners, then incarcerated, who also were represented by Geraghty’s attorneys. In the alternative, the prisoners sought to intervene. We deferred our ruling on the motion to the hearing of the case on the merits. 440 U. S. 945 (1979). These prisoners, or most of them, now also have been released from incarceration. On September 25, 1979, a supplement to the motion to substitute or intervene was filed, proposing six new substitute respondents or intervenors; each of these is a presently incarcerated federal prisoner who, allegedly, has been adversely affected by the guidelines and who is represented by Geraghty’s counsel.
Since we hold that respondent may continue to litigate the class certification issue, there is no need for us to. consider whether the motion should be granted in order to prevent the case from being moot. We conclude that the District Court initially should rule on the motion.
See, e. g., Armour v. City of Anniston, 597 F. 2d 46, 48-19 (CA5 1979); Susman v. Lincoln American Cory., 587 F. 2d 866 (CA7 1978), cert. pending, No. 78-1169; Goodman v. Schlesinger, 584 F. 2d 1325, 1332-1333 (CA4 1978); Camper v. Calumet Petrochemicals, Inc., 584 F. 2d 70 (CA5 1978); Roper v. Consurve, Inc., 578 F. 2d 1106 (CA5 1978), aff’d sub nom. Deposit Guaranty Nat. Bank v. Roper, ante, p. 326; Satterwhite v. City of Greenville, 578 F. 2d 987 (CA5 1978) (en banc), cert. pending, No. 78-1008; Vun Cannon v. Breed, 565 F. 2d 1096 (CA9 1977); Winokur v. Bell Federal Savings & Loan Assn., 560 F. 2d 271 (CA7 1977), cert. denied, 435 U. S. 932 (1978); Lasky v. Quinlan, 558 F. 2d 1133 (CA2 1977); Kuahulu v. Employers Ins. of Wausau, 557 F. 2d 1334 (CA9 1977); Boyd v. Justices of Special Term, 546 F. 2d 526 (CA2 1976); Napier v. Gertrude, 542 F. 2d 825 (CA10 1976), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 1049 (1977).
38 Fed. Reg. 31942-31945 (1973). The guidelines currently in force appear at 28 CFR § 2.20 (1979).
The extortion count was based on respondent’s use of his position as a vice squad officer of the Chicago police force to “shake down” dispensers of alcoholic beverages; the false declarations concerned his involvement in this scheme.
Apparently Becher, too, has.now been released from prison.
The claim in Sosna also fit the traditional category of actions that are deemed not moot despite the litigant’s loss of personal stake, that is, those “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” See Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U. S. 498, 515 (1911). In Franks v. Bowman Transportation Co., 424 U. S. 747, 753-755 (1976), however, the Court held that the class-action aspect of mootness doctrine does not depend on the class claim’s being so inherently transitory that it meets the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” standard.
Three of the Court’s cases might be described as adopting a less flexible approach. In Indianapolis School Comm’rs v. Jacobs, 420 U. S. 128 (1975), and in Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U. S. 147 (1975), dismissal of putative class suits, as moot, was ordered after the named plaintiffs’ claims became moot. And in Pasadena City Bd. of Education v. Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 430 (1976), it was indicated that the action would have been moot, upon expiration of the named plaintiffs’ claims, had not the United States intervened as a party plaintiff. Each of these, however, was a case in which there was an attempt to appeal the merits without first having obtained proper certification of a class. In each case it was the defendant who petitioned this Court for review. As is observed subsequently in the text, appeal from denial of class classification is permitted in some circumstances where appeal on the merits is not. In the situation where the proposed class representative has lost a “personal stake,” the merits cannot be reached until a class properly is certified. Although the Court perhaps could have remanded Jacobs and Weinstein for reconsideration of the class certification issue, as the Court of Appeals did here, the parties in those cases did not suggest “relation back” of class certification. Thus we do not find this fine of cases dispositive of the question now before us.
Were the class an indispensable party, the named plaintiff’s interests in certification would approach a “legally cognizable interest.”
See, e. g., Landers, Of Legalized Blackmail and Legalized Theft: Consumer Class Actions and the Substance-Procedure Dilemma, 47 S. Cal. L. Rev. 842 (1974); Simon, Class Actions — Useful Tool or Engine of Destruction
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:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In these eases we consider an alleged conspiracy to eliminate price competition among chiropractors, by means of a “peer review committee” that advised an insurance company whether particular chiropractors’ treatments and fees were “necessary” and “reasonable.” The question presented is whether the alleged conspiracy is exempt from federal antitrust laws as part of the “business of insurance” within the meaning of the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
I
Petitioners are the New York State Chiropractic Association (NYSCA), a professional association of chiropractors, and the Union Labor Life Insurance Co. (ULL), a Maryland insurer doing business in New York. As required by New York law, ULL’s health insurance policies cover certain policyholder claims for chiropractic treatments. But certain ULL policies limit the company’s liability to “the reasonable charges” for “necessary medical care and services.” App. 19a, 22a (emphasis added). Accordingly, when presented with a policyholder claim for reimbursement for chiropractic treatments, ULL must determine whether the treatments were necessary and whether the charges for them were reasonable. In making some of these determinations, ULL has arranged with NYSCA to use the advice of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee.
The Committee was established by NYSCA in 1971, primarily to aid insurers in evaluating claims for chiropractic treatments. It is composed of 10 practicing New York chiropractors, who serve on a voluntary basis. At the request of an insurer, the Committee will examine a chiropractor’s treatments and charges in a particular case, and will render an opinion on the necessity for the treatments and the reasonableness of the charges made for them. The opinion will be based upon such considerations as the treating chiropractor’s experience and specialty degrees; the location of his office; the number of visits and time spent with the patient; the patient’s age, occupation, general physical condition, and history of previous treatment; and X-ray findings.
Respondent is a chiropractor licensed and practicing in the State of New York. On a number of occasions his treatments of ULL policyholders, and his charges for those treatments, have been referred by ULL to the Committee, which has sometimes concluded that his treatments were unnecessary or his charges unreasonable. Petitioners assert that respondent has treated his patients “in a manner calculated to maximize the number of treatments for a particular condition, and that his fees for these treatments are unusually high.” 650 F. 2d 387, 389 (CA2 1981). Respondent, for his part, contends that the members of the Committee “practice ‘antiquated’ techniques that they seek to impose on their more innovative competitors.” Ibid.
This dispute resulted in the present suit, brought by respondent in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Respondent alleged that the peer review practices of petitioners violated § 1 of the Sherman Act. In particular, he claimed that petitioners and others had used the Committee as the vehicle for a conspiracy to fix the prices that chiropractors, including respondent, would be permitted to charge for their services. He concluded that he had been restrained from providing his chiropractic services to the public freely and fully, and that would-be recipients of chiropractic services had been deprived of the benefits of competition. Respondent requested, inter alia, declaratory and injunctive relief against ULL’s continued use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee in evaluating policyholders’ claims.
After extensive discovery, the District Court granted petitioners’ motion for summary judgment dismissing respondent’s complaint, concluding that ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee was exempted from antitrust scrutiny by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 81-389, pp. 20a-37a. The court noted that three requirements must be met in order to obtain the McCarranFerguson exemption: The challenged practices (1) must constitute the “business of insurance,” (2) must be regulated by state law, and (3) must not amount to a “boycott, coercion, or intimidation.” Id., at 27a-28a. In the court’s view, all three of these requirements were satisfied in the present case. In particular, the court held that petitioners’ peer review practices constituted the “business of insurance” because they served “to define the precise extent of ULL’s contractual obligations . . . under [its] policies.” Id., at 29a-30a. Moreover, the court determined that the peer review practices “involve[d] the spreading of risk, an indispensable element of the ‘business of insurance.’” Id., at 30a. Respondents’ Sherman Act claim was accordingly dismissed with prejudice.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. 650 F. 2d 387 (1981). Relying upon this Court’s recent opinion in Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S. 205 (1979), the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court had erred in holding that ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee constituted the “business of insurance.” Accordingly, the Court of Appeals remanded the action for further proceedings. We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals on the question presented. 454 U. S. 1052 (1981).
II
The only issue before us is whether petitioners’ peer review practices are exempt from antitrust scrutiny as part of the “business of insurance.” “It is axiomatic that conduct which is not exempt from the antitrust laws may nevertheless be perfectly legal.” Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., supra, at 210, n. 5. Thus in deciding these cases we have no occasion to address the merits of respondent’s Sherman Act claims. However, the Sherman Act does express a “longstanding congressional commitment to the policy of free markets and open competition.” Community Communications Co. v. Boulder, 455 U. S. 40, 56 (1982); see also United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U. S. 596, 610 (1972). Accordingly, our precedents consistently hold that exemptions from the antitrust laws must be construed narrowly. FMC v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U. S. 726, 733 (1973). This principle applies not only to implicit exemptions, see Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., supra, at 231, but also to express statutory exemptions, see United States v. McKesson & Robbins, Inc., 351 U. S. 305, 316 (1956). In Royal Drug, supra, this Court had occasion to reexamine the scope of the express antitrust exemption provided for the “business of insurance” by § 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. • We hold that decision of the question before us is controlled by Royal Drug.
The principal petitioner in Royal Drug was a Texas insurance company, Blue Shield, that offered policies entitling insured persons to purchase prescription drugs for $2 each from any pharmacy participating in a “Pharmacy Agreement” with Blue Shield; policyholders were also allowed to purchase prescription drugs from a nonparticipating pharmacy, but in that event they would have to pay full price for the drugs and would be reimbursed by Blue Shield for only a part of that price. Blue Shield offered Pharmacy Agreements to all licensed pharmacies in Texas, but participating pharmacies were required to sell prescription drugs to Blue Shield’s policyholders for $2 each, and were reimbursed only for their cost in acquiring the drugs thus sold. “Thus, only pharmacies that [could] afford to distribute prescription drugs for less than this $2 markup [could] profitably participate in the plan.” 440 U. S., at 209 (footnote omitted).
Respondents in Royal Drug were the owners of nonparticipating pharmacies. They sued Blue Shield and several participating pharmacies under § 1 of the Sherman Act, alleging that the Pharmacy Agreements were the instrument by which Blue Shield had conspired with participating pharmacies to fix the retail prices of prescription drugs. Respondents also alleged that the Agreements encouraged Blue Shield’s policyholders to avoid nonparticipating pharmacies, thus constituting an unlawful group boycott. The District Court granted summary judgment to Blue Shield and the other petitioners, holding that the challenged Agreements were exempt under §2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. But the Court of Appeals disagreed, holding that the Agreements were not the “business of insurance” within the meaning of that Act, and reversed. 440 U. S., at 210. This Court affirmed. Looking to “the structure of the Act and its legislative history,” id., at 211, the Court discussed three characteristics of the business of insurance that Congress had intended to exempt through § 2(b).
First, after noting that one “indispensable characteristic of insurance” is the “spreading and underwriting of a policyholder’s risk,” id., at 211-212, the Court observed that parts of the legislative history of the McCarran-Ferguson Act “strongly suggest that Congress understood the business of insurance to be the underwriting and spreading of risk,” id., at 220-221. The Court then dismissed Blue Shield’s contention that its Pharmacy Agreements involved such activities.
“The Pharmacy Agreements . . . are merely arrangements for the purchase of goods and services by Blue Shield. By agreeing with pharmacies on the maximum prices it will pay for drugs, Blue Shield effectively reduces the total amount it must pay to its policyholders. The Agreements thus enable Blue Shield to minimize costs and maximize profits. Such cost-savings arrangements may well be sound business practice, and may well inure ultimately to the benefit of policyholders in the form of lower premiums, but they are not the ‘business of insurance.’” Id., at 214 (footnote omitted).
Second, the Court identified “the contract between the insurer and the insured” as “[a]nother commonly understood aspect of the business of insurance.” Id., at 215. The Court noted that, in enacting the McCarran-Ferguson Act, Congress had been concerned with the “ ‘relationship between insurer and insured, the type of policy which could be issued, its reliability, interpretation, and enforcement — these were the core of the “business of insurance.”’” Id., at 215-216, quoting SEC v. National Securities, Inc., 393 U. S. 453, 460 (1969). The Court then rejected Blue Shield’s argument that its Pharmacy Agreements were so closely related to the “reliability, interpretation, and enforcement” of its policies as to fall within the intended scope of §2(b): “This argument . . . proves too much.” 440 U. S., at 216.
“At the most, the petitioners have demonstrated that the Pharmacy Agreements result in cost savings to Blue Shield which may be reflected in lower premiums if the cost savings are passed on to policyholders. But, in that sense, every business decision made by an insurance company has some impact on its reliability, its rate-making, and its status as a reliable insurer . . . [and thus] could be included in the ‘business of insurance.’ Such a result would be plainly contrary to the statutory language, which exempts the ‘business of insurance’ and not the ‘business of insurance companies.’” Id., at 216-217.
Finally, the Court noted that in enacting the McCarranFerguson Act, “the primary concern of both representatives of the insurance industry and the Congress was that cooperative ratemaking efforts be exempt from the antitrust laws.” Id., at 221. This was so because of “the widespread view that it [was] very difficult to underwrite risks in an informed and responsible way without intra-industry cooperation.” Ibid. The Court was thus reluctant to extend the § 2(b) exemption to the case before it, “because the Pharmacy Agreements involve parties wholly outside the insurance industry.” Id., at 231.
“There is not the slightest suggestion in the legislative history that Congress in any way contemplated that arrangements such as the Pharmacy Agreements in this case, which involve the mass purchase of goods and services from entities outside the insurance industry, are the ‘business of insurance.’” Id., at 224 (footnote omitted).
In sum, Royal Drug identified three criteria relevant in determining whether a particular practice is part of the “business of insurance” exempted from the antitrust laws by § 2(b): first, whether the practice has the effect of transferring or spreading a policyholder’s risk; second, whether the practice is an integral part of the policy relationship between the insurer and the insured; and third, whether the practice is limited to entities within the insurance industry. None of these criteria is necessarily determinative in itself, but examining the arrangement between petitioners NYSCA and ULL with respect to all three criteria, we do not hesitate to conclude that it is not a part of the “business of insurance.”
Plainly, ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee plays no part in the “spreading and underwriting of a policyholder’s risk.” Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S., at 211. Both the “spreading” and the “underwriting” of risk refer in this context to the transfer of risk characteristic of insurance. See n. 7, supra. And as the Court of Appeals below observed:
“The risk that an insured will require chiropractic treatment has been transferred from the insured to [ULL] by the very purchase of insurance. Peer review takes place only after the risk has been transferred by means of the policy, and then it functions only to determine whether the risk of the entire loss (the insured’s cost of treatment) has been transferred to [ULL] — that is, whether the insured’s loss falls within the policy limits.” 650 F. 2d, at 393.
Petitioner ULL argues that the Court of Appeals’ analysis is “semantic and unrealistic.” Brief for Petitioner ULL 17. Petitioner reasons that “[i]t is inconceivable that Congress would have included risk transfer within the ‘business of insurance’ but excluded a device that helps ‘determine whether the risk. . . has been transferred’ and acts as ‘an aid in determining the scope of the transfer.’” Ibid. We find no merit in this argument, because the challenged peer review arrangement is logically and temporally unconnected to the transfer of risk accomplished by ULL’s insurance policies. The transfer of risk from insured to insurer is effected by means of the contract between the parties — the insurance policy — and that transfer is complete at the time that the contract is entered. See 9 G. Couch, Cyclopedia of Insurance Law §§39:53, 39:63 (2d ed. 1962). If the policy limits coverage to “necessary” treatments and “reasonable” charges for them, then that limitation is the measure of the risk that has actually been transferred to the insurer: To the extent that the insured pays unreasonable charges for unnecessary treatments, he will not be reimbursed, because the risk of incurring such treatments and charges was never transferred to the insurer, but was instead always retained by the insured. Petitioner’s argument contains the unspoken premise that the transfer of risk from an insured to his insurer actually takes place not when the contract between those parties is completed, but rather only when the insured’s claim is settled. This premise is contrary to the fundamental principle of insurance that the insurance policy defines the scope of risk assumed by the insurer from the insured. See id., §39:3; R. Keeton, Insurance Law § 5.1(a) (1971).
Turning to the second Royal Drug criterion, it is clear that ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee is not an integral part of the policy relationship between insurer and insured. In the first place, the challenged arrangement between ULL and NYSCA is obviously distinct from ULL’s contracts with its policyholders. In this sense the challenged arrangement resembles the Pharmacy Agreements in Royal Drug. There the Court rejected the proposition that the Agreements were “‘between insurer and insured.’” Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., supra, at 215, quoting SEC v. National Securities, Inc., 393 U. S., at 460. Rather, it recognized those Agreements as “separate contractual arrangements between Blue Shield and pharmacies engaged in the sale and distribution of goods and services other than insurance.” 440 U. S., at 216. Similarly, ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee is a separate arrangement between the insurer and third parties not engaged in the business of insurance.
Petitioner ULL argues that the challenged peer review practices satisfy this criterion because peer review “directly involves the ‘interpretation’ and ‘enforcement’ of the insurance contract.” Brief for Petitioner ULL 16. But this argument is essentially identical to one made and rejected in Royal Drug. Blue Shield there contended that its Pharmacy Agreements “so closely affectfed] the ‘reliability, interpretation, and enforcement’ of the insurance contract... as to fall within the exempted area.” 440 U. S., at 216 (footnote omitted). This Court noted, however:
“The benefit promised to Blue Shield policyholders is that their premiums will cover the cost of prescription drugs except for a $2 charge for each prescription. So long as that promise is kept, policyholders are basically unconcerned with arrangements made between Blue Shield and participating pharmacies.” Id., at 213-214 (footnotes omitted).
Similarly, when presented with policyholder claims for reimbursement, ULL must decide whether the claims are covered by its policies. But these decisions are entirely ULL’s, and its use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee as an aid in its decisionmaking process is a matter of indifference to the policyholder, whose only concern is whether his claim is paid, not why it is paid. As in Royal Drug, petitioners have shown, at the most, that the challenged peer review practices result in “cost savings to [ULL] which may be reflected in lower premiums if the cost savings are passed on to policyholders.” Id., at 216. To grant the practices a §2(b) exemption on such a showing “would be plainly contrary to the statutory language, which exempts the ‘business of insurance’ and not the ‘business of insurance companies.’” ■ Id., at 217.
Finally, as respects the third Royal Drug criterion, it is plain that the challenged peer review practices are not limited to entities within the insurance industry. On the contrary, ULL’s use of NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee inevitably involves third parties wholly outside the insurance industry — namely, practicing chiropractors. Petitioners do not dispute this fact, but instead deprecate its importance. They argue that we should not conclude “that ULL’s use of the peer review process is outside the scope of the ‘business of insurance’ simply because NYSCA is not an insurance company.” Brief for Petitioner ULL 25. In petitioners’ view:
“There is nothing in the McCarran-Ferguson Act that limits the ‘business of insurance’ to the business of insurance companies. As this Court has stated, ‘[the Act’s] language refers not to the persons or companies who are subject to state regulation, but to laws “regulating the business of insurance.”’ National Securities, 393 U. S. at 459.” Ibid, (emphasis in original of quoted opinion).
Asserting that “the [New York] Superintendent of Insurance effectively can regulate the peer review process through his authority over the claims adjustment procedures of ULL,” id., at 26, petitioners conclude that the process is part of the “business of insurance” despite the necessary involvement of third parties outside the insurance industry.
We may assume that the challenged peer review practices need not be denied the § 2(b) exemption solely because they involve parties outside the insurance industry. But the involvement of such parties, even if not dispositive, constitutes part of the inquiry mandated by the Royal Drug analysis. As the Court noted there, § 2(b) was intended primarily to protect “mira-industry cooperation” in the underwriting of risks. 440 U. S., at 221 (emphasis added). Arrangements between insurance companies and parties outside the insurance industry can hardly be said to lie at the center of that legislative concern. More importantly, such arrangements may prove contrary to the spirit as well as the letter of § 2(b), because they have the potential to restrain competition in noninsurance markets. Indeed, the peer review practices challenged in the present cases assertedly realize precisely this potential: Respondent’s claim is that the practices restrain competition in a provider market — the market for chiropractic services — rather than in an insurance market. App. 8a. Thus we cannot join petitioners in depreciating the fact that parties outside the insurance industry are intimately involved in the peer review practices at issue in these cases.
III
In sum, we conclude that ULL’s use of NYSCA s Peer Review Committee does not constitute the “business of insurance” within the meaning of § 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly
Affirmed.
59 Stat. 33, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1011-1015. The Act provides in relevant part:
“(a) The business of insurance, and every person engaged therein, shall be subject to the laws of the several States which relate to the regulation or taxation of such business.
“(b) No Act of Congress shall be construed to invalidate, impair, or supersede any law enacted by any State for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance, . . . unless such Act specifically relates to the business of insurance . . . .” §2, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1012(a), (b).
“(b) Nothing contained in this Act shall render the . . . Sherman Act inapplicable to any agreement to boycott, coerce, or intimidate, or act of boycott, coercion, or intimidation.” § 3, 15 U. S. C. § 1013(b).
The Committee’s advice is also available to patients, governmental agencies, and chiropractors themselves, but insurers are the principal users. 650 F. 2d 387, 388 (CA2 1981).
15 U. S. C. § 1, which provides in pertinent part that “[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. ...”
The court then turned to the Act’s second requirement, that the challenged practices be “regulated by state law.” The court held that that requirement had been met, as well, observing that New York had “enacted a pervasive scheme of regulation and supervision of insurance,” had prohibited “the unfair settlement of claims,” and had proscribed “the conduct alleged in the complaint” in its state antitrust law, the Donnelly Act, which by its terms applied to insurers. App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 81-389, pp. 31a-32a. Finally, the court determined that respondent had neither alleged a “boycott” on petitioners’ part, nor offered evidentiary support for such a claim. Id., at 33a-35a. The court thus concluded that the Act’s third requirement was satisfied in the present case, and that petitioners’ actions were consequently “exempt from application of the antitrust laws.” Id., at 36a.
Since it reached this conclusion, the Court of Appeals did not definitively address the other holdings of the District Court. See n. 4, swpra. The court did note, however, that petitioner NYSCA did not itself “appear to be regulated by state law in the manner § 2(b) requires.” 650 F. 2d, at 390, n. 5.
As noted by the Court of Appeals, id., at 395, n. 13, the decision below is contrary to that of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit “in a factually identical ease.” See Bartholomew v. Virginia Chiropractors Assn., 612 F. 2d 812 (1979).
As the Court explained:
“ ‘It is characteristic of insurance that a number of risks are accepted, some of which involve losses, and that such losses are spread over all the risks so as to enable the insurer to accept each risk at a slight fraction of the possible liability upon it.’ 1 G. Couch, Cyclopedia of Insurance Law § 1:3 (2d ed. 1959). See also R. Keeton, Insurance Law § 1.2(a) (1971) (‘Insurance is an arrangement for transferring and distributing risk’); 1 G. Richards, The Law of Insurance § 2 (W. Freedman 5th ed. 1952).” 440 U. S., at 211 (footnote omitted).
The premise of the dissent is that NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee actually constitutes “the claims adjustor” in these cases. See post, at 137. From this premise the dissent reasons that since “claims adjustment is part and parcel of the ‘business of insurance’ protected by the McCarranFerguson Act,” post, at 138, it necessarily follows that the peer review practices at issue in these cases must enjoy the Act’s exemption. The fatal flaw in this syllogism is that NYSCA’s Peer Review Committee is not the claims adjustor. As the Court of Appeals noted: “Opinions of the committee are not binding unless the parties agree beforehand that they will be.” 650 F. 2d, at 388. Thus in a case such as the present ones, ULL is perfectly free to disregard the Committee’s evaluation. Even if ULL were to act upon the Committee’s opinion, the nonbinding nature of the Committee’s evaluation means that, at most, peer review is merely ancillary to the claims adjustment process. We see no reason that such ancillary activities must necessarily enjoy the McCarran-Ferguson exemption from the antitrust laws. Unlike activities that occur wholly within the insurance industry — such as the claims adjustment process itself — the ancillary peer review practices at issue in these eases “involve parties wholly outside the insurance industry.” See Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S., at 231. Thus peer review falls afoul of the third Royal Drug criterion in a way in which pure claims adjustment activities cannot.
This conclusion renders it unnecessary for us to address the questions whether the conduct challenged in respondent’s complaint was “regulated by state law” or constituted a “boycott, coercion, or intimidation.” See n. 5, 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:
|
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.
Respondent Ralph Arvizu was stopped by a border patrol agent while driving on an unpaved road in a remote area of southeastern Arizona. A search of his vehicle turned up more than 100 pounds of marijuana. The District Court for the District of Arizona denied respondent’s motion to suppress, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. In the course of its opinion, it categorized certain factors relied upon by the District Court as simply out of bounds in deciding whether there was “reasonable suspicion” for the stop. We hold that the Court of Appeals’ methodology was contrary to our prior decisions and that it reached the wrong result in this case.
On an afternoon in January 1998, Agent Clinton Stoddard was working at a border patrol checkpoint along U. S. Highway 191 approximately 30 miles north of Douglas, Arizona. App. 22, 24. See Appendix, infra (containing a map of the area noting the location of the checkpoint and other points important to this ease). Douglas has a population of about 13,000 and is situated on the United States-Mexico border in the southeastern part of the State. Only two highways lead north from Douglas. See App. 157. Highway 191 leads north to Interstate 10, which passes through Tucson and Phoenix. State Highway 80 heads northeast through less populated areas toward New Mexico, skirting south and east of the portion of the Coronado National Forest that lies approximately 20 miles northeast of Douglas.
The checkpoint is located at the intersection of 191 and Rucker Canyon Road, an unpaved east-west road that connects 191 and the Coronado National Forest. When the checkpoint is operational, border patrol agents stop the traffic on 191 as part of a coordinated effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration and smuggling across the international border. See id., at 20-21. Agents use roving patrols to apprehend smugglers trying to circumvent the checkpoint by taking the backroads, including those roads through the sparsely populated area between Douglas and the national forest. Id., at 21-22, 26, 80. Magnetic sensors, or “intrusion devices,” facilitate agents’ efforts in patrolling these areas. See id., at 25. Directionally sensitive, the sensors signal the passage of traffic that would be consistent with smuggling activities. Ibid.; Tr. of Oral Arg. 23-24.
Sensors are located along the only other northbound road from Douglas besides Highways 191 and 80: Leslie Canyon Road. Leslie Canyon Road runs roughly parallel to 191, about halfway between 191 and the border of the Coronado National Forest, and ends when it intersects Rucker Canyon Road. It is unpaved beyond the 10-mile stretch leading out of Douglas and is very rarely traveled except for use by local ranchers and forest service personnel. App. 26. Smugglers commonly try to avoid the 191 checkpoint by heading west on Rucker Canyon Road from Leslie Canyon Road and thence to Kuykendall Cutoff Road, a primitive dirt road that leads north approximately 12 miles east of 191. Id., at 29-30. From there, they can gain access to Tucson and Phoenix. Id., at 30.
Around 2:15 p.m., Stoddard received a report via Douglas radio that a Leslie Canyon Road sensor had been triggered. Id., at 24. This was significant to Stoddard for two reasons. First, it suggested to him that a vehicle might be trying to circumvent the checkpoint. Id., at 27. Second, the timing coincided with the point when agents begin heading back to the checkpoint for a shift change, which leaves the area unpatrolled. Id., at 26, 47. Stoddard knew that alien smugglers did extensive scouting and seemed to be most active when agents were en route back to the checkpoint. Another border patrol agent told Stoddard that the same sensor had gone off several weeks before and that he had apprehended a minivan using the same route and witnessed the occupants throwing bundles of marijuana out the door. Id., at 27.
Stoddard drove eastbound on Rucker Canyon Road to investigate. As he did so, he received another radio report of sensor activity. Id., at 29. It indicated that the vehicle that had triggered the first sensor was heading westbound on Rucker Canyon Road. He continued east, passing Kuy-kendall Cutoff Road. He saw the dust trail of an approaching vehicle about a half mile away. Id., at 31. Stoddard had not seen any other vehicles and, based on the timing, believed that this was the one that had tripped the sensors. Id., at 31-32. He pulled off to the side of the road at a slight slant so he could get a good look at the oncoming vehicle as it passed by. Id., at 32.
It was a minivan, a type of automobile that Stoddard knew smugglers used. Id., at 33. As it approached, it slowed dramatically, from about 50-55 to 25-30 miles per hour. Id., at 32, 57. He saw five occupants inside. An adult man was driving, an adult woman sat in the front passenger seat, and three children were in the back. Id., at 33-34. The driver appeared stiff and his posture very rigid. He did not look at Stoddard and seemed to be trying to pretend that Stod-dard was not there. Id., at 33. Stoddard thought this suspicious because in his experience on patrol most persons look over and see what is going on, and in that area most drivers give border patrol agents a friendly wave. Id., at 59. Stod-dard noticed that the knees of the two children sitting in the very back seat were unusually high, as if their feet were propped up on some cargo on the floor. Id., at 34.
At that point, Stoddard decided to get a closer look, so he began to follow the vehicle as it continued westbound on Rucker Canyon Road toward Kuykendall Cutoff Road. Id., at 34-35. Shortly thereafter, all of the children, though still facing forward, put their hands up at the same time and began to wave at Stoddard in an abnormal pattern. Id., at 35, 61. It looked to Stoddard as if the children were being instructed. Their odd waving continued on and off for about four to five minutes. Id., at 35, 73.
Several hundred feet before the Kuykendall Cutoff Road intersection, the driver signaled that he would turn. Id., at 36. At one point, the driver turned the signal off, but just as he approached the intersection he put it back on and abruptly turned north onto Kuykendall. The turn was significant to Stoddard because it was made at the last place that would have allowed the minivan to avoid the checkpoint. Id., at 37. Also, Kuykendall, though passable by a sedan or van, is rougher than either Rucker Canyon or Leslie Canyon Roads, and the normal traffic is four-wheel-drive vehicles. Id., at 36, 63-64. Stoddard did not recognize the minivan as part of the local traffic agents encounter on patrol, id., at 37, and he did not think it likely that the minivan was going to or coming from a picnic outing. He was not aware of any picnic grounds on Turkey Creek, which could be reached by following Kuykendall Cutoff all the way up. Id., at 54. He knew of picnic grounds and a Boy Scout camp east of the intersection of Rucker Canyon and Leslie Canyon Roads, id., at 31, 53, 54, but the minivan had turned west at that intersection. And he had never seen anyone picnicking or sightseeing near where the first sensor went off. Id., at 53, 75.
Stoddard radioed for a registration check and learned that the minivan was registered to an address in Douglas that was four blocks north of the border in an area notorious for alien and narcotics smuggling. Id., at 37-38, 66-67. After receiving the information, Stoddard decided to make a vehicle stop. Id., at 38. He approached the driver and learned that his name was Ralph Arvizu. Stoddard asked if respondent would mind if he looked inside and searched the vehicle. Id., at 43. Respondent agreed, and Stoddard discovered marijuana in a black duffel bag under the feet of the two children in the back seat. Id., at 45-46. Another bag containing marijuana was behind the rear seat. Id., at 46. In all, the van contained 128.85 pounds of marijuana, worth an estimated $99,080. Brief for United States 8.
Respondent was charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1) (1994 ed.). He moved to suppress the marijuana, arguing among other things that'Stoddard did not have reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle as required by the Fourth Amendment. After holding a hearing where Stoddard and respondent testified, the District Court for the District of Arizona ruled otherwise. App. to Pet. for Cert. 21a. It pointed to a number of the facts described above and noted particularly that any recreational areas north of Rucker Canyon would have been accessible from Douglas via 191 and another paved road, making it unnecessary to take a 40-to-50-mile trip on dirt roads. Id., at 22a.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 232 F. 3d 1241 (2000). In its view, fact-specific weighing of circumstances or other multifactor tests introduced “a troubling degree of uncertainty and unpredictability” into the Fourth Amendment analysis. Id., at 1248 (internal quotation marks omitted). It therefore “attempted] ... to describe and clearly delimit the extent to which certain factors may be considered by law enforcement officers in making stops such as the stop involving]” respondent. Ibid. After characterizing the District Court’s analysis as relying on a list of 10 factors, the Court of Appeals proceeded to examine each in turn. It held that seven of the factors, including respondent’s slowing down, his failure to acknowledge Stoddard, the raised position of the children’s knees, and their odd waving carried little or no weight in the reasonable-suspicion calculus. The remaining factors — the road’s use by smugglers, the temporal proximity between respondent’s trip and the agents’ shift change, and the use of minivans by smugglers — were not enough to render the stop permissible. Id., at 1251. We granted certiorari to review the decision of. the Court of Appeals because of its importance to the enforcement of federal drug and immigration laws. 532 U. S. 1065 (2001).
The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures” by the Government, and its protections extend to brief investigatory .stops of persons or vehicles that fall short of traditional arrest. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 9 (1968); United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411, 417 (1981). Because the “balance between the public interest and the individual’s right to personal security,” United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873, 878 (1975), tilts in favor of a standard less than probable cause in such cases, the Fourth Amendment is satisfied if the officer’s action is supported by reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity “ ‘may be afoot,’ ” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U. S. 1, 7 (1989) (quoting Terry, supra, at 30). See also Cortez, 449 U. S., at 417 (“An investigatory stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity”).
When discussing how reviewing courts should make reasonable-suspicion determinations, we have said repeatedly that they must look at the “totality of the circumstances” of each case to see whether the detaining officer has a “particularized and objective basis” for suspecting legal wrongdoing. See, e. g., id., at 417-418. This process allows officers to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that “might well elude an untrained person.” Id., at 418. See also Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 699 (1996) (reviewing court must give “due weight” to factual inferences drawn by resident judges and local law enforcement officers). Although an officer’s reliance on a mere “‘hunch’” is insufficient to justify a stop, Terry, supra, at 27, the likelihood of criminal activity need not rise to the level required for probable cause, and it falls considerably short of satisfying a preponderance of the evidence standard, Sokolow, supra, at 7.
Our cases have recognized that the concept of reasonable suspicion is somewhat abstract. Ornelas, supra, at 696 (principle of reasonable suspicion is not a “‘finely-tuned standard]’ ”); Cortez, supra, at 417 (the cause “sufficient to authorize police to stop a person” is an “elusive concept”). But we have deliberately avoided reducing it to “ ‘a neat set of legal rules,”’ Ornelas, supra, at 695-696 (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 232 (1983)). In Sokolow, for example, we rejected a holding by the Court of Appeals that distinguished between evidence of ongoing criminal behavior and probabilistic evidence because it “create[d] unnecessary difficulty in dealing with one of the relatively simple concepts embodied in the Fourth Amendment.” 490 U. S., at 7-8.
We think that the approach taken by the Court of Appeals here departs sharply from the teachings of these cases. The court’s evaluation and rejection of seven of the listed factors in isolation from each other does not take into account the “totality of the circumstances,” as our cases have understood that phrase. The court appeared to believe that each observation by Stoddard that was by itself readily susceptible to an innocent explanation was entitled to “no weight.” See 232 F. 3d, at 1249-1251. Terry, however, precludes this sort of divide-and-conquer analysis. The officer in Terry observed the petitioner and his companions repeatedly walk back and forth, look into a store window, and confer with one another. Although each of the series of acts was “perhaps innocent in itself,” we held that, taken together, they “warranted further investigation.” 392 U. S., at 22. See also Sokolow, supra, at 9 (holding that factors which by themselves were “quite consistent with innocent travel” collectively amounted to reasonable suspicion).
The Court of Appeals’ view that it was necessary to “clearly delimit” an officer’s consideration of certain factors to reduce “troubling . . . uncertainty,” 232 F. 3d, at 1248, also runs counter to our cases and underestimates the usefulness of the reasonable-suspicion standard in guiding officers in the field. In Ornelas v. United States, we held that the standard for appellate review of reasonable-suspicion determinations should be de novo, rather than for “abuse of discretion.” 517 U. S., at 691. There, we reasoned that de novo review would prevent the affirmance of opposite decisions on identical facts from different judicial districts in the same circuit, which would have been possible under the latter standard, and would allow appellate courts to clarify the legal principles. Id., at 697. Other benefits of the approach, we said, were its tendency to unify precedent and greater capacity to provide law enforcement officers with the tools to reach correct determinations beforehand: Even if in many instances the factual “mosaic” analyzed for a reasonable-suspicion determination would preclude one case from squarely controlling another, “two decisions when viewed together may usefully add to the body of law on the subject.” Id., at 697-698.
But the Court of Appeals’ approach would go considerably beyond the reasoning of Ornelas and seriously undercut the “totality of the circumstances” principle which governs the existence vel non of “reasonable suspicion.” Take, for example, the court’s positions that respondent’s deceleration could not be considered because “slowing down after spotting a law enforcement vehicle is an entirely normal response that is in no way indicative of criminal activity” and that his failure to acknowledge Stoddard’s presence provided no support because there were “no ‘special circumstances’ rendering ‘innocent avoidance . . . improbable.’” 232 F. 3d, at 1248-1249. We think it quite reasonable that a driver’s slowing down, stiffening of posture, and failure to acknowledge a sighted law enforcement officer might well be unremarkable in one instance (such as a busy San Francisco highway) while quite unusual in another (such as a remote portion of rural southeastern Arizona). Stoddard was entitled to make an assessment of the situation in light of his specialized training and familiarity with the customs of the area’s inhabitants. See Ornelas, supra, at 699. To the extent that a totality of the circumstances approach may render appellate review less circumscribed by precedent than otherwise, it is the nature of the totality rule..
In another instance, the Court of Appeals chose to dismiss entirely the children’s waving on grounds that odd conduct by children was all too common to be probative in a particular case. See 232 F. 3d, at 1249 (“If every odd act engaged in by one’s children . . . could contribute to a finding of reasonable suspicion, the vast majority of American parents might be stopped regularly within a block of their homes”). Yet this case did not involve simply any odd act by children. At the suppression hearing, Stoddard testified about the children’s waving several times, and the record suggests that he physically demonstrated it as well. The District Court Judge, who saw and heard Stoddard, then characterized the waving as “methodical,” “mechanical,” “abnormal,” and “certainly ... a fact that is odd and would lead a reasonable officer to wonder why they are doing this.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 25a. Though the issue of this case does not turn on the children’s idiosyncratic actions, the Court of Appeals should not have casually rejected this factor in light of the District Court’s superior access to the evidence and the well-recognized inability of reviewing courts to reconstruct what happened in the courtroom.
Having considered the totality of the circumstances and given due weight to the factual inferences drawn by the law enforcement officer and District Court Judge, we hold that Stoddard had reasonable suspicion to believe that respondent was engaged in illegal activity. It was reasonable for Stoddard to infer from his observations, his registration check, and his experience as a border patrol agent that respondent had set out from Douglas along a little-traveled route used by smugglers to avoid the 191 checkpoint. Stod-dard’s knowledge further supported a commonsense inference that respondent intended to pass through the area at a time when officers would be leaving their backroads patrols to change shifts. The likelihood that respondent and his family were on a picnic outing was diminished by the fact that the minivan had turned away from the known recreational areas accessible to the east on Rucker Canyon Road. Corroborating this inference was the fact that recreational areas farther to the north would have been easier to reach by taking 191, as opposed to the 40-to-50-mile trip on unpaved and primitive roads. The children’s elevated knees suggested the existence of concealed cargo in the passenger compartment. Finally, for the reasons we have given, Stod-dard’s assessment of respondent’s reactions upon seeing him and the children’s mechanical-like waving, which continued for a full four to five minutes, were entitled to some weight.
Respondent argues that we must rule in his favor because the facts suggested a family in a minivan on a holiday outing. A determination that reasonable suspicion exists, however, need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U. S. 119, 125 (2000) (that flight from police is not necessarily indicative of ongoing criminal activity does not establish Fourth Amendment violation). Undoubtedly, each of these factors alone is susceptible of innocent explanation, and some factors are more probative than others. Taken together, we believe they sufficed to form a particularized and objective basis for Stoddard’s stopping the vehicle, making the stop reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
[Appendix to opinion of the Court follows this page.]
Coronado National Forest consists of 12 widely scattered sections of land covering 1,780,000 acres in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The section of the forest near Douglas includes the Chiriea-hua, Dragoon, and Peloncillo Mountain Ranges.
At one point during the hearing, Stoddard testified that “[the children's waving] wasn’t in a normal pattern. It looked like they were instructed to do so. They kind of stuck their hands up and began waving to me like this.” App. 35.
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this case is whether a person arrested and held for trial under a prosecutor’s information is constitutionally entitled to a judicial determination of probable cause for pretrial restraint of liberty.
I
In March 1971 respondents Pugh and Henderson were arrested in Dade County, Fla. Each was charged with several offenses under a prosecutor’s information. Pugh was denied bail because one of the charges against him carried a potential life sentence, and Henderson remained in custody because he was unable to post a $4,500 bond.
In Florida, indictments are required only for prosecution of capital offenses. Prosecutors may charge all other crimes by information, without a prior preliminary hearing and without obtaining leave of court. Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.140 (a); State v. Hernandez, 217 So. 2d 109 (Fla. 1968); Di Bona v. State, 121 So. 2d 192 (Fla. App. 1960). At the time respondents were arrested, a Florida rule seemed to authorize adversary preliminary hearings to test probable cause for detention in all cases. Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 1.122 (before amendment in 1972). But the Florida courts had held that the filing of an information foreclosed the suspect’s right to a preliminary-hearing. See State ex rel. Hardy v. Blount, 261 So. 2d 172 (Fla. 1972). They had also held that habeas corpus could not be used, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances, to test the probable cause for detention under an information. See Sullivan v. State ex rel. McCrory, 49 So. 2d 794, 797 (Fla. 1951). The only possible methods for obtaining a judicial determination of probable cause were a special statute allowing a preliminary hearing after 30 days, Fla. Stat. Ann. §907.045 (1973), and arraignment, which the District Court found was often delayed a month or more after arrest. Pugh v. Rainwater, 332 F. Supp. 1107, 1110 (SD Fla. 1971). As a result, a person charged by information could be detained for a substantial period solely on the decision of a prosecutor.
Respondents Pugh and Henderson filed a class action against Dade County officials in the Federal District Court, claiming a constitutional right to a judicial hearing on the issue of probable cause and requesting declaratory and injunctive relief. Respondents Turner and Faulk, also in custody under informations, subsequently intervened. Petitioner Gerstein, the State Attorney for Dade County, was one of several defendants.
After an initial delay while the Florida Legislature considered a bill that would have afforded preliminary hearings to persons charged by information, the District Court granted the relief sought. Pugh v. Rainwater, supra. The court certified the case as a class action under Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23 (b) (2), and held that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments give all arrested persons charged by information a right to a judicial hearing on the question of probable cause. The District Court ordered the Dade County defendants to give the named plaintiffs an immediate preliminary hearing to determine probable cause for further detention. It also ordered them to submit a plan providing preliminary hearings in all cases instituted by information.
The defendants submitted a plan prepared by Sheriff E. Wilson Purdy, and the District Court adopted it with modifications. The final order prescribed a detailed post-arrest procedure. 336 F. Supp. 490 (SD Fla. 1972). Upon arrest the accused would be taken before a magistrate for a “first appearance hearing.” The magistrate would explain the charges, advise the accused of his rights, appoint counsel if he was indigent, and proceed with a probable cause determination unless either the prosecutor or the accused was unprepared. If either requested more time, the magistrate would set the date for a “preliminary hearing,” to be held within four days if the accused was in custody and within 10 days if he had been released pending trial. The order provided sanctions for failure to hold the hearing at prescribed times. At the “preliminary hearing” the accused would be entitled to counsel, and he would be allowed to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses, to summon favorable witnesses, and to have a transcript made on request. If the magistrate found no probable cause, the accused would be discharged. He then could not be charged with the same offense by complaint or information, but only by indictment returned within 30 days.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed the District Court's order pending appeal, but while the case was awaiting decision, the Dade County judiciary voluntarily adopted a similar procedure of its own. Upon learning of this development, the Court of Appeals remanded the case for specific findings on the constitutionality of the new Dade County system. Before the District Court issued its findings, however, the Florida Supreme Court amended the procedural rules governing preliminary hearings statewide, and the parties agreed that the District Court should direct its inquiry to the new rules rather than the Dade County procedures.
Under the amended rules every arrested person must be taken before a judicial officer within 24 hours. Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.130 (b). This “first appearance” is similar to the “first appearance hearing” ordered by the District Court in all respects but the crucial one: the magistrate does not make a determination of probable cause. The rule amendments also changed the procedure for preliminary hearings, restricting them to felony charges and codifying the rule that no hearings are available to persons charged by information or indictment. Rule 3.131; see In re Rule 3.131 (b), Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, 289 So. 2d 3 (Fla. 1974).
In a supplemental opinion the District Court held that the amended rules had not answered the basic constitutional objection, since a defendant charged by information still could be detained pending trial without a judicial determination of probable cause. 355 F. Supp. 1286 (SD Fla. 1973). Reaffirming its original ruling, the District Court declared that the continuation of this practice was unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 483 F. 2d 778 (1973), modifying the District Court’s decree in minor particulars and suggesting that the form of preliminary hearing provided by the amended Florida rules would be acceptable, as long as it was provided to all defendants in custody pending trial. Id., at 788-789.
State Attorney Gerstein petitioned for review, and we granted certiorari because of the importance of the issue. 414 U. S. 1062 (1973). We affirm in part and reverse in part.
II
As framed by the proceedings below, this case presents two issues: whether a person arrested and held for trial on an information is entitled to a judicial determination of probable cause for detention, and if so, whether the adversary hearing ordered by the District Court and approved by the Court of Appeals is required by the Constitution.
A
Both the standards and procedures for arrest and detention have been derived from the Fourth Amendment and its common-law antecedents. See Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 294-295 (1973); Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75 (1807); Ex parte Burford, 3 Cranch 448 (1806). The standard for arrest is probable cause, defined in terms of facts and circumstances “sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [suspect] had committed or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S. 89, 91 (1964). See also Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98 (1959); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 175-176 (1949). This standard, like those for searches and seizures, represents a necessary accommodation between the individual’s right to liberty and the State’s duty to control crime.
“These long-prevailing standards seek to safeguard citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from unfounded charges of crime. They also seek to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection. Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability. The rule of probable cause is a practical, nontechnical conception affording the best compromise that has been found for accommodating these often opposing interests. Requiring more would unduly hamper law enforcement. To allow less would be to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers’ whim or caprice.” Id., at 176.
To implement the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unfounded invasions of liberty and privacy, the Court has required that the existence of probable cause be decided by a neutral and detached magistrate whenever possible. The classic statement of this principle appears in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13-14 (1948):
“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”
See also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 20-22 (1968).
Maximum protection of individual rights could be assured by requiring a magistrate’s review of the factual justification prior to any arrest, but such a requirement would constitute an intolerable handicap for legitimate law enforcement. Thus, while the Court has expressed a preference for the use of arrest warrants when feasible, Beck v. Ohio, supra, at 96; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 479-482 (1963), it has never invalidated an arrest supported by probable cause solely because the officers failed to secure a warrant. See Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (1963); Draper v. United States, 358 U. S. 307 (1959); Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 705 (1948).
Under this practical compromise, a policeman’s on-the-scene assessment of probable cause provides legal justification for arresting a person suspected of crime, and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative steps incident to arrest. Once the suspect is in custody, however, the reasons that justify dispensing with the magistrate's neutral judgment evaporate. There no longer is any danger that the suspect will escape or commit further crimes while the police submit their evidence to a magistrate. And, while the State's reasons for taking summary action subside, the suspect's need for a neutral determination of probable cause increases significantly. The consequences of prolonged detention may be more serious than the interference occasioned by arrest. Pretrial confinement may imperil the suspect’s job, interrupt his source of income, and impair his family relationships. See R. Goldfarb, Ransom 32-91 (1965); L. Katz, Justice Is the Crime 51-62 (1972). Even pretrial release may be accompanied by burdensome conditions that effect a significant restraint of liberty. See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. §§ 3146 (a)(2), (5). When the stakes are this high, the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate is essential if the Fourth Amendment is to furnish meaningful protection from unfounded interference with liberty. Accordingly, we hold that the Fourth Amendment requires a judicial determination of probable cause as a prerequisite to extended restraint of liberty following arrest.
This result has historical support in the common law that has guided interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. See Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 149 (1925). At common law it was customary, if not obligatory, for an arrested person to be brought before a justice of the peace shortly after arrest. 2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown 77, 81, 95, 121 (1736); 2 W. Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 116-117 (4th ed. 1762). See siso Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U. S. 487, 498-499 (1885). The justice of the peace would “examine” the prisoner and the witnesses to determine whether there was reason to believe the prisoner had committed a crime. If there was, the suspect would be committed to jail or bailed pending trial. If not, he would be discharged from custody. 1 M. Hale, supra, at 583-586; 2 W. Hawkins, supra, at 116-119; 1 J. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England 233 (1883). The initial determination of probable cause also could be reviewed by higher courts on a writ of habeas corpus. 2 W. Hawkins, supra, at 112-115; 1 J. Stephen, supra, at 243; see Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch, at 97-101. This practice furnished the model for criminal procedure in America immediately following the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, see Ex parte Bollman, supra; Ex parte Burford, 3 Cranch 448 (1806); United States v. Hamilton, 3 Dall. 17 (1795), and there are indications that the Framers of the Bill of Rights regarded it as a model for a “reasonable” seizure. See Draper v. United States, 358 U. S., at 317-320 (Douglas, J., dissenting).
B
Under the Florida procedures challenged here, a person arrested without a warrant and charged by information may be jailed or subjected to other restraints pending trial without any opportunity for a probable cause determination. Petitioner defends this practice on the ground that the prosecutor's decision to file an information is itself a determination of probable cause that furnishes sufficient reason to detain a defendant pending trial. Although a conscientious decision that the evidence warrants prosecution affords a measure of protection against unfounded detention, we do not think prosecutorial judgment standing alone meets the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, we think the Court's previous decisions compel disapproval of the Florida procedure. In Albrecht v. United States, 273 U. S. 1, 5 (1927), the Court held that an arrest warrant issued solely upon a United States Attorney’s information was invalid because the accompanying affidavits were defective. Although the Court’s opinion did not explicitly state that the prosecutor’s official oath could not furnish probable cause, that conclusion was implicit in the judgment that the arrest was illegal under the Fourth Amendment. More recently, in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 449-453 (1971), the Court held that a prosecutor’s responsibility to law enforcement is inconsistent with the constitutional role of a neutral and detached magistrate. We reaffirmed that principle in Shad- wick v. City of Tampa, 407 U. S. 345 (1972), and held that probable cause for the issuance of an arrest warrant must be determined by someone independent of police and prosecution. See also United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297, 317 (1972). The reason for this separation of functions was expressed by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in a similar context:
“A democratic society, in which respect for the dignity of all men is central, naturally guards against the misuse of the law enforcement process. Zeal in tracking down crime is not in itself an assurance of soberness of judgment. Disinterestedness in law enforcement does not alone prevent disregard of cherished liberties. Experience has therefore counseled that safeguards must be provided against the dangers of the overzealous as well as the despotic. The awful instruments of the criminal law cannot be entrusted to a single functionary. The complicated process of criminal justice is therefore divided into different parts, responsibility for which is separately vested in the various participants upon whom the criminal law relies for its vindication.” McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 343 (1943).
In holding that the prosecutor’s assessment of probable cause is not sufficient alone to justify restraint of liberty pending trial, we do not imply that the accused is entitled to judicial oversight or review of the decision to prosecute. Instead, we adhere to the Court’s prior holding that a judicial hearing is not prerequisite to prosecution by information. Beck v. Washington, 369 U. S. 541, 545 (1962); Lem Woon v. Oregon, 229 U. S. 586 (1913). Nor do we retreat from the established rule that illegal arrest or detention does not void a subsequent conviction. Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U. S. 519 (1952); Ker v. Illinois, 119 U. S. 436 (1886). Thus, as the Court of Appeals noted below, although a suspect who is presently detained may challenge the probable cause for that confinement, a conviction will not be vacated on the ground that the defendant was detained pending trial without a determination of probable cause. 483 F. 2d, at 786-787. Compare Scarbrough v. Dutton, 393 F. 2d 6 (CA5 1968), with Brown v. Fauntleroy, 143 U. S. App. D. C. 116, 442 F. 2d 838 (1971), and Cooley v. Stone, 134 U. S. App. D. C. 317, 414 F. 2d 1213 (1969).
Ill
Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals held that the determination of probable cause must be accompanied by the full panoply of adversary safeguards — counsel, confrontation, cross-examination, and compulsory process for witnesses. A full preliminary hearing of this sort is modeled after the procedure used in many States to determine whether the evidence justifies going to trial under an information or presenting the case to a grand jury. See Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S. 1 (1970); Y. Kamisar, W. LaFave & J. Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure 957-967, 996-1000 (4th ed. 1974). The standard of proof required of the prosecution is usually referred to as “probable cause,” but in some jurisdictions it may approach a prima facie case of guilt. ALI, Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure, Commentary on Art. 330, pp. 90-91 (Tent. Draft No. 5, 1972). When the hearing takes this form, adversary procedures are customarily employed. The importance of the issue to both the State and the accused justifies the presentation of witnesses and full exploration of their testimony on cross-examination. This kind of hearing also requires appointment of counsel for indigent defendants. Coleman v. Alabama, supra. And, as the hearing assumes increased importance and the procedures become more complex, the likelihood that it can be held promptly after arrest diminishes. See ALI, Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure, supra, at 33-34.
These adversary safeguards are not essential for the probable cause determination required by the Fourth Amendment. The sole issue is whether there is probable cause for detaining the arrested person pending further proceedings. This issue can be determined reliably without an adversary hearing. The standard is the same as that for arrest. That standard — probable cause to believe the suspect has committed a crime — traditionally has been decided by a magistrate in a nonadversary proceeding on hearsay and written testimony, and the Court has approved these informal modes of proof.
“Guilt in a criminal case must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and by evidence confined to that which long experience in the common-law tradition, to some extent embodied in the Constitution, has crystallized into rules of evidence consistent with that standard. These rules are historically grounded rights of our system, developed to safeguard men from dubious and unjust convictions, with resulting forfeitures of life, liberty and property.
“In dealing with probable cause, however, as the very name implies, we deal with probabilities. These are not technical; they are the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act. The standard of proof is accordingly correlative to what must be proved.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S., at 174-175.
Cf. McCray v. Illinois, 386 U. S. 300 (1967).
The use of an informal procedure is justified not only by the lesser consequences of a probable cause determination but also by the nature of the determination itself. It does not require the fine resolution of conflicting evidence that a reasonable-doubt or even a preponderance standard demands, and credibility determinations are seldom crucial in deciding whether the evidence supports a reasonable belief in guilt. See F. Miller, Prosecution: The Decision to Charge a Suspect with a Crime 64— 109 (1969). This is not to say that confrontation and cross-examination might not enhance the reliability of probable cause determinations in some cases. In most cases, however, their value would be too slight to justify holding, as a matter of constitutional principle, that these formalities and safeguards designed for trial must also be employed in making the Fourth Amendment determination of probable cause.
Because of its limited function and its nonadversary character, the probable cause determination is not a “critical stage” in the prosecution that would require appointed counsel. The Court has identified as “critical stages” those pretrial procedures that would impair defense on the merits if the accused is required to proceed without counsel. Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S. 1 (1970); United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 226-227 (1967). In Coleman v. Alabama, where the Court held that a preliminary hearing was a critical stage of an Alabama prosecution, the majority and concurring opinions identified two critical factors that distinguish the Alabama preliminary hearing from the probable cause determination required by the Fourth Amendment. First, under Alabama law the function of the preliminary hearing was to determine whether the evidence justified charging the suspect with an offense. A finding of no probable cause could mean that he would not be tried at.all. The Fourth Amendment probable cause determination is addressed only to pretrial custody. To be sure, pretrial custody may affect to some extent the defendant’s ability to assist in preparation of his defense, but this does not present the high probability of substantial harm identified as controlling in Wade and Coleman. Second, Alabama allowed the suspect to confront and cross-examine prosecution witnesses at the preliminary hearing. The Court noted that the suspect’s defense on the merits could be compromised if he had no legal assistance for exploring or preserving the witnesses’ testimony. This consideration does not apply when the prosecution is not required to produce witnesses for cross-examination.
Although we conclude that the Constitution does not require an adversary determination of probable cause, we recognize that state systems of criminal procedure vary widely. There is no single preferred pretrial procedure, and the nature of the probable cause determination usually will be shaped to accord with a State’s pretrial procedure viewed as a whole. While we limit our holding to the precise requirement of the Fourth Amendment, we recognize the desirability of flexibility and experimentation by the States. It may be found desirable, for example, to make the probable cause determination at the suspect’s first appearance before a judicial officer, see McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S., at 342-344, or the determination may be incorporated into the procedure for setting bail or fixing other conditions of pretrial release. In some States, existing procedures may satisfy the requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Others may require only minor adjustment, such as acceleration of existing preliminary hearings. Current proposals for criminal procedure reform suggest other ways of testing probable cause for detention. Whatever procedure a State may adopt, it must provide a fair and reliable determination of probable cause as a condition for any significant pretrial restraint of liberty, and this determination must be made by a judicial officer either before or promptly after arrest.
IV
We agree with the Court of Appeals that the Fourth Amendment requires a timely judicial determination of probable cause as a prerequisite to detention, and we accordingly affirm that much of the judgment. As we do not agree that the Fourth Amendment requires the adversary hearing outlined in the District Court’s decree, we reverse in part and remand to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Respondent Pugh was arrested on March 3, 1971. On March 16 an information was filed charging him with robbery, carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of a firearm during commission of a felony. Respondent Henderson was arrested on March 2, and charged by information on March 19 with the offenses of breaking and entering and assault and battery. The record does not indicate whether there was an arrest warrant in either case.
Florida law also denies preliminary hearings to persons confined under indictment, see Sangaree v. Hamlin, 235 So. 2d 729 (Fla. 1970) ; Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.131 (a); but that procedure is not challenged in this case. See infra, at 117 n. 19.
This statute may have been construed to make the hearing permissive instead of mandatory. See Evans v. State, 197 So. 2d 323 (Fla. App. 1967); Fla. Op. Atty. Gen. 067-29 (1967). But cf. Karz v. Overton, 249 So. 2d 763 (Fla. App. 1971). It may also have been superseded by the subsequent amendments to the Rules of Criminal Procedure. In re Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, 272 So. 2d 65 (1972).
The Florida rules do not suggest that the issue of probable cause can be raised at arraignment, Fla. Rule Crim. Proc. 3.160, but counsel for petitioner represented at oral argument that arraignment affords the suspect an opportunity to “attack the sufficiency of the evidence to hold him.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 17 (Mar. 25, 1974). The Court of Appeals assumed, without deciding, that this was true. 483 F. 2d 778, 781 n. 8 (CA5 1973).
The complaint was framed under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and jurisdiction in the District Court was based on 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3).
Respondents did not ask for release from state custody, even as an alternative remedy. They asked only that the state authorities be ordered to give them a probable cause determination. This was also the only relief that the District Court ordered for the named respondents. 332 F. Supp. 1107, 1115-1116, (SD Fla. 1971). Because release was neither asked nor ordered, the lawsuit did not come within the class of cases for which habeas corpus is the exclusive remedy. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475 (1973); see Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 55-555 (1974).
Turner was being held on a charge of auto theft, following arrest on March 11, 1971. Faulk was arrested on March 19 on charges of soliciting a ride and possession of marihuana.
The named defendants included justices of the peace and judges of small-claims courts, who were authorized to hold preliminary hearings in criminal cases, and a group of law enforcement officers with power to make arrests in Dade County. Gerstein was the only one who petitioned for certiorari.
The District Court correctly held that respondents’ claim for relief was not barred by the equitable restrictions on federal intervention in state prosecutions, Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971). The injunction was not directed at the state prosecutions as such, but only at the legality of pretrial detention without a judicial hearing, an issue that could not be raised in defense of the criminal prosecution. The order to hold preliminary hearings could not prejudice the conduct of the trial on the merits. See Conover v. Montemuro, 477 F. 2d 1073, 1082 (CA3 1972); cf. Perez v. Ledesma, 401 U. S. 82 (1971); Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U. S. 117 (1951).
Although this ruling held a statewide “legislative rule” unconstitutional, it was not outside the jurisdiction of a single judge by virtue of 28 U. S. C. §2281. The original complaint did not ask for an injunction against enforcement of any state statute or legislative rule of statewide application, since the practice of denying preliminary hearings to persons charged by information was then embodied only in judicial decisions. The District Court therefore had jurisdiction to issue the initial injunction, and the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction over the appeal. On remand, the constitutionality of a state “statute” was drawn into question for the first time when the criminal rules were amended. The District Court’s supplemental opinion can fairly be read as a declaratory judgment that the amended rules were unconstitutional; the injunctive decree was never amended to incorporate that holding; and the opinion in the Court of Appeals is not inconsistent with the conclusion that the District Court did not enjoin enforcement of the statewide rule. See 483 F. 2d, at 788-790. Accordingly, a district court of three judges was not required for the issuance of this order. See Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, 152-155 (1963); Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, 606-608 (1960).
At oral argument counsel informed us that the named respondents have been convicted. Their pretrial detention therefore has ended. This case belongs, however, to that narrow class of cases in which the termination of a class representative’s claim does not moot the claims of the unnamed members of the class. See Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975). Pretrial detention is by nature temporary, and it is most unlikely that any given individual could have his constitutional claim decided on appeal before he is either released or convicted. The individual could nonetheless suffer repeated deprivations, and it is certain that other persons similarly situated will be detained under the allegedly unconstitutional procedures. The claim, in short, is one that is distinctly “capable of repetition, yet evading review.”
At the time the complaint was filed, the named respondents were members of a class of persons detained without a judicial probable cause determination, but the record does not indicate whether any of them were still in custody awaiting trial when the District Court certified the class. Such a showing ordinarily would be required to avoid mootness under Sosna. But this case is a suitable exception to that requirement. See Sosna, supra, at 402 n. 11; cf. Rivera v. Freeman, 469 F. 2d 1159, 1162-1163 (CA9 1972). The length of pretrial custody cannot be ascertained at the outset, and it may be ended at any time by release on recognizance, dismissal of the charges, or a guilty plea, as well as by acquittal or conviction after trial. It is by no means certain that any given individual, named as plaintiff, would be in pretrial custody long enough for a district judge to certify the class. Moreover, in this case the constant existence of a class of persons suffering the deprivation is certain. The attorney representing the named respondents is a public defender, and we can safely assume that he has other clients with a continuing live interest in the case.
We reiterated this principle in United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297 (1972). In terms that apply equally to arrests, we described the “very heart of the Fourth Amendment directive” as a requirement that “where practical, a governmental search and seizure should represent both the efforts of the officer to gather evidence of wrongful acts and the judgment of the magistrate that the collected evidence is sufficient to justify invasion of a citizen's private premises or conversation.” Id., at 316.
Another aspect of Trupiano was overruled in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950), which was overruled in turn by Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969).
The issue of warrantless arrest that has generated the most controversy, and that remains unsettled, is whether and under what circumstances an officer may enter a suspect’s home to make a war-rantless arrest. See Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 474-481 (1971); id., at 510-512, and n. 1 (White, J., dissenting); Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499-500 (1958).
The primary motivation for the requirement seems to have been the penalty for allowing an offender to escape, if he had in fact committed the crime, and the fear of liability for false imprisonment, if he had not. But Hale also recognized that a judicial warrant of commitment, called a mittimus, was required for more than brief detention.
“When a private person hath arrested a felon, or one suspected of felony, he may detain him in custody till he can reasonably dismiss himself of him; but with as much speed as conveniently he can, he may do either of these things.
“1. He may carry him to the common gaol,... but that is now rarely done.
“2. He may deliver him to the constable of the vill, who may either carry him to the common gaol,... or to a justice of peace to be examined, and farther proceeded against as case shall require....
“3. Or he may carry him immediately to any justice of peace of the county where he is taken, who upon examination may discharge, bail, or commit him, as the case shall require.
“And the bringing the offender either by the constable or private person to a justice of peace is most usual and safe, because a gaoler will expect a Mittimus for his warrant of detaining.” 1 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown 589-590 (1736).
The examination of the prisoner was inquisitorial, and the witnesses were questioned outside the prisoner’s presence. Although this method of proceeding was considered quite harsh, 1 J. Stephen, supra, at 219-225, it was well established that the prisoner was entitled to be discharged if the investigation turned up insufficient evidence of his guilt. Id., at 233.
In Ex parte Bollman, two men charged in the Aaron Burr case were committed following an examination in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. They filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court. The Court, in an opinion by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, affirmed its jurisdiction to issue habeas corpus to persons in custody by order of federal trial courts. Then, following arguments on the Fourth Amendment requirement of probable cause, the Court surveyed the evidence against the prisoners and held that it did not establish probable cause that they were guilty of treason. The prisoners were discharged.
See also N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 15-16 (1937). A similar procedure at common law, the warrant for recovery of stolen goods, is said to have furnished the model for a “reasonable” search under the Fourth Amendment. The victim was required to appear before a justice of the peace and make an oath of probable cause that his goods could be found in a particular place. After the warrant was executed, and the goods seized, the victim and 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:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court of Michigan draws in question the constitutional validity of certain provisions of Detroit’s Smoke Abatement Code as applied to ships owned by the appellant and operated in interstate commerce.
The appellant is a Michigan corporation, engaged in the manufacture and sale of cement. It maintains a fleet of five vessels which it uses to transport cement from its mill in Alpena, Michigan, to distributing plants located in various states bordering the Great Lakes. Two of the ships, the S. S. Crapo and the S. S. Boardman, are equipped with hand-fired Scotch marine boilers. While these vessels are docked for loading and unloading it is necessary, in order to operate deck machinery, to keep the boilers fired and to clean the fires periodically. When the fires are cleaned, the ship’s boiler stacks emit smoke which in density and duration exceeds the maximum standards allowable under the Detroit Smoke Abatement Code. Structural alterations would be required in order to insure compliance with the Code.
Criminal proceedings were instituted in the Detroit Recorder’s Court against the appellant and its agents for violations of the city law during periods when the vessels were docked at the Port of Detroit. The appellant brought an action in the State Circuit Court to enjoin the city from further prosecuting the pending litigation in the Recorder’s Court, and from otherwise enforcing the smoke ordinance against its vessels, “except where the emission of smoke is caused by the improper firing or the improper use of the equipment upon said vessels.” The Circuit Court refused to grant relief, and the Supreme Court of Michigan affirmed, 355 Mich. 227, 93 N. W. 2d 888. An appeal was lodged here, and we noted probable jurisdiction, 361 U. S. 806.
In support of the claim that the ordinance cannot constitutionally be applied to appellant’s ships, two basic arguments are advanced. First, it is asserted that since the vessels and their equipment, including their boilers, have been inspected, approved and licensed to operate in interstate commerce in accordance with a comprehensive system of regulation enacted by Congress, the City of Detroit may not legislate in such a way as, in effect, to impose additional or inconsistent standards. Secondly, the argument is made that even if Congress has not expressly pre-empted the field, the municipal ordinance “materially affects interstate commerce in matters where uniformity is necessary.” We have concluded that neither of these contentions can prevail, and that the Federal Constitution does not prohibit application to the appellant's vessels of the criminal provisions of the Detroit ordinance.
The ordinance was enacted for the manifest purpose of promoting the health and welfare of the city’s inhabitants. Legislation designed to free from pollution the very air that people breathe clearly falls within the exercise of even the most traditional concept of what is com-pendiously known as the police power. In the exercise of that power, the states and their instrumentalities may act, in many areas of interstate commerce and maritime activities, concurrently with the federal government. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia, 12 How. 299; The Steamboat New York v. Rea, 18 How. 223; Morgan v. Louisiana, 118 U. S. 455; The Minnesota Rate Cases, 230 U. S. 352; Wilmington Transp. Co. v. California Railroad Comm., 236 U. S. 151; Vandalia R. Co. v. Public Service Comm., 242 U. S. 255; Stewart & Co. v. Rivara, 274 U. S. 614; Welch Co. v. New Hampshire, 306 U. S. 79.
The basic limitations upon local legislative power in this area are clear enough. The controlling principles have been reiterated over the years in a host of this Court’s decisions. Evenhanded local regulation to effectuate a legitimate local public interest is valid unless preempted by federal action, Erie R. Co. v. New York, 233 U. S. 671; Oregon-Washington Co. v. Washington, 270 U. S. 87; Napier v. Atlantic Coast Line, 272 U. S. 605; Missouri Pacific Co. v. Porter, 273 U. S. 341; Service Transfer Co. v. Virginia, 359 U. S. 171, or unduly burdensome on maritime activities or interstate commerce, Minnesota v. Barber, 136 U. S. 313; Morgan v. Virginia, 328 U. S. 373; Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, 359 U. S. 520.
In determining whether state regulation has been preempted by federal action, “the intent to supersede the exercise by the State of its police power as to matters not covered by the Federal legislation is not to be inferred from the mere fact that Congress has seen fit to circumscribe its regulation and to occupy a limited field. In other words, such intent is not to be implied unless the act of Congress fairly interpreted is in actual conflict with the law of the State.” Savage v. Jones, 225 U. S. 501, 533. See also Reid v. Colorado, 187 U. S. 137; Asbell v. Kansas, 209 U. S. 251; Welch Co. v. New Hampshire, 306 U. S. 79; Maurer v. Hamilton, 309 U. S. 598.
In determining whether the state has imposed an undue burden on interstate commerce, it must be borne in mind that the Constitution when “conferring upon Congress the regulation of commerce, . . . never intended to cut the States off from legislating on all subjects relating to the health, life, and safety of their citizens, though the legislation might indirectly affect the commerce of the country. Legislation, in a great variety of ways, may affect commerce and persons engaged in it without constituting a regulation of it, within the meaning of the Constitution.” Sherlock v. Alling, 93 U. S. 99, 103; Austin v. Tennessee, 179 U. S. 343; Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Kentucky, 183 U. S. 503; The Minnesota Rate Cases, 230 U. S. 352; Boston & Maine R. Co. v. Armburg, 285 U. S. 234; Collins v. American Buslines, Inc., 350 U. S. 528. But a state may not impose a burden which materially affects interstate commerce in an area where uniformity of regulation is necessary. Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485; Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona, 325 U. S. 761; Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, 359 U. S. 520.
Although verbal generalizations do not of their own motion decide concrete cases, it is nevertheless within the framework of these basic principles that the issues in the present case must be determined.
I.
For many years Congress has maintained an extensive and comprehensive set of controls over ships and shipping. Federal inspection of steam vessels was first required in 1838, 5 Stat. 304, and the requirement has been continued ever since. 5 Stat. 626; 10 Stat. 61; 14 Stat. 227; 16 Stat. 440; 22 Stat. 346; 28 Stat. 699; 32 Stat. 34; 34 Stat. 68; 60 Stat. 1097; 73 Stat. 475. Steam vessels which carry passengers must pass inspection annually, 46 U. S. C. § 391 (a), and those which do not, every two years. 46 U. S. C. §391 (b). Failure to meet the standards invoked by law results in revocation of the inspection certificate, or refusal to issue a new one, 46 U. S. C. § 391(d). It is unlawful for a vessel to operate without such a certificate. 46 U. S. C. § 390c (a).
These inspections are broad in nature, covering “the boilers, unfired pressure vessels, and appurtenances thereof, also the propelling and auxiliary machinery, electrical apparatus and equipment, of all vessels subject to inspection . . . .” 46 U. S. C. § 392 (b). The law provides that “No boiler . . . shall be allowed to be used if constructed in whole or in part of defective material or which because of its form, design, workmanship, age, use, or for any other reason is unsafe.” 46 U. S. C. § 392 (c).
As is apparent on the face of the legislation, however, the purpose of the federal inspection statutes is to insure the seagoing safety of vessels subject to inspection. Thus 46 U. S. C. § 392 (c) makes clear that inspection of boilers and related equipment is for the purpose of seeing to it that the equipment “may be safely employed in the service proposed.” The safety of passengers, 46 U. S. C. § 391 (a), and of the crew, 46 U. S. C. § 391 (b), is the criterion. The thrust of the federal inspection laws is clearly limited to affording protection from the perils of maritime navigation. Cf. Ace Waterways v. Fleming, 98 F. Supp. 666. See also Steamship Co. v. Joliffe, 2 Wall. 450.
By contrast, the sole aim of the Detroit ordinance is the elimination of air pollution to protect the health and enhance the cleanliness of the local community. Congress recently recognized the importance and legitimacy of such a purpose, when in 1955 it provided:
“[I]n recognition of the dangers to the public health and welfare, injury to agricultural crops and livestock, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to air and ground transportation, from air pollution, it is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress to preserve and protect the primary responsibilities and rights of the States and local governments in controlling air pollution, to support and aid technical research to devise and develop methods of abating such pollution, and to provide Federal technical services and financial aid to State and local government air pollution control agencies and other public or private agencies and institutions in the formulation and execution of their air pollution abatement research programs.” 69 Stat. 322; 42 U. S. C. § 1857.
Congressional recognition that the problem of air pollution is peculiarly a matter of state and local concern is manifest in this legislation. Such recognition is underlined in the Senate Committee Report:
“The committee recognizes that it is the primary responsibility of State and local governments to prevent air pollution. The bill does not propose any exercise of police power by the Federal Government and no provision in it invades the sovereignty of States, counties or cities.” S. Rep. No. 389, 84th Cong., 1st Sess. 3.
We conclude that there is no overlap between the scope of the federal ship inspection laws and that of the municipal ordinance here involved. For this reason we cannot find that the federal inspection legislation has pre-empted local action. To hold otherwise would be to ignore the teaching of this Court’s decisions which enjoin seeking out conflicts between state and federal regulation where none clearly exists. Savage v. Jones, 225 U. S. 501; Welch Co. v. New Hampshire, 306 U. S. 79; Maurer v. Hamilton, 309 U. S. 598.
An additional argument is advanced, however, based not upon the mere existence of the federal inspection standards, but upon the fact that the appellant’s vessels were actually licensed, 46 U. S. C. § 263, and enrolled, 46 U. S. C. §§ 259-260, by the national government. It is asserted that the vessels have thus been given a dominant federal right to the use of the navigable waters of the United States, free from the local impediment that would be imposed by the Detroit ordinance.
The scope of the privilege granted by the federal licensing scheme has been well delineated. A state may not exclude from its waters a ship operating under a federal license. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1. A state may not require a local occupation license, in addition to that federally granted, as a condition precedent to the use of its waters. Moran v. New Orleans, 112 U. S. 69. While an enrolled and licensed vessel may be required to share the costs of benefits it enjoys, Huse v. Glover, 119 U. S. 543, and to pay fair taxes imposed by its domicile, Transportation Co. v. Wheeling, 99 U. S. 273, it cannot be subjected to local license imposts exacted for the use of a navigable waterway, Harman v. Chicago, 147 U. S. 396. See also Sinnot v. Davenport, 22 How. 227.
The mere possession of a federal license, however, does not immunize a ship from the operation of the normal incidents of local police power, not constituting a direct regulation of commerce. Thus, a federally licensed vessel is not, as such, exempt from local pilotage laws, Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia, 12 How. 299, or local quarantine laws, Morgan's Steamship Co. v. Louisiana Board of Health, 118 U. S. 455, or local safety inspections, Kelly v. Washington, 302 U. S. 1, or the local regulation of wharves and docks, Packet Co. v. Catlettsburg, 105 U. S. 559. Indeed this Court has gone so far as to hold that a state, in the exercise of its police power, may actually seize and pronounce the forfeiture of a vessel “licensed for the coasting trade, under the laws of the United States, while engaged in that trade.” Smith v. Maryland, 18 How. 71, 74. The present case obviously does not even approach such an extreme, for the Detroit ordinance requires no more than compliance with an orderly and reasonable scheme of community regulation. The ordinance- does not exclude a licensed vessel from the Port of Detroit, nor does it destroy the right of free passage. We cannot hold that the local regulation so burdens the federal license as to be constitutionally invalid.
II.
The claim that the Detroit ordinance, quite apart from the effect of federal legislation, imposes as to the appellant’s ships an undue burden on interstate commerce needs no extended discussion. State regulation, based on the police power, which does not discriminate against interstate commerce or operate to disrupt its required uniformity, may constitutionally stand. Hennington v. Georgia, 163 U. S. 299; Lake Shore & Mich. South. R. Co. v. Ohio, 173 U. S. 285; Pennsylvania Gas Co. v. Public Service Comm., 252 U. S. 23; Milk Board v. Eisenberg Co., 306 U. S. 346; Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan, 333 U. S. 28.
It has not been suggested that the local ordinance, applicable alike to “any person, firm or corporation” within the city, discriminates against interstate commerce as such. It is a regulation of general application, designed to better the health and welfare of the community. And while the appellant argues that other local governments might impose differing requirements as to air pollution, it has pointed to none. The record contains nothing to suggest the existence of any such competing or conflicting local regulations. Cf. Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, 359 U. S. 520. We conclude that no impermissible burden on commerce has been shown.
The judgment is affirmed.
The Detroit legislation also contains provisions making it unlawful to operate any combustion equipment in the city without a certificate, § 2.16, providing for an annual inspection of all such equipment used in the city, § 2.17, and further providing for the sealing of equipment in the event that the inspection requirements are repeatedly ignored, § 2.20. There is nothing in the record to indicate that the city has at any time attempted to enforce these provisions with respect to the appellant’s ships. Accordingly, we do not reach the question of the validity of the inspection sections as they might be applied to appellant, but limit our consideration solely to what is presented upon this record — the enforcement of the criminal provisions of the Code for violation of the smoke emission provisions.
Compare, Napier v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., where the Court concluded that “the [Locomotive] Boiler Inspection Act . . . was intended to occupy the field.” 272 U. S. 605, 613.
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:
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J
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sc_issuearea
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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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In the spring of 1966, within the period of a fortnight, a series of armed robberies occurred in Mobile, Alabama. The victims, in each case, were local shopkeepers open at night who were forced by a gunman to hand over money. While robbing one grocery store, the assailant fired his gun once, sending a bullet through a door into the ceiling. A few days earlier in a drugstore, the robber had allowed his gun to discharge in such a way that the bullet, on ricochet from the floor, struck a customer in the leg. Shortly thereafter, a local grand jury returned five indictments against petitioner, a 27-year-old Negro, for common-law robbery — an offense punishable in Alabama by death.
Before the matter came to trial, the court determined that petitioner was indigent and appointed counsel to represent him. Three days later, at his arraignment, petitioner pleaded guilty to all five indictments. So far as the record shows, the judge asked no questions of petitioner concerning his plea, and petitioner did not address the court.
Trial strategy may of course make a plea of guilty seem the desirable course. But the record is wholly silent on that point and throws no light on it.
Alabama provides that when a defendant pleads guilty, “the court must cause the punishment to be determined by a jury” (except where it is required to be fixed by the court) and may “cause witnesses to be examined, to ascertain the character of the offense.” Ala. Code, Tit. 15, §277 (1958). In the present case a trial of that dimension was held, the prosecution presenting its ease largely through eyewitness testimony. Although counsel for petitioner engaged in cursory cross-examination, petitioner neither testified himself nor presented testimony concerning his character and background. There was nothing to indicate that he had a prior criminal record.
In instructing the jury, the judge stressed that petitioner had pleaded guilty in five cases of robbery, defined as “the felonious taking of money . . . from another against his will ... by violence or by putting him in fear . . . [carrying] from ten years minimum in the penitentiary to the supreme penalty of death by electrocution.” The jury, upon deliberation, found petitioner guilty and sentenced him severally to die on each of the five indictments.
Taking an automatic appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, petitioner argued that a sentence of death for common-law robbery was cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Federal Constitution, a suggestion which that court unanimously rejected. 281 Ala. 659, 207 So. 2d 412. On their own motion, however, four of the seven justices discussed the constitutionality of the process by which the trial judge had accepted petitioner’s guilty plea. From the order affirming the trial court, three justices dissented on the ground that the record was inadequate to show that petitioner had intelligently and knowingly pleaded guilty. The fourth member concurred separately, conceding that “a trial judge should not accept a guilty plea unless he has determined that such a plea was voluntarily and knowingly entered by the defendant,” but refusing “ [f] or aught appearing” “to presume that the trial judge failed to do his duty.” 281 Ala., at 662, 663, 207 So. 2d, at 414, 416. We granted certiorari. 393 U. S. 820.
Respondent does not suggest that we lack jurisdiction to review the voluntary character of petitioner’s guilty plea because he failed to raise that federal question below and the state court failed to pass upon it. But the question was raised on oral argument and we conclude that it is properly presented. The very Alabama statute (Ala. Code, Tit. 15, § 382 (10) (1958)) that provides automatic appeal in capital cases also requires the reviewing court to comb the record for “any error prejudicial to the appellant, even though not called to our attention in brief of counsel.” Lee v. State, 265 Ala. 623, 630, 93 So. 2d 757, 763. The automatic appeal statute “is the only provision under the Plain Error doctrine of which we are aware in Alabama criminal appellate review.” Douglas v. State, 42 Ala. App. 314, 331, n. 6, 163 So. 2d 477, 494, n. 6. In the words of the Alabama Supreme Court:
“Perhaps it is well to note that in reviewing a death case under the automatic appeal statute, . . . we may consider any testimony that was seriously prejudicial to the rights of the appellant and may reverse thereon, even though no lawful objection or exception was made thereto. [Citations omitted.] Our review is not limited to the matters brought to our attention in brief of counsel.” Duncan v. State, 278 Ala. 145, 157, 176 So. 2d 840, 851.
It was error, plain on the face of the record, for the trial judge to accept petitioner’s guilty plea without an affirmative showing that it was intelligent and voluntary. That error, under Alabama procedure, was properly before the court below and considered explicitly by a majority of the justices and is properly before us on review.
A plea of guilty is more than a confession which admits that the accused did various acts; it is itself a conviction; nothing remains but to give judgment and determine punishment. See Kercheval v. United States, 274 U. S. 220, 223. Admissibility of a confession must be based on a “reliable determination on the voluntariness issue which satisfies the constitutional rights of the defendant.” Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 387. The requirement that the prosecution spread on the record the prerequisites of a valid waiver is no constitutional innovation. In Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506, 516, we dealt with a problem of waiver of the right to counsel, a Sixth Amendment right. We held: “Presuming waiver from a silent record is impermissible. The record must show, or there must be an allegation and evidence which show, that an accused was offered counsel but intelligently and understanding^ rejected the offer. Anything less is not waiver.”
We think that the same standard must be applied to determining whether a guilty plea is voluntarily made. For, as we have said, a plea of guilty is more than an admission of conduct; it is a conviction. Ignorance, incomprehension, coercion, terror, inducements, subtle or blatant threats might be a perfect cover-up of unconstitutionality. The question of an effective waiver of a federal constitutional right in a proceeding is of course governed by federal standards. Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 415, 422.
Several federal constitutional rights are involved in a waiver that takes place when a plea of guilty is entered in a state criminal trial. First, is the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1. Second, is the right to trial by jury. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145. Third, is the right to confront one’s accusers. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400. We cannot presume a waiver of these three important federal rights from a silent record.
What is at stake for an accused facing death or imprisonment demands the utmost solicitude of which courts are capable in canvassing the matter with the accused to make sure he has a full understanding of what the plea connotes and of its consequence. When the judge discharges that function, he leaves a record adequate for any review that may be later sought (Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U. S. 157, 173; Specht v. Patterson, 386 U. S. 605, 610), and forestalls the spin-off of collateral proceedings that seek to probe murky memories.
The three dissenting justices in the Alabama Supreme Court stated the law accurately when they concluded that there was reversible error “because the record does not disclose that the defendant voluntarily and understandingly entered his pleas of guilty.” 281 Ala., at 663, 207 So. 2d, at 415.
Reversed.
Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U. S. 52; Ala. Code, Tit. 15, §§ 318 (1) — (12) (Supp. 1967).
The elements of robbery in Alabama are derived from the common law, but the possible penalties are fixed by statute. Ala. Code, Tit. 14, §415 (1958).
This is unlike Cardinale v. Louisiana, 394 U. S. 437, in which the state court was perhaps unacquainted with the federal question at issue. For, as already stated, four of the seven justices on the court below (a majority) discussed the matter and its implications for Alabama law.
“A plea of guilty is more than a voluntary confession made in open court. It also serves as a stipulation that no proof by the prosecution need be advanced .... It supplies both evidence and verdict, ending controversy.” Woodard v. State,, 42 Ala. App. 552, 558, 171 So. 2d 462, 469.
In the federal regime we have Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which governs the duty of the trial judge before accepting a guilty plea. See McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459. We said in that case:
“A defendant who enters such a plea simultaneously waives several constitutional rights, including his privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, his right to trial by jury, and his right to confront his accusers. For this waiver to be valid under the Due Process Clause, it must be 'an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.’ Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464 (1938). Consequently, if a defendant’s guilty plea is not equally voluntary and knowing, it has been obtained in violation of due process and is therefore void. Moreover, because a guilty plea is an admission of all the elements of a formal criminal charge, it cannot be truly voluntary unless the defendant possesses an understanding of the law in relation to the facts.” Id., at 466.
Among the States requiring that an effective waiver of the right to plead not guilty appear affirmatively in the record are Colorado, Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 39-7-8; Illinois, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 38, §§ 113-1 to 114-14; Missouri, State v. Blaylock, 394 S. W. 2d 364 (1965); New York, People v. Seaton, 19 N. Y. 2d 404, 407, 227 N. E. 2d 294, 295 (1967); Wisconsin, State v. Burke, 22 Wis. 2d 486, 494, 126 N. W. 2d 91, 96 (1964); and Washington, Woods v. Rhay, 68 Wash. 2d 601, 605, 414 P. 2d 601, 604 (1966).
“A majority of criminal convictions are obtained after a plea of guilty. If these convictions are to be insulated from attack, the trial court is best advised to conduct an on the record examination of the defendant which should include, inter alia, an attempt to satisfy itself that the defendant understands the nature of the charges, his right to a jury trial, the acts sufficient to constitute the offenses for which he is charged and the permissible range of sentences.” Commonwealth ex rel. West v. Rundle, 428 Pa. 102, 105-106, 237 A. 2d 196, 197-198 (1968).
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:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Pee Curiam.
In 1968, Florida enacted a new law for the financing of public education through state appropriations and local ad valorem taxes assessed by each school district. A section of the new law, Fla. Stat. Ann. § 236.251 (Supp. 1970), known as the “Millage Rollback Law,” provided that, to be eligible to receive state moneys, a local school district must limit ad valorem taxes for school purposes to not more than 10 mills of assessed valuation, with certain exceptions. Appellees filed this class action in the District Court for the Middle District of Florida alleging that the Millage Rollback Law effected an invidious discrimination, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, against school children of property-poor counties in that 10 mills of ad valorem tax in school districts in such counties would produce less dollars per child for educational purposes than would 10 mills of ad valorem tax in other counties. A three-judge District Court entered a summary judgment in appellees’ favor upon a declaration that the Millage Rollback Law was unconstitutional, and enjoined the appellants from withholding state funds from any school district by virtue of the provisions of that Act. Hargrave v. Kirk, 313 F. Supp. 944 (1970). We noted probable jurisdiction. 400 U. S. 900 (1970). We vacate and remand.
I
Subsequent to the filing of this suit, School Board of Broward County v. Christian, No. 69-932, was filed in the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit of Leon County, Florida. That action attacks the Millage Rollback Law primarily on state law grounds, as violative of provisions of the Florida Constitution. The District Court, however, rejected appellants' argument that the court "should abstain from considering the case in deference to [the] state court proceeding,” 313 F. Supp., at 946-947, holding that under Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961), and McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S. 668 (1963), “[t]he fact that a state remedy is available is not a valid basis for federal court abstention.” 313 F. Supp., at 947. The reliance upon Monroe v. Pape and McNeese was misplaced. Monroe v. Pape is not in point, for there “the state remedy, though adequate in theory, was not available in practice.” 365 U. S., at 174. McNeese held that “assertion of a federal claim in a federal court [need not] await an attempt to vindicate the same claim in a state court.” 373 U. S., at 672 (emphasis added). See also Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U. S. 433 (1971). Our understanding from the colloquy on oral argument with counsel for the parties is that the Christian case asserts, not the “same claim,” that is, the federal claim of alleged denial of the federal right of equal protection, but primarily state law claims under the Florida Constitution, which claims, if sustained, will obviate the necessity of determining the Fourteenth Amendment question. In such case, the line of decisions of which Reetz v. Bozanich, 397 U. S. 82 (1970), is a recent example, states the principles that should inform the exercise of the District Court’s discretion as to whether to abstain.
II
Since the case must be remanded, we add another comment. The appellees' motion for summary judgment was considered on the pleadings and an affidavit which essentially merely verified the allegations of the amended complaint. Our examination of the pleadings and the affidavit persuades us that they are inadequate as a basis for deciding the equal protection claim. They do not sufficiently present the facts related to appellants’ argument that the Millage Rollback Law was only one aspect of a comprehensive legislative program for reorganizing educational financing throughout the State to more nearly equalize educational opportunities for all the school children of the State. Appellants contend that this program enacted a formula calling for “a massive infusion of state money into the several school districts,” which more than made up the loss suffered by a school district under the limitation of 10 mills in the assessment of ad valorem taxes: “The net effect of the 1968 educational financing enactments was not only to make up for the loss of funds suffered by the counties required to reduce local millage but to greatly increase the moneys available to the counties on a per pupil basis.” Appellants’ Reply Brief 4. Since the manner in which the program operates may be critical in the decision of the equal protection claim, that claim should not be decided without fully developing the factual record at a hearing.
The judgment of the District Court is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Black concurs in the judgment and Part II of the opinion.
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:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the "actual innocence" gateway to federal habeas review applied in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995), and further explained in House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518, 126 S.Ct. 2064, 165 L.Ed.2d 1 (2006). In those cases, a convincing showing of actual innocence enabled habeas petitioners to overcome a procedural bar to consideration of the merits of their constitutional claims. Here, the question arises in the context of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1), the statute of limitations on federal habeas petitions prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Specifically, if the petitioner does not file her federal habeas petition, at the latest, within one year of "the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence," § 2244(d)(1)(D), can the time bar be overcome by a convincing showing that she committed no crime?
We hold that actual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which a petitioner may pass whether the impediment is a procedural bar, as it was in Schlup and House, or, as in this case, expiration of the statute of limitations. We caution, however, that tenable actual-innocence gateway pleas are rare: "[A] petitioner does not meet the threshold requirement unless he persuades the district court that, in light of the new evidence, no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Schlup, 513 U.S., at 329, 115 S.Ct. 851; see House, 547 U.S., at 538, 126 S.Ct. 2064 (emphasizing that the Schlup standard is "demanding" and seldom met). And in making an assessment of the kind Schlup envisioned, "the timing of the [petition]" is a factor bearing on the "reliability of th[e] evidence" purporting to show actual innocence.
Schlup, 513 U.S., at 332, 115 S.Ct. 851.
In the instant case, the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that habeas petitioner Perkins (respondent here) had filed his petition after the statute of limitations ran out, and had "failed to diligently pursue his rights." Order in No. 09-1875, (CA6, Feb. 24, 2010), p. 2 (Certificate of Appealability). Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the District Court denying Perkins' petition, and held that Perkins' actual-innocence claim allowed him to pursue his habeas petition as if it had been filed on time. 670 F.3d 665, 670 (2012). The appeals court apparently considered a petitioner's delay irrelevant to appraisal of an actual-innocence claim. See ibid.
We vacate the Court of Appeals' judgment and remand the case. Our opinion clarifies that a federal habeas court, faced with an actual-innocence gateway claim, should count unjustifiable delay on a habeas petitioner's part, not as an absolute barrier to relief, but as a factor in determining whether actual innocence has been reliably shown. See Brief for Respondent 45 (habeas court "could... hold the unjustified delay against the petitioner when making credibility findings as to whether the [actual-innocence] exception has been met").
I
A
On March 4, 1993, respondent Floyd Perkins attended a party in Flint, Michigan, in the company of his friend, Rodney Henderson, and an acquaintance, Damarr Jones. The three men left the party together. Henderson was later discovered on a wooded trail, murdered by stab wounds to his head. Perkins was charged with the murder of Henderson. At trial, Jones was the key witness for the prosecution. He testified that Perkins alone committed the murder while Jones looked on. App. 55.
Chauncey Vaughn, a friend of Perkins and Henderson, testified that, prior to the murder, Perkins had told him he would kill Henderson, id., at 39, and that Perkins later called Vaughn, confessing to his commission of the crime. Id., at 36-38. A third witness, Torriano Player, also a friend of both Perkins and Henderson, testified that Perkins told him, had he known how Player felt about Henderson, he would not have killed Henderson. Id., at 74.
Perkins, testifying in his own defense, offered a different account of the episode. He testified that he left Henderson and Jones to purchase cigarettes at a convenience store. When he exited the store, Perkins related, Jones and Henderson were gone. Id., at 84. Perkins said that he then visited his girlfriend. Id., at 87. About an hour later, Perkins recalled, he saw Jones standing under a streetlight with blood on his pants, shoes, and plaid coat. Id., at 90.
The jury convicted Perkins of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on October 27, 1993. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Perkins' conviction and sentence, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied Perkins leave to appeal on January 31, 1997. Perkins' conviction became final on May 5, 1997.
B
Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, a state prisoner ordinarily has one year to file a federal petition for habeas corpus, starting from "the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review." 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(A). If the petition alleges newly discovered evidence, however, the filing deadline is one year from "the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence." § 2244(d)(1)(D).
Perkins filed his federal habeas corpus petition on June 13, 2008, more than 11 years after his conviction became final. He alleged, inter alia, ineffective assistance on the part of his trial attorney, depriving him of his Sixth Amendment right to competent counsel. To overcome AEDPA's time limitations, Perkins asserted newly discovered evidence of actual innocence. He relied on three affidavits, each pointing to Jones, not Perkins, as Henderson's murderer.
The first affidavit, dated January 30, 1997, was submitted by Perkins' sister, Ronda Hudson. Hudson stated that she had heard from a third party, Louis Ford, that Jones bragged about stabbing Henderson and had taken his clothes to the cleaners after the murder. App. to Pet. for Cert. 54a-55a. The second affidavit, dated March 16, 1999, was subscribed to by Demond Louis, Chauncey Vaughn's younger brother. Louis stated that, on the night of the murder, Jones confessed to him that he had just killed Henderson. Louis also described the clothes Jones wore that night, bloodstained orange shoes and orange pants, and a colorful shirt. Id., at 50a-53a. The next day, Louis added, he accompanied Jones, first to a dumpster where Jones disposed of the bloodstained shoes, and then to the cleaners. Finally, Perkins presented the July 16, 2002 affidavit of Linda Fleming, an employee at Pro-Clean Cleaners in 1993. She stated that, on or about March 4, 1993, a man matching Jones's description entered the shop and asked her whether bloodstains could be removed from the pants and a shirt he brought in. The pants were orange, she recalled, and heavily stained with blood, as was the multicolored shirt left for cleaning along with the pants. Id., at 48a-49a.
The District Court found the affidavits insufficient to entitle Perkins to habeas relief. Characterizing the affidavits as newly discovered evidence was "dubious," the District Court observed, in light of what Perkins knew about the underlying facts at the time of trial. Id., at 29a. But even assuming qualification of the affidavits as evidence newly discovered, the District Court next explained, "[Perkins'] petition [was] untimely under § 2244(d)(1)(D)." Ibid. "[If] the statute of limitations began to run as of the date of the latest of th[e] affidavits, July 16, 2002," the District Court noted, then "absent tolling, [Perkins] had until July 16, 2003 in which to file his habeas petition." Ibid. Perkins, however, did not file until nearly five years later, on June 13, 2008.
Under Sixth Circuit precedent, the District Court stated, "a habeas petitioner who demonstrates a credible claim of actual innocence based on new evidence may, in exceptional circumstances, be entitled to equitable tolling of habeas limitations." Id., at 30a. But Perkins had not established exceptional circumstances, the District Court determined. In any event, the District Court observed, equitable tolling requires diligence and Perkins "ha[d] failed utterly to demonstrate the necessary diligence in exercising his rights." Id., at 31a. Alternatively, the District Court found that Perkins had failed to meet the strict standard by which pleas of actual innocence are measured: He had not shown that, taking account of all the evidence, "it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him," or even that the evidence was new. Id., at 30a-31a.
Perkins appealed the District Court's judgment. Although recognizing that AEDPA's statute of limitations had expired and that Perkins had not diligently pursued his rights, the Sixth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability limited to a single question: Is reasonable diligence a precondition to relying on actual innocence as a gateway to adjudication of a federal habeas petition on the merits? Certificate of Appealability 2-3.
On consideration of the certified question, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court's judgment. Adhering to Circuit precedent, Souter v. Jones, 395 F.3d 577, 597-602 (2005), the Sixth Circuit held that Perkins' gateway actual-innocence allegations allowed him to present his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim as if it were filed on time. On remand, the Court of Appeals instructed, "the [D]istrict [C]ourt [should] fully consider whether Perkins assert[ed] a credible claim of actual innocence." 670 F.3d, at 676.
We granted certiorari to resolve a Circuit conflict on whether AEDPA's statute of limitations can be overcome by a showing of actual innocence. 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 527, 184 L.Ed.2d 338 (2012). Compare, e.g., San Martin v. McNeil, 633 F.3d 1257, 1267-1268 (C.A.11 2011) ("A court... may consider an untimely § 2254 petition if, by refusing to consider the petition for untimeliness, the court thereby would endorse a 'fundamental miscarriage of justice' because it would require that an individual who is actually innocent remain imprisoned."), with, e.g., Escamilla v. Jungwirth, 426 F.3d 868, 871-872 (C.A.7 2005) ("Prisoners claiming to be innocent, like those contending that other events spoil the conviction, must meet the statutory requirement of timely action."). See also Rivas v. Fischer, 687 F.3d 514, 548 (C.A.2 2012) (collecting cases).
II
A
In Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 130 S.Ct. 2549, 177 L.Ed.2d 130 (2010), this Court addressed the circumstances in which a federal habeas petitioner could invoke the doctrine of "equitable tolling." Holland held that "a [habeas] petitioner is entitled to equitable tolling only if he shows (1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way and prevented timely filing." Id., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2562 (internal quotation marks omitted). As the courts below comprehended, Perkins does not qualify for equitable tolling. In possession of all three affidavits by July 2002, he waited nearly six years to seek federal postconviction relief. "Such a delay falls far short of demonstrating the... diligence" required to entitle a petitioner to equitable tolling.
App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a (District Court opinion). See also Certificate of Appealability 2.
Perkins, however, asserts not an excuse for filing after the statute of limitations has run. Instead, he maintains that a plea of actual innocence can overcome AEDPA's one-year statute of limitations. He thus seeks an equitable exception to § 2244(d)(1), not an extension of the time statutorily prescribed. See Rivas, 687 F.3d, at 547, n. 42 (distinguishing from "equitable tolling" a plea to override the statute of limitations when actual innocence is shown).
Decisions of this Court support Perkins' view of the significance of a convincing actual-innocence claim. We have not resolved whether a prisoner may be entitled to habeas relief based on a freestanding claim of actual innocence. Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 404-405, 113 S.Ct. 853, 122 L.Ed.2d 203 (1993). We have recognized, however, that a prisoner "otherwise subject to defenses of abusive or successive use of the writ [of habeas corpus] may have his federal constitutional claim considered on the merits if he makes a proper showing of actual innocence." Id., at 404, 113 S.Ct. 853 (citing Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U.S. 333, 112 S.Ct. 2514, 120 L.Ed.2d 269 (1992) ). See also Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 496, 106 S.Ct. 2639, 91 L.Ed.2d 397 (1986) ("[W]e think that in an extraordinary case, where a constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent, a federal habeas court may grant the writ even in the absence of a showing of cause for the procedural default."). In other words, a credible showing of actual innocence may allow a prisoner to pursue his constitutional claims (here, ineffective assistance of counsel) on the merits notwithstanding the existence of a procedural bar to relief. "This rule, or fundamental miscarriage of justice exception, is grounded in the 'equitable discretion' of habeas courts to see that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons." Herrera, 506 U.S., at 404, 113 S.Ct. 853.
We have applied the miscarriage of justice exception to overcome various procedural defaults. These include "successive " petitions asserting previously rejected claims, see Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U.S. 436, 454, 106 S.Ct. 2616, 91 L.Ed.2d 364 (1986) (plurality opinion), "abusive" petitions asserting in a second petition claims that could have been raised in a first petition, see McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 494-495, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991), failure to develop facts in state court, see Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1, 11-12, 112 S.Ct. 1715, 118 L.Ed.2d 318 (1992), and failure to observe state procedural rules, including filing deadlines, see Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991) ; Carrier, 477 U.S., at 495-496, 106 S.Ct. 2639.
The miscarriage of justice exception, our decisions bear out, survived AEDPA's passage. In Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U.S. 538, 118 S.Ct. 1489, 140 L.Ed.2d 728 (1998), we applied the exception to hold that a federal court may, consistent with AEDPA, recall its mandate in order to revisit the merits of a decision. Id., at 558, 118 S.Ct. 1489 ("The miscarriage of justice standard is altogether consistent... with AEDPA's central concern that the merits of concluded criminal proceedings not be revisited in the absence of a strong showing of actual innocence."). In Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 622, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998), we held, in the context of § 2255, that actual innocence may overcome a prisoner's failure to raise a constitutional objection on direct review. Most recently, in House, we reiterated that a prisoner's proof of actual innocence may provide a gateway for federal habeas review of a procedurally defaulted claim of constitutional error. 547 U.S., at 537-538, 126 S.Ct. 2064.
These decisions "see[k] to balance the societal interests in finality, comity, and conservation of scarce judicial resources with the individual interest in justice that arises in the extraordinary case." Schlup, 513 U.S., at 324, 115 S.Ct. 851. Sensitivity to the injustice of incarcerating an innocent individual should not abate when the impediment is AEDPA's statute of limitations.
As just noted, see supra, at 1931 - 1932, we have held that the miscarriage of justice exception applies to state procedural rules, including filing deadlines. Coleman, 501 U.S., at 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546.
A federal court may invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to justify consideration of claims defaulted in state court under state timeliness rules. See ibid. The State's reading of AEDPA's time prescription would thus accord greater force to a federal deadline than to a similarly designed state deadline. It would be passing strange to interpret a statute seeking to promote federalism and comity as requiring stricter enforcement of federal procedural rules than procedural rules established and enforced by the States.
B
The State ties to § 2244(d)'s text its insistence that AEDPA's statute of limitations precludes courts from considering late-filed actual-innocence gateway claims. " Section 2244(d)(1)(D)," the State contends, "forecloses any argument that a habeas petitioner has unlimited time to present new evidence in support of a constitutional claim." Brief for Petitioner 17. That is so, the State maintains, because AEDPA prescribes a comprehensive system for determining when its one-year limitations period begins to run. "Included within that system," the State observes, "is a specific trigger for the precise circumstance presented here: a constitutional claim based on new evidence." Ibid. Section 2244(d)(1)(D) runs the clock from "the date on which the factual predicate of the claim... could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence." In light of that provision, the State urges, "there is no need for the courts to act in equity to provide additional time for persons who allege actual innocence as a gateway to their claims of constitutional error." Ibid. Perkins' request for an equitable exception to the statute of limitations, the State charges, would "rende[r] superfluous this carefully scripted scheme." Id., at 18.
The State's argument in this regard bears blinders. AEDPA's time limitations apply to the typical case in which no allegation of actual innocence is made. The miscarriage of justice exception, we underscore, applies to a severely confined category: cases in which new evidence shows "it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted [the petitioner]." Schlup, 513 U.S., at 329, 115 S.Ct. 851 (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 2244(d)(1)(D) is both modestly more stringent (because it requires diligence) and dramatically less stringent (because it requires no showing of innocence). Many petitions that could not pass through the actual-innocence gateway will be timely or not measured by § 2244(d)(1)(D)'s triggering provision. That provision, in short, will hardly be rendered superfluous by recognition of the miscarriage of justice exception.
The State further relies on provisions of AEDPA other than § 2244(d)(1)(D), namely, §§ 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2), to urge that Congress knew how to incorporate the miscarriage of justice exception when it was so minded. Section 2244(b)(2)(B), the State observes, provides that a petitioner whose first federal habeas petition has already been adjudicated when new evidence comes to light may file a second-or-successive petition when, and only when, the facts underlying the new claim would "establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense." § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii). And § 2254(e)(2), which generally bars evidentiary hearings in federal habeas proceedings initiated by state prisoners, includes an exception for prisoners who present new evidence of their innocence. See §§ 2254(e)(2)(A)(ii), (B) (permitting evidentiary hearings in federal court if "the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense").
But Congress did not simply incorporate the miscarriage of justice exception into §§ 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2). Rather, Congress constrained the application of the exception. Prior to AEDPA's enactment, a court could grant relief on a second-or-successive petition, then known as an "abusive" petition, if the petitioner could show that "a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result from a failure to entertain the claim." McCleskey, 499 U.S., at 495, 111 S.Ct. 1454. Section 2244(b)(2)(B) limits the exception to cases in which "the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence," and the petitioner can establish that no reasonable factfinder "would have found [her] guilty of the underlying offense" by "clear and convincing evidence." Congress thus required second-or-successive habeas petitioners attempting to benefit from the miscarriage of justice exception to meet a higher level of proof ("clear and convincing evidence") and to satisfy a diligence requirement that did not exist prior to AEDPA's passage.
Likewise, petitioners asserting actual innocence pre-AEDPA could obtain evidentiary hearings in federal court even if they failed to develop facts in state court. See Keeney, 504 U.S., at 12, 112 S.Ct. 1715 ("A habeas petitioner's failure to develop a claim in state-court proceedings will be excused and a hearing mandated if he can show that a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result from failure to hold a federal evidentiary hearing."). Under AEDPA, a petitioner seeking an evidentiary hearing must show diligence and, in addition, establish her actual innocence by clear and convincing evidence. §§ 2254(e)(2)(A)(ii), (B).
Sections 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) thus reflect Congress' will to modify the miscarriage of justice exception with respect to second-or-successive petitions and the holding of evidentiary hearings in federal court. These provisions do not demonstrate Congress' intent to preclude courts from applying the exception, unmodified, to "the type of petition at issue here"-an untimely first federal habeas petition alleging a gateway actual-innocence claim. House, 547 U.S., at 539, 126 S.Ct. 2064. The more rational inference to draw from Congress'
incorporation of a modified version of the miscarriage of justice exception in §§ 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) is simply this: In a case not governed by those provisions, i.e., a first petition for federal habeas relief, the miscarriage of justice exception survived AEDPA's passage intact and unrestricted.
Our reading of the statute is supported by the Court's opinion in Holland."[E]quitable principles have traditionally governed the substantive law of habeas corpus," Holland reminded, and affirmed that "we will not construe a statute to displace courts' traditional equitable authority absent the clearest command." 560 U.S., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2562 (internal quotation marks omitted). The text of § 2244(d)(1) contains no clear command countering the courts' equitable authority to invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to overcome expiration of the statute of limitations governing a first federal habeas petition. As we observed in Holland,
"AEDPA seeks to eliminate delays in the federal habeas review process. But AEDPA seeks to do so without undermining basic habeas corpus principles and while seeking to harmonize the new statute with prior law.... When Congress codified new rules governing this previously judicially managed area of law, it did so without losing sight of the fact that the writ of habeas corpus plays a vital role in protecting constitutional rights." Id., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2562 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
III
Having rejected the State's argument that § 2244(d)(1)(D) precludes a court from entertaining an untimely first federal habeas petition raising a convincing claim of actual innocence, we turn to the State's further objection to the Sixth Circuit's opinion. Even if a habeas petitioner asserting a credible claim of actual innocence may overcome AEDPA's statute of limitations, the State argues, the Court of Appeals erred in finding that no threshold diligence requirement at all applies to Perkins' petition.
While formally distinct from its argument that § 2244(d)(1)(D)'s text forecloses a late-filed claim alleging actual innocence, the State's contention makes scant sense. Section 2244(d)(1)(D) requires a habeas petitioner to file a claim within one year of the time in which new evidence "could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence." It would be bizarre to hold that a habeas petitioner who asserts a convincing claim of actual innocence may overcome the statutory time bar § 2244(d)(1)(D) erects, yet simultaneously encounter a court-fashioned diligence barrier to pursuit of her petition. See 670 F.3d, at 673 ("Requiring reasonable diligence effectively makes the concept of the actual innocence gateway redundant, since petitioners... seek [an equitable exception only] when they were not reasonably diligent in complying with § 2244(d)(1)(D).").
While we reject the State's argument that habeas petitioners who assert convincing actual-innocence claims must prove diligence to cross a federal court's threshold, we hold that the Sixth Circuit erred to the extent that it eliminated timing as a factor relevant in evaluating the reliability of a petitioner's proof of innocence. To invoke the miscarriage of justice exception to AEDPA's statute of limitations, we repeat, a petitioner "must show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in the light of the new evidence." Schlup, 513 U.S., at 327, 115 S.Ct. 851. Unexplained delay in presenting new evidence bears on the determination whether the petitioner has made the requisite showing. Perkins so acknowledges. See Brief for Respondent 52 (unjustified delay may figure in determining "whether a petitioner has made a sufficient showing of innocence"). As we stated in Schlup, "[a] court may consider how the timing of the submission and the likely credibility of [a petitioner's] affiants bear on the probable reliability of... evidence [of actual innocence]." 513 U.S., at 332, 115 S.Ct. 851. See also House, 547 U.S., at 537, 126 S.Ct. 2064.
Considering a petitioner's diligence, not discretely, but as part of the assessment whether actual innocence has been convincingly shown, attends to the State's concern that it will be prejudiced by a prisoner's untoward delay in proffering new evidence. The State fears that a prisoner might "lie in wait and use stale evidence to collaterally attack his conviction... when an elderly witness has died and cannot appear at a hearing to rebut new evidence." Brief for Petitioner 25. The timing of such a petition, however, should seriously undermine the credibility of the actual-innocence claim. Moreover, the deceased witness' prior testimony, which would have been subject to cross-examination, could be introduced in the event of a new trial. See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004) (recognizing exception to the Confrontation Clause where witness is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination). And frivolous petitions should occasion instant dismissal. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254 Rule 4. Focusing on the merits of a petitioner's actual-innocence claim and taking account of delay in that context, rather than treating timeliness as a threshold inquiry, is tuned to the rationale underlying the miscarriage of justice exception-i.e., ensuring "that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons." Herrera, 506 U.S., at 404, 113 S.Ct. 853.
IV
We now return to the case at hand. The District Court proceeded properly in first determining that Perkins' claim was filed well beyond AEDPA's limitations period and that equitable tolling was unavailable to Perkins because he could demonstrate neither exceptional circumstances nor diligence. See supra, at 1930. The District Court then found that Perkins' alleged newly discovered evidence, i.e., the information contained in the three affidavits, was "substantially available to [Perkins] at trial." App. to Pet. for Cert. 31a. Moreover, the proffered evidence, even if "new," was hardly adequate to show that, had it been presented at trial, no reasonable juror would have convicted Perkins. Id., at 30a-31a.
The Sixth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability limited to the question whether reasonable diligence is a precondition to reliance on actual innocence as a gateway to adjudication of a federal habeas petition on the merits. We have explained that untimeliness, although not an unyielding ground for dismissal of a petition, does bear on the credibility of evidence proffered to show actual innocence. On remand, the District Court's appraisal of Perkins' petition as insufficient to meet Schlup's actual-innocence standard should be dispositive, absent cause, which we do not currently see, for the Sixth Circuit to upset that evaluation. We stress once again that the Schlup standard is demanding. The gateway should open only when a petition presents "evidence of innocence so strong that a court cannot have confidence in the outcome of the trial unless the court is also satisfied that the trial was free of nonharmless constitutional error." 513 U.S., at 316, 115 S.Ct. 851.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Sixth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice SCALIA, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Justice THOMAS join, and with whom Justice ALITO joins as to Parts I, II, and III, dissenting.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) provides that a "1-year period of limitation shall apply" to a state prisoner's application for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). The gaping hole in today's opinion for the Court is its failure to answer the crucial question upon which all else depends: What is the source of the Court's power to fashion what it concedes is an "exception" to this clear statutory command?
That question is unanswered because there is no answer. This Court has no such power, and not one of the cases cited by the opinion says otherwise. The Constitution vests legislative power only in Congress, which never enacted the exception the Court creates today. That inconvenient truth resolves this case.
I
A
"Actual innocence" has, until today, been an exception only to judge-made, prudential barriers to habeas relief, or as a means of channeling judges' statutorily conferred discretion not to apply a procedural bar. Never before have we applied the exception to circumvent a categorical statutory bar to relief. We have not done so because we have no power to do so. Where Congress has erected a constitutionally valid barrier to habeas relief, a court cannot decline to give it effect.
Before AEDPA, the Supreme Court had developed an array of doctrines, see, e.g., Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977) (procedural default); McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 489, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991) (abuse of the writ), to limit the habeas practice that it had radically expanded in the early or mid-20th century to include review of the merits of conviction and not merely jurisdiction of the convicting court, see Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 475-478, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976) (citing Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 35 S.Ct. 582, 59 L.Ed. 969 (1915) ); Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533-534, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring in result); Bator, Finality in Criminal Law and Federal Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners, 76 Harv. L.Rev. 441, 483-499 (1963). For example, the doctrine of procedural default holds that a state prisoner's default of his federal claims "in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule" bars federal habeas review of those claims. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). That doctrine is not a statutory or jurisdictional command; rather, it is a "prudential" rule "grounded in 'considerations of comity and concerns for the orderly administration of criminal justice.' " Dretke v. Haley, 541 U.S. 386, 392-393, 124 S.Ct. 1847, 158
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:
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A
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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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent Paul Gibbs was awarded compensatory and punitive damages in this action against petitioner United Mine Workers of America (UMW) for alleged violations of § 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 158, as amended, and of the common law of Tennessee. The case grew out of the rivalry between the United Mine Workers and the Southern Labor Union over representation of workers in the southern Appalachian coal fields. Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company, not a party here, laid off 100 miners of the UMW’s Local 5881 when it closed one of its mines in southern Tennessee during the spring of 1960. Late that summer, Grundy Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated, hired respondent as mine superintendent to attempt to open a new mine on Consolidated’s property at nearby Gray’s Creek through use of members of the Southern Labor Union. As part of the arrangement, Grundy also gave respondent a contract to haul the mine’s coal to the nearest railroad loading point.
On August 15 and 16, 1960, armed members of Local 5881 forcibly prevented the opening of the mine, threatening respondent and beating an organizer for the rival union. The members of the local believed Consolidated
had promised them the jobs at the new mine; they insisted that if anyone would do the work, they would. At this time, no representative of the UMW, their international union, was present. George Gilbert, the UMW’s field representative for the area including Local 5881, was away at Middlesboro, Kentucky, attending an Executive Board meeting when the members of the local discovered Grundy’s plan; he did not return to the area until late in the day of August 16. There was uncontradicted testimony that he first learned of the violence while at the meeting, and returned with explicit instructions from his international union superiors to establish a limited picket line, to prevent any further violence, and to see to it that the strike did not spread to neighboring mines. There was no further violence at the mine site; a picket line was maintained there for nine months; and no further attempts were made to open the mine during that period.
Respondent lost his job as superintendent, and never entered into performance of his haulage contract. He testified that he soon began to lose other trucking contracts and mine leases he held in nearby areas. Claiming these effects to be the result of a concerted union plan against him, he sought recovery not against Local 5881 or its members, but only against petitioner, the international union. The suit was brought in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and jurisdiction was premised on allegations of secondary boycotts under § 303. The state law claim, for which jurisdiction was based upon the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction, asserted “an unlawful conspiracy and an unlawful boycott aimed at him and [Grundy] to maliciously, wantonly and willfully interfere with his contract of employment and with his contract of haulage.” The trial judge refused to submit to the jury the claims of pressure intended to cause mining firms other than Grundy to cease doing business with Gibbs; he found those claims unsupported by the evidence. The jury’s verdict was that the UMW had violated both § 303 and state law. Gibbs was awarded $60,000 as damages under the employment contract and $14,500 under the haulage contract; he was also awarded $100,000 punitive damages. On motion, the trial court set aside the award of damages with respect to the haulage contract on the ground that damage was unproved. It also held that union pressure on Grundy to discharge respondent as supervisor would constitute only a primary dispute with Grundy, as respondent’s employer, and hence was not cognizable as a claim under § 303. Interference with the employment relationship was cognizable as a state claim, however, and a remitted award was sustained on the state law claim. 220 F. Supp. 871. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 343 F. 2d 609. We granted certiorari. 382 U. S. 809. We reverse.
I.
A threshold question is whether the District Court properly entertained jurisdiction of the claim based on Tennessee law. There was no need to decide a like question in Teamsters Union v. Morton, 377 U. S. 252, since the pertinent state claim there was based on peaceful secondary activities and we held that state law based on such activities had been pre-empted by § 303. But here respondent’s claim is based in part on proofs of violence and intimidation. “[W]e have allowed the States to grant compensation for the consequences, as defined by the traditional law of torts, of conduct marked by violence and imminent threats to the public order. United Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634; United Construction Workers v. Laburnum Corp., 347 U. S. 656.... State jurisdiction has prevailed in these situations because the compelling state interest, in the scheme of our federalism, in the maintenance of domestic peace is not overridden in the absence of clearly expressed congressional direction.” San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 247.
The fact that state remedies were not entirely preempted does not, however, answer the question whether the state claim was properly adjudicated in the District Court absent diversity jurisdiction. The Court held in Hum v. Oursler, 289 U. S. 238, that state law claims are appropriate for federal court determination if they form a separate but parallel ground for relief also sought in a substantial claim based on federal law. The Court distinguished permissible from nonpermissible exercises of federal judicial power over state law claims by contrasting “a case where two distinct grounds in support of a single cause of action are alleged, one only of which presents a federal question, and a case where two separate and distinct causes of action are alleged, one only of which is federal in character. In the former, where the federal question averred is not plainly wanting in substance, the federal court, even though the federal ground be not established, may nevertheless retain and dispose of the case upon the non-federal ground; in the latter it may not do so upon the non-federal cause of action 289 U. S., at 246. The question is into which category the present action- fell.
Hum was decided in 1933, before the unification of law and equity by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. At the time, the meaning of “cause of action” was a subject of serious dispute; the phrase might “mean one thing for one purpose and something different for another.” United States v. Memphis Cotton Oil Co., 288 U. S. 62, 67-68. The Court in Hum identified what it meant by the term by citation of Baltimore S. S. Co. v. Phillips, 274 U. S. 316, a case in which “cause of action” had been used to identify the operative scope of the doctrine of res judicata. In that case the Court had noted that “ The whole tendency of our decisions is to require a plaintiff to try his whole cause of action and his whole case at one time.’ ” 274 U. S., at 320. It stated its holding in the following language, quoted in part in the Hum opinion:
“Upon principle, it is perfectly plain that the respondent [a seaman suing for an injury sustained while working aboard ship] suffered but one actionable wrong and was entitled to but one recovery, whether his injury was due to one or the other of several distinct acts of alleged negligence or to a combination of some or all of them. In either view, there would be but a single wrongful invasion of a single primary right of the plaintiff, namely, the right of bodily safety, whether the acts constituting such invasion were one or many, simple or complex.
“A cause of action does not consist of facts, but of the unlawful violation of a right which the facts show. The number and variety of the facts alleged do not establish more than one cause of action so long as their result, whether they be considered severally or in combination, is the violation of but one right by a single legal wrong. The mere multiplication of grounds of negligence alleged as causing the same injury does not result in multiplying the causes of action. ‘The facts are merely the means, and not the end. They do not constitute the cause of action, but they show its existence by making the wrong appear.’ ” Id,., at 321.
Had the Court found a jurisdictional bar to reaching the state claim in Hum, we assume that the doctrine of res judicata would not have been applicable in any subsequent state suit. But the citation of Baltimore S. S. Co. shows that the Court found that the weighty policies of judicial economy and fairness to parties reflected in res judicata doctrine were in themselves strong counsel for the adoption of a rule which would permit federal courts to dispose of the state as well as the federal claims.
With the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the unified form of action, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 2, much of the controversy over “cause of action” abated. The phrase remained as the keystone of the Hum test, however, and, as commentators have noted, has been the source of considerable confusion. Under the Rules, the impulse is toward entertaining the broadest possible scope of action consistent with fairness to the parties; joinder of claims, parties and remedies is strongly encouraged. Yet because the Hum question involves issues of jurisdiction as well as convenience, there has been some tendency to limit its application to cases in which the state and federal claims are, as in Hum, “little more than the equivalent of different epithets to characterize the same group of circumstances.” 289 U. S., at 246.
This limited approach is unnecessarily grudging. Pendent jurisdiction, in the sense of judicial power, exists whenever there is a claim “arising under [the] Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority...,” U. S. Const., Art. Ill, § 2, and the relationship between that claim and the state claim permits the conclusion that the entire action before the court comprises but one constitutional “case.” The federal claim must have substance sufficient to confer subject matter jurisdiction on the court. Levering & Garrigues Co. v. Morrin, 289 U. S. 103. The state and federal claims must derive from a common nucleus of operative fact. But if, considered without regard to their federal or state character, a plaintiff's claims are such that he would ordinarily be expected to try them all in one judicial proceeding, then, assuming substantiality of the federal issues, there is power in federal courts to hear the whole.
That power need not be exercised in every case in which it is found to exist. It has consistently been recognized that pendent jurisdiction is a doctrine of discretion, not of plaintiff’s right. Its justification lies in considerations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants; if these are not present a federal court should hesitate to exercise jurisdiction over state claims, even though bound to apply state law to them, Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64. Needless decisions of state law should be avoided both as a matter of comity and to promote justice between the parties, by procuring for them a surer-footed reading of applicable law. Certainly, if the federal claims are dismissed before trial, even though not insubstantial in a jurisdictional sense, the state claims should be dismissed as well. Similarly, if it appears that the state issues substantially predominate, whether in terms of proof, of the scope of the issues raised, or of the comprehensiveness of the remedy sought, the state claims may be dismissed without prejudice and left for resolution to state tribunals. There may, on the other hand, be situations in which the state claim is so closely tied to questions of federal policy that the argument for exercise of pendent jurisdiction is particularly strong. In the present case, for example, the allowable scope of the state claim implicates the federal doctrine of pre-emption; while this interrelationship does not create statutory federal question jurisdiction, Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149, its existence is relevant to the exercise of discretion. Finally, there may be reasons independent of jurisdictional considerations, such as the likelihood of jury confusion in treating divergent legal theories of relief, that would justify separating state and federal claims for trial, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 42 (b). If so, jurisdiction should ordinarily be refused.
The question of power will ordinarily be resolved on the pleadings. But the issue whether pendent jurisdiction has been properly assumed is one which remains open throughout the litigation. Pretrial procedures or even the trial itself may reveal a substantial hegemony of state law claims, or likelihood of jury confusion, which could not have been anticipated at the pleading stage. Although it will of course be appropriate to take account in this circumstance of the already completed course of the litigation, dismissal of the state claim might even then be merited. For example, it may appear that the plaintiff was well aware of the nature of his proofs and the relative importance of his claims; recognition of a federal court’s wide latitude to decide ancillary questions of state law does not imply that it must tolerate a litigant’s effort to impose upon it what is in effect only a state law ease. Once it appears that a state claim constitutes the real body of a case, to which the federal claim is only an appendage, the state claim may fairly be dismissed.
We are not prepared to say that in the present case the District Court exceeded its discretion in proceeding to judgment on the state claim. We may assume for purposes of decision that the District Court was correct in its holding that the claim of pressure on Grundy to terminate the employment contract was outside the purview of § 303. Even so, the § 303 claims based on secondary pressures on Grundy relative to the haulage contract and on other coal operators generally were substantial. Although § 303 limited recovery to compensatory damages based on secondary pressures, Teamsters Union v. Morton, supra, and state law allowed both compensatory and punitive damages, and allowed such damages as to both secondary and primary activity, the state and federal claims arose from the same nucleus of operative fact and reflected alternative remedies. Indeed, the verdict sheet sent in to the jury authorized only one award of damages, so that recovery could not be given separately on the federal and state claims.
It is true that the § 303 claims ultimately failed and that the only recovery allowed respondent was on the state claim. We cannot confidently say, however, that the federal issues were so remote or played such a minor role at the trial that in effect the state claim only was tried. Although the District Court dismissed as unproved the § 303 claims that petitioner’s secondary activ--ities included attempts to induce coal operators other than Grundy to cease doing business with respondent, the court submitted the § 303 claims relating to Grundy to the jury. The jury returned verdicts against petitioner on those § 303 claims, and it was only on petitioner’s motion for a directed verdict and a judgment. n. o. v. that the verdicts on those claims were set aside. The District Judge considered the claim as to the haulage contract proved as to liability, and held it failed only for lack of proof of damages. Although there was some risk of confusing the jury in joining the state and federal claims — especially since, as will be developed, differing standards of proof of UMW involvement applied— the possibility of confusion could be lessened by employing a special verdict form, as the District Court did. Moreover, the question whether the permissible scope of the state claim was limited by the doctrine of preemption afforded a special reason for the exercise of pendent jurisdiction; the federal courts are particularly appropriate bodies for the application of pre-emption principles. We thus conclude that although it may be that the District Court might, in its sound discretion, have dismissed the state claim, the circumstances show no error in refusing to do so.
1 — I H-f
This Court has consistently recognized the right of States to deal with violence and threats of violence appearing in labor disputes, sustaining a variety of remedial measures against the contention that state law was pre-empted by the passage of federal labor legislation. Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin Board, 315 U. S. 740; United Construction Workers v. Laburnum, Construction Corp., 347 U. S. 656; United Automobile Workers v. Wisconsin Board, 351 U. S. 266; Youngdahl v. Bainfair, Inc., 355 U. S. 131; United Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634: Petitioner concedes the principle, but argues that the permissible scope of state remedies in this area is strictly confined to the direct consequences of such conduct, and does not include consequences resulting from associated peaceful picketing or other union activity. We agree.
Our opinions on this subject, frequently announced over weighty arguments in dissent that state remedies were being given too broad scope, have approved only remedies carefully limited to the protection of the compelling state interest in the maintenance of domestic peace. Thus, in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Carmon, 359 U. S. 236, we read our prior decisions as only allowing “the States to grant compensation for the consequences, as defined by the traditional law of torts, of conduct marked by violence and imminent threats to the public order,” id., at 247, and noted that in Laburnum,
“damages were restricted to the 'damages directly and proximately caused by wrongful conduct chargeable to the defendants...’ as defined by the traditional law of torts.... Thus there is nothing in the measure of damages to indicate that state power was exerted to compensate for anything more than the direct consequences of the violent conduct.” Id., 248, n. 6, at 249.
In Russell, we specifically observed that the jury had been charged that to award damages it must find a proximate relation between the violence and threats of force and violence complained of, on the one hand, and the loss of wages allegedly suffered, on the other. 356 U. S., at 638, n. 3. In the two Wisconsin Board cases it was noted that the State’s administrative-injunctive relief was limited to prohibition against continuation of the unlawful picketing, not all picketing.. 315 U. S., at 748; 351 U. S., at 269-270, n. 3. And in Youngdahl, the Court held that a state court injunction which would have prohibited all picketing must be modified to permit peaceful picketing of the premises. We said, “[t] hough the state court was within its discretionary power in enjoining future acts of violence, intimidation and threats of violence by the strikers and the union, yet it is equally clear that such court entered the pre-empted domain of the National Labor Relations Board insofar as it enjoined peaceful picketing....” 355 U. S., at 139.
It is true that in Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U. S. 287, the Court approved sweeping state injunctive relief barring any future picketing in a labor dispute, whether peaceful or not. That case, however, was decided only on a constitutional claim of freedom of speech. We did not consider the impact of federal labor policy on state regulatory power. Moreover, as we recognized in Youngdahl, supra, at 139, the case was decided in the context of a strike marked by extreme and repeated acts of violence — “a pattern of violence... which would inevitably reappear in the event picketing were later resumed.” The Court in Meadowmoor had stated the question presented as “whether a state can choose to authorize its courts to enjoin acts of picketing in themselves peaceful when they are enmeshed with contemporaneously violent conduct which is concededly outlawed,” 312 U. S., at 292, and had reasoned that
“acts which in isolation are peaceful may be part of a coercive thrust when entangled with acts of violence. The picketing in this case was set in a background of violence. In such a setting it could justifiably be concluded that the momentum of fear generated by past violence would survive even though future picketing might be wholly peaceful.” Id., at 294.
Such special facts, if they appeared in an action for damages after picketing marred by violence had occurred, might support the conclusion that all damages resulting from the picketing were proximately caused by its violent component or by the fear which that violence engendered. Where the consequences of peaceful and violent conduct are separable, however, it is clear that recovery may be had only for the latter.
In the present case, petitioner concedes that violence which would justify application of state tort law within these narrow bounds occurred during the first two days of the strike. It is a separate issue, however, whether the pleadings, the arguments of counsel to the jury, or the instructions to the jury adequately defined the compass within which damages could be awarded under state law. The tort claimed was, in essence, a “conspiracy” to interfere with Gibbs’ contractual relations. The tort of “conspiracy” is poorly defined, and highly susceptible to judicial expansion; its relatively brief history is colored by use as a weapon against the developing labor movement. Indeed, a reading of the record in this case gives the impression that the notion of “conspiracy” was employed here to expand the application of state law substantially beyond the limits to be observed in showing direct union involvement in violence.
Thus, respondent’s complaint alleged “an unlawful conspiracy and an unlawful boycott... to maliciously, wantonly and willfully interfere with his contract of employment and with his contract of haulage.” No limitation to interference by violence appears. Similarly, counsel in arguing to the jury asserted, not that the conspiracy in which the union had allegedly participated and from which its liability could be inferred was a conspiracy of violence but that it was a conspiracy to impose the UMW and the UMW’s standard contract on the coal fields of Tennessee. Under the state law, it would not have been relevant that the union had not actually authorized, participated in or ratified the particular violence involved or even the general use of violence. It would only be necessary to show a conspiracy in which the union had a part, and to show also that those who engaged in the violence were members of the conspiracy and their acts were related to the conspiracy’s purpose.
The instructions to the jury also appear not to have kept the conspiracy concept within any proper bounds. The charge instructed the jury separately on the § 303 and conspiracy claims, characterizing each as predicated on an assertion that there had been “unlawful” picketing action, and distinguishing one from the other on the basis that in the conspiracy claim “the lawfulness of the means rather than the lawfulness of the object or the purpose of the picketing... is controlling.” But in charging the conspiracy claim, the court stressed that the “unlawfulness” of the picketing, rather than violence as such, would be controlling. Thus, in characterizing respondent’s claim of a conspiracy intentionally to interfere with his contractual relations with Grundy, the trial judge said respondent asserted the interference to be “wrongful in that it was accomplished by unlawful means, including violence and threats of violence.” Turning to the question of the international union’s responsibility, he said this depended on a showing that it “was a party to a conspiracy pursuant to which the interference was committed.” He defined conspiracy as
“an agreement between two or more... to do an unlawful thing, or to do a lawful thing by unlawful means.... It is not essential to the existence of a conspiracy that the agreement between the conspirators be formally made between the parties at any one time, if, for example, two persons agreed to pursue an unlawful purpose or pursue a lawful purpose by unlawful means, then later a third person with knowledge of the existence of the conspiracy assents to it either impliedly or expressly and participates in it, then all three are conspirators in the same conspiracy.... [A] 11 that is required is that each party to the conspiracy know of the existence of the conspiracy and that each agrees to assist in some manner in the furtherance of the unlawful purpose... or any unlawful means of accomplishing an unlawful purpose.”
The trial judge then charged, in accordance with the Tennessee common law on conspiracy, that the union, if a member of a conspiracy, would be liable for all acts “done in concert... with the common purpose, and to effect a common design,” whether or not it had authorized, participated in, or ratified the particular acts. The jury was told it might award “only such damages as... he has sustained as a proximate and direct result of the action of the defendant,” and that “[n]o award of damages can be made... on the basis of losses sustained... as a result of lawful activity upon the part of the defendant or its agents.” Such instructions do not focus the jury’s attention upon violence or threats of violence as the essential predicate of any recovery it might award.
III.
Even assuming the conspiracy concept could be and was kept within limits proper to the application of state tort law under the pre-emption doctrine, reversal is nevertheless required here for failure to meet the special proof requirements imposed by § 6 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act:
“No officer or member of any association or organization, and no association or organization participating or interested in a labor dispute, shall be held responsible or liable in any court of the United States for the unlawful acts of individual officers, members, or agents, except upon clear proof of actual participation in, or actual authorization of, such acts, or of ratification of such acts after actual knowledge thereof.”
Petitioner vigorously contends that § 6 applied to the state claims in this case; that, on this record, it cannot be charged with having participated in or authorized the violence of August 15-16; and that its acts once it learned of the violence fell short of what would be necessary to show either ratification of the violence or any intent to build its picketing campaign upon the fears the violence engendered. We agree.
We held in Brotherhood of Carpenters v. United States, 330 U. S. 395, 403, that
“whether § 6 should be called a rule of evidence or one that changes the substantive law of agency... its purpose and effect was to relieve organizations... and members of those organizations from liability for damages or imputation of guilt for lawless acts done in labor disputes by some individual officers or members of the organization, without clear proof that the organization or member charged with responsibility for the offense actually participated, gave prior authorization, or ratified such acts after actual knowledge of their perpetration.”
Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act, which expressly provides that for the purposes of that statute, including § 303, the responsibility of a union for the acts of its members and officers is to be measured by reference to ordinary doctrines of agency, rather than the more stringent standards of § 6. Yet although the legislative history indicates that Congress was well aware of the Carpenters decision, it did not repeal § 6 outright, but left it applicable to cases not arising under the new Act. This selectivity is not surprising, for on state claims, though not on § 303 claims, punitive damages may be recovered. The driving force behind § 6 and the opposition to § 303, even in its limited form, was the fear that unions might be destroyed if they could be held liable for damage done by acts beyond their practical control. Plainly, § 6 applies to federal court adjudications of state tort claims arising out of labor disputes, whether or not they are associated with claims under § 303 to which the section does not apply.
Although the statute does not define “clear proof,” its history and rationale suggest that Congress meant at least to signify a meaning like that commonly accorded such similar phrases as “clear, unequivocal, and convincing proof.” Under this standard, the plaintiff in a civil case is not required to satisfy the criminal standard of reasonable doubt on the issue of participation, authorization or ratification; neither may he prevail by meeting the ordinary civil burden of persuasion. He is required to persuade by a substantial margin, to come forward with “more than a bare preponderance of the evidence to prevail.” Schneiderman v. United State's, 320 U. S. 118, 125. In our view, that burden was not met.
At the outset, it is clear that the requisite showing was not made as to possible union authorization of or participation in the violence of August 15 and 16. Although it is undoubtedly true that the officers and members of Local 5881 were present in force at the mine site on those days, neither the Local nor they are parties to this suit. Mr. Gilbert, the UMW representative, had left the area for a business meeting before the series of events culminating in the violence, and immediately upon his return, the violence subsided. The Sixth Circuit conceded that “[t]he proofs were sketchy as to defendant’s responsibility for the [first two days’ violence].” This view accurately reflects the state of the record. Petitioner was not even aware of Grundy’s plan to open the Gray’s Creek mine until after the violence had occurred.
The remaining issue is whether there was clear proof that the union ratified the violence which had occurred. Preliminarily, we note that it would be inconsistent with the fabric of national labor policy to infer ratification from the mere fact that petitioner involved itself in the dispute after the violence had occurred, or from the fact that it carried on some normal union functions, such as provision of strike relief. A union would ordinarily undertake these tasks during the course of a lawful strike. National labor policy requires that national unions be encouraged to exercise a restraining influence on explosive strike situations; and when they seek to do so, they should not for these activities be made to risk liability for such harm as may already have been done. The fact that ripples of the earlier violence may still be felt should not be permitted, and under § 6 is not permitted, to impose such liability. Because the dispute which sparked the violence will often continue, the union will feel a responsibility to take up the dispute.as well as to curb its excesses. There can be no rigid requirement that a union affirmatively disavow such unlawful acts as may previously have occurred. Cf. ILGWU v. Labor Board, 237 F. 2d 545. What is required is proof, either that the union approved the violence which occurred, or that it participated actively or by knowing tolerance in further acts which were in themselves actionable under state law or intentionally drew upon the previous violence for their force.
The record here is persuasive that the petitioner did what it could to stop or curtail the violence. There was repeated and uncontradicted testimony that when news of the violence reached the meeting that Gilbert was attending, he was given firm instructions to return to the scene, to assume control of the strike, to suppress violence, to limit the size of the picket line, and to assure that no other area mines were affected. He succeeded. Although the day after his return two Consolidated officers were harassed by a large and unruly mob in a nearby town, this incident was unrelated to respondent, and was not repeated. There was no further violence at the mine site, and the number of pickets was reduced to a very few. Other mines in the immediate area, including two worked on lease by Gibbs, continued to operate, although strenuous effort was required to accomplish this; one union official testified, “I thought I was going to get whipped two or three times [by members of the Local who opposed this policy].”
To be sure, there was testimony that Gilbert and, through him, the international union were not pleased with respondent’s role in the abortive venture to open the Gray’s Creek mines with members of the Southern Labor Union. A company officer testified that when the mines finally opened respondent was not hired, because “Had I hired Mr. Paul Gibbs none of these mines would be open today.” Respondent testified that Gilbert had told him, shortly after assuming control of the strike, “I want you to keep your damn hands off of that Gray’s Creek area over there, and tell that Southern Labor Union that we don’t intend for you to work that mine.” To another, Gilbert is alleged to have said, “Hell, we can’t let that go on... Paul was trying to bring this other union in there, and [Gilbert said] he ain’t going to get by with it.” A third witness reported remarks of a similar tenor. Respondent testified that fear for his own safety caused him not to visit his mine leases after the events of August 15 and 16. His foreman testified to minor acts of violence at the mine site, never connected to any person or persons.
The relevant question, however, is whether Gilbert or other UMW representatives were clearly shown to have endorsed violence or threats of violence as a means of settling the dispute. The Sixth Circuit’s answer was that they had. Its view of the record gave it
“the impression that the threat of violence remained throughout the succeeding days and months. The night and day picketing that followed its spectacular beginning was but a guaranty and warning that like treatment would be accorded further attempts to open the Gray’s Creek area. The aura of violence remained to enhance the effectiveness of the picketing. Certainly there is a threat of violence when the man who has just knocked me down my front steps continues to stand guard at my front door.” 343 F. 2d, at 616.
An “impression” is too ephemeral a product to be the result of “clear proof.” As we have said, the mere fact of continued picketing at the mine site is not properly relied upon to show ratification. But even accepting the passage as a holding that “clear proof” of UMW involvement is present, we do not so read the record.
If there was a remaining threat of violence here, it was a threat which arose from the context of the dispute, and not from the manner in which the international union was shown to have handled it. This dispute began when unemployed miners in the Appalachian hills discovered that jobs they believed had been promised to them were being given to others behind their backs. In considering the vicarious liability of the international union, accommodation must be made for that fact. The record here clearly bears the construction that the international union exerted pressure to assure that respondent would lose his present jobs and obtain no more. But the record fails to rebut petitioner’s contention that it had been unwilling to see its ends accomplished through violence, and indeed had sought to control the excesses which had occurred. Since the record establishes only peaceful activities in this regard on the part of petitioner, respondent was limited to his § 303 remedy. Teamsters Union v. Morton, supra. Although our result would undoubtedly be firmer if the petitioner had assured respondent that, having assumed control of the strike, it would prevent further violence, in the circumstances of this case the crucial fact of petitioner’s participation in or ratification of the violence that occurred was not proved to the degree of certainty required by § 6. Reversed.
The Chief Justice took no part in the decision of this case.
Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 provides:
“(a) It shall be unlawful, for the purpose of this section only, in an industry or activity affecting commerce, for any labor organization to engage in any activity or conduct defined as an unfair labor practice in section 158 (b) (4) of this title.
“(b) Whoever shall be injured in his business or property by reason [of] any violation of subsection (a) of this section may sue therefor in any district court of the United States subject to the limitations and provisions of section 185 of this title without respect to the amount in controversy, or in any other court having jurisdiction of the parties, and shall recover the damages by him sustained and the cost of the suit.” 29 U. S. C. § 187 (1964 ed.).
Section 158 (b)(4) of Title 29 U. S. C. (1964 ed
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:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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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.
PER CURIAM.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
It is so ordered.
Justice BREYER, with whom Justice SOTOMAYOR and Justice KAGAN join, dissenting.
Section 302(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 157, as amended, an antibribery provision, makes it a crime for an employer "to pay, lend, or deliver, or agree to pay, lend, or deliver, any money or other thing of value" to a labor union that represents or seeks to represent its employees. 29 U.S.C. § 186(a)(2). Section 302(b) makes it a crime "for any person to request [or] demand ..., or agree to receive or accept, any payment, loan, or delivery of any money or other thing of value prohibited by subsection (a)." § 186(b)(1). The question in this case is whether an employer violates § 302(a) by making the following promises to a union that seeks to represent its employees: (1) that the employer will remain neutral in respect to the union's efforts to organize its employees, (2) that the union will be given access (for organizing purposes) to nonpublic areas of the employer's premises, and (3) that the union will receive a list of employees' names and contact information (also for organizing purposes). A further question (the other side of the same coin) is whether a union violates § 302(b) by requesting that the employer perform its contractual obligations to fulfill these promises.
The Eleventh Circuit held that these items are "thing[s] of value" and that an employer's promise to "pay" them in return for something of value from the union violates the Act if the employer intends to use the payment to "corrupt" the union; the Eleventh Circuit also held that a union's request that an employer make such a payment violates § 302(b) if the union intends to "extort" the benefit from the employer. 667 F.3d 1211, 1215-1216 (2012). Other Circuits have held to the contrary, reasoning that similar promises by an employer to assist a union's organizing campaign (or merely to avoid opposing the campaign) fall outside the scope of § 302. See Adcock v. Freightliner LLC, 550 F.3d 369 (C.A.4 2008); Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union, Local 57 v. Sage Hospitality Resources, LLC, 390 F.3d 206 (C.A.3 2004). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict.
We have received briefs on the issue, and we have heard oral argument. But in considering the briefs and argument, we became aware of two logically antecedent questions that could prevent us from reaching the question of the correct interpretation of § 302. First, it is possible that the case is moot because the contract between the employer and union that contained the allegedly criminal promises appears to have expired by the end of 2011, before the Eleventh Circuit rendered its decision on the scope of § 302. Second, it is arguable that respondent Mulhall, the sole plaintiff in this case, lacks Article III standing.
In my view, rather than dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, the Court should simply ask for additional briefs addressing these two questions. If it turns out that the federal courts lack jurisdiction either because the case is moot or because Mulhall lacks standing, then we cannot reach the merits. But if that is the case, then we should likely order the Eleventh Circuit's decision vacated, thereby removing its precedential effect and leaving the merits question open to be resolved in a later case that does fall within the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
I believe we should also ask for further briefing on a third question: the question whether § 302 authorizes a private right of action. I recognize that the Court said, long ago and in passing, that § 302(e) "permit[s] private litigants to obtain injunctions" for violations of § 302. Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U.S. 195, 205, 82 S.Ct. 1328, 8 L.Ed.2d 440 (1962), overruled in part on other grounds, Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U.S. 235, 237-238, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970). But, in light of the Court's more restrictive views on private rights of action in recent decades, see, e.g.,Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 286-287, 121 S.Ct. 1511, 149 L.Ed.2d 517 (2001), the legal status of Sinclair Refining 's dictum is uncertain. And if § 302 in fact does not provide a right of action to private parties like Mulhall, then courts will not need to reach difficult questions about the scope of § 302, as happened in this case, unless the Federal Government decides to prosecute such cases rather than limit its attention to cases that clearly fall within the statute's core antibribery purpose.
Unless resolved, the differences among the Courts of Appeals could negatively affect the collective-bargaining process. This is because the Eleventh Circuit's decision raises the specter that an employer or union official could be found guilty of a crime that carries a 5-year maximum sentence, see 29 U.S.C. § 186(d), if the employer or union official is found to have made certain commonplace organizing assistance agreements with the intent to "corrupt" or "extort." In my view, given the importance of the question presented to the collective-bargaining process, further briefing, rather than dismissal, is the better course of 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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The single issue presented for decision in this case is whether the United States District Court in New Orleans, acting under 28 U. S. C. § 1404 (a), erred in ordering that this action for damages to cargo from alleged unseaworthiness be transferred for trial, “in the interest of justice,” to the United States District Court at Memphis, Tennessee, where the sinking of the barge occurred. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's transfer order. 268 F. 2d 240. We granted certiorari to consider this important question. 361 U. S. 811.
The facts and circumstances on which the District Court transferred this case are these. Barge FBL-585, a respondent here under an ancient admiralty fiction, is owned by Federal Barge Lines, Inc., the other respondent. After the barge was partially loaded by petitioner, Continental Grain Co., with its soybeans at its wharf in Memphis, the barge sank, causing damage both to the barge and to the soybeans. A dispute arose over what caused it to sink. The barge owner, Federal Barge Lines, Inc., brought an action for damages in a Tennessee state court charging that the barge sank because the cargo owner, Continental Grain Co., had been negligent in loading it. The cargo owner later brought this action in the United States District Court in New Orleans against the barge and its owner, in a single complaint, charging that the vessel had sunk because of its defects and unseaworthiness, and claiming damages for injury to the cargo. In the meantime the damage case against the grain company had been removed from the Tennessee state court to the United States District Court at Memphis. While the litigation arising out of this single occurrence was in this posture in the New Orleans and Memphis courts, the barge-owner defendant, at New Orleans, filed a motion and accompanying affidavits under § 1404 (a) to transfer “this action” to the United States District Court at Memphis alleging that such transfer was “necessary for the convenience of the parties and witnesses and in the interest of justice. . . .” This followed the language of § 1404 (a), which provides:
“For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought.”
The New Orleans District Court found that the issue in the Memphis case
“that is, the cause of the casualty, is precisely the issue in the case at bar. The convenience of the great majority of witnesses in this case dictates that this case be tried in Memphis. The efficient administration of justice requires that this claim for cargo damage be tried by the same court which is trying the claim for hull damage, both claims being between the same parties, and relate to the same incident.”
These findings were well supported by evidence, were approved by the Court of Appeals, are not challenged here, and we accept them. The case, therefore, if tried in New Orleans, will bring about exactly the kind of mischievous consequences against “the interest of justice” that § 1404 (a) was designed to prevent, that is, unnecessary inconvenience and expense to parties, witnesses, and the public.
The grain company argues that this frustration of the basic purpose of Congress in passing § 1404 (a) is compelled by the language of the section that prevents the transfer of a “civil action” by a District Court to any District Court other than one “where it might have been brought.”- Two weeks ago this Court decided in Hoff man v. Blaski and Sullivan v. Behimer, 363 U. S. 335, that this language bars transfer of a “civil action” properly pending in one District Court to another in which that “civil action” could not have been brought because the defendant legally could not have been subjected to suit there at the time when the case was originally filed. Those cases involved transfers in which the plaintiffs filing the suits would have had no right whatever to proceed originally against the defendants on the “civil actions” in the District Courts to which transfer was sought.without the defendants’ consent. But in this case there was admittedly a right on the part of the grain company to subject the owner of the barge, with or without its consent, to a “civil action” in Memphis at the time the New Orleans action was brought. Under these circumstances it would plainly violate the express command of § 1404 (a), as construed in our two prior cases, to reverse the District Court’s judgment ordering this single civil action to be transferred to Memphis, unless transfer is barred by the joinder of the in rem claim against the barge with the claim against the owner itself. The grain company takes this view of the effect of joinder, arguing that since the barge was in New Orleans when this “civil action” was brought and the admiralty in rem claim therefore could not have been brought in Memphis at that time, the entire civil action must remain in the inconvenient New Orleans forum. This view is reached by labeling this single civil action as two, one against the barge and one against the owner. It asserts this view despite the fact that the grain company’s suit against the barge and its suit against the owner are in the same complaint for the loss of the same cargo in the same sinking of the same barge producing the same damages. The basis of this view that there are two distinct civil actions for § 1404 (a) purposes is a long-standing admiralty fiction that a vessel may be assumed to be a person for the purpose of filing a lawsuit and enforcing a judgment.
The fiction relied upon has not been without its critics even in the field it was designed to serve. It has been referred to as “archaic,” “an animistic survival. from remote times,” “irrational” and “atavistic.” Perhaps this is going too far since the fiction is one that certainly had real cause for its existence in its context and in the day and generation in which it was created. A purpose of the fiction, among others, has been to allow actions against ships where a person owning the ship could not be reached, and it can be very useful for this purpose still. We are asked here, however, to transplant this ancient salt-water admiralty fiction into the dry-land context of jorum non conveniens, where its usefulness and possibilities for good are questionable at best. In fact, the fiction appears to have no relevance whatever in a District Court’s determination of where a case can most conveniently be tried. A fiction born to provide convenient forums should not be transferred into a weapon to defeat that very purpose.
This Court has not hesitated in the past to refuse to apply this same admiralty fiction in a way that would cut down, as it would here, the scope of congressional enactments. In fact, Mr. Justice Bradley, speaking for the Court, said at one time, in construing a statute which had limited a shipowner’s liability but had failed to refer to the “personal” liability of the vessel:
“To say that an owner is not liable, but that his vessel is liable, seems to us like talking in riddles. A man’s liability for a demand against him is measured by the amount of the property that may be taken from him to satisfy that demand. In the matter of liability, a man and his property cannot be separated . . . .” The City of Norwich, 118 U. S. 468, 503.
Fifty-seven years later this Court was confronted with a similar argument about another section of the same statute, and after referring to the analysis in City of Norwich concluded,
“The riddle after more than half a century repeated to us in different context does not appear to us to have improved with age. . . . Congress has said that the owner shall not ‘answer for’ this loss in question. Claimant says this means in effect that he shall answer only with his ship. But the owner would never answer for a loss except with his property, since execution against the body was not at any time in legislative contemplation. There could be no practical exoneration of the owner that did not at the same time exempt his property.” Consumers Import Co. v. Kabushiki Kaisha Kawasaki Zosenjo, 320 U. S. 249, 253-254.
We follow the common-sense approach of these two cases in interpreting § 1404 (a). Failure to do so would practically scuttle the forum non conveniens statute so far as admiralty actions are concerned. All a plaintiff would need to do to escape from it entirely would be to bring his action against both the owner and the ship, as was done here. This would be all the more unfortunate since courts have long recognized “admiralty’s approach to do justice with slight regard to formal matters,” and, as this Court has recently observed,
“Admiralty practice, which has served as the origin of much of our modern federal procedure, should not be tied to the mast of legal technicalities it has been the forerunner in eliminating from other federal practices.” British Transport Comm’n v. United States, 354 U. S. 129, 139.
It is relevant that the law of admiralty itself is unconcerned about the technical distinctions between in rem and w personam actions for purposes of transferring admiralty actions from one court to a more convenient forum. This Court’s Admiralty Rule 54, which prescribes the procedures for owners’ limiting their liability after vessels have been libeled, provides in language broader than § 1404 (a): “The District Court may, in its discretion, transfer the proceedings to any district for the convenience of the parties.” And it may be further observed that courts have not felt themselves bound by this fiction when confronted with the argument that because in rem and in personam actions involve different parties, therefore res judicata does not apply from an in personam action against an owner to an in rem action against his ship. It is interesting in this connection to take note of the fact that, according to the Court of Appeals opinion, the case at Memphis has already been tried. To permit a situation in which two cases involving precisely the same issues are simultaneously pending in different District Courts leads to the wastefulness of time, energy and money that § 1404 (a) was designed to prevent. Moreover, such a situatipn is conducive to a race of diligence among litigants for a trial in the District Court each prefers. These are additional reasons why § 1404 (a) should not be made' ambiguous by the importation of irrelevant fictions.
The idea behind § 1404 (a) is that where a “civil action” to vindicate a wrong — however brought in a court — presents issues and requires witnesses that make one District Court more convenient than another, the trial judge can, after findings, transfer the whole action to the more convenient court. That situation exists here. Although the action in New Orleans was technically brought against the barge itself as well as its owner, the obvious fact is that, whatever other advantages may result, this is an alternative way of bringing the owner into court. And although any judgment for the cargo owner will be technically enforceable against the barge as an entity as well as its owner, the practical economic fact of the matter is that the money paid in satisfaction of it will have to come out of the barge owner’s pocket — including the possibility of a levy upon the barge even had the cargo owner not prayed for “personified” in rem relief. The crucial issues about fault and damages suffered were identical, whether considered as a claim against the ship or its owner. The witnesses were identical. Thus, while two methods were invoked to bring the owner into court and enforce any judgment against it, the substance of what had to be done to adjudicate the rights of the parties was not different at all. Treating both methods for § 1404 (a) purposes for what they are in a case like this — inseparable parts of one single “civil action” — merely permits or requires parties to try their issues in a single “civil action” in a court where it “might have been brought.” To construe § 1404 (a) this way merely carries out its design to protect litigants, witnesses and the public against unnecessary inconvenience and expense, not to provide a shelter for in rem admiralty proceedings in costly and inconvenient forums.
For the reasons stated here the judgment is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Harlan joins.
Although this case also involves some nice questions of admiralty procedure, since the claimant barge owner has moved for transfer and has agreed to “pay any final decree which may be rendered against” the barge, the controlling considerations for me are those set forth in my opinion in Sullivan v. Behimer, 363 U. S. 351. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment.
“A ship is the most living of inanimate things. Servants sometimes say 'she’ of a clock, but every one gives a gender to vessels. And we need not be surprised, therefore, to find a mode of dealing which has shown such extraordinary vitality in the criminal law applied with even more striking thoroughness in the Admiralty. It is only by supposing the ship to have been treated as if endowed with personality, that the arbitrary seeming peculiarities of the maritime law can be made intelligible, and on that supposition they at once become consistent and logical.” Holmes, The Common Law (1881), 26-27.
The Carlotta, 48 F. 2d 110, 112, 1931 Am. Mar. Cas. 742, 745 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1931), quoted in Gilmore and Black, The Law of Admiralty (1957), 508.
Point Landing, Inc., v. Alabama Dry Dock & Shipbuilding Co., 261 F. 2d 861, 866, 1959 Am. Mar. Cas. 148, 155 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1958).
See Burns Bros. v. Central R. Co., 202 F. 2d 910, 1953 Am. Mar. Cas. 718 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1953); Sullivan v. Nitrate Producers’ S. S. Co., 262 F. 371 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1919); Bailey v. Sundberg, 49 F. 583 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1892); Gilmore and Black, The Law of Admiralty (1957), 507-509.
268 F. 2d 240, 242, n. 2, 1959 A. M. C. 2158, 2160, n. 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:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted the Government’s petition for certiorari to decide whether the area near a barn, located approximately 50 yards from a fence surrounding a ranch house, is, for Fourth Amendment purposes, within the curtilage of the house. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the barn lay within the house’s curtilage, and that the District Court should have suppressed certain evidence obtained as a result of law enforcement officials’ intrusion onto the area immediately surrounding the barn. 782 F. 2d 1226 (1986). We conclude that the barn and the area around it lay outside the curtilage of the house, and accordingly reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
Respondent Ronald Dale Dunn and a codefendant, Robert Lyle Carpenter, were convicted by a jury of conspiring to manufacture phenylacetone and amphetamine, and to possess amphetamine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 846. Respondent was also convicted of manufacturing these two controlled substances and possessing amphetamine with intent to distribute. The events giving rise to respondent’s apprehension and conviction began in 1980 when agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) discovered that Carpenter had purchased large quantities of chemicals and equipment used in the manufacture of amphetamine and phenylacetone. DEA agents obtained warrants from a Texas state judge authorizing installation of miniature electronic transmitter tracking devices, or “beepers,” in an electric hot plate stirrer, a drum of acetic anhy-dride, and a container holding phenylacetic acid, a precursor to phenylacetone. All of these items had been ordered by Carpenter. On September 3, 1980, Carpenter took possession of the electric hot plate stirrer, but the agents lost the signal from the “beeper” a few days later. The agents were able to track the “beeper” in the container of chemicals, however, from October 27, 1980, until November 5, 1980, on which date Carpenter’s pickup truck, which was carrying the container, arrived at respondent’s ranch. Aerial photographs of the ranch property showed Carpenter’s truck backed up to a barn behind the ranch house. The agents also began receiving transmission signals from the “beeper” in the hot plate stirrer that they had lost in early September and determined that the stirrer was on respondent’s ranch property.
Respondent’s ranch comprised approximately 198 acres and was completely encircled by a perimeter fence. The property also contained several interior fences, constructed mainly of posts and multiple strands of barbed wire. The ranch residence was situated 14 mile from a public road. A fence encircled the residence and a nearby small greenhouse. Two barns were located approximately 50 yards from this fence. The front of the larger of the two barns was enclosed by a wooden fence and had an open overhang. Locked, waist-high gates barred entry into the barn proper, and netting material stretched from the ceiling to the top of the wooden gates.
On the evening of November 5, 1980, law enforcement officials made a warrantless entry onto respondent’s ranch property. A DEA agent accompanied by an officer from the Houston Police Department crossed over the perimeter fence and one interior fence. Standing approximately midway between the residence and the barns, the DEA agent smelled what he believed to be phenylacetic acid, the odor coming from the direction of the barns. The officers approached the smaller of the barns — crossing over a barbed wire fence— and, looking into the bam, observed only empty boxes. The officers then proceeded to the larger barn, crossing another barbed wire fence as well as a wooden fence that enclosed the front portion of the barn. The officers walked under the barn’s overhang to the locked wooden gates and, shining a flashlight through the netting on top of the gates, peered into the barn. They observed what the DEA agent thought to be a phenylacetone laboratory. The officers did not enter the barn. At this point the officers departed from respondent’s property, but entered it twice more on November 6 to confirm the presence of the phenylacetone laboratory.
On November 6, 1980, at 8:30 p.m., a Federal Magistrate issued a warrant authorizing a search of respondent’s ranch. DEA agents and state law enforcement officials executed the warrant on November 8, 1980. The officers arrested respondent and seized chemicals and equipment, as well as bags of amphetamines they discovered in a closet in the ranch house.
The District Court denied respondent’s motion to suppress all evidence seized pursuant to the warrant and respondent and Carpenter were convicted. In a decision rendered in 1982, the Court of Appeals reversed respondent’s conviction. United States v. Dunn, 674 F. 2d 1093. The court concluded that the search warrant had been issued based on information obtained during the officers’ unlawful warrantless entry onto respondent’s ranch property and, therefore, all evidence seized pursuant to the warrant should have been suppressed. Underpinning this conclusion was the court’s reasoning that “the barn in question was within the curtilage of the residence and was within the protective ambit of the fourth amendment.” Id., at 1100. We granted the Government’s petition for certiorari, vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for further consideration in fight of Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170 (1984). 467 U. S. 1201 (1984). On remand, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed its judgment that the evidence seized pursuant to the warrant should have been suppressed, but altered the legal basis supporting this conclusion: the large barn was not within the curtilage of the house, but by standing outside the barn and peering into the structure, the officers nonetheless violated respondent’s “reasonable expectation of privacy in his barn and its contents.” 766 F. 2d 880, 886 (1985). The Government again filed a petition for certiorari. On January 17, 1986, before this Court acted on the petition, the Court of Appeals recalled and vacated its judgment issued on remand, stating that it would enter a new judgment in due course. 781 F. 2d 52. On February 4, 1986, the Court of Appeals reinstated the original opinion rendered in 1982, asserting that “[u]pon studied reflection, we now conclude and hold that the barn was inside the protected curtilage.” 782 F. 2d, at 1227. The Government thereupon submitted a supplement to its petition for certiorari, revising the question presented to whether the barn lay within the curtilage of the house. We granted the petition, 477 U. S. 903, and now reverse.
II
The curtilage concept originated at common law to extend to the area immediately surrounding a dwelling house the same protection under the law of burglary as was afforded the house itself. The concept plays a part, however, in interpreting the reach of the Fourth Amendment. Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57, 59 (1924), held that the Fourth Amendment’s protection accorded “persons, houses, papers, and effects” did not extend to the open fields, the Court observing that the distinction between a person’s house and open fields “is as old as the common law. 4 Bl. Comm. 223, 225, 226.”
We reaffirmed the holding of Hester in Oliver v. United States, supra. There, we recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects the curtilage of a house and that the extent of the curtilage is determined by factors that bear upon whether an individual reasonably may expect that the area in question should be treated as the home itself. 466 U. S., at 180. We identified the central component of this inquiry as whether the area harbors the “intimate activity associated with the ‘sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.’” Ibid, (quoting Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886)).
Drawing upon the Court’s own cases and the cumulative experience of the lower courts that have grappled with the task of defining the extent of a home’s curtilage, we believe that curtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by. See California v. Ciraolo, 476 U. S. 207, 221 (1986) (Powell, J., dissenting) (citing Care v. United States, 231 F. 2d 22, 25 (CA10), cert. denied, 351 U. S. 932 (1956); United States v. Van Dyke, 643 F. 2d 992, 993-994 (CA4 1981)). We do not suggest that combining these factors produces a finely tuned formula that, when mechanically applied, yields a “correct” answer to all extent-of-curtilage questions. Rather, these factors are useful analytical tools only to the degree that, in any given case, they bear upon the centrally relevant consideration — whether the area in question is so intimately tied to the home itself that it should be placed under the home’s “umbrella” of Fourth Amendment protection. Applying these factors to respondent’s barn and to the area immediately surrounding it, we have little difficulty in concluding that this area lay outside the curtilage of the ranch house.
First. The record discloses that the barn was located 50 yards from the fence surrounding the house and 60 yards from the house itself. 766 F. 2d, at 882-883; 782 F. 2d, at 1228. Standing in isolation, this substantial distance supports no inference that the barn should be treated as an adjunct of the house.
Second. It is also significant that respondent’s barn did not lie within the area surrounding the house that was enclosed by a fence. We noted in Oliver, supra, that “for most homes, the boundaries of the curtilage will be clearly marked; and the conception defining the curtilage — as the area around the home to which the activity of home life extends —is a familiar one easily understood from our daily experience.” 466 U. S., at 182, n. 12. Viewing the physical layout of respondent’s ranch in its entirety, see 782 F. 2d, at 1228, it is plain that the fence surrounding the residence serves to demark a specific area of land immediately adjacent to the house that is readily identifiable as part and parcel of the house. Conversely, the barn — the front portion itself enclosed by a fence — and the area immediately surrounding it, stands out as a distinct portion of respondent’s ranch, quite separate from the residence.
Third. It is especially significant that the law enforcement officials possessed objective data indicating that the barn was not being used for intimate activities of the home. The aerial photographs showed that the truck Carpenter had been driving that contained the container of phenylacetic acid was backed up to the barn, “apparently,” in the words of the Court of Appeals, “for the unloading of its contents.” 674 F. 2d, at 1096. When on respondent’s property, the officers’ suspicion was further directed toward the barn because of “a very strong odor” of phenylacetic acid. App. 15. As the DEA agent approached the barn, he “could hear a motor running, like a pump motor of some sort . . . .” Id., at 17. Furthermore, the officers detected an “extremely strong” odor of phenylacetic acid coming from a small crack in the wall of the barn. Ibid. Finally, as the officers were standing in front of the barn, immediately prior to looking into its interior through the netting material, “the smell was very, very strong . . . [and the officers] could hear the motor running very loudly.” Id., at 18. When considered together, the above facts indicated to the officers that the use to which the barn was being put could not fairly be characterized as so associated with the activities and privacies of domestic life that the officers should have deemed the barn as part of respondent’s home.
Fourth. Respondent did little to protect the barn area from observation by those standing in the open fields. Nothing in the record suggests that the various interior fences on respondent’s property had any function other than that of the typical ranch fence; the fences were designed and constructed to corral livestock, not to prevent persons from observing what lay inside the enclosed areas.
l — l HH 1 — I
Respondent submits an alternative basis for affirming the judgment below, one that was presented to but ultimately not relied upon by the Court of Appeals. Respondent asserts that he possessed an expectation of privacy, independent from his home’s curtilage, in the barn and its contents, because the barn is an essential part of his business. Brief for Respondent 9. Respondent overlooks the significance of Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170 (1984).
We may accept, for the sake of argument, respondent’s submission that his barn enjoyed Fourth Amendment protection and could not be entered and its contents seized without a warrant. But it does not follow on the record before us that the officers’ conduct and the ensuing search and seizure violated the Constitution. Oliver reaffirmed the precept, established in Hester, that an open field is neither a “house” nor an “effect,” and, therefore, “the government’s intrusion upon the open fields is not one of those ‘unreasonable searches’ proscribed by the text of the Fourth Amendment.” 466 U. S., at 177. The Court expressly rejected the argument that the erection of fences on an open field — at least of the variety involved in those cases and in the present case — creates a constitutionally protected privacy interest. Id., at 182-183. “[T]he term ‘open fields’ may include any unoccupied or undeveloped area outside of the curtilage. An open field need be neither ‘open’ nor a ‘field’ as those terms are used in common speech.” Id., at 180, n. 11. It follows that no constitutional violation occurred here when the officers crossed over respondent’s ranch-style perimeter fence, and over several similarly constructed interior fences, prior to stopping at the locked front gate of the barn. As previously mentioned, the officers never entered the barn, nor did they enter any other structure on respondent’s premises. Once at their vantage point, they merely stood, outside the curti-lage of the house and in the open fields upon which the barn was constructed, and peered into the barn’s open front. And, standing as they were in the open fields, the Constitution did not forbid them to observe the phenylacetone laboratory located in respondent’s barn. This conclusion flows naturally from our previous decisions.
Under Oliver and Hester, there is no constitutional difference between police observations conducted while in a public place and while standing in the open fields. Similarly, the fact that the objects observed by the officers lay within an area that we have assumed, but not decided, was protected by the Fourth Amendment does not affect our conclusion. Last Term, in California v. Ciraolo, 476 U. S. 207 (1986), we held that warrantless naked-eye aerial observation of a home’s curtilage did not violate the Fourth Amendment. We based our holding on the premise that the Fourth Amendment “has never been extended to require law enforcement officers to shield their eyes when passing by a home on public thoroughfares.” Id., at 213. Importantly, we deemed it irrelevant that the police observation at issue was directed specifically at the identification of marijuana plants growing on an area protected by the Fourth Amendment. Ibid. Finally, the plurality opinion in Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 739-740 (1983), notes that it is “beyond dispute” that the action of a police officer in shining his flashlight to illuminate the interior of a car, without probable cause to search the car, “trenched upon no right secured . . . by the Fourth Amendment.” The holding in United States v. Lee, 274 U. S. 559, 563 (1927) is of similar import. Here, the officers’ use of the beam of a flashlight, directed through the essentially open front of respondent’s barn, did not transform their observations into an unreasonable search within the meaning of Fourth Amendment.
The officers lawfully viewed the interior of respondent’s barn, and their observations were properly considered by the Magistrate in issuing a search warrant for respondent’s premises. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
In denying respondent’s motion to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the search warrant, the District Court Judge stated that the law enforcement officials, during their incursions onto respondent’s property, “did not invade the premises, that is, the houses or the barns . . . .” Tr. 216. The Court of Appeals did not disturb this finding. At the suppression hearing, the DEA agent described the officers’ approach to the large barn on November 5:
“A. We came back around, we crossed a small wooden type fence here, which put us right underneath a type of a tin overhang and in front of us was a wooden locked gate ....
“Q. How high was that gate?
“A. It probably came up to my waist, estimated.
“Q. Was that gate open or shut?
“A. It was shut and it was locked.
“Q. Was there anything above that gate?
“A. Yes, there was.
“Q. What was that?
“A. A fish netting, kind of a netting, that was hanging from the ceiling down to the gate.
“Q. Did you cross over that gate and go into the barn?
“A. No.
“Q. Did you stand outside the gate?
“A. We stood right at the gate.”
App. 17-18.
Prior to the actual search of the barn and ranch house, the agents entered the property for further observations.
In the section of Blaekstone’s Commentaries which the Court cited, Blackstone described the elements of common-law burglary, and elaborated on the element that a breaking occur in a mansion or dwelling house. In defining the terms “mansion or dwelling-house,” Blackstone wrote that “no distant barn, warehouse, or the like are under the same privileges, nor looked upon as a man’s castle of defence . . . .” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *225. Blackstone observed, however, that “if the barn, stable, or warehouse, be parcel of the mansion-house, and within the same common fence, though not under the same roof or contiguous, a burglary may be committed therein; for the capital house protects and privileges all its branches and appurtenances, if within the curtilage or homestall.” Ibid.
We decline the Government’s invitation to adopt a “bright-line rule” that “the curtilage should extend no farther than the nearest fence surrounding a fenced house.” Brief for United States 14. Fencing configurations are important factors in defining the curtilage, see infra, at 302, but, as we emphasize above, the primary focus is whether the area in question harbors those intimate activities associated with domestic life and the privacies of the home. Application of the Government’s “first fence rule” might well lead to diminished Fourth Amendment protection in those cases where a structure lying outside a home’s enclosing fence was used for such domestic activities. And, in those cases where a house is situated on a large parcel of property and has no nearby enclosing fence, the Government’s rule would serve no utility; a court would still be required to assess the various factors outlined above to define the extent of the curtilage.
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 the 2-year period to file suit against a corporate insider under § 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78p(b), begins to run only upon the insider’s filing of the disclosure statement required by § 16(a) of the Act, § 78p(a).
I
Under § 16(b) of the Exchange Act, 48 Stat. 896, as amended, a corporation or security holder of that corporation may bring suit against the officers, directors, and certain beneficial owners of the corporation who realize any profits from the purchase and sale, or sale and purchase, of the corporation’s securities within any 6-month period. “The statute imposes a form of strict liability” and requires insiders to disgorge these “short-swing” profits “even if they did not trade on inside information or intend to profit on the basis of such information.” Gollust v. Mendell, 501 U. S. 115, 122 (1991). Section 16(b) provides that suits must be brought within “two years after the date such profit was realized.” 15 U. S. C. § 78p(b).
In 2007, respondent Vanessa Simmonds filed 55 nearly identical actions under § 16(b) against financial institutions that had underwritten various initial public offerings (IPOs) in the late 1990⅛ and 2000, including these petitioners. In a representative complaint, she alleged that the underwriters and the issuers’ insiders employed various mechanisms to inflate the aftermarket price of the stock to a level above the IPO price, allowing them to profit from the aftermarket sale. App. 59. She further alleged that, as a group, the underwriters and the insiders owned in excess of 10% of the outstanding stock during the relevant time period, which subjected them to both disgorgement of profits under § 16(b) and the reporting requirements of § 16(a). Id., at 61. See 15 U. S. C. § 78m(d)(3); 17 CFR §§ 240.13d-5(b)(1) and 240.16a-1(a)(1) (2011). The latter requires insiders to disclose any changes to their ownership interests on a document known as a Form 4, specified in the Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. 15 U. S. C. § 78p(a)(2)(C); 17 CFR §240.16a-3(a). Simmonds alleged that the underwriters failed to comply with that requirement, thereby tolling § 16(b)’s 2-year time period. App. 62.
Simmonds’ lawsuits were consolidated for pretrial purposes, and the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed all of her complaints. In re: Section 16(b) Litigation, 602 F. Supp. 2d 1202 (2009). As relevant here, the court granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss 24 complaints on the ground that § 16(b)’s 2-year time period had expired long before Simmonds filed the suits. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. 638 F. 3d 1072 (2011). Citing its decision in Whittaker v. Whittaker Corp., 639 F. 2d 516 (1981), the court held that §16(b)’s limitations period is “tolled until the insider discloses his transactions in a Section 16(a) filing, regardless of whether the plaintiff knew or" should have known of the conduct at issue.” 638 F. 3d, at 1095. Judge Milan Smith, Jr., the author of the panel opinion, also specially concurred, expressing his disagreement with the Whittaker rule, but noting that the court was compelled to follow Circuit precedent. Id., at 1099-1101. We granted certiorari, 564 U. S. 1036 (2011).
II
Petitioners maintain that these suits were properly dismissed because they were filed more than, two years after the alleged profits were realized. Pointing to dictum in Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350 (1991), petitioners argue that § 16(b)’s limitations period is a period of repose, which is not to be “extended to account for a plaintiff’s discovery of the facts underlying a claim.” Brief for Petitioners 17. See Lampf, supra, at 360, n. 5 (“Section 16(b)... sets a 2-year ... period of repose”). We do not reach that contention, because we conclude that, even assuming that the 2-year period can be extended, the Ninth Circuit erred in determining that it is tolled until the filing of a § 16(a) statement.
In adopting its rule in Whittaker, the Ninth Circuit expressed its concern that “[i]t would be a simple matter for the unscrupulous to avoid the salutary effect of Section 16(b) ... simply by failing to file ... reports in violation of subdivision (a) and thereby concealing from prospective plaintiffs the information they would need” to bring a § 16(b) action. 639 F. 2d, at 528 (internal quotation marks omitted). Assuming that is correct, it does not follow that the limitations period is tolled until the § 16(a) statement is filed. Section 16 itself quite clearly does not extend the period in that manner. The 2-year clock starts from “the date such profit was realized.” §78p(b). Congress could have very easily provided that “no such suit shall be brought more than two years after the filing of a statement under subsection (a)(2)(C).” But it did not. The text of § 16 simply does not support the Whittaker rule.
The Whittaker court suggested that the background rule of equitable tolling for fraudulent concealment operates to toll the limitations period until the § 16(a) statement is filed. See 639 F. 2d, at 527, and n. 9. Even accepting that equitable tolling for fraudulent concealment is triggered by the failure to file a § 16(a) statement, the Whittaker rule is completely divorced from long-settled equitable-tolling principles. “Generally, a litigant seeking equitable tolling bears the burden of establishing two elements: (1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way.” Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U. S. 408, 418 (2005) (emphasis added). It is well established, moreover, that when a limitations period is tolled because of fraudulent concealment of facts, the tolling ceases when those facts are, or should have been, discovered by the plaintiff. 2 C. Corman, Limitation of Actions §9.7.1, pp. 55-57 (1991). Thus, we have explained that the statute does not begin to run until discovery of the fraud “ ‘where the party injured by the fraud remains in ignorance of it without any fault or want of diligence or care on his parV ” Lampf, supra, at 363 (quoting Bailey v. Glover, 21 Wall. 342, 348 (1875); emphasis added). Allowing tolling to continue beyond the point at which a § 16(b) plaintiff is aware, or should have been aware, of the facts underlying the claim would quite certainly be inequitable and inconsistent with the general purpose of statutes of limitations: “to protect defendants against stale or unduly delayed claims.” John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U. S. 130, 133 (2008).
The inequity of the Whittaker rule is especially apparent in a case such as this, where the theory of § 16(b) liability of underwriters is so novel that petitioners can plausibly claim that they were not aware they were required to file a § 16(a) statement. And where they disclaim the necessity of filing, the Whittaker rule compels them either to file or to face the prospect of § 16(b) litigation in perpetuity. Simmonds has acknowledged that “under her theory she could buy stocks in companies who had IPOs 20 years ago and bring claims for short-swing transactions if the underwriters had undervalued a stock.” 602 F. Supp. 2d, at 1218. The potential for such endless tolling in cases in which a reasonably diligent plaintiff would know of the facts underlying the action is out of step with the purpose of limitations periods in general. And it is especially at odds with a provision that imposes strict liability on putative insiders, see Gollust, 501 U. S., at 122. Had Congress intended this result, it most certainly would have said so.
Simmonds maintains that failing to apply the Whittaker rule would obstruct Congress’s objective of curbing short-swing speculation by corporate insiders. This objective, according to Simmonds, is served by § 16(a) statements, which “provide the information necessary to trigger § 16(b) enforcement.” Brief for Respondent 24. Simmonds — like the Ninth Circuit in Whittaker — disregards the most glaring indication that Congress did not intend that the limitations period be categorically tolled until the statement is filed: The limitations provision does not say so. This fact alone is reason enough to reject a departure from settled equitable-tolling principles. Moreover, § 16⅛ purpose is fully served by the rules outlined above, under which the limitations period would not expire until two years after a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have learned the facts underlying a § 16(b) action. The usual equitable-tolling inquiry will thus take account of the unavailability of sources of information other than the § 16(a) filing. Cf., e. g., Ruth v. Unifund CCR Partners, 604 F. 3d 908, 911-913 (CA6 2010); Santos ex rel. Beato v. United States, 559 F. 3d 189, 202-203 (CA3 2009). The oddity of Simmonds’ position is well demonstrated by the circumstances of this case. Under the Whittaker rule, because petitioners have yet to file § 16(a) statements (as noted earlier they do not think themselves subject to that requirement), Simmonds still has two years to bring suit, even though she is so well aware of her alleged cause of action that she has already sued. If § 16(a) statements were, as Simmonds suggests, indispensable to a party’s ability to sue, Simmonds would not be here.
Simmonds also asserts that application of established equitable-tolling doctrine in this context would be inconsistent with Congress’s intention to establish in § 16 a clear rule that is capable of “mechanical application.” Brief for Respondent 57 (internal quotation marks omitted). Equitable tolling, after all, involves fact-intensive disputes “about what the notice was, where it was disseminated, who received it, when it was received, and whether it provides sufficient notice of relevant Section 16(a) facts.” Id., at 56-57. Of course this argument counsels just as much in favor of the “statute of repose” rule that petitioners urge (that is, no tolling whatever) as it does in favor of the Whittaker rule. No tolling is certainly an easily administrable bright-line rule. And assuming some form of tolling does apply, it is preferable to apply that form which Congress was certainly aware of, as opposed to the rule the Ninth Circuit has fashioned. See Meyer v. Holley, 537 U. S. 280, 286 (2003) (“Congress’ silence, while permitting an inference that Congress intended to apply ordinary background tort principles, cannot show that it intended to apply an unusual modification of those rules”).
* * *
Having determined that § 16(b)’s limitations period is not tolled until the filing of a § 16(a) statement, we remand for the lower courts to consider how the usual rules of equitable tolling apply to the facts of this case. We are divided 4 to 4 concerning, and thus affirm without precedential effect, the Court of Appeals’ rejection of petitioners’ contention that § 16(b) establishes a period of repose that is not subject to tolling. 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.
The Chief Justice took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Section 16(b) regulates beneficial owners of more than 10% of any class of equity securities. 15 U. S. C. § 78p(a)(l).
Section 16(b) provides in full:
“For the purpose of preventing the unfair use of information which may have been obtained by such beneficial owner, director, or officer by reason of his relationship to the issuer, any profit realized by him from any purchase and sale, or any sale and purchase, of any equity security of such issuer (other than an exempted security) or a security-based swap agreement (as defined in section 206B of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) involving any such equity security within any period of less than six months, unless such security or security-based swap agreement was acquired in good faith in connection with a debt previously contracted, shall inure to and be recoverable by the issuer, irrespective of any intention on the part of such beneficial owner, director, or officer in entering into such transaction of holding the security or security-based swap agreement purchased or of not repurchasing the security or security-based swap agreement sold for a period exceeding six months. Suit to recover such profit may be instituted at law or in equity in any court of competent jurisdiction by the issuer, or by the owner of any security of the issuer in the name and in behalf of the issuer if the issuer shall fail or refuse to bring such suit within sixty days after request or shall fail diligently to prosecute the same thereafter; but no such suit shall be brought more than two years after the date such profit was realized. This subsection shall not be construed to cover any transaction where such beneficial owner was not such both at the time of the purchase and sale, or the sale and purchase, of the security or security-based swap agreement (as defined in section 206B of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) involved, or any transaction or transactions which the [Securities and Exchange] Commission by rules and regulations may exempt as not comprehended within the purpose of this subsection.” 15 U.S. C. § 78p(b).
Simmonds also named the issuing companies as nominal defendants. In re: Section 16(b) Litigation, 602 F. Supp. 2d 1202, 1204 (WD Wash. 2009).
Petitioners have consistently disputed §16’s application to them, arguing that they, as underwriters, are generally exempt from the statute’s coverage. See 17 CFR §§240.16a-7(a) and 240.16a-10. Simmonds contends that this exemption does not apply where the underwriters do not act in good faith. Brief for Respondent 49. See §240.16a-7(a). We express no view on this issue.
Simmonds voluntarily dismissed one of the complaints. 602 F. Supp. 2d, at 1206, n. 4.
Relying on our decision in American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538 (1974), Simmonds argues that the Whittaker rule is best understood as applying legal — rather than equitable — tolling. In American Pipe, we held that “commencement of a class action suspends the applicable statute of limitations as to all asserted members of the class who would have been parties had the suit been permitted to continue as a class action.” 414 U. S., at 554. We based our conclusion on “the efficiency and economy of litigation which is a principal purpose of [Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23 class actions).” Id., at 553. Although we did not employ the term “legal tolling,” some federal courts have used that term to describe our holding on the ground that the rule “is derived from a statutory source,” whereas equitable tolling is “judicially created.” Arivella v. Lucent Technologies, Inc., 623 F. Supp. 2d 164, 176 (Mass. 2009). The label attached to the Whittaker rule does not matter. As we proceed to explain, neither general equitable-tolling principles nor the “statutory source” of § 16 supports the conclusion that the limitations period is tolled until the filing of a § 16(a) statement.
It is for this reason that we also reject the Second Circuit’s rule that the 2-year period is tolled until the plaintiff “gets actual notice that a person subject to Section 16(a) has realized specific short-swing profits that are worth pursuing,” Litzler v. CC Investments, L. D. C., 362 F. 3d 203, 208 (2004). As that court itself recognized, this actual-notice rule departs from usual equitable-tolling principles. See id., at 207.
The District Court said that “there is no dispute that all of the facts giving rise to Ms. Simmonds’ complaints against [petitioners] were known to the shareholders of the Issuer Defendants for at least five years before these cases were filed,” 602 F. Supp. 2d, at 1217. The Court of Appeals did not consider the accuracy of that statement, which Simmonds disputes, Brief for Respondent 12, since it concluded the period is tolled until a § 16(a) statement is filed.
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 Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether a general arbitration clause in a collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) requires an employee to use the arbitration procedure for an alleged violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 327,42 U. S. C. § 12101 et seq.
\ — 1
In 1970, petitioner Ceasar Wright began working as a longshoreman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a member of Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (Union), which uses a hiring hall to supply workers to several stevedore companies represented by the South Carolina Stevedores Association (SCSA). Clause 15(B) of the CBA between the Union and the SCSA provides in part as follows: “Matters under dispute which cannot be promptly settled between the Local and an individual Employer shall, no later than 48 hours after such discussion, be referred in writing covering the entire grievance to a Port Grievance Committee ....” App. 43a. If the Port Grievance Committee, which is evenly divided between representatives of labor and management, cannot reach an agreement within five days of receiving the complaint, then the dispute must be referred to a District Grievance Committee, which is also evenly divided between the two sides. The CBA provides that a majority decision of the District Grievance Committee “shall be final and binding.” Id., at 44a. If the District Grievance Committee cannot reach a majority decision within 72 hours after meeting, then the committee must employ a professional arbitrator.
Clause 15(F) of the CBA provides as follows:
“The Union agrees that this Agreement is intended to cover all matters affecting wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment and that during the term of this Agreement the Employers will not be required to negotiate on any further matters affecting these or other subjects not specifically set forth in this Agreement. Anything not contained in this Agreement shall not be construed as being part of this Agreement. All past port practices being observed may be reduced to writing in each port.” Id., at 45a-46a.
Finally, Clause 17 of the CBA states: “It is the intention and purpose of all parties hereto that no provision or part of this Agreement shall be violative of any Federal or State Law.” Id., at 47a.
Wright was also subject to the Longshore Seniority Plan, which contained its own grievance provision, reading as follows: “Any dispute concerning or arising out of the terms and/or conditions of this Agreement, or dispute involving the interpretation or application of this Agreement, or dispute arising out of any ride adopted for its implementation, shall be referred to the Seniority Board.” Id., at 48a. The Seniority Board is equally divided between labor and management representatives. If the board reaches agreement by majority vote, then that determination is final and binding. If the board cannot resolve the dispute, then the Union and the SCSA each choose a person, and this “Committee of two” makes a final determination.
On February 18, 1992, while Wright was working for respondent Stevens Shipping and Terminal Company (Stevens), he injured his right-heel and his back. He sought compensation from Stevens for permanent disability under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, 44 Stat. 1424, as amended, 33 U. S. C. § 901 et seq., and ultimately settled the claim for $250,000 and $10,000 in attorney's fees. Wright was also awarded Social Security disability benefits.
In January 1995, Wright returned to the Union hiring hall and asked to be referred for work. (At some point he obtained a written note from his doctor approving such activity.) Between January 2 and January 11, Wright worked for four stevedoring companies, none of which complained about his performance. When, however, the stevedoring companies realized that Wright had previously settled a claim for permanent disability, they informed the Union that they would not accept Wright for employment, because a person certified as permanently disabled (which they regarded Wright to be) is not qualified to perform longshore work under the CBA. The Union responded that the employers had misconstrued the CBA, suggested that the ADA entitled Wright to return to work if he could perform his duties, and asserted that refusing Wright employment would constitute a “lock-out” in violation of the CBA.
When Wright found out that the stevedoring companies would no longer accept him for employment, he contacted the Union to ask how he could get back to work. Wright claims that instead of suggesting the filing of a grievance, the Union told him to obtain counsel and file a claim under the ADA. Wright hired an attorney and eventually filed charges of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the South Carolina State Human Affairs Commission, alleging that the stevedoring companies and the SCSA had violated the ADA by refusing him work. In October 1995, Wright received a right-to-sue letter from the EEOC.
In January 1996, Wright filed a complaint against the SCSA and six individual stevedoring companies in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. Respondents’ answer asserted various affirmative defenses, including Wright’s failure to exhaust his remedies under the CBA and the Seniority Plan. After discovery, respondents moved for summary judgment and Wright moved for partial summary judgment with respect to some of respondents’ defenses. A Magistrate Judge recommended that the District Court dismiss the ease without prejudice because Wright had failed to pursue the grievance procedure provided by the CBA. The District Court adopted the report and recommendation and subsequently rejected Wright’s motion for reconsideration. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, see No. 96-2850 (July 29, 1997), judgt. order reported at 121 F. 3d 702, relying upon its earlier decision in Austin v. Owens-Brockway Glass Container, Inc., 78 F. 3d 875, cert. denied, 519 U. S. 980 (1996), which in turn had relied upon our decision in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20 (1991). We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1146 (1998).
In this ease, the Fourth Circuit concluded that the general arbitration provision in the CBA governing Wright’s employment was sufficiently broad to encompass a statutory claim arising under the ADA, and that such a provision was enforceable. The latter conclusion brings into question two lines of our case law. The first is represented by Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U. S. 36 (1974), which held that an employee does not forfeit his right to a judicial forum for claimed discriminatory discharge in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., if “he first pursues his grievance to final arbitration under the nondiscrimination clause of a collective-bargaining agreement.” 415 U. S., at 49. In rejecting the argument that the doctrine of election of remedies barred the Title VII lawsuit, we reasoned that a grievance is designed to vindicate a “contractual right” under a CBA, while a lawsuit under Title VII asserts “independent statutory rights accorded by Congress.” Id., at 49-50. The statutory cause of action was not waived by the union’s agreement to the arbitration provision of the CBA, since “there can be no prospective waiver of an employee’s rights under Title VII.” Id., at 51. We have followed the holding of Gardner-Denver in deciding the effect of CBA arbitration upon employee claims under other statutes. See McDonald v. West Branch, 466 U. S. 284 (1984) (claim under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983); Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, Inc., 450 U. S. 728 (1981) (claim under Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq.).
The second line of eases implicated here is represented by Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., supra, which held that a elaim brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq., could be subject to compulsory arbitration pursuant to an arbitration provision in a securities registration form. Relying upon the federal policy favoring arbitration embodied in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., we said that “statutory claims may be the subject of an arbitration agreement, enforceable pursuant to the FAA.” 500 U. S., at 26 (citing Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477 (1989); Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220 (1987); Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614 (1985)).
There is obviously some tension between these two lines of cases. Whereas Gardner-Denver stated that “an employee’s rights under Title VII are not susceptible of prospective waiver,” 415 U. S., at 51-52, Gilmer held that the right to a federal judicial forum for an ADEA claim could be waived. Petitioner and the United States as amicus would have us reconcile the lines of authority by maintaining that federal forum rights cannot be waived in union-negotiated CBAs even if they can be waived in individually executed contracts — a distinction that assuredly finds support in the text of Gilmer, see 500 U. S., at 26, 35. Respondents and their amici, on the other hand, contend that the real difference between Gardner-Denver and Gilmer is the radical change, over two decades, in the Court’s receptivity to arbitration, leading Gilmer to affirm that “questions of arbitrability must be addressed with a healthy regard for the federal policy favoring arbitration,” 500 U. S., at 26 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Gilmer, they argue, has sufficiently undermined Gardner-Denver that a union can waive employees’ rights to a judicial forum. Although, as will appear, we find Gardner-Denver and Gilmer relevant for various purposes to the ease before us, we find it unnecessary to resolve the question of the validity of a union-negotiated waiver, since it is apparent to us, on the facts and arguments presented here, that no such waiver has occurred.
H — 1 I — i
In asserting the existence of an agreement to arbitrate the ADA claim, respondents rely upon the presumption of arbitrability this Court has found in §301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185. See generally Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593 (1960); Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564 (1960); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960). In collective-bargaining agreements, we have said, “there is a presumption of arbitrability in the sense that ‘[a]n order to arbitrate the particular grievance should not be denied unless it may be said with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted dispute.’” AT&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers, 475 U. S. 643, 650 (1986) (quoting Warrior & Gulf, supra, at 582-583).
That presumption, however, does not extend beyond the reach of the principal rationale that justifies it, which is that arbitrators are in a better position than courts to interpret the terms of a CBA See AT&T Technologies, supra, at 650; Warrior & Gulf, supra, at 581-582. This rationale finds support in the very text of the LMRA, which announces that “[fjinal adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is declared to be the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement.” 29 U. S. C. § 173(d) (emphasis added). The dispute in the present case, however, ultimately concerns not the application or interpretation of any CBA, but the meaning of a federal statute. The cause of action Wright asserts arises not out of contract, but out of the ADA, and is distinct from any right conferred by the collective-bargaining agreement. See Gilmer, supra, at 34; Barrentine, 450 U. S., at 737; Gardner-Denver, supra, at 49-50. To be sure, respondents argue that Wright is not qualified for his position as the CBA requires, but even if that were true he would still prevail if the refusal to hire violated the ADA.
Nor is the statutory (as opposed to contractual) focus of the claim altered by the fact that Clause 17 of the CBA recites it to be “the intention and purpose of all parties hereto that no provision or part of this Agreement shall be violative of any Federal or State Law.” App. 47a. As we discuss below in Part IV, this does not incorporate the ADA by reference. Even if it did so, however — thereby creating a contractual right that is coextensive with the federal statutory right — the ultimate question for the arbitrator would be not what the parties have agreed to, but what federal law requires; and that is not a question which should be presumed to be included within the arbitration requirement. Application of that principle is unaffected by the fact that the CBA in this case, unlike the one in Gardner-Denver, does not expressly limit the arbitrator to interpreting and applying the contract. The presumption only extends that far, whether or not the text of the agreement is similarly limited. It may well be that ordinary textual analysis of a CBA will show that matters which go beyond the interpretation and application of contract terms are subject to arbitration; but they will not be presumed to be so.
IV
Not only is petitioner’s statutory claim not subject to a presumption of arbitrability; we think any CBA requirement to arbitrate it must be particularly dear. In Metropolitan Edison Co. v. NLRB, 460 U. S. 693 (1983), we stated that a union could waive its officers’ statutory right under § 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3), to be free of antiunion discrimination, but we held that such a waiver must be clear and unmistakable. “[W]e will not infer from a general contractual provision that the parties intended to waive a statutorily protected right unless the undertaking is ‘explicitly stated.’ More succinctly, the waiver must be clear and unmistakable.” 460 U. S., at 708; see also Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U. S. 107, 125 (1994) (dictum); Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U. S. 399, 409, n. 9 (1988) (dictum); cf. Mastro Plastics Corp. v. NLRB, 350 U. S. 270, 283 (1956).
We think the same standard applicable to a union-negotiated waiver of employees’ statutory right to a judicial forum for claims of employment discrimination. Although that is not a substantive right, see Gilmer, 500 U. S., at 26, and whether or not Gardner-Denver’s seemingly absolute prohibition of union waiver of employees’ federal forum rights survives Gilmer, Gardner-Denver at least stands for the proposition that the right to a federal judicial forum is of sufficient importance to be protected against less-than-explicit union waiver in a CBA. The CBA in this case does not meet that standard. Its arbitration clause is very general, providing for arbitration of “[mjatters under dispute,” App. 43a — which could be understood to mean matters in dispute under the contract. And the remainder of the contract contains no explicit incorporation of statutoiy antidis-crimination requirements. (Indeed, it does not even contain, as did the CBAs in Austin and Gardner-Denver, its own specific antidiscrimination provision.) The Fourth Circuit relied upon the fact that the equivalently broad arbitration clause in Gilmer — applying to “any dispute, claim or controversy” — was held to embrace federal statutory claims. But Gilmer involved an individual’s waiver of his own rights, rather than a union’s waiver of the rights of represented employees — and hence the “dear and unmistakable” standard was not applicable.
Respondents rely upon Clause 15(F) of the CBA, which states that “this Agreement is intended to cover all matters affecting wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.” App. 45a-46a. But even if this could, in isolation, be considered a clear and unmistakable incorporation of employment-discrimination laws (which is doubtful), it is surely deprived of that effect by the provision, later in the same paragraph, that “[ajnything not contained in this Agreement shall not be construed as being part of this Agreement.” Id., at 46a. Respondents also rely upon Clause 17 of the CBA, which states that “[i]t is the intention and purpose of all parties hereto that no provision or part of this Agreement shall be violative of any Federal or State Law.” Id., at 47a. They argue that this requires the arbitrator to “apply legal definitions derived from the ADA” in determining whether Wright is “qualified” for employment within the meaning of the CBA. Brief for Respondents 39. Perhaps so, but that is not the same as making compliance with the ADA a contractual commitment that would be subject to the arbitration clause. This becomes crystal clear when one contrasts Clause 17 with the provision of the CBA which states that “[t]he requirements of the Occupations [sic] Safety and Health Administration shall be binding on both Parties.” App. 46a. (Under respondents’ interpretation of Clause 17, this OSHA provision would be superfluous.) Clause 17 seems to us nothing more than a recitation of the canon of construction which would in any event have been applied to the CBA — that an agreement should be interpreted in such fashion as to preserve, rather than destroy, its validity (ut res magis valeat quarn pereat).
Finally, we do not find a clear and unmistakable waiver in the Longshore Seniority Plan. Like the CBA itself, the plan contains no antidiscrimination provision; and it specifi-eally limits its grievance procedure to disputes related to the agreement.
* * *
We hold that the collective-bargaining agreement in this case does not contain a clear and unmistakable waiver of the covered employees’ rights to a judicial forum for federal claims of employment discrimination. We do not reach the question whether such a waiver would be enforceable. The judgment of the Fourth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
We have also discerned a presumption of arbitrability under the FAA, 9 U. S. C. § 1 et seq. See Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 626 (1985). Petitioner argued that the FAA does not apply to this ease, see Brief for Petitioner 43-44, and asserted that respondents “have not argued at any stage of this case that the F. A. A. applies,” id., at 43. Respondents did not dispute the latter assertion, nor did they argue the applicability of the FAA before us; rather, they contended that it makes no difference whether the FAA applies, since the FAA presumption and the LMRA presumption are the same, see Brief for Respondents 12; Tr. of Oral Arg. 42-43. Finally, the Fourth Circuit, while it cited an FAA case, Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1983), did not explicitly rely upon the FAA — presumably because it has held elsewhere that the FAA does not apply to CBAs, see Austin v. Owens-Brockway Glass Container, Inc., 78 F. 3d 875, 879 (CA4), cert. denied, 519 U. S. 980 (1996). In these circumstances, we decline to consider the applicability of the FAA to the present case.
Respondents and some of their amici rely upon the provision in the ADA which states that “[w]here appropriate and to the extent authorized by law, the use of alternative means of dispute resolution, including . .. arbitration, is encouraged to resolve disputes arising under this chapter.” 42 U. S. C. § 12212. They rely upon it principally in connection with the question whether, under Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991), a predispute agreement in a CBA to arbitrate employment-discrimination claims is enforceable — a question we do not reach. Our conclusion that a union waiver of employee rights to a federal judicial forum for employment-discrimination claims must be clear and unmistakable means that, absent a dear waiver, it is not “appropriate,” within the meaning of this provision of the ADA, to find an agreement to arbitrate. We take no position, however, on the effect of this provision in cases where a CBA dearly encompasses employment-discrimination claims, or in areas outside collective bargaining.
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
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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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant stands convicted of knowingly having had in her possession and under her control certain lewd and lascivious books, pictures, and photographs in violation of § 2905.34 of Ohio’s Revised Code. As officially stated in the syllabus to its opinion, the Supreme Court of Ohio found that her conviction was valid though “based primarily upon the introduction in evidence of lewd and lascivious books and pictures unlawfully seized during an unlawful search of defendant’s home....” 170 Ohio St. 427-428, 166 N. E. 2d 387, 388.
On May 23,1957, three Cleveland police officers arrived at appellant’s residence in that city pursuant to information that “a person [was] hiding out in the home, who was wanted for questioning in connection with a recent bombing, and that there was a large amount of policy paraphernalia being hidden in the home.” Miss Mapp and her daughter by a former marriage lived on the top floor of the two-family dwelling. Upon their arrival at that house, the officers knocked on the door and demanded entrance but appellant, after telephoning her attorney, refused to admit them without a search warrant. They advised their headquarters of the situation and undertook a surveillance of the house.
The officers again sought entrance some three hours later when four or more additional officers arrived on the scene. When Miss Mapp did not come to the door immediately, at least one of the several doors to the house was forcibly opened and the policemen gained admittance. Meanwhile Miss Mapp’s attorney arrived, but the officers, having secured their own entry, and continuing in their defiance of the law, would permit him neither to see Miss Mapp nor to enter the house. It appears that Miss Mapp was halfway down the stairs from the upper floor to the front door when the officers, in this highhanded manner, broke into the hall. She demanded to see the search warrant. A paper, claimed to be a warrant, was held up by one of the officers. She grabbed the “warrant” and placed it in her bosom. A struggle ensued in which the officers recovered the piece of paper and as a result of which they handcuffed appellant because she had been “belligerent” in resisting their official rescue of the “warrant” from her person. Running roughshod over appellant, a policeman “grabbed” her, “twisted [her] hand,” and she “yelled [and] pleaded with him” because “it was hurting.” Appellant, in handcuffs, was then forcibly taken upstairs to her bedroom where the officers searched a dresser, a chest of drawers, a closet and some suitcases. They also looked into a photo album and through personal papers belonging to the appellant. The search spread to the rest of the second floor including the child’s bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and a dinette. The basement of the building and a trunk found therein were also searched. The obscene materials for possession of which she was ultimately convicted were discovered in the course of that widespread search.
At the trial no search warrant was produced by the prosecution, nor was the failure to produce one explained or accounted for. At best, “There is, in the record, considerable doubt as to whether there ever was any warrant for the search of defendant’s home.” 170 Ohio St., at 430, 166 N. E. 2d, at 389. The Ohio Supreme Court believed a “reasonable argument” could be made that the conviction should be reversed “because the'methods’ employed to obtain the [evidence]... were such as to 'offend “a sense of justice,” ’ ” but the court found determinative the fact that the evidence had not been taken “from defendant’s person by the use of brutal or offensive physical force against defendant.” 170 Ohio St., at 431, 166 N. E. 2d, at 389-390.
The State says that even if the search were made without authority, or otherwise unreasonably, it is not prevented from using the unconstitutionally seized evidence at trial, citing Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949), in which this Court did indeed hold “that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure.” At p. 33. On this appeal, of which we have noted probable jurisdiction, 364 U. S. 868, it is urged once again that we review that holding.
I.
Seventy-five years ago, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886), considering the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as running “almost into each other” on the facts before it, this Court held that the doctrines of those Amendments
“apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employés of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property.... Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man’s own testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation... [of those Amendments].”
The Court noted that
“constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed.... It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.” At p. 635.
In this jealous regard for maintaining the integrity of individual rights, the Court gave life to Madison’s prediction that “independent tribunals of justice... will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.” I Annals of Cong. 439 (1789). Concluding, the Court specifically referred to the use of the evidence there seized as “unconstitutional.” At p. 638.
Less than 30 years after Boyd, this Court, in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), stated that
“the Fourth Amendment... put the courts of the United States and Federal officials, in the exercise of their power and authority, under limitations and restraints [and]... forever secure [d] the people, their persons, houses, papers and effects against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law... and the duty of giving to it force and effect is obligatory upon all entrusted under our Federal system with the enforcement of the laws.” At pp. 391-392.
Specifically dealing with the use of the evidence unconstitutionally seized, the Court concluded:
“If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense, the protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution.' The efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land.” At p. 393.
Finally, the Court in that case clearly stated that use of the seized evidence involved “a denial of the constitutional rights of the accused.” At p. 398. Thus, in the year 1914, in the Weeks case, this Court “for the first time” held that “in a federal prosecution the Fourth Amendment barred the use of evidence secured through an illegal search and seizure.” Wolf v. Colorado, supra, at 28. This Court has ever since required of federal law officers a strict adherence to that command which this Court has held to be a clear, specific, and constitutionally required — even if judicially implied — deterrent safeguard without insistence upon which the Fourth Amendment would have been reduced to “a form of words.” Holmes, J., Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 392 (1920). It meant, quite simply, that “conviction by means of unlawful seizures and enforced confessions... should find no sanction in the judgments of the courts...,” Weeks v. United States, supra, at 392, and that such evidence “shall not be used at all.” Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, supra, at 392.
There are in the cases of this Court some passing references to the Weeks rule as being one of evidence. But the plain and unequivocal language of Weeks — and its later paraphrase in Wolf — to the effect that the Weeks rule is of constitutional origin, remains entirely undisturbed. In Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28 (1927), a unanimous Court declared that “the doctrine [cannot]... be tolerated under our constitutional system, that evidences of crime discovered by a federal officer in making a search without lawful warrant may be used against the victim of the unlawful search where a timely challenge has been interposed.” At pp. 29-30 (emphasis added). The Court, in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 (1928), in unmistakable language restated the Weeks rule:
“The striking outcome of the Weeks case and those which followed it was the sweeping declaration that the Fourth Amendment, although not referring to or limiting the use of evidence in courts, really forbade its introduction if obtained by government officers through a violation of the Amendment.” At p. 462.
In McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 (1943), we note this statement:
“[A] conviction in the federal courts, the foundation of which is evidence obtained in disregard of liberties deemed fundamental by the Constitution, cannot stand. Boyd v. United States... Weeks v. United States.... And this Court has, on Constitutional grounds, set aside convictions, both in the federal and state courts, which were based upon confessions ‘secured by protracted and repeated questioning of ignorant and untutored persons, in whose minds the power of officers was greatly magnified'... or ‘who have been unlawfully held incommunicado without advice of friends or counsel’....” At pp. 339-340.
Significantly, in McNabb, the Court did then pass on to formulate a rule of evidence, saying, “[i]n the view we take of the case, however, it becomes unnecessary to reach the Constitutional issue [for]... [t]he principles governing the admissibility of evidence in federal criminal trials have not been restricted... to those derived solely from the Constitution.” At pp. 340-341.
II.
In 1949, 35 years after Weeks was announced, this Court, in Wolf v. Colorado, supra, again for the first time, discussed the effect of the Fourth Amendment upon the States through the operation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It said:
“[W]e have no hesitation in saying that were a State affirmatively to sanction such police incursion into privacy it would run counter to the guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment.” At p. 28.
Nevertheless, after declaring that the “security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police” is “implicit in 'the concept of ordered liberty’ and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause,” cf. Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319 (1937), and announcing that it “stoutly adhere [d]” to the Weeks decision, the Court decided that the Weeks exclusionary rule would not then be imposed upon the States as “an essential ingredient of the right.” 338 U. S., at 27-29. The Court’s reasons for not considering essential to the right to privacy, as a curb imposed upon the States by the Due Process Clause, that which decades before had been posited as part and parcel of the Fourth Amendment’s limitation upon federal encroachment of individual privacy, were bottomed on factual considerations.
While they are not basically relevant to a decision that the exclusionary rule is an essential ingredient of the Fourth Amendment as the right it embodies is vouchsafed against the States by the Due Process Clause, we will consider the current validity of the factual grounds upon which Wolf was based.
The Court in Wolf first stated that “[t]he contrariety of views of the States” on the adoption of the exclusionary rule of Weeks was “particularly impressive” (at p. 29) ; and, in this connection, that it could not “brush aside the experience of States which deem the incidence of such conduct by the police too slight to call for a deterrent remedy... by overriding the [States’] relevant rules of evidence.” At pp. 31-32. While in 1949, prior to the Wolf case, almost two-thirds of the States were opposed to the use of the exclusionary rule, now, despite the Wolf case, more than half of those since passing upon it, by their own legislative or judicial decision, have wholly or partly adopted or adhered to the Weeks rule. See Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, Appendix, pp. 224-232 (1960). Significantly, among those now following the rule is California, which, according to its highest court, was “compelled to reach that conclusion because other remedies have completely failed to secure compliance with the constitutional provisions....” People v. Cohan, 44 Cal. 2d 434, 445, 282 P. 2d 905, 911 (1955). In connection with this California case, we note that the second basis elaborated in Wolf in support of its failure to enforce the exclusionary doctrine against the States was that “other means of protection” have been afforded “the right to privacy.” 338 U. S., at 30. The experience of California that such other remedies have been worthless and futile is buttressed by the experience of other States. The obvious futility of relegating the Fourth Amendment to the protection of other remedies has, moreover, been recognized by this Court since Wolf. See Irvine v. California, 347 U. S. 128, 137 (1954).
Likewise, time has set its face against what Wolf called the “weighty testimony” of People v. Defore, 242 N. Y. 13, 150 N. E. 585 (1926). There Justice (then Judge) Cardozo, rejecting adoption of the Weeks exclusionary rule in New York, had said that “[t]he Federal rule as it stands is either too strict or too lax.” 242 N. Y., at 22, 150 N. E., at 588. However, the force of that reasoning has been largely vitiated by later decisions of this Court. These include the recent discarding of the “silver platter” doctrine which allowed federal judicial use. of evidence seized in violation of the Constitution by state agents, Elkins v. United States, supra; the relaxation of the formerly strict requirements as to standing to challenge the use of evidence thus seized, so that now the procedure of exclusion, “ultimately referable to constitutional safeguards;” is available to anyone even “legitimately on [the] premises” unlawfully searched, Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257, 266-267 (1960); and, finally, the formulation of a method to prevent state use of evidence unconstitutionally seized by federal agents, Rea v. United States, 350 U. S. 214 (1956). Because there can be no fixed formula, we are admittedly met with “recurring questions of the reasonableness of searches,” but less is not to be expected when dealing with a Constitution, and, at any rate, “ [r] easonableness is in the first instance for the [trial court]... to determine.” United States v. Rabinowits, 339 U. S. 56, 63 (1950).
It, therefore, plainly appears that the factual considerations supporting the failure of the Wolf Court to include the Weeks exclusionary rule when it recognized the enforceability of the right to privacy against the States in 1949, while not basically relevant to the constitutional consideration, could not, in any analysis, now be deemed controlling.
III.
Some five years after Wolf, in answer to a plea made here Term after Term that we overturn its doctrine on applicability of the Weeks exclusionary rule, this Court indicated that such should not be done until the States had “adequate opportunity to adopt or reject the [Weeks] rule.” Irvine v. California, supra, at 134. There again it was said:
“Never until June of 1949 did this Court hold the basic search-and-seizure prohibition in any way applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Ibid.
And only last Term, after again carefully re-examining the Wolf doctrine in Elkins v. United States, supra, the Court pointed out that “the controlling principles” as to search and seizure and the problem of admissibility “seemed clear” (at p. 212) until the announcement in Wolf “that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not itself require state courts to adopt the exclusionary rule” of the Weeks case. At p. 213. At the same time, the Court pointed out, “the underlying constitutional doctrine which Wolf established... that the Federal Constitution... prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by state officers” had undermined the “foundation upon which the admissibility of state-seized evidence in a federal trial originally rested....” Ibid. The Court concluded that it was therefore obliged to hold, although it chose the narrower ground on which to do so, that all evidence obtained by an unconstitutional search and seizure was inadmissible in a federal court regardless of. its source. Today we once again examine Wolf’s constitutional documentation of the right to privacy free from unreasonable state intrusion, and, after its dozen years on our books, are led by it to close the only courtroom door remaining open to evidence secured by official lawlessness in flagrant abuse of that basic right, reserved to all persons as a specific guarantee against that very same unlawful conduct. We hold that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, 'inadmissible in a state court.
IV.
Since the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government. Were it otherwise, then just as without the Weeks rule the assurance against unreasonable federal searches and seizures would be “a form of words,” valueless and undeserving of mention in a perpetual charter of inestimable human liberties, so too, without that rule the freedom from state invasions of privacy would be so ephemeral and so neatly severed from its conceptual nexus with the freedom from all brutish means of coercing evidence as not to merit this Court’s high regard as a freedom “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” At the time that the Court held in Wolf that the Amendment was applicable to the States through the Due Process Clause, the cases of this Court, as we have seen, had steadfastly held that as. to federal officers the Fourth Amendment included the exclusion of the evidence seized in violation of its provisions. Even Wolf “stoutly adhered” to that proposition. The right to privacy, when conceded operatively enforceable against the States, was not susceptible of destruction by avulsion of the sanction upon which its protection and enjoyment had always been deemed dependent under the Boyd, Weeks and Silverthorne cases. Therefore, in extending the substantive protections of due process to all constitutionally unreasonable searches — state or federal — it was logically and constitutionally necessary that the exclusion doctrine — an essential part of the right to privacy — be also insisted upon as an essential ingredient of the right newly recognized by the Wolf case. In short, the admission of the new constitutional right by Wolf could not consistently tolerate denial of its most important constitutional privilege, namely, the exclusion of the evidence which an accused had been forced to give by reason of the unlawful seizure. To hold otherwise is to grant the right but in reality to withhold its privilege and enjoyment. Only last year the Court itself recognized that the purpose of the exclusionary rule “is to deter — to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way — by removing the incentive to disregard it.” Elkins v. United States, supra, at 217.
Indeed, we are aware of no restraint, similar to that rejected today, conditioning the enforcement of any other basic constitutional right. The right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people, would stand in marked contrast to all other rights declared as “basic to a free society.” Wolf v. Colorado, supra, at 27. This Court has not hesitated to enforce as strictly against the States as it does against the Federal Government the rights of free speech and of a free press, the rights to notice and to a fair, public trial, including, as it does, the right not to be convicted by use of a coerced confession, however logically relevant it be, and without regard to its reliability. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534 (1961). And nothing could be more certain than that when a coerced confession is involved, “the relevant rules of evidence” are overridden without regard to “the incidence of such conduct by the police,” slight or frequent. Why should not the sanie rule apply to what is tantamount to coerced testimony by way of unconstitutional seizure of goods, papers, effects, documents, etc.? We find that, as to the Federal Government, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and, as to the States, the freedom from unconscionable invasions of privacy and the freedom from convictions based upon coerced confessions do enjoy an “intimate relation” in their perpetuation of “principles of humanity and civil liberty [secured]... only after years of struggle,” Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532, 543-544 (1897). They express “supplementing phases of the same constitutional purpose — to maintain inviolate large areas of personal privacy.” Feldman v. United States, 322 U. S. 487, 489-490 (1944). The philosophy of each Amendment and of each freedom is complementary to, although not dependent upon, that of the other in its sphere of influence — the very least that together they assure in either sphere is that no man is to be convicted on unconstitutional evidence. Cf. Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 173 (1952).
V.
Moreover, our holding that the exclusionary rule is an essential part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments is not only the logical dictate of prior cases, but it also makes very good sense. There is no war between the Constitution and common sense. Presently, a federal prosecutor may make no use of evidence illegally seized, but a State’s attorney across the street may, although he supposedly is operating under the enforceable prohibitions of the same Amendment. Thus the State, by admitting evidence unlawfully seized, serves to encourage disobedience to the Federal Constitution which it is bound to uphold. Moreover, as was said in Elkins, “[t'Jhe very essence of a healthy federalism depends upon the avoidance of needless conflict between state and federal courts.” 364 U. S., at 221. Such a conflict, hereafter needless, arose this very Term, in Wilson v. Schnettler, 365 U. S. 381 (1961), in which, and in spite of the promise made by Rea, we gave full recognition to our practice in this regard by refusing to restrain a federal officer from testifying in a state court as to evidence unconstitutionally seized by him in the performance of his duties. Yet the double standard recognized until today hardly put such a thesis into practice. In non-exclusionary States, federal officers, being human, were by it invited to and did, as our cases indicate, step across the street to the State’s attorney with their unconstitutionally seized evidence. Prosecution on the basis of that evidence was then had in a state court in utter disregard of the enforceable Fourth Amendment. If the fruits of an unconstitutional search had been inadmissible in both state and federal courts, this inducement to evasion would have been sooner eliminated. There would be no need to reconcile such cases as Rea and Schnettler, each pointing up the hazardous uncertainties of our heretofore ambivalent approach.
Federal-state cooperation in the solution of crime under constitutional standards will be promoted, if only by recognition of their now mutual obligation to respect the same fundamental criteria in their approaches. “However much in a particular case insistence upon such rules may appear as a technicality that inures to the benefit of a guilty person, the history of the criminal law proves that tolerance of shortcut methods in law enforcement impairs its enduring effectiveness.” Miller v. United States, 357 U. S. 301, 313 (1958). Denying shortcuts to only one of two cooperating law enforcement agencies tends naturally to breed legitimate suspicion of “working arrangements” whose results are equally tainted. Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28 (1927); Lustig v. United States, 338 U. S. 74 (1949).
There are those who say, as did Justice (then Judge) Cardozo, that under our constitutional exclusionary doctrine “[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore, 242 N. Y., at 21, 150 N. E., at 587, In some cases this will undoubtedly be the result. But, as was said in Elkins, “there is another consideration — the imperative of judicial integrity.” 364 U. S., at 222. The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the chartei of its own existence. As Mr. Justice Brandéis, dissenting, said in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 485 (1928): “Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.... If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” Nor can it lightly be assumed that, as a practical matter, adoption of the exclusionary rule fetters law enforcement. Only last year this Court expressly considered that contention and found that “pragmatic evidence of a sort” to the contrary was not wanting. Elkins v. United States, supra, at 218. The Court noted that
“The federal courts themselves have operated under the exclusionary rule of Weeks for almost half a century; yet it has not been suggested. either that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has thereby been rendered ineffective, or that the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts has thereby been disrupted. Moreover, the experience of the states is impressive.... The movement towards the rule of exclusion has been halting but seemingly inexorable.” Id., at 218-219.
The ignoble shortcut to conviction left open to the State tends to destroy the entire system of constitutional restraints on which the liberties of the people rest. Having once recognized that the right to privacy embodied in the Fourth Amendment is enforceable against the States, and that the right to be secure against rude invasions of privacy by state officers is, therefore, constitutional in origin, we can no longer permit that right to remain an empty promise. Because it is enforceable in the same manner and to like effect as other basic rights secured by the Due Process Clause, we can no longer permit it to be revocable at the whim of any police officer who, in the name of law enforcement itself, chooses to suspend its enjoyment. Our decision, founded on reason and truth, gives to the individual no more than that which the Constitution guarantees him, to the police officer no less than that to which honest law enforcement is entitled, and, to the courts, that judicial integrity so necessary in the true administration of justice.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
The statute provides in pertinent part that
“No person shall knowingly... have in his possession or under his control an obscene, lewd, or lascivious book [or]... picture....
“Whoevér violates this section shall be fined not less than two hundred nor more than two thousand dollars or imprisoned not less than one nor more than seven years, or both.”
A police officer testified that “we did pry the screen door to gain entrance”; the attorney on the scene testified that a policeman “tried... to kick in the door” and then “broke the glass in the door and somebody reached in and opened the door and let them in”; the appellant testified that “The back door was broken.”
Other issues have been raised on this appeal but, in the view we have taken of the case, they need not be decided. Although appellant chose to urge what may have appeared to be the surer ground for favorable disposition and did not insist that Wolf be overruled, the amicus curiae, who was also permitted to participate in the oral argument, did urge the Court to overrule Wolf.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The close connection between the concepts later embodied in these two Amendments had been noted at least as early as 1765 by Lord Camden, on whose opinion in Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029, the Boyd court drew heavily. Lord Camden had noted, at 1073:
“It is very certain, that the law obligeth no man to accuse himself; because the necessary means of compelling self-accusation, falling upon the innocent as well as the guilty, would be both cruel and unjust; and it should seem, that search for evidence is disallowed upon the same principle. There too the innocent would be confounded with the guilty.”
See, however, National Safe Deposit Co. v. Stead, 232 U. S. 58 (1914), and Adams v. New York, 192 U. S. 585 (1904).
Less than half of the States have any criminal provisions relating directly to unreasonable searches and seizures. The punitive sanctions of the 23 States attempting to control such invasions of the right of privacy may be classified as follows:
Criminal Liability of Affiant for Malicious Procurement of Search Warrant. — Ala. Code, 1968, Tit. 15, § 99; Alaska Comp. Laws Ann., 1949, §66-7-15; Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann., 1956, § 13-1454; Cal. Pen. Code §170; Fla. Stat., 1959, § 933.16; Ga. Code Ann., 1953, § 27-301; Idaho Code Ann., 1948, § 18-709; Iowa Code Ann., 1950, §751.38; Minn. Stat. Ann., 1947, §613.54; Mont. Rev. Codes Ann., 1947, §94-35-122; Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 199.130, 199.140; N. J. Stat. Ann., 1940, § 33:1-64; N. Y. Pen. Law § 1786, N. Y. Code Crim. Proc. § 811; N. C. Gen. Stat., 1953, § 15-27 (applies to “officers” only); N. D. Century Code Ann., 1960, §§ 12-17-08, 29-29-18; Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, §585, Tit. 22, § 1239; Ore. Rev. Stat. § 141.990; S. D. Code, 1939 (Supp. 1960), § 34.9904; Utah Code Ann., 1953, § 77-54-21.
Criminal Liability of Magistrate Issuing Warrant Without Supporting Affidavit. — N. C. Gen. Stat., 1953, § 15-27; Va. Code Ann., 1960 Replacement Volume, § 19.1-89.
Criminal Liability of Officer Willfully Exceeding Authority of Search Warrant. — Fla. Stat. Ann., 1944, § 933.17; Iowa Code Ann., 1950, §751.39; Minn. Stat. Ann., 1947, §613.54; Nev. Rev. Stat. § 199.450; N. Y. Pen. Law § 1847, N. Y. Code Crim. Proc.'§812; N. D. Century Code Ann., 1960, §§ 12-17-07, 29-29-19; Okla. Stat., 1951, Tit. 21, § 536, Tit. 22, § 1240; S. D. Code, 1939 (Supp. 1960), §34.9905; Tenn. Code Ann., 1955, §40-510; Utah Code Ann., 1953, § 77-54-22.
Criminal Liability of Officer for Search with Invalid Warrant or no Warrant. — Idaho Code Ann., 1948, § 18-703; Minn. Stat. Ann., 1947, §§ 613.53, 621.17; Mo. Ann. Stat., 1953, § 558.190; Mont. Rev. Codes Ann., 1947, §94-3506; N. J. Stat. Ann., 1940, § 33:1-65; N. Y. Pen. Law § 1846; N. D. Century Code Ann., 1960, § 12 — 17—06; Okla. Stat. Ann., 1958, Tit. 21, §535; Utah Code Ann., 1953, §76-28-52; Va. Code Ann., 1960 Replacement Volume, §19.1-88; Wash. Rev. Code §§ 10.79.040, 10.79.045.
But compare Waley v. Johnston, 316 U. S. 101, 104, and Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 236, with Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, and Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25.
As is always the case, however, state procedural requirements governing assertion and pursuance of direct and collateral constitutional challenges to criminal prosecutions must be respected. We note, moreover, that the class of state convictions possibly affected by this decision is of relatively narrow compass when compared with Burns v. Ohio, 360 U. S. 252, Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, and Herman v. Claudy, 350 U. S. 116. In those cases the same contention was urged and later
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.
Held : Section 229 does not reach Bond's simple assault. Pp. 2086 - 2094.
(a) The parties debate whether section 229 is a necessary and proper means of executing the Federal Government's power to make treaties, but "normally [this] Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case." Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U.S. 48, 51, 104 S.Ct. 1577, 80 L.Ed.2d 36 ( per curiam ). Thus, this Court starts with Bond's argument that section 229 does not cover her conduct. Pp. 2086 - 2087.
(b) This Court has no need to interpret the scope of the international Chemical Weapons Convention in this case. The treaty specifies that a signatory nation should implement its obligations "in accordance with its constitutional processes." Art. VII(1), 1974 U.N.T.S. 331. Bond was prosecuted under a federal statute, which, unlike the treaty, must be read consistent with the principles of federalism inherent in our constitutional structure. Pp. 2087 - 2094.
(1) A fair reading of section 229 must recognize the duty of "federal courts to be certain of Congress's intent before finding that federal law overrides" the "usual constitutional balance of federal and state powers," Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410. This principle applies to federal laws that punish local criminal activity, which has traditionally been the responsibility of the States. This Court's precedents have referred to basic principles of federalism in the Constitution to resolve ambiguity in federal statutes. See, e.g.,United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488;Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848, 120 S.Ct. 1904, 146 L.Ed.2d 902. Here, the ambiguity in the statute derives from the improbably broad reach of the key statutory definition, given the term-"chemical weapon"-that is being defined, the deeply serious consequences of adopting such a boundless reading, and the lack of any apparent need to do so in light of the context from which the statute arose-a treaty about chemical warfare and terrorism, not about local assaults. Thus, the Court can reasonably insist on a clear indication that Congress intended to reach purely local crimes before interpreting section 229's expansive language in a way that intrudes on the States' police power. Pp. 2087 - 2090.
(2) No such clear indication is found in section 229. An ordinary speaker would not describe Bond's feud-driven act of spreading irritating chemicals as involving a "chemical weapon." And the chemicals at issue here bear little resemblance to those whose prohibition was the object of an international Convention. Where the breadth of a statutory definition creates ambiguity, it is appropriate to look to the ordinary meaning of the term being defined (here, "chemical weapon") in settling on a fair reading of the statute. See Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 130 S.Ct. 1265, 176 L.Ed.2d 1.
The Government's reading of section 229 would transform a statute concerned with acts of war, assassination, and terrorism into a massive federal anti-poisoning regime that reaches the simplest of assaults. In light of the principle that Congress does not normally intrude upon the States' police power, this Court is reluctant to conclude that Congress meant to punish Bond's crime with a federal prosecution for a chemical weapons attack. In fact, only a handful of prosecutions have been brought under section 229, and most of those involved crimes not traditionally within the States' purview, e.g., terrorist plots.
Pennsylvania's laws are sufficient to prosecute assaults like Bond's, and there is no indication in section 229 that Congress intended to abandon its traditional "reluctan[ce] to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States," Bass, supra, at 349, 92 S.Ct. 515. That principle goes to the very structure of the Constitution, and "protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power." Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2355, 2364, 180 L.Ed.2d 269. The global need to prevent chemical warfare does not require the Federal Government to reach into the kitchen cupboard. Pp. 2090 - 2094.
681 F.3d 149, reversed and remanded.
ROBERTS, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which KENNEDY, GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which THOMAS, J., joined, and in which ALITO, J., joined as to Part I. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which SCALIA, J., joined, and in which ALITO, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III. ALITO, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
Paul D. Clement, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, for Respondent.
Ashley C. Parrish, Adam M. Conrad, King & Spalding LLP, Washington, DC, Robert E. Goldman, Robert E. Goldman LLC, Fountainville, PA, Paul D. Clement, Counsel of Record, Erin E. Murphy, Bancroft PLLC, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, John P. Carlin, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Michael R. Dreeben, Deputy Solicitor General, Joseph R. Palmore, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Virginia M. Vander Jagt, Aditya Bamzai, Attorneys, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
The horrors of chemical warfare were vividly captured by John Singer Sargent in his 1919 painting Gassed. The nearly life-sized work depicts two lines of soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, clinging single file to orderlies guiding them to an improvised aid station. There they would receive little treatment and no relief; many suffered for weeks only to have the gas claim their lives. The soldiers were shown staggering through piles of comrades too seriously burned to even join the procession.
The painting reflects the devastation that Sargent witnessed in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Arras during World War I. That battle and others like it led to an overwhelming consensus in the international community that toxic chemicals should never again be used as weapons against human beings. Today that objective is reflected in the international Convention on Chemical Weapons, which has been ratified or acceded to by 190 countries. The United States, pursuant to the Federal Government's constitutionally enumerated power to make treaties, ratified the treaty in 1997. To fulfill the United States' obligations under the Convention, Congress enacted the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998. The Act makes it a federal crime for a person to use or possess any chemical weapon, and it punishes violators with severe penalties. It is a statute that, like the Convention it implements, deals with crimes of deadly seriousness.
The question presented by this case is whether the Implementation Act also reaches a purely local crime: an amateur attempt by a jilted wife to injure her husband's lover, which ended up causing only a minor thumb burn readily treated by rinsing with water. Because our constitutional structure leaves local criminal activity primarily to the States, we have generally declined to read federal law as intruding on that responsibility, unless Congress has clearly indicated that the law should have such reach. The Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act contains no such clear indication, and we accordingly conclude that it does not cover the unremarkable local offense at issue here.
I
A
In 1997, the President of the United States, upon the advice and consent of the Senate, ratified the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. S. Treaty Doc. No. 103-21, 1974 U.N.T.S. 317. The nations that ratified the Convention (State Parties) had bold aspirations for it: "general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, including the prohibition and elimination of all types of weapons of mass destruction." Convention Preamble, ibid. This purpose traces its origin to World War I, when "[o]ver a million casualties, up to 100,000 of them fatal, are estimated to have been caused by chemicals..., a large part following the introduction of mustard gas in 1917." Kenyon, Why We Need a Chemical Weapons Convention and an OPCW, in The Creation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 1, 4 (I. Kenyon & D. Feakes eds. 2007) (Kenyon & Feakes). The atrocities of that war led the community of nations to adopt the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of chemicals as a method of warfare. Id., at 5.
Up to the 1990s, however, chemical weapons remained in use both in and out of wartime, with devastating consequences.
Iraq's use of nerve agents and mustard gas during its war with Iran in the 1980s contributed to international support for a renewed, more effective chemical weapons ban. Id., at 6, 10-11. In 1994 and 1995, long-held fears of the use of chemical weapons by terrorists were realized when Japanese extremists carried out two attacks using sarin gas. Id., at 6. The Convention was conceived as an effort to update the Geneva Protocol's protections and to expand the prohibition on chemical weapons beyond state actors in wartime. Convention Preamble, 1974 U.N.T.S. 318 (the State Parties are "[d]etermined for the sake of all mankind, to exclude completely the possibility of the use of chemical weapons,... thereby complementing the obligations assumed under the Geneva Protocol of 1925"). The Convention aimed to achieve that objective by prohibiting the development, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons by any State Party or person within a State Party's jurisdiction. Arts. I, II, VII. It also established an elaborate reporting process requiring State Parties to destroy chemical weapons under their control and submit to inspection and monitoring by an international organization based in The Hague, Netherlands. Arts. VIII, IX.
The Convention provides:
"(1) Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never under any circumstances:
"(a) To develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical weapons to anyone;
"(b) To use chemical weapons;
"(c) To engage in any military preparations to use chemical weapons;
"(d) To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention." Art. I, id., at 319.
"Chemical Weapons" are defined in relevant part as "[t]oxic chemicals and their precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited under this Convention, as long as the types and quantities are consistent with such purposes." Art. II(1)(a), ibid. "Toxic Chemical," in turn, is defined as "Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. This includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere." Art. II(2), id., at 320. "Purposes Not Prohibited Under this Convention" means "[i]ndustrial, agricultural, research, medical, pharmaceutical or other peaceful purposes," Art. II(9)(a), id., at 322, and other specific purposes not at issue here, Arts. II(9)(b)-(d).
Although the Convention is a binding international agreement, it is "not self-executing." W. Krutzsch & R. Trapp, A Commentary on the Chemical Weapons Convention 109 (1994). That is, the Convention creates obligations only for State Parties and "does not by itself give rise to domestically enforceable federal law" absent "implementing legislation passed by Congress." Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491, 505, n. 2, 128 S.Ct. 1346, 170 L.Ed.2d 190 (2008). It instead provides that "[e]ach State Party shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, adopt the necessary measures to implement its obligations under this Convention." Art. VII(1), 1974 U.N.T.S. 331. "In particular," each State Party shall "[p]rohibit natural and legal persons anywhere... under its jurisdiction... from undertaking any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention, including enacting penal legislation with respect to such activity." Art. VII(1)(a), id., at 331-332.
Congress gave the Convention domestic effect in 1998 when it passed the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. See 112 Stat. 2681-856. The Act closely tracks the text of the treaty: It forbids any person knowingly "to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, transfer directly or indirectly, receive, stockpile, retain, own, possess, or use, or threaten to use, any chemical weapon." 18 U.S.C. § 229(a)(1). It defines "chemical weapon" in relevant part as "[a] toxic chemical and its precursors, except where intended for a purpose not prohibited under this chapter as long as the type and quantity is consistent with such a purpose." § 229F(1)(A). "Toxic chemical," in turn, is defined in general as "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. The term includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere." § 229F(8)(A). Finally, "purposes not prohibited by this chapter" is defined as "[a]ny peaceful purpose related to an industrial, agricultural, research, medical, or pharmaceutical activity or other activity," and other specific purposes. § 229F(7). A person who violates section 229 may be subject to severe punishment: imprisonment "for any term of years," or if a victim's death results, the death penalty or imprisonment "for life." § 229A(a).
B
Petitioner Carol Anne Bond is a microbiologist from Lansdale, Pennsylvania. In 2006, Bond's closest friend, Myrlinda Haynes, announced that she was pregnant. When Bond discovered that her husband was the child's father, she sought revenge against Haynes. Bond stole a quantity of 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine (an arsenic-based compound) from her employer, a chemical manufacturer. She also ordered a vial of potassium dichromate (a chemical commonly used in printing photographs or cleaning laboratory equipment) on Amazon.com. Both chemicals are toxic to humans and, in high enough doses, potentially lethal. It is undisputed, however, that Bond did not intend to kill Haynes. She instead hoped that Haynes would touch the chemicals and develop an uncomfortable rash.
Between November 2006 and June 2007, Bond went to Haynes's home on at least 24 occasions and spread the chemicals on her car door, mailbox, and door knob. These attempted assaults were almost entirely unsuccessful. The chemicals that Bond used are easy to see, and Haynes was able to avoid them all but once. On that occasion, Haynes suffered a minor chemical burn on her thumb, which she treated by rinsing with water. Haynes repeatedly called the local police to report the suspicious substances, but they took no action. When Haynes found powder on her mailbox, she called the police again, who told her to call the post office. Haynes did so, and postal inspectors placed surveillance cameras around her home. The cameras caught Bond opening Haynes's mailbox, stealing an envelope, and stuffing potassium dichromate inside the muffler of Haynes's car.
Federal prosecutors naturally charged Bond with two counts of mail theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1708. More surprising, they also charged her with two counts of possessing and using a chemical weapon, in violation of section 229(a). Bond moved to dismiss the chemical weapon counts on the ground that section 229 exceeded Congress's enumerated powers and invaded powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. The District Court denied Bond's motion. She then entered a conditional guilty plea that reserved her right to appeal. The District Court sentenced Bond to six years in federal prison plus five years of supervised release, and ordered her to pay a $2,000 fine and $9,902.79 in restitution.
Bond appealed, raising a Tenth Amendment challenge to her conviction. The Government contended that Bond lacked standing to bring such a challenge. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed. We granted certiorari, the Government confessed error, and we reversed. We held that, in a proper case, an individual may "assert injury from governmental action taken in excess of the authority that federalism defines." Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2355, 2363-2364, 180 L.Ed.2d 269 (2011) ( Bond I ). We "expresse[d] no view on the merits" of Bond's constitutional challenge. Id., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2367.
On remand, Bond renewed her constitutional argument. She also argued that section 229 does not reach her conduct because the statute's exception for the use of chemicals for "peaceful purposes" should be understood in contradistinction to the "warlike" activities that the Convention was primarily designed to prohibit. Bond argued that her conduct, though reprehensible, was not at all "warlike." The Court of Appeals rejected this argument. 681 F.3d 149 (C.A.3 2012). The court acknowledged that the Government's reading of section 229 would render the statute "striking" in its "breadth" and turn every "kitchen cupboard and cleaning cabinet in America into a potential chemical weapons cache." Id., at 154, n. 7. But the court nevertheless held that Bond's use of " 'highly toxic chemicals with the intent of harming Haynes' can hardly be characterized as 'peaceful' under that word's commonly understood meaning." Id., at 154 (citation omitted).
The Third Circuit also rejected Bond's constitutional challenge to her conviction, holding that section 229 was "necessary and proper to carry the Convention into effect." Id., at 162. The Court of Appeals relied on this Court's opinion in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416, 40 S.Ct. 382, 64 L.Ed. 641 (1920), which stated that "[i]f the treaty is valid there can be no dispute about the validity of the statute" that implements it "as a necessary and proper means to execute the powers of the Government," id., at 432, 40 S.Ct. 382.
We again granted certiorari, 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 978, 184 L.Ed.2d 758 (2013).
II
In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people retain the remainder. The States have broad authority to enact legislation for the public good-what we have often called a "police power." United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995). The Federal Government, by contrast, has no such authority and "can exercise only the powers granted to it," McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819), including the power to make "all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" the enumerated powers, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 18. For nearly two centuries it has been "clear" that, lacking a police power, "Congress cannot punish felonies generally." Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 428, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821). A criminal act committed wholly within a State "cannot be made an offence against the United States, unless it have some relation to the execution of a power of Congress, or to some matter within the jurisdiction of the United States." United States v. Fox, 95 U.S. 670, 672, 24 L.Ed. 538 (1878).
The Government frequently defends federal criminal legislation on the ground that the legislation is authorized pursuant to Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. In this case, however, the Court of Appeals held that the Government had explicitly disavowed that argument before the District Court. 681 F.3d, at 151, n. 1. As a result, in this Court the parties have devoted significant effort to arguing whether section 229, as applied to Bond's offense, is a necessary and proper means of executing the National Government's power to make treaties. U.S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Bond argues that the lower court's reading of Missouri v. Holland would remove all limits on federal authority, so long as the Federal Government ratifies a treaty first. She insists that to effectively afford the Government a police power whenever it implements a treaty would be contrary to the Framers' careful decision to divide power between the States and the National Government as a means of preserving liberty. To the extent that Holland authorizes such usurpation of traditional state authority, Bond says, it must be either limited or overruled.
The Government replies that this Court has never held that a statute implementing a valid treaty exceeds Congress's enumerated powers. To do so here, the Government says, would contravene another deliberate choice of the Framers: to avoid placing subject matter limitations on the National Government's power to make treaties. And it might also undermine confidence in the United States as an international treaty partner.
Notwithstanding this debate, it is "a well-established principle governing the prudent exercise of this Court's jurisdiction that normally the Court will not decide a constitutional question if there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case." Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U.S. 48, 51, 104 S.Ct. 1577, 80 L.Ed.2d 36 (1984) ( per curiam ); see also Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 347, 56 S.Ct. 466, 80 L.Ed. 688 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). Bond argues that section 229 does not cover her conduct. So we consider that argument first.
III
Section 229 exists to implement the Convention, so we begin with that international agreement. As explained, the Convention's drafters intended for it to be a comprehensive ban on chemical weapons. But even with its broadly worded definitions, we have doubts that a treaty about chemical weapons has anything to do with Bond's conduct. The Convention, a product of years of worldwide study, analysis, and multinational negotiation, arose in response to war crimes and acts of terrorism. See Kenyon & Feakes 6. There is no reason to think the sovereign nations that ratified the Convention were interested in anything like Bond's common law assault.
Even if the treaty does reach that far, nothing prevents Congress from implementing the Convention in the same manner it legislates with respect to innumerable other matters-observing the Constitution's division of responsibility between sovereigns and leaving the prosecution of purely local crimes to the States. The Convention, after all, is agnostic between enforcement at the state versus federal level: It provides that "[e]ach State Party shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, adopt the necessary measures to implement its obligations under this Convention." Art. VII(1), 1974 U.N.T.S. 331 (emphasis added); see also Tabassi, National Implementation: Article VII, in Kenyon & Feakes 205, 207 ("Since the creation of national law, the enforcement of it and the structure and administration of government are all sovereign acts reserved exclusively for [State Parties], it is not surprising that the Convention is so vague on the critical matter of national implementation.").
Fortunately, we have no need to interpret the scope of the Convention in this case. Bond was prosecuted under section 229, and the statute-unlike the Convention-must be read consistent with principles of federalism inherent in our constitutional structure.
A
In the Government's view, the conclusion that Bond "knowingly" "use[d]" a "chemical weapon" in violation of section 229(a) is simple: The chemicals that Bond placed on Haynes's home and car are "toxic chemical[s]" as defined by the statute, and Bond's attempt to assault Haynes was not a "peaceful purpose." §§ 229F(1), (8), (7). The problem with this interpretation is that it would "dramatically intrude[ ] upon traditional state criminal jurisdiction," and we avoid reading statutes to have such reach in the absence of a clear indication that they do. United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 350, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971).
Part of a fair reading of statutory text is recognizing that "Congress legislates against the backdrop" of certain unexpressed presumptions. EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991). As Justice Frankfurter put it in his famous essay on statutory interpretation, correctly reading a statute "demands awareness of certain presuppositions." Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 537 (1947). For example, we presume that a criminal statute derived from the common law carries with it the requirement of a culpable mental state-even if no such limitation appears in the text-unless it is clear that the Legislature intended to impose strict liability. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U.S. 422, 437, 98 S.Ct. 2864, 57 L.Ed.2d 854 (1978). To take another example, we presume, absent a clear statement from Congress, that federal statutes do not apply outside the United States. Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 255, 130 S.Ct. 2869, 177 L.Ed.2d 535 (2010). So even though section 229, read on its face, would cover a chemical weapons crime if committed by a U.S. citizen in Australia, we would not apply the statute to such conduct absent a plain statement from Congress.1 The notion that some things "go without saying" applies to legislation just as it does to everyday life.
Among the background principles of construction that our cases have recognized are those grounded in the relationship between the Federal Government and the States under our Constitution. It has long been settled, for example, that we presume federal statutes do not abrogate state sovereign immunity, Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 243, 105 S.Ct. 3142, 87 L.Ed.2d 171 (1985), impose obligations on the States pursuant to section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 16-17, 101 S.Ct. 1531, 67 L.Ed.2d 694 (1981), or preempt state law, Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230, 67 S.Ct. 1146, 91 L.Ed. 1447 (1947).
Closely related to these is the well-established principle that " 'it is incumbent upon the federal courts to be certain of Congress' intent before finding that federal law overrides' " the "usual constitutional balance of federal and state powers." Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991) (quoting Atascadero, supra, at 243, 105 S.Ct. 3142). To quote Frankfurter again, if the Federal Government would " 'radically readjust[ ] the balance of state and national authority, those charged with the duty of legislating [must be] reasonably explicit' " about it. BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation, 511 U.S. 531, 544, 114 S.Ct. 1757, 128 L.Ed.2d 556 (1994) (quoting Some Reflections, supra, at 539-540; second alteration in original). Or as explained by Justice Marshall, when legislation "affect[s] the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision." Bass, supra, at 349, 92 S.Ct. 515.
We have applied this background principle when construing federal statutes that touched on several areas of traditional state responsibility. See Gregory, supra, at 460, 111 S.Ct. 2395 (qualifications for state officers); BFP, supra, at 544, 114 S.Ct. 1757 (titles to real estate); Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159, 174, 121 S.Ct. 675, 148 L.Ed.2d 576 (2001) (land and water use). Perhaps the clearest example of traditional state authority is the punishment of local criminal activity. United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 618, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000). Thus, "we will not be quick to assume that Congress has meant to effect a significant change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction." Bass, 404 U.S., at 349, 92 S.Ct. 515.
In Bass, we interpreted a statute that prohibited any convicted felon from "'receiv[ing], possess[ing], or transport[ing] in commerce or affecting commerce... any firearm.' " Id., at 337, 92 S.Ct. 515. The Government argued that the statute barred felons from possessing all firearms and that it was not necessary to demonstrate a connection to interstate commerce. We rejected that reading, which would "render[ ] traditionally local criminal conduct a matter for federal enforcement and would also involve a substantial extension of federal police resources." Id., at 350, 92 S.Ct. 515. We instead read the statute more narrowly to require proof of a connection to interstate commerce in every case, thereby "preserv[ing] as an element of all the offenses a requirement suited to federal criminal jurisdiction alone." Id., at 351, 92 S.Ct. 515.
Similarly, in Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848, 850, 120 S.Ct. 1904, 146 L.Ed.2d 902 (2000), we confronted the question whether the federal arson statute, which prohibited burning " 'any... property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign commerce,' " reached an owner-occupied private residence. Once again we rejected the Government's "expansive interpretation," under which "hardly a building in the land would fall outside the federal statute's domain." Id., at 857, 120 S.Ct. 1904. We instead held that the statute was "most sensibly read" more narrowly to reach only buildings used in "active employment for commercial purposes." Id., at 855, 120 S.Ct. 1904. We noted that "arson is a paradigmatic common-law state crime," id., at 858, 120 S.Ct. 1904, and that the Government's proposed broad reading would "'significantly change [ ] the federal-state balance,' " ibid. (quoting Bass, 404 U.S., at 349, 92 S.Ct. 515), "mak[ing] virtually every arson in the country a federal offense," 529 U.S., at 859, 120 S.Ct. 1904.
These precedents make clear that it is appropriate to refer to basic principles of federalism embodied in the Constitution to resolve ambiguity in a federal statute. In this case, the ambiguity derives from the improbably broad reach of the key statutory definition given the term-"chemical weapon"-being defined; the deeply serious consequences of adopting such a boundless reading; and the lack of any apparent need to do so in light of the context from which the statute arose-a treaty about chemical warfare and terrorism. We conclude that, in this curious case, we can insist on a clear indication that Congress meant to reach purely local crimes, before interpreting the statute's expansive language in a way that intrudes on the police power of the States. See Bass, supra, at 349, 92 S.Ct. 515.2
B
We do not find any such clear indication in section 229. "Chemical weapon" is the key term that defines the statute's reach, and it is defined extremely broadly. But that general definition does not constitute a clear statement that Congress meant the statute to reach local criminal conduct.
In fact, a fair reading of section 229 suggests that it does not have as expansive a scope as might at first appear. To begin, as a matter of natural meaning, an educated user of English would not describe Bond's crime as involving a "chemical weapon." Saying that a person "used a chemical weapon" conveys a very different idea than saying the person "used a chemical in a way that caused some harm." The natural meaning of "chemical weapon" takes account of both the particular chemicals that the defendant used and the circumstances in which she used them.
When used in the manner here, the chemicals in this case are not of the sort that an ordinary person would associate with instruments of chemical warfare. The substances that Bond used bear little resemblance to the deadly toxins that are "of particular danger to the objectives of the Convention." Why We Need a Chemical Weapons Convention and an OPCW, in Kenyon & Feakes 17 (describing the Convention's Annex on Chemicals, a nonexhaustive list of covered substances that are subject to special regulation). More to the point, the use of something as a "weapon" typically connotes "[a]n instrument of offensive or defensive combat," Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2589 (2002), or "[a]n instrument of attack or defense in combat, as a gun, missile, or sword," American Heritage Dictionary 2022 (3d ed. 1992). But no speaker in natural parlance would describe Bond's feud-driven act of spreading irritating chemicals on Haynes's door knob and mailbox as "combat." Nor do the other circumstances of Bond's offense-an act of revenge born of romantic jealousy, meant to cause discomfort, that produced nothing more than a minor thumb burn-suggest that a chemical weapon was deployed in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Potassium dichromate and 10-ch
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
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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.
Held : The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded.
893 F.Supp.2d 133, reversed and remanded.
Chief Justice ROBERTS, joined by Justice SCALIA, Justice KENNEDY, and Justice ALITO, concluded that the aggregate limits are invalid under the First Amendment. Pp. 1444 - 1476.
(a) Appellants' substantial First Amendment challenge to the current system of aggregate limits merits plenary consideration. Pp. 1444 - 1448.
(1) In Buckley, this Court evaluated the constitutionality of the original contribution and expenditure limits in FECA. Buckley distinguished the two types of limits based on the degree to which each encroaches upon protected First Amendment interests. It subjected expenditure limits to "the exacting scrutiny applicable to limitations on core First Amendment rights of political expression." 424 U.S., at 44-45, 96 S.Ct. 612. But it concluded that contribution limits impose a lesser restraint on political speech and thus applied a lesser but still "rigorous standard of review," id., at 29, 96 S.Ct. 612, under which such limits "may be sustained if the State demonstrates a sufficiently important interest and employs means closely drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgement of associational freedoms," id., at 25, 96 S.Ct. 612. Because the Court found that the primary purpose of FECA-preventing quid pro quo corruption and its appearance-was a "sufficiently important" governmental interest, id., at 26-27, 96 S.Ct. 612, it upheld the base limit under the "closely drawn" test, id., at 29, 96 S.Ct. 612. After doing so, the Court devoted only one paragraph of its 139-page opinion to the aggregate limit then in place under FECA, noting that the provision "ha[d] not been separately addressed at length by the parties." Id., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. It concluded that the aggregate limit served to prevent circumvention of the base limit and was "no more than a corollary" of that limit. Id., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. Pp. 1444 - 1445.
(2) There is no need in this case to revisit Buckley's distinction between contributions and expenditures and the corresponding distinction in standards of review. Regardless whether strict scrutiny or the "closely drawn" test applies, the analysis turns on the fit between the stated governmental objective and the means selected to achieve that objective. Here, given the substantial mismatch between the Government's stated objective and the means selected to achieve it, the aggregate limits fail even under the "closely drawn" test.
Buckley's ultimate conclusion about the constitutionality of the aggregate limit in place under FECA does not control here. Buckley spent just three sentences analyzing that limit, which had not been separately addressed by the parties. Appellants here, by contrast, have directly challenged the aggregate limits in place under BCRA, a different statutory regime whose limits operate against a distinct legal backdrop. Most notably, statutory safeguards against circumvention have been considerably strengthened since Buckley. The 1976 FECA Amendments added another layer of base limits-capping contributions from individuals to political committees-and an antiproliferation rule prohibiting donors from creating or controlling multiple affiliated political committees. Since Buckley, the Federal Election Commission has also enacted an intricate regulatory scheme that further limits the opportunities for circumvention of the base limits through "unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute" to a particular candidate. 424 U.S., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. In addition to accounting for such statutory and regulatory changes, appellants raise distinct legal arguments not considered in Buckley, including an overbreadth challenge to the aggregate limit. Pp. 1445 - 1448.
(b) Significant First Amendment interests are implicated here. Contributing money to a candidate is an exercise of an individual's right to participate in the electoral process through both political expression and political association. A restriction on how many candidates and committees an individual may support is hardly a "modest restraint" on those rights. The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse. In its simplest terms, the aggregate limits prohibit an individual from fully contributing to the primary and general election campaigns of ten or more candidates, even if all contributions fall within the base limits. And it is no response to say that the individual can simply contribute less than the base limits permit: To require one person to contribute at lower levels because he wants to support more candidates or causes is to penalize that individual for "robustly exercis [ing]" his First Amendment rights. Davis v. Federal Election Comm'n, 554 U.S. 724, 739, 128 S.Ct. 2759, 171 L.Ed.2d 737.
In assessing the First Amendment interests at stake, the proper focus is on an individual's right to engage in political speech, not a collective conception of the public good. The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect individual speech that the majority might prefer to restrict, or that legislators or judges might not view as useful to the democratic process. Pp. 1447 - 1450.
(c) The aggregate limits do not further the permissible governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. Pp. 1450 - 1460.
(1) This Court has identified only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. See Davis,supra, at 741, 128 S.Ct. 2759. Moreover, the only type of corruption that Congress may target is quid pro quo corruption. Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner "influence over or access to" elected officials or political parties. Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n, 558 U.S. 310, 359, 130 S.Ct. 876, 175 L.Ed.2d 753. The line between quid pro quo corruption and general influence must be respected in order to safeguard basic First Amendment rights, and the Court must "err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it." Federal Election Comm'n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, 551 U.S. 449, 457, 127 S.Ct. 2652, 168 L.Ed.2d 329 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.). Pp. 1450 - 1452.
(2) The Government argues that the aggregate limits further the permissible objective of preventing quid pro quo corruption. The difficulty is that once the aggregate limits kick in, they ban all contributions of any amount, even though Congress's selection of a base limit indicates its belief that contributions beneath that amount do not create a cognizable risk of corruption. The Government must thus defend the aggregate limits by demonstrating that they prevent circumvention of the base limits, a function they do not serve in any meaningful way. Given the statutes and regulations currently in effect, Buckley's fear that an individual might "contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through... unearmarked contributions" to entities likely to support the candidate, 424 U.S., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612, is far too speculative. Even accepting Buckley's circumvention theory, it is hard to see how a candidate today could receive "massive amounts of money" that could be traced back to a particular donor uninhibited by the aggregate limits. The Government's scenarios offered in support of that possibility are either illegal under current campaign finance laws or implausible. Pp. 1451 - 1457.
(3) The aggregate limits also violate the First Amendment because they are not "closely drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgment of associational freedoms." Buckley, supra, at 25, 96 S.Ct. 612. The Government argues that the aggregate limits prevent an individual from giving to too many initial recipients who might then recontribute a donation, but experience suggests that the vast majority of contributions are retained and spent by their recipients. And the Government has provided no reason to believe that candidates or party committees would dramatically shift their priorities if the aggregate limits were lifted. The indiscriminate ban on all contributions above the aggregate limits is thus disproportionate to the Government's interest in preventing circumvention.
Importantly, there are multiple alternatives available to Congress that would serve the Government's interest in preventing circumvention while avoiding "unnecessary abridgment" of First Amendment rights. Buckley, supra, at 25, 96 S.Ct. 612. Such alternatives might include targeted restrictions on transfers among candidates and political committees, or tighter earmarking rules. Transfers, after all, are the key to the Government's concern about circumvention, but they can be addressed without such a direct and broad interference with First Amendment rights. Pp. 1456 - 1460.
(4) Disclosure of contributions also reduces the potential for abuse of the campaign finance system. Disclosure requirements, which are justified by "a governmental interest in 'provid[ing] the electorate with information' about the sources of election-related spending," Citizens United, supra, at 367, 130 S.Ct. 876, may deter corruption "by exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity," Buckley, supra at 67, 96 S.Ct. 612. Disclosure requirements may burden speech, but they often represent a less restrictive alternative to flat bans on certain types or quantities of speech. Particularly with modern technology, disclosure now offers more robust protections against corruption than it did when Buckley was decided. Pp. 1459 - 1460.
(d) The Government offers an additional rationale for the aggregate limits, arguing that the opportunity for corruption exists whenever a legislator is given a large check, even if the check consists of contributions within the base limits to be divided among numerous candidates or committees. That rationale dangerously broadens the circumscribed definition of quid pro quo corruption articulated in prior cases. Buckley confined its analysis to the possibility that "massive amounts of money" could be funneled to a particular candidate in excess of the base limits. 424 U.S., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. Recasting as corruption a donor's widely distributed support for a political party would dramatically expand government regulation of the political process. And though the Government suggests that solicitation of large contributions poses the corruption danger, the aggregate limits are not limited to any direct solicitation by an officeholder or candidate. Pp. 1460 - 1462.
Justice THOMAS agreed that the aggregate limits are invalid under the First Amendment, but would overrule Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659, and subject BCRA's aggregate limits to strict scrutiny, which they would surely fail. Buckley's "analytic foundation... was tenuous from the very beginning and has only continued to erode in the intervening years." Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 412, 120 S.Ct. 897, 145 L.Ed.2d 886 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). Contributions and expenditures are simply "two sides of the same First Amendment coin," and this Court's efforts to distinguish the two have produced mere "word games" rather than any cognizable constitutional law principle. Buckley, supra, at 241, 244, 96 S.Ct. 612 (BURGER, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Pp. 1440 - 1443.
ROBERTS, C.J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which SCALIA, KENNEDY, and ALITO, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
Erin E. Murphy, New York, NY, for Appellants.
Bobby R. Burchfield, Washington, DC, for Senator Mitch Connell as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Appellants.
Donald B. Verrilli, Solicitor General, for Appellee.
Erin E. Murphy, Bancroft PLLC, Washington, DC, Dan Backer, Paul Henry Jossey, DB Capitol Strategies, PLLC, Alexandria, VA, Michael T. Morley, Counsel of Record, Cranford, NJ, Jerad Wayne Najvar, Najvar Law Firm, Houston, TX, for Appellant Shaun McCutcheon.
Stephen M. Hoersting, Dayton, OH, James Bopp, Jr., Counsel of Record, Richard E. Coleson, Anita Y. Woudenberg, The Bopp Law Firm, PC, Terre Haute, IN, for Appellant Republican National Committee.
Lisa J. Stevenson, Deputy General Counsel, Kevin Deeley, Adav Noti, Acting Associate General Counsels, Charles Kitcher, Attorney, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C., Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, Malcolm L. Stewart, Deputy Solicitor General, Eric J. Feigin, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Appellee.
Dan Backer, Paul Henry Jossey, DB Capitol Strategies, PLLC, Washington, DC, Jerad Wayne Najvar, Najvar Law Firm, Houston, TX, Michael T. Morley, Counsel of Record, Cranford, NJ, for Appellant.
Chief Justice ROBERTS announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice SCALIA, Justice KENNEDY, and Justice ALITO join.
There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. Citizens can exercise that right in a variety of ways: They can run for office themselves, vote, urge others to vote for a particular candidate, volunteer to work on a campaign, and contribute to a candidate's campaign. This case is about the last of those options.
The right to participate in democracy through political contributions is protected by the First Amendment, but that right is not absolute. Our cases have held that Congress may regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption. See, e.g.,Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 26-27, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976) ( per curiam). At the same time, we have made clear that Congress may not regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics, or to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others. See, e.g., Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2806, 2825-2826, 180 L.Ed.2d 664 (2011).
Many people might find those latter objectives attractive: They would be delighted to see fewer television commercials touting a candidate's accomplishments or disparaging an opponent's character. Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades-despite the profound offense such spectacles cause-it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989); Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. ----, 131 S.Ct. 1207, 179 L.Ed.2d 172 (2011); National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U.S. 43, 97 S.Ct. 2205, 53 L.Ed.2d 96 (1977) ( per curiam). Indeed, as we have emphasized, the First Amendment "has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office." Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 272, 91 S.Ct. 621, 28 L.Ed.2d 35 (1971).
In a series of cases over the past 40 years, we have spelled out how to draw the constitutional line between the permissible goal of avoiding corruption in the political process and the impermissible desire simply to limit political speech. We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford. "Ingratiation and access... are not corruption." Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n, 558 U.S. 310, 360, 130 S.Ct. 876, 175 L.Ed.2d 753 (2010). They embody a central feature of democracy-that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns.
Any regulation must instead target what we have called " quid pro quo " corruption or its appearance. See id., at 359, 130 S.Ct. 876. That Latin phrase captures the notion of a direct exchange of an official act for money. See McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. 257, 266, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 114 L.Ed.2d 307 (1991). "The hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo : dollars for political favors." Federal Election Comm'n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S. 480, 497, 105 S.Ct. 1459, 84 L.Ed.2d 455 (1985). Campaign finance restrictions that pursue other objectives, we have explained, impermissibly inject the Government "into the debate over who should govern." Bennett, supra, at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2826. And those who govern should be the last people to help decide who should govern.
The statute at issue in this case imposes two types of limits on campaign contributions. The first, called base limits, restricts how much money a donor may contribute to a particular candidate or committee. 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(1). The second, called aggregate limits, restricts how much money a donor may contribute in total to all candidates or committees. § 441a(a)(3).
This case does not involve any challenge to the base limits, which we have previously upheld as serving the permissible objective of combatting corruption. The Government contends that the aggregate limits also serve that objective, by preventing circumvention of the base limits. We conclude, however, that the aggregate limits do little, if anything, to address that concern, while seriously restricting participation in the democratic process. The aggregate limits are therefore invalid under the First Amendment.
I
A
For the 2013-2014 election cycle, the base limits in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), permit an individual to contribute up to $2,600 per election to a candidate ($5,200 total for the primary and general elections); $32,400 per year to a national party committee; 1 $10,000 per year to a state or local party committee; and $5,000 per year to a political action committee, or "PAC." 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(1); 78 Fed.Reg. 8532 (2013). 2 A national committee, state or local party committee, or multicandidate PAC may in turn contribute up to $5,000 per election to a candidate. § 441a(a)(2).3
The base limits apply with equal force to contributions that are "in any way earmarked or otherwise directed through an intermediary or conduit" to a candidate. § 441a(a)(8). If, for example, a donor gives money to a party committee but directs the party committee to pass the contribution along to a particular candidate, then the transaction is treated as a contribution from the original donor to the specified candidate.
For the 2013-2014 election cycle, the aggregate limits in BCRA permit an individual to contribute a total of $48,600 to federal candidates and a total of $74,600 to other political committees. Of that $74,600, only $48,600 may be contributed to state or local party committees and PACs, as opposed to national party committees.
§ 441a(a)(3); 78 Fed.Reg. 8532. All told, an individual may contribute up to $123,200 to candidate and noncandidate committees during each two-year election cycle.
The base limits thus restrict how much money a donor may contribute to any particular candidate or committee; the aggregate limits have the effect of restricting how many candidates or committees the donor may support, to the extent permitted by the base limits.
B
In the 2011-2012 election cycle, appellant Shaun McCutcheon contributed a total of $33,088 to 16 different federal candidates, in compliance with the base limits applicable to each. He alleges that he wished to contribute $1,776 to each of 12 additional candidates but was prevented from doing so by the aggregate limit on contributions to candidates. McCutcheon also contributed a total of $27,328 to several noncandidate political committees, in compliance with the base limits applicable to each. He alleges that he wished to contribute to various other political committees, including $25,000 to each of the three Republican national party committees, but was prevented from doing so by the aggregate limit on contributions to political committees. McCutcheon further alleges that he plans to make similar contributions in the future. In the 2013-2014 election cycle, he again wishes to contribute at least $60,000 to various candidates and $75,000 to non-candidate political committees. Brief for Appellant McCutcheon 11-12.
Appellant Republican National Committee is a national political party committee charged with the general management of the Republican Party. The RNC wishes to receive the contributions that McCutcheon and similarly situated individuals would like to make-contributions otherwise permissible under the base limits for national party committees but foreclosed by the aggregate limit on contributions to political committees.
In June 2012, McCutcheon and the RNC filed a complaint before a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. See BCRA § 403(a), 116 Stat. 113-114. McCutcheon and the RNC asserted that the aggregate limits on contributions to candidates and to noncandidate political committees were unconstitutional under the First Amendment. They moved for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the challenged provisions, and the Government moved to dismiss the case.
The three-judge District Court denied appellants' motion for a preliminary injunction and granted the Government's motion to dismiss. Assuming that the base limits appropriately served the Government's anticorruption interest, the District Court concluded that the aggregate limits survived First Amendment scrutiny because they prevented evasion of the base limits. 893 F.Supp.2d 133, 140 (2012).
In particular, the District Court imagined a hypothetical scenario that might occur in a world without aggregate limits. A single donor might contribute the maximum amount under the base limits to nearly 50 separate committees, each of which might then transfer the money to the same single committee. Ibid. That committee, in turn, might use all the transferred money for coordinated expenditures on behalf of a particular candidate, allowing the single donor to circumvent the base limit on the amount he may contribute to that candidate. Ibid. The District Court acknowledged that "it may seem unlikely that so many separate entities would willingly serve as conduits" for the single donor's interests, but it concluded that such a scenario "is not hard to imagine." Ibid. It thus rejected a constitutional challenge to the aggregate limits, characterizing the base limits and the aggregate limits "as a coherent system rather than merely a collection of individual limits stacking prophylaxis upon prophylaxis." Ibid.
McCutcheon and the RNC appealed directly to this Court, as authorized by law. 28 U.S.C. § 1253. In such a case, "we ha[ve] no discretion to refuse adjudication of the case on its merits," Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 344, 95 S.Ct. 2281, 45 L.Ed.2d 223 (1975), and accordingly we noted probable jurisdiction. 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 1242, 185 L.Ed.2d 177 (2013).
II
A
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659, presented this Court with its first opportunity to evaluate the constitutionality of the original contribution and expenditure limits set forth in FECA. FECA imposed a $1,000 per election base limit on contributions from an individual to a federal candidate. It also imposed a $25,000 per year aggregate limit on all contributions from an individual to candidates or political committees. 18 U.S.C. §§ 608(b)(1), 608(b)(3) (1970 ed., Supp. IV). On the expenditures side, FECA imposed limits on both independent expenditures and candidates' overall campaign expenditures. §§ 608(e)(1), 608(c).
Buckley recognized that "contribution and expenditure limitations operate in an area of the most fundamental First Amendment activities." 424 U.S., at 14, 96 S.Ct. 612. But it distinguished expenditure limits from contribution limits based on the degree to which each encroaches upon protected First Amendment interests. Expenditure limits, the Court explained, "necessarily reduce[ ] the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached." Id., at 19, 96 S.Ct. 612. The Court thus subjected expenditure limits to "the exacting scrutiny applicable to limitations on core First Amendment rights of political expression." Id., at 44-45, 96 S.Ct. 612. Under exacting scrutiny, the Government may regulate protected speech only if such regulation promotes a compelling interest and is the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest. See Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 126, 109 S.Ct. 2829, 106 L.Ed.2d 93 (1989).
By contrast, the Court concluded that contribution limits impose a lesser restraint on political speech because they "permit[ ] the symbolic expression of support evidenced by a contribution but do[ ] not in any way infringe the contributor's freedom to discuss candidates and issues." Buckley, 424 U.S., at 21, 96 S.Ct. 612. As a result, the Court focused on the effect of the contribution limits on the freedom of political association and applied a lesser but still "rigorous standard of review." Id., at 29, 96 S.Ct. 612. Under that standard, "[e]ven a'"significant interference" with protected rights of political association' may be sustained if the State demonstrates a sufficiently important interest and employs means closely drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgement of associational freedoms." Id., at 25, 96 S.Ct. 612 (quoting Cousins v. Wigoda, 419 U.S. 477, 488, 95 S.Ct. 541, 42 L.Ed.2d 595 (1975)).
The primary purpose of FECA was to limit quid pro quo corruption and its appearance; that purpose satisfied the requirement of a "sufficiently important" governmental interest. 424 U.S., at 26-27, 96 S.Ct. 612. As for the "closely drawn"
component, Buckley concluded that the $1,000 base limit "focuses precisely on the problem of large campaign contributions... while leaving persons free to engage in independent political expression, to associate actively through volunteering their services, and to assist to a limited but nonetheless substantial extent in supporting candidates and committees with financial resources." Id., at 28, 96 S.Ct. 612. The Court therefore upheld the $1,000 base limit under the "closely drawn" test. Id., at 29, 96 S.Ct. 612.
The Court next separately considered an overbreadth challenge to the base limit. See id., at 29-30, 96 S.Ct. 612. The challengers argued that the base limit was fatally overbroad because most large donors do not seek improper influence over legislators' actions. Although the Court accepted that premise, it nevertheless rejected the overbreadth challenge for two reasons: First, it was too "difficult to isolate suspect contributions" based on a contributor's subjective intent. Id., at 30, 96 S.Ct. 612. Second, "Congress was justified in concluding that the interest in safeguarding against the appearance of impropriety requires that the opportunity for abuse inherent in the process of raising large monetary contributions be eliminated." Ibid.
Finally, in one paragraph of its 139-page opinion, the Court turned to the $25,000 aggregate limit under FECA. As a preliminary matter, it noted that the constitutionality of the aggregate limit "ha[d] not been separately addressed at length by the parties." Id., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. Then, in three sentences, the Court disposed of any constitutional objections to the aggregate limit that the challengers might have had:
"The overall $25,000 ceiling does impose an ultimate restriction upon the number of candidates and committees with which an individual may associate himself by means of financial support. But this quite modest restraint upon protected political activity serves to prevent evasion of the $1,000 contribution limitation by a person who might otherwise contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute to that candidate, or huge contributions to the candidate's political party. The limited, additional restriction on associational freedom imposed by the overall ceiling is thus no more than a corollary of the basic individual contribution limitation that we have found to be constitutionally valid." Ibid.
B
1
The parties and amici curiae spend significant energy debating whether the line that Buckley drew between contributions and expenditures should remain the law. Notwithstanding the robust debate, we see no need in this case to revisit Buckley's distinction between contributions and expenditures and the corollary distinction in the applicable standards of review. Buckley held that the Government's interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance was "sufficiently important," id., at 26-27, 96 S.Ct. 612; we have elsewhere stated that the same interest may properly be labeled "compelling," see National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S., at 496-497, 105 S.Ct. 1459, so that the interest would satisfy even strict scrutiny. Moreover, regardless whether we apply strict scrutiny or Buckley's "closely drawn" test, we must assess the fit between the stated governmental objective and the means selected to achieve that objective. See, e.g., National Conservative Political Action Comm.,supra, at 496-501, 105 S.Ct. 1459;Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230, 253-262, 126 S.Ct. 2479, 165 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006) (opinion of BREYER, J.). Or to put it another way, if a law that restricts political speech does not "avoid unnecessary abridgement" of First Amendment rights, Buckley, 424 U.S., at 25, 96 S.Ct. 612, it cannot survive "rigorous" review.
Because we find a substantial mismatch between the Government's stated objective and the means selected to achieve it, the aggregate limits fail even under the "closely drawn" test. We therefore need not parse the differences between the two standards in this case.
2
Buckley treated the constitutionality of the $25,000 aggregate limit as contingent upon that limit's ability to prevent circumvention of the $1,000 base limit, describing the aggregate limit as "no more than a corollary" of the base limit. Id., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. The Court determined that circumvention could occur when an individual legally contributes "massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions" to entities that are themselves likely to contribute to the candidate. Ibid. For that reason, the Court upheld the $25,000 aggregate limit.
Although Buckley provides some guidance, we think that its ultimate conclusion about the constitutionality of the aggregate limit in place under FECA does not control here. Buckley spent a total of three sentences analyzing that limit; in fact, the opinion pointed out that the constitutionality of the aggregate limit "ha[d] not been separately addressed at length by the parties." Ibid. We are now asked to address appellants' direct challenge to the aggregate limits in place under BCRA. BCRA is a different statutory regime, and the aggregate limits it imposes operate against a distinct legal backdrop.
Most notably, statutory safeguards against circumvention have been considerably strengthened since Buckley was decided, through both statutory additions and the introduction of a comprehensive regulatory scheme. With more targeted anticircumvention measures in place today, the indiscriminate aggregate limits under BCRA appear particularly heavy-handed.
The 1976 FECA Amendments, for example, added another layer of base contribution limits. The 1974 version of FECA had already capped contributions from political committees to candidates, but the 1976 version added limits on contributions to political committees. This change was enacted at least "in part to prevent circumvention of the very limitations on contributions that this Court upheld in Buckley." California Medical Assn. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 453 U.S. 182, 197-198, 101 S.Ct. 2712, 69 L.Ed.2d 567 (1981) (plurality opinion); see also id., at 203, 101 S.Ct. 2712 (Blackmun, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Because a donor's contributions to a political committee are now limited, a donor cannot flood the committee with "huge" amounts of money so that each contribution the committee makes is perceived as a contribution from him. Buckley, supra, at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612. Rather, the donor may contribute only $5,000 to the committee, which hardly raises the specter of abuse that concerned the Court in Buckley. Limits on contributions to political committees consequently create an additional hurdle for a donor who seeks both to channel a large amount of money to a particular candidate and to ensure that he gets the credit for doing so.
The 1976 Amendments also added an antiproliferation rule prohibiting donors from creating or controlling multiple affiliated political committees. See 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(5); 11 CFR § 100.5(g)(4). The Government acknowledges that this antiproliferation rule "forecloses what would otherwise be a particularly easy and effective means of circumventing the limits on contributions to any particular political committee." Brief for Appellee 46. In effect, the rule eliminates a donor's ability to create and use his own political committees to direct funds in excess of the individual base limits. It thus blocks a straightforward method of achieving the circumvention that was the underlying concern in Buckley.
The intricate regulatory scheme that the Federal Election Commission has enacted since Buckley further limits the opportunities for circumvention of the base limits via "unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute" to a particular candidate. 424 U.S., at 38, 96 S.Ct. 612
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 Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case has a long history. It must be told with some particularity in order to unravel issues ensnarled in protracted litigation in both state and federal courts, turning essentially on the admissibility of confessions.
The Trial. — Petitioner was found guilty of murder by a jury in the Superior Court, New Haven County, Connecticut. The undisputed evidence leading to the conviction may be briefly told. On January 9, 1954, New Haven, Connecticut, police arrested petitioner on charges of committing attempted robbery and other crimes on that day at a local hotel. At the time of his arrest petitioner had in his possession a revolver. Subsequent ballistic tests tended to show that this weapon, which had been reported stolen from the home of petitioner’s nephew, was used in a fatal shooting during a liquor store robbery in West Haven, Connecticut, on November 21, 1953, the same day its disappearance was discovered.
Petitioner was lodged in the New Haven County Jail pending trial on the charges that prompted his arrest. On January 30, 1954, he was transported without court order from the jail to the office of the State’s Attorney for questioning in connection with the West Haven killing. The interrogation commenced at approximately 2 p. m. of that day and continued throughout the afternoon and evening. During the interrogation petitioner was allowed to smoke, was brought a sandwich and coffee, and was at no time subjected to violence or threat of violence.
After petitioner had been intermittently questioned without success by a team of at least three police officers from 2 p. m. to 8 p. m., New Haven Assistant Chief of Police Eagan was called in to conduct the investigation. When petitioner persisted in his denial that he had done the shooting, Chief Eagan pretended, in petitioner’s hearing, to place a telephone call to police officers, directing them to stand in readiness to bring in petitioner’s wife for questioning. After the passage of approximately one hour, during which petitioner remained silent, Chief Eagan indicated that he was about to have petitioner’s wife taken into custody. At this point petitioner announced his willingness to confess and did confess in a statement which .was taken down in shorthand by an official óourt reporter.
The following morning the Coroner of New Haven County issued an order that petitioner be held incommunicado at the jail. When a lawyer associated with counsel whom petitioner had previously retained to defend him on the attempted robbery charge called at the jail to see petitioner, he was turned away on the authority of the Coroner’s order. Petitioner was then transported to the County Court House for interrogation by the Coroner, who had been informed of his confession of the previous night. There he was put on oath to tell the truth but warned that he might refuse to say anything further and advised that he might obtain the assistance of counsel. Petitioner again confessed to the shooting in a statement recorded by the same official court reporter.
Petitioner’s defense at the trial was directed toward discrediting the confessions as the product of coercion. In accordance with Connecticut practice, see, e. g., State v. Willis, 71 Conn. 293, 41 A. 820; State v. Guastamachio, 137 Conn. 179, 75 A. 2d 429, the trial judge heard the evidence bearing on admissibility of the confessions without the jury present. At this hearing petitioner testified that shortly after the commencement of the interrogation he asked to see a lawyer but was never permitted to do so. He also testified, with reference to Chief Eagan’s pretense of bringing petitioner’s wife in for questioning, that this move took the form of a threat to do so unless he confessed and that in making this threat Chief Eagan told him that he would be “less than a man” if he failed to confess and thereby caused her to be taken into custody. According to petitioner his wife suffered from arthritis, and he confessed to spare her being transported to the scene of the interrogation.
The State met petitioner’s account with the testimony of Chief Eagan. He testified that petitioner made no request to see a lawyer dhring his presence in the room. However, it will be recalled that Chief Eagan did not arrive until the questioning had run a course of six hours and that petitioner claimed to have requested counsel during that period. Chief Eagan also denied that he had framed his remarks about bringing petitioner’s wife in for questioning as a threat or that he had suggested that petitioner would be “less than a man,” etc.
On the basis of the evidence summarized, the trial judge concluded that the confessions were voluntary and allowed them to go to the jury for consideration of the weight to be given them under all the circumstances that led to them. Conviction of petitioner for murder followed.
Review by the Connecticut Supreme Court. — On appeal, the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, finding no error in the trial judge’s admission of the confessions, affirmed the conviction, State v. Rogers, 143 Conn. 167, 120 A. 2d 409.
First Federal Habeas Corpus Proceeding. — In August of 1956, after satisfying the rule of Darr v. Burford, 339 U. S. 200, petitioner sought a federal writ of habeas corpus, basically on the ground that since the confessions were secured under circumstances rendering them constitutionally inadmissible, he was denied due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. The United States District Court for the District of Connecticut held a hearing based on the evidence' offered by the parties. This evidence included excerpts from the record of the state proceedings as well as testimony of petitioner and various state officials. Neither petitioner nor respondent submitted the entire transcript of the state proceedings and the district judge did not call for it. Petitioner again testified that before he confessed he had requested an opportunity to confer with his lawyer. His testimony was flatly contradicted by three police officers called by the State’s Attorney, none of whom had testified at the trial.
On the testimony before him, the district judge made findings which differed from those of the state trial judge in several important respects. He accepted petitioner’s testimony that during the police interrogation he had asked to see his lawyer before he yielded to Chief Eagan’s efforts to have him confess. He also found that the confession before the Coroner was the product of fear that repudiation of the earlier confession would lead the police to take his wife and foster children into custody. Accordingly, he concluded that “The confessions were the result of pressure overcoming Rogers’ powers of resistance and were not voluntary on his part.” United States ex rel. Rogers v. Cummings, 154 F. Supp. 663, 665. He therefore set aside the judgment of conviction.
First Court of Appeals Review. — On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the District Court’s judgment, finding that it was error to hold a hearing de novo on issues of basic evidentiary fact that had been considered and adjudicated by the state courts. Relying on Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, the Court of Appeals concluded that the district judge should have called for the entire state record before reaching his decision. It held
“that in the case now before us the nature of the issues presented and proper regard for the delicate balance of federal-state relationships required the District Judge to obtain and examine the State proceedings .... Only on an adequate state record can the District Court determine “if a vital flaw exists which warrants correction by extrinsic evidence.” United States ex rel. Rogers v. Richmond, 252 F. 2d 807, 810, 811.
The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the District Court with the following instructions:
“Unless the judge below shall find in the record thus before him material which he deems to constitute ‘vital flaws’ and ‘unusual circumstances’ within the meaning of Brown v. Allen, we hold that he should make the necessary constitutional determinations exclusively on the basis of the historical facts as found by the State trial court.” 252 F. 2d, at 811.
Certiorari Proceeding. — The petitioner sought certi-orari here and we denied the petition with this per curiam opinion:
“The petition for writ of certiorari is denied. We read the opinion of the Court of Appeals as holding that while the District Judge may, unless he finds a vital flaw in the State Court proceedings, accept the determination in such proceedings, he need not deem such determination binding, and may take testimony. See Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 506, et seq.” Rogers v. Richmond, 357 U. S. 220.
Second Federal Habeas Corpus Proceeding. — On remand, the district judge had before him the entire transcript of the state proceedings and on the basis of it dismissed the petition. United States ex rel. Rogers v. Richmond, 178 F. Supp. 69. While he adhered to his belief in petitioner’s testimony in the first habeas corpus hearing, he now considered himself obliged to accept the state court’s “Findings,” rather than his own, on all points of historical fact “unless some vital flaw or unusual circumstance exists or some other basis appears for consideration of testimony outside the record.” 178 F. Supp., at 71-72. The district judge found no such “flaw” or “circumstance” to permit retrial of the issue of the volun-tariness of the confessions. He thus stated his position:
“The issue of whether request for counsel was made and the issue of voluntary character of the confessions were fully and conscientiously tried by an experienced judge. Subsequent disagreement with his weighing of essentially similar evidence is not in itself sufficient under the limitations now imposed in the interest of proper balance in our dual court system, to permit consideration of the matter heard at the trial of the issue de novo here.” 178 F. Supp., at 73.
On this basis the district judge could not find that the confessions were the product of coercion.
Second Court of Appeals Review. — The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed this judgment, one judge dissenting. United States ex rel. Rogers v. Richmond, 271 F. 2d 364. The court held that the district judge was correct in restricting himself to the state court’s “Findings” regarding petitioner’s request to see his lawyer before confessing, and agreed with him that the facts in the record did not justify the conclusion that petitioner’s confessions were not voluntary.
Because issues concerning the appropriate procedure for dealing with petitions for federal habeas corpus in relation to state convictions were urged, we brought the case here. 361 U. S.959.
A critical analysis of the Connecticut proceedings leads to disposition of the case on a more immediate issue. For it compels the conclusion that the trial judge in admitting the confessions as “voluntary,” and the Supreme Court of Errors in affirming the conviction into which the confessions entered, failed to apply the standard demanded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment for determining the admissibility of a confession.
Our decisions under that Amendment have made clear that convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i. e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charge against an accused out of his own mouth. See Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227; Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 236; Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 172-174; Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 320-321; Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 206-207. And see Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 54-55. To be sure, confessions cruelly extorted may be and have been, to an unascertained extent, found to be untrustworthy. But the constitutional principle of excluding confessions that are not-voluntary does not rest on this consideration. Indeed, in many of the cases in which the command of the Due Process Clause has compelled us to reverse state convictions involving the use of confessions obtained by impermissible methods, independent corroborating evidence left little doubt of the truth of what the defendant had confessed. Despite such verification, confessions were found to be the product of constitutionally impermissible methods in their inducement. Since a defendant had been subjected to pressures to which, under our accusatorial system, an accused shoúld not be subjected, we were constrained to find that the procedures leading to his conviction had failed to afford him that due process of law which the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees.
In the present case, while the trial judge ruled that each of petitioner’s confessions was “freely and voluntarily made and accordingly was admissible in evidence,” he reached that conclusion on the basis of considerations that undermine its validity. He found that the pretense of bringing petitioner’s wife in for questioning “had no tendency to produce a confession that was not in accord with the truth.” Again, in his charge to the jury, he thus enunciated the reasoning which had guided him in admitting the confessions for its consideration:
“No confession or admission of an accused is admissible in evidence unless made freely and voluntarily and not under the influence of promises or threats. The fact that a confession was procured by the employment of some artifice or deception does not exclude the confession if it was not calculated, that is to say, if the artifice or deception was not calculated to procure an untrue statement. The motive of a person in confessing is of no importance provided the particular confession does not result from threats, fear or promises made by persons in actual or seeming authority. The object of evidence is to get •at the truth, and a trick or device which has no tendency to produce a confession except one in accordance with the truth does not render the confession inadmissible .... The rules which surround the use of a confession are designed and put into operation because of the desire expressed in the law that the confession, if used, be probably a true confession.”
The same view — that the probable reliability of a confession is a circumstance of weight in determining its vol-untariness — entered the opinion of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut in sustaining the trial judge’s admission of the confession:
“If we concede that this [petitioner’s claims of illegal removal from jail and incommunicado detention] was all true and that such conduct was unlawful, it does not, standing alohe, render the defendant’s confessions inadmissible. The question is whether, under these and other circumstances of the case, that conduct induced the defendant to confess falsely that he had committed the crime being investigated. Unless it did, it cannot be said that its illegality vitiated his confessions.” 143 Conn., at 173; 120 A. 2d, at 412.
And again :
“Proper court authorization should have been secured before the defendant was removed from the jail. There is nothing about his illegal removal, however, to demonstrate that he was thereby forced to make an untrue statement. The same can be said concerning the refusal to admit counsel to see the defendant on the morning of January 31 before he was brought before the coroner.” 143 Conn., at 173-174; 120 A. 2d, at 412.
Concerning the feigned phone call that petitioner’s wife be brought in to headquarters, the Supreme Court concluded:
“Here again, the question for the court to decide was whether this conduct induced the defendant to make an involuntary and hence untrue statement.” 143 Conn., at 174; 120 A. 2d, at 412.
From a fair reading of these expressions, we cannot but conclude that the question whether Rogers’ confessions were admissible into evidence was answered by reference to a legal standard which took into account the circumstance of probable truth or falsity. And this is not a permissible standard under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The attention of the trial judge should have been focused, for purposes of the Federal Constitution, on the question whether the behavior of the State’s law enforcement officials was such as to overbear petitioner’s will to resist and bring about confessions not freely self-determined — a question to be answered with complete disregard of whether or not petitioner in fact spoke the truth. The employment instead, by the trial judge and the Supreme Court of Errors, of a standard infected by the inclusion of references to probable reliability resulted in a constitutionally invalid conviction, pursuant to which Rogers is now detained “in violation of the Constitution.” A defendant has the right to be tried according to the substantive and procedural due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. This means that a vital confession, such as is involved in this case, may go to the jury only if it is subjected to screening in accordance with correct constitutional standards. To the extent that in the trial of Rogers evidence was allowed to go to the jury on the basis of standards that departed from constitutional requirements, to that extent he was unconstitutionally tried and the conviction was vitiated by error of constitutional dimension.
It is not for this Court, any more than for a Federal District Court, in habeas corpus proceedings, to make an independent appraisal of the legal significance of facts gleaned from the record after such a conviction. We are barred from speculating — it would be an irrational process — about the weight attributed to the impermissible consideration of truth and falsity which, entering into the Connecticut trial court’s deliberations concerning the admissibility of the confessions, may well have distorted, by putting in improper perspective, even its findings of historical fact. Any consideration of this “reliability” element was constitutionally precluded, precisely because the force which it carried with the trial judge cannot be known.
As a matter of abstract logic it is arguable that Rogers may not have been deprived of a constitutional right, nor held in custody in violation of the Constitution, within 28 U. S. C. § 2241 (c)(3), solely because the Connecticut trial court applied an impermissible constitutional standard in admitting his confession — that Rogers was not so deprived, or so held, unless “in fact” his confession was coerced, a “fact” to be ascertained from the state record on direct review here, or de novo by a federal district judge in habeas corpus proceedings. Such a view ignores both the volatile and amorphous character of “fact” as fact is found by courts, and the distributive functions of the dual judicial system in our federalism for the finding of fact and the application of law to fact. In coerced confession cases coming directly to this Court from the highest court of a State in which review may be had, we look for “fact” to the undisputed, the uncontested evidence of record. See Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 50-52. This is all that we may look to, in the absence of detailed state-court findings of historical fact, because this Court cannot sit as a trial tribunal to hear and assess the credibility of witnesses. Of course, so-called facts and their constitutional significance may be so blended that they cannot be severed in consideration. And in any event, there must be a foundation in fact for the legal result. See Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U. S. 199. With due regard to these considerations, it would be manifestly unfair, and afford niggardly protection for federal constitutional rights, were we to sustain a state conviction in which the trial judge or trial jury — whichever is charged by state law with the duty of finding fact pertinent to a claim of coercion — passes upon that claim under an erroneous standard of constitutional law. In such a case, to look to the wholly undisputed evidence, in the event conflicting evidence is presented, would deprive the state criminal defendant of the benefit of whatever credit his testimony might have been given by the state judge or the state jury, had the judge or jury employed a proper legal standard. Nor, in a case where specific findings are made concerning the allegedly coercive circumstances, can those findings be fairly looked to for the “facts,” since findings of fact may often be (to what extent, in a particular case, cannot be known) influenced by what the finder is looking for. Historical facts “found” in the perspective framed by an erroneous legal standard cannot plausibly be expected to furnish the basis for correct conclusions if and merely because a correct standard is later applied to them.
Of course, where the issue of coercion is raised not on direct review in this Court but by petition for habeas corpus in a Federal District Court, one alternative method of proceeding impossible on direct review is available. The District Court might conceivably hold a hearing de novo on the issue of coercion. But such a procedure would neither adequately protect the federal rights of state criminal defendants nor duly take account of the large leeway which must be left to the States in their administration of their own criminal justice. A state defendant should have the opportunity to have all issues which may be determinative of his guilt tried by a state judge or a state jury under appropriate state procedures which conform to the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Where he has not had that opportunity he should not be required to establish in a Federal District Court, before a federal district judge who must consider the issue of the voluntariness of the confession in a certain abstraction from the whole, living complex of a criminal trial, and perhaps many years after the occurrence of the events surrounding the confession, facts establishing coercion. On the other hand, the State, too, has a weighty interest in having valid federal constitutional criteria applied in the administration of its criminal law by its own courts and juries. To require a federal judge exercising habeas corpus jurisdiction to attempt to combine within himself the proper functions of judge and jury in a state trial — to ask him to approximate the sympathies of the defendant’s peers or to make the rulings which the state trial judge might make, within the exercise of his discretion concerning the admission of evidence at the borderline of constitutional permissibility — is potentially to prejudice state defendants claiming federal rights and to pre-empt functions that belong to state machinery in the administration of state criminal law.
In view, therefore, of the constitutionally inadequate test applied by the Connecticut courts for determining whether the confessions were voluntarily given, we need not, on this record, consider whether the circumstances of the interrogation and the manner in which it was pressed barred admissibility of the confessions as a matter of federal law. In the case before us, the state trial court misconstrued the applicable law of the Constitution and was sustained in doing so by Connecticut’s Supreme Court. It was error for the court below to affirm the District Court’s denial of petitioner’s application for habeas corpus. The case is remanded, to the Court of Appeals to be held in order to give the State opportunity to retry petitioner, in light of this opinion, within a reasonable time. In default thereof the petitioner is to be discharged.
Reversed.
We find support for this conclusion in a line of Connecticut cases, some of which are cited by the Supreme Court of Errors in Rogers. See State v. Willis, 71 Conn. 293, 307-312, 41 A. 820, 824-826; State v. Cross, 72 Conn. 722, 727, 46 A. 148, 150; State v. DiBattista, 110 Conn. 549, 563, 148 A. 664, 669; State v. Palko, 121 Conn. 669, 680, 186 A. 657, 662; State v. Tomassi, 137 Conn. 113, 127-128, 75 A. 2d 67, 74; State v. Guastamachio, 137 Conn. 179, 182, 75 A. 2d 429, 431; State v. Lorain, 141 Conn. 694, 700, 109 A. 2d 504, 507. But see State v. Wakefield, 88 Conn. 164, 90 A. 230; State v. Castelli, 92 Conn. 58, 101 A. 476; State v. Zukauskas, 132 Conn. 450, 45 A. 2d 289; State v. Buteau, 136 Conn. 113, 68 A. 2d 681; State v. Malm, 142 Conn. 113, 111 A. 2d 685, containing no reference to a “truth-falsity” test. Connecticut case law regarding the admissibility of confessions allegedly secured under circumstances which render them involuntary, or by means of promises, “artifices,” “deception” or illegal police practices not amounting to coercion, is not free from uncertainty. We need not now endeavor to ascertain the extent to which, or the circumstances under which, Connecticut courts generally look to reliability as the criterion, alone or in conjunction with other criteria, of admissibility. If petitioner in the present case has been convicted through the use of a constitutionally impermissible standard, it is indifferent that Connecticut law, in its operation in other cases, may be unimpeachable. What that law does reveal of relevance here is that conceptions of probable truth or probable falsity have had and appear still to have a place in the reasoning of Connecticut judges in classes of cases having similarities to Rogers and relied on therein. Without meaning to consider the validity of such reasoning, under the Fourteenth Amendment, in any applications but the one now before us, we do derive from its currency in a continuing line of Connecticut decisions confirmation of our conclusion that the language of the trial judge and of the Supreme Court of Errors in the Rogers case is not the product of mere verbal inadvertence or unreflective phraseology, but an accurate embodiment of the mode of reasoning which led to holding that petitioner’s confessions were admissible as “voluntary.”
28 U. S. C. § 2241 (c)(3).
Determination of the admissibility of confessions is, of course, a matter of local procedure. But whether the question of admissibility is left to the jury or is determinable by the trial judge, it must be determined according to constitutional standards satisfying the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the question of admissibility is left to the jury, they must not be misdirected by wrong constitutional standards; if the question is decided by the trial judge, he must not misdirect himself.
A different question was implicitly presented in Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181. In that case the trial judge permitted the confessions to go to the jury under instructions which told it to disregard them if it found that they were not voluntarily made, and which adequately defined the “voluntariness” required by due process. See Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596, 601. Thus, there was no flaw in the verdict as rendered. An erroneous legal standard for determining the admissibility of allegedly coerced confessions was interjected into the proceeding only at the level of the Supreme Court of California. Had the State Supreme Court, under similar circumstances reversed the conviction, not on the basis of local law but solely by reason of a misinterpretation of this Court’s principles governing coerced confessions, and had the case been brought here for review on certiorari, the jury’s verdict would have had to be reinstated. In any event, the question presented in Stroble was not faced squarely, and in illuminating isolation, in that case. Compare Lee v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 742, with Stroble.
We do not deal in this case with a situation in which the record— taking all of petitioner’s evidence, and the inferences reasonably to be drawn from it, in the light most favorable to him — nevertheless fails to make out a claim of coercion. Since the issue of voluntariness might fairly have gone either way on the whole of the testimony, petitioner has clearly been prejudiced by the application of an-erroneous standard to his federal claim by the state trial judge in allowing the confessions to go to the jury.
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:
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A
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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.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Under 42 U. S. C. § 1988 (1982 ed.), a court may award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party in civil rights cases. We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals as to whether § 1988 invalidates contingent-fee contracts that would require a prevailing civil rights plaintiff to pay his attorney more than the statutory award against the defendant.
This dispute arises out of an action brought by petitioner Venegas under 42 U. S. C. §1983 (1982 ed.) in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that police officers of the city of Long Beach, California, falsely arrested Venegas and conspired to deny him a fair trial through the knowing presentation of perjured testimony. After an order of the District Court dismissing Venegas’ complaint as barred by the statute of limitations was reversed by the Court of Appeals, Venegas retained respondent Mitchell as his attorney. Venegas and Mitchell signed a contingent-fee contract providing that Mitchell would represent Venegas at trial for a fee of 40% of the gross amount of any recovery. The contract gave Mitchell “the right to apply for and collect any attorney fee award made by a court,” App. to Brief in Opposition 3a, prohibited Venegas from waiving Mitchell’s right to court-awarded attorney’s fees, and allowed Mitchell’s intervention to protect his interest in the the fee award. The contract also provided that any fee awarded by the court would be applied, dollar for dollar, to offset the contingent fee. The contract obligated Mitchell to provide his services for one trial only and stated that “[i]n the event there is a mistrial or an appeal, the parties may mutually agree upon terms and conditions of [Mitchell’s] employment, but are not obligated to do so.” Id., at la. Venegas subsequently consented to the association of co-counsel with the understanding that co-counsel would share any contingent fee equally with Mitchell.
Venegas obtained a judgment in his favor of $2.08 million. Mitchell then moved for attorney’s fees under § 1988, and on August 15, 1986, the District Court entered an order awarding Venegas $117,000 in attorney’s fees, of which $75,000 was attributable to work done by Mitchell. The District Court calculated the award for Mitchell’s work by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by the number of hours Mitchell expended on the case, and then doubling this lodestar figure to reflect Mitchell’s competent performance. App. to Pet. for Cert. 28a. Negotiations between attorney and client about the possibility of Mitchell’s representing Venegas on appeal broke down, and on September 14, 1986, Mitchell signed a stipulation withdrawing as counsel of record. Venegas obtained different counsel for the appeal.
Mitchell then filed a motion for leave to intervene, which requested that the District Court confirm a lien on the judgment for the fees purportedly due him under the contingent-fee contract in the amount of $406,000. The District Court held that Mitchell had not established his entitlement either to intervention as of right under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) or to permissive intervention under Rule 24(b)(2), primarily because the court could discern no connection between Mitchell’s asserted rights under the fee contract and the substance of Venegas’ civil rights action. App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a. The court went on to state its view, however, that the contract did not expressly provide for a lien and declined to decide whether the contract gave rise to an implied equitable lien on Venegas’ recovery because the judgment had been stayed pending appeal. The court remarked that Mitchell could bring an action in state court to establish his lien, if and when the judgment for Venegas became final. Id., at 26a. The District Court refused to disallow or reduce the contingent fee claimed by Mitchell, holding that in this case the fee contracted for was reasonable and not a windfall for the attorney. Id., at 27a-29a.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the District Court had erred in denying Mitchell permissive intervention, 867 F. 2d 527, 531 (1989), but agreed, contrary to Venegas’ submission, that § 1988 does not prevent the lawyer from collecting a reasonable fee provided for in a contingent-fee contract even if it exceeds the statutory award, id., at 533. The Court of Appeals also agreed with the District Court that the fee provided for by the contract in this case was reasonable and not a mere windfall to Mitchell. Because the judgment in Venegas’ favor had by that time been affirmed, the court remanded to the District Court to act on the merits of Mitchell’s motion to confirm a lien on the recovery. We granted certiorari, 493 U. S. 806 (1989).
II ► — I
Section 1988 states in pertinent part that [i]n any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981,1982,1983, 1985, and 1986 of this title, . . . the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.” The section by its terms authorized the trial court in this case to order the defendants to pay to Venegas, the prevailing party, a reasonable attorney’s fee. The aim of the section, as our cases have explained, is to enable civil rights plaintiffs to employ reasonably competent lawyers without cost to themselves if they prevail. It is likely that in many, if not most, cases a lawyer will undertake a civil rights case on the express or implied promise of the plaintiff to pay the lawyer the statutory award, i. e., a reasonable fee, if the case is won. But there is nothing in the section to regulate what plaintiffs may or may not promise to pay their attorneys if they lose or if they win. Certainly § 1988 does not on its face prevent the plaintiff from promising an attorney a percentage of any money judgment that may be recovered. Nor has Venegas pointed to anything in the legislative history that persuades us that Congress intended § 1988 to limit civil rights plaintiffs’ freedom to contract with their attorneys.
It is true that in construing §1988, we have generally turned away from the contingent-fee model to the lodestar model of hours reasonably expended compensated at reasonable rates. See Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U. S. 87, 94 (1989); Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, 478 U. S. 546, 564 (1986) (Delaware Valley I); Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U. S. 561, 574 (1986) (plurality opinion); Blum v. Stenson, 465 U. S. 886, 897 (1984). We may also assume for the purposes of deciding this case that § 1988 would not have authorized the District Court to enhance the statutory award upward from the lodestar figure based on the contingency of nonrecovery in this particular litigation. See Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, 483 U. S. 711, 726 (1987) (plurality opinion) (Delaware Valley II); id., at 731 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). But it is a mighty leap from these propositions to the conclusion that § 1988 also requires the District Court to invalidate a contingent-fee agreement arrived at privately between attorney and client. We have never held that §1988 constrains the freedom of the civil rights plaintiff to become contractually and personally bound to pay an attorney a percentage of the recovery, if any, even though such a fee is larger than the statutory fee that the defendant must pay to the plaintiff.
Indeed, our cases look the other way. Section 1988 makes the prevailing party eligible for a discretionary award of attorney’s fees. Evans v. Jeff D., 475 U. S. 717, 730 (1986). Because it is the party, rather than the lawyer, who is so eligible, we have consistently maintained that fees may be awarded under § 1988 even to those plaintiffs who did not need them to maintain their litigation, either because they were fortunate enough to be able to retain counsel on a fee-paying basis, Blanchard v. Bergeron, supra, at 94-95, or because they were represented free of charge by nonprofit legal aid organizations, Blum v. Stenson, supra, at 894-895. We have therefore accepted, at least implicitly, that statutory awards of fees can coexist with private fee arrangements. See also Delaware Valley II, 483 U. S., at 726 (plurality opinion); id., at 749 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). And just as we have recognized that it is the party’s entitlement to receive the fees in the appropriate case, so have we recognized that as far as § 1988 is concerned, it is the party’s right to waive, settle, or negotiate that eligibility. See Evans v. Jeff D., supra, at 730-731.
Much the same is true of the substance of a money judgment recovered under § 1983 (exclusive of fees awarded under § 1988), of which the contingent fee in this case is a part. A cause of action under § 1983 belongs “to the injured individual!],” Newton v. Rumery, 480 U. S. 386, 395 (1987) (plurality opinion), and in at least some circumstances that individual’s voluntary waiver of a § 1983 cause of action may be valid. Id., at 398 (plurality opinion); id., at 403 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). If §1983 plaintiffs may waive their causes of action entirely, there is little reason to believe that they may not assign part of their recovery to an attorney if they believe that the contingency arrangement will increase their likelihood of recovery. A contrary decision would place § 1983 plaintiffs in the peculiar position of being freer to negotiate with their adversaries than with their own attorneys.
Relying heavily on Blanchard v. Bergeron, supra, Venegas argues that if a contingent-fee agreement does not impose a ceiling on the amount of a “court awarded fee which would go to the attorney” (as he understands the holding of Blanchard, see Brief for Petitioner 9), such a fee agreement should also be ignored for the benefit of the client so that he need pay only the statutory award. There are two difficulties with this argument. First, Blanchard did not address contractual obligations of plaintiffs to their attorneys; it dealt only with what the losing defendant must pay the plaintiff, whatever might be the substance of the contract between the plaintiff and the attorney. Second, we have already rejected the argument that the entitlement to a § 1988 award belongs to the attorney rather than the plaintiff. See Evans v. Jeff D., supra, at 731-732.
Venegas also argues that because Congress provided for a reasonable fee to be paid by the defendant so that “a plaintiff’s recovery will not be reduced by what he must pay his counsel,” Blanchard, 489 U. S., at 94, the plaintiff should be protected from paying the attorney any more than the reasonable fee awarded by the trial court. Otherwise, Venegas contends, paying the contingent fee in full would greatly reduce his recovery and would impose a cost on him for enforcing the civil rights laws, a cost that the defendant should pay. This argument, too, is wide of the mark. Blanchard also noted that “[plaintiffs who can afford to hire their own lawyers, as well as impecunious litigants, may take advantage” of § 1988. Ibid. Civil rights plaintiffs, if they prevail, will be entitled to an attorney’s fee that Congress anticipated would enable them to secure reasonably competent counsel. If they take advantage of the system as Congress established it, they will avoid having their recovery reduced by contingent-fee agreements. But neither Blanchard nor any other of our cases has indicated that § 1988, by its own force, protects plaintiffs from having to pay what they have contracted to pay, even though their contractual liability is greater than the statutory award that they may collect from losing opponents. Indeed, depriving plaintiffs of the option of promising to pay more than the statutory fee if that is necessary to secure counsel of their choice would not further § 1988’s general purpose of enabling such plaintiffs in civil rights cases to secure competent counsel.
In sum, §1988 controls what the losing defendant must pay, not what the prevailing plaintiff must pay his lawyer. What a plaintiff may be bound to pay and what an attorney is free to collect under a fee agreement are not necessarily measured by the “reasonable attorney’s fee” that a defendant must pay pursuant to a court order. Section 1988 itself does not interfere with the enforceability of a contingent-fee contract.
Venegas also argues that even if contingent fees exceeding statutory awards are not prohibited per se by § 1988, nonetheless the contingent fee in this case is unreasonable under federal and state law. Venegas made this contention to both lower courts, and both courts rejected it. We find no reason in the record or briefs to disturb their conclusion on this issue. We therefore have no occasion to address the extent of the federal courts’ authority to supervise contingent fees.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
The Third, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits have held that civil rights plaintiffs may be required to pay their attorneys contingent fees exceeding a statutory award made under § 1988. Sullivan v. Crown Paper Board Co., 719 F. 2d 667, 669-670 (CA3 1983); Wilmington v. J. I. Case Co., 793 F. 2d 909, 923 (CA8 1986); Venegas v. Skaggs, 867 F. 2d 527 (CA9 1989), The Tenth Circuit has held that a § 1988 award places a ceiling on an attorney’s permissible recovery under a contingent-fee agreement. Cooper v. Singer, 719 F. 2d 1496 (1983) (in banc).
Venegas v. Wagner, 704 F. 2d 1144 (CA9 1983).
Venegas v. Skaggs, No. CV 77-4047-RJK (CD Cal., Aug. 14, 1986), pp. 5-7.
The Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed the judgment. Venegas v. Wagner, 831 F. 2d 1514 (CA9 1987).
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:
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F
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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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioners were indicted in the United States District Court in Oregon for the offense of intercepting and divulging telephone communications and of conspiracy to do so. 47 U. S. C. §§ 501, 605; 18 U. S. C. § 371. Before trial the petitioners made a motion to suppress as evidence several tape and wire recordings and a recording machine, which had originally been seized by state law enforcement officers in the home of petitioner Clark under circumstances which, two Oregon courts had found, had rendered the search and seizure unlawful. At the hearing on the motion the district judge assumed without deciding that the articles had been obtained as the result of an unreasonable search and seizure, but denied the motion to suppress because there was no evidence that any “agent of the United States had any knowledge or information or suspicion of any kind that this search was being contemplated or was eventually made by the State officers until they read about it in the newspaper.” At the trial the articles in question were admitted in evidence against the petitioners, and they were convicted.
The convictions were affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 266 F. 2d 588. That court agreed with the district judge that it was unnecessary to determine whether or not the original state search and seizure had been lawful, because there had been no participation by federal officers. “Hence the unlawfulness of the State search and seizure, if indeed they were unlawful, did not entitle defendants to an order of the.District Court suppressing the property seized.” 266 F. 2d, at 594.
We granted certiorari, 361 U. S. 810, to consider a question of importance in the administration of federal justice. The question is this: May articles obtained as the result of an unreasonable search and seizure by state officers, without involvement of federal officers, be introduced in evidence against a defendant over his timely objection in a federal criminal trial? In a word, we re-examine here the validity of what has come to be called the silver platter doctrine. For the reasons that follow we conclude that this doctrine can no longer be accepted.
To put the issue in historic perspective, the appropriate starting point must be Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, decided in 1914. It was there that the Court established the rule which excludes in a federal criminal prosecution evidence obtained by federal agents in violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. The foundation for that decision was set out in forthright words:
“The effect of the Fourth Amendment is to put the courts of the United States and Federal officials, in the exercise of their power and authority, under limitations and restraints as to the exercise of such power and authority, and to forever secure the people, their persons, houses, papers and effects against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law. This protection reaches all alike, whether accused of crime or not, and the duty of giving to it force and effect is obligatory upon all entrusted under our Federal system with the enforcement of the laws. The tendency of those who execute the criminal laws of the country to obtain conviction by means of unlawful seizures and enforced confessions, the latter often obtained after subjecting accused persons to unwarranted practices destructive of rights secured by the Federal Constitution, should find no sanction in the judgments of the courts which are charged at all times with the support of the Constitution and to which people of all conditions have a right to appeal for the maintenance of such fundamental rights.
“... If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense, the protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution. The efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land.” 232 U. S. 383, 391-393.
To the exclusionary rule of Weeks v. United States there has been unquestioning adherence for now almost half a century. See Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298; Amos v. United States, 255 U. S. 313; Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20; Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344; Grau v. United States, 287 U. S. 124; McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48.
But the Weeks case also announced, unobtrusively but nonetheless definitely, another evidentiary rule. Some of the articles used as evidence against Weeks had been unlawfully seized by local police officers acting on their own account. The Court held that the admission of this evidence was not error for the reason that “the Fourth Amendment is not directed to individual misconduct of such officials. Its limitations reach the Federal Government and its agencies.” 232 U. S., at 398. Despité the limited discussion of this second ruling in the Weeks opinion, the right of the prosecutor in a federal criminal trial to avail himself of evidence unlawfully seized by state officers apparently went unquestioned for the next thirty-five years. See, e. g., Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28, 33; Feldman v. United States, 322 U. S. 487, 492.
That such a rule would engender practical difficulties in an era of expanding federal criminal jurisdiction could not, perhaps, have been foreseen. In any event the difficulties soon appeared. They arose from the entirely commendable practice of state and federal agents to cooperate with each other in the investigation and detection of criminal activity. When in a federal criminal prosecution evidence which had been illegally seized by state officers was sought to be introduced, the question inevitably arose whether there had been such participation by federal agents in the search and seizure as to make applicable the exclusionary rule of Weeks. See Flagg v. United States, 233 Fed. 481, 483; United States v. Slusser, 270 Fed. 818, 820; United States v. Falloco, 277 Fed. 75, 82; Legman v. United States, 295 Fed. 474, 476-478; Marron v. United States, 8 F. 2d 251, 259; United States v. Brown, 8 F. 2d 630, 631.
This Court first came to grips with the problem in Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28. There it was held that when the participation of the federal agent in the search was “under color of his federal office” and the search “in substance and effect was a joint operation of the local and federal officers,” then the evidence.must be excluded, because “the effect is the same as though [the federal agent] had engaged in the undertaking as one exclusively his own.” 273 U. S., at 33. In Gambino v. United States, 275 U. S. 310, the Court went further. There state officers had seized liquor from the defendants’ automobile after an unlawful search in which no federal officers had participated. The liquor was admitted in evidence against the defendants in their subsequent federal trial for violation of the National Prohibition Act. This Court reversed the judgments of conviction, holding that the illegally seized evidence should have been excluded. Pointing out that there was “no suggestion that the defendants were committing, at the time of the arrest, search and seizure, any state offense; or that they had done so in the past; or that the [state] troopers believed that they had,” the Court found that “[t]he wrongful arrest, search and seizure were made solely on behalf of the United States.” 275 U. S., at 314, 316.
Despite these decisions, or perhaps because of them, cases kept arising in which the federal courts were faced with determining whether there had been such participation by federal officers in a lawless state search as to make inadmissible in evidence that which had been seized. And it is fair to say that in their approach to this recurring question, no less than in their disposition of concrete cases, the federal courts did not find themselves in complete harmony, nor even internally self-consistent. No less difficulty was experienced by the courts in determining whether, even in the absence of actual participation by federal agents, the state officers’ illegal search and seizure had nevertheless been made “solely on behalf of the United States.”
But difficult and unpredictable as may have been their application to concrete cases, the controlling principles seemed clear up to 1949. Evidence which had been seized by federal officers in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be used in a federal criminal prosecution. Evidence which had been obtained by state agents in an unreasonable search and seizure was admissible, because, as Weeks had pointed out, the Fourth Amendment was not “directed to” the “misconduct of such officials.” But if federal agents had participated in an unreasonable search and seizure by state officers, or if the state officers had acted solely on behalf of the United States, the evidence was not admissible in a federal prosecution.
Then came Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25. With the ultimate determination in Wolf — that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not itself require state courts to adopt the exclusionary rule with respect to evidence illegally seized by state agents — we are not here directly concerned. But nothing could be of greater relevance to the present inquiry than the underlying constitutional doctrine which Wolf established. For there it was unequivocally determined by a unanimous Court that the Federal Constitution, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by state officers. “The security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police... is... implicit in ‘the concept of ordered liberty’ and as such enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause.” 338 U. S. 25, 27-28. The Court has subsequently found frequent occasion to reiterate this statement from Wolf. See Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U. S. 117, 119; Irvine v. California, 347 U. S. 128, 132; Frank v. Maryland, 359 U. S. 360, 362-363.
The foundation upon which the admissibility of state-seized evidence in a federal trial originally rested — that unreasonable state searches did not violate the Federal Constitution — thus disappeared in 1949. This removal of the doctrinal underpinning for the admissibility rule has apparently escaped the attention of most of the federal courts, which have continued to approve the admission of evidence illegally seized by state officers without so much as even discussing the impact of Wolf. Only two of the courts of appeals which have adhered to the admissibility rule appear to have recognized that Wolf casts doubt upon its continuing validity. Jones v. United States, 217 F. 2d 381 (C. A. 8th Cir.); United States v. Benanti, 244 F. 2d 389 (C. A. 2d Cir.), reversed on other grounds, 355 U. S. 96. Cf. Kendall v. United States, 272 F. 2d 163, 165 (C. A. 5th Cir.). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has been alone in squarely holding “that the Weeks and the Wolf decisions, considered together, make all evidence obtained by unconstitutional search and seizure unacceptable in federal courts.” Hanna v. United States, 104 U. S. App. D. C. 205, 209, 260 F. 2d 723, 727.
Yet this Court’s awareness that the constitutional doctrine of Wolf operated to undermine the logical foundation of the Weeks admissibility rule has been manifest from the very day that Wolf was decided. In Lustig v. United States, 338 U. S. 74, decided that day, the prevailing opinion carefully left open the question of the continuing validity of the admissibility rule. “Where there is participation on the part of federal officers,” the opinion said, “it is not necessary to consider what would be the result if the search had been conducted entirely by State officers.” 338 U. S., at 79. And in Benanti v. United States, 355 U. S. 96, the Court was at pains to point out that “[i]t has remained an open question in this Court whether evidence obtained solely by state agents in an illegal search may be admissible in federal court....” 355 U. S., at 102, note 10. There the question has stood for 11 years.
If resolution of the issue were to be dictated solely by principles of logic, it is clear what our decision would have to be. For surely no distinction can logically be drawn between evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment and that obtained in violation of the Fourteenth. The Constitution is flouted equally in either case. To the victim it matters not whether his constitutional right has been invaded by a federal agent or by a state officer. It would be a curiously ambivalent rule that would require the courts of the United States to differentiate between unconstitutionally seized evidence upon so arbitrary a basis. Such a distinction indeed would appear to reflect an indefensibly selective evaluation of the provisions of the Constitution. Moreover, it would seem logically impossible to justify a policy that would bar from a federal trial what state officers had obtained in violation of a federal statute, yet would admit that which they had seized in violation of the Constitu-tionffitself. Cf. Benanti v. United States, 355 U. S. 96.
Mere logical symmetry and abstract reasoning are perhaps not enough, however, to support a doctrine that would exclude relevant evidence from the trial of a federal criminal case. It is true that there is not involved here an absolute or qualified testimonial privilege such as that accorded a spouse, a patient, or a penitent, which irrevocably bars otherwise admissible evidence because of the status of the witness or his relationship to the defendant. Cf. Hawkins v. United States, 358 U. S. 74. A rule which would exclude evidence if, and only if, government officials in a particular case had chosen to engage in unlawful conduct is of a different order. Yet, any apparent limitation upon the process of discovering truth in a federal trial ought to be imposed only upon the basis of considerations which outweigh the general need for untrammeled disclosure. of competent and relevant evidence in a court of justice.
What is here invoked is the Court’s supervisory power over the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts, under which the Court has “from the very beginning -of its history, formulated rules of evidence to be applied in federal criminal prosecutions.” McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 341. In devising such evi-dentiary rules, we are to be governed by “principles of the common law as they may be interpreted... in the light of reason and experience.” Rule 26, Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. Determination of the issue before us must ultimately depend, therefore, upon evaluation of the exclusionary rule itself in the context here presented.
The exclusionary rule has for decades been the subject of ardent controversy. The arguments of its antagonists and of its proponents have been so many times marshalled as to require no lengthy elaboration here. Most of what has been said in opposition to the rule was distilled in a single Cardozo sentence — “The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore, 242 N. Y. 13, 21, 150 N. E. 585, 587. The same point was made at somewhat greater length in the often quoted words of Professor Wigmore: “Titus, you have been found guilty of conducting a lottery; Flavius, you have confessedly violated the constitution. Titus ought to suffer imprisonment for crime, and Flavius for contempt. But no! We shall let you both go free. We shall not punish Flavius directly, but shall do so by reversing Titus’ conviction. This is our way of teaching people like Flavius to behave, and of teaching people like Titus to behave, and incidentally of securing respect for the Constitution. Our way of upholding the Constitution is not to strike at the man who breaks it, but to let off somebody else who broke something else.” 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940), § 2184.
Yet, however felicitous their phrasing, these objections hardly answer the basic postulate of the exclusionary rule itself. The rule is calculated to prevent, not to repair. Its purpose is to deter — to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only effectively available way— by removing the incentive to disregard it. See Eleuteri v. Rickman, 26 N. J. 506, 513, 141 A. 2d 46, 50. Mr. Justice Jackson summed it up well:
“Only occasional and more flagrant abuses come to the attention of the courts, and then only those where the search and seizure yields incriminating evidence and the defendant is at least sufficiently compromised to be indicted. If the officers raid a home, an office, or stop and search an automobile but find nothing incriminating, this invasion of the personal liberty of the innocent too often finds no practical redress. There may be, and I am convinced that there are, many unlawful searches of homes and automobiles of innocent people which turn up nothing incriminating, in which no arrest is made, about which courts do nothing, and about which we never hear.
“Courts can protect the innocent against such invasions only indirectly and through the medium of excluding evidence obtained against those who frequently are guilty.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 181 (dissenting opinion).
Empirical statistics are not available to show that the inhabitants of states which follow the exclusionary rule suffer less from lawless searches and seizures than do those of states which admit evidence unlawfully obtained. Since as a practical matter it is never easy to prove a negative, it is hardly likely that conclusive factual data could ever be assembled. For much the same reason, it cannot positively be demonstrated that enforcement of the criminal law is either more or less effective under either rule.
But pragmatic evidence of a sort is not wanting. The federal courts themselves have operated under the exclusionary rule of Weeks for almost half a century; yet it has not been suggested either that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has thereby been rendered ineffective, or that the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts has thereby been disrupted. Moreover, the experience of the states is impressive. Not more than half the states continue totally to adhere to the rule that evidence is freely admissible no matter how it was obtained. Most of the others have adopted the exclusionary rule in its entirety; the rest have adopted it in part. The movement towards the rule of exclusion has been halting but seemingly inexorable. Since the Wolf decision one state has switched its position in that direction by legislation, and two others by judicial decision. Another state, uncommitted until 1955, in that year adopted the rule of exclusion. Significantly, most of the exclusionary states which have had to consider the issue have held that evidence obtained by federal officers in a search and seizure unlawful under the Fourth Amendment must be suppressed in a prosecution in the state courts. State v. Arregui, 44 Idaho 43, 254 P. 788; Walters v. Commonwealth, 199 Ky. 182, 250 S. W. 839; Little v. State, 171 Miss. 818, 159 So. 103; State v. Rebasti, 306 Mo. 336, 267 S. W. 858; State v. Hiteshew, 42 Wyo. 147, 292 P. 2; see Ramirez v. State, 123 Tex. Cr. R. 254, 58 S. W. 2d 829. Compare Rea v. United States, 350 U. S. 214.
The experience in California has been most illuminating. In 1955 the Supreme Court of that State resolutely turned its back on many years of precedent and adopted the exclusionary rule. People v. Cahan, 44 Cal. 2d 434, 282 P. 2d 905. “We have been compelled to reach that conclusion because other remedies have completely failed to secure compliance with the constitutional provisions on the part of police officers with the attendant result that the courts under the ■ old rule have been constantly required to participate in, and in effect condone, the lawless activities of law enforcement officers.... Experience has demonstrated, however, that neither administrative, criminal nor civil remedies are effective in suppressing lawless searches and seizures. The innocent suffer with the guilty, and we cannot close our eyes to the effect the rule we adopt will have on the rights of those not before the court.” 44 Cal. 2d 434, at 445, 447, 282 P. 2d 905, at 911-912, 913.
The ■ chief law enforcement officer of California was quoted as having made this practical evaluation of the Cahan decision less than two years later:
“The over-all effects of the Cahan decision, particularly in view of the rules now worked out by the Supreme Court, have been excellent. A much greater education, is called for on the part of all peace officers of California. As a result, I am confident they will be much better police officers. I think there is more cooperation with the District Attorneys and this will make for better administration of criminal justice.”
Impressive as is this experience of individual states, even more is to be said for adoption of the exclusionary rule in the particular context here presented — a context which brings into focus considerations of federalism. The very essence of a healthy federalism depends upon the avoidance of needless conflict between state and federal courts. Yet when a federal court sitting in an exclusionary state admits evidence lawlessly seized by state agents, it not only frustrates state policy, but frustrates that policy in a particularly inappropriate and ironic way. For by admitting the unlawfully seized evidence the federal court serves to defeat the state’s effort to assure obedience to the Federal Constitution. In states which have not adopted the exclusionary rule, on the other hand, it would work no conflict with local policy for a federal court to decline to receive evidence unlawfully seized by state officers. The question with which we deal today affects not at all the freedom of the states to develop and apply their own sanctions in their own way. Cf. Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25.
Free and open cooperation between state and federal law enforcement officers is to be commended and encouraged. Yet that kind of cooperation is hardly promoted by a rule that implicitly invites federal officers to withdraw from such association and at least tacitly to ericour-age state officers in the disregard of constitutionally protected freedom. If, on the other hand, it is understood that the fruit of an unlawful search by state agents will be inadmissible in a federal trial, there can be no inducement to subterfuge and evasion with respect to federal-state cooperation in criminal investigation. Instead, forthright cooperation under constitutional standards will be promoted and fostered.
It must always be remembered that what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures. Without pausing to analyze individual decisions, it can fairly be said that in applying the Fourth Amendment this Court has seldom shown itself unaware of the practical demands of effective criminal investigation and law enforcement. Indeed, there are those who think that some of the Court’s decisions have tipped the balance too heavily against the protection of that individual privacy which it was the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to guarantee. See Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145, 155, 183, 195 (dissenting opinions); United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 66, 68 (dissenting opinions). In any event, while individual cases have sometimes evoked “fluctuating differences of view,” Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217, 235, it can hardly be said that in the over-all pattern of Fourth Amendment decisions this Court has been either unrealistic or visionary.
These, then, are the considerations of reason and experience which point to the rejection of a doctrine that would freely admit in a federal criminal trial evidence seized by state agents in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights. But there is another consideration— the imperative of judicial integrity. It was of this that Mr. Justice Holmes and Mr. Justice Brandéis so eloquently spoke in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, at 469, 471, more than 30 years ago. “For those who agree with me,” said Mr. Justice Holmes, “no distinction can be taken between the Government as prosecutor and the Government as judge.” 277 U. S., at 470. (Dissenting opinion.) “In a government of laws,” said Mr. Justice Brandéis, “existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face.” 277 U. S., at 485. (Dissenting opinion.)
This basic principle was accepted by the Court in McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332. There it was held that “a conviction resting on evidence secured through such a flagrant disregard of the procedure which Congress has commanded cannot be allowed to stand without making the courts themselves accomplices in willful disobedience of law.” 318 U. S., at 345. Even less should the federal courts be accomplices in the willful disobedience of a Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
For these reasons we hold that evidence obtained by state officers during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant’s immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible over the defendant’s timely objection in a federal criminal trial. In determining whether there has been an unreasonable search and seizure by state officers, a federal court must make an independent inquiry, whether or not there has been such an inquiry by a state court, and irrespective of how any such inquiry may have turned out. The test is one of federal law, neither enlarged by what one state court may have countenanced, nor diminished by what another may have colorably suppressed.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is set aside, and the case is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Vacated and remanded.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
Table I. — Admissibility, in state courts, of evidence illegally seized by state officers.
State Pre-Weeks Pre-Wolf Post-Wolf
Alabama_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Partially
excludable
Arizona_ _ Admissible_ Admissible
Arkansas_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
California_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Excludable
Colorado_ _ Admissible_ Admissible
Connecticut_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Delaware_ _ Admissible_ Excludable
Florida_ _ Excludable_ Excludable
Georgia_■_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Idaho_ Admissible_ Excludable_ Excludable
Illinois_ Admissible.-. Excludable_ Excludable
Indiana_ _ Excludable_ Excludable
Iowa_ Excludable... Admissible_ Admissible
Kansas_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Kentucky_ _ Excludable_ Excludable
Louisiana_ _ Admissible... Admissible
Maine_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Maryland_ Admissible_ Partially Partially excludable excludable
Massachusetts_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Table I. — Admissibility, in state courts, of evidence illegally seized by state officers — Continued.
State Pre-Weeks Pre-Wolf Post-Wolf
Michigan_ Admissible_ Excludable_ Partially. excludable
Minnesota- Admissible. __ Admissible... Admissible
Mississippi_ _ Excludable_ Excludable
Missouri- Admissible_ Excludable... Excludable
Montana- Admissible_ Excludable_ Excludable
Nebraska- Admissible... Admissible_ Admissible
Nevada- - Admissible_ Admissible
New Hampshire_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
New Jersey_ _ Admissible_ Admissible
New Mexico_ _- Admissible_ Admissible
New York- Admissible... Admissible_ Admissible
North Carolina_ Admissible_ Admissible_ Excludable
North Dakota_ _ Admissible_ Admissible
Ohio- - Admissible_ Admissible
Oklahoma_ Admissible_ Excludable_ Excludable
Oregon- Admissible_ Excludable_ Excludable
Pennsylvania_ _ Admissible... Admissible
Rhode Island_ _ _ Excludable
South Carolina- Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
South Dakota_ Admissible. __ Excludable_ Partially excludable
Tennessee_... Admissible_ Excludable... Excludable
Texas- - Excludable_ Excludable
Utah- - Admissible_ Admissible
Vermont- Admissible_ Admissible_ Admissible
Virginia_ _ Admissible_ Admissible
Washington- Admissible... Excludable... Excludable
West Virginia_ Admissible_ Excludable_ Excludable
Wisconsin_ _ Excludable_ Excludable
Wyoming_ _ Excludable... Excludable
To admit — 27 To admit — 29 To admit — 24
To exclude — 1 To exclude— To exclude—
18. 26
Undecided— Undecided— Undecided—
20. 1. 0.
Table II. — Representative cases by state, considering the admissibility of evidence illegally seized by state officers.
Alabama
Pre-Weeks: Shields v. State, 104 Ala. 35, 16 So. 85 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: Banks v. State, 207 Ala. 179, 93 So. 293 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: Cf. Oldham v. State, 259 Ala. 507, 67 So. 2d 55 (admissible).
(Ala. Code, 1940 (Supp. 1955), Tit. 29, § 210, requires the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence in the trial of certain alcohol control cases.)
Arizona
Pre-Weeks: no holding.
Pre-Wolf: Argetakis v. State, 24 Ariz. 599, 212 P. 372 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: State v. Thomas, 78 Ariz. 52, 275 P. 2d 408 (admissible).
Arkansas
Pre-Weeks: Starchman v. State, 62 Ark. 538, 36 S. W. 940 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: Benson v. State, 149 Ark. 633, 233 S. W. 758 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: Lane, Smith & Barg v. State, 217 Ark. 114, 229 S. W. 2d 43 (admissible).
California
Pre-Weeks: People v. Le Doux, 155 Cal. 535, 102 P. 517 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: People v. Mayen, 188 Cal. 237, 205 P. 435 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: People v. Cahan, 44 Cal. 2d 434, 282 P. 2d 905 (excludable).
Colorado
Pre-Weeks: no holding.
Pre-Wolf: Massantonio v. People, 77 Colo. 392, 236 P. 1019 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: Williams v. People, 136 Colo. 164, 315 P. 2d 189 (admissible).
Connecticut
Pre-Weeks: State v. Griswold, 67 Conn. 290, 34 A. 1046 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: State v. Reynolds, 101 Conn. 224, 125 A. 636 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: no holding.
Delaware
Pre-Weeks: no holding.
Pre-Wolf: State v. Chuchola, 32 Del. 133, 120 A. 212 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: Rickards v. State, 45 Del. 573, 77 A. 2d 199 (excludable).
Florida
Pre-Weeks: no holding.
Pre-Wolf: Atz v. Andrews, 84 Fla. 43, 94 So. 329 (excludable).
Post-Wolf: Byrd v. State, 80 So. 2d 694 (Sup. Ct. Florida) (excludable).
Georgia
Pre-Weeks: Williams v. State, 100 Ga. 511, 28 S. E. 624 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: Jackson v. State, 156 Ga. 647, 119 S. E. 525 (admissible).
Post-Wolf: Atterberry v. State, 212 Ga. 778, 95 S. E. 2d 787 (admissible).
Idaho
Pre-Weeks: State v. Bond, 12 Idaho 424, 86 P. 43 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: State v. Arregui, 44 Idaho 43, 254 P. 788 (excludable.)
Post-Wolf: no holding.
Illinois
Pre-Weeks: Siebert v. People, 143 Ill. 571, 32 N. E. 431 (admissible).
Pre-Wolf: People v. Castree, 311 Ill. 392, 143 N. E. 112 (excludable).
Post-Wolf: City of Chicago v. Lord, 7 Ill. 2d 379, 130 N. E. 2d 504 (excludable).
Indiana
Pre-Weeks: no holding.
Pre-Wolf: Flum v. State, 193 Ind. 585, 141 N. E. 353 (excludable).
Post-Wolf: Rohlfing v. State, 230 Ind. 236, 102 N. E. 2d 199 (excludable).
Iowa
Pre-Weeks: State v. Sheridan, 121 Iowa 164, 96 N. W. 730 (excludable).
Pre-Wolf: State v. Rowley, 197 Iowa 977, 195 N. W. 881 (admissible)
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:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Per Curiam.
We granted a writ of certiorari, 449 U. S. 951 (1980), to review a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, holding that California’s “transfer-of-assets” statute applicable to “medically needy” recipients of Medicaid benefits does not conflict with governing federal law. Dawson v. Myers, 622 F. 2d 1304 (1980). Petitioner is an individual considered “medically needy” under California’s Medicaid plan, who represents the class of all such persons who have been denied Medicaid benefits because of previous transfers of assets for less than full consideration. She argues that this exclusion is impermissible because it is based on a rule applicable only to “medically needy” recipients, and could not apply under federal law to “categorically needy” recipients.
After our grant of certiorari on November 3, 1980, Congress passed § 5 of Pub. L. 96-611, 94 Stat. 3567 (Dec. 28, 1980) (the “Boren-Long Amendment”), which made material changes in the law in this area. This section creates a presumption that assets disposed of for less than full consideration within the preceding 24 months should be included in the resources of an applicant for SSI benefits. The applicant can overcome this presumption with “convincing evidence to establish that the transaction was exclusively for some . . . purpose” other than establishing eligibility. § 5 (a) (amending § 1613 of the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1382b). This section goes on to allow state Medicaid plans to apply similar rules to Medicaid recipients — including both the categorically needy and the medically needy. Pub. L. 96-611, § 5 (b), 94 Stat. 3568 (amending § 1902 of the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1396a). It states that if the state plan includes a transfer-of-assets rule, it shall specify a procedure for implementing the denial of benefits “which, except as provided in paragraph (2), is not more restrictive than the procedure specified” for SSI. Paragraph (2) provides that where the uncompensated value of the disposed-of resources exceeds $12,000, the States may impose a period of ineligibility exceeding 24 months, as long as this period bears “a reasonable relationship to such uncompensated value.”
In sum, it would appear that in the future the States will be permitted to impose transfer-of-assets restrictions generally similar to that of California. This change will take effect on July 1, 1981, Pub. L. 96-611, § 2, 94 Stat. 3567 — a matter of weeks from now. This raises the question whether it is appropriate for the Court to decide the merits of the underlying dispute as considered by the Court of Appeals.
We have determined that the change caused by the recent statutory amendment requires reconsideration of the decision below by the Court of Appeals. Because of the statutory change, the federal standards governing state plans with respect to transfer-of-asset rules have been altered significantly. Although it is fair to say that Congress generally endorsed rules like California’s, the detailed provisions recently enacted may require some changes in the California rule. We note in particular that California seems to include the residence of the claimant among the assets that may not be given away without a corresponding loss in Medicaid coverage. Under the Boren-Long Amendment, however, arguably such an asset must be excluded. Petitioner should have the opportunity to argue the validity of the California law under the new federal law — an issue that was not addressed by the parties in this Court.
We vacate the decision below, and remand this case to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration of its decision in light of the recent statutory change.
It is so ordered.
“Medically needy” persons are included in the categories of Medicaid recipients — aged, blind, disabled, or dependent children — which are derived from Social Security welfare programs. They have income levels, however, that are too high to qualify for regular income assistance under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs, and for this reason are distinguished from “categorically needy” recipients. 42 CFR §435.4 (1980).
The California rule is set out in Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code Ann. § 14015 (West 1980). This statute provides in part:
“[A]ny transfer of the holdings by gift or, knowingly, without adequate and reasonable consideration, shall be presumed to constitute a gift of property with intent to qualify for assistance and such act shall disqualify the owner for further aid for a period determined under standards established by the director, and in no event for less than half of the period that the capital value of the transferred property would have supplied the person’s maintenance needs based on his circumstances at the time of his transfer plus the cost of any needed medical care.”
See n. 1, supra. The categorically needy receive Medicaid benefits merely by virtue of their eligibility for income assistance under the SSI or AFDC programs. Since that eligibility has not, until recently, been conditioned on a person’s retention of existing assets, States could not apply a transfer-of-assets disqualification to the categorically needy.
Petitioner’s claim here is that she must be accorded the same treatment under the terms of 42 U. S. C. §§ 1396a (a)(10)(C), (17) (B). See also 42 CFR §435.401 (1980).
Petitioner herself was penalized by California for a gift of her home to relatives.
The amendment to § 1613 of the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1382b, in § 5 (a) of Pub. L. 96-611, 94 Stat. 3567, provides for consideration in the SSI program of any disposed of resources “(but subject to the exclusions under subsection (a)).” Subsection (a) of §1613, 42 U. S. C. § 1382b (a), provides for exclusion from consideration of a claimant’s home, household effects, and certain other items. If the new law has the effect of allowing uncompensated disposal of these excluded items without corresponding reductions in SSI benefits, it may also have the effect of requiring States to ignore transfer of these same assets in administering Medicaid. See Pub. L. 96-611, § 5 (b), 94 Stat. 3568 (providing that the state plan’s “procedure” cannot be more restrictive than the rules applicable to SSI, except that the period of ineligibility may be longer than 24 months if the value of the assets exceeds $12,000). See also 126 Cong. Rec. 33928 (1980) (Sen. Long) (“Generally, State [Medicaid] rules could not be more restrictive than the Federal SSI rule except that the period of disqualification could be longer than 24 months in cases where a very large disposal of assets — more than $12,000 — is involved”). But see Senate Committee on Finance, Spending Reductions: Recommendations Required by the Reconciliation Process in Section 3 (a) (15) of H. Con. Res. 307, the First Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 1981, 96th Cong., 2d Sess., 20 (Comm. Print 1980) (analysis of an identical amendment of the SSI statute included in S. 2885, 96th Cong., 2d Sess., § 511 (1980)) (“the committee amendment would require that any resources which an individual has given away or sold for less than fair market value would still be considered as available for his support, during the 2 years following the transfer of the asset”) (emphasis added).
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:
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B
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment prohibit a State from imposing a generally applicable sales and use tax on the distribution of religious materials by a religious organization.
t — i
California’s Sales and Use Tax Law requires retailers to pay a sales tax “[f ]or the privilege of selling tangible personal property at retail.” Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §6051 (West 1987). A “sale” includes any transfer of title or possession of tangible personal property for consideration. Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. § 6006(a) (West Supp. 1989).
The use tax, as a complement to the sales tax, reaches out-of-state purchases by residents of the State. It is “imposed on the storage, use, or other consumption in this state of tangible personal property purchased from any retailer,” § 6201, at the same rate as the sales tax (6 percent). Although the use tax is imposed on the purchaser, § 6202, it is generally collected by the retailer at the time the sale is made. §§6202-6206. Neither the State Constitution nor the State Sales and Use Tax Law exempts religious organizations from the sales and use tax, apart from a limited exemption for the serving of meals by religious organizations, §6363.5.
During the tax period in question (1974 to 1981), appellant Jimmy Swaggart Ministries was a religious organization incorporated as a Louisiana nonprofit corporation and recognized as such by the Internal Revenue Service pursuant to § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, 26 U. S. C. § 501(c)(3) (1982 ed.), and by the California State Controller pursuant to the Inheritance Tax and Gift Tax Laws of the State of California. Appellant’s constitution and bylaws provide that it “is called for the purpose of establishing and maintaining an evangelistic outreach for the worship of Almighty God.” App. 107. This outreach is to be performed “by all available means, both at home and in foreign lands,” and
“shall specifically include evangelistic crusades; missionary endeavors; radio broadcasting (as owner, broadcaster, and placement agency); television broadcasting (both as owner and broadcaster); and audio production and reproduction of music; audio production and reproduction of preaching; audio production and reproduction of teaching; writing, printing and publishing; and, any and all other individual or mass media methods that presently exist or may be devised in the future to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.” Id., at 107-108.
From 1974 to 1981, appellant conducted numerous “evangelistic crusades” in auditoriums and arenas across the country in cooperation with local churches. Id., at 61. During this period, appellant held 23 crusades in California — each lasting 1 to 3 days, with one crusade lasting 6 days — for a total of 52 days. Id., at 19-20. At the crusades, appellant conducted religious services that included preaching and singing. Some of these services were recorded for later sale or broadcast. Appellant also sold religious books, tapes, records, and other religious and nonreligious merchandise at the crusades.
Appellant also published a monthly magazine, “The Evangelist,” which was sold nationwide by subscription. The magazine contained articles of a religious nature as well as advertisements for appellant’s religious books, tapes, and records. The magazine included an order form listing the various items for sale in the particular issue and their unit price, with spaces for purchasers to fill in the quantity desired and the total price. Appellant also offered its items for sale through radio, television, and cable television broadcasts, including broadcasts through local California stations.
In 1980, appellee Board of Equalization of the State of California (Board) informed appellant that religious materials were not exempt from the sales tax and requested appellant to register as a seller to facilitate reporting and payment of the tax. See Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §§6066-6074 (West 1987 and Supp. 1989) (tax registration requirements). Appellant responded that it was exempt from such taxes under the First Amendment. In 1981, the Board audited appellant and advised appellant that it should register as a seller and report and pay sales tax on all sales made at its California crusades. The Board also opined that appellant had a sufficient nexus with the State of California to require appellant to collect and report use tax on its mail-order sales to California purchasers.
Based on the Board’s review of appellant’s records, the parties stipulated “that [appellant] sold for use in California tangible personal property for the period April 1, 1974, through December 31, 1981, measured by payment to [appellant] of $1,702,942.00 for mail order sales from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and $240,560.00 for crusade merchandise sales in California.” App. 58. These figures represented the sales and use in California of merchandise with specific religious content— Bibles, Bible study manuals, printed sermons and collections of sermons, audiocassette tapes of sermons, religious books and pamphlets, and religious music in the form of songbooks, tapes, and records. See App. to Juris. Statement B-l to B-3. Based on the sales figures for appellant’s religious materials, the Board notified appellant that it owed sales and use taxes of $118,294.54, plus interest of $36,021.11, and a penalty of $11,829.45, for a total amount due of $166,145.10. App. 8. Appellant did not contest the Board’s assessment of tax liability for the sale and use of certain nonreligious merchandise, including such items as “T-shirts with JSM logo, mugs, bowls, plates, replicas of crown of thorns, ark of the covenant, Roman coin, candlesticks, Bible stand, pen and pencil sets, prints of religious scenes, bud vase, and communion cups.” Id., at 59-60.
Appellant filed a petition for redetermination with the Board, reiterating its view that the tax on religious materials violated the First Amendment. Following a hearing and an appeal to the Board, the Board deleted the penalty but otherwise redetermined the matter without adjustment in the amount of $118,294.54 in taxes owing, plus $65,043.55 in interest. Pursuant to state procedural law, appellant paid the amount and filed a petition for redetermination and refund with the Board. See Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §6902 (West 1987). The Board denied appellant’s petition, and appellant brought suit in state court, seeking a refund of the tax paid.
The trial court entered judgment for the Board, ruling that appellant was not entitled to a refund of any tax. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, 204 Cal. App. 3d 1269, 250 Cal. Rptr. 891 (1988), and the California Supreme Court denied discretionary review. We noted probable jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §1257(2) (1982 ed.) (amended in 1988), 490 U. S. 1018 (1989), and now affirm.
» — I 1 — 1
Appellant’s central contention is that the State’s imposition of sales and use tax liability on its sale of religious materials contravenes the First Amendment’s command, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, to “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Appellant challenges the Sales and Use Tax Law under both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses.
A
The Free Exercise Clause, we have noted, “withdraws from legislative power, state and federal, the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of religion. Its purpose is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority.” Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 222-223 (1963). Indeed, “[a] regulation neutral on its face may, in its application, nonetheless offend the constitutional requirement for governmental neutrality if it unduly burdens the free exercise of religion.” Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 220 (1972). Our cases have established that “[t]he free exercise inquiry asks whether government has placed a substantial burden on the observation óf a central religious belief or practice and, if so, whether a compelling governmental interest justifies the burden.” Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680, 699 (1989) (citations omitted).
Appellant relies almost exclusively on our decisions in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943), and Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573, 576 (1944), for the proposition that a State may not impose a sales or use tax on the evangelical distribution of religious material by a religious organization. Appellant contends that the State’s imposition of use and sales tax liability on it burdens its evangelical distribution of religious materials in a manner identical to the manner in which the evangelists in Murdock and Follett were burdened.
We reject appellant’s expansive reading of Murdock and Follett as contrary to the decisions themselves. In Mur-dock, we considered the constitutionality of a city ordinance requiring all persons canvassing or soliciting within the city to procure a license by paying a flat fee. Reversing the convictions of Jehovah’s Witnesses convicted under the ordinance of soliciting and distributing religious literature without a license, we explained:
“The hand distribution of religious tracts is an age-old form of missionary evangelism... [and] has been a potent force in various religious movements down through the years. This form of evangelism is utilized today on a large scale by various religious sects whose colporteurs carry the Gospel to thousands upon thousands of homes and seek through personal visitations to win adherents to their faith. It is more than preaching; it is more than distribution of religious literature. It is a combination of both. Its purpose is as evangelical as the revival meeting. This form of religious activity occupies the same high estate under the First Amendment as do worship in the churches and preaching in the pulpits.” 319 U. S., at 108-109 (footnotes omitted).
Accordingly, we held that “spreading one’s religious beliefs or preaching the Gospel through distribution of religious literature and through personal visitations is an age-old type of evangelism with as high a claim to constitutional protection as the more orthodox types.” Id., at 110; see also Jones v. Opelika, 319 U. S. 103 (1943); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 (1943).
We extended Murdock the following Term by invalidating, as applied to “one who earns his livelihood as an evangelist or preacher in his home town,” an ordinance (similar to that involved in Murdock) that required all booksellers to pay a flat fee to procure a license to sell books. Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S., at 576. Reaffirming our observation in Murdock that “‘the power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control or suppress its enjoyment,’” 321 U. S., at 577 (quoting Murdock, supra, at 112), we reasoned that “[t]he protection of the First Amendment is not restricted to orthodox religious practices any more than it is to the expression of orthodox economic views. He who makes a profession of evangelism is not in a less preferred position than the casual worker.” 321 U..S., at 577.
Our decisions in these cases, however, resulted from the particular nature of the challenged taxes — flat license taxes that operated as a prior restraint on the exercise of religious liberty. In Murdock, for instance, we emphasized that the tax at issue was “a license tax — a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights,” 319 U. S., at 113, and cautioned that “[w]e do not mean to say that religious groups and the press are free from all financial burdens of government.... We have here something quite different, for example, from a tax on the income of one who engages in religious activities or a tax on property used or employed in connection with those activities.” Id., at 112 (citing Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 250 (1936)); see also 319 U. S., at 115 (“This tax is not a charge for the enjoyment of a privilege or benefit bestowed by the state”). In Follett, we reiterated that a preacher is not “free from all financial burdens of government, including taxes on income or property” and, “like other citizens, may be subject to general taxation.” 321 U. S., at 578 (emphasis added).
Significantly, we noted in both cases that a primary vice of the ordinances at issue was that they operated as prior restraints of constitutionally protected conduct:
“In all of these cases [in which license taxes have been invalidated] the issuance of the permit or license is dependent on the payment of a license tax. And the" license tax is fixed in amount and unrelated to the scope of the activities of petitioners or to their realized revenues. It is not a nominal fee imposed as a regulatory measure to defray the expenses of policing the activities in question. It is in no way apportioned. It is a flat license tax levied and collected as a condition to the pursuit of activities whose enjoyment is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Accordingly, it restrains in advance those constitutional liberties of press and religion and inevitably tends to suppress their exercise. That is almost uniformly recognized as the inherent vice and evil of this flat license tax.” Murdock, supra, at 113-114 (emphasis added).
See also follett, supra, at 577 (“The exaction of a tax as a condition to the exercise of the great liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment is as obnoxious as the imposition of a censorship or a previous restraint”) (citations omitted). Thus, although Murdock and Follett establish that appellant’s form of religious exercise has “as high a claim to constitutional protection as the more orthodox types,” Murdock, supra, at 110, those cases are of no further help to appellant. Our concern in Murdock and Follett — that a flat license tax would act as a precondition to the free exercise of religious beliefs — is simply not present where a tax applies to all sales and uses of tangible personal property in the State.
Our reading of Murdock and Follett is confirmed by our decision in Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575 (1983), where we considered a newspaper’s First Amendment challenge to a state use tax on ink and paper products used in the production of periodic publications. In the course of striking down the tax, we rejected the newspaper’s suggestion, premised on Murdock and Follett, that a generally applicable sales tax could not be applied to publications. Construing those cases as involving “a flat tax, unrelated to the receipts or income of the speaker or to the expenses of administering a valid regulatory scheme, as a condition of the right to speak,” 460 U. S., at 587, n. 9 (emphasis in original), we noted:
“By imposing the tax as a condition of engaging in protected activity, the defendants in those cases imposed a form of prior restraint on speech, rendering the tax highly susceptible to constitutional challenge. In that regard, the cases cited by Star Tribune do not resemble a generally applicable sales tax. Indeed, our cases have consistently recognized that nondiscriminatory taxes on the receipts or income of newspapers would be permissible.” Ibid, (citations omitted).
Accord, Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 229 (1987) (“[A] genuinely nondiscriminatory tax on the receipts of newspapers would be constitutionally permissible”).
We also note that just last Term a plurality of the Court rejected the precise argument appellant now makes. In Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U. S. 1 (1989), Justice Brennan, writing for three Justices, held that a state sales tax exemption for religious publications violated the Establishment Clause. Id., at 14-21 (plurality opinion). In so concluding, the plurality further held that the Free Exercise Clause did not prevent the State from withdrawing its exemption, noting that “[t]o the extent that our opinions in Murdock and Follett might be read... to suggest that the States and the Federal Government may never tax the sale of religious or other publications, we reject those dicta.” Id., at 24. Justice White, concurring in the judgment, con-eluded that the exemption violated the Free Press Clause because the content of a publication determined its tax-exempt status. Id., at 24-25. Justice Blackmun, joined by Justice O’Connor, concurred in the plurality’s holding that the tax exemption at issue in that case contravened the Establishment Clause, but reserved the question whether “the Free Exercise Clause requires a tax exemption for the sale of religious literature by a religious organization; in other words, defining the ultimate scope of Follett and Murdock may be left for another day.” Id., at 28. In this case, of course, California has not chosen to create a tax exemption for religious materials, and we therefore have no need to revisit the Establishment Clause question presented in Texas Monthly.
We do, however, decide the free exercise question left open by Justice Blackmun’s concurrence in Texas Monthly by limiting Murdock and Follett to apply only where a flat license tax operates as a prior restraint on the free exercise of religious beliefs. As such, Murdock and Follett plainly do not support appellant’s free exercise claim. California’s generally applicable sales and use tax is not a flat tax, represents only a small fraction of any retail sale, and applies neutrally to all retail sales of tangible personal property made in California. California imposes its sales and use tax even if the seller or the purchaser is charitable, religious, nonprofit, or state or local governmental in nature. See Union League Club v. Johnson, 18 Cal. 2d 275, 278, 115 P. 2d 425, 426 (1941); People v. Imperial County, 76 Cal. App. 2d 572, 576-577, 173 P. 2d 352, 354 (1946); Bank of America National Trust & Savings Assn. v. State Board of Equalization, 209 Cal. App. 2d 780, 796-797, 26 Cal. Rptr. 348, 357-358 (1962). Thus, the sales and use tax is not a tax on the right to disseminate religious information, ideas, or beliefs per se; rather, it is a tax on the privilege of making retail sales of tangible personal property and on the storage, uáe, or other consumption of tangible personal property in California. For example, California treats the sale of a Bible by a religious organization just as it would treat the sale of a Bible by a bookstore; as long as both are in-state retail sales of tangible personal property, they are both subject to the tax regardless of the motivation for the sale or the purchase. There is no danger that appellant’s religious activity is being singled out for special and burdensome treatment.
Moreover, our concern in Murdock and Follett that flat license taxes operate as a precondition to the exercise of evangelistic activity is not present in this case, because the registration requirement, see Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §§6066-6074 (West 1987 and Supp. 1989), and the tax itself do not act as prior restraints — no fee is charged for registering, the tax is due regardless of preregistration, and the tax is not imposed as a precondition of disseminating the message. Thus, unlike the license tax in Murdock, which was “in no way apportioned” to the “realized revenues” of the itinerant preachers forced to pay the tax, 319 U. S., at 113-114; see also Texas Monthly, supra, at 22, the tax at issue in this case is akin to a generally applicable income or property tax, which Murdock and Follett specifically state may constitutionally be imposed on religious activity.
In addition to appellant’s misplaced reliance on Murdock and Follett, appellant’s free exercise claim is also in significant tension with the Court’s decision last Term in Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680 (1989), holding that the Government’s disallowance of a tax deduction for religious “auditing” and “training” services did not violate the Free Exercise Clause. Id., at 694-700. The Court reasoned that
“[a]ny burden imposed on auditing or training... derives solely from the fact that, as a result of the deduction denial, adherents have less money to gain access to such sessions. This burden is no different from that imposed by any public tax or fee; indeed, the burden imposed by the denial of the ‘contribution or gift’ deduction would seem to pale by comparison to the overall federal income tax burden on an adherent.” Id., at 699.
There is no evidence in this case that collection and payment of the tax violates appellant’s sincere religious beliefs. California’s nondiscriminatory Sales and Use Tax Law requires only that appellant collect the tax from its California purchasers and remit the tax money to the State. The only burden on appellant is the claimed reduction in income resulting from the presumably lower demand for appellant’s wares (caused by the marginally higher price) and from the costs associated with administering the tax. As the Court made clear in Hernandez, however, to the extent that imposition of a generally applicable tax merely decreases the amount of money appellant has to spend on its religious activities, any such burden is not constitutionally significant. See ibid.; Texas Monthly, 489 U. S., at 19-20 (plurality opinion); see also Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 603-604 (1983).
Appellant contends that the availability of a deduction (at issue in Hernandez) and the imposition of a tax (at issue here) are distinguishable, but in both cases adherents base their claim for an exemption on the argument that an “incrementally larger tax burden interferes with their religious activities.” 490 U. S., at 700. It is precisely this argument — rather than one applicable only to deductions — that the Court rejected in Hernandez. At bottom, though we do not doubt the economic cost to appellant of complying with a generally applicable sales and use tax, such a tax is no different from other generally applicable laws and regulations — such as health and safety regulations — to which appellant must adhere.
Finally, because appellant’s religious beliefs do not forbid payment of the sales and use tax, appellant’s reliance on Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963), and its progeny is fnisplaced, because in no sense has the State “ ‘conditioned] receipt of an important benefit upon conduct proscribed by a religious faith, or... denie[d] such a benefit because of conduct mandated by religious belief, thereby putting substantial pressure on an adherent to modify his behavior and to violate his beliefs,’” Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Florida, 480 U. S. 136, 141 (1987) (quoting Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 717-718 (1981)). Appellant has never. alleged that the mere act of paying the tax, by itself, violates its sincere religious beliefs.
We therefore conclude that the collection and payment of the generally applicable tax in this case imposes no constitutionally significant burden on appellant’s religious practices or beliefs. The Free Exercise Clause accordingly does not require the State to grant appellant an exemption from its generally applicable sales and use tax. Although it is of course possible to imagine that a more onerous tax rate, even if generally applicable, might effectively choke off an adherent’s religious practices, cf. Murdock, supra, at 115 (the burden of a flat tax could render itinerant evangelism “crushed and closed out by the sheer weight of the toll or tribute which is exacted town by town”), we face no such situation in this case. Accordingly, we intimate no views as to whether such a generally applicable tax. might violate the Free Exercise Clause.
B
Appellant also contends that application of the sales and use tax to its sale of religious materials violates the Establishment Clause because it fosters “‘an excessive government entanglement with religion,’” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 613 (1971) (quoting Walz v. Tax Comm’n of New York City, 397 U. S. 664, 674 (1970)). Appellant alleges, for example, that the present controversy has featured on-site inspections of appellant’s evangelistic crusades, lengthy on-site audits, examinations of appellant’s books and records, threats of criminal prosecution, and layers of administrative and judicial proceedings.
The Establishment Clause prohibits “sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity.” Walz, swpra, at 668. The “excessive entanglement” prong of the tripartite purpose-effect-entanglement Lemon test, see Lemon, 403 U. S., at 612-613, requires examination of “the character and purposes of the institutions that are benefited, the nature of the aid that the State provides, and the resulting relationship between the government and the religious authority,” id., at 615; see also Walz, 397 U. S., at 695 (separate opinion of Harlan, J.) (warning of “programs, whose very nature is apt to entangle the state in details of administration”). Indeed, in Walz we held that a tax exemption for “religious organizations for religious properties used solely for religious worship,” as part of a general exemption for nonprofit institutions, id., at 666-667, did not violate the Establishment Clause. In upholding the tax exemption, we specifically noted that taxation of religious properties would cause at least as much administrative entanglement between government and religious authorities as did the exemption:
“Either course, taxation of churches or exemption, occasions some degree of involvement with religion. Elimination of exemption would tend to expand the involvement of government by giving rise to tax valuation of church property, tax liens, tax foreclosures, and the direct confrontations and conflicts that follow in the train of these legal processes.
“Granting tax exemptions to churches necessarily operates to afford an indirect economic benefit and also gives rise to some, but yet a lesser, involvement than taxing them. In analyzing either alternative the questions are whether the involvement is excessive, and whether it is a continuing one calling for official and continuing surveillance leading to an impermissible degree of entanglement.” Id., at 674-675.
The issue presented, therefore, is whether the imposition of sales and use tax liability in this ease on appellant results in “excessive” involvement between appellant and the State and “continuing surveillance leading to an impermissible degree of entanglement.”
At the outset, it is undeniable that a generally applicable tax has a secular purpose and neither advances nor inhibits religion, for the very essence of such a tax is that it is neutral and nondiscriminatory on questions of religious belief. Thus, whatever the precise contours of the Establishment Clause, see County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union of Pittsburgh, 492 U. S. 573, 589-594 (1989) (tracing evolution of Establishment Clause doctrine); cf. Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589, 615-618 (1988) (applying but noting criticism of the entanglement prong of the Lemon test), its undisputed core values are not even remotely called into question by the generally applicable tax in this case.
Even applying the “excessive entanglement” prong of the Lemon test, however, we hold that California’s imposition of sales and use tax liability on appellant threatens no excessive entanglement between church and state. First, we note that the evidence of administrative entanglement in this case is thin. Appellant alleges that collection and payment of the sales and use tax impose severe accounting burdens on it. The Court of Appeal, however, expressly found that the record did not support appellant’s factual assertions, noting that appellant “had a sophisticated accounting staff and had recently computerized its accounting and that [appellant] in its own books and for purposes of obtaining a federal income tax exemption segregated ‘retail sales’ and ‘donations.’” 204 Cal. App. 3d, at 1289, 250 Cal. Rptr., at 905.
Second, even assuming that the tax imposes substantial administrative burdens on appellant, such administrative and recordkeeping burdens do not rise to a constitutionally significant level. Collection and payment of the tax will of course require some contact between appellant and the State, but we have held that generally applicable administrative and recordkeeping regulations may be imposed on religious organization -without running afoul of the Establishment Clause. See Hernandez, 490 U. S., at 696-697 (“[R]outine regulatory interaction [such as application of neutral tax laws] which involves no inquiries into religious doctrine,... no delegation of state power to a religious body,... and no ‘detailed monitoring and close administrative contact’ between secular and religious bodies,... does not of itself violate the nonentan-glement command”); Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor, 471 U. S. 290, 305-306 (1985) (“The Establishment Clause does not exempt religious organizations from such secular governmental activity as fire inspections and building and zoning regulations, Lemon, swpra, at 614, and the recordkeeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, while perhaps more burdensome in terms of paperwork, are not significantly more intrusive into religious affairs”). To be sure, we noted in Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation that the recordkeeping requirements at issue in that case “applied] only to commercial activities undertaken with a ‘business purpose,’ and would therefore have no impact on petitioners’ own evangelical activities,” 471 U. S., at 305, but that recognition did not bear on whether the generally applicable regulation was nevertheless “the kind of government surveillance the Court has previously held to pose an intolerable risk of government entanglement with religion,” ibid.
The fact that appellant must bear the cost of collecting and remitting a generally applicable sales and use tax — even if the financial burden of such costs may vary from religion to religion — does not enmesh government in religious affairs. Contrary to appellant’s contentions, the statutory scheme requires neither the involvement of state employees in, nor on-site continuing inspection of, appellant’s day-to-day operations. There is no “official and continuing surveillance,” Walz, supra, at 675, by government auditors. The sorts of government entanglement that we have found to violate the Establishment Clause have been far more invasive than the level of contact created by the administration of neutral tax laws. Cf. Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U. S. 402, 414 (1985); Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc., 459 U. S. 116, 126-127 (1982).
Most significantly, the imposition of the sales and use tax without an exemption for appellant does not require the State to inquire into the religious content of the items sold or the religious motivation for selling or purchasing the items, because the materials are subject to the tax regardless of content or motive. From the State’s point of view, the critical question is not whether the materials are religious, but whether there is a sale or a use, a question which involves only a secular determination. Thus, this case stands on firmer ground than Hernandez, because appellant offers the items at a stated price, thereby relieving the State of the need to place a monetary value on appellant’s religious items. Compare Hernandez, 490 U. S., at 697-698 (where no comparable good or service is sold in the marketplace, Internal Revenue Service looks to cost of providing the good or service), with id., at 706 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“It becomes impossible... to compute the ‘contribution’ portion of a payment to charity where what is received in return is not merely an intangible, but an intangible (or, for that matter a tangible) that is not bought and sold except in donative contexts”). Although appellant asserts that donations often accompany payments made for the religious items and that items are sometimes given away without payment (or only nominal payment), it is plain that, in the first case, appellant’s use of “order forms” and “price lists” renders illusory any difficulty in separating the two portions and that, in the second case, the question is only whether any particular transfer constitutes a “sale.” Ironically, appellant’s theory, under which government may not tax “religious core” activities but may tax “nonreligious” activities, would require government to do precisely what appellant asserts the Religion Clauses prohibit: “determine which expenditures are religious and which are secular.” Lemon, 403 U. S., at 621-622. Accordingly, because we find no excessive entanglement between government and religion in this case, we hold that the imposition of sales and use tax liability on appellant does not violate the Establishment Clause.
III
Appellant also contends that the State’s imposition of use tax liability on it violates the Commerce and Due Process Clauses because, as an out-of-state distributor, it had an insufficient “nexus” to the State. See National Geographic Society v. California Bd. of Equalization, 430 U. S. 551, 554 (1977); National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Ill., 386 U. S. 753, 756-760 (1967). We decline to reach the merits of this claim, however, because the courts below ruled that the claim was procedurally barred. California law provides that an administrative claim for a tax refund “shall state the specific grounds upon which the claim is founded,” Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. § 6904(a) (West Supp. 1989), and that refund suits will be entertained only if “a claim for refund or credit has been duly filed” with the Board, § 6932. Suit may thereafter be brought only “on the grounds set forth in the claim.” §6933. Thus, under state law, “[t]he claim for refund delineates and restricts the issues to be considered in a taxpayer’s refund action. The trial court and [appellate] court are without jurisdiction to consider grounds not set forth in the claim.” Atari, Inc. v. State Board of Equalization, 170 Cal. App. 3d 665, 672, 216 Cal. Rptr. 267, 271 (1985) (citations omitted). This rule serves a legitimate state interest in requiring parties to exhaust administrative remedies before proceeding to court, for “[s]uch a rule prevents having an overworked court consider issues and remedies available through administrative channels.” Id., at 673, 216 Cal. Rptr., at 272.
The record in this case makes clear that appellant, in its refund claim before the Board, failed even to cite the Commerce Clause or the Due Process Clause, much less articulate legal arguments contesting the nexus issue. See App. 34 (incorporating petition for redetermination, which in turn raised only First Amendment arguments, see id., at 11-16). The Board’s hearing officer specifically noted, in forwarding his decision to the Board, that appellant’s “[c]ounsel does not argue nexus,” id., at 22,
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.
When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) evaluates an application to market a generic drug, it considers whether the proposed drug would infringe a patent held by the manufacturer of the brand-name version. To assess that matter, the FDA requires brand manufacturers to submit descriptions of the scope of their patents, known as use codes. The FDA does not attempt to determine if that information is accurate. Rather, the FDA assumes that it is so and decides whether to approve a generic drug on that basis. As a result, the breadth of the use code may make the difference between approval and denial of a generic company’s application.
In this case, we consider whether Congress has authorized a generic company to challenge a use code’s accuracy by bringing a counterclaim against the brand manufacturer in a patent infringement suit. The relevant statute provides that a generic company “may assert a counterclaim seeking an order requiring the [brand manufacturer] to correct or delete the patent information [it] submitted... under [two statutory subsections] on the ground that the patent does not claim... an approved method of using the drug.” 117 Stat. 2452, 21 U.S.C. § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(I). We hold that a generic manufacturer may employ this provision to force correction of a use code that inaccurately describes the brand’s patent as covering a particular method of using the drug in question.
I
A
The FDA regulates the manufacture, sale, and labeling of prescription drugs under a complex statutory scheme. To begin at the beginning: When a brand manufacturer wishes to market a novel drug, it must submit a new drug application (NDA) to the FDA for approval. The NDA must include, among other things, a statement of the drug’s components, scientific data showing that the drug is safe and effective, and proposed labeling describing the uses for which the drug may be marketed. See §§ 355(b)(1), (d). The FDA may approve a brand-name drug for multiple methods of use — either to treat different conditions or to treat the same condition in different ways.
Once the FDA has approved a brand manufacturer’s drug, another company may seek permission to market a generic version pursuant to legislation known as the Hatch-Waxman Amendments. See Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, 98 Stat. 1585. Those amendments allow a generic competitor to file an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) piggy-backing on the brand’s NDA. Rather than providing independent evidence of safety and efficacy, the typical ANDA shows that the generic drug has the same active ingredients as, and is biologically equivalent to, the brand-name drug. See §§ 355( j)(2)(A)(ii), (iv). As we have previously recognized, this process is designed to speed the introduction of low-cost generic drugs to market. See Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc., 496 U. S. 661, 676 (1990).
Because the FDA cannot authorize a generic drug that would infringe a patent, the timing of an ANDA’s approval depends on the scope and duration of the patents covering the brand-name drug. Those patents come in. different varieties. One type protects the drug compound itself. Another kind — the one at issue here — gives the.brand manufacturer exclusive rights over a particular method of using the drug. In some circumstances, a brand manufacturer may hold such a method-of-use patent even after its patent on the drug compound has expired.
To facilitate the approval of generic drugs as soon as patents allow, the Hatch-Waxman Amendments and FDA regulations direct brand manufacturers to file information about their patents. The statute mandates that a brand submit in its NDA “the patent number and the expiration date of any patent which claims the drug for which the [brand] submitted the [NDA] or which claims a method of using such drug.” § 355(b)(1). And the regulations issued under that statute require that, once an NDA is approved, the brand provide a description of any method-of-use patent it holds. See 21 CFR §§ 314.53(c)(2)(ii)(P)(3), (e) (2011). That description is known as a use code, and the brand submits it on FDA Form 3542. As later discussed, the FDA does not attempt to verify the accuracy of the use codes that brand manufacturers supply. It simply publishes the codes, along with the corresponding patent numbers and expiration dates, in a fat, brightly hued volume called the Orange Book (less colorfully but more officially denominated Approved Drug Products With Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations).
After consulting the Orange Book, a company filing an ANDA must assure the FDA that its proposed generic drug will not infringe the brand’s patents. When no patents are listed in the Orange Book or all listed patents have expired (or will expire prior to the ANDA’s approval), the generic manufacturer simply certifies to that effect. See 21 U. S. C. §§ 355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(I)-(III). Otherwise, the applicant has two possible ways to obtain approval.
One option is to submit a so-called section viii statement, which asserts that the generic manufacturer will market the drug for one or more methods of use not covered by the brand’s patents. See §355(j)(2)(A)(viii). A section viii statement is typically used when the brand’s patent on the drug compound has expired and the brand holds patents on only some approved methods of using the drug. If the ANDA applicant follows this route, it will propose labeling for the generic drug that “carves out” from the brand’s approved label the still-patented methods of use. See 21 CFR § 314.94(a)(8)(iv). The FDA may approve such a modified label, see § 314.127(a)(7), as an exception to the usual rule that a generic drug must bear the same label as the brand-name product, see 21 U. S. C. §§355(j)(2)(A)(v), (j)(4)(G). FDA acceptance of the carve-out label allows the generic company to place its drug on the market (assuming the ANDA meets other requirements), but only for a subset of approved uses — i. e., those not covered by the brand’s patents.
Of particular relevance here, the FDA will not approve such an ANDA if the generic’s proposed carve-out label overlaps at all with the brand’s use code. See 68 Fed. Reg. 36682-36683 (2003). The FDA takes that code as a given: It does not independently assess the patent’s scope or otherwise look behind the description authored by the brand. According to the agency, it lacks “both [the] expertise and [the] authority” to review patent claims; although it will forward questions about the accuracy of a use code to the brand, its own “role with respect to patent listing is ministerial.” Id., at 36683; see ibid. (“A fundamental assumption of the Hatch-Waxman Amendments is that the courts are the appropriate mechanism for the resolution of disputes about the scope and validity of patents”). Thus, whether section viii is available to a generic manufacturer depends on how the brand describes its patent. Only if the use code provides sufficient space for the generic’s proposed label will the FDA approve an ANDA with a section viii statement.
The generic manufacturer’s second option is.to file a so-called paragraph IV certification, which states that a listed patent “is invalid or will not be infringed by the manufacture, use, or sale of the [generic] drug.” 21 U. S. C. § 355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(IV). A generic manufacturer will typically take this path in either of two situations: if it wants to market the drug for all uses, rather than carving out those still allegedly under patent; or if it discovers, as described above, that any carve-out label it is willing to adopt cannot avoid the brand’s use code. Filing a paragraph IV certification means provoking litigation. The patent statute treats such a filing as itself an act of infringement, which gives the brand an immediate right to sue. See 35 U. S. C. § 271(e)(2)(A). Assuming the brand does so, the FDA generally may not approve the ANDA until 30 months pass or the court finds the patent invalid or not infringed. See 21 U. S. C. § 355(j)(5)(B)(iii). Accordingly, the paragraph IV process is likely to keep the generic drug off the market for a lengthy period, but may eventually enable the generic company to market its drug for all approved uses.
In the late 1990⅛, evidence mounted that some brands were exploiting this statutory scheme to prevent or delay the marketing of generic drugs, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) soon issued a study detailing these anticom-petitive practices. See FTC, Generic Drug Entry Prior to Patent Expiration: An FTC Study, pp. iii-vi (July 2002) (hereinafter FTC Study). That report focused attention on brands' submission of inaccurate patent information to the FDA. In one case cited by the FTC, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Thompson, 268 F. 3d 1323 (CA Fed. 2001), a brand whose original patent on a drug was set to expire listed a new patent ostensibly extending its rights over the drug, but in fact covering neither the compound nor any method of using it. The FDA, as was (and is) its wont, accepted the listing at its word and accordingly declined to approve a generic product. The generic manufacturer sued to delete the improper listing from the Orange Book, but the Federal Circuit held that the Hatch-Waxman Amendments did not allow such a right of action. See id., at 1330-1333. As the FTC noted, that ruling meant that the only option for generic manufacturers in Mylan's situation was to file a paragraph IV certification (triggering an infringement suit) and then wait out the usual 30-month period before the FDA could approve an ANDA. See FTC Study 40-45.
Congress responded to these abuses by creating a mechanism, in the form of a legal counterclaim, for generic manufacturers to challenge patent information a brand' has submitted to the FDA. See Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003,117 Stat. 2452. The provision authorizes an ANDA applicant sued for patent infringement to
“assert a counterclaim seeking an order requiring the [brand] to correct or delete the patent information submitted by the [brand] under subsection (b) or (c) [of §355] on the ground that the patent does not claim either—
“(aa) the drug for which the [brand’s NDA] was approved; or
“(bb) an approved method of using the drug.” 21 U.S. C. § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(I).
The counterclaim thus enables a generic competitor to obtain a judgment directing a brand to “correct or delete” certain patent information that is blocking the FDA’s approval of a generic product. This case raises the question whether the counterclaim is available to fix a brand’s use code.
B
The parties to this case sell or seek to sell the diabetes drug repaglinide. Respondents (collectively Novo) manufacture Prandin, the brand-name version of the drug. The FDA has approved three uses of Prandin to treat diabetes: repaglinide by itself; repaglinide in combination with metfor-min; and repaglinide in combination with thiazolidinediones (TZDs). Petitioners (collectively Caraco) wish to market a generic version of the drug for two of those uses.
Novo originally owned a patent for the repaglinide compound, known as the ’035 patent, but it expired in 2009. • In 2004, Novo also acquired a method-of-use patent for the drug, called the ’358 patent, which does not expire until 2018. That patent — the one at issue here — claims a “method for treating [diabetes by] administering... repaglinide in combination with metformin.” 601 F. 3d 1359, 1362 (CA Fed. 2010). Thus, Novo currently holds a patent for one of the three FDA-approved uses of repaglinide — its use with met-formin. But Novo holds no patent for the use of repaglinide with TZDs or its use alone.
In 2005, Caraco filed an ANDA seeking to market a generic version of repaglinide. At that time, the Orange Book entry for Prandin listed both the ’035 patent (the drug compound) and the ’358 patent (the use of the drug with metformin). Caraco assured the FDA that it would not market its generic drug until the ’035 patent expired, thus making that patent irrelevant to the FDA’s review of the ANDA. Caraco filed a paragraph IV certification for the remaining, ’358 patent, stating that it was “invalid or [would] not be infringed.” § 355(j)(2)(A)(vii)(IV); see supra, at 407-408. In accord with the patent statute, Novo treated this filing as an act of infringement and brought suit.
When Caraco filed its ANDA, Novo’s use code for the ’358 patent represented that the patent covered “‘[u]se of re-paglinide in combination with metformin to lower blood glucose.’ ” 601 F. 3d, at 1362-1363. The FDA therefore advised Caraco that if it did not seek to market repaglinide for use with metformin, it could submit a section viii statement. That would allow Caraco, assuming its ANDA was otherwise in order, to market its generic drug for the other two uses. Caraco took the FDA’s cue and in 2008 submitted a section viii statement, with proposed labeling carving out Novo’s patented metformin therapy. See App. 166-176.
Before the FDA took further action, however, Novo changed its use code for the ’358 patent. The new use code describes “‘[a] method for improving glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.’” 601 F. 3d, at 1363. Because that code indicates that the ’358 patent protects all three approved methods of using repaglinide to treat diabetes, Caraco’s proposed carve-out of metformin therapy was no longer sufficient; even with that exclusion, Caraco’s label now overlapped with Novo’s use code on the other two uses. And Caraeo could not carve out those uses as well, because at that point nothing would be left for it to market. The FDA has approved repaglinide for only three uses, and Novo’s use code encompassed them all. The FDA accordingly informed Caraeo that it could no longer employ section viii to bring its drug to market.
Caraeo responded to Novo’s new, preclusive use code by filing a statutory counterclaim in the ongoing infringement suit. The counterclaim sought an order requiring Novo to “correct” its use code “on the ground that [the ’358] patent does not claim” two approved methods of using repaglinide— alone and in combination with TZDs. § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(I); see supra, at 408-409. That order would permit the FDA to accept Caraco’s proposed carve-out label and approve the company’s ANDA. The District Court granted summary judgment to Caraeo, enjoining Novo to “correct... its inaccurate description of the ’358 patent” by submitting a new Form 3542 to the FDA that would “reinstate] its former” use code. App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a-66a.
The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that Caraeo lacked “a statutory basis to assert a counterclaim.” 601 F. 3d, at 1360. The court first read the statutory phrase “the patent does not claim... an approved method of using the drug” to require Caraeo to demonstrate that the ’358 patent does not claim any approved method of use. See id., at 1365 (“‘[A]n approved method’ means ‘any approved method’”). Because the patent covers one approved method of use— repaglinide in combination with metformin — the counterclaim was unavailable. The court further ruled that the counterclaim provision does not reach use codes because they are not “patent information submitted by the [brand] under subsection (b) or (c).” On the Federal Circuit’s view, that information consists only of the patent number and expiration date. See id., at 1366-1367. Judge Dyk dissented. He would have read the phrase “the patent does not claim... an approved method of using the drug” to include situations where, as here, the use code wrongly indicates that the patent covers one or more particular approved methods of use. See id., at 1376-1378. And he would have construed “patent information submitted... under subsection (b) or (c)” to include use codes. See id., at 1370-1376.
We granted certiorari, 564 U. S. 1035 (2011), and now reverse.
II
We begin “where all such inquiries must begin: with the language of the statute itself.” United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., 489 U. S. 235, 241 (1989). This case requires us to construe two statutory phrases. First, we must decide when a “patent does not claim... an approved method of using” a drug. Second, we must determine the content of “patent information submitted... under subsection (b) or (c)” of §355. We consider both of those questions against the backdrop of yet a third statutory phrase, providing that the remedy for a prevailing counterclaimant is an order requiring the brand “to correct or delete” that patent information. And we consider each question in the context of the entire statute. See Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U. S. 337, 341 (1997) (Statutory interpretation focuses on “the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole”). We cannot say that the counterclaim clause is altogether free of ambiguity. But when we consider statutory text and context together, we conclude that a generic manufacturer in Caraco’s position can use the counterclaim.
A
An ANDA applicant sued for patent infringement may bring a counterclaim “on the ground that the patent does not claim... an approved method of using the drug.” 21 U. S. C. § 355( j)(5)(C)(ii)(I). The parties debate the meaning of this language. Novo (like the Federal Circuit) reads “not an” to mean “not any,” contending that “the counterclaim is available only if the listed patent does not claim any (or, equivalently, claims no) approved method of using the drug.” Brief for Respondents 29 (internal quotation marks omitted). By that measure, Caraco may not bring a counterclaim because Novo’s ’358 patent claims the use of repaglinide with metformin. In contrast, Caraco reads “not an” to mean “not a particular one,” so that the statute permits a counterclaim whenever the patent does not claim a method of use for which the ANDA applicant seeks to market the drug. On that view, the counterclaim is available here — indeed, is available twice over — because the ’358 patent does not claim the use of repaglinide with TZDs or its use alone.
Truth be told, the answer to the general question “What does ‘not an’ mean?” is “It depends”: The meaning of the phrase turns on its context; See Johnson v. United States, 559 U, S. 133, 139 (2010) (“Ultimately, context determines meaning”). “Not an” sometimes means “not any,” in the way Novo claims. If your spouse tells you he is late because he “did not take a cab,” you will infer that he took no cab at all (but took the bus instead). If your child admits that she “did not read a book all summer,” you will surmise that she did not read any book (but went to the movies a lot). And if a sports-fan friend bemoans that “the New York Mets do not have a chance of winning the World Series,” you will gather that the team has no chance whatsoever (because they have no hitting). But now stop a moment. Suppose your spouse tells you that he got lost because he “did not make a turn.” You would understand that he failed to make a particular turn, not that he drove from the outset in a straight line.'Suppose your child explains her mediocre grade on a college exam by saying that she “did not read an assigned text.” You would infer that she failed to read a specific book, not that she read nothing at all on the syllabus. And suppose a lawyer friend laments that in her last trial, she “did not prove an element of the offense.” You would grasp that she is speaking not of all the elements, but of a particular one. The examples could go on and on, but the point is simple enough: When it comes to the meaning of “not an,” context matters.
And the statutory context here supports Caraco’s position. As described earlier (and as Congress understood), a single drug may have multiple methods of use, only one or some of which a patent covers. See, e. g., 21 U. S. C. § 355(b)(1) (requiring that an NDA applicant file information about “any patent which claims the drug... or which claims a method of using such drug” (emphasis added)). The Hatch-Waxman Amendments authorize the FDA to approve the marketing of a generic drug for particular unpatented uses;, and section viii provides the mechanism for a generic company to identify those uses, so that a product with a label matching them can quickly come to market. The statutory scheme, in other words, contemplates that one patented use will not foreclose marketing a generic drug for other unpatented ones. Within that framework, the counterclaim naturally functions to challenge the brand’s'' assertion of rights over whichever discrete use (or uses) the generic company wishes to pursue. That assertion, after all, is the thing blocking the generic drug’s entry on the market. The availability of the counterclaim thus matches the availability of FDA approval under the statute: A company may bring a counterclaim to show that a method of use is unpatented because establishing that fact allows the FDA to authorize a generic drug via section viii.
Consider the point as applied to this ease. Caraco wishes to market a generic version of repaglinide for two (and only two) uses. Under the statute, the FDA could approve Car-aco’s application so long as no patent covers those uses, regardless whether a patent protects yet a third method of using the drug. Novo agrees that Caraco could bring a counterclaim if Novo’s assertion of patent protection for repaglinide lacked any basis — for example, if Novo held no patent, yet claimed rights to the pair of uses for which Car-aco seeks to market its drug. But because Novo has a valid patent on a different use, Novo argues that Caraco’s counterclaim evaporates. And that is so even though, once again, Caraco has no wish to market its product for that patented use and the FDA stands ready, pursuant to the statute, to approve Caraco’s product for the other two. To put the matter simply, Novo thinks the counterclaim disappears because it has a patent for a method of use in which neither Caraco nor the FDA is interested at all. “It would take strong evidence to persuade us that this is what Congress wrought.” Eli Lilly, 496 U. S., at 673. That “not an” sometimes (but sometimes not) means “not any” is not enough.
Novo argues that our reading must be wrong because Congress could have expressly “impose[d] additional... qualifications” on the term “an approved method of us[e]” — and indeed did so in another place in the statute. Brief for Respondents 31; 21 U.S.C. § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(I). Novo points here to section viii itself, which applies when the brand’s patent “does not claim a use for which the [ANDA] applicant is seeking approval.” § 355(j)(2)(A)(viii) (emphasis added). But the mere possibility of clearer phrasing cannot defeat the most natural reading of a statute; if it could (with all due respect to Congress), we would interpret a great many statutes differently than we do. Nor does Congress’s use of more detailed language in another provision, enacted years earlier, persuade us to put the counterclaim clause at odds with its statutory context. That is especially so because we can turn this form of argument back around on Novo. Congress, after all, could have more clearly expressed Novo’s proposed meaning in the easiest of ways — by adding a single letter to make clear that “not an” really means “not any.” And indeed, Congress used a “not any” construction in the very next subclause, enacted at the very same time.' See § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(II) (“Subclause (I) does not authorize the assertion of a claim... in any [other] civil action”). So if we needed any proof that Congress knew how to say “not any” when it meant “not any,” here we find it. We think that sees, raises, and bests Novo’s argument.
Our more essential point, though, has less gamesmanship about it: We think that the “not any” construction does not appear in the relevant counterclaim provision because Congress did not mean what Novo wishes it had. And we think that is so because Congress meant (as it usually does) for the provision it enacted to fit within the statutory scheme — here, by facilitating the approval of non-infringing generic drugs under section viii.
B
Novo contends that Caraco’s counterclaim must fail for another, independent reason: On its view (as on the Federal Circuit’s), the counterclaim does not provide a way to correct use codes because they are not “patent information submitted by the [brand] under subsection (b) or (c)” of § 355. Once again, we disagree.
The statute does not define “patent information,” but a use code must qualify. It describes the method of use claimed in a patent. See 21 CFR §§314.53(e)(2)(ii)(P)(3), (e). That fits under any ordinary understanding of the language..
The more difficult question arises from the “submitted under” phrase. The subsections mentioned there — (b) and (c) of §355 — require an NDA applicant to submit specified information: “the patent number and the expiration date of any patent” claiming the drug or a method of its use. 21 U. S. C. §§ 355(b)(1), (c)(2). According to Novo, only that information comes within the counterclaim provision. But subsections (b) and (c) as well govern the regulatory process by which brands provide additional patent information to the FDA, both before and after an NDA is approved. In particular, those subsections provide the basis for the regulation requiring brands to submit use codes, see 21 CFR § 314.53; in issuing that regulation, the FDA noted that “[o]ur principal legal authority... is section 505 of the act [codified at §355], in conjunction with our general rulemaking authority,” 68 Fed. Reg. 36697-36698 (specifically referring to subsections (b) and (c)). And the form (Form 3542) on which brands submit their use codes states that the information appearing there is “provided in accordance with Section [355](b) and (c);” App. 97. So use codes fall within the counterclaim’s, ambit if the phrase “submitted under” reaches filings that not only subsections (b) and (c) themselves but also their implementing regulations require.
Several of our cases support giving “under” this broad meaning. For example, in Eli Lilly, 496 U. S., at 665-668, we examined a similar statutory reference to the “submission of information under a Federal law which regulates the manufacture, use, or sale of drugs,” 35 U. S. C. § 271(e)(1). We noted there that submitting information “under a Federal law” suggests doing so “in furtherance of or compliance with a comprehensive scheme of regulation.” 496 U. S., at 667. Likewise, in Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 135 (1991), we held that a regulatory proceeding “under section 554,” 5 U. S. C. § 504(b)(1)(C)(i), meant any proceeding “subject to,” “governed by,” or conducted “by reason of the authority of” that statutory provision.
So too here. “Patent information submitted... under subsection (b) or (c)” most naturally refers to patent information provided as part of the “comprehensive scheme of regulation” premised on those subsections. Eli Lilly, 496 U. S., at 667. It includes everything (about patents) that the FDA requires brands to furnish in the proceedings “subject to,” “governed by,” or conducted “by reason of the authority of” §§ 355(b) and (c). Ardestani, 502 U. S., at 135. The breadth of the term “under” becomes particularly clear when compared with other phrases — “described in” and “prescribed by” — appearing in neighboring provisions. See, e. g., 21 U. S. C. § 355(c)(2) (“patent information described in subsection (b)”); § 355(d)(6) (“patent information prescribed by subsection (b)”). Those phrases denote a patent number and expiration date and nothing more. In contrast, the word “under” naturally reaches beyond that most barebones information to other patent materials the FDA demands in the regulatory process.
Once again, that congressional choice fits the broader statutory context. Use codes are pivotal to the FDA’s implementation of the Hatch-Waxman Amendments — and no less so because a regulation, rather than the statute itself, requires their submission. Recall that those Amendments instruct the FDA (assuming other requirements are met) to approve an ANDA filed with a section viii statement when it proposes to market a drug for only unpatented methods of use. To fulfill that charge, the FDA must determine whether any patent covers a particular method of use; and to do that, the agency (which views itself as lacking expertise in patent matters, see supra, at 406-407, and n. 2) relies on the use codes submitted in the regulatory process. See 68 Fed. Reg. 36682-36683. An overbroad use code therefore throws a wrench into the FDA’s ability to approve generic drugs as the statute contemplates. So it is not surprising that the language Congress used in the counterclaim provision sweeps widely enough to embrace that filing.
C
Another aspect of the counterclaim provision — its description of available remedies — dispatches whatever remains of Novo’s arguments. According to the statute, a successful claimant may obtain an order requiring the brand to “correct or delete” its patent information. § 355(j)(5)(C)(ii)(I). Our interpretation of the statute gives content to both those remedies: It deletes a listing from the Orange Book when the brand holds no relevant patent and corrects the listing when the brand has misdescribed the patent’s scope. By contrast, Novo’s two arguments would all but read the term “correct” out of the statute.
Consider first how Novo’s an-means-any contention would accomplish that result. Recall that on Novo’s view, a counterclaim can succeed only if the patent challenged does not claim either the drug or any approved method of using it. See supra, at 413. But when a generic manufacturer makes that showing, the remedy must be to “delete” the listing; no correction would be enough. Novo agrees with that proposition; “[a]t bottom,” Novo avers, “the counterclaim is a delisting provision.” Brief for Respondents 20. But that raises the obvious question: Why did Congress also include the term “correct” in the statute?
Novo can come up with just one answer: The counterclaim, it proposes, can correct erroneous patent numbers. Imagine, for example, that Novo mistakenly entered the number ’359, instead, of ’358, when submitting information about its repaglinide patent for publication in the Orange Book. Then, Novo suggests, Caraco could bring a counterclaim to challenge the inaccurate listing (on the ground that ’359 does not claim any method of use), and the remedy would be “correction]” (substituting an 8 for a 9). But we think Novo’s admission that this scenario would be “unusual,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 41, considerably understates the matter. As Novo concedes, brands have every incentive to provide the right patent number in the first place, and to immediately rectify any error brought to their attention. See id., at 40-41. By doing so, they place both generic companies and the FDA on notice of their patents and thereby prevent infringement. And conversely, generics have little or no incentive to bring a counterclaim that will merely replace one digit in the Orange Book with another. So we doubt Congress created a legal action to “correct” patent information just to fix such scrivener’s errors. See, e. g., TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S. 19, 31 (2001) (refusing to adopt an interpretation of a statute that would render a piece of it “insignificant, if-not wholly superfluous” (internal quotation marks omitted)). That would have been, in the most literal sense, to make a federal case out of nothing.
The same problem afflicts Novo’s alternative contention— that “patent information submitted... under subsection (b) or (c)” includes only numbers and expiration dates (and not use codes). Once again, we cannot think Congress included the remedy of “correction]” so that courts could expunge typos in patent numbers. And not even Novo has proffered a way for the counterclaim to “correct” an erroneous expiration date. Suppose, for example, that a brand incorrectly lists the expiration date of a valid patent as 2018 rather than 20Í5. The counterclaim would be useless: It authorizes a remedy only “on the ground' that” the listed patent does not claim the drug or an approved method of using it — and notwithstanding the wrong expiration date, this patent does so. Alternatively, suppose the brand lists a patent as having a 2018 expiration date when in fact the patent has already lapsed. Then, a generic manufacturer could bring a counterclaim alleging that the patent no longer claims the drug or a method of using it — but the appropriate remedy would be deletion, not correction, of the brand’s listing. Novo’s reading of “patent information,” like its reading of “not an,” effectively deletes the term “correct” from the statute.
Ill
Novo finally advances two arguments relating to the counterclaim’s drafting history. Neither contention,, however, overcomes the statutory text and context. Indeed, consideration of the provision’s background only strengthens our view of its meaning.
A
Novo first contends that our interpretation of the statute "effectively resurrect[s] the scheme rejected by Congress.” Brief for Respondents 44 (quoting Smith
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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- Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a suit in the Court of Claims under §-902 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, 49 Stat. 2015, as amended, 53 Stat. 1255, 46 U. S. C. § 1242, to recover the balance of “just compensation” alleged to be due respondent from the United States for requisitioning his steam tug, the MacArthur, in October, 1942. The tug was a Coast Guard boat built in 1895 and used by it in harbor duties at Baltimore until 1939. It was then transferred to the Coast Guard base at Portland, Maine. In September, 1941, the Coast Guard advertised it for sale to. the highest bidder. Respondent was the highest bidder, purchasing the tug in Maine on March 19, 1942, for $2,875. Thereafter he expended $5,699.78 on labor and materials in repairing and improving the vessel, an amount which would have been substantially greater had he not performed part of the work himself. In April, 1942, respondent -received from the Department of Commerce a certificate designating the vessel as a towing steam vessel and authorizing him to employ it in the coastal trade for one year. Respondent then brought the tug to Staten Island, New York, where it remained until requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration on October 15, 1942. A .survey by the Navy had indicated it was suitable as a steam-heating plant for heating and pumping fuel oil from oil barges into naval combat vessels. Its condition was said to be “fair to -good”; and its original cost was estimated to be $45,000; its replacement cost, $56,000; and its present value $9,000. It was used as a steam plant to heat oil for use in combat shipsf
The War Shipping Administration determined that $9,000 was “just compensation” for the tug and offered that amount to respondent. Respondent accepted 75 per cent of the award, as he was permitted to do by § 902 (d) of the Act, and brought suit to recover the balance of the $20,000 which he alleged was the “just compensation” to which he-was entitled, plus interest.
Section 902 (a) of the Act, after providing that the owner of any vessel requisitioned by the Commission shall be paid “just compensation'for the property.taken or for the use of such property,” goes on to state “but in no case 'shall the value of the property taken or used be deemed enhanced by the causes necessitating the taking or use.” It is around this latter clause that the present controversy turns.
. The Ctíurt of Claims found that the fair market value at the time of the taking was $15,500 and that respondent was entitled to receive, that amount, less the sum already paid, plus interest. 110 Ct. Cl. 66, 75 F. Supp. 235. The importance of that decision in the settlement of claims arising as a result of the requisitioning program during the period of recent hostilities led us to grant the petition for certiorari.' ■.
The United States admitted liability for only $10,500, claiming that $5,000 of the market value was due to an enhancement brought about by its need for vessels which necessitated their taking. The Court of Claims found that at the time of the requisitioning there existed in and about the Port of New York “a rising market and a strong demand for tugs of all types” due in part at least to the' government’s requisitioning program. It found that the market value of the tug had been enhanced $5,000 by-October 15, 1942, due (1) to the great increase in shipping and harbor traffic'because of the war and (2) to the government's need for vessels in the prosecution of the war. But the Court of Claims held that an owner of property taken by the government was entitled to no less than he could have received on the market from others, which in the present case was $15,500.
The Comptroller General has ruled that § 902 (a) prohibitexthe payment of compensation to the extent that, it may be based on values in excess of those existing on the date of the President’s proclamation of a limited national emergency (September■ 8, 1939), provided that such excess be determined as due to economic conditions directly caused by the national emergency.
The Advisory Board on Just Compensation formulated various rules for the guidance of the War Shipping Administration in its requisitioning program, including the following:
“From the value at the time of taking, there should be deducted any enhancement due, to the Government’s need of vessels which has necessitated the taking, to the previous taking of vessels of similar type, or to a prospective taking, reasonably probable, whether such need, taking, or prospect, occurred before or after the declaration of the national emergency of May 27, 1941. Enhancement due to a general rise in prices or earnings, whenever occurring, should not be deducted. In the application of this rule neither the proclamation of limited emergency of September 8, 1939, nor the facts existing at that time, are in themselves of significance. The Board does not determine whether any enhancement after May 27, 1941, other than as enumerated above as deductible, should be excluded; since the Board is advised that the value of oceangoing vessels was higher on May 27, 1941, than at the .time of taking, and that any enhancement since May 27, 1941, .in vessels of other types, not deductible under the foregoing, is attributable to a general rise in prices or earnings, and should therefore not be deducted.”
The Department of Justice agrees with both the Comptroller General and the Advisory Board that the enhancement which is excluded is not limited to that accruing in the period after the declaration of a national emergency on May 27, 1941 and contends for a construction which would eliminate any enhancement on values due to the war. It argues that the Act as so construed, tfiough different from hitherto announced judicial rules of construction of “just compensation” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment, is nevertheless constitutional.
Respondent, relying largely on Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States, 148 U. S. 312, argues that if that construction is adopted it makes the enhancement clause unconstitutional because it conflicts with the judicial construction of “just compensation” and is therefore beyond the competence of Congress to prescribe.
First. We need not reach the question whether the measure of compensation which Congress wrote into the Act is in all of its applications identical with the judicial standard. We are satisfied that on the present facts the two are coterminous.
The Court in its construction of the constitutional provision has been careful not to reduce the concept of “just compensation” to a formula. The political ethics reflected in the Fifth Amendment reject confiscation as a measure of justice. But the Amendment does not contain any definite standards of fairness by which the measure of “just compensation” is to be determined. United States ex rel. T. V. A. v. Powelson, 319 U. S. 266, 279-280; United States v. Petty Motor Co., 327 U. S. 372, 377. The Court in an endeavor to find working rules that will do substantial justice has adopted practical standards, including that of market value. United States v. Miller, 317 U. S. 369, 374. But it-hás refused to make a fetish even of market value, since that may not be the best measure of value in some cases. At times some elements included in the criterion of market value have in fairness been excluded, as for example where the property has a special value to the owner because, of its adaptability to his needs or where it has a special value to the taker because of its peculiar fitness, for the taker’s project. See United States v. Miller, supra, 375 and cases cited. Moreover, where the government lays out a project involving the taking of lands, no increment of value arising by virtue of the fact that a particular tract is clearly or probably within the project may be added. Id., 376-379 and cases cited. Any increase in value due ■to that fact would reflect speculation as to what the government could be compelled to pay and hence in fairness should be excluded from the determination of what compensation would be just. Id., 377.‘
The Court of Claims recognized these rules. But it concluded that they represented the only exceptions to the requirement that market value be paid, that they were inapplicable here, and that therefore there was no enhancement in the value of the vessel that should be excluded from the fair market value in making the award to respondent. We believe, however, that these exceptions are merely illustrations of a principle which excludes enhancement of value resulting from the government’s special or extraordinary demand for. the property.
The special value to the condemner as distinguished from others who may or may not possess the power to condemn has long been excluded as an element ffom market value. See United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., 229 U. S. 53, 76. In time of war or other national emergency the demand of the government for an article or commodity often causes the market to. be an unfair indication of value. The special needs of the government create a demand that outruns the supply. The market, sensitive to the bullish pressure, responds with a spiraling of prices. The normal market price for the commodity becomes inflated. And so the market value of the. commodity is enhanced by the special need which the government has for it.
That seems to have been the situation in the present case. For, as we have seen, the Court of Claims found that at the time of the requisition there was “a rising market and a strong demand for tugs of all types” in and around the Port of New York, due in part at least to the shortage of tugs resulting from the government’s requisitioning program.
It is not fair that the government be required to pay the enhanced price which its demand alone has created. That enhancement reflects elements of the value that was created by the urgency of its need for the article. It does not reflect what “a willing buyer would pay in cash to a willing seller,” United States v. Miller, supra, 374, in a fair market. It represents what can be exacted from the government whose demands in the emergency have ereated a sellers’ market. ■ In this situation, as in the case of land included in a proposed project of the government, the enhanced value reflects speculation as to what the government can be compelled to pay. That is a hold-up value, not a fair market value. That is a value which the government itself created and hence in fairness should not be required to pay.
Second. What we have said is in accord with our reading of the Report of the Advisory Board. Any enhancement of value must be deducted where it is. due (a) “to the Government’s need of vessels which has necessitated the taking,” (b) “to the previous taking of vessels of similar type,” or (c) “to a prospective taking, reasonably probable. ...”
The government’s need of vessels which has necessitated the taking is its need for the precise ship taken, for the type or class of ship taken, or for ships which perform the same or related functions. The government’s need for cargo vessels may affect indirectly the price level of many commodities. It may, for example, affect the price of rowboats. But'if the government takes a rowboat, the enhancement to be excluded is that which results from the 'gqvernment’s activities in the particular market. It is the government’s demand in that market that is the measure of the “causes necessitating the taking or use” in this situation.
We also agree with the Advisory Board that the enhancement which is excluded is that which arises before as well as after the declaration of the national emergency' of May 27, 1941. . Section 902 (a) does not have any limiting factor so far as time is concerned. But we cannot say from this record whether any part of the $15,500 that the Court of Claims found to be the fair market value of the tug at the time of the taking includes any deductible enhancement in value. The Court of Claims found, to be sure-, that there was no reasonable prospect of the condemnation of the tug and hence no enhancement in value due to that reason. Yet, as we have seen, that is only one source of the enhancement in value which is deductible. There are no findings as to the effect on the market either of the previous taking, if any, of vessels of a similar type, or of the government’s need of vessels necessitating the taking, as we have construed it. The only findings at all relevant to these factors are (1) that the increase in market values of “nearly all vessels in 'and about the Port of New York” between September 8, 1939 and May 27, 1941 was due to “the demand for vessels which followed the outbreak of war in Europe”; and (2) that such increase after May 27, 1941, and particularly after December 7, 1941, was due to “the Government’s need for vessels, which necessitated the taking of many vessels, and to the great increase in shipping and in harbor traffic” during the war. These findings, however, are not sufficiently discriminating. They do not show the effect on the market of the government’s need for this particular ship, for this type or class of vessel, or for ships which perform the same or related functions.' The findings as to the rising market for tugs in and about the Port of New York tell us that some of that enhancement is due to the government’s need. But we are left in the dark as to how much it may be.
In sum the findings do not tell us with sufficient particularity what was the effect of the government’s activities in the particular market. ■ Nor do we know whether increases in value of the vessel up to March 19, 1942, when the United States sold it to respondent, were re-fleeted in the sale price. If they were, the United States. has received any enhancement in value that resulted from its need up to that date.
Finally, respondent argues that the actual basis for the increase in value of the vessel between March and October, 1942 (the period when respondent owned it) is due to causes other than the government’s need. He points out that his total monetary expenditure on the vessel amounted to $8,574.78, of which $5,699.78 represented lábor and materials. The latter amount, however, would have been substantially greater had not respondent himself performed part of the labor. Respondent plainly would be entitled to .any increase in value due to that factor. Moreover, when respondent repaired and reconditioned the boat it was certificated as a towing steam vessel, a .substantially new use for the tug. These two factors alone, plus the. general price increase, are said to account for the $5,000 enhancement in value found by the Court of Claims.
We start with findings that tell us that some of the enhancement in market value is due to the government’s need. It is sheer speculation to say that there are offsets against that enhancement which so reduce it as to render the-construction of the Act an abstract question.., Cf. Ashwander v. Valley Authority, 297 U. S. 288, 324. The inadequacies in the findings are due to the erroneous construction of the Act by the Court of Claims.
Reversed.
Mr. Chief Justice Vinson dissents.
Section 902 (a) provides:
“Whenever the President shall proclaim that the security of the national defense makes it advisable or during any national emergency declared by ■ proclamation of- the President, it shall be lawful for the Commission to requisition or purchase any vessel or other, watercraft owned by citizens of the United States, or under construction within the United States, or for any period during such emergency, to requisition or charter the use of any such property. The termination of any emergency so declared shall be announced by a further proclamation by the President. When any such property or the use thereof is’so requisitioned, the owner thereof shall be paid just compensation for the property taken or for the use of such property, but in no case shall the value of the property taken or used be deemed enhanced by the causes necessitating the taking or use. If any property is- taken and used under authority of this section, but the ownership thereof is not required by the United States, such property shall be restored to the owner in a condition at least as good as when taken,, less ordinary wear and tear, or the owner shall be paid an amount for reconditioning sufficient to place the property in such condition. The owner shall not be paid for any consequential damages arising from a taking or use of property under authority of this section.” (Italics added.)
The findings on these issues were as follows:
“At the time of the requisition, there existed in and about the Port of New York a rising market-and a strong .demand for tugs of all types, including thé MacArthur. This situation was due to the greatly increased traffic in the harbor during the period of the war, to the fact that the Government had been requisitioning tugs and to the resulting shortage of tugs. Tugs were operated day and night in an effort to handle the increased business and, under those conditions most tug owners were reluctant to sell. However,-from August 1941 to February 1943, six tugboats were sold.on the open market in or near the Port of New York. None of these sales involved a vessel closely comparable to the MacArthur in design, power, and equipment. . . .”
“Beginning on September. 8, 1939, the date on which the President proclaimed the existence of a limited national emergency, and continuing up to the date that plaintiff’s vessel was requisitioned, there was a general rise-in the market values of nearly all vessels in and about the Port of New York. This increase in values between September 8, 1939 and May 27, 1941, the date on which the President proclaimed the existence of a general national emergency, was due to the demand for vessels which followed the outbreak of war in Europe. After May 27, 1941 and particularly after December 7, 1941, the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the rise in market values was due to the Government’s need for vessels, which necessitated the taking of many vessels, and to the great increase in shipping and in harbor traffic which occurred during the period of the war. These conditions combined to create a demand for and a shortage of tugs. As a result, the market value of the MacArthur had been enhanced by the sum of 15,000.00 by October 15, 1942.
“Prior to the time the defendant requisitioned the MacArthur there was no reasonable prospect that she would be requisitioned, and no part of the enhancement in her value was due-to such a prospect.”
See 3 C. F. R. Cum. Supp. 114.
22 Comp. Gen. 497, 608.
See Exec. Order 9387, Oct. 15, 1943, 8 Fed. Reg. 14105, 3 C. F. R., 1943 Supp. 48-49. The Executive Order provided in part:
“The Board, in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Constitution and the laws of the United States, shall establish fair and equitable standards, rules and formulae of general applicability for the guidance of the War Shipping Administration in determining the just compensation to be paid for all vessels requisitioned, purchased, chartered or insured by the Administration. The Board may prescribe such rules, regulations and procedures as it deems necessary or advisable in carrying out its functions.
“In determining the amount of just compensation which should be paid for each vessel, the War Shipping Administration will be guided by the general standards, rules and formulae established by the Board.”
- This Board was- composed of Learned Hand, John J. Parker, and Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr.
3 C. F. Jt. Cum. Supp. 234.
Whether there might- be a different measure of t-' mse causes in other- situations is a question we do not reach.
See note 2. 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:
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D
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Pattern Makers’ League of North America, AFL-CIO (League), a labor union, provides in its constitution that resignations are not permitted during a strike or when a strike is imminent. The League fined 10 of its members who, in violation of this provision, resigned during a strike and returned to work. The National Labor Relations Board held that these fines were imposed in violation of § 8(b)(1)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A). We granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in order to decide whether § 8(b)(1)(A) reasonably may be construed by the Board as prohibiting a union from fining members who have tendered resignations invalid under the union constitution.
M
The League is a national union composed of local associations (locals). In May 1976, its constitution was amended to provide that
“[n]o resignation or withdrawal from an Association, or from the League, shall be accepted during a strike or lockout, or at a time when a strike or lockout appears imminent.”
This amendment, known as League Law 13, became effective in October 1976, after being ratified by the League’s locals. On May 6, 1977, when a collective-bargaining agreement expired, two locals began an economic strike against several manufacturing companies in Rockford, Illinois, and Beloit, Wisconsin. Forty-three of the two locals’ members participated. In early September 1977, after the locals formally rejected a contract offer, a striking union member submitted a letter of resignation to the Beloit Association. He returned to work the following day. During the next three months, 10 more union members resigned from the Rockford and Beloit locals and returned to work. On December 19, 1977, the strike ended when the parties signed a new collective-bargaining agreement. The locals notified 10 employees who had resigned that their resignations had been rejected as violative of League Law 13. The locals further informed the employees that, as union members, they were subject to sanctions for returning to work. Each was fined approximately the equivalent of his earnings during the strike.
The Rockford-Beloit Pattern Jobbers’ Association (Association) had represented the employers throughout the collective-bargaining process. It filed charges with the Board against the League and its two locals, the petitioners. Relying on § 8(b)(1)(A), the Association claimed that levying fines against employees who had resigned was an unfair labor practice. Following a hearing, an Administrative Law Judge found that petitioners had violated § 8(b)(1)(A) by fining employees for returning to work after tendering resignations. Pattern Makers’ League of North America, 265 N. L. R. B. 1332, 1339 (1982) (decision of G. Wacknov, ALJ). The Board agreed that § 8(b)(1)(A) prohibited the union from imposing sanctions on the 10 employees. Pattern Makers’ League of North America, supra. In holding that League Law 13 did not justify the imposition of fines on the members who attempted to resign, the Board relied on its earlier decision in Machinists Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), 263 N. L. R. B. 984 (1982), enf. denied, 725 F. 2d 1212 (CA9 1984).
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit enforced the Board’s order. 724 F. 2d 57 (1983). The Court of Appeals stated that by restricting the union members’ freedom to resign, League Law 13 “frustrate^] the overriding policy of labor law that employees be free to choose whether to engage in concerted activities.” Id., at 60. Noting that the “mutual reliance” theory was given little weight in NLRB v. Textile Workers, 409 U. S. 213 (1972), the court rejected petitioners’ argument that their members, by participating in the strike vote, had “waived their Section 7 right to abandon the strike.” 724 F. 2d, at 60-61. Finally, the Court of Appeals reasoned that under Scofield v. NLRB, 394 U. S. 423 (1969), labor organizations may impose disciplinary fines against members only if they are “free to leave the union and escape the rule[s].” 724 F. 2d, at 61.
We granted a petition for a writ of certiorari, 469 U. S. 814 (1984), to resolve the conflict between the Courts of Appeals over the validity of restrictions on union members’ right to resign. The Board has held that such restrictions are invalid and do not justify imposing sanctions on employees who have attempted to resign from the union. Because of the Board’s “special competence” in the field of labor relations, its interpretation of the Act is accorded substantial deference. NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251, 266 (1975). The question for decision today is thus narrowed to whether the Board’s construction of § 8(b)(1)(A) is reasonable. See NLRB v. City Disposal Systems, Inc., 465 U. S. 822, 830 (1984). We believe that § 8(b)(1)(A) properly may be construed as prohibiting the fining of employees who have tendered resignations ineffective under a restriction in the union constitution. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals enforcing the Board’s order.
K
A
Section 7 of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 157, grants employees the right to “refrain from any or all [concerted]... activities....” This general right is implemented by § 8(b)(1)(A). The latter section provides that a union commits an unfair labor practice if it “restraint] or coerce[s] employees in the exercise” of their § 7 rights. When employee members of a union refuse to support a strike (whether or not a rule prohibits returning to work during a strike), they are refraining from “concerted activity.” Therefore, imposing fines on these employees for returning to work “restraints]” the exercise of their §7 rights. Indeed, if the terms “refrain” and “restrain or coerce” are interpreted literally, fining employees to enforce compliance with any union rule or policy would violate the Act.
Despite this language from the Act, the Court in NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 175 (1967), held that § 8(b)(1)(A) does not prohibit labor organizations from fining current members. In NLRB v. Textile Workers, supra, and Machinists v. NLRB, 412 U. S. 84 (1973) (per curiam), the Court found as a corollary that unions may not fine former members who have resigned lawfully. Neither Textile Workers, supra, nor Machinists, supra, however, involved a provision like League Law 13, restricting the members’ right to resign. We decide today whether a union is precluded from fining employees who have attempted to resign when resignations are prohibited by the union’s constitution.
B
The Court’s reasoning in Allis-Chalmers, supra, supports the Board’s conclusion that petitioners in this case violated § 8(b)(1)(A). In Allis-Chalmers, the Court held that imposing court-enforceable fines against current union members does not “restrain or coerce” the workers in the exercise of their §7 rights. In so concluding, the Court relied on the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act. It noted that the sponsor of § 8(b)(1)(A) never intended for that provision “ 'to interfere with the internal affairs or organization of unions,’” 388 U. S., at 187, quoting 93 Cong. Rec. 4272 (1947) (statement of Sen. Ball), and that other proponents of the measure likewise disclaimed an intent to interfere with unions’ “internal affairs.” 388 U. S., at 187-190. From the legislative history, the Court reasoned that Congress did not intend to prohibit unions from fining present members, as this was an internal matter. The Court has emphasized that the crux of Allis-Chalmers’ holding was the distinction between “internal and external enforcement of union rules....” Scofield v. NLRB, 394 U. S., at 428. See also NLRB v. Boeing Co., 412 U. S. 67, 73 (1973).
The congressional purpose to preserve unions’ control over their own “internal affairs” does not suggest an intent to authorize restrictions on the right to resign. Traditionally, union members were free to resign and escape union discipline. In 1947, union constitutional provisions restricting the right to resign were uncommon, if not unknown. Therefore, allowing unions to “extend an employee's membership obligation through restrictions on resignation” would “expan[d] the definition of internal action” beyond the contours envisioned by the Taft-Hartley Congress. International Assn. of Machinists, Local 1414 (Neufeld Porsche-Audi, Inc.), 270 N. L. R. B. No. 209, p. 11 (1984).
C
Language and reasoning from other opinions of this Court confirm that the Board’s construction of § 8(b)(1)(A) is reasonable. In Scofield v. NLRB, supra, the Court upheld a union rule setting a ceiling on the daily wages that members working on an incentive basis could earn. The union members’ freedom to resign was critical to the Court’s decision that the union rule did not “restrain or coerce” the employees within the meaning of § 8(b)(1)(A). It stated that the rule was “reasonably enforced against union members who [were] free to leave the union and escape the rule.” Id., at 430. The Court deemed it important that if members were unable to take full advantage of their contractual right to earn additional pay, it was because they had “chosen to become and remain union members.” Id., at 435 (emphasis added).
The decision in NLRB v. Textile Workers, 409 U. S. 213 (1972), also supports the Board’s view that § 8(b)(1)(A) prohibits unions from punishing members not free to resign. There, 31 employees resigned their union membership and resumed working during a strike. We held that fining these former members “restrained or coerced” them, within the meaning of § 8(b)(1)(A). In reaching this conclusion, we said that “the vitality of § 7 requires that the member be free to refrain in November from the actions he endorsed in May.” Id., at 217-218. Restrictions on the right to resign curtail the freedom that the Textile Workers Court deemed so important. See also Machinists v. NLRB, 412 U. S. 84 (1973).
HI
Section 8(b)(1)(A) allows unions to enforce only those rules that “impai[r] no policy Congress has imbedded in the labor laws....” Scofield, supra, at 430. The Board has found union restrictions on the right to resign to be inconsistent with the policy of voluntary unionism implicit in § 8(a)(3). See International Assn. of Machinists, Inc., Local 1)11 (Neufeld, Porsche-Audi, Inc.), supra; Machinists Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), 263 N. L. R. B., at 992 (Chairman Van de Water and Member Hunter, concurring). We believe that the inconsistency between union restrictions on the right to resign and the policy of voluntary unionism supports the Board’s conclusion that League Law 13 is invalid.
Closed shop agreements, legalized by the Wagner Act in 1935, became quite common in the early 1940’s. Under these agreements, employers could hire and retain in their employ only union members in good standing. R. Gorman, Labor Law, ch. 28, § 1, p. 639 (1976). Full union membership was thus compulsory in a closed shop; in order to keep their jobs, employees were required to attend union meetings, support union leaders, and otherwise adhere to union rules. Because of mounting objections to the closed shop, in 1947 — after hearings and full consideration — Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Act. Section 8(a)(3) of that Act effectively eliminated compulsory union membership by outlawing the closed shop. The union security agreements permitted by § 8(a)(3) require employees to pay dues, but an employee cannot be discharged for failing to abide by union rules or policies with which he disagrees.
Full union membership thus no longer can be a requirement of employment. If a new employee refuses formally to join a union and subject himself to its discipline, he cannot be fired. Moreover, no employee can be discharged if he initially joins a union, and subsequently resigns. We think it noteworthy that § 8(a)(3) protects the employment rights of the dissatisfied member, as well as those of the worker who never assumed full union membership. By allowing employees to resign from a union at any time, § 8(a)(3) protects the employee whose views come to diverge from those of his union.
League Law 13 curtails this freedom to resign from full union membership. Nevertheless, petitioners contend that League Law 13 does not contravene the policy of voluntary unionism imbedded in the Act. They assert that this provision does not interfere with workers’ employment rights because offending members are not discharged, but only fined. We find this argument unpersuasive, for a union has not left a “worker’s employment rights inviolate when it exacts [his entire] paycheck in satisfaction of a fine imposed for working. ” Wellington, Union Fines and Workers’ Rights, 85 Yale L. J. 1022, 1023 (1976). Congress in 1947 sought to eliminate completely any requirement that the employee maintain full union membership. Therefore, the Board was justified in concluding that by restricting the right of employees to resign, League Law 13 impairs the policy of voluntary unionism.
1 — 1 <3
We now consider specifically three arguments advanced by petitioners: (i) union rules restricting the right to resign are protected by the proviso to § 8(b)(1)(A); (ii) the legislative history of the Act shows that Congress did not intend to protect the right of union members to resign; and (iii) labor unions should be allowed to restrict the right to resign because other voluntary associations are permitted to do so.
A
Petitioners first argue that the proviso to § 8(b)(1)(A) expressly allows unions to place restrictions on the right to resign. The proviso states that nothing in § 8(b)(1)(A) shall “impair the right of a labor organization to prescribe its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership therein.” 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A). Petitioners contend that because League Law 18 places restrictions on the right to withdraw from the union, it is a “rul[e] with respect to the... retention of membership,” within the meaning of the proviso.
Neither the Board nor this Court has ever interpreted the proviso as allowing unions to make rules restricting the right to resign. Rather, the Court has assumed that “rules "with respect to the... retention of membership” are those that provide for the expulsion of employees from the union. The legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act is consistent with this interpretation. Senator Holland, the proviso’s sponsor, stated that § 8(b)(1)(A) should not outlaw union rules “which ha[ve] to do with the admission or the expulsion of members.” 93 Cong. Rec. 4271 (1947) (emphasis added). Senator Taft accepted the proviso, for he likewise believed that a union should be free to “refuse [a] man admission to the union, or expel him from the union” Id., at 4272 (emphasis added). Furthermore, the legislative history of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 29 U. S. C. §401 et seq., confirms that the proviso was intended to protect union rules involving admission and expulsion. Accordingly, we find no basis for refusing to defer to the Board’s conclusion that League Law 13 is not a “rule with respect to the retention of membership,” within the meaning of the proviso.
B
The petitioners next argue that the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act shows that Congress made a considered decision not to protect union members’ right to resign. Section 8(c) of the House bill contained a detailed “bill of rights” for labor union members. H. R. 3020, § 8(c), 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 22-26 (1947). Included was a provision making it an unfair labor practice to “deny to any [union] member the right to resign from the organization at any time.” H. R. 3020, supra, § 8(c)(4), at 23. The Senate bill, on the other hand, did not set forth specific employee rights, but stated more generally that it was an unfair labor practice to “restrain or coerce” employees in the exercise of their §7 rights. H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., §8(b)(1)(A), p. 81 (1947) (as passed by Senate). The Taft-Hartley Act contains the Senate bill’s general language rather than the more specific House prohibitions. See 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A). The petitioners contend that the omission of the House provision shows that Congress expressly decided not to protect the “right to resign.”
The legislative history does not support this contention. The “right to resign” apparently was included in the original House bill to protect workers unable to resign because of “closed shop” agreements. Union constitutions limiting the right to resign were uncommon in 1947, see n. 12, supra; closed shop agreements, however, often impeded union resignations. The House Report, H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947), confirms that closed shop agreements provided the impetus for the inclusion of a right to resign in the House bill. The Report simply states that even under the proposed legislation, employees could be required to pay dues pursuant to union security agreements. Id., at 32. Because the closed shop was outlawed by the Taft-Hartley Act, see § 8(a)(3), 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3), it is not surprising that Congress thought it unnecessary explicitly to preserve the right to resign.
Even if § 8(c)(4) of the House bill, H. R. 3020, supra, was directed at restrictive union rules, its omission from the Taft-Hartley Act does not convince us that the Board’s construction of § 8(b)(1)(A) is unreasonable. The House Conference Report, upon which petitioners primarily rely, does state that the specific prohibitions of § 8(c) were “omitted... as unfair labor practices,” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 46 (1947). But this language does not suggest that all employee rights arguably protected by the House bill were to be left unprotected. Cf. id., at 43 (“[T]he primary strike for recognition... was not prohibited”). Apparently, the Report was intended merely to inform House Members that the detailed prohibitions of § 8(c) were not separately included in the conference bill as “unfair labor practices.” We are reluctant to reach a contrary conclusion, and thereby overturn the Board’s decision, on the basis of this summary statement in the House Conference Report. Congress must have been aware that the broad language of § 8(b)(1)(A) would reach some of the same union conduct proscribed by the detailed “bill of rights.”
Petitioners concede that “absent the legislative history,” the Board’s construction of § 8(b)(1)(A) would be entitled to deference. Tr. of Second Oral Arg. 15 (Apr. 1985). They argue, however, that “in this instance the legislative materials are too clearly opposed to what the Board did to permit the result the Board reached.” Id., at 17. We do not agree. The ambiguous legislative history upon which petitioners rely falls far short of showing that the Board’s interpretation of the Act is unreasonable.
C
In Textile Workers, 409 U. S, at 216, and Machinists, 412 U. S., at 88 (per curiam), the Court stated that when a union constitution does not purport to restrict the right to resign, the “law which normally is reflected in our free institutions” is applicable. Relying on this quoted language, petitioners argue that League Law 13 is valid. They assert that because the common law does not prohibit restrictions on resignation, such provisions are not violative of § 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act. We find no merit in this argument. Textile Workers, supra, and Machinists, supra, held only that in the absence of restrictions on the right to resign, members are free to leave the union at any time. Although the Court noted that its decisions were consistent with the common-law rule, it did not state that the validity of restrictions on the right to resign should be determined with reference to common law.
The Court’s decision in NLRB v. Marine & Shipbuilding Workers, 391 U. S. 418 (1968), demonstrates that many union rules, although valid under the common law of associations, run afoul of § 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act. There the union expelled a member who failed to comply with a rule requiring the “exhaustion of] all remedies and appeals within the Union... before... resort to any court or other tribunal outside of the Union.” Id., at 421. Under the common law, associations may require their members to exhaust all internal remedies. See, e. g., Medical Soc. of Mobile Cty. v. Walker, 245 Ala. 135, 16 So. 2d 321 (1944). Nevertheless, the Marine Workers Court held that “considerations of public policy” mandated a holding that the union rule requiring exhaustion violated § 8(b)(1)(A), 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A). 391 U. S., at 424; see also Scofield v. NLRB, 394 U. S., at 430 (union rule is invalid under § 8(b)(1)(A) if it “impairs [a] policy Congress has imbedded in the labor laws”).
The Board reasonably has concluded that League Law 13 “restrains or coerces” employees, see § 8(b)(1)(A), and is inconsistent with the congressional policy of voluntary unionism. Therefore, whatever may have been the common law, the Board’s interpretation of the Act merits our deference.
V
The Board has the primary responsibility for applying “ ‘the general provisions of the Act to the complexities of industrial life.’” Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, 441 U. S. 488, 496 (1979), quoting NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 236 (1963), in turn citing NLRB v. Steelworkers, 357 U. S. 357, 362-363 (1958). Where the Board’s construction of the Act is reasonable, it should not be rejected “merely because the courts might prefer another view of the statute.” Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, supra, at 497. In this case, two factors suggest that we should be particularly reluctant to hold that the Board’s interpretation of the Act is impermissible. First, in related cases this Court invariably has yielded to Board decisions on whether fines imposed by a union “restrain or coerce” employees. Second, the Board consistently has construed § 8(b)(1)(A) as prohibiting the imposition of fines on employees who have tendered resignations invalid under a union constitution. Therefore, we conclude that the Board’s decision here is entitled to our deference.
f — t >
The Board found that by fining employees who had tendered resignations, the petitioners violated § 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act, even though League Law 13 purported to render the resignations ineffective. We defer to the Board’s interpretation of the Act and so affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals enforcing the Board’s order.
It is so ordered.
William Kohl complained in his letter: “I no longer feel that the union officers are acting in the best interest of the men. We need fair and reasonable negotiators to solve our problems.” 3 Record, General Counsel Exhibit 2.
Kohl, the other employee who returned to work, was expelled from the union. On January 14, 1978, the Beloit local notified Kohl’s employer that because he was no longer a union member, he should be discharged pursuant to the “union shop” agreement. Two weeks later, the Beloit local informed Kohl that he could gain readmission to the union, and thus remain employed, if he paid back dues, a readmission fee, and $4,200 in “damages... for deserting the strike by returning to work.” Pattern Makers’ League of North America, 265 N. L. R. B. 1332, 1337 (1982) (decision of G. Wacknov, ALJ). Kohl was denied readmission to the union because he refused to pay the amounts allegedly due. Nevertheless, he was not discharged by his employer. Ibid.
The Association also charged that petitioners committed the following unfair labor practices: (i) threatening employees with physical harm and loss of accrued pension benefits if they returned to work during the strike; and (2) attempting to have Kohl and another employee, John Nelson, discharged pursuant to a “union shop” agreement. Ibid. These charges are unrelated to the question presented in this case. Therefore, we express no opinion concerning the disposition of these claims by the ALJ, the Board, and the Court of Appeals.
Writing separately, Member Fanning asserted that a restriction on the right to resign would not violate § 8(b)(1)(A) if it functioned only to prevent members from removing their names from the union’s rolls. He agreed, however, that the employees could not be fined for returning to work after tendering their resignations. Pattern Makers’ League of North America, supra, at 1335 (Member Fanning, concurring and dissenting in part). Member Jenkins dissented, as he did in Machinist Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), 263 N. L. R. B. 984 (1982), enf. denied, 725 F. 2d 1212 (CA9 1984). See n. 5, infra.
In Machinists Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), several employees resigned from a union and returned to work during a strike. The union constitution prohibited resignations during, or within 14 days preceding, strikes. As in this case, the employees’ resignations were not accepted, and they were fined for aiding and abetting the employer. The Board held that fining these employees for returning to work after tendering resignations violated § 8(b)(1)(A).
Chairman Van de Water and Member Hunter stated that no restriction on the right to resign was permissible under the Act; they reasoned that such a rule allowed the union to exercise control over “external matters.” Moreover, these Board members thought that restrictions on resignation impaired the congressional policy, embodied in § 8(a)(3), of voluntary unionism. Therefore, they concluded that any discipline premised on such a rule violates § 8(b)(1)(A). 263 N. L. R. B., at 988.
Members Fanning and Zimmerman asserted that a rule legitimately could restrict the right to resign for a period of 30 days. Because the rule in question restricted the right to resign indefinitely, however, they agreed that the union had violated §8(b)(1)(A). Id., at 987.
Member Jenkins, the lone dissenter, contended that the union’s restriction on resignation was protected by the proviso to § 8(b)(1)(A), which states that a union may “prescribe its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership therein.” Id., at 993.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held that a union may impose restrictions on its members’ right to resign. Machinists Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), supra. See n. 5, supra, for a discussion of the Board decision that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to enforce.
Section 7 of the Act, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 157, provides:
“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this title.”
Section 8(b)(1)(A), as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A), provides:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
“(1) to restrain or coerce (A) employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title: Provided, That this paragraph shall not impair the right of a labor organization to prescribe its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership therein....”
In both Textile Workers, 409 U. S., at 217, and Machinists, 412 U. S., at 88, the Court explicitly left open the question of “the extent to which contractual restriction on a member’s right to resign may be limited by the Act.” Ibid.
The proviso to § 8(b)(1)(A), 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(1)(A), states that nothing in the section shall “impair the right of a labor organization to prescribe its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership therein.” The Court in Allis-Chalmers assumed that the proviso could not be read to authorize the imposition of court-enforceable fines. 388 U. S., at 192. See NLRB v. Boeing Co., 412 U. S. 67, 71, n. 5 (1973) (“This Court..., in holding that court enforcement of union fines was not an unfair labor practice in NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., relied on congressional intent only with respect to the first part of this section”) (citation omitted).
See Bossert v. Dhuy, 221 N. Y. 342, 365, 117 N. E. 582, 587 (1917) (“The members of the organization... who are not willing to obey the orders of the organization are at liberty to withdraw therefrom”); Barker Painting Co. v. Brotherhood of Painters, 57 App. D. C. 322, 324, 23 F. 2d 743, 745, cert. denied, 276 U. S. 631 (1928) (It is “not unlawful for... unions to punish a member by fine, suspension, or expulsion for an infraction of the union rules, since membership in the union is purely voluntary”); Bayer v. Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America, Local 301, 108 N. J. Eq. 257, 262, 154 A. 759, 761 (1931) (“association is a voluntary one, and the workmen may decline to become members or withdraw from membership, if dissatisfied with the conduct of its affairs”); Mische v. Kaminski, 127 Pa. Super. 66, 91-92, 193 A. 410, 421 (1937) (members “had a right to leave the union”); Longshore Printing Co. v. Howell, 26 Ore. 527, 540, 38 P. 547, 551 (1894) (“No resort can be had to compulsory methods of any kind either to increase, keep up, or retain such membership”).
Our attention has not been called to any provision limiting the right to resign in a union constitution extant in 1947. Indeed, even by the 1970’s, very few unions had such restrictions in their constitutions. See Millan, Disciplinary Developments Under § 8(b)(1)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act, 20 Loyola L. Rev. 245, 269 (1974); Wellington, Union Fines and Workers’ Rights, 85 Yale L. J. 1022, 1042 (1976).
In International Assn. of Machinists, Local 1414 (Neufeld Porsche-Audi, Inc.), a majority of the Board held that any restriction on the right to resign violates the Act. This was the position taken by Chairman Van de Water and Member Hunter in Machinists Local 1327 (Dalmo Victor II), 263 N. L. R. B. 984 (1982), enf. denied, 725 F. 2d 1212 (CA9 1984). See n. 5, supra.
Section 8(a)(3), as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3), provides: “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 subchapter, or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude an employer from making an agreement with a labor organization... to require as a condition of employment membership therein on or after the thirtieth day following the beginning of such employment or the effective date of such agreement, whichever is the later...: Provided further, That no employer shall justify any discrimination against an employee for nonmembership in a labor organization (A) if he has reasonable grounds for believing that such membership was not available to the employee on the same terms and conditions generally applicable to other members, or (B) if he has reasonable grounds for believing that membership was denied or terminated for reasons other than the failure of the employee to tender the periodic dues and the initiation fees uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership.”
Section 8(b)(2) of the Act, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(2), complements § 8(a)(3) by providing that:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents—
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:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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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 Burton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The principal question before us is whether, on a petition to review a natural gas rate reduction order of the Federal Power Commission, a Court of Appeals may consider, sua sponte, an objection which has not been urged before the Commission in the application for rehearing prescribed by § 19 of the Natural Gas Act. Alternatively, a question also is raised whether, in such a rate proceeding, a Court of Appeals may invalidate, sua sponte, an existing order of the Commission, which prohibits the inclusion of certain operating expenses of the natural gas company in its cost of service, where such order not only has been proposed and acquiesced in by the company, but has been imposed on it by the Commission as a condition of a merger under which the company is operating. For the reasons hereafter stated, we answer each of these questions in the negative.
In 1948, the Federal Power Commission, petitioner herein, instituted a rate investigation against respondent, the Colorado Interstate Gas Company, under § 5 (a) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 823-824, 15 U. S. C. § 717d (a). While this was pending, respondent and the Canadian River Gas Company filed a joint application under § 7 of the same Act, 52 Stat. 824-825, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 717f. That application sought a certificate of public convenience and necessity permitting respondent to merge with the latter company, acquire and operate its properties, and construct additional facilities. Objection was made that consumers, receiving natural gas from respondent, might be forced by this merger to share respondent’s loss if the costs of certain gasoline operations to be undertaken by it exceeded its revenues from them. To meet this objection, respondent proposed that the Commission, in any natural gas rate proceeding, exclude such loss from the company’s cost of service.
March 1, 1951, the Commission wrote in the above proposal as a condition of its certification of the merger. 10 F. P. C. 105, 778. No review was sought. The merger was consummated and respondent has enjoyed its benefits since December 31,1951.
The rate investigation was resumed in 1951 and the year 1952 became the test year. The usual intermediate decision was omitted and, on August 8, 1952, the Commission issued its findings and rate order. 95 P. U. R. (N. S.) 97. In that proceeding, respondent had argued for a “volumetric”- allocation of gasoline costs which, in 1952, would result in a showing of no loss suffered by it from the gasoline operations in question. The Commission, however, had declined to adopt that method and had applied, a “relative market value method” of allocating costs. This showed a loss of $421,537 from such operations and, pursuant to its merger order, the Commission held that such loss “shall not be considered as a part of the cost of service which we have heretofore determined.” On that basis, the Commission found respondent’s total cost of service, in 1952, to be $14,952,567, including federal taxes of $185,599 and the proceeds of a 5.75% rate of return ($3,280,317 on a rate base of $57,048,988). Deducting that cost from its gas service revenues of $17,-962,532 left respondent with excess revenues of over $3,000,000. The Commission accordingly ordered a rate reduction eliminating that excess. Id., at 127.
Respondent applied for a rehearing pursuant to § 19 (a) of the Natural Gas Act. The application stated respondent’s objections to the Commission’s allocation of the expense of the gasoline operations and a claim that, if the costs were properly allocated, there would be no resulting loss. Respondent complained further that the Commission’s computation, in effect, reduced the company’s rate of return from 5.75% to 5.01%. At no point did respondent contend that the Commission’s order excluding respondent’s loss from gasoline operations from its cost of service was invalid. Upon consideration of the application, the Commission denied the rehearing and modified the new rates only to a slight degree not material here.
On respondent’s petition for review by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, that court generally upheld the Commission’s findings and order. It accepted the Commission’s method of allocating respondent’s gasoline costs and the computation which fixed the resulting loss at $421,537. However, the court held, sua sponte, that, despite the action taken in the merger proceeding, this loss must be added to respondent’s cost of service. The court therefore reversed the Commission’s order and remanded the cause for further proceedings. 209 F. 2d 717. After reargument, the court reaffirmed its position. 209 F. 2d 732. Recognizing the importance of such a result in relation to the judicial review of administrative orders, we granted the Commission’s petition for certiorari but denied respondent’s cross-petition. 347 U. S. 1009; 348 U. S. 818, 884. 28 U. S. C. § 1254 (1); 52 Stat. 831-832, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b).
The Natural Gas Act prescribes explicitly the procedure to be followed by any person seeking judicial review of an order of the Federal Power Commission, and limits the scope of that review as follows:
“Sec. 19. (a) Any person . . . aggrieved by an order issued by the [Federal Power] Commission in a proceeding under this Act to which such person ... is a party may apply for a rehearing within thirty days after the issuance of such order. The application for rehearing shall set forth specifically the ground or grounds upon which such application is based. . . . No proceeding to review any order of the Commission shall be brought by any person unless such person shall have made application to the Commission for a rehearing thereon.
“(b) . . . No objection to the order of the Commission shall be considered by the court [o/ Appeals] unless such objection shall have been urged before the Commission in the application for rehearing unless there is reasonable ground for failure so to do. . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) 52 Stat. 831-832, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (a) and (b).
Respondent first contends that its application for a rehearing by the Commission did, in substance, object to the validity of the merger condition and thus did meet the requirements of § 19 (b). We find, however, that in such application, respondent objected to the exclusion of the loss of $421,537 from gasoline operations merely on the ground that the Commission’s certificate approving the merger required a “proper allocation” of the costs, and that the method of allocation chosen by the Commission was not “proper.” Respondent also unsuccessfully proposed an alternative method of allocation, which would eliminate the loss. In passing upon these contentions, the Commission assumed, as did respondent, that any properly computed loss resulting from the gasoline operations was to be excluded from the cost of service. Respondent's objection thus gave no notice that respondent was attacking the validity of the merger condition. The same is true of respondent’s objection to the Commission’s treatment of its income taxes, and of respondent’s claim that the ultimate effect of the Commission’s order was to reduce its net share of the proceeds of the rate of return from one of 5.75% to one of 5.01%. These were bids for a higher rate of return or for a recomputation of the loss from the gasoline operations, not claims that the merger condition was invalid.
Respondent’s second and principal contention is that, although its application did not meet the requirements of § 19 (b) and it therefore is barred from attacking the validity of the merger condition in the Court of Appeals, nothing precludes that court itself from raising, considering and sustaining the same objection, sua sponte. Respondent’s error appears on the face of the statute. Section 19 (a) first precludes the bringing of any proceeding in a Court of Appeals to review an order of the Commission, unless the person bringing it previously has applied to the Commission for a rehearing on that order. Section 19 (b) then expressly precludes the consideration by the court of any objection to an order of the Commission, unless the objection shall have been urged before the Commission in the application for rehearing. As the court is thus expressly precluded from considering an objection when, without prior application to the Commission, that objection is presented to the court by the party directly aggrieved, it cannot be assumed that Congress intended to permit the same court to consider the same objection, under the same circumstances, sua sponte, merely because the objection was not presented to the court by the party aggrieved. Section 19 (b) reflects the policy that a party must exhaust its administrative remedies before seeking judicial review. To allow a Court of Appeals to intervene here on its own motion would seriously undermine the purpose of the explicit requirements of § 19 (b) that objections must first come before the Commission.
Section 10 (e) of the Administrative Procedure Act does not require a different result. That Act purports to strengthen, rather than to weaken, the principle requiring the exhaustion of administrative remedies before permitting court review. The Senate Committee, recommending the bill for that Act, said:
“A party cannot wilfully fail to exhaust his administrative remedies and then, after the agency action has become operative, either secure a suspension of the agency action by a belated appeal to the agency, or resort to court without having given the agency an opportunity to determine the questions raised. If he so fails he is precluded from judicial review by the application of the time-honored doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies. . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) S. Doc. No. 248, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 289, n. 21.
Furthermore, § 10, by its own terms, is made inapplicable in “so far as (1) statutes [as here] preclude judicial review,” and § 10 (e) applies only to situations where the question at issue has been properly “presented,” as has not been done here. It is not a reasonable interpretation of the general terms of that Act to hold that they repeal the administrative procedures specifically set forth in the Natural Gas Act.
“We have recognized in more than a few decisions, and Congress has recognized in more than a few statutes, that orderly procedure and good administration require that objections to the proceedings of an administrative agency be made while it has opportunity for correction in order to raise issues reviewable by the courts.” United States v. Tucker Truck Lines, 344 U. S. 33, 36-37. See also, Riss & Co. v. United States, 341 U. S. 907; Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33; United States v. Capital Transit Co., 338 U. S. 286, 291; Unemployment Compensation Commission v. Aragon, 329 U. S. 143, 155.
The necessity for prior administrative consideration of an issue is apparent where, as here, its decision calls for the application of technical knowledge and experience not usually possessed by judges. The Federal Power Commission is an administrative agency the decisions of which involve those difficult problems of policy, accounting, economics and special knowledge that go into public utility rate making. For reviewing a rate made by the Federal Power Commission, the Court of Appeals has no inherent suitability comparable to that which it has for reviewing the judicial decisions made by a United States District Court.
Respondent further suggests that to limit the judicial review of the Court of Appeals to those objections which have been urged specifically before the Commission prevents that court from reviewing effectively the “end result” of the rate order. See Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591. To accept that argument would wipe out at a single stroke the expressly prescribed policy of § 19 (b). Not only would such acceptance be contrary to the terms of the statute, but it would fail to recognize the fundamental consideration that it is not the function of a court itself to engage in rate making.
Returning to the language of § 19, we hold that the Court of Appeals does not here have authority, either under § 19 or sua sponte, to reverse the Commission by overruling its exclusion of $421,537 of gasoline production expense from respondent’s cost of service for rate purposes.
As an alternative ground for reversal, the Commission also contends that the Court of Appeals is here precluded from redetermining the validity of the merger condition because of respondent’s and the Commission’s previous conduct in approving it. Cf. United States v. Hancock Truck Lines, 324 U. S. 774, 778-780. In 1950, respondent proposed this condition in its merger proceeding. That merger had many facets and a difference of opinion existed within the Commission on its merits. 10 F. P. C. 105, 119. In 1951, the condition before us became an important factor in securing the Commission’s finding that the merger would be in the public interest. Id., at 780. After the merger was approved on that condition, respondent sought no review of it. On the other hand, respondent consummated the merger and has enjoyed its benefits ever since. It cannot now be allowed to attack an officially approved condition of the merger while retaining at the same time all of its benefits. The impropriety of the attack is rendered twofold because it is not made in the merger proceeding but is attempted in a separate rate proceeding. While respondent also charges that, under the Commission’s allocation of gasoline costs and the condition requiring the company to absorb them, the rate of return is reduced from 5.75% to 5.01% and is therefore unreasonable and confiscatory, we do not sustain that charge.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Harlan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
52 Stat. 831-832, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 717r. The material provisions of § 19 (a) and (b) are set forth in the body of this opinion at p. 497, infra. For related litigation not material to the issues now presented, see Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, and Canadian River Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 324 U. S. 581, and Colorado-Wyoming Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 324 U. S. 626.
The proposal in respondent’s letter of June 8, 1950, to the Commission, was that “in order to keep a rate payer from meeting this deficiency the- Commission could condition the certificate of public convenience and necessity so as in effect to provide that such deficit would not be considered in determining reasonable rates. In other words, the stockholders of Colorado Interstate Gas Company would take the risk as to whether or not gasoline prices will go down.”
“(i) The authorization herein granted for effectuating the acquisition and operation of Canadian’s properties and facilities is upon the express understanding and condition that if, as a result of carrying out the terms and conditions in the transaction proposed as a part of the acquisition and merger of Canadian into Colorado whereby rights to liquid hydrocarbons in place are granted to Southwestern Development Co. and whereby Colorado is to receive 50 percent of the gross proceeds from the sale of certain liquid hydrocarbons and 15 percent of the net revenue to be received by Colorado from the hydrocarbons resulting from the operation of Fritsch Natural Gasoline Plant of Texoma Natural Gas Co., the costs properly allocable to such hydrocarbons exceed the amounts payable to Colorado pursuant to such transaction, then and in that case in any proceeding in which the effective or proposed rates of Colorado are under inquiry such excess shall not be considered as a cost of service to Colorado’s natural gas customers and consumers." (Emphasis supplied.) 10 F. P. C., at 780.
“. . . Petitioner, moreover, failed to object in its application for rehearing before the Commission to the inclusion of its producing properties and gathering facilities in the rate base. It is accordingly precluded by § 19 (b) of the Act from attacking the order of the Commission on the ground that they are included.” Panhandle Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 324 U. S. 635, 649, and see 650-651. See also, Labor Board v. Cheney Lumber Co., 327 U. S. 385, 388-389, and Labor Board v. Seven-Up Co., 344 U. S. 344, where failure to preserve the issue by objection before the agency was treated as a bar to the judicial consideration of it.
“Sec. 10. Except so jar as (1) statutes preclude judicial review or (2) agency action is by law committed to agency discretion—
“(e) Scope op review. — So far as necessary to decision and where presented the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of any agency action. It shall (A) compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed; and (B) hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be (1) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law; (2) contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity; (3) in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right; (4) without observance of procedure required bylaw; (5) unsupported by substantial evidence in any case subject to the requirements of sections 7 and 8 or otherwise reviewed on the record of an agency hearing provided by statute; or (6) unwarranted by the facts to the extent that the facts are subject to trial de novo by the reviewing court. In making the foregoing determinations the court shall review the whole record or such portions thereof as may be cited by any party, and due account shall be taken of the rule of prejudicial error.” (Emphasis supplied.) 60 Stat. 243-244, 5 U. S. C. § 1009 (e).
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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
On this appeal we review a decision of the District Court for the Eastern District of California that § 103 of the Social Security Amendments Act of 1983, 97 Stat. 71, 42 U. S. C. §418(g) (1982 ed., Supp. II), effected a taking of property within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment by preventing States from withdrawing state and local government employees from the Social Security System.
I — I
[>
The Social Security Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 620, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 301 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. II), established an insurance program for “persons working in industry and commerce as a long-run safeguard against the occurrence of old-age dependency.” H. R. Rep. No. 1300, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1949). From that relatively humble beginning, the coverage of the Act has been expanded to provide benefits not only to the “insured worker in his old age,” ibid., but also to “individuals and families when workers retire, become disabled, or die.” S. Rep. No. 98-13, vol. 2, p. 78 (1983). The “basic idea” of Social Security “is that, while they are working, employees and their employers pay earmarked social security contributions (FICA taxes) .... Then, when earnings stop, or are reduced because of retirement in old-age, death, or disability, cash benefits are paid to partially replace the earnings that were lost.” Ibid. The System operates on a “pay as you go” basis, with current contributions “largely paid out in current benefits,” ibid. In the words of Congress, the System now functions “as the Nation’s basic social insurance program.” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, p. 19 (1983). To ensure that this important program could evolve as economic and social conditions changed, Congress expressly reserved to itself “[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of” the Act. 42 U. S. C. § 1304.
As of 1983, more than 90% of the Nation’s paid employees, a total of more than 115 million people, participated in the Social Security System. H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 13. Participation in the System is, and has been since its inception, “basically mandatory.” Id., at 19. Therefore, most workers covered by the System and their employers have no choice whether or not to participate. In 1935, when the Act was adopted, Congress faced questions as to whether it could compel the States and their political subdivisions to include their employees in the System. Therefore, the Act at that time excluded such employees from its coverage. See 42 U. S. C. § 410(a)(7). Responding to subsequent pressure from States that sought Social Security coverage for their employees, in 1950 Congress enacted § 418, the provision at the heart of the controversy in this case.
Section 418 authorizes voluntary participation by States in the Social Security System. Under § 418(a), States may obtain coverage for their employees and employees of their political subdivisions, enrolling all or only specified “coverage groups” of workers. 42 U. S. C. § 418(a)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. II); see § 418(b)(5) (defining coverage group). States enter the System by executing “an agreement” (§ 418 Agreement) with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary). While §418 gives States some authority over the content of the Agreements, i. e., States may identify the covered employees, the provisions of a § 418 Agreement are required to be “not inconsistent with the provisions of” § 418. § 418(a)(1). From its enactment in 1950 through 1983, § 418 permitted States to terminate their § 418 Agreements “[u]pon giving at least two years’ advance notice in writing to the [Secretary].” §418(g)(1). Once a State exercised its option to withdraw, it could not thereafter reenter the System. § 418(g)(3).
Following adoption of § 418, all 50 States entered into § 418 Agreements with respect to their own employees, local government employees, or both. “By the early 1960’s most States had made coverage agreements,” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 18, and the percentage of state and local employees enrolled in the System increased from 11% in 1951 to 70% in 1970, H. R. Comm. Print 97-34, at 25. Since 1970, “[c]overage of State and local employees has remained fairly constant at 70-72 percent.” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 18. As of 1983, “some 9.4 million out of the approximately 13.2 million State and local employees” participated in the Social Security System. Id., at 17.
For the first 20 years of their participation, “very few” States exercised their option under § 418(g) to withdraw from the System. Id., at 18. Until the mid-1970’s, the number of state and local employees “leaving the system was always greatly exceeded by the number of newly-covered employees — in most years, by 50,000 or more.” Ibid. Starting in 1976, however, this trend reversed, and the “numbers of positions being terminated from coverage” began to exceed “the numbers of newly-covered positions. ” Ibid. From 1977 through 1981, “termination activity was greater than in the previous ten years,” with coverage “terminated for 96,000 State and local government employees.” Ibid. As of 1982, coverage was “terminated for 595 State entities employing 190,000 workers.” Ibid. Finally, “for the two-year period of 1983-84, terminations [were] pending for 634 State and local entities employing 227,000 workers.” Ibid.
After studying the trend towards termination of §418 Agreements and the reasons for it, Congress determined that the increasing rate of withdrawals was threatening the integrity of the System in a number of important respects. As an initial matter, Congress observed that the current rate of withdrawals would cost the System between $500 million and $1 billion annually. H. R. Comm. Print 97-34, at 13-14. Congress further concluded that States’ ability to withdraw was “inequitable both for the employees who lose coverage and for the vast majority of the nation’s workforce who continue to pay into the system.” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 18-19. While States terminating § 418 Agreements often did so in the course of designing benefit packages that would attract long-term workers, Congress believed that sound social policy also required protection of employees who move from job to job. Id., at 19. Moreover, “the shifting of the tax burden of social security from those workers who withdraw, but who remain entitled to future benefits based on their past earnings,” created resentment on the part of workers whose participation in the System was mandatory. Ibid.
Accordingly, Congress decided to amend § 418(g) by repealing the termination provision. As amended, § 418(g) provides that no § 418 Agreement “may be terminated, either in its entirety or with respect to any coverage group, on or after April 20, 1983.” The amendment expressly prevents States from withdrawing employees from the System even if a termination notice had been filed prior to enactment of the amendment.
B
On March 9, 1951, California and the Secretary entered into a §418 Agreement, effective as of January 1,1951, under which the parties agreed to extend Social Security coverage to employees of the State and its political subdivisions. The Agreement recited that its provisions were “in conformity with” §418, and authorized the State to modify the Agreement to include additional groups of employees, “such modification to be consistent with the provisions of” §418. The Agreement also included a clause that permitted the State to terminate the Agreement either in its entirety or with respect to particular coverage groups. The terms of the clause exactly mirrored the statutory termination provision embodied in § 418(g).
When Congress amended § 418(g) in 1983, California had filed termination notices on behalf of 71 of its political subdivisions, employing approximately 34,000 persons. When the amendment prevented the termination notices from taking effect, appellees commenced the lawsuits underlying this appeal, naming as defendants the United States and the Secretary and Undersecretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The first lawsuit was brought by several public agencies of California, their employees and taxpayers, and by an organization calling itself Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment. These parties alleged, among other claims, that amended § 418(g) had deprived them of their “contract rights” without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. In the second lawsuit, the State of California sought to enjoin enforcement of § 418(g) as well as a declaration that the section was unconstitutional. The State claimed that the federal defendants had acted in excess of their constitutional authority and had violated the Tenth Amendment by breaching their contract with the State and by impairing the State’s “ability . . . to structure its relationships with its employees.” App. 26-27.
Ruling on cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court held that § 418(g) was unconstitutional. Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment v. Heckler, 613 F. Supp. 558 (ED Cal. 1985). The court decided that the § 418 Agreement created a “contractual right” to withdraw from the Social Security System that ran in favor of both the State and its public agencies. This contractual right existed independently of the statutory termination provision, and Congress derived no authority from § 1304 to amend the § 418 Agreement, as opposed to § 418.
The contractual right to withdraw, reasoned the District Court, constituted “private property” within the meaning of the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Amended § 418(g) effected a taking of that property without providing the requisite just compensation. In the court’s view, the “only rational compensation would be reimbursement by the United States to the State or public agencies, of the amount of money they currently pay to the United States for their participation” in the Social Security Program. 613 F. Supp., at 575. Since amended § 418(g) was enacted to solve the Social Security “financial crisis,” however, the District Court concluded that an order awarding this measure of damages would be “simply and clearly contrary to the will of Congress.” . Ibid. Accordingly, the District Court simply declared § 418(g) unconstitutional. Ibid. We noted probable jurisdiction, 474 U. S. 1004 (1985), and now reverse.
II
A
Congress’ decision that American workers need- a federal program of social insurance protecting them in old age and disability “has of necessity called forth a highly complicated and interrelated statutory structure.” Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603, 610 (1960). Since the Act was designed to protect future, as well as present, generations of workers, it was inevitable that amendment of its provisions would be necessary in response to evolving social and economic conditions unforeseeable in 1935. Ibid. Congress anticipated that it would be necessary to respond to “ever-changing conditions” with “flexibility and boldness,” ibid., and therefore included in the Act “a clause expressly reserving to it ‘[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision’ of the Act. § 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U. S. C. § 1304. That provision makes express what is implicit in the institutional needs of the program.” Id., at 611. As appellees must concede, the Act itself, including the original version of § 418(g), created no contractual rights. Cf. Flemming v. Nestor, supra, at 608-611; see also National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Atchison, T & S. F. R. Co., 470 U. S. 451, 465-470 (1985). Therefore, there is no doubt that Congress had the power to amend the section.
In view of the purpose and structure of the Act, and of Congress’ express reservation of authority to alter its provisions, courts should be extremely reluctant to construe § 418 Agreements in a manner that forecloses Congress’ exercise of that authority. While the Federal Government, as sovereign, has the power to enter contracts that confer vested rights, and the concomitant duty to honor those rights, see Perry v. United States, 294 U. S. 330, 350-354 (1935); Lynch v. United States, 292 U. S. 571 (1934), we have declined in the context of commercial contracts to find that a “sovereign forever waives the right to exercise one of its sovereign powers unless it expressly reserves the right to exercise that power in” the contract. Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U. S. 130, 148 (1982). Rather, we have emphasized that “[without regard to its source, sovereign power, even when unexercised, is an enduring presence that governs all contracts subject to the sovereign’s jurisdiction, and will remain intact unless surrendered in unmistakable terms.” Ibid. Therefore, contractual arrangements, including those to which a sovereign itself is party, “remain subject to subsequent legislation” by the sovereign. Id., at 147.
These principles form the backdrop against which we must consider the District Court’s decision effectively to forbid Congress to amend a provision of the Social Security Act. That decision heeded none of this Court’s often-repeated admonitions that contracts should be construed, if possible, to avoid foreclosing exercise of sovereign authority. Those admonitions take on added force when the arrangement pursuant to which the Government is claimed to have surrendered a sovereign power is one that serves to implement a comprehensive social welfare program affecting millions of individuals throughout our Nation.
B
Venerable precedent supports our conclusion that Congress reserved the authority to amend not only § 418 but also Agreements entered into “in conformity with” that section. Just last Term, we considered a statute in which Congress had “ ‘expressly reserved’ its right to ‘repeal, alter, or amend’ the Act at any time,” National Railroad Passenger Corporation, supra, at 456, and we noted that the “effect of these few simple words” has been settled since the Sinking-Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700 (1879). 470 U. S., at 467-468, n. 22. The Sinking-Fund Cases involved federal statutes that governed railroads’ obligations to the United States on subsidy bonds. The statutes in question expressly reserved Congress’ authority to repeal, alter, or amend them, and Congress exercised that power by requiring the railroads to set aside part of their current income as a sinking fund to meet their debts to the Government as those debts came due. The railroads claimed that this amendment deprived them of property without due process and improperly interfered with their vested rights. 99 U. S., at 719. In rejecting those arguments, the Court explained that through the language of reservation, “Congress not only retains, but has given special notice of its intention to retain, full and complete power to make such alterations and amendments as come within the just scope of legislative power.” Id., at 720. The effect of the Court’s construction of the reservation was to authorize Congress not only to amend the statute granting the railroads’ corporate charter but also to change the stipulations of a contract made under that charter subsequently to and independently of the original statute. Whatever the limits of the reserved power, it was “safe to say” that Congress had the authority to provide by amendment whatever rules it might “have prescribed in the original charter” and terms governing the “performance of contracts already entered into.” Id., at 721.
This reasoning disposes of appellees’ contention that Congress lacked authority to amend California’s §418 Agreement. The State accepted the Agreement under an Act that contained the language of reservation. That language expressly notified the State that Congress retained the power to amend the law under which the Agreement was executed and by amending that law to alter the Agreement itself. We have no doubt that in 1950 Congress could have provided that States electing to enter the Social Security System would not have authority to terminate their participation. Therefore, amended § 418(g) falls well within the limits of Congress’ reserved power to alter the law governing performance of § 418 Agreements.
C
The § 418 Agreement provided that its terms were “in conformity with” §418. Therefore, the Agreement expressly incorporated §418, which of course was fully subject to Congress’ reserved power of amendment. Appellees nonetheless insist that the termination provision embodied in the Agreement constituted a valuable property right that was “taken” when Congress enacted amended § 418(g). In the Sinking-Fund Cases, the Court did observe that Congress’ exercise of the reserved power “has a limit” in that Congress could not rely on that power to “take away property already acquired under the operation of the charter, or to deprive the corporation of the fruits actually reduced to possession of contracts lawfully made.” 99 U. S., at 720. Similarly, other decisions have held that Congress does not have the power to repudiate its own debts, which constitute “property” to the lender, simply in order to save money. Perry v. United States, 294 U. S., at 350-351; see Lynch v. United States, 292 U. S., at 576-577.
But the “contractual right” at issue in this case bears little, if any, resemblance to rights held to constitute “property” within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. The termination provision in the Agreement exactly tracked the language of the statute, conferring no right on the State beyond that contained in § 418 itself. The provision constituted neither a debt of the United States, see Perry v. United States, supra, nor an obligation of the United States to provide benefits under a contract for which the obligee paid a monetary premium, see Lynch v. United States, supra. The termination clause was not unique to this Agreement; nor was it a term over which the State had any bargaining power or for which the State provided independent consideration. Rather, the provision simply was part of a regulatory program over which Congress retained authority to amend in the exercise of its power to provide for the general welfare. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the termination provision in California’s §418 Agreement did not rise to the level of “property.” The provision simply cannot be viewed as conferring any sort of “vested right” in the face of precedent concerning the effect of Congress’ reserved power on agreements entered into under a statute containing the language of reservation. Since appellees had no property right in the termination clause, amended § 418 did not effect a taking within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment.
I — I I — I I — I
The judgment of the District Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this decision.
It is so ordered.
According to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, the Social Security System is “much more” than a “retirement program for older workers. . . . Social security is also family security, protecting workers and their families from loss of earnings because of death, retirement, or disability.” Senate Special Committee on Aging, Termination of Social Security Coverage: The Impact on State and Local Government Employees, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 9 (Comm. Print 1976) (hereinafter Senate Report on Aging).
Congress included this provision in the original Act, and has retained it ever since. See Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603, 610-611 (1960).
“The ten percent of workers not . . . covered by social security [in 1983] include[d] most Federal civilian workers (2.4 out of 2.7 million), about 30 percent of State and local employees (approximately 3 million), and 10-15 percent of employees of nonprofit organizations (up to 1 million).” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 13.
As Congress explained when it was studying the reasons underlying States’ decisions to withdraw employees from the System, “[t]he Social Security Act of 1935 excluded from coverage all employment for States and localities, primarily because of the question of the constitutionality of any general levy of the employer tax on States and localities.” Subcommittee on Social Security of House Committee on Ways and Means, Termination of Social Security Coverage for Employees of State and Local Governments and Nonprofit Groups, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., Ser. No. WMCP: 97-34, p. 20 (Comm. Print 1982) (hereinafter H. R. Comm. Print 97-34).
At the time Congress enacted the amendment challenged in this case, it explained that provision for voluntary participation by employees of state and local governments was “the result of congressional desire to extend coverage as quickly and with as little difficulty as possible to those employees who needed it most.” H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 19.
Under the Act, therefore, States decide which groups of employees will receive Social Security coverage. Section 418(d)(3) creates an exception to this rule. Where state employees already are members of a retirement program, that section requires that a majority of such employees agree to participate in the Social Security System. 42 U. S. C. § 418(d)(3) (1982 ed. and Supp. II).
For purposes of conciseness, we use the term “Secretary” to refer to the federal official responsible for administration of the System both under the current and prior versions of the Social Security Act.
As of 1988, the employees of Alaska, “the only State to withdraw from the system, and of Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Ohio, which never chose to participate in the system,” were not covered by Social Security. H. R. Rep. No. 98-25, at 17. Each of those States, however, was party to a § 418 Agreement that provided coverage to local government employees.
During these years, “many terminations were caused by consolidation of local jurisdictions, rather than by withdrawal from the social security system.” Id., at 18.
The Senate Special Committee on Aging found that States offered the following reasons for terminating their §418 Agreements: employees wanted more take-home pay through a reduction in payroll deductions; state and local governments sought to cut costs by dropping Social Security coverage; news reports concerning “the projected exhaustion of social security trust funds in the 1980’s” led employees to believe that benefits would cease; state and local governments believed that Social Security taxes would continue to rise, and thus viewed termination as a means “to achieve more static and budgetable expenditures”; some employees favored termination because they perceived that they would receive Social Security benefits even if they were no longer required to pay into the System; and alternative retirement plans were believed to pay higher levels of benefits. Senate Report on Aging 6-8; see also H. R. Comm. Print 97-34, at 6-7. The Committee also found that “many” decisions to withdraw from the System were made in the absence of “[information necessary for informed judgments.” Senate Report on Aging 8.
Congress regarded voluntary participation by some employees, such as those of state and local governments, as an anomaly in an otherwise mandatory program. “The fundamental principle underlying compulsory coverage for most workers is that responsibility for paying for insurance against such risks should be borne by the society as a whole to the extent possible.” H. R. Comm. Print 97-34, at 4. Mandatory participation is necessary to sustain the “ ‘pay-as-you-go’ financing structure,” particularly since workers retain coverage “regardless of how many times they change their jobs in a lifetime.” Ibid. Mandatory participation ensures workers that they will obtain a minimum level of benefits in the event of a catastrophe that the worker did not foresee or plan for. Ibid. In the context of a mandatory system, voluntary participation for some employees was, in Congress’ view, “inconsistent with the principle of equal treatment of all citizens.” Id., at 5.
The amendment, set out in Pub. L. 98-21, §103, 97 Stat. 71-72 provides:
“(a) [42 U. S. C. § 418(g)] is amended to read as follows:
“ ‘Duration of Agreement
“(g) No agreement under this section may be terminated, either in its entirety or with respect to any coverage group, on or after the date of the enactment of the Social Security Amendments of 1983.’
“(b) The amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply to any agreement in effect under [§ 418] on the date of the enactment of this Act, without regard to whether a notice of termination is in effect on such date, and to any agreement or modification thereof which may become effective under such [§ 418] after that date.”
The termination provision in California’s § 418 Agreement stated:
“The State, upon giving at least two years’ advance notice in writing to the [Secretary], may terminate this agreement, either in its entirety or with respect to any coverage group, effective at the end of a calendar quarter specified in the notice, provided, however, that the agreement may be terminated in its entirety only if it has been in effect not less than five years prior to receipt of such notice, and provided further that the agreement may be terminated with respect to any coverage group only if it has been in effect with respect to such coverage group for not less than five years prior to receipt of such notice.” Reprinted, App. 31.
If these employees were withdrawn from the System, “approximately $33.7 millio[n] would be lost to the social security trust funds in 1984.” Id., at 61.
Plaintiffs in this lawsuit also alleged that the enactment denied them their contract rights without due process, that it constituted an attempt to regulate “ ‘essential state and local government functions,’ in violation of the Tenth Amendment,” and that they were entitled to specific performance for the Government’s breach of contract. Public Agencies Opposed to Social Security Entrapment v. Heckler, 613 F. Supp. 558, 565 (ED Cal. 1985).
Though the State did not press any claim that amended § 418(g) effected a taking of its property without the compensation required by the Fifth Amendment, the District Court rested its decision on that ground, finding it unnecessary to reach any of the arguments raised by the State. Therefore, none of those arguments are before us.
Before reaching the merits, the District Court determined that the plaintiffs in both suits, appellees here, had standing to challenge the validity of the enactment. With respect to the first lawsuit, brought by the public agencies and certain individuals, the court concluded that the agencies alleged an injury sufficient to confer standing because they claimed that amended § 418(g) deprived them of their contractual rights as third-party beneficiaries of the State’s § 418 Agreement. Id., at 567-570. The individual plaintiffs had standing because they claimed that the federal defendants had denied them equal protection. Id., at 571. With respect to the second suit, the court found that the State had standing because it alleged “a judicially cognizable interest in the preservation of its own sovereignty, and a diminishment of that sovereignty by the alleged interference in its employment relations with its public employees.” Id., at 567. While appellants suggest in this Court that none of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought by the public agencies were properly before the District Court, they concede, and we agree, that there is no question concerning the State’s standing to bring the action. Therefore, the District Court plainly had authority to resolve this controversy, as do we.
Title 42 U. S. C. § 1304 provides: “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this chapter is hereby reserved to the Congress.”
The language of § 418 and of California’s § 418 Agreement provides further support for this conclusion. Section 418(a)(1) requires that the provisions of § 418 Agreements be “not inconsistent with the provisions of this section,” 42 U. S. C. § 418(a)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. II), and the Agreement provided that it was “in conformity with” § 418. The State was thus on notice that the terms of its Agreement must mirror the provisions of the section, which could be amended under the reserved power. If Congress amended § 418 in such a manner as to render a provision of an Agreement “inconsistent” or no longer “in conformity” with the section, then the logical conclusion is that the inconsistent provision no longer was to be given legal effect.
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:
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D
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sc_issuearea
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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.
Per Curiam.
I
Congress has adopted a policy that favors contracting with small businesses owned and controlled by the socially and economically disadvantaged. See § 8(d)(1) of the Small Business Act, as added by §7 of Pub. L. 87-305,75 Stat. 667, and as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 637(d)(1) (1994 ed., Supp. IV). To effectuate that policy, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), Pub. L. 102-240, § 1003(b), 105 Stat. 1919, which is an appropriations measure for the Department of Transportation (DOT), seeks to direct 10 percent of the contracting funds expended on projects funded in whole or in part by the appropriated funds to transportation projects employing so-called disadvantaged business enterprises. ISTEA § 1003(b)(1).
To qualify for that status, the small business must be certified as owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. DOT does not itself conduct certifications, but relies on certifications from two main sources: the Small Business Administration, which certifies businesses for all types of federal procurement programs, and state highway agencies, which certify them for purposes of federally assisted highway projects. The federal regulations governing these certification programs, see 13 CFR pt. 124 (1999) (Small Business Administration); 64 Fed. Reg. 5096-5148 (1999) (to be codified in 49 CFR pt. 26) (DOT for state highway agencies), require that the certifying entity presume to be socially disadvantaged persons who are black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific, Subcontinent Asian, Native Americans, or members of other groups designated from time to time by the Small Business Administration. See 13 CFR § 124.103(b); 64 Fed. Reg. 5136 (§26.67). State highway agencies must in addition presume that women are socially disadvantaged. Ibid. Small businesses owned and controlled by persons who are not members of the preferred groups may also be certified, but only if they can demonstrate social disadvantage. See 13 CFR § 124.103(c); 64 Fed. Reg. 5136-5137 (§ 26.67(d)); id., at 5147-5148 (pt. 26, subpt. D, App. E). Third parties, as well as DOT, may challenge findings of social disadvantage. See 13 CFR § 124.1017(a); 64 Fed. Reg. 5142 (§26.87).
II
In 1989, DOT awarded the prime contract for a federal highway project in Colorado to Mountain Gravel & Construction Company. The contract included a Subcontractor Compensation Clause — which the Small Business Act requires all federal agencies to include in their prime contracts, see 15 U. S. C. § 637(d) — rewarding the prime contractor for subcontracting with disadvantaged business enterprises, see § 637(d)(4)(E). Petitioner, whose principal is a white man, submitted the low bid on a portion of the project, but Mountain Gravel awarded the subcontract to a company that had previously been certified by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) as a disadvantaged business enterprise.
Petitioner brought suit against various federal officials, alleging that the Subcontractor Compensation Clause, and in particular the race-based presumption that forms its foundation, violated petitioner’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection. The Tenth Circuit, applying the so-called intermediate scrutiny approved in some of our cases involving classifications on a basis other than race, see Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U. S. 718 (1982); Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190 (1976), upheld the use of the clause and the presumption. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 16 F. 3d 1537 (1994). Because DOT’S use of race-based measures should have been subjected to strict scrutiny, we reversed and remanded for the application of that standard. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 237-239 (1995) (Adarand I).
On remand, the District Court for the District of Colorado held that the clause and the presumption failed strict scrutiny because they were not narrowly tailored. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 965 F. Supp. 1556 (1997) (Adarand II). Specifically, the court held the presumption that members of the enumerated racial groups are socially disadvantaged to be both overinelusive and underinclusive, because it includes members of those groups who are not disadvantaged and excludes members of other groups who are. Id., at 1580. The District Court enjoined DOT from using the elause and its presumption. Id., at 1584. Respondents appealed to the Tenth Circuit.
Shortly thereafter, and while respondents’ appeal was still pending, petitioner filed a second suit in the District Court, this time naming as defendants certain Colorado officials, and challenging (on the same grounds) the State’s use of the federal guidelines in certifying disadvantaged business enterprises for federally assisted projects. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Romer, Civ. No. 97-K-1351 (June 26, 1997). Shortly after this suit was filed, however, Colorado altered its certification program in response to the District Court's decision in Adarand II. Specifically, the State did away with the presumption of social disadvantage for certain minorities and women, App. to Pet. for Cert. 109-111, and in its place substituted a requirement that all applicants certify on their own account that each of the firm’s majority owners “has experienced social disadvantage based upon the effects of racial, ethnic or gender discrimination,” id., at 110. Colorado requires no further showing of social disadvantage by any applicant.
A few days after Colorado amended its certification procedure, the District Court held a hearing on petitioner’s motion for a preliminary injunction in Romer. The District Court took judicial notice of its holding in Adarand II that the Federal Government had discriminated against petitioner’s owner “by the application of unconstitutional rules and regulations.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 136. As a result of that race-based discrimination, the District Court reasoned, petitioner likely was eligible for disadvantaged business status under Colorado’s system for certifying businesses for federally assisted projects — the system at issue in Romer. App. to Pet. for Cert. 137. The District Court therefore denied petitioner’s request for a preliminary injunction. Id., at 138. Petitioner then requested and received disadvantaged business status from CDOT.
Meanwhile, respondents’ appeal from the District Court’s decision in Adamnd II was pending before the Tenth Circuit. Upon learning that CDOT had given petitioner disadvantaged business status, the Tenth Circuit held that the cause of action was moot, and vacated the District Court’s judgment favorable to petitioner in Adarand II. 169 F. 3d 1292, 1296-1297, 1299 (CA10 1999). Petitioner filed a petition for certiorari.
Ill
In dismissing the ease as moot, the Tenth Circuit relied on the language of the Subcontractor Compensation Clause, which provides that “[a] small business concern will be considered a [disadvantaged business enterprise] after it has been certified as such by . . . any State’s Department of Highways/Transportation.” Id., at 1296. Because CDOT had certified petitioner as a disadvantaged business enterprise, the court reasoned, the language of the clause indicated that the Federal Government also had accepted petitioner’s certification for purposes of federal projects. As a result, petitioner could no longer demonstrate “ ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is sufficiently ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent’” to establish standing. Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 64 (1997) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992)). Because, the court continued, petitioner could not demonstrate such an invasion, its cause of action was moot. 169 F. 3d, at 1296-1297.
In so holding, the Tenth Circuit “confused mootness with standing,” Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., ante, at 189, and as a result placed the burden of proof on the wrong party. If this case is moot, it is because the Federal Government has accepted CDOT’s certification of petitioner as a disadvantaged business enterprise, and has thereby eeased its offending conduct. Voluntary cessation of challenged conduct moots a ease, however, only if it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” United States v. Concentrated Phosphate Export Assn., Inc., 393 U. S. 199, 203 (1968) (emphasis added). And the “ ‘heavy burden of persua[ding]’ the court that the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to start up again lies with the party asserting mootness.” Friends of Earth, ante, at 189 (emphasis added) (quoting Concentrated Phosphate Export Assn., supra, at 203).
Because respondents cannot satisfy this burden, the Tenth Circuit’s error was a crucial one. As common sense would suggest, and as the Tenth Circuit itself recognized, DOT accepts only “valid certification[s]” from state agencies. 169 F. 3d, at 1298. As respondents concede, however, see Brief in Opposition 13-14, n. 6, DOT has yet to approve — as it must—CDOT’s procedure for certifying disadvantaged business enterprises, see 64 Fed. Reg. 5129 (1999) (49 CFR § 26.21(b)(1)) (“[The State] must submit a [disadvantaged business enterprise] program conforming to this part by August 31, 1999 to the concerned operating administration”).
DOT has promulgated regulations outlining the procedure state highway agencies must follow in certifying firms as disadvantaged business enterprises. See 64 Fed. Reg. 5096-5148 (pt. 26). As described earlier, those regulations require the agency to presume that “women, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, Subcontinent Asian Americans, or other minorities found to be disadvantaged by the [Small Business Administration]” are socially disadvantaged. Id., at 5136 (§ 26.67(a)(1)). Before individuals not members of those groups may be certified, the state agency must make individual determinations as to disadvantage. See id., at 5136-5137 (§ 26.67(d)) (“In such a proceeding, the applicant firm has the burden of demonstrating to [the state highway-agency], by a preponderance of the evidence, that the individuals who own and control it are socially and economically disadvantaged”); id., at 5147-5148 (pt. 26, subpt. D, App. E) (providing list of “elements” that highway agencies must consider in making individualized determinations of social disadvantage). CDOT’s new procedure under which petitioner was certified applies no presumption in favor of minority groups, and accepts without investigation a firm’s self-certification of entitlement to disadvantaged business status. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 109-111. Given the material differences (not to say incompatibility) between that procedure and the requirements of the DOT regulations, it is not at all clear that CDOT’s certification is a “valid certification,” and hence not at all clear that the Subcontractor Compensation Clause requires its acceptance.
Before the Tenth Circuit, respondents took pains to “ex-presé] no opinion regarding the correctness of Colorado’s determination that [petitioner] is entitled to [disadvantaged business] status.” Motion by the Federal Appellants to Dismiss Appeal as Moot and to Vacate the District Court Judgment in No. 97-1304, p. 3, n. 2. Instead, they stated flatly that “in the event there is a third-party challenge to [petitioner’s] certification as a [disadvantaged business enterprise] and the decision on the challenge is appealed to DOT, DOT may review the decision to determine whether the certification was proper.” Id., at 3-4, n. 2. In addition, DOT itself has the power to require States to initiate proceedings to withdraw a firm’s disadvantaged status if there is “reasonable cause to believe” that the firm “does not meet the eligibility criteria” set forth in the federal regulations. 64 Fed. Reg. 5142 (§ 26.87(e)(1)). Given the patent incompatibility of the certification with the federal regulations, it is far from clear that these possibilities will not become reality. Indeed, challenges to petitioner’s disadvantaged business status seem quite probable now that the Tenth Circuit, by vacating Adarand II, has eliminated the sole basis for petitioner’s certification in the first place.
The Tenth Circuit dismissed these possibilities as insufficiently particular and concrete to grant standing and therefore “too conjectural and speculative to avoid a finding of mootness.” 169 F. 3d, at 1298 (internal quotation marks omitted). As we recently noted in Friends of the Earth, however, “[t]he plain lesson of [our precedents] is that there are circumstances in which the prospect that a defendant will engage in (or resume) harmful conduct may be too speculative to support standing, but not too speculative to overcome mootness.” Ante, at 190. Because, under the circumstances of this case, it is impossible to conclude that respondents have borne their burden of establishing that it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur,” ante, at 189, petitioner’s cause of action remains alive.
* * *
It is no small matter to deprive a litigant of the rewards of its efforts, particularly in a case that has been litigated up to this Court and back down again. Such action on grounds of mootness would be justified only if it were absolutely clear that the litigant no longer had any need of the judicial protection that it sought. Because that is not the case here, the petition for writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Congress recently enacted the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, Pub. L. 105-178, Tit. I, § 1101(b), 112 Stat. 113, the successor appropriations measure to ISTEA. Although the new Act contains similar provisions, it is technically the provisions of ISTEA that apply to funding obligated in prior fiscal years but not yet expended.
Before the Tenth Circuit, the parties disagreed as to whether the scope of the District Court’s remedial order was appropriate. In characterizing that order as we do here, we do not intend to take a position in that dispute.
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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