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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.
Section 455(a) of 28 U. S. C. (1994 ed.) provides that a judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” In this tobacco-products liability case, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that § 455(a) required disqualification of a District Judge whose name appeared erroneously, prior to his appointment to the bench, on a motion to file an amicus brief in a similar suit against some of the same defendants. Republic of Panama v. American Tobacco Co., 250 F. 3d 315 (2001) (per curiam) (Republic of Panama II). We grant the writ of certiorari and reverse.
Petitioner, Sao Paulo State, brought this suit against respondent tobacco companies in Louisiana state court. It alleged that respondents had conspired to conceal the health risks of smoking, thereby preventing it from adopting policies that would have reduced smoking by Sao Paulo citizens. It seeks compensation for the costs of treating their smoking-related health problems. The suit was removed to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and assigned to District Judge Carl J. Barbier, who had presided over a companion case, Republic of Panama v. American Tobacco Co., No. 98-3279, 1999 WL 350030 (ED La., May 28,1999) (Republic of Panama I), vacated and remanded, 217 F. 3d 343 (CA5 2000). As in that ease, respondents filed a motion seeking Judge Barbier’s recusal under § 455(a) because of his involvement, prior to appointment to the bench, in a similar suit against some of the respondents.
Almost nine years before the present suit was commenced, Judge Barbier’s name appeared on a motion to file an amicus curiae brief in Gilboy v. American Tobacco Co., 582 So. 2d 1263 (La. 1991). The motion was submitted by the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association (LTLA), and erroneously listed Judge Barbier as the association’s president, a position from which he had retired about six months earlier. The motion also correctly listed as a member of the LTLA’s amicus curiae committee which approved the brief Michael St. Martin, who represents petitioner in the case before us. The amicus brief itself — which did not list either Judge Barbier or Mr. St. Martin — supported the Gilboy plaintiff’s claim that cigarettes are addictive and cause cancer, and that the defendants failed to warn consumers about these dangers. Brief for LTLA as Amicus Curiae in No. 90-C-2686 (La. Sup. Ct.), App. to Brief in Opposition 9a; Gilboy, supra, at 1266.
Respondents argued that Judge Barbier’s association with the Gilboy amicus brief created an “appearance of partiality” requiring disqualification under § 455(a). Brief in Opposition 3. Judge Barbier disagreed. Adopting his reasons for denying recusal in Republic of Panama I, he refused to disqualify himself because his name appeared in error on the motion to file the amicus brief and because he took no part in preparation or approval of the brief. Minute Entry in Civ. Action Nos. 00-0922, 98-3279 (ED La., May 26, 2000), App. to Pet. for Cert. 43a; Tr. of Proceeding on Motion for Recusal in Republic of Panama I, pp. 21, 37-40 (Feb. 3, 1999), App. to Pet. for Cert. 48a-51a (Tr. of Proceeding). Indeed, he was previously unaware of it, which he found unsurprising because the LTLA affixed the president’s name to all motions to file amicus briefs, despite the fact that the president had absolutely no role in preparation or approval of the briefs. Tr. of Status Conf. in Republic of Panama I, pp. 7-8 (Dec. 21, 1998), App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a (Tr. of Status Conf.); Tr. of Proceeding 37-40, App. to Pet. for Cert. 49a-51a. Judge Barbier also noted in Republic of Panama I that he had never practiced law with Mr. St. Martin or any other lawyer listed on the motion, had no personal knowledge of the disputed facts in Gilboy, had never taken a position with respect to any of the issues raised in petitioner’s suit, and had never been involved in a tobacco-related case “one way or another in my whole legal career.” Tr. of Status Conf. 9, App. to Pet. for Cert. 54a. See also Tr. of Proceeding 39-40, App. to Pet. for Cert. 50a-51a.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, citing its prior decision reversing Judge Barbier’s order denying recusal in Republic of Panama I. In that case, the Fifth Circuit said:
“The fact that Judge Barbier’s name was listed on a motion to file an amicus brief which asserted similar allegations against tobacco companies to the ones made in this case may lead a reasonable person to doubt his impartiality. Also, Judge Barbier was listed on this filing with the attorney who is currently representing the Republic of Panama. The trial judge’s assertions that he did not participate directly in the writing or researching of the amicus brief do not dissipate the doubts that a reasonable person would probably have about the court’s impartiality. We acknowledge that this is a close case for recusal.” 217 F. 3d, at 347.
Judge Parker concurred, agreeing that the court was bound by its decision in Republic of Panama I, but arguing that that decision was “erroneous because it requires recusal on the basis of a judge’s public statements on the law made prior to becoming a judge . . . .” Republic of Panama II, supra, at 318. Rehearing en banc was denied over the dissent of six judges, who argued that the decision below amounts to an “issue recusal” rule, requiring disqualification whenever a judge has pre-judicial association with a legal position. 265 F. 3d 299, 306 (2001) (joint dissent of Wiener and Parker, JJ.).
We need not consider the argument advanced by the dissenting judges, since this case is easily disposed of on other grounds. The Fifth Circuit’s decision is inconsistent with Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U. S. 847 (1988), which stated that § 455(a) requires judicial recusal “if a reasonable person, knowing all the circumstances, would expect that the judge would have actual knowledge” of his interest or bias in the case. Id., at 861 (internal quotation marks omitted and emphasis added). The Fifth Circuit reached the conclusion that recusal was required because it considered what a reasonable person would believe without knowing (or giving due weight to the fact) that the judge’s name was added mistakenly and without his knowledge to a pro forma motion to file an amicus brief in á separate controversy. Although Judge Barbier was indeed a leader of the LTLA at that time (he was a member of the association’s executive committee), he took no part in the preparation or approval of the amicus brief; indeed, he was only “vaguely aware” of the case. Tr. of Status Conf. 8, App. to Pet. for Cert. 54a. The decision whether his “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” should not have been made in disregard of these facts; and when they are taken into account we think it self-evident that a reasonable person would not believe he had any interest or bias.
Accordingly, we grant the petition for certiorari, reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remand the case for 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: | 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 Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Last Term, in Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U. S. 555 (1978), we granted certiorari to consider the question whether negligent conduct can form the basis of an award of damages under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The constitutional violation alleged in Procunier was interference on the part of prison officials with a prisoner’s outgoing mail. The complaint alleged that the prison officials had acted with every conceivable state of mind, from “knowingly” and in “bad faith” to “negligently and inadvertently.” We granted certiorari, however, only on the question “[w]hether negligent failure to mail certain of a prisoner’s outgoing letters states a cause of action under § 1983.” 434 U. S., at 559 n. 6.
Following oral argument and briefing on the merits, the Court held that since the constitutional right allegedly violated had not been authoritatively declared at the time the prison officials acted, the officials were entitled, as a matter of law, to prevail on their claim of qualified immunity. Quoting from Wood v. Strickland, 420 U. S. 308, 322 (1975), we observed: “Because [the prison officials] could not reasonably have been expected to be aware of a constitutional right that had not yet been declared, [they] did not act with such disregard for the established law that their conduct 'cannot reasonably be characterized as being in good faith.’ ” 434 U. S., at 565. It was thus unnecessary to reach the question on which certiorari had been granted.
In the instant case, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit saw the focal issue as whether petitioner Baker, the sheriff of Potter County, Tex., had negligently failed to establish certain identification procedures which would have revealed that respondent was not the man wanted in connection with the drug charges on which he was arrested. Accordingly, it withheld decision until our opinion in Procunier was handed down. Finding no guidance in Procunier on the question whether an allegation of “simple negligence” states a claim for relief under § 1983, the Court of Appeals proceeded to answer that question affirmatively, holding that respondent was entitled to have his § 1983 claim presented to the jury even though the evidence supported no more than a finding of negligence on the part of Sheriff Baker. We granted certiorari. 439 U. S. 1114 (1979).
Having been around this track once before in Procunier, supra, we have come to the conclusion that the question whether an allegation of simple negligence is sufficient to state a cause of action under § 1983 is more elusive than it appears at first blush. It may well not be susceptible of a uniform answer across the entire spectrum of conceivable constitutional violations which might be the subject of a § 1983 action. In any event, before the relationship between the defendant’s state of mind and his liability under § 1983 can be meaningfully explored, it is necessary to isolate the precise constitutional violation with which he is charged. For § 1983 imposes civil liability only upon one
“who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws
The first inquiry in any § 1983 suit, therefore, is whether the plaintiff has been deprived of a right “secured by the Constitution and laws.” If there has been no such deprivation, the state of mind of the defendant is wholly immaterial. We think that respondent has failed to satisfy this threshold requirement of § 1983 and thus defer once again consideration of the question whether simple negligence can give rise to § 1983 liability.
I
Leonard McCollan and respondent Linnie Carl McCollan are brothers. Leonard somehow procured a duplicate of Linnie’s driver’s license, identical to the original in every respect except that, as the Court of Appeals put it, “Leonard’s picture graced it instead of Linnie’s.” McCollan v. Tate, 575 F. 2d 509, 511 (CA5 1978). In October 1972, Leonard, masquerading as Linnie, was arrested in Potter County on narcotics charges. He was booked as Linnie Carl McCollan, signed various documents as Linnie Carl McCollan, and was released on bail as Linnie Carl McCollan. Leonard’s bondsman sought and received an order allowing him to surrender his principal and a warrant was issued for the arrest of “Linnie Carl McCollan.”
On December 26, 1972, Linnie was stopped in Dallas for running a red light. A routine warrant check revealed that Linnie Carl McCollan was wanted in Potter County, and respondent was taken into custody over his protests of mistaken identification. The Dallas Police Department contacted the Potter County Sheriff’s Department, compared the identifying information on respondent’s driver’s license with that contained in the Potter County arrest records, and understandably concluded that they had their man. On December 30, Potter County deputies took custody of respondent and placed him in the Potter County Jail in Amarillo. He remained there until January 2, 1973, when officials compared his appearance against a file photograph of the wanted man and, recognizing their error, released him.
Respondent brought this damages action “pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and ...[§] 1983.” App. 6. After each party had rested his case, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas directed a verdict in favor of Sheriff Baker and his surety, Transamerica Insurance Co., without articulating its reasons. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. Characterizing respondent’s cause of action as a “ [§] 1983 false imprisonment action,” the Court of Appeals determined that respondent had made out a prima facie case by showing (1) intent to confine, (2) acts resulting in confinement, and (3) consciousness of the victim of confinement or resulting harm. The question in the court’s view thus became whether Sheriff Baker was entitled to the defense of qualified immunity, which in turn depended on the reasonableness of his failure to institute an identification procedure that would have disclosed the error. Noting that the error would have been discovered if Potter County officials had sent identifying material to Dallas or had immediately upon respondent’s arrival in Amarillo compared him with the file photograph and fingerprints of the wanted man, the Court of Appeals determined that a jury could reasonably conclude that the sheriff had behaved unreasonably in failing to institute such measures. Accordingly, the case was remanded to the District Court for a new trial.
II
Respondent’s claim is that his detention in the Potter County jail was wrongful. Under a tort-law analysis it may well have been. The question here, however, is whether his detention was unconstitutional. For, as the Court of Appeals recognized, a public official is liable under § 1983 only “if he causes the plaintiff to be subjected to deprivation of his constitutional rights.” 575 F. 2d, at 512 (emphasis in original). Despite this recognition, the Court of Appeals analyzed respondent’s so-called “[§] 1983 false imprisonment action” exclusively in terms of traditional tort-law concepts, relying heavily on the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1965). Indeed, nowhere in its opinion does the Court of Appeals specifically identify the constitutional right allegedly infringed in this case. Because respondent’s claim and the Court of Appeals’ decision focus exclusively on respondent’s prolonged detention caused by petitioner’s failure to institute adequate identification procedures, the constitutional provision allegedly violated by petitioner’s action is presumably the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection against deprivations of liberty without due process of law.
By virtue of its “incorporation” into the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment requires the States to provide a fair and reliable determination of probable cause as a condition for any significant pretrial restraint of liberty. Ger stein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103 (1975). The probable-cause determination “must be made by a judicial officer either before or promptly after arrest.” Id., at 125. Since an adversary hearing is not required, and since the probable-cause standard for pretrial detention is the same as that for arrest, a person arrested pursuant to a warrant issued by a magistrate on a showing of probable cause is not constitutionally entitled to a separate judicial determination that there is probable cause to detain him pending trial.
In this case, respondent was arrested pursuant to a facially valid warrant, and the Court of Appeals made no suggestion that respondent's arrest was constitutionally deficient. Indeed, respondent makes clear that his § 1983 claim was based solely on Sheriff Baker’s actions after respondent was incarcerated:
“McCollan’s § 1983 claim against the sheriff is not for the wrong name being placed in the warrant or the failure to discover and change same or even the initial arrest of the respondent, but rather for the intentional failure to investigate and determine that the wrong man was imprisoned.” Brief for Respondent 12.
For purposes of analysis, then, this case can be parsed with relative ease. Absent an attack on the validity of the warrant under which he was arrested, respondent’s complaint is simply that despite his protests of mistaken identity, he was detained in the Potter County jail from December 30, when Potter County deputies retrieved him from Dallas, until January 2, when the validity of his protests was ascertained. Whatever claims this situation might give rise to under state tort law, we think it gives rise to no claim under the United States Constitution: Respondent was indeed deprived of his liberty for a period of days, but it was pursuant to a warrant conforming, for purposes of our decision, to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Obviously, one in respondent’s position could not be detained indefinitely in the face of repeated protests of innocence even though the warrant under which he was arrested and detained met the standards of the Fourth Amendment. For the Constitution likewise guarantees an accused the right to a speedy trial, and invocation of the speedy trial right need not await indictment or other formal charge; arrest pursuant to probable cause is itself sufficient. United States v. Marion, 404 U. S. 307 (1971). We may even assume, arguendo, that, depending on what procedures the State affords defendants following arrest and prior to actual trial, mere detention pursuant to a valid warrant but in the face of repeated protests of innocence will after the lapse of a certain amount of time deprive the accused of “liberty . . . without due process of law.” But we are quite certain that a detention of three days over a New Year’s weekend does not and could not amount to such a deprivation.
Respondent’s innocence of the charge contained in the warrant, while relevant to a tort claim of false imprisonment in most if not all jurisdictions, is largely irrelevant to his claim of deprivation of liberty without due process of law. The Constitution does not guarantee that only the guilty will be arrested. If it did, § 1983 would provide a cause of action for every defendant acquitted — indeed, for every suspect released. Nor are the manifold procedural protections afforded criminal defendants under the Bill of Rights “without limits.” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 208 (1977). “Due process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person.” Ibid.
The Fourteenth Amendment does not protect against all deprivations of liberty. It protects only against deprivations of liberty accomplished “without due process of law.” A reasonable division of functions between law enforcement officers, committing magistrates, and judicial officers — all of whom may be potential defendants in a § 1983 action — is entirely consistent with “due process of law.” Given the requirements that arrest be made only on probable cause and that one detained be accorded a speedy trial, we do not think a sheriff executing an arrest warrant is required by the Constitution to investigate independently every claim of innocence, whether the claim is based on mistaken identity or a defense such as lack of requisite intent. Nor is the official charged with maintaining custody of the accused named in the warrant required by the Constitution to perform an error-free investigation of such a claim. The ultimate determination of such claims of innocence is placed in the hands of the judge and the jury.
Ill
The Court of Appeals closed its opinion with the following summary of its holding:
“We are saying that the sheriff or arresting officer has a duty to exercise due diligence in making sure that the person arrested and detained is actually the person sought under the warrant and not merely someone of the same or a similar name. See Restatement (2d) Torts § 125, comment (d) (1965).” 575 F. 2d, at 513.
Section 1983 imposes liability for violations of rights protected by the Constitution, not for violations of duties of care arising out of tort law. Remedy for the latter type of injury must be sought in state court under traditional tort-law principles. Just as “[mjedical malpractice does not become a constitutional violation merely because the victim is a prisoner,” Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 106 (1976), false imprisonment does not become a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment merely because the defendant is a state official.
Having been deprived of no rights secured under the United States Constitution, respondent had no claim cognizable under § 1983. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is therefore
Reversed.
Of course, the state of mind of the defendant may be relevant on the issue of whether a constitutional violation has occurred in the first place, quite apart from the issue of whether § 1983 contains some additional qualification of that nature before a defendant may be held to respond in damages under its provisions.
In rejecting the contention that a defendant is entitled to an adversary hearing on the question of probable cause to detain, the Gerstein Court stated:
“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.” 420 U. S., at 120 (footnote omitted).
We of course agree with the dissent’s quotation of the statement from Schilb v. Kuebel, 404 U. S. 357, 365 (1971), that “the Eighth Amendment’s proscription of excessive bail has been assumed to have application to thé States through the Fourteenth Amendment.” Post, at 149 n. 1. But the inference that the dissent appears to draw from this statement — that States are required by the United States Constitution to release an accused criminal defendant on bail — would, if correct, merely supply one more possibility of release from incarceration by resort to procedures specifically set out in the Bill of Rights, over and above those guarantees discussed in the text. It is for violations of such constitutional and statutory rights that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 authorizes redress; that section is not itself a source of substantive rights, but a method for vindicating federal rights elsewhere conferred by those parts of the United States Constitution and federal statutes that it describes. Cases such as Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188, 198 (1972), relied upon by the dissent, post, at 152-153, and n. 7, in no way contradict this view. The discussion of misidentification in Neil was in the context of the use of eyewitness identification testimony at the trial which the United States Constitution guarantees to any accused before he may be punished. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520 (1979).
We, of course, do not deal here with a criminal defendant’s claim to a new trial after conviction where that claim is based upon newly discovered evidence. Most States provide a procedure similar to that contained in Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 33 to process such claims.
In view of the substantive analysis employed by the dissent, it would seem virtually impossible to reach a conclusion other than that any case of misidentification in connection with an arrest made pursuant to an admittedly valid warrant or concededly on probable cause would constitute a deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
On March 25, 1960, the United States brought this action charging that the acquisition by Von’s Grocery Company of its direct competitor Shopping Bag Food Stores, both large retail grocery companies in Los Angeles, California, violated § 7 of the Clayton Act which, as amended in 1950 by the Celler-Kefauver Anti-Merger Act, provides in relevant part:
“That no corporation engaged in commerce . . . shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another corporation engaged also in commerce, where in any line of commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.”
On March 28, 1960, three days later, the District Court refused to grant the Government’s motion for a temporary restraining order and immediately Von’s took over all of Shopping Bag’s capital stock and assets including 36 grocery stores in the Los Angeles area. After hearing evidence on both sides, the District Court made findings of fact and concluded as a matter of law that there was “not a reasonable probability” that the merger would tend “substantially to lessen competition” or “create a monopoly” in violation of § 7. For this reason the District Court entered judgment for the defendants. 233 F. Supp. 976, 985. The Government appealed directly to this Court as authorized by § 2 of the Expediting Act. The sole question here is whether the District Court properly concluded on the facts before it that the Government had failed to prove a violation of §7.
The record shows the following facts relevant to our decision. The market involved here is the retail grocery market in the Los Angeles area. In 1958 Yon’s retail sales ranked third in the area and Shopping Bag’s ranked sixth. In 1960 their sales together were 7.5% of the total two and one-half billion dollars of retail groceries sold in the Los Angeles market each year. For many years before the merger both companies had enjoyed great success as rapidly growing companies. From 1948 to 1958 the number of Von’s stores in the Los Angeles area practically doubled from 14 to 27, while at the same time the number of Shopping Bag’s stores jumped from 15 to 34. During that same decade, Von’s sales increased fourfold and its share of the market almost doubled while Shopping Bag’s sales multiplied seven times and its share of the market tripled. The merger of these two highly successful, expanding and aggressive competitors created the second largest grocery chain in Los Angeles with sales of almost $172,488,000 annually. In addition the findings of the District Court show that the number of owners operating single stores in the Los Angeles retail grocery market decreased from 5,365 in 1950 to 3,818 in 1961. By 1963, three years after the merger, the number of single-store owners had dropped still further to 3,590. During roughly the same period, from 1953 to 1962, the number of chains with two or more grocery stores increased from 96 to 150. While the grocery business was being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer owners, the small companies were continually being absorbed by the larger firms through mergers. According to an exhibit prepared by one of the Government’s expert witnesses, in the period from 1949 to 1958 nine of the top 20 chains acquired 126 stores from their smaller competitors. Figures of a principal defense witness, set out below, illustrate the many acquisitions and mergers in the Los Angeles grocery industry from 1954 through 1961 including acquisitions made by Food Giant, Alpha Beta, Fox, and Mayfair, all among the 10 leading chains in the area. Moreover, a table prepared by the Federal Trade Commission appearing in the Government’s reply brief, but not a part of the record here, shows that acquisitions and mergers in the Los Angeles retail grocery market have continued at a rapid rate since the merger. These facts alone are enough to cause us to conclude contrary to the District Court that the Von’s-Shopping Bag merger did violate § 7. Accordingly, we reverse.
From this country’s beginning there has been an abiding and widespread fear of the evils which flow from monopoly — that is the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few. On the basis of this fear, Congress in 1890, when many of the Nation’s industries were already concentrated into what it deemed too few hands, passed the Sherman Act in an attempt to prevent further concentration and to preserve competition among a large number of sellers. Several years later, in 1897, this Court emphasized this policy of the Sherman Act by calling attention to the tendency of powerful business combinations to restrain competition “by driving out of business the small dealers and worthy men whose lives have been spent therein, and who might be unable to readjust themselves in their altered surroundings.” United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290, 323. The Sherman Act failed to protect the smaller businessmen from elimination through the monopolistic pressures of large combinations which used mergers to grow ever more powerful. As a result in 1914 Congress, viewing mergers as a continuous, pervasive threat to small business, passed § 7 of the Clayton Act which prohibited corporations under most circumstances from merging by purchasing the stock of their competitors. Ingenious businessmen, however, soon found a way to avoid § 7 and corporations began to merge simply by purchasing their rivals’ assets. This Court in 1926, over the dissent of Justice Brandéis, joined by Chief Justice Taft and Justices Holmes and Stone approved this device for avoiding § 7 and mergers continued to concentrate economic power into fewer and fewer hands until 1950 when Congress passed the Celler-Kefauver Anti-Merger Act now before us.
Like the Sherman Act in 1890 and the Clayton Act in 1914, the basic purpose of the 1950 Celler-Kefauver Act was to prevent economic concentration in the American economy by keeping a large number of small competitors in business. In stating the purposes of their bill, both of its sponsors, Representative Celler and Senator Kefauver, emphasized their fear, widely shared by other members of Congress, that this concentration was rapidly driving the small businessman out of the market. The period from 1940 to 1947, which was at the center of attention throughout the hearings and debates on the Celler-Kefauver bill, had been characterized by a series of mergers between large corporations and their smaller competitors resulting in the steady erosion of the small independent business in our economy. As we said in Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S. 294, 315, “The dominant theme pervading congressional consideration of the 1950 amendments was a fear of what was considered to be a rising tide of economic concentration in the American economy.” To arrest this “rising tide” toward concentration into too few hands and to halt the gradual demise of the small businessman, Congress decided to clamp down with vigor on mergers. It both revitalized § 7 of the Clayton Act by “plugging its loophole” and broadened its scope so as not only to prohibit mergers between competitors, the effect of which “may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monpoly” but to prohibit all mergers having that effect. By using these terms in § 7 which look not merely to the actual present effect of a merger but instead to its effect upon future competition, Congress sought to preserve competition among many small businesses by arresting a trend toward concentration in its incipiency before that trend developed to the point that a market was left in the grip of a few big companies. Thus, where concentration is gaining momentum in a market, we must be alert to carry out Congress’ intent to protect competition against ever-increasing concentration through mergers.
The facts of this case present exactly the threatening trend toward concentration which Congress wanted to halt. The number of small grocery companies in the. Los Angeles retail grocery market had been declining rapidly before the merger and continued to decline rapidly afterwards. This rapid decline in the number of grocery store owners moved hand in hand with a large number of significant absorptions of the small companies by the larger ones. In the midst of this steadfast trend toward concentration, Von’s and Shopping Bag, two of the most successful and largest companies in the area, jointly owning 66 grocery stores merged to become the second largest chain in Los Angeles. This merger cannot be defended on the ground that one of the companies was about to fail or that the two had to merge to save themselves from destruction by some larger and more powerful competitor. What we have on the contrary is simply the case of two already powerful companies merging in a way which makes them even more powerful than they were before. If ever such a merger would not violate § 7, certainly it does when it takes place in a market characterized by a long and continuous trend toward fewer and fewer owner-competitors which is exactly the sort of trend which Congress, with power to do so, declared must be arrested.
Appellees’ primary argument is that the merger between Von’s and Shopping Bag is not prohibited by § 7 because the Los Angeles grocery market was competitive before the merger, has been since, and may continue to be in the future. Even so, § 7 “requires not merely an appraisal of the immediate impact of the merger upon competition, but a prediction of its impact upon competitive conditions in the future; this is what is meant when it is said that the amended § 7 was intended to arrest anticompetitive tendencies in their 'incipiency.’ ” U. S. v. Philadelphia Nat. Bank, 374 U. S. 321, 362. It is enough for us that Congress feared that a market marked at the same time by both a continuous decline in the number of small businesses and a large number of mergers would slowly but inevitably gravitate from a market of many small competitors to one dominated by one or a few giants, and competition would thereby be destroyed. Congress passed the Celler-Kefauver Act to prevent such a destruction of competition. Our cases since the passage of that Act have faithfully endeavored to enforce this congressional command. We adhere to them now.
Here again as in United States v. El Paso Gas Co., 376 U. S. 651, 662, since appellees “have been on notice of the antitrust charge from almost the beginning ... we not only reverse the judgment below but direct the District Court to order divestiture without delay.” See also United States v. du Pont & Co., 366 U. S. 316; United States v. Alcoa, 377 U. S. 271, 281.
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Fortas took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
Table 1.
Food store acquisitions in the Los Angeles metropolitan area 1954-61
Table 2.
Food store acquisitions in the Los Angeles metropolitan area 1961-64
Acquired company (or stores) Type of acquisition
Year Acquiring company Name Number of stores Sales (thousands) Hor-tal Other
1961 Acme Markets........ Alpha Beta Food Markets.. 45 $79,042
Boys Markets......... Korys Markets.............. 5 10,000 X
Food Giant Markets.. McDaniels Markets.......... 9 21,500 X
Mayfair Markets...... Yorway Markets............ 1 1,500 X
Alpha Beta Food Markets... 1 1.700 X
1962 Mayfair Markets.. Schaubs Market............. 1 1,800 X
Fox Markets................ 1 2,200 X
Ralph’s Grocery Co. Imperial Supreme Markets.. 1 916 X
1963 Food Fair Stores_____ Fox Markets............— 22 44,419
Kroger............... Market Basket............— 53 110,860
Mayfair Markets..... Bi Rite Markets............. 1 2,569
Dales Food Market......— 1 2,200
Food Giant Markets........ 1 1.700
1964 Albertson’s, Inc. Greater All American_______ 14 30,308
Mayfair Markets.. Gateway Market............ 4 8,000
Pattons Markets............ 4 10,400
Ralph's Grocery Co... Cracker Barrel Supermarket. 1 1,000
Food Giant Markets... McDaniels Markets__________ 7 18,350
Total horizontal mergers. 38 83,835
Total market extension mergers. 134 264,629
38 Stat. 731, as amended by 64 Stat. 1125, 15 U. S. C. §18 (1964 ed.).
32 Stat. 823, as amended by 62 Stat. 989, 15 U. S. C. § 29 (1964 ed.).
Despite this steadfast concentration of the Los Angeles grocery business into fewer and fewer hands, the District Court, in Finding of Fact No. 80, concluded as follows:
“There has been no increase in concentration in the retail grocery business in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area either in the last decade or since the merger. On the contrary, economic concentration has decreased ...”
This conclusion is completely contradicted by Finding No. 23 which makes plain the steady decline in the number of individual grocery store owners referred to above. It is thus apparent that the District Court, in finding No. 80, used the term “concentration” in some sense other than a total decrease in the number of separate competitors which is the crucial point here.
Appellees, in their brief, claim that 120 and not 126 stores changed hands in these acquisitions:
“It should also be noted here that the exhibit is in error in showing an acquisition by Food Giant from itself of six stores doing an annual volume of $31,700,000. Actually this was simply a change of name by Food Giant ...”
These figures as they appear in a table in the Brief for the United States show acquisitions of retail grocery stores in the Los Angeles area from 1954 to 1961: See Appendix, Table 1, substantially reproducing the above-mentioned table.
See Appendix, Table 2.
Later, in 1945, Judge Learned Hand, reviewing the policy of the antitrust laws and other laws designed to foster small business, said, “Throughout the history of these statutes it has been constantly assumed that one of their purposes was to perpetuate and preserve, for its own sake and in spite of possible cost, an organization of industry in small units which can effectively compete with each other.” United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 F. 2d 416, 429.
Thatcher Manufacturing Co. v. Federal Trade Commission, 272 U. S. 554, 560.
See, e. g., U. S. v. Philadelphia Nat. Bank, 374 U. S. 321, 362-363; United States v. Alcoa, 377 U. S. 271, 280.
Representative Celler, in introducing the bill on the House floor, remarked:
“Small, independent, decentralized business of the kind that built up our country, of the kind that made our country great, first, is fast disappearing, and second, is being made dependent upon monster concentration.” 95 Cong. Rec. 11486.
Senator Kefauver expressed the same fear on the Senate floor:
“I think that we are approaching a point where a fundamental decision must be made in regard to this problem of economic concentration. Shall we permit the economy of the country to gravitate into,the hands of a few corporations . . . ? Or on the other hand ¿re we going to preserve small business, local operations, and free enterprise?” 96 Cong. Rec. 16450.
References to a number of other similar remarks by other Congressmen are collected in Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S. 294, 316, n. 28.
H. R. Rep. No. 1191, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., p. 3, described this characteristic of the merger movement as follows:
“. . . the outstanding characteristic of the merger movement has been that of large corporations buying out small companies, rather than smaller companies combining together in order to compete more effectively with their larger rivals. More than 70 percent of the total number of firms acquired during 1940-47 have been absorbed by larger corporations with assets of over $5,000,000. In contrast, fully 93 percent of all the firms bought out held assets of less than $1,000,000. Some 33 of the Nation’s 200 largest industrial corporations have bought out an average of 5 companies each, and 13 have purchased more than 10 concerns each.”
See, e. g., Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S., at 346; U. S. v. Philadelphia Nat. Bank, 374 U. S., at 362. See also United States v. du Pont & Co., 353 U. S. 586, 597, interpreting § 7 before the Celler-Kefauver Anti-Merger amendment.
See Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S., at 319.
See, e. g., Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U. S. 294; U. S. v. Philadelphia Nat. Bank, 374 U. S. 321; United States v. El Paso Gas Co., 376 U. S. 651; United States v. Alcoa, 377 U. S. 271; United States v. Continental Can Co., 378 U. S. 441; FTC v. Consolidated Foods, 380 U. S. 592.
Consists of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. (1963 census defined the Los Angeles metropolitan area as Los Angeles County only.)
In most cases, sales are for the 12-month period prior to acquisition.
According to a statement made by Von’s counsel at oral argument, this acquisition did not take place in 1961, but instead Food Giant bought seven of McDaniel’s stores in 1964. The acquisition in 1964 is listed in this table.
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 Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a companion case to No. 2, Metlakatla Indian Community v. Egan, ante, p. 45, but calls for separate treatment. Appellants seek the reversal of a decision of the Supreme Court of Alaska, - Alaska -, 362 P. 2d 901, affirming the dismissal of their petitions for injunctions against interference with their operation of fish traps in southeastern Alaska.
The Organized Village of Kake and the Angoon Community Association are corporations chartered under the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 984, 988, as amended, 49 Stat. 1250 (1936), 25 U. S. C. §§ 473a, 476, 477. Kake is located on Kupreanof Island, 100 miles south of Juneau. Angoon is located on Admiralty Island, 60 miles south of Juneau. They are occupied by Thlinget or Tlinget Indians, native to Alaska.
Both communities are entirely dependent upon salmon fishing. In pursuance of a policy to create a sound fishing economy for the two groups, the United States purchased canneries and related properties for Angoon in 1948 and for Kake in 1950. Since these dates appellants have operated fish traps at specified locations in nearby waters, under permits granted by the Army Engineers to erect traps in navigable waters and by the United States Forest Service to anchor them in the Tongass National Forest. In March 1959 the Secretary of the Interior, by regulations issued under authority of the White Act, 43 Stat. 464, as amended, 48 U. S. C. §§ 221-228, and the Alaska Statehood Act, 72 Stat. 339, permitted Angoon to operate three fish traps during the 1959 season and Kake four. 24 Fed. Reg. 2053, 2069. The following year the Secretary authorized permanent operation of these trap-sites and specified one additional site for Angoon and five more for Kake for possible future authorization. 25 CFR (1961 Supp.) pt. 88.
The history of this litigation is recited in Metlakatla Indian Community v. Egan, supra. It is sufficient to note here that Alaska in 1959 threatened to enforce against Kake and Angoon her anti-fish-trap conservation law, Alaska Laws 1959, c. 17, as amended by id., c. 95; that the State seized one fish trap at Kake, arrested the President of the Kake Village Council and the foreman of the crew attempting to moor the trap, and filed informations against them; that suit was filed by both Kake and Angoon in the interim United States District Court for Alaska to enjoin this interference with their claimed fishing rights; and that the dismissal of both complaints was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Alaska.
The situation here differs from that of the Metlakat-lans in that neither Kake nor Angoon has been provided with a reservation and in that there is no statutory authority under which the Secretary of the Interior might permit either to operate fish traps contrary to state law. Appellants do not rely heavily on the Secretary’s regulations. Neither the White Act nor the Statehood Act, cited by the Secretary, supports a grant of immunity from state law. The White Act was a conservation and anti-monopoly measure. It authorized the Secretary to limit fishing times, places, and equipment in order to conserve fish but forbade him in so doing to create exclusive rights, even in Indians. Hynes v. Grimes Packing Co., 337 U. S. 86, 122-123. Because the rights claimed are exclusive in the Kakes and Angoons, they cannot have been created pursuant to the White Act, even though that statute now applies, if at all, only to Indians. Moreover, the White Act gives the Secretary power only to limit fishing, not to grant rights. The Statehood Act retained “absolute jurisdiction and control” of Indian “property (including fishing rights)” in the United States, but it did not give powers of the nature claimed to the Secretary of the Interior. No other source of authority appears available. The provisions now found in 25 U. S. C. §§ 2 and 9, referring to the President’s power to prescribe regulations for effectuating statutes “relating to Indian affairs,” to settle accounts of “Indian affairs,” and concerning “the management of all Indian affairs and of all matters arising out of Indian relations,” derive from statutes of 1832 and 1834, 4 Stat. 564 and 4 Stat. 735, 738. In keeping with the policy of almost total tribal self-government prevailing when these statutes were passed, see pp. 71-72, infra, the Interior Department itself is of the opinion that the sole authority conferred by the first of these is that to implement specific laws, and by the second that over relations between the United States and the Indians — not a general power to make rules governing Indian conduct. United States Department of the Interior, Federal Indian Law (1958), pp. 54-55; Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1945), p. 102. We agree that they do not support the fish-trap regulations.
Both communities operate their traps under permits granted by the Army Corps of Engineers and by the United States Forest Service. But neither of these permits grants a right to be free of state regulation or prohibition. Like a certification by the Interstate Commerce Commission, each is simply acknowledgment that the activity does not violate federal law, and not an exemption from state licensing or police power requirements. Cf. Maurer v. Hamilton, 309 U. S. 598; South Carolina Highway Dept. v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U. S. 177. The Engineers have no objection under the Rivers and Harbors Act, 30 Stat. 1121, 1151, 33 U. S. C. § 403, to the obstruction of navigable streams incident to the operation of fish traps at Kake and Angoon; the Forest Service has no objection to the use of National Forest land to anchor them. Neither attempted to exempt these traps from state law.
As in the companion case, certain grounds relied on by the Alaska court are no longer urged by the State. The principal dispute now concerns the meaning of § 4 of the Statehood Act, in which the State disclaimed all right and title to and the United States retained “absolute jurisdiction and control” over, inter alia, “any lands or other property (including fishing rights), the right or title to which may be held by any Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts (hereinafter called natives) or is held by the United States in trust for said natives.”
The United States in its 'brief amicus curiae contended that the reservation of absolute jurisdiction over Indian “property (including fishing rights)” ousted the State from any regulation of fishing by Indians in Alaska. Appellants urge that Congress intended to protect the Indians in their freedom to continue fishing as they had done before statehood, so that Alaska cannot interfere with the Indian fishing actually practiced at that time. They argue in addition that in using fish traps they were exercising an aboriginal right to fish that was protected by § 4. The court below concluded that aboriginal rights of Alaskan natives have been extinguished, that appellants have no rights not enjoyed in common with all other Alaskans, and that § 4 protects only exclusive rights given Indians by federal law.
The United States wisely abandoned its position that Alaska has disclaimed the power to legislate with respect to any fishing activities of Indians in the State. Legislative history reveals no such intention, in Congress, which was concerned with the protection of certain Indian claims in existence at the time of statehood. See, e. g., Hearings Before House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs on H. R. 2535 and related bills, 84th Cong., 1st Sess. 124-131, 266-267, 381-383 (1955). But we cannot accept Alaska’s contention that Indian “property (including fishing rights)” refers only to property owned by or held for Indians under provisions of federal law. Section 4 must be construed in light of the circumstances of its formulation and enactment. See Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U. S. 78, 87. Congress was aware that few such rights existed in Alaska. Its concern was to preserve the status quo with respect to aboriginal and possessory Indian claims, so that statehood would neither extinguish them nor recognize them as compensable. See, e. g., House Hearings, supra, 130, 384 (1955) (Delegate Bartlett); Hearings Before Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs on S. 50, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 227 (Senator Jackson), 260-261 (1954).
Discussion during hearings on the 1955 House bill affords further evidence that claims not based on federal law are included. Section 205 of that bill (like § 6 of the bill as enacted) authorized Alaska to select large tracts of United States land for transfer to state ownership. It was understood that the disclaimer provision left the State free to choose Indian “property” if it desired, but that such a taking would leave unimpaired the Indians’ right to sue the United States for any compensation that might later be established to be due. See House Hearings, supra, 135 (1955) (Delegate Bartlett). Feeling that experience had shown this procedure too slow to give prompt relief to the Indians, Oklahoma’s Representative Edmondson proposed to exempt Indian property from the State’s selection. Id., at 381. This was rejected as virtually destroying Alaska’s right to select lands. For, although Representative Edmondson pointed out that the disclaimer extended only to property owned by Indians or held in trust for them, four representatives clearly stated their belief that the disclaimer included not just the few Alaska reservations but also the aboriginal or other unproved claims in dispute, which covered most if not all of Alaska. Id., at 383 (Representatives Engle, Dawson, Metcalf, Westland).
“Fishing rights” first appeared in a Senate bill reported in 1951, S. Rep. No. 315, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. 2. Earlier bills had mentioned only land. The fishing-rights provision is unique to Alaska, although the disclaimer is in other respects the same as in earlier statutes. See pp. 67-68, infra. It was included because fishing rights are of vital importance to Indians in Alaska. House Hearings, supra, 125 (1955) (Delegate Bartlett). The existence of aboriginal fishing rights was affirmed by the Interior Department’s Solicitor in 1942, 57 I. D. 461. There was almost no discussion of “fishing rights” in Congress. In earlier hearings the Senate Committee was considering a suggestion by Senator Cordon that all Indian property be granted to the State, reserving the right to seek federal compensation, except for property actually occupied by Indians. Asked to describe Indian possessory rights, Governor Heintzleman portrayed a smokehouse beside a stream, 50 miles from the town where they live, visited for fishing purposes perhaps two weeks each year. Senate Hearings, supra, 137 (1954).
On a similar basis the Kakes and the Angoons have fished at the disputed locations since 1948 and 1950. It appears to be Alaskan custom that, although traps are taken from the water and replaced each year, one does not “jump” a trap-site. The prior claim of the first trapper is respected. See United States v. Libby, McNeil & Libby, 14 Alaska 37, 42, 107 F. Supp. 697, 700 (D. Alaska 1952); Gruening, The State of Alaska (1954), p. 171; 57 I. D. 461, 462 (1942). The Statehood Act by no means makes any claim of appellants to fishing rights compensable against the United States; neither does it extinguish such claims. The disclaimer was intended to preserve unimpaired the right of any Indian claimant to assert his claim, whether based on federal law, aboriginal right or simply occupancy, against the Government. Appellants’ claims are “property (including fishing rights)” within § 4.
Because § 4 of the Statehood Act provides that Indian “property (including fishing rights)” shall not only be disclaimed by the State as a proprietary matter but also “shall be and remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the United States,” the parties have proceeded on the assumption that if Kake and Angoon are found to possess “fishing rights” within the meaning of this section the State cannot apply her law. Consequently argument has centered upon whether appellants have any such “rights.”
The assumption is erroneous. Although the reference to fishing rights is unique, the retention of “absolute” federal jurisdiction over Indian lands adopts the formula of nine prior statehood Acts. Indian lands in Arizona remained “under the absolute jurisdiction and control” of the United States, 36 Stat. 557, 569; yet in Williams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217, 220, 223, we declared that the test of whether a state law could be applied on Indian reservations there was whether the application of that law would interfere with reservation self-government. The identical language appears in Montana's admission Act, 25 Stat. 676, 677, yet in Draper v. United States, 164 U. S. 240, the Court held that a non-Indian who was accused of murdering another non-Indian on a Montana reservation could be prosecuted only in the state courts. The Montana statute applies also to North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington. Identical provisions are found in the Acts admitting New Mexico (36 Stat. 557, 558-559) and Utah (28 Stat. 107, 108), and in the Constitutions of Idaho (1890, Art. 21, § 19) and Wyoming (1890, Art. 21, § 26), which were ratified by Congress (26 Stat. 215 (Idaho); 26 Stat. 222 (Wyoming)).
Draper and Williams indicate that “absolute” federal jurisdiction is not invariably exclusive jurisdiction. The momentum of substantially identical past admission legislation touching Indians carries the settled meaning governing the jurisdiction of States over Indian property to the Alaska Statehood Act in light of its legislative history.
Section 4 of the Statehood Act contains three provisions relating to Indian property. The State must disclaim right and title to such property; the United States retains “absolute jurisdiction and control” over it; the State may not tax it. On the urging of the Interior Department that Alaska be dealt with as had other States, these provisions replaced an earlier section granting to the State all lands not actually possessed and used by the United States. Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Public Lands on H. R. 206 and H. R. 1808, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 2, 12, 14 (1947). The first and third provisions have nothing to do with this case; the second does not exclude state conservation laws from appellants’ fish traps.
The disclaimer of right and title by the State was a disclaimer of proprietary rather than governmental interest. It was determined, after some debate, to be the best way of ensuring that statehood would neither extinguish nor establish claims by Indians against the United States. If lands subject to the claim of Indian rights were transferred to the State, the Indians were not thereby to lose the right to make claims against the United States for damages. See Senate Hearings, supra, 286 (1954).
The provision for “absolute jurisdiction and control” received little attention in Congress. In the 1954 Senate hearings the Committee was considering a provision copied from the Oklahoma statute that Indian lands should remain “subject to the jurisdiction, disposal, and control of the United States.” Mr. Barney, on behalf of the Justice Department, urged the inclusion of such a provision in order to avoid the possibility that, under United States v. McBratney, 104 U. S. 621, federal criminal jurisdiction over Indian reservations might be extinguished by statehood. Senators Barrett and Jackson thereupon expressed the clear desire that federal jurisdiction not be made exclusive over all disclaimed areas. Mr. Barney denied that the provision would deprive the State of “political jurisdiction” over disclaimed properties. Senator Cordon declared:
“The State may well waive its claim to any right or title to the lands and still have all of its political or police power with respect to the actions of people on those lands, as long as that does not affect the title to the land.”
Senator Jackson said: “All that you are doing here is a disclaimer of proprietary interest,” and Mr. Barney agreed. Senator Cordon said:
“The act of admission gives to the State of Alaska political jurisdiction, including all that is meant by the term 'police power/ within its boundaries unless there be express or definitely implied, which is the same thing, a reservation of exclusive jurisdiction in the United States.”
Senators Barrett and Jackson and Mr. Barney agreed. Mr. Slaughter of the Interior Department pointed out that a later section of the bill, now § 11, provided for “exclusive” federal jurisdiction over Mt. McKinley National Park. Mr. Barney, in answer to a direct question, stated that “jurisdiction” in the Oklahoma statute and in his proposal for Indian property did not mean exclusive jurisdiction. Senate Hearings, supra, 283-287 (1954). The bill as reported contained no provision on jurisdiction but only a disclaimer of right and title, a reservation of federal power to extinguish Indian claims as if there had been no statehood Act, and an exemption from state taxation. Id., at 331. Provisions retaining federal “jurisdiction” and “absolute jurisdiction” were considered interchangeable by at least one committee, which reported the disclaimer in an Alaska bill as “almost identical” with those in the preceding 13 admission Acts. S. Rep. No. 315, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. 15 (1951).
Most statehood bills contained the more common phrasing “absolute jurisdiction and control” rather than the Oklahoma phrase. Although this was the usual language employed to retain federal power in statehood acts, the Senate Committee in 1958 out of an abundance of caution deleted the word “jurisdiction” in order that no one might construe the statute as abolishing state power entirely: The Committee declared that it was not its intention by the retention of federal control to make the Alaska situation any different from that prevailing in other States as to state jurisdiction over Indian lands. S. Rep. No. 1163, 85th Cong., 1st Sess. 15 (1957). The House bill, which retained the usual language, was passed first, 104 Cong. Rec. 9756, and the Senate made no amendments to the House bill because it feared that statehood might be lost once again if the House had to act on a conference report. 104 Cong. Rec. 12009-12010. Senator Jackson stated that “the differences are of wording and language rather than policy . . . designed to define more clearly some of the jurisdictional problems involved .... The objective of both bills is identical. There is strong evidence that the end product of both bills would be identical.” The Senate amendment was designed simply to make clear what an examination of past statutes and decisions makes clear also: that the words “absolute jurisdiction and control” are not intended to oust the State completely from regulation of Indian “property (including fishing rights).” “Absolute” in § 4 carried the gloss of its predecessor statutes, meaning undiminished, not exclusive. Cf. Boston Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 278 U. S. 41, 47-48. The power of Alaska over Indians, except as granted by Congress in 1958, 72 Stat. 545, is the same as that of many other States.
The relation between the Indians and the States has by no means remained constant since the days of John Marshall. In the early years, as the white man pressed against Indians in the eastern part of the continent, it was the policy of the United States to isolate the tribes on territories of their own beyond the Mississippi, where they were quite free to govern themselves. The 1828 treaty with the Cherokee Nation, 7 Stat. 311, guaranteed the Indians their lands would never be subjected to the jurisdiction of any State or Territory. Even the Federal Government itself asserted its power over these reservations only to punish crimes committed by or against non-Indians. 1 Stat. 469, 470; 2 Stat. 139. See 18 U. S. C. § 1152.
As the United States spread westward, it became evident that there was no place where the Indians could be forever isolated. In recognition of this fact the United States began to consider the Indians less as foreign nations and more as a part of our country. In 1871 the power to make treaties with Indian tribes was abolished, 16 Stat. 544, 566, 25 U. S. C. § 71. In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act, 24 Stat. 388, as amended, 25 U. S. C. §§ 331-358, authorizing the division of reservation land among individual Indians with a view toward their eventual assimilation into our society. In 1885, departing from the decision in Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U. S. 556, Congress intruded upon reservation self-government to extend federal criminal law over several specified crimes committed by one Indian against another on Indian land, 23 Stat. 362, 385, as amended, 18 U. S. C. § 1153; United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375. Other offenses remained matters for the tribe, United States v. Quiver, 241 U. S. 602.
The general notion drawn from Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion in Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 561; The Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 737, 755-757; and The New York Indians, 5 Wall. 761, that an Indian reservation is a distinct nation within whose boundaries state law cannot penetrate, has yielded to closer analysis when confronted, in the course of subsequent developments, with diverse concrete situations. By 1880 the Court no longer viewed reservations as distinct nations. On the contrary, it was said that a reservation was in many cases a part of the surrounding State or Territory, and subject to its jurisdiction except as forbidden by federal law, Utah & Northern R. Co. v. Fisher, 116 U. S. 28, 31. In Langford v. Monteith, 102 U. S. 145, the Court held that process might be served within a reservation for a suit in territorial court between two non-Indians. In United States v. McBratney, 104 U. S. 621, and Draper v. United States, 164 U. S. 240, the Court held that murder of one non-Indian by another on a reservation was a matter for state law.
The policy of assimilation was reversed abruptly in 1934. A great many allottees of reservation lands had sold them and disposed of the proceeds. Further allotments were prohibited in order to safeguard remaining Indian properties. The Secretary of the Interior was authorized to create new reservations and to add lands to existing ones. Tribes were permitted to become chartered federal corporations with powers to manage their affairs, and to organize and adopt constitutions for their own self-government. 48 Stat. 984, 986, 987, 988. These provisions were soon extended to Alaska, 49 Stat. 1250.
Concurrently the influence of state law increased rather than decreased. As the result of a report making unfavorable comparisons between Indian Service activities and those of the States, Congress in 1929 authorized the States to enforce sanitation and quarantine laws on Indian reservations, to make inspections for health and educational purposes, and to enforce compulsory school attendance. 45 Stat. 1185, as amended, 25 U. S. C. § 231. See Meriam, Problem of Indian Administration (1928); H. R. Rep. No. 2135, 70th Cong., 2d Sess. (1929); Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1945), p. 83; United States Department of the Interior, Federal Indian Law (1958), pp. 126-127. In 1934 Congress authorized the Secretary of the Interior to enter into contracts with States for the extension of educational, medical, agricultural, and welfare assistance to reservations, 48 Stat. 596, 25 U. S. C. § 452. During the 1940’s several States were permitted to assert criminal jurisdiction, and sometimes civil jurisdiction as well, over certain Indian reservations. E. g., 62 Stat. 1161; 62 Stat. 1224; 64 Stat. 845; 63 Stat. 705. A new shift in policy toward termination of federal responsibility and assimilation of reservation Indians resulted in the abolition of several reservations during the 1950’s. E. g., 68 Stat. 250 (Menominees); 68 Stat. 718 (Klamaths).
In 1953 Congress granted to several States full civil and criminal jurisdiction over Indian reservations, consenting to the assumption of such jurisdiction by any additional States making adequate provision for this in the future. 67 Stat. 588, 18 U. S. C. § 1162, 28 U. S. C. § 1360. Alaska was added to the list of such States in 1958, 72 Stat. 545. This statute disclaims the intention to permit States to interfere with federally granted fishing privileges or uses of property. Finally, the sale of liquor on reservations has been permitted subject to state law, on consent of the tribe itself. 67 Stat. 586, 18 U. S. C. § 1161. Thus Congress has to a substantial degree opened the doors of reservations to state laws, in marked contrast to what prevailed in the time of Chief Justice Marshall.
Decisions of this Court are few as to the power of the States when not granted Congressional authority to regulate matters affecting Indians. In Thomas v. Gay, 169 U. S. 264, an Oklahoma territorial tax on the cattle of non-Indian lessees of reservation land was upheld on the authority of the Fisher and Maricopa decisions, supra, which permitted taxation of railroad rights-of-way. The Court conceded that because the lands on which the taxed cattle grazed were leased from Indians the tax might, in contrast to the railroad cases, have an indirect effect on Indians, but that effect was declared to be too remote to require a contrary result. In the latest decision, Williams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217, we held that Arizona had no jurisdiction over a civil action brought by a non-Indian against an Indian for the price of goods sold the latter on the Navajo Reservation. The applicability of state law, we there said, depends upon “whether the state action infringed on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them,” 358 U. S., at 220. Another recent statement of the governing principle was made in a decision reaffirming the authority of a State to punish crimes committed by non-Indians against non-Indians on reservations: “[I]n the absence of a limiting treaty obligation or Congressional enactment each state had a right to exercise jurisdiction over Indian reservations within its boundaries,” New York ex rel. Ray v. Martin, 326 U. S. 496, 499.
These decisions indicate that even on reservations state laws may be applied to Indians unless such application would interfere with reservation self-government or impair a right granted or reserved by federal law. Congress has gone even further with respect to Alaska reservations, 72 Stat. 545, 18 U. S. C. § 1162, 28 U. S. C. § 1360. State authority over Indians is yet more extensive over activities, such as in this case, not on any reservation. It has never been doubted that States may punish crimes committed by Indians, even reservation Indians, outside of Indian country. See Cohen, Indian Rights and the Federal Courts, 24 Minn. L. Rev. 145, 153 (1940), citing Pablo v. People, 23 Colo. 134, 46 P. 636. Even where reserved by federal treaties, off-reservation hunting and fishing rights have been held subject to state regulation, Ward v. Race Horse, 163 U. S. 504; Tulee v. Washington, 315 U. S. 681, in contrast to holdings by state and federal courts that Washington could not apply the laws enforced in Tulee to fishing within a reservation, Pioneer Packing Co. v. Winslow, 159 Wash. 655, 294 P. 557; Moore v. United States, 157 F. 2d 760, 765 (C. A. 9th Cir.). See State v. Cooney, 77 Minn. 518, 80 N. W. 696.
True, in Tulee the right conferred was to fish in common with others, while appellants here claim exclusive rights. But state regulation of off-reservation fishing certainly does not impinge on treaty-protected reservation self-government, the factor found decisive in Williams v. Lee. Nor have appellants any fishing rights derived from federal laws. This Court has never held that States lack power to regulate the exercise of aboriginal Indian rights, such as claimed here, or of those based on occupancy. Because of the migratory habits of salmon, fish traps at Kake and Angoon are no merely local matter.
Congress has neither authorized the use of fish traps at Kake and Angoon nor empowered the Secretary of the Interior to do so. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Alaska is affirmed. However, in view of all the circumstances and in order to avoid hardship, the stay granted by Mr. Justice Brennan, and continued by the Court, will remain in force until the end of the 1962 salmon fishing season, as defined in the regulations issued by the Secretary of the Interior.
T, . , , It ts so ordered.
In 1948 a statehood bill requiring disclaimer of “all lands . . . owned or held by any . . . natives, the right or title to which shall have been acquired through or from the United States or any prior sovereignty,” was favorably reported with this explanation:
“As proposed to be amended, this paragraph would preserve all existing valid native property rights in Alaska, including those derived from use or occupancy, together with all existing authority of the Congress to provide for the determination, perfection or relinquishment of native property rights in Alaska. It would neither add to nor subtract from such rights and such authority, but would simply maintain the status quo.” H. R. Rep. No. 1731, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 16 (1948).
To the same effect, see H. R. Rep. No. 255, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. 13 (1949).
Fisher permitted a territorial tax on a railway through Indian country, and one basis for the holding was that here discussed. The alternative ground was that the railway right-of-way had been withdrawn from the reservation, as was held in Maricopa & Phoenix R. Co. v. Arizona Territory, 156 U. S. 347.
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.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
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.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Pennsylvania provides in its workers’ compensation regime that an employer or insurer may withhold payment for disputed medical treatment pending an independent review to determine whether the treatment is reasonable and necessary. We hold that the insurers are not “state actors” under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Pennsylvania regime does not deprive disabled employees of property within the meaning of that Amendment.
hH
Before the enactment of workers compensation laws, employees who suffered a work-related injury or occupational disease could recover compensation from their employers only by resort to traditional tort remedies available at common law. In the early 20th century, States began to replace the common-law system, which often saddled employees with the difficulty and expense of establishing negligence or proving damages, with a compulsory insurance system requiring employers to compensate employees for work-related injuries without regard to fault. See generally 1 A. Larson & L. Larson, Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law §§5.20-5.30, pp. 2-15 to 2-25 (1996).
Following this model, Pennsylvania’s Workers’ Compensation Act, Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 77, § 1 et seq. (Purdon 1992 and Supp. 1998) (Act or 77 Pa. Stat. Ann.), first enacted in 1915, creates a system of no-fault liability for work-related injuries and makes employers’ liability under this system “exclusive... of any and all other liability.” § 481(a). All employers subject to the Act must (1) obtain workers’ compensation insurance from a private insurer, (2) obtain such insurance through the State Workmen’s Insurance Fund (SWIF), or (3) seek permission from the State to self-insure. § 501(a). Once an employer becomes liable for an employee’s work-related injury — because liability either is not contested or is no longer at issue — the employer or its insurer must pay for all “reasonable” and “necessary” medical treatment, and must do so within 30 days of receiving a bill. §§531(l)(i), (5).
To assure that insurers pay only for medical care that meets these criteria, and in an attempt to control costs, Pennsylvania amended its workers’ compensation system in 1993. 1993 Pa. Laws, No. 44, p. 190. Most important for our purposes, the 1993 amendments created a "utilization review” procedure under which the reasonableness and necessity of an employee’s past, ongoing, or prospective medical treatment could be reviewed before a medical bill must be paid. 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. §531(6) (Purdon Supp. 1998). Under this system, if an insurer “disputes the reasonableness or necessity of the treatment provided,” §531(5), it may request utilization review (within the same 30-day period) by filing a one-page form with the Workers’ Compensation Bureau of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (Bureau). § 531(6)(i); 34 Pa. Code §§ 127.404(b), 127.452(a) (1998). The form identifies (among other things) the employee, the medical provider, the date of the employee’s injury, and the medical treatment to be reviewed. Ibid.; App. 5. The Bureau makes no attempt, as the Court of Appeals stated, to "address the legitimacy or lack thereof of the request,” but merely determines whether the form is “properly completed — i.e., that all information required by the form is provided.” Sullivan v. Barnett, 139 P. 3d 158, 163 (CA3 1998); see 34 Pa. Code § 127.452(a). Upon the proper filing of a request, an insurer may withhold payment to health care providers for the particular services being challenged. 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. §531(5) (Purdon Supp. 1998); 34 Pa. Code § 208(f).
The Bureau then notifies the parties that utilization review has been requested and forwards the request to a randomly selected “utilization review organization” (URO). § 127.453. URO’s are private organizations consisting of health care providers who are “licensed in the same profession and hav[e] the same or similar specialty as that of the provider of the treatment under review,” 77 Pa. Stat. Ann.,§531(6)(i) (Purdon Supp. 1998); 34 Pa. Code § 127.466. The purpose of utilization review, and the sole authority conferred upon a URO, is to determine “whether the treatment under review is reasonable or necessary for the medical condition of the employee” in light of “generally accepted treatment protocols.” §§ 127.470(a), 127.467. Reviewers must examine the treating provider’s medical records, §§ 127.459, 127.460, and must give the provider an opportunity to discuss the treatment under review, § 127.469. Any doubt as to the reasonableness and necessity of a given procedure must be resolved in favor of the employee. § 127.471(b).
URO’s are instructed to complete their review and render a determination within 30 days of a completed request. 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. §531(6)(ii) (Purdon Supp. 1998); 34 Pa. Code § 127.465. If the URO finds in favor of the insurer, the employee may appeal the determination to a workers’ compensation judge for a de novo review, but the insurer need not pay for the disputed services unless the URO’s determination is overturned by the judge, or later by the courts. 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 531(6)(iv) (Purdon Supp. 1998); 34 Pa. Code § 127.556. If the URO finds in favor of the employee, the insurer must pay the disputed bill immediately, with 10 percent annual interest, as well as the cost of the utilization review. 34 Pa. Code § 127.208(e); 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 531(6)(iii) (Purdon Supp. 1998).
Respondents are 10 individual employees and 2 organizations representing employees who received medical benefits under the Act. They claimed to have had payment of particular 'benefits withheld pursuant to the utilization review procedure set forth in the Act. They sued under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, acting individually and on behalf of a class of similarly situated employees. Named as defendants were various Pennsylvania officials who administer the Act, the director of the SWIF, the School District of Philadelphia (which self-insures), and a number of private insurance companies who provide workers’ compensation coverage in Pennsylvania. Respondents alleged that in withholding workers’ compensation benefits without predeprivation notice and an opportunity to be heard, the state and private defendants, acting “under color of state law,” deprived them of property in violation of due process. Amended Complaint f ¶ 265-271, App. 43-44. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as damages.
The District Court dismissed the private insurers from lawsuit on the ground that they are not “state actors,” Sullivan v. Barnett, 913 F. Supp. 895, 905 (ED Pa. 1996), and later dismissed the state officials who remained as defendants, as well as the school district, on the ground that the Act does not violate due process, App. to Pet. for Cert. 71a.
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit disagreed on both issues. 139 F. 3d 158 (1998). It held that a private insurer’s decision to suspend payment under the Act — what the court called a “supersedeas” — constitutes state action. The court reasoned:
“In creating and executing this system of entitlements, the [State] has enacted a complex and interwoven regulatory web enlisting the Bureau, the employers, and the insurance companies. The [State] extensively regulates and controls the Workers’ Compensation system. Although the insurance companies are private entities, when they act under the construct of the Workers’ Compensation system, they are providing public benefits which honor [s]tate entitlements. In effect, they become an arm of the State, fulfilling a uniquely governmental obligation under an entirely self-contained public benefit system....
“The right to invoke the supersedeas, or to stop payments, is a power that traditionally was held in the hands of the State. When insurance companies invoke the supersedeas (i. e., suspension) of an employee’s medical benefits, they compromise an employee’s [s]tate-created entitlements. The insurers have no power to deprive or terminate such benefits without the permission and participation of the [State]. More importantly, however, the [State] is intimately involved in any decision by an insurer to terminate an employee’s constitutionally protected benefits because an insurer cannot suspend medical payments without first obtaining authorization from the Bureau. However this authorization may be characterized, any deprivation that occurs is predicated upon the State’s involvement.” Id., at 168.
On the due process issue, the Court of Appeals did not address whether respondents have a protected property interest in workers’ compensation medical benefits, stating that “[n] either party disputes” this point. Id., at 171, n. 23. Thus focusing on what process is “due,” the court held that payment of bills may not be withheld until employees have had an opportunity to submit their view in writing as to the reasonableness and necessity of the disputed treatment to the URO. The court then determined that the relevant statutory language permitting the suspension of payment during utilization review was severable and struck it from the statute. Id., at 173-174.
We granted certiorari, 524 U. S. 981 (1998), to resolve a conflict on the status of private insurers providing workers’ compensation coverage under state laws, and to review the Court of Appeals’ holding that due process prohibits insurers from withholding payment for disputed medical treatment pending review.
II
To state a claim for relief in an action brought under § 1983, respondents must establish that they were deprived of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States, and that the alleged deprivation was committed under color of state law. Like the state-action requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the under-color-of-state-law element of §1983 excludes from its reach “‘merely private conduct, no matter how discriminatory or wrongful,’ ” Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1002 (1982) (quoting Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1, 13 (1948)).
Perhaps hoping to avoid the traditional application our state-action eases, respondents attempt to characterize their claim as a “facial” or “direct” challenge to the utilization review procedures contained in the Act, in which case, the argument goes, we need not concern ourselves with the “identity of the defendant” or the “act or decision by a private actor or entity who is relying on the challenged law.” Brief for Respondents 16. This argument, however, ignores our repeated insistence that state action requires both an alleged constitutional deprivation “caused by the exercise of some right or privilege created by the State or by a rule of conduct imposed by the State or by a person for whom the State is responsible,” and that “the party charged with the deprivation must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 937 (1982); see Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U. S. 149, 156 (1978). In this case, while it may fairly be said that private insurers act “ ‘with the knowledge of and pursuant to’ ” the state statute, ibid, (quoting Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 162, n. 23 (1970)), thus satisfying the first requirement, respondents still must satisfy the second, whether the allegedly unconstitutional conduct is fairly attributable to the State.
Our approach to this latter question begins by identifying “the specific conduct of which the plaintiff complains.” Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S., at 1004; see id., at 1003 (“Faithful adherence to the ‘state action’ requirement... requires careful attention to the gravamen of the plaintiff’s complaint”). Here, respondents named as defendants both public officials and a class of private insurers and self-insured employers. Also named is the director of the SWIF and the School District of Philadelphia, a municipal corporation. The complaint alleged that the state and private defendants, acting under color of state law and pursuant to the Act, deprived them of property in violation of due process by withholding payment for medical treatment without prior notice and an opportunity to be heard. All agree that the public officials responsible for administering the workers’ compensation system and the director of SWIF are state actors. See 139 F. 3d, at 167. Thus, the issue we address, in accordance with our cases, is whether a private insurer's decision to withhold payment for disputed medical treatment may be fairly attributable to the State so as to subject insurers to the constraints of the Fourteenth Amendment. Our answer to that question is “no.”
In cases involving extensive state regulation of private activity, we have consistently held that “[t]he mere fact that a business is subject to state regulation does not by itself convert its action into that of the State for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 350 (1974); see Blum, 457 U.S., at 1004. Faithful application of the state-action requirement in these cases ensures that the prerogative of regulating private business remains with the States and the representative branches, not the courts. Thus, the private insurers in this ease will not be held to constitutional standards unless “there is a sufficiently close nexus between the State and the challenged action of the regulated entity so that the action of the latter may be fairly treated as that of the State itself.” Ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted). Whether such a “close nexus” exists, our cases state, depends on whether the State “has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State.” Ibid.; see Flagg Bros., supra, at 166; Jackson, supra, at 357; Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163, 173 (1972); Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., supra, at 170. Action taken by private entities with the mere approval or acquiescence of the State is not state action. Blum, supra, at 1004-1005; Flagg Bros., supra, at 154-165; Jackson, supra, at 357.
Here, respondents do not assert that the decision to invoke utilization review should be attributed to the State because the State compels or is directly involved in that decision. Obviously the State is not so involved. It authorizes, but does not require, insurers to withhold payments for disputed medical treatment. The decision to withhold payment, like the decision to transfer Medicaid patients to a lower level of care in Blum, is made by concededly private parties, and “turns on... judgments made by private parties” without “standards... established by the State.” Blum, supra, at 1008.
Respondents do assert, however, that the decision to withhold payment to providers may be fairly attributable to the State because the State has “authorized” and “encouraged” it. Respondents’ primary argument in this regard is that, in amending the Act to provide for utilization review and to grant insurers an option they previously did not have, the State purposely “encouraged” insurers to withhold payments for disputed medical treatment. This argument reads too much into the State’s reform, and in any event cannot be squared with our cases.
We do not doubt that the State’s decision to provide insurers the option of deferring payment for unnecessary and unreasonable treatment pending review can in some sense be seen as encouraging them to do just that. But, as petitioners note, this kind of subtle encouragement is no more significant than that which inheres in the State’s creation or modification of any legal remedy. We have never held that the mere availability of a remedy for wrongful conduct, even when the private use of that remedy serves important public interests, so significantly encourages the private activity as to make the State responsible for it. See Tulsa Professional Collection Services, Inc. v. Pope, 485 U. S. 478, 485 (1988) (“Private use of state-sanetioned private remedies or procedures does not rise to the level of state action”); see also Lugar, 457 U. S., at 937; Flagg Bros., 436 U. S., at 165-166. It bears repeating that a finding of state action on this basis would be contrary to the “essential dichotomy,” Jackson, supra, at 349, between public and private acts that our cases have consistently recognized.
The State’s decision to allow insurers to withhold payments pending review can just as easily be seen as state inaction, or more accurately, a legislative decision not to intervene in a dispute between an insurer and an employee over whether a particular treatment is reasonable and necessary. See Flagg Bros., 436 U. S., at 164-165. Before the 1993 amendments, Pennsylvania restricted the ability of an insurer (after liability had been established, of course) to defer workers’ compensation medical benefits, including payment for unreasonable and unnecessary treatment, beyond 30 days of receipt of the bill. The 1993 amendments, in effect, restored to insurers the narrow option, historically exercised by employers and insurers before the adoption of Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation law, to defer payment of a bill until it is substantiated. The most that can be said of the statutory scheme, therefore, is that whereas it previously prohibited insurers from withholding payment for disputed medical services, it no longer does so. Such permission of a private choice cannot support a finding of state action. As we have said before, our cases will not tolerate “the imposition of Fourteenth Amendment restraints on private action by the simple device of characterizing the State’s inaction as ‘authorization’ or ‘encouragement.’ ” Ibid.
Nor does the State’s role in creating, supervising, and setting standards for the URO process differ in any meaningful sense from the creation and administration of any forum for resolving disputes. While the decision of a URO, like that of any judicial official, may properly be considered state action, a private party’s mere use of the State’s dispute resolution machinery, without the “overt, significant assistance of state officials,” Tulsa, supra, at 486, cannot.
The State, in the course of administering a many-faceted remedial system, has shifted one facet from favoring the employees to favoring the employer. This sort of decision occurs regularly in legislative review of such systems. But it cannot be said that such a change “encourages” or “authorizes” the insurer’s actions as those terms are used in our state-action jurisprudence.
We also reject the notion, relied upon by the Court of Appeals, that the challenged decisions are state action because insurers must first obtain “authorization” or “permission” from the Bureau before withholding payment. See 139 F. 3d, at 168. As described in our earlier summary of the statute and regulations, the Bureau’s participation is limited to requiring insurers to file “a form prescribed by the Bureau,” 84 Pa. Code § 127.452, processing the request for technical compliance, and then forwarding the matter to a URO and informing the parties that utilization review has been requested. In Blum, we rejected the notion that the State, “by requiring completion of a form,” 457 U. S., at 1007, is responsible for the private party’s decision. The additional “paper shuffling” performed by the Bureau here in response to an insurers’ request does not alter that conclusion.
Respondents next contend that state action is present because the State has delegated to insurers “powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” Jackson, 419 U. S., at 352. Their argument here is twofold. Relying on West v. Atkins, 487 U. S. 42 (1988), respondents first argue that workers’ compensation benefits are state-mandated “public benefits,” and that the State has delegated the provision of these “public benefits” to private insurers. They also contend that the State has delegated to insurers the traditionally exclusive government function of determining whether and under what circumstances an injured worker’s medical benefits may be suspended. The Court of Appeals apparently agreed on both points, stating that insurers “providing public benefits which honor State entitlements... become an arm of the State, fulfilling a uniquely governmental obligation,” 139 F. 3d, at 168, and that “[t]he right to invoke the supersedeas, or to stop payments, is a power that traditionally was held in the hands of the State,” ibid.
We think neither argument has merit. West is readily distinguishable: There the State was constitutionally obligated to provide medical treatment to injured inmates, and the delegation of that traditionally exclusive public function to a private physician gave rise to a finding of state action. See 487 U. S., at 54-56. Here, on the other hand, nothing in Pennsylvania’s Constitution or statutory scheme obligates the State to provide either medical treatment or workers’ compensation benefits to injured workers. See Blum, supra, at 1011. Instead, the State’s workers’ compensation law imposes that obligation on employers. This case is therefore not unlike Jackson, supra, where we noted that “while the Pennsylvania statute imposes an obligation to furnish service on regulated utilities, it imposes no such obligation on the State.” Id., at 353; see also San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Comm., 483 U. S. 522, 544 (1987) (“The fact ‘[t]hat a private entity performs a function which serves the public does not make its acts [governmental] action’”) (quoting Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U. S. 830, 842 (1982)).
Nor is there any merit in respondents’ argument that the State has delegated to insurers the traditionally exclusive governmental function of deciding whether to suspend payment for disputed medical treatment. Historical practice, as well as the state statutory scheme, does not support respondents’ characterization. It is no doubt true that before the 1993 amendments an insurer who sought to withhold payment for disputed medical treatment was required to petition the Bureau, and could withhold payment only upon a favorable ruling by a workers’ compensation judge, and then only for prospective treatment.
But before Pennsylvania ever adopted its workers’ compensation law, an insurer under contract with an employer to pay for its workers’ reasonable and necessary medical expenses could withhold payment, for any reason or no reason, without any authorization or involvement of the State. The insurer, of course, might become liable to the employer (or its workers) if the refusal to pay breached the contract or constituted “bad faith,” but the obligation to pay would only arise after the employer had initiated a claim and reduced it to a judgment. That Pennsylvania first recognized an insurer’s traditionally private prerogative to withhold payment, then restricted it, and now (in one limited respect) has restored it, cannot constitute the delegation of a traditionally exclusive public function. Like New York in Flagg Bros., Pennsylvania “has done nothing more than authorize (and indeed limit) — without participation by any public official— what [private insurers] would tend to do, even in the absence of such authorization,” i. e., withhold payment for disputed medical treatment pending a determination that the treatment is, in fact, reasonable and necessary. 436 U. S., at 162, n. 12.
The Court of Appeals, in response to the various arguments advanced by respondents, seems to have figuratively thrown up its hands and fallen back on language in our decision in Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S. 715 (1961). The Pennsylvania system, that court said, “inextricably entangles the insurance companies in a partnership with the Commonwealth such that they become an integral part of the state in administering the statutory scheme.” 139 F. 3d, at 170. Relying on Burton, respondents urge us to affirm the Court of Appeals’ holding under a “joint participation” theory of state action.
Burton was one of our early eases dealing with “state action” under the Fourteenth Amendment, and later cases have refined the vague “joint participation” test embodied in that case. Blum and Jackson, in particular, have established that “privately owned enterprises providing services that the State would not necessarily provide, even though they are extensively regulated, do not fall within the ambit of Burton.” Blum, 457 U. S., at 1011; see Jackson, supra, at 357-358. Here, workers’ compensation insurers are at least as extensively regulated as the private nursing facilities in Blum and the private utility in Jackson. Like those cases, though, the state statutory and regulatory scheme leaves the challenged decisions to the judgment of insurers.
Respondents also rely on Lugar v. Edmondson 457 U. S. 922 (1982), whieh contains general language about “joint participation” as a test for state action. But, as the Lugar opinion itself makes clear, its language must not be torn from the context out of which it arose:
“The Court of Appeals erred in holding that in this context ‘joint participation’ required something more than invoking the aid of state officials to take advantage of state-created attachment procedures_Whatever may be true in other contexts, this is sufficient when the State has created a system whereby state officials will attach property on the ex parte application of one party to a private dispute.” Id., at 942.
In the present case, of course, there is no effort by petitioners to seize the property of respondents by an ex parte application to a state official.
We conclude that an insurer’s decision to withhold payment and seek utilization review of the reasonableness and necessity of particular medical treatment is not fairly attributable to the State. Respondents have therefore failed to satisfy an essential element of their § 1983 claim.
J-H h-i > — I
Though our resolution of the state-action issue would be sufficient by itself to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, we believe the court fundamentally misapprehended the nature of respondents’ property interest at stake in this case, with ramifications not only for the state officials who are concededly state actors, but also for the private insurers who (under our holding in Part II) are not. If the Court of Appeals’ ruling is left undisturbed, SWIF, which insures both public and private employers, will be required to pay for all medical treatment (reasonable and necessary or not) within 30 days, while private insurers will be able to defer payment for disputed treatment pending utilization review. Although we denied the petitions for certiorari filed by the school district, 525 U. S. 824 (1998), and the various state officials, 525 U. S. 824 (1998), we granted both questions presented in the petition filed by the private insurance companies. The second question therein states:
“Whether the Due Process Clause requires workers’ compensation insurers to pay disputed medical bills prior to a determination that the medical treatment was reasonable and necessary.” Pet. for Cert. (i).
This question has been briefed and argued, it is an important one, and it is squarely presented for review. We thus proceed to address it.
The first inquiry in every due process challenge is whether the plaintiff has been deprived of a protected interest in “property” or “liberty.” See U. S. Const., Arndt. 14 (“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”); Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 332 (1976). Only after finding the deprivation of a protected interest do we look to see if the State’s procedures comport with due process. Ibid.
Here, respondents contend that Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation law confers upon them a protected property interest in workers’ compensation medical benefits. Under state law, respondents assert, once an employer’s liability is established for a particular work-related injury, the employer is obligated to pay for certain benefits, including partial wage replacement, compensation for permanent injury or disability, and medical care. See 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. §§431, 531 (Purdon Supp. 1998). It follows from this, the argument goes, that medical benefits are a state-created entitlement, and thus an insurer cannot withhold payment of medical benefits without affording an injured worker due process.
In Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 individual receiving federal welfare assistance has a statutorily created property interest in the continued receipt of those benefits. Likewise, in Mathews, supra, we recognized that the same was true for an individual receiving Social Security disability benefits. In both cases, an individual’s entitlement to benefits had been established, and the question presented was whether predeprivation notice and a hearing were required before the individual’s interest in continued payment of benefits could be terminated. See Goldberg, supra, at 261-263; Mathews, supra, at 332.
Respondents’ property interest in ease, fundamentally different. Under Pennsylvania law, an employee is not entitled to payment for all medical treatment once the employer’s initial liability is established, as respondents’ argument assumes. Instead, the law expressly limits an employee’s entitlement to “reasonable” and “necessary” medical treatment, and requires that disputes over the reasonableness and necessity of particular treatment must be resolved before an employer’s obligation to pay— and an employee’s entitlement to benefits — arise. See 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. §531(1)(i) (Purdon Supp. 1998) (“The employer shall provide payment... for reasonable surgical and medical services” (emphasis added)); §531(5) (“All payments to providers for treatment... shall be made within thirty (30) days of receipt of such bills and records unless the employer or insurer disputes the reasonableness or necessity of the treatment’ (emphasis added)). Thus, for an employee’s property interest in the payment of medical benefits to attach under state law, the employee must clear two hurdles: First, he must prove that an employer is liable for a work-related injury, and second, he must establish that the particular medical treatment at issue is reasonable and necessary. Only then does the employee’s interest parallel that of the beneficiary of welfare assistance in Goldberg and the recipient of disability benefits in Mathews.
Respondents obviously have not cleared both of these hurdles. While they indeed have established their initial eligibility for medical treatment, they have yet to make good on their claim that the particular medical treatment they received was reasonable and necessary. Consequently, they do not have a property interest — under the logic of their own argument — in having their providers paid for treatment that has yet to be found reasonable and necessary. To state the argument is to refute it, for what respondents ask in this case is that insurers be required to pay for patently unreasonable, unnecessary, and even fraudulent medical care without any right, under state law, to seek reimbursement from providers. Unsurprisingly, the Due Process Clause does not require such a result.
Having concluded that respondents’ due process claim falters for lack of a property interest in the payment of benefits, we need go no further. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Justice Scalia joins Parts I and II of this opinion.
Self-insured employers and private insurers face identical obligations under Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation system, and we therefore refer to them collectively as “insurers” or “private insurers.”
Before Pennsylvania enacted the “utilization review” procedure, an insurer had no effective means of recouping payments for medical treatment that was later determined to be unreasonable or unnecessary. State law bars insurers from seeking reimbursement of excessive payments from health care providers, see Moats v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Bd. (Emerald Mines Corp.), 588 A. 2d 116, 118 (Pa. Commw. 1991), and, although insurers are entitled to reimbursement from the Workmen’s Compensation Supersedeas Fund for treatment later deemed to be unreasonable or unnecessary, 34 Pa. Code § 127.208(g) (1998), the fund is financed entirely from assessments levied on insurers and self-insured employers themselves. 77 Pa. Stat. Ann. § 999(b) (Purdon 1992). See generally D. Ballantyne, Workers Compensation Research Institute, Revisiting Workers’ Compensation in Pennsylvania 36-37 (1997).
Although URO’s may not request, and the parties may not submit, any “reports of independent medical examinations,” 34 Pa. Code § 127.461, employees are allowed to submit a “written personal statement” to the URO regarding their view of the “reasonableness and/or necessity” of the disputed treatment, App. 50. This latter aspect of the process differs from the system in place at the time of the Court of Appeals’ decision. Under the law at that time, employees received notice that utilization review had been requested, but were not informed that their medical benefits could be suspended and were not permitted to submit materials to the URO. The Bureau modified its procedures in response to the Court of Appeals’ decision, and now provides for more extensive notice and an opportunity for employees to provide at least some input into the URO’s decision. Petitioners have not challenged the Court of Appeals’ holding with respect to these additional procedures.
If the URO’s determination is overturned on appeal, the insurer may recover excess payments from the Workmen’s Compensation Supersedeas Fund. See n. 2, supra.
In addition to the 10 named employees, the 2 named organizations are the Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit group composed of over 2,000 unions and their members, Amended Complaint ¶ 15, App. 12, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, a labor organization representing approximately 20,000 employees of the School District of Philadelphia, id., ¶ 16, App. 12.
The class was defined to include "all persons who have been, or will be in the future, receiving medical benefits pursuant to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation [Act], and who have had or will have their medical benefits” suspended without prior notice and an opportunity to be heard. Id., ¶ 17, App. 12-13.
Cf. Barnes v. Lehman, 861 F. 2d 1383 (CA5 1988).
Where, as here, deprivations of rights under the Fourteenth Amendment are alleged, these two requirements converge. See Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 935, n. 18 (1982).
Respondents’ reliance on Tulsa Professional v. Pope, 485 U. S. 478 (1988), as support for their position is misplaced. Nowhere in Tulsa did we characterize petitioner’s claim as a “facial” or “direct” challenge to the Oklahoma “nonclaim” statute at issue there. Instead, we analyzed petitioner’s challenge under our traditional two-step approach, requiring both action taken pursuant to state law and significant state involvement. See id., at 486-487. While it may be true, as respondents argue, that the utilization review procedure here, like the non-claim statute in Tulsa, is not “self-executing,” that fact does not relieve respondents of establishing both requisites of state action. Tulsa does not suggest otherwise.
At the same time the District Court dismissed the private insurers, it refused to grant the school district’s motion to dismiss for lack of state action (the school district argued that because
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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, who is in a Texas prison under a life sentence imposed by a Texas court, brought this petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Federal District Court. His claim is that he was denied the due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment because he was tried and convicted of robbery at a time when he was of unsound mind and unassisted by counsel. The District Court denied the petition without a hearing. The Court of Appeals affirmed by a divided vote. 205 F. 2d 665. The case is here on certiorari. 347 U. S. 1011.
Petitioner’s trial on the robbery charge started and ended the same day. He had been confined to the psychopathic hospital of the state prison for several months prior to the trial; and for part of that time he was kept in a cell block reserved for the most violent inmates. He was removed from a strait jacket March 7, 1941, and tried March 11, 1941. He stood trial without benefit of counsel, though the crime with which he was charged carried a mandatory life sentence because petitioner had suffered two prior felony convictions. See Tex. Pen. Code, Art. 63.
Petitioner declined to plead guilty; hence a plea of not guilty was entered. So far as we are advised, petitioner took no part in the proceedings and made no attempt to conduct any defense. Petitioner was convicted and immediately sentenced. Shortly thereafter, he tried to commit suicide; and then he was recommitted to the psychopathic ward where he was confined for several months more. While he was so confined, the time for appeal from his judgment of conviction expired.
Since his conviction, petitioner has tried repeatedly to obtain relief by way of habeas corpus both in the state and federal courts. He repeatedly claimed that he was tried and convicted without counsel while he was insane and unable to defend himself. Until 1952, he failed, because the record of his trial erroneously stated that he was represented by counsel. The error in that record was corrected by affidavits of both the trial judge and the prosecuting attorney. Thereupon petitioner renewed his efforts to get a hearing on his claim. Finally the Texas courts denied him relief because under Texas law the question whether he was insane and thus unable to defend could be raised only on appeal, not collaterally. Ex parte Massey, 157 Tex. Cr. R. 491, 249 S. W. 2d 599. Petitioner, having exhausted his state remedies, sought the present relief in the District Court, which ruled against him. The Court of Appeals affirmed on the grounds (1) that petitioner now tenders an issue which could and should have been raised during the trial; (2) that the question of petitioner’s insanity was determined against him in 1948 by the District Court; and (3) that the allegations of insanity and lack of counsel do not present a substantial federal question.
We disagree with the Court of Appeals and conclude that petitioner is entitled to a hearing on the question whether he was insane at the time of the trial. He has not had such a hearing. In 1948, the District Court, acting on the erroneous assumption that petitioner had counsel, held that he was competent to stand trial.
In the present case the District Court merely ruled, “On this question of whether, since he was not represented by counsel at his trial, he is in custody in violation of the Constitution, etc. of the United States, I have examined again all the proceedings in this Court and in the State Courts and have reached the conclusion that his contention that his trial was not in accordance with the Constitution is without merit.” That may mean that the evidence to support the finding that petitioner was competent to stand trial with a lawyer was also sufficient to sustain the conclusion that he was competent to stand trial without a lawyer. It may mean that in the view of the District Court the two issues are the same. The present record leaves us in doubt.. One might not be insane in the sense of being incapable of standing trial and yet lack the capacity to stand trial without benefit of counsel. The difference in those issues and the importance of that difference to the petitioner make manifest that grave injustice might be done, if the finding in the earlier proceedings were allowed to do service here. On this record the question of petitioner’s ability to represent himself without counsel remains undetermined.
On the present pleadings we must take as true the allegation of mental incapacity at the time of the trial. See Smith v. O’Grady, 312 U. S. 329; White v. Ragen, 324 U. S. 760, 763. Yet if he were then insane as claimed, he was effectively foreclosed from defending himself. We cannot hold an insane man tried without counsel to the requirement of tendering the issue of his insanity at the trial. If he is insane, his need of a lawyer to tender the defense is too plain for argument. We have not allowed convictions to stand if the accused stood trial without benefit of counsel and yet was so unskilled, so ignorant, or so mentally deficient as not to be able to comprehend the legal issues involved in his defense. See Williams v. Kaiser, 323 U. S. 471; Wade v. Mayo, 334 U. S. 672; Palmer v. Ashe, 342 U. S. 134. The requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment is for a fair trial. See Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455, 462. No trial can be fair that leaves the defense to a man who is insane, unaided by counsel, and who by reason of his mental condition stands helpless and alone before the court. Even the sane layman may have difficulty discovering in a particular case the defenses which the law allows. See Gibbs v. Burke, 337 U. S. 773. Yet problems difficult for him are impossible for the insane. Any defense is hopelessly beyond reach for an accused who is insane. He stands convicted on a chatge which he could not contest and yet for which he may well have had a complete defense.
For the same reasons, the failure of an insane man to raise the question of his insanity on appeal emphasizes only his need for counsel, not his waiver or loss of his constitutional right. Cf. Smith v. O’Grady, supra.
We do not intimate an opinion on the merits, for we do not know what facts the hearing will produce. We only rule that if the allegations charged are proven, petitioner has been deprived of his liberty without due process of law.
Reversed.
For the chapters, which are reported, in petitioner’s unsuccessful attempts to obtain a hearing on the question, see In re Massey, 327 U. S. 770; Ex parte Massey, 149 Tex. Cr. R. 172, 191 S. W. 2d 877; Massey v. Moore, 173 F. 2d 980.
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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, a longshoreman, brought this libel in personam against the United States pursuant to the Suits in Admiralty Act, § 2, 41 Stat. 525, 46 U. S. C. § 742. Claiming injuries suffered while aboard a government ship removing grain to an elevator, petitioner sought recovery on the grounds of unseaworthiness and negligence. The District Court dismissed the libel after finding that there was no negligence, and that since the ship in fact was not in navigation there was no warranty of seaworthiness. 170 F. Supp. 763. This dismissal was affirmed by a divided Court of Appeals, 282 F. 2d 413, and a petition for certiorari requesting review of the seaworthiness issue was granted. 365 U. S. 802. We now affirm the judgment below.
The S. S. Harry Lane was a liberty ship of World War II origin, which was deactivated from service and “mothballed” in 1945. In this process her supplies, stores, nautical instruments, cargo gear and tackle were removed; her pipes and machinery were drained and prepared for storage; and her rudder, tail shaft and propeller were secured. As a result of such action the ship lost her Coast Guard safety certification as well as her license to operate, both of which were requisite to a vessel in navigation. Indeed, the trial court found that “admittedly” reactivation of the ship would have required a major overhaul.
In 1954 the Government was confronted with an urgent need of storage facilities for the country’s surplus grain, and a decision was made to utilize as warehouse space the holds of some of the deactivated liberty ships. The ships were not reactivated for navigation nor used for transportation purposes, but were utilized solely as granaries for the storage of the Government’s grain. Pursuant thereto, the use of the S. S. Harry Lane was covered by a general storage agreement between the Continental Grain Company and the Commodity Credit Corporation, and it was towed to loading facilities, filled with grain, and returned to the “dead fleet” of some 360 vessels, where it remained for two years.
In September 1956 a sale was made of the grain stored in this ship, and she was towed back to the grain elevator for the unloading operation. As in the earlier movement, no repairs or structural changes preparatory to activating the ship were made; nor was there any attempt to obtain a safety certificate or a license to operate as a vessel in navigation, and none was issued. The movement was by tug, with a licensed riding master and six linemen stationed aboard the dead vessel. The linemen were discharged from the vessel after she was secured to her berth at the grain elevator, the riding master alone remaining to guard the vessel. The line handlers did not sign on as seamen for the vessel, and the tugboat captain was “in charge of the move from the Fleet down to the berth” with the riding master “subject to the orders of the tugboat captain.”
The unloading operation was carried out by Continental Grain Company. The grain was removed by a “marine leg,” a large shore-based mechanism containing a conveyor belt which lifts grain from the ship’s hold into the adjacent grain elevator leased by Continental. The marine leg was owned and maintained by Continental, and their employee operated it from a control house in response to signals from longshoremen in the hold. When the grain level dropped to a certain depth, the balance was drawn onto the belt by “grain shovels”- — plow-like devices attached by rope to winches in the leg. These shovels were operated by longshoremen employed by a stevedor-ing company, which had contracted with Continental to aid in the unloading. Petitioner, the foreman of the longshoreman crew, was injured when a latently defective part of the marine leg (a block through which one of the shovel ropes ran) broke and struck him. The entire unloading operation was directed and controlled by Continental and the stevedoring company, and the riding master was without power to supervise the work or inspect the equipment.
The test for determining whether a vessel is in navigation is the “status of the ship,” West v. United States, 361 U. S. 118, 122 (1959). This is a question of fact, Butler v. Whiteman, 356 U. S. 271 (1958), and consequently reversible only upon a showing of clear error. Admittedly the S. S. Harry Lane was withdrawn from navigation in 1945. The issue presented is therefore whether events subsequent to 1945 altered this status. In 1954 the function of the ship was modified. However, she was not converted to a self-propelled, self-directed cargo vessel. Nor was she even prepared for use as a barge to transport cargo from one location to another. In point of fact it would be more accurate to note that the ship itself was not converted to any navigational use. While its hold was utilized as a granary or warehouse, the vessel ipso facto was not reactivated for service in navigation.
A second aspect of the ship’s history since 1954 is the movement between the dead fleet and the grain elevator. This movement was by tug without assistance from the ship’s motive or directional equipment which, indeed, was not in the least usable. The men aboard were not signed on as seamen, and the entire operation was directed and controlled by the tug captain. Unlike a barge, the S. S. Harry Lane was not moved in order to transport commodities from one location to another. It served as a mobile warehouse which was filled and then moved out of the way to perform its function of storing grain until needed, at which time it was returned and unloaded.
In light of the above circumstances, we cannot say as a matter of law that the S. S. Harry Lane had been converted into a vessel in navigation, and that the findings of the trial court were clearly erroneous.
Since we are unwilling to upset the trial court’s factual determination that the S. S. Harry Lane was not a vessel in navigation, it follows that there was no warranty of the ship’s seaworthiness. West v. United States, supra; Kissinger v. United States, 176 F. Supp. 828 (1959). This limitation is analogous to that applied in libels under the Jones Act, where it has long been held that recovery is precluded if the ship involved is not a vessel in navigation. Desper v. Starved Rock Ferry Co., 342 U. S. 187 (1952); Hawn v. American S. S. Co., 107 F. 2d 999 (1939).
This disposition of the case makes it unnecessary for us to pass upon the remaining question, i. e., whether a shore-based marine leg is within the warranty of seaworthiness in the circumstances here disclosed.
Affirmed.
Other parties, not concerned with our disposition, were impleaded.
For cases involving similar facts and to the same effect see Hawn v. American S. S. Co., 107 F. 2d 999 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1939); Kissinger v. United States, 176 F. Supp. 828 (D. C. E. D. N. Y. 1959); Krolczyk v. Waterways Navigation Co., 151 F. Supp. 873 (D. C. E. D. Mich. 1957). Lawlor v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 275 F. 2d 599 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1960), is not contra. There minor repairs were underway on an active ship with a full crew aboard.
The view that a vessel not in navigation extends no warranty has often been expressed in the more familiar context of to whom does the warranty extend. E. g., Union Carbide Corp. v. Goett, 256 F. 2d 449 (C. A. 4th Cir. 1958). Implicit within such cases is the reasoning that those working on vessels not in navigation are not seamen (or doing seamen’s work) and consequently not among those employees protected by the warranty of seaworthiness.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This is a motion for an injunction to stay the prosecution of a number of criminal cases in the courts of Mississippi pending an appeal to this Court from the judgment of a three-judge Federal District Court. A federal injunction to stay state criminal proceedings is an extraordinary remedy. Cf. Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U. S. 157; Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123. In addition to the considerations normally attending an application for such relief, a serious question of standing is presented on this motion, in that it appears that the movants themselves are not being prosecuted in the Mississippi courts. On the record before us the motion for a stay injunction pending appeal is denied.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Frankfurter concur in the denial of a stay solely on the ground that the three movants are not themselves being prosecuted or threatened with prosecutions in Mississippi and they therefore reach no other questions.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellants, discharged federal probationary employees, were denied unemployment compensation by the New York State Department of Labor, an “agent of the United States” under agreement with the Secretary of Labor for the administration of the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) Program, 5 U. S. C. § 8501 et seq. Appellants brought this class suit against that state agency in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, joining as defendants the United States Department of Labor, which is charged with overall responsibility for the program, and the United States Post Office Department and Department of the Treasury, which are appellants' former employing agencies.
Appellants alleged that the state agency had based its adverse determinations on findings of fact made ex parte by the federal employing- agencies, and that the state agency had refused to afford either appellant a hearing at which he or she could attempt to contest those federal findings. The result, appellants claimed, was a deprivation of any opportunity to be heard, in violation of the UCFE statutes and of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. They sought certification as representatives of the class of persons similarly situated, the convening of a three-judge court, and declaratory, injunctive, and mandamus relief.
The District Court viewed the suit as a constitutional attack on 5 U. S. C. § 8506 (a), which, inter alia, makes the findings of the federal employing agency “final and conclusive” on the state agency, and on the regulations of the Secretary of Labor promulgated, pursuant to 5 U. S. C. § 8508, to enforce the program. A three-judge court was convened. That court, in an opinion reported at 347 F. Supp. 1158 (1972), first examined the statutory-claim and held that § 8506 (a) does not require that appellants receive either a state or a federal hearing to contest the employing agency’s findings. Next, the court noted that jurisdiction over the claims against the federal defendants had been alleged only under 28 U. S. C. § 1361, providing for mandamus actions. Holding that § 1361 will not support a constitutional challenge to a statute, the court dismissed the constitutional claims against the federal defendants for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Finally, turning to the constitutional claims against the state defendants, the court, apparently assuming for purposes of argument that the federal defendants were not constitutionally required to afford appellants a hearing, treated the claims as asserting that denial of a state hearing was, in effect, a denial of any hearing on the federal findings. The court held that the denial of a hearing by the state agency did not violate either the Due Process or the Equal Protection Clause.
We noted probable jurisdiction of appellants’ appeal, 411 U. S. 930 (1973). We are of the view that decision upon appellants’ statutory and constitutional claims would be premature. We cannot discover in the record that the state agency, in notifying appellants of the adverse determinations, informed them, as required by 20 CPR § 609.20, of their “right to additional information or reconsideration and correction” of the findings by the employing agencies. Nor can we discover from the record whether or not appellants invoked 20 CFR § 609.23, entitling them to request their employing agencies “to reconsider and correct” those findings.
The “findings” of appellant Christian’s federal employer, the United States Post Office Department, were that Christian was discharged because of excessive absences. The “findings” of appellant Green’s employer, the Department of the Treasury, were that Green was discharged for consuming an alcoholic beverage within 24 hours of going on duty as a sky marshal. It is clear that neither was afforded a prior hearing by his or her agency or any opportunity to challenge the justifications for discharge. Each then applied for unemployment compensation through the New York State Department of Labor. As required by § 8506, New York requested and obtained from each agency its “findings” describing the nature of the employment, including the reasons for the discharge. On the basis of those findings, the state officials made an initial determination that neither appellant qualified for compensation under the applicable state standards.
We find nothing whatever in the record to show compliance by the state agency with 20 CFR § 609.20. All that appears is that the New York officials sent each appellant a letter that included (a) a recitation that no employment benefits could be paid, (b) the state rule that required that conclusion, (c) a short summary of the findings of the federal agency, and (d) a statement that the individual could request a hearing before an impartial state referee. Indeed, the letter appears to be a form letter appropriate in cases of private and state employee applicants, but not tailored for the situation of the federal employee applicant given rights of reconsideration and correction by the Secretary’s regulations.
Appellant Christian requested and obtained a hearing before a state referee. The referee permitted her to introduce evidence-to rebut the federal findings, credited that evidence, and recommended that she be provided unemployment compensation. The state Appeals Board, however, reversed on the ground that § 8506 prohibited re-examination of the facts found by the federal agency. Appellant Green had not obtained a hearing at the time this suit was filed, and the record does not disclose whether he requested one.
The UCFE Program does not, as the state Appeals Board recognized, contemplate a hearing before the state agency for correction of factual findings of the federal employer. But, while prohibiting state re-examination of the facts, § 8506 (a) also requires an opportunity for federal re-examination:
“The regulations [promulgated by the Secretary of Labor] shall include provision for correction by the employing agency of errors and omissions. Findings made in accordance with the regulations are final and conclusive for the purpose of [state adjudication].”
The regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Labor plainly attach great significance to the right of the discharged employee to have the employing agency reconsider its stated reasons for his discharge. The crucial requirement that triggers this reconsideration is the obligation imposed upon the state agency to notify the applicant of the content of the federal findings, which notice “shall [also] inform the Federal civilian employee of his right to additional information or reconsideration and correction of such findings.” 20 CFR § 609.20. Thereupon, the employee may obtain additional information from the employing agency concerning the basis of its findings, § 609.22. Whether or not he avails himself of that opportunity, he may file a request for reconsideration and correction, “together with such information as supports his request, through the State agency before which the claim is pending . . . .” § 609.23. Upon receipt of such a request, the federal agency must consider any information submitted by the employee, promptly correct any errors or omissions, and either affirm, modify, or reverse its original findings in writing. § 609.9. Finally, the State is required to stay its adjudicatory process pending federal reconsideration, although it is conclusively bound by any factual findings of the federal agency, §§ 609.23 (a), 609.18 (c), when it applies its own law to redetermine eligibility. §§ 609.24 (c), (d).
Appellants' contention that § 8506 (a) works a denial of due process and equal protection by depriving them of a hearing before the state agency is thus misdirected. Congress has precluded a hearing on the federal findings in any state forum, but it has required the Secretary of Labor to provide a “hearing” of some dimensions in conjunction with the mandated procedures for reconsideration. Whether a more comprehensive hearing than §§ 609.22-609.24 of the regulations now provide is required either by the language of § 8506 (a) or by the Constitution — and we intimate no views on those questions — the regulations of the Department of Labor, as implemented by the federal agencies subject to those regulations, should be the focal point of the inquiry.
The absence of any indication in the record that this federal administrative procedure was followed is, in our view, a bar to our consideration of appellants’ attack upon. the validity of the regulations. It is true that the fact that the employing agency’s decision is not statutorily subject to judicial review does not preclude review of the agency’s procedure used to reach that determination. See Cole v. Young, 351 U. S. 536 (1956); L. Jaffe, Judicial Control of Administrative Action 371-372 (1965). But there are sound practical reasons for declining such review where the agency has not had the opportunity to apply its challenged procedure to a determination that is clearly within its subject-matter jurisdiction.
The most obvious reasons relate to economy. A favorable agency decision on the merits of the claim may moot the objections to the procedure employed. And “it is generally more' efficient for the administrative process to go forward without interruption than it is to permit the parties to seek aid from the courts at various intermediate stages,” McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 194 (1969).
But there are also persuasive reasons more directly related to the presentation of the procedural claim, as we have noted in cases involving the analogous requirement that administrative remedies be exhausted prior to application for judicial review, of the merits. See McGee v. United States, 402 U. S. 479 (1971); Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U. S. 397, 406-407 (1970). Appellants’ criticism, on this appeal, of the federal administrative remedy as an “ex parte” determination amply demonstrates the point. The regulations clearly require that the agency receive and consider any additional information the employee submits. Thus, the question is not whether there is to be some form of adversary proceeding, but whether that proceeding must be as elaborate as appellants contend. That determination would be hazardous on the scant record before us. The regulations appear capable of accommodating various kinds of issues, and their requirements should be construed with an eye to the nature of the agencies involved and the employment relationship. We cannot know at this stage what particular procedures will be applied, whether credibility determinations will arise, how they will be treated if they do, or even what official within a federal employing agency will be responsible for the reconsideration. Removal of these uncertainties from the case may significantly advance judicial resolution of appellants’ claims, while occasioning no great cost to them.
But we cannot determine on this record whether the District Court would have dismissed this suit for failure to invoke the federal administrative procedures. The adverse notification provided by New York clearly fails to satisfy the notice requirement of 20 CFR § 609.20 of the Secretary’s regulations. Without that crucial information concerning their rights, appellants could hardly be found to have waived them by proceeding in the state forum. Yet the record is silent concerning whether such information was provided, either with the state notice or otherwise. Under the circumstances, we vacate the District Court’s dismissal of the suit as to both federal and state defendants and remand to the District Court with directions to determine whether appellants should be permitted to invoke the federal procedures. In such case, the suit should be retained on the docket for final decision following the federal redetermination proceedings.
So ordered.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT
Code of Federal Regulations
Title 20: Employees’ Benefits
Part 609 — Unemployment Compensation for Federal Civilian Employees
§ 609.1 Definitions.
(b) “Federal agency” means any department, agency, or governmental body of the United States, including any instrumentality wholly or partially owned by the United States, employing individuals in Federal civilian service.
(f) “Federal findings” means the facts found by a Federal agency as to (1) whether an individual has performed Federal civilian service for such agency during the base period specified on a Form ES-931; (2) the period or periods of such Federal civilian service; (3) the individual’s Federal civilian wages for the base period specified on such form; and (4) the reasons for termination of his Federal civilian service.
§ 609.6 Federal findings on Form ES-931.
(a) Within 4 work days after receipt from a State agency or the Secretary of a Form ES-931 a Federal agency shall make its Federal findings, complete all copies of the form, and transmit its Federal findings to the State agency or the Secretary, as appropriate, on such form or as a part thereof. If documents necessary for completion of a Form ES-931 have been assigned to an agency records center or the Federal Records Center in St. Louis the Federal agency shall obtain the necessary information from the records center. Any records center shall give priority to such request.
(b) If a completed Form ES-931 cannot be returned within 4 work days of receipt the Federal agency immediately shall inform the State agency or the Secretary, as appropriate, and shall include an estimated date by which the completed form will be returned.
(c) Each Federal agency shall maintain a control of the Forms ES-931 received by it that will enable it to ascertain at any time the number of such forms that have not been returned to the requesting State agency or the Secretary and the date of the Federal agency’s receipt of such unreturned forms.
§ 609.7 Corrected Federal findings.
If a Federal agency ascertains at any time within 1 year after it has returned a completed Form ES-981 [sic] to a State agency or the Secretary that any of its Federal findings were erroneous it shall promptly correct its error and forward corrected Federal findings to the State agency or the Secretary, as appropriate.
§ 609.8 Answering requests for additional information.
On receipt of a request for additional information under § 609.22 a Federal agency except where it would be inconsistent with general policies followed in the case of separations for security reasons shall furnish in writing to the requesting authority such additional information as (1) will enable a Federal civilian employee to understand the basis for Federal findings or (2) will enable the requesting authority to correctly apply a State unemployment compensation law.
§ 609.9 Answering requests for correction of Federal findings.
On receipt of a request for reconsideration and correction of Federal findings under § 609.23 a Federal agency shall consider the information supplied in connection with such request and shall review its Federal findings. The Federal agency promptly shall correct any errors or omissions in its Federal findings and shall affirm, modify, or reverse any or all of its Federal findings in writing. The Federal agency then shall forward its reconsidered Federal findings to the requesting authority.
§ 609.18 Finality of Federal findings.
(a) Federal findings under § 609.6 or § 609.7 shall be final and conclusive except that Federal findings which contradict the reasons given by a Federal civilian employee for his resignation or which relate to the validity of such reasons shall not be final and conclusive unless such employee has been afforded an opportunity for a fair hearing on any issue involved in the alleged reasons for resignation. Such opportunity for hearing may be afforded by the Federal agency or the U. S. Civil Service Commission at any appropriate stage with respect to any personnel action, or upon request for reconsideration under § 609.23.
(b) Additional information submitted by a Federal agency under § 609.8 shall be considered part of the original Federal findings which, as so supplemented, shall be final and conclusive, as provided in paragraph (a) of this section.
(c) Federal findings which after reconsideration under § 609.9 have been affirmed, modified, or reversed by the Federal agency shall be final and conclusive, as provided in paragraph (a) of this section.
§ 609.19 Determination of entitlement.
(a) Entitlement. The State agency of a State whose unemployment compensation law applies to a Federal civilian employee under § 609.15 promptly shall determine such employee’s entitlement to compensation and pay such compensation in the same amounts, on the same terms, and subject to the same conditions as would apply to such employee if his Federal civilian service and wages had been included as employment and wages under the State unemployment compensation law except that § 609.31 shall apply to the Virgin Islands agency in lieu of this paragraph.
(b) Determination in absence of Form ES-981. (1) If a Form ES-931 has not been received from a Federal agency by the 12th day after such form was forwarded to such agency, a State agency shall determine entitlement to compensation on the basis of a Federal civilian employee’s statement under oath if in addition to furnishing such statement such employee submits for examination any document issued by a Federal agency (as for example Standard Form 50 or W-2) showing that he performed service for such agency.
(2) If a Form ES-931 received from a Federal agency after such determination contains Federal findings which would result in a change in the Federal civilian employee’s entitlement to compensation the State agency promptly shall make a redetermination and give such employee notice thereof. All payments of compensation made after such redetermination shall be in accordance therewith and all payments of compensation made prior to such determination shall be adjusted in accordance therewith. If the Federal civilian employee has received compensation not in accordance with the redetermination § 609.21 shall apply.
§ 609.20 Notice of determination.
A notice of determination or redetermination shall be given to a Federal civilian employee with respect to any determination or redetermination under § 609.19 or § 609.31. Such notice shall be given in the same manner as notice of determination or redetermination is given to claimants under the State unemployment compensation law. The notice shall include the Federal findings and shall inform the Federal civilian employee of his right to additional information or reconsideration and correction of such findings. The State agency shall set forth the Federal findings in sufficient detail to enable the Federal civilian employee to determine whether he wishes to request reconsideration or correction of any such findings.’
§ 609.22 Procedure for obtaining additional information.
(a) Request by Federal civilian employee. If a Federal civilian employee needs additional information in order to understand the basis for a Federal finding in connection with a claim for compensation under the UCFE program he may file a request through the State agency, or the Secretary if the State agency does not determine claims under the UCFE program, for more specific information from the Federal agency which made such Federal finding. Such request shall be mailed by the State agency or the Secretary to the appropriate Federal agency. If notice of a determination of entitlement has been given to the Federal civilian employee before a request for additional information is filed, such employee must file concurrently with such request a timely appeal or request for redetermination under the State unemployment compensation law. No hearing on such appeal shall be scheduled before the State agency receives from the Federal agency the additional information requested.
(b) Request by State agency. If at any stage of determining a Federal civilian employee’s entitlement to compensation a State agency, State administrative appeal authority (including the referee in the Virgin Islands), or the Secretary determines that Federal findings do not contain sufficient information to enable correct application of the State unemployment compensation law a request may be made for additional facts from the appropriate Federal agency.
§ 609.23 Procedure for obtaining correction of Federal findings.
(a) Bequest by Federal civilian employee. A Federal civilian employee who wishes a Federal agency to reconsider and correct Federal findings in connection with a claim for compensation under the UCFE program may file a request for such reconsideration and correction, together with such information as supports his request, through the State agency before which the claim is pending or through the Secretary if the State agency does not determine claims under the UCFE program. Such request shall be mailed by the State agency or the Secretary to the appropriate Federal agency. If notice of a determination of entitlement has been given to the Federal civilian employee before a request for reconsideration and correction of Federal findings is filed, such employee must file concurrently with such request a timely appeal under the State unemployment compensation law. No hearing on such appeal shall be scheduled before the State agency receives from the Federal agency its reconsidered Federal findings.
(b) Bequest by State agency. A State agency, State administrative appeal authority (including the referee in the Virgin Islands), or the Secretary may request a Federal agency to reconsider and correct its Federal findings at any stage in determining a Federal civilian employee's entitlement to compensation.
§ 609.24 Procedure after correction of Federal findings.
(a) A State agency shall forward to the affected Federal civilian employee a copy of reconsidered Federal findings or additional information furnished by a Federal agency.
(b) If additional information or reconsidered Federal findings provide a basis under the State unemployment compensation law for the State agency to redetermine such employee’s entitlement to compensation the State agency promptly shall make a redeter-mination and give notice thereof to the affected Federal civilian employee.
(c) If a State agency after reviewing additional information or reconsidered Federal findings submitted by a Federal agency does not consider that there is a basis for making a redetermination the State agency promptly shall set a date for hearing the Federal civilian employee’s appeal.
(d) If Federal findings are corrected under § 609.7 a State agency shall notify the affected Federal civilian employee of such correction. If the State unemployment compensation law permits and the corrected Federal findings afford a basis for such action the State agency shall redetermine such employee’s entitlement to compensation and give notice of redetermination to such employee.
§ 609.25 Appeal by Federal civilian employee.
(a) A determination or redetermination by a State agency as to a Federal civilian employee’s entitlement to compensation is subject to review, except for Federal findings which are final and conclusive under § 609.18, in the same manner and to the same extent as other determinations of entitlement under the State unemployment compensation law.
That subsection provides:
"(a) Each agency of the United States and each wholly or partially owned instrumentality of the United States shall make available to State agencies which have agreements under this subchapter, or to the Secretary of Labor, as the case may be, such information concerning the Federal service and Federal wages of a Federal employee as the Secretary considers practicable and necessary for the determination of the entitlement of the Federal employee to compensation under this subchapter. The information shall include the findings of the employing agency concerning—
“(1) whether or not the Federal employee has performed Federal service;
“(2) the periods of Federal service;
“(3) the amount of Federal wages; and
“(4) the reasons for termination of Federal service.
“The employing agency shall make the findings in the form and manner prescribed by regulations of the Secretary. The regulations shall include provision for correction by the employing agency of errors and omissions. Findings made in accordance with the regulations are final and conclusive for the purpose of sections 8502 (d) and 8503 (c) of this title. This subsection does not apply with respect to Federal service and Federal wages covered by subchapter II of this chapter.”
The pertinent sections of 20 CFR appear in the Appendix to this opinion.
The District Court stated no reasons to support this holding. Appellants attack it, arguing that mandamus jurisdiction lies where the act of a federal official, although authorized by statute, is alleged to violate the Constitution, citing Garfield v. United States ex rel. Goldsby, 211 U. S. 249 (1908). Alternatively, they contend that jurisdiction over the federal defendants lies under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3) so long as there has been joint participation by state and federal officers under color of state law, see Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144 (1970). At oral argument the Assistant to the Solicitor General stated: “[W]e do not contest jurisdiction under [the] mandamus statute.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 26. See also Brief for Federal Appellees 6 n. 2.
We have no occasion to address appellants’ contentions that the District Court has jurisdiction to hear the constitutional claims against the federal defendants. There is jurisdiction of the federal defendants in any event for purposes of consideration of the appellants’ statutory claim that the Secretary has disobeyed a nondiscre-tionary command in § 8506 that he provide for a full hearing. See infra, at 621-622. Our remand directs that the District Court reconsider that claim as related to the availability under the Secretary’s regulations of a right of reconsideration and correction of the findings of the employing agencies.
Appellant Green unsuccessfully sought review of the factual basis for his discharge by the Civil Service Commission under 5 CFR § 315.806. But, as provided by that regulation, a probationary federal employee has no right to appeal a discharge, and is only entitled to a hearing on the basis of claims that the discharge resulted from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, political persuasion, marital status, or physical handicap, or that the procedure used violated 5 CFR § 315.805.
Section 8502, 5 U. S. C., provides in part:
“ (b) The agreement shall provide that compensation will be paid by the State to a Federal employee in the same amount, on the same terms, and subject to the same conditions as the compensation which would be payable to him under the unemployment compensation law of the State if his Federal service and Federal wages assigned under section 8504 of this title to the State had been included as employment and wages under that State law.
“ (d) A determination by a State agency with respect to entitlement to compensation under an agreement is subject to review in the same manner and to the same extent as determinations under the State unemployment compensation law, and only in that manner and to that extent.”
See 20 CFR § 609.14; N. Y. Labor Law § 500 et seq. (1965). Both appellants were denied compensation on the basis of § 593, which includes as grounds for denial “voluntary separation without good cause” and “misconduct in connection with his employment.”
Both appellants were entitled to a hearing, N. Y. Labor Law § 620, review by the Appeals Board, id., § 621, and state judicial review on questions of law, id., § 624.
We note that an employee who resigns must, pursuant to 20 CFR § 609.18, be “afforded an opportunity for a fair hearing on any issue involved in the alleged reasons for resignation,” if the federal findings are to be final and conclusive. The Solicitor General argues that there are sound reasons for limiting such opportunities to resignees since the agency “will have no information concerning [their] reasons.” Brief for Federal Appellees 28. At this stage of the litigation, however, we have no way of knowing what protections this procedure includes, how it differs from the procedures available to discharged employees, or what kinds of "resignations” it will cover.
“[C]onsideration of what procedures due process may require under any given set of circumstances must begin with a determination of the precise nature of the government function involved as well as of the private interest that has been affected by governmental action.” Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961).
See Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471 (1972); Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535 (1971).
Cf. McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 196-197 (1969).
At oral argument the Assistant to the Solicitor General suggested that appellants might now be barred from obtaining reconsideration and correction of the findings by the passage of time. We find no such limitation in the regulations. Indeed, the only time limitation imposed with regard to corrections is to be found in 20 CFR § 609.7, which requires the federal employing agency to “promptly correct its error” if it ascertains within one year of its initial submission of findings to the State that “any of its Federal findings were erroneous.” That this is an independent obligation, imposed on the agency without regard to the receipt of a request for reconsideration by the employee, is clear both from the language of the regulation and from the fact that all other time limits imposed by the regulations are designed to protect the employee from delay by the agency. See, e. g., 20 CFR §§609.6, 609.19 (b). Compare id,., § 609.24 (a), with id., § 609.24 (d). Moreover, a construction of the regulation as barring reconsideration and correction despite the State’s failure to provide the notice required by the regulations might raise independent constitutional problems.
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 |
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Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether a moratorium on development imposed during the process of devising a comprehensive land-use plan constitutes a per se taking of property requiring compensation under the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution. This case actually involves two moratoria ordered by respondent Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) to maintain the status quo while studying the impact of development on Lake Tahoe and designing a strategy for environmentally sound growth. The first, Ordinance 81-5, was effective from August 24, 1981, until August 26,1983, whereas the second more restrictive Resolution 83-21 was in effect from August 27, 1983, until April 25, 1984. As a result of these two directives, virtually all development on a substantial portion of the property subject to TRPA’s jurisdiction was prohibited for a period of 32 months. Although the question we decide relates only to that 32-month period, a brief description of the events leading up to the moratoria and a comment on the two permanent plans that TRPA adopted thereafter will clarify the narrow scope of our holding.
The relevant facts are undisputed. The Court of Appeals, while reversing the District Court on a question of law, accepted all of its findings of fact, and no party challenges those findings. All agree that Lake Tahoe is “uniquely beautiful,” 34 F. Supp. 2d 1226, 1230 (Nev. 1999), that President Clinton was right to call it a “ ‘national treasure that must be protected and preserved,’” ibid., and that Mark Twain aptly described the clarity of its waters as “‘not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so,’” ibid. (emphasis added) (quoting M. Twain, Roughing It 174-175 (1872)).
Lake Tahoe’s exceptional clarity is attributed to the absence of algae that obscures the waters of most other lakes. Historically, the lack of nitrogen and phosphorous, which nourish the growth of algae, has ensured the transparency of its waters. Unfortunately, the lake’s pristine state has deteriorated rapidly over the past 40 years; increased land development in the Lake Tahoe Basin (Basin) has threatened the “‘noble sheet of blue water’” beloved by Twain and countless others. 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1230. As the District Court found, “[d]ramatie decreases in clarity first began to be noted in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s, shortly after development at the lake began in earnest.” Id., at 1231. The lake’s unsurpassed beauty, it seems, is the wellspring of its undoing.
The upsurge of development in the area has caused “increased nutrient loading of the lake largely because of the increase in impervious coverage of land in the Basin resulting from that development.” Ibid.
“Impervious coverage — such as asphalt, concrete, buildings, and even packed dirt — prevents precipitation from being absorbed by the soil. -Instead, the water is gathered and concentrated by such coverage. Larger amounts of water flowing off a driveway or a roof have more erosive force than scattered raindrops falling over a dispersed area — especially one covered with indigenous vegetation, which softens the impact of the raindrops themselves.” Ibid.
Given this trend, the District Court predicted that “unless the process is stopped, the lake will lose its clarity and its trademark blue color, becoming green and opaque for eternity.”
Those areas in the Basin that have steeper slopes produce more runoff; therefore, they are usually considered “high hazard” lands. Moreover, certain areas near streams or wetlands known as “Stream Environment Zones” (SEZs) are especially vulnerable to the impact of development because, in their natural state, they act as filters for much of the debris that runoff carries. Because “[t]he most obvious response to this problem... is to restrict development around the lake — especially in SEZ lands, as well as in areas already naturally prone to runoff,” id., at 1232, conservation efforts have focused on controlling growth in these high hazard areas.
In the 1960’s, when the problems associated with the burgeoning development began to receive significant attention, jurisdiction over the Basin, which occupies 501 square miles, was shared by the States of California and Nevada, five counties, several municipalities, and the Forest Service of the Federal Government. In 1968, the legislatures of the two States adopted the Tahoe Regional Planning Compact, see 1968 Cal. Stats, no. 998, p. 1900, § 1; 1968 Nev. Stats, p. 4, which Congress approved in 1969, Pub. L. 91-148, 83 Stat. 360. The compact set goals for the protection and preservation of the lake and created TRPA as the agency assigned “to coordinate and regulate development in the Basin and to conserve its natural resources.” Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391, 394 (1979).
Pursuant to the compact, in 1972 TRPA adopted a Land Use Ordinance that divided the land in the Basin into seven “land capability districts,” based largely on steepness but also taking into consideration other factors affecting runoff. Each district was assigned a “land coverage coefficient — a recommended limit on the percentage of such land that could be covered by impervious surface.” Those limits ranged from 1% for districts 1 and 2 to 30% for districts 6 and 7. Land in districts 1,2, and 3 is characterized as “high hazard” or “sensitive,” while land in districts 4, 5, 6, and 7 is “low hazard” or “non-sensitive.” The SEZ lands, though often treated as a separate category, were actually a subcategory of district 1. 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1232.
Unfortunately, the 1972 ordinance allowed numerous exceptions and did not significantly limit the construction of new residential housing. California became so dissatisfied with TRPA that it withdrew its financial support and unilaterally imposed stricter regulations on the part of the Basin located in California. Eventually the two States, with the approval of Congress and the President, adopted an extensive amendment to the compact that became effective on December 19, 1980. Pub. L. 96-551, 94 Stat. 3233; Cal. Govt. Code Ann. §66801 (West Supp. 2002); Nev. Rev. Stat. §277.200 (1980).
The 1980 Tahoe Regional Planning Compact (Compact) redefined the structure, functions, and voting procedures of TRPA, App. 37, 94 Stat. 3235-3238; 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1233, and directed it to develop regional “environmental threshold carrying capacities” — a term that embraced “standards for air quality, water quality, soil conservation, vegetation preservation and noise.” 94 Stat. 3235,3239. The Compact provided that TRPA “shall adopt” those standards within 18 months, and that “[w]ithin 1 year after” their adoption (i. e., by June 19,1983), it “shall” adopt an amended regional plan that achieves and maintains those carrying capacities. Id., at 3240. The Compact also contained a finding by the legislatures of California and Nevada “that in order to make effective the regional plan as revised by [TRPA], it is necessary to halt temporarily works of development in the region which might otherwise absorb the entire capability of the region for further development or direct it out of harmony with the ultimate plan.” Id., at 3243. Accordingly, for the period prior to the adoption of the final plan (“or until May 1, 1983, whichever is earlier”), the Compact itself prohibited the development of new subdivisions, condominiums, and apartment buildings, and also prohibited each city and county in the Basin from granting any more permits in 1981, 1982, or 1983 than had been granted in 1978.
During this period TRPA was also working on the development of a regional water quality plan to comply with the Clean Water Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1288 (1994 ed.). Despite the fact that TRPA performed these obligations in “good faith and to the best of its ability,” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1233, after a. few months it concluded that it could not meet the deadlines in the Compact. On June 25, 1981, it therefore enacted Ordinance 81-5 imposing the first of the two mora-toria on development that petitioners challenge in this proceeding. The ordinance provided that it would become effective on August 24,1981, and remain in effect pending, the adoption of the permanent plan required by the Compact. App. 159,191.
The District Court made a detailed analysis of the ordinance, noting that it might even prohibit hiking or picnicking on SEZ lands, but construed it as essentially banning any construction or other activity that involved the removal of Vegetation or the creation of land coverage on all SEZ lands, as well as on class 1, 2, and 3 lands in California. 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1233-1235. Some permits could be obtained for such construction in Nevada if certain findings were made. Id., at 1235. It is undisputed, however, that Ordinance 81-5 prohibited the construction of any new residences on SEZ lands in either State and on class 1, 2, and 3 lands in California.
Given the complexity of the task of defining “environmental threshold carrying capacities” and the division of opinion within TRPA’s governing board, the District Court found that it was “unsurprising” that TRPA failed to adopt those thresholds until August 26, 1982, roughly two months after the Compact deadline. Ibid. Under a liberal reading of the Compact, TRPA then had until August 26, 1983, to adopt a new regional plan. 94 Stat. 3240. “Unfortunately, but again not surprisingly, no regional plan was in place as of that date.” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1235. TRPA therefore adopted Resolution 83-21, “which completely suspended all project reviews and approvals, including the acceptance of new proposals,” and which remained in effect until a new regional plan was adopted on April 26,1984. Thus, Resolution 83-21 imposed an 8-month moratorium prohibiting all construction on high hazard lands in either State. In combination, Ordinance 81-5 and Resolution 83-21 effectively prohibited all construction on sensitive lands in California and on all SEZ lands in the entire Basin for 32 months, and on sensitive lands in Nevada (other than SEZ lands) for eight months. It is these two moratoria that are at issue in this case.
On the same day that the 1984 plan was adopted, the State of California filed an action seeking to enjoin its implementation on the ground that it failed to establish land-use controls sufficiently stringent to protect the Basin. Id., at 1236. The District Court entered an injunction that was upheld by the Court of Appeals and remained in effect until a completely revised plan was adopted in 1987. Both the 1984 injunction and the 1987 plan contained provisions that prohibited new construction on sensitive lands in the Basin. As the case comes to us, however, we have no occasion to consider the validity of those provisions.
f-H
Approximately two months after the adoption of the 1984 plan, petitioners filed parallel actions against TRPA and other defendants in federal courts in Nevada and California that were ultimately consolidated for trial in the District of Nevada. The petitioners include the Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc., a nonprofit membership corporation representing about 2,00.0 owners of both improved and unimproved parcels of real estate in the Lake Tahoe Basin, and a class of some 400 individual owners of vacant lots located either on SEZ lands or in other parts of districts 1, 2, or 3. Those individuals purchased their properties prior to the effective date of the 1980 Compact, App. 34, primarily for the purpose of constructing “at a time of their choosing” a single-family home “to serve as a permanent, retirement or vacation residence,” id., at 86. When they made those purchases, they did so with the understanding that such construction was authorized provided that “they complied with all reasonable requirements for building.” Ibid.
Petitioners’ complaints gave rise to protracted litigation that has produced four opinions by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and several published District Court opinions. For present purposes, however, we need only describe those courts’ disposition of the claim that three actions taken by TRPA — Ordinance 81-5, Resolution 83-21, and the 1984 regional plan — constituted takings of petitioners’ property without just compensation. Indeed, the challenge to the 1984 plan is not before us because both the District Court and the Court of Appeals held that it was the federal injunction against implementing that plan, rather than the plan itself, that caused the post-1984 injuries that petitioners allegedly suffered, and those rulings are not encompassed within our limited grant of certiorari. Thus, we limit our discussion to the lower courts’ disposition of the claims based on the 2-year moratorium (Ordinance 81-5) and the ensuing 8-month moratorium (Resolution 83-21).
The District Court began its constitutional analysis by identifying the distinction between a direct government appropriation of property without just compensation and a government regulation that imposes such a severe restriction on the owner’s use of her property that it produces “nearly the same result as a direct appropriation.” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1238. The court noted that all of the claims in this case “are of the ‘regulatory takings’ variety.” Id., at 1239. Citing our decision in Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U. S. 255 (1980), it then stated that a “regulation will constitute a taking when either: (1) it does not substantially advance a legitimate state interest; or (2) it denies the owner economically viable use of her land.” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1239. The District Court rejected the first alternative based on its finding that “further development on high hazard lands such as [petitioners’] would lead to significant additional dámage to the lake.” Id., at 1240. With respect to the second alternative, the court first considered whether the analysis adopted in Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104 (1978), would lead to the conclusion that TRPA had effected a “partial taking,” and then whether those actions had effected a “total taking.”
Emphasizing the temporary nature of the regulations, the testimony that the “average holding time of a lot in the Tahoe area between lot purchase and home construction is twenty-five years,” and the failure of petitioners to offer specific evidence of harm, the District Court concluded that “consideration of the Penn Central factors clearly leads to the conclusion that there was no taking.” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1240. In the absence of evidence regarding any of the individual plaintiffs, the court evaluated the “average” purchasers’ intent and found that such purchasers “did not have reasonable, investment-backed expectations that they would be able to build single-family homes on their land within the six-year period involved in this lawsuit.” Id., at 1241.
The District Court had more difficulty with the “total taking” issue. Although it was satisfied that petitioners’ property did retain some value during the moratoria, it found that they had been temporarily deprived of “all economically viable use of their land.” Id., at 1245. The court concluded that those actions therefore constituted “categorical” takings under our decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003 (1992). It rejected TRPA’s response that Ordinance 81-5 and Resolution 83-21 were “reasonable temporary planning moratoria” that should be excluded from Lucas’ categorical approach. The court thought it “fairly clear” that such interim actions would not have been viewed as takings prior to our decisions in Lucas and First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304 (1987), because “[zjoning boards, cities, counties and other agencies used them all the time to ‘maintain the status quo pending study and governmental decision making.’ ” 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1248-1249 (quoting Williams v. Central, 907 P. 2d 701, 706 (Colo. App. 1995)). After expressing uncertainty as to whether those cases required a holding that moratoria on development automatically effect takings, the court concluded that TRPA’s actions did so, partly because neither the ordinance nor the resolution, even though intended to be temporary from the beginning, contained an express termination date. 34 F. Supp. 2d, at 1250-1251. Accordingly, it ordered TRPA to pay damages to most petitioners for the 32-month period from August 24,1981, to April 25, 1984, and to those owning class 1, 2, or 3 property in Nevada for the 8-month period from August 27, 1983, to April 25, 1984. Id., at 1255.
Both parties appealed. TRPA successfully challenged the District Court’s takings determination, and petitioners unsuccessfully challenged the dismissal of their claims based on the 1984 and 1987 plans. Petitioners did not, however, challenge the District Court’s findings or conclusions concerning its application of Penn Central. With respect to the two moratoria, the Ninth Circuit noted that petitioners had expressly disavowed an argument “that the regulations constitute a taking under the ad hoc balancing approach described in Penn Central” and that they did not “dispute that the restrictions imposed on their properties are appropriate means of securing the purpose set forth in the Compact.” Accordingly, the only question before the court was “whether the rule set forth in Lucas applies — that is, whether a categorical taking occurred because Ordinance 81-5 and Resolution 83-21 denied the plaintiffs ‘all economically beneficial or productive use of land.’ ” 216 F. 3d 764, 773 (2000). Moreover, because petitioners brought only a facial challenge, the narrow inquiry before the Court of Appeals was whether the mere enactment of the regulations constituted a taking.
Contrary to the District Court, the Court of Appeals held that because the regulations had only a temporary impact on petitioners’ fee interest in the properties, no categorical taking had occurred. It reasoned:
“Property interests may have many different dimensions. For example, the dimensions of a property interest may include a physical dimension (which describes the size and shape of the property in question), a functional dimension (which describes the extent to which an owner may use or dispose of the property in question), and a temporal dimension (whieh describes the duration of the property interest). At base, the plaintiffs’ argument is that we should conceptually sever each plaintiff’s fee interest into discrete segments in at least one of these dimensions — the temporal one— and treat each of those segments as separate and distinct property interests for purposes of takings analysis. Under this theory, they argue that there was a categorical taking of one of those temporal segments.” Id., at 774.
Putting to one side “cases of physical invasion or occupation,” ibid., the court read our cases involving regulatory taking claims to focus on the impact of a regulation on the parcel as a whole. In its view a “planning regulation that prevents the development of a parcel for a temporary period of time is conceptually no different than a land-use restriction that permanently denies all use on a discrete portion of property, or that permanently restricts a type of use across all of the parcel.” Id., at 776. In each situation, a regulation that affects only a portion of the parcel— whether limited by time, use, or space — does not deprive the owner of all economically beneficial use.
The Court of Appeals distinguished Lucas as applying to the “ ‘relatively rare’ ” case in which a regulation denies all productive use of an entire parcel, whereas the moratoria involve only a “temporal ‘slice’” of the fee interest and a form of regulation that is widespread and well established. 216 F. 3d, at 773-774. It also rejected petitioners’ argument that our decision in First English was controlling. According to the Court of Appeals, First English concerned the question whether compensation is an appropriate remedy for a temporary taking and not whether or when such a taking has occurred. 216 F. 3d, at 778. Faced squarely with the question whether a taking had occurred, the court held that Penn Central was the appropriate framework for analysis. Petitioners, however, had failed to challenge the District Court’s conclusion that they could not make out a taking claim under the Penn Central factors.
Over the dissent of five judges, the Ninth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc. 228 F. 3d 998 (2000). In the dissenters’ opinion, the panel’s holding was not faithful to this Court’s decisions in First English and Lucas, nor to Justice Holmes admonition in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393, 416 (1922), that “ ‘a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change.’” 228 F. 3d, at 1003. Because of the importance of the case, we granted certiorari limited to the question stated at the beginning of this opinion. 533 U. S. 948 (2001). We now affirm.
Ill
Petitioners make only a facial attack on Ordinance 81-5 and Resolution 83-21. They contend that the mere enactment of a temporary regulation that, while in effect, denies a property owner all viable economic use of her property gives rise to an unqualified constitutional obligation to compensate her for the value of its use during that period. Hence, they “face an uphill battle,” Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470, 495 (1987), that is made especially steep by their desire for a categorical rule requiring compensation whenever the government imposes such a moratorium on development. Under their proposed rule, there is no need to evaluate the landowners’ investment-backed expectations, the actual impact of the regulation on any individual, the importance of the public interest served by the regulation, or the reasons for imposing the temporary restriction. For petitioners, it is enough that a regulation imposes a temporary deprivation— no matter how brief — of all economically viable use to trigger a per se rule that a taking has occurred. Petitioners assert that our opinions in First English and Lucas have already endorsed their view, and that it is a logical application of the principle that the Takings Clause was “designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.” Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960).
We shall first explain why our cases do not support their proposed categorical rule — indeed, fairly read, they implicitly reject it. Next, we shall explain why the Armstrong principle requires rejection of that rule as well as the less extreme position advanced by petitioners at oral argument. In our view the answer to the abstract question whether a temporary moratorium effects a taking is neither “yes, always” nor “no, never”; the answer depends upon the particular circumstances of the case. Resisting “[t]he temptation to adopt what amount to per se rules in either direction,” Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U. S. 606, 636 (2001) (O’Connor, J., concurring), we conclude that the circumstances in this case are best analyzed within the Penn Central framework.
IV
The text of the Fifth Amendment itself provides a basis for drawing a distinction between physical takings and regulatory takings. Its plain language requires the payment of compensation whenever the government acquires private property for a public purpose, whether the acquisition is the result of a condemnation proceeding or a physical appropriation. But the Constitution contains no comparable reference to regulations that prohibit a property owner from making certain uses of her private property. Our jurisprudence involving condemnations and physical takings is as old as the Republic and, for the most part, involves the straightforward application of per se rules. Our regulatory takings jurisprudence, in contrast, is of more recent vintage and is characterized by “essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries,” Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124, designed to allow “careful examination and weighing of all the relevant circumstances.” Palazzolo, 533 U. S., at 636 (O’Connor, J., concurring).
When the government physically takes possession of an interest in property for some public purpose, it has a categorical duty to compensate the former owner, United States v. Pewee Coal Co., 341 U. S. 114, 115 (1951), regardless of whether the interest that is taken constitutes an entire parcel or merely a part thereof. Thus, compensation is mandated when a leasehold is taken and the government occupies the property for its own purposes, even though that use is temporary. United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U. S. 373 (1945); United States v. Petty Motor Co., 327 U. S. 372 (1946). Similarly, when the government appropriates part of a rooftop in order to provide cable TV access for apartment tenants, Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419 (1982); or when its planes use private airspace to approach a government airport, United States v. Causby, 328 U. S. 256 (1946), it is required to pay for that share no matter how small. But a government regulation that merely prohibits landlords from evicting tenants unwilling to pay a higher rent, Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135 (1921); that bans certain private uses of a portion of an owner’s property, Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365 (1926); Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470 (1987); or that forbids the private use of certain airspace, Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104 (1978), does not constitute a categorical taking. “The first category of cases requires courts to apply a clear rule; the second necessarily entails complex factual assessments of the purposes and economic effects of government actions.” Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 523 (1992). See also Loretto, 458 U. S., at 440; Keystone, 480 U. S., at 489, n. 18.
This longstanding distinction between acquisitions of property for public use, on the one hand, and regulations prohibiting private usés, on the other, makes it inappropriate to treat cases involving physical takings as controlling precedents for the evaluation of a claim that there has been a “regulatory taking,” and vice versa. For the same reason that we do not ask whether a physical appropriation advances a substantial government interest or whether it deprives the owner of all economically valuable use, we do not apply our precedent from the physical takings context to regulatory takings claims. Land-use regulations are ubiquitous and most of them impact property values in some tangential way — often in completely unanticipated ways. Treating them all as per se takings would transform government regulation into a luxury few governments could afford. By contrast, physical appropriations are relatively rare, easily identified, and usually represent a greater affront to individual property rights. “This case does not present the ‘classic] taking’ in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use,” Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U. S. 498, 522 (1998); instead the interference with property rights “arises from some public program adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good,” Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124.
Perhaps recognizing this fundamental distinction, petitioners wisely do not place all their emphasis on analogies to physical takings cases. Instead, they rely principally on our decision in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003 (1992) — a regulatory takings case that, nevertheless, applied a categorical rule — to argue that the Penn Central framework is inapplicable here. A brief review of some of the cases that led to our decision in Lucas, however, will help to explain why the holding in that case does not answer the question presented here.
As we noted in Lucas, it was Justice Holmes’ opinion in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393 (1922), that gave birth to our regulatory takings jurisprudence. In subsequent opinions we have repeatedly and consistently endorsed Holmes’ observation that “if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.” Id., at 415. Justice Holmes did not provide a standard for determining when a regulation goes “too far,” but he did reject the view expressed in Justice Brandéis’ dissent that there could not be a taking because the property remained in the possession of the owner and had not been appropriated or used by the public.. After Mahon, neither a physical appropriation nor a public use has ever been a necessary component of a “regulatory taking.”
In the decades following that decision, we have “generally eschewed” any set formula for determining how far is too far, choosing instead to engage in “ ‘essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries.’ ” Lucas, 505 U. S., at 1015 (quoting Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124). Indeed, we still resist the temptation to adopt per se rules in our cases involving partial regulatory takings, preferring to examine “a number of factors” rather than a simple “mathematically precise” formula. Justice Brennan’s opinion for the Court in Penn Central did, however, make it clear that even though multiple factors are relevant in the analysis of regulatory takings claims, in such cases we must focus on “the parcel as a whole”:
“‘Taking’ jurisprudence does not divide a single parcel into discrete segments and attempt to determine whether rights in a particular segment have been entirely abrogated. In deciding whether a particular governmental action has effected a taking, this Court focuses rather both on the character of the action and on the nature and extent of the interference with rights in the parcel as a whole — here, the city tax block designated as the ‘landmark site.’” Id., at 130-131.
This requirement that “the aggregate must be viewed in its entirety” explains why, for example, a regulation that prohibited commercial transactions in eagle feathers, but did not bar other uses or impose any physical invasion or restraint upon them, was not a taking. Andrus v. Allard, 444 U. S. 51, 66 (1979). It also clarifies why restrictions on the use of only limited portions of the parcel, such as setback ordinances, Gorieb v. Fox, 274 U. S. 603 (1927), or a requirement that coal pillars be left in place to prevent mine subsidence, Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S., at 498, were not considered regulatory takings. In each of these cases, we affirmed that “where an owner possesses a full ‘bundle’ of property rights, the destruction of one ‘strand’ of the bundle is not a taking.” Andrus, 444 U. S., at 65-66.
While the foregoing cases considered whether particular regulations had “gone too far” and were therefore invalid, none of them addressed the separate remedial question of how compensation is measured once a regulatory taking is established. In his dissenting opinion in San Diego Gas & Elec. Co. v. San Diego, 450 U. S. 621, 636 (1981), Justice Brennan identified that question and explained how he would answer it:
“The constitutional rule I propose requires that, once a court finds that a police power regulation has effected a ‘taking,’ the government entity must pay just compensation for the period commencing on the date the regulation first effected the ‘taking,’ and ending on the date the government entity chooses to rescind or otherwise amend the regulation.” Id., at 658.
Justice Brennan’s proposed rule was subsequently endorsed by the Court in First English, 482 U. S., at 315, 318, 321. First English was certainly a significant decision, and nothing that we say today qualifies its holding. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that we did not address in that case the quite different and logically prior question whether the temporary regulation at issue had in fact constituted a taking.
In First English, the Court unambiguously and repeatedly characterized the issue to be decided as a “compensation question” or a “remedial question.” Id., at 311 (“The disposition of the case on these grounds isolates the remedial question for our consideration”); see also id., at 313, 318. And the Court’s statement of its holding was equally unambiguous: “We merely hold that where the government’s activities have already worked a taking of all use of property, no subsequent action by the government can relieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the period during which the taking was effective.” Id., at 321 (emphasis added). In fact, First English expressly disavowed any ruling on the merits of the takings issue because the California courts had decided the remedial question on the assumption that a taking had been alleged. Id., at 312-313 (“We reject appellee’s suggestion that... we must independently evaluate the adequacy of the complaint and resolve the takings claim on the merits before we can reach the remedial question”). After our remand, the California courts concluded that there had not been a taking, First English Evangelical Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 210 Cal. App. 3d 1353, 258 Cal. Rptr. 893 (1989), and we declined review of that decision, 493 U. S. 1056 (1990).
To the extent that the Court in First English referenced the antecedent takings question, we identified two reasons why a regulation temporarily denying an owner all use of her property might not constitute a taking. First, we recognized that “the county might avoid the conclusion that a compensable taking had occurred by establishing that the denial of all use was insulated as a part of the State’s authority to enact safety regulations.” 482 U. S., at 313. Second, we limited our holding “to the facts presented” and recognized “the quite different questions that would arise in the ease of normal delays in obtaining building permits, changes in zoning ordinances, variances, and the like which [were] not before us.” Id., at 321. Thus, our decision in First English surely did not approve, and implicitly rejected, the categorical submission that petitioners are now advocating.
Similarly, our decision in Lucas is not dispositive of the question presented. Although Lucas endorsed and applied a categorical rule, it was not the one that petitioners propose. Lucas purchased two residential lots in 1988 for $975,000.
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 |
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Justice Rehnquist,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to examine the double jeopardy implications of a prosecution for engaging in a “continuing criminal enterprise” (CCE), in violation of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 21 U. S. C. § 848, when facts underlying a prior conviction are offered to prove one of three predicate offenses that must be shown to make out a CCE violation. Petitioner Jonathan Garrett contends that his prior conviction is a lesser included offense of the CCE charge, and, therefore, that the CCE prosecution is barred under Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161 (1977).
Between 1976 and 1981, Garrett directed an extensive marihuana importation and distribution operation involving offloading, transporting, and storing boatloads of marihuana. These activities and related meetings and telephone calls occurred in several States, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Washington.
In March 1981, Garrett was charged in three substantive counts of an indictment in the Western District of Washington for his role in the off-loading and landing of approximately 12,000 pounds of marihuana from a “mother ship” at Neah Bay, Washington. He was named as a co-conspirator, but not indicted, in a fourth count charging conspiracy to import marihuana. Having learned that he was being investigated on CCE charges in Florida, Garrett moved to consolidate in the Washington proceedings “all charges anticipated, investigated and currently pending against [him].” The Government opposed the motion on the ground that no other charges had then been filed against Garrett, and the District Court denied it.
Garrett pleaded guilty to one count of importation of marihuana in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§952, 960(a)(1), 960(b)(2) and 18 U. S. C. § 2. He was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and a $15,000 fine; and the remaining counts against him, including possession of marihuana with intent to distribute, were dismissed without prejudice to the Government’s right to prosecute him on any other offenses he may have committed.
Approximately two months after his guilty plea in Washington, Garrett was indicted in the Northern District of Florida for conspiring to import marihuana, 21 U. S. C. §§ 952, 960, 963, conspiring to possess marihuana with intent to distribute, 21 U. S. C. §§841, 846, using a telephone to facilitate illegal drug activities, 21 U. S. C. §§963, 846, 843(b), and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, 21 U. S. C. §848. The District Court denied Garrett’s pretrial motion to dismiss the CCE charge, made on the ground that it encompassed the Washington importation operation in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
In the Florida trial, the Government introduced extensive evidence of Garrett’s ongoing and widespread drug activities, including proof of the marihuana smuggling operation at Neah Bay, Washington. The court instructed the jury on the CCE count that it had to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Garrett had committed “a felony under Title 21 of the United States Code” that “was a part of a continuing series of violations,” defined to be “three or more successive violations of Title 21 over a definite period of time with a single or substantially similar purpose. ” The court further instructed the jury that it had to find that Garrett acted “in concert with five or more other persons,” that with respect to them Garrett occupied “a position of organizer, supervisor, or any position of management,” and that he “received substantial income from this operation.” As to the predicate violations making up the “series,” the court instructed the jury that in addition to the offenses charged as substantive counts in the Florida indictment, the felony offenses of possession of marihuana with intent to distribute it, distribution of marihuana, and importation of marihuana would qualify as predicate offenses. 14 Record 16-20. The Washington evidence, as well as other evidence introduced in the Florida trial, tended to prove these latter three offenses.
The jury convicted Garrett on the CCE count, the two conspiracy counts, and the telephone facilitation count. He received consecutive prison terms totaling 14 years and a $45,000 fine on the latter three counts, and 40 years’ imprisonment and a $100,000 fine on the CCE count. The CCE prison term was made concurrent with the prison terms on the other counts, but consecutive to the prison term from the Washington conviction. The CCE fine was in addition to the fine on the other counts and the Washington fine.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected Garrett’s contention that his conviction in Washington for importing marihuana barred the subsequent prosecution in Florida for engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. 727 F. 2d 1003 (1984). The court held that the Washington importation offense and the CCE offense were not the same under the Double Jeopardy Clause; hence successive prosecutions and cumulative sentences for these offenses were permissible. We granted certiorari to consider this question. 469 U. S. 814 (1984).
h — I
This case presents two of the three aspects of the Double Jeopardy Clause identified in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 717 (1969): protection against a second prosecution for the Washington importation conviction; and protection against multiple punishments for that conviction. Garrett focuses primarily on the former protection, which we address first.
The heart of Garrett’s argument entails two steps: First, notwithstanding Jeffers v. United States, 432 U. S. 137 (1977) (plurality opinion), CCE is a separate substantive offense and not a conspiracy offense because it requires completion of the criminal objective and not merely an agreement. Thus CCE is not distinct from its underlying predicates in the way that conspiracy is a distinct offense from the completed object of the conspiracy. Cf. Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U. S. 640, 643 (1946). Second, applying the test of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299 (1932), each of the predicate offenses is the “same” for double jeopardy purposes as the CCE offense because the predicate offense does not require proof of any fact not necessary to the CCE offense. Because the latter requires proof of additional facts, including concerted activity with five other persons, a supervisory role, and substantial income, the predicates are lesser included offenses of the CCE provision. The relationship is the same, Garrett argues, as the relationship between the joyriding and auto theft statutes involved in Brown v. Ohio, supra, and thus a subsequent prosecution for the greater CCE offense is barred by the earlier conviction of the lesser marihuana importation offense.
Where the same conduct violates two statutory provisions, the first step in the double jeopardy analysis is to determine whether the legislature — in this case Congress — intended that each violation be a separate offense. If Congress intended that there be only one offense — that is, a defendant could be convicted under either statutory provision for a single act, but not under both — there would be no statutory authorization for a subsequent prosecution after conviction of one of the two provisions, and that would end the double jeopardy analysis. Cf. Albrecht v. United States, 273 U. S. 1, 11 (1927).
This question of legislative intent arose in Blockburger in the context of multiple punishments imposed in a single prosecution. Based on one drug sale, Blockburger was convicted of both selling a drug not in the original stamped package and selling it not in pursuance of a written order of the purchaser. The sale violated two separate statutory provisions, and the question was whether “the accused committed two offenses or only one.” 284 U. S., at 303-304. The rule stated in Blockburger was applied as a rule of statutory construction to help determine legislative intent. Significantly, after setting out the rule, the Court cited a paragraph in Albrecht, supra, at 11, which included the following statement: “There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from punishing separately each step leading to the consummation of a transaction which it has power to prohibit and punishing also the completed transaction” (emphasis added). We have recently indicated that the Blockburger rule is not controlling when the legislative intent is clear from the face of the statute or the legislative history. Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U. S. 359, 368 (1983); Albernaz v. United States, 450 U. S. 333, 340 (1981); Whalen v. United States, 445 U. S. 684, 691-692 (1980). Indeed, it would be difficult to contend otherwise without converting what is essentially a factual inquiry as to legislative intent into a conclusive presumption of law.
In the present case the application of the Blockburger rule as a conclusive determinant of legislative intent, rather than as a useful canon of statutory construction, would lead to the conclusion urged by Garrett: that Congress intended the conduct at issue to be punishable either as a predicate offense, or as a CCE offense, but not both. The language, structure, and legislative history of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse, Prevention and Control Act of 1970, however, show in the plainest way that Congress intended the CCE provision to be a separate criminal offense which was punishable in addition to, and not as a substitute for, the predicate offenses. Insofar as the question is one of legislative intent, the Blockburger presumption must of course yield to a plainly expressed contrary view on the part of Congress.
The language of 21 U. S. C. § 848, which is set out in full in the margin, affirmatively states an offense for which punishment will be imposed. It begins:
“Any person who engages in a continuing criminal enterprise shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 10 years and which may be up to life imprisonment, to a- fine of not more than $100,000, and to the forfeiture prescribed in paragraph (2).” § 848(a)(1).
At this point there is no reference to other statutory offenses, and a separate penalty is set out, rather than a multiplier of the penalty established for some other offense. This same paragraph then incorporates its own recidivist provision, providing for twice the penalty for repeat violators of this section. Significantly the language expressly refers to “one or more prior convictions... under this section.” Next, subparagraph (2), which sets out various forfeiture provisions, also refers to any person “who is convicted under paragraph (1) of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise,” again suggesting that §848 is a distinct offense for which one is separately convicted.
Subsection (b) of § 848 defines the conduct that constitutes being “engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise”:
“(1) he violates any provision of this subehapter or subchapter II of this chapter [establishing various drug offenses] the punishment for which is a felony, and
“(2) such violation is a part of a continuing series of violations of this subchapter or subchapter II of this chapter—
“(A) which are undertaken by such person in concert with five or more other persons with respect to whom such person occupies a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management, and
“(B) from which such person obtains substantial income or resources.”
A common-sense reading of this definition reveals a carefully crafted prohibition aimed at a special problem. This language is designed to reach the “top brass” in the drug rings, not the lieutenants and foot soldiers.
The definition of a continuing criminal enterprise is not drafted in the way that a recidivist provision would be drafted. Indeed § 848(a)(1), as already noted, contains language that is typical of that sort of provision. Moreover, the very next section of the statute entitled “Dangerous Special Drug Offender Sentencing” is a recidivist provision. It is drafted in starkly contrasting language which plainly is not intended to create a separate offense. For example, it provides for a special hearing before the court sitting without a jury to consider the evidence of prior offenses, and the determination that a defendant is a dangerous special drug offender is made on a preponderance of the information by the court. See 21 U. S. C. § 849.
This conclusion as to Congress’ intent is fortified by the legislative history. H. R. 18583 is the bill that was enacted to become the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. In its section-by-section analysis, the House Committee Report states:
“Section 408(a) [21 U. S. C. § 848(a)] provides that any person who engages in a continuing criminal enterprise shall upon conviction for that offense be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for not less than 10 years and up to life.... If the person engages in this activity subsequent to one or more convictions under this section, he shall receive a penalty of not less than 20 years’ imprisonment....” H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1, p. 50 (1970) (emphasis added).
The intent to create a separate offense could hardly be clearer.
As originally introduced in the House, H. R. 18583 had a section entitled “Continuing Criminal Enterprises” which in reality was a recidivist provision, like the current 21U. S. C. § 849, that provided for enhanced sentences for “a special offender,” who “committed [a drug] felony as part of a pattern of conduct which was criminal under applicable laws of any jurisdiction, which constituted a substantial source of his income, and in which he manifested special skill or expertise.” The House Committee substituted for this provision an amendment offered by Representative Dingell that ultimately became the current §848. “Instead of providing a post-conviction-presentencing procedure, [the Dingell amendment] made engagement in a continuing criminal enterprise a new and distinct offense with all its elements triable in court.” H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1, pp. 83-84 (1970) (additional views); see 116 Cong. Rec. 33302 (1970) (remarks of Rep. Eckhardt).
During consideration of the bill by the full House, Representative Poff offered an amendment which would restore the recidivist provision to the bill in addition to the Dingell provision. Explaining the differences between the two approaches, Representative Eckhardt stated:
“[T]he Dingell amendment created a new offense which would have to be triable in all its parts by admissible evidence brought before the court, whereas the post-conviction presentence [procedure] of the original bill similar to the Poff provisions provided that some report upon which sentence would be based would be available to the judge, cross-examination would be available of those who presented the report, but not of those who may have contributed to it.” Ibid.
Later in the debate, Representative Poff explained his proposed amendment further:
“Mr. Chairman, the most dangerous criminal in the criminal drug field is the organized crime offender, the habitual offender, the professional criminal.
“Mr. Chairman, we need special penalties in my opinion for these special criminals. Constitutional scholars have suggested two approaches to deal with such offenders. The first is the creation of a separate crime with separate penalties. The second approach is the imposition of longer sentences upon those convicted first of the basic crime and then shown to be dangerous offenders.
“Mr. Chairman, the first approach, the separate crime approach, is the approach taken by section 408 of the Committee bill [21 U. S. C. §848]. The second is found in the amendment which I have just offered which adds two new sections to the bill, sections 409 and 410 [21 U. S. C. §§849 and 850].” Id., at 33630.
The distinction between the two approaches was emphasized in the continuing debate. For example, Representative Eckhardt stated: “Under the Dingell amendment, if you are going to prove a man guilty, you have to come into court and prove every element of the continuing criminal offense.” Representative Poff concurred in this characterization of the CCE provision “which embodies a new separate criminal offense with a separate criminal penalty.” Representative Poff distinguished this approach from his proposed amendment which “authorizes the judge to impose the extended sentence upon the defendant in the dock who has already been found guilty by the jury of the basic charge.” Id., at 33631. The Poff amendment was adopted, id., at 33634, and both approaches are contained in the statute, 21 U. S. C. §§848, 849, and 850.
In view of this legislative history, it is indisputable that Congress intended to create a separate CCE offense. One could still argue, however, that having created the separate offense, Congress intended it, where applicable, to be a substitute for the predicate offenses. Nowhere in the legislative history is it stated that a big-time drug operator could be prosecuted and convicted for the separate predicate offenses as well as the CCE offense. The absence of such a statement, however, is not surprising; given the motivation behind the legislation and the temper of the debate, such a statement would merely have stated the obvious. Congress was seeking to add a new enforcement tool to the substantive drug offenses already available to prosecutors. During the debate on the Poff amendment, for example, Representative Fascell stated: “I see no reason to treat a drug trafficker any less harshly than an organized crime racketeer. Their acts are equally heinous, the consequences equally severe, and their punishment equally justified.” Representative Weicker stated: “The penalty structure has been designed to accommodate all types of drug offenders, from the casual drug user and experimenter to the organized crime syndicates engaged in unlawful transportation and distribution of illicit drugs.” He continued, “This bill goes further in providing those persons charged with enforcing it a wide variety of enforcement tools which will enable them to more effectively combat the illicit drug trafficker and meet the increased demands we have imposed on them.” Representative Taft stated: “[T]his amendment will do much at least to help a coordinated attack on the organized crime problem within the purview of this legislation.... Hopefully, we will see other legislation coming along broadening the attack on the crime syndicates even further.” 116 Cong. Rec. 33630-33631 (1970). It runs counter to common sense to infer from comments such as these, which pervade the entire debate and which stand unrebutted, that Congress intended to substitute the CCE offense for the underlying predicate offenses in the case of a big-time drug dealer rather than to permit prosecution for CCE in addition to prosecution for the predicate offenses.
Finally, it would be illogical for Congress to intend that a choice be made between the predicate offenses and the CCE offense in pursuing major drug dealers. While in the instant case Garrett claims that the Government was aware of the possibility of bringing the CCE charge before he was indicted on the Washington offenses, in many cases the Government would catch a drug dealer for one offense before it was aware of or had the evidence to make a case for other drug offenses he had committed or in the future would commit. The Government would then be forced to choose between prosecuting the dealer on the offense of which it could prove him guilty or releasing him with the idea that he would continue his drug-dealing activities so that the Government might catch him twice more and then be able to prosecute him on the CCE offense. Such a situation is absurd and clearly not what Congress intended.
II
Having determined that Congress intended CCE to be a separate offense and that it intended to permit prosecution for both the predicate offenses and the CCE offense, we must now determine whether prosecution for a CCE offense after an earlier prosecution for a predicate offense is constitutional under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Double Jeopardy Clause provides:
“[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”
The critical inquiry is whether a CCE offense is considered the “same offense” as one or more of its predicate offenses within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
Quite obviously the CCE offense is not, in any commonsense or literal meaning of the term, the “same” offense as one of the predicate offenses. The CCE offense requires the jury to find that the defendant committed a predicate offense, and in addition that the predicate offense was part of a continuing series of predicate offenses undertaken by the defendant in concert with five or more other persons, that the defendant occupied the position of an organizer or manager, and that the defendant obtained substantial income or resources from the continuing series of violations.
In order to properly analyze the successive prosecution issue, we must examine not only the statute which Congress has enacted, but also the charges which form the basis of the Government’s prosecution here. Petitioner pleaded guilty in the Western District of Washington in May 1981 to a count charging importation of 12,000 pounds of marihuana at Neah Bay, Washington, on August 26, 1980. He was indicted in the Northern District of Florida in July 1981, on charges of conspiring to import “multi-ton quantities of marihuana and marihuana ‘Thai sticks’” from January 1976 to July 16, 1981; of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute marihuana over the same period of time; and of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise over the same period of time. Thus at the very moment he made his motion to require “consolidation” of all the charges against him in the Western District of Washington, he was engaging in criminal conduct of which he was later found guilty by a jury in the Northern District of Florida.
Petitioner contends that the marihuana importation charge to which he pleaded guilty in Washington was a “lesser included offense” of the CCE offense of which he was convicted in Florida. He points out that evidence of the Washington offense was introduced at the Florida trial, and that the jury was permitted to find that the Washington violation was one of the “predicate offenses” for the CCE charge in Florida. He relies on Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161 (1977), for his conclusion that the use of the Washington offense as an element of the Florida charge placed him twice in jeopardy in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Brown v. Ohio held that, where the misdemeanor of joyriding was a lesser included offense in the felony of auto theft, a prosecution for the misdemeanor barred a second prosecution for the felony. We think there is a good deal of difference between the classic relation of the “lesser included offense” to the greater offense presented in Brown, on the one hand, and the relationship between the Washington marihuana offense and the CCE charge involved in this case, on the other. The defendant in Brown had stolen an automobile and driven it for several days. He had engaged in a single course of conduct — driving a stolen car. The very same conduct would support a misdemeanor prosecution for joyriding or a felony prosecution for auto theft, depending only on the defendant’s state of mind while he engaged in the conduct in question. Every moment of his conduct was as relevant to the joyriding charge as it was to the auto theft charge.
In the case before us the situation is quite different. The count in the Washington indictment to which Garrett pleaded guilty charged importation of 12,000 pounds of marihuana at Neah Bay on August 26, 1980. The Washington indictment was returned on March 17, 1981, and a guilty plea entered on May 18, 1981. Two other counts of the indictment, including causing interstate travel to facilitate importation of marihuana on or about October 24, 1979, were dismissed without prejudice to the Government’s right subsequently to prosecute any other offense Garrett may have committed.
The CCE indictment returned against Garrett in Florida was returned on July 16, 1981. It charged that he had, from January 1976, “up to and including [July 16, 1981],” conspired in that district and “divers other districts” to import multiton quantities of marihuana and marihuana “Thai sticks” in violation of applicable federal law. Another count charged conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marihuana over the same period of more than five years. A third count of the Florida indictment charged that Garrett had engaged in the Northern District of Florida and in “divers other districts” in a continuing criminal enterprise over the same 5x/2-year period.
Obviously the conduct in which Garrett was charged with engaging in the Florida indictment, when compared with that with which he was charged in the Washington indictment, does not lend itself to the simple analogy of a single course of conduct — stealing a car — comprising a lesser included misdemeanor within a felony. Here the continuing criminal enterprise was alleged to have spanned more than five years; the acts charged in the Washington indictment were alleged to have occurred on single days in 1979 and 1980, respectively. Whenever it was during the 5!4-year period alleged in the indictment that Garrett committed the first of the three predicate offenses required to form the basis for a CCE prosecution, it could not then have been said with any certainty that he would necessarily go ahead and commit the other violations required to render him liable on a CCE charge. Every minute that Nathaniel Brown drove or possessed the stolen automobile he was simultaneously committing both the lesser included misdemeanor and the greater felony, but the same simply is not true of Garrett. His various boatload smuggling operations in Louisiana, for example, obviously involved incidents of conduct wholly separate from his “mother boat” operations in Washington. These significant differences caution against ready transposition of the “lesser included offense” principles of double jeopardy from the classically simple situation presented in Brown to the multilayered conduct, both as to time and to place, involved in this case.
Were we to sustain Garrett’s claim, the Government would have been able to proceed against him in either one of only two ways. It would have to have withheld the Washington charges, alleging crimes committed in October 1979 and August 1980, from the grand jury which indicted Garrett in March 1981, until it was prepared to present to a grand jury the CCE charge which was alleged to have been, and found by a jury to be, continuing on each of those dates; or it would have to have submitted the CCE charge to the Washington grand jury in March 1981, even though the indictment ultimately returned against Garrett on that charge alleged that the enterprise had continued until July 1981. We do not think that the Double Jeopardy Clause may be employed to force the Government’s hand in this manner, however we were to resolve Garrett’s lesser-included-offense argument. One who insists that the music stop and the piper be paid at a particular point must at least have stopped dancing himself before he may seek such an accounting.
Petitioner urges that “[w]here the charges arise from a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction, they must be tried in a single proceeding. Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S., at 170 (Brennan, J., concurring).” We have steadfastly refused to adopt the “single transaction” view of the Double Jeopardy Clause. But it would seem to strain even that doctrine to describe Garrett’s multifarious multistate activities as a “single transaction.” For the reasons previously stated, we also have serious doubts as to whether the offense to which Garrett pleaded guilty in Washington was a “lesser included offense” within the CCE charge so that the prosecution of the former would bar a prosecution of the latter. But we may assume, for purposes of decision here, that the Washington offense was a lesser included offense, because in our view Garrett’s claim of double jeopardy would still not be sustainable.
In Diaz v. United States, 223 U. S. 442 (1912), the Court had before it an initial prosecution for assault and battery, followed by a prosecution for homicide when the victim eventually died from injuries inflicted in the course of the assault. The Court rejected the defendant’s claim of double jeopardy, holding that the two were not the “same offense”:
“The homicide charged against the accused in the Court of First Instance and the assault and battery for which he was tried before the justice of the peace, although identical in some of their elements, were distinct offenses both in law and in fact. The death of the injured person was the principal element of the homicide, but was no part of the assault and battery. At the time of the trial for the latter the death had not ensued, and not until it did ensue was the homicide committed. Then, and not before, was it possible to put the accused in jeopardy for that offense.” Id., at 448-449.
In the present case, as in Diaz, the continuing criminal enterprise charged against Garrett in Florida had not been completed at the time that he was indicted in Washington. The latter event took place in March 1981, whereas the continuing criminal enterprise charged in the Florida indictment and found by the trial jury extended from January 1976 to July 1981. The evidence at trial showed, for example, that Garrett was arrested for traffic offenses and other violations on July 23, 1981, while out on bail pending sentencing for the Washington conviction. He told the arresting officer that the officer had caught “somebody big” and that he was a “smuggler.” At the time of the arrest, Garrett was carrying $6,253 in cash. About $30 of this was in quarters. He explained that he needed them to make long-distance phone calls, on which he sometimes spent $25 to $50 a day. He also told the arresting officer and a federal agent who interviewed him the next morning that he had just bought the truck he had been driving for $13,000 cash and that he used it for smuggling. He further stated that he had a yacht in Hawaii which he had purchased for $160,000 cash. This evidence is consistent with the jury’s verdict that Garrett continued his CCE activities into July 1981.
We think this evidence not only permits but requires the conclusion that the CCE charged in Florida, alleged to have begun in January 1976, and continued up to mid-July 1981, was under Diaz a different offense from that charged in the Washington indictment. We cannot tell, without considerable sifting of the evidence and speculating as to what juries might do, whether the Government could in March 1981 have successfully indicted and prosecuted Garrett for a different continuing criminal enterprise — one ending in March 1981. But we do not think any such sifting or speculation is required at the behest of one who at the time the first indictment is returned is continuing to engage in other conduct found criminal by the jury which tried the second indictment.
It may well be, as Justice Stevens suggests in his dissenting opinion, that the Florida indictment did not by its terms indicate that the Neah Bay importation would be used as evidence to support it, post, at 804-805, and therefore at the time the pretrial motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds was made the District Court in Florida could not have rendered an informed decision on petitioner’s motion. But there can be no doubt that by the time the evidence had all been presented in the Florida trial, and the jury was charged, only one reasonable conclusion could be drawn by the District Court: the Government’s evidence with respect to the CCE charge included acts which took place after March 1981, the date of the Washington indictment, and up to and including July 1981. Therefore, the continuing criminal enterprise charged by the Government had not been completed at the time the Washington indictment was returned, and under the Diaz rule evidence of the Neah Bay importation might be used to show one of the predicate offenses.
Having concluded that Congress intended CCE to be a separate offense and that it does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause under the facts of this case to prosecute the CCE offense after a prior conviction for one of the predicate offenses, the only remaining issue is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars cumulative punishments. Garrett’s sentence on the CCE conviction was consecutive to his sentence on the Washington conviction. In this connection, “the Double Jeopardy Clause does no more than prevent the sentencing court from prescribing greater punishment than the legislature intended.” Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U. S., at 366; Albernaz v. United States, 450 U. S., at 344. As discussed above, Congress intended to create a separate offense. The presumption when Congress creates two distinct offenses is that it intends to permit cumulative sentences, and legislative silence on this specific issue does not establish an ambiguity or rebut this presumption:
“[The defendants] read much into nothing. Congress cannot be expected to specifically address each issue of statutory construction which may arise. But, as we have previously noted, Congress is ‘predominantly a lawyer’s body,’... and it is appropriate for us ‘to assume that our elected representatives... know the law.’... As a result if anything is to be assumed from the congressional silence on this point, it is that Congress was aware of the Blockburger rule and legislated with it in mind. It is not a function of this Court to presume that ‘Congress was unaware of what it accomplished.’” Id., at 341-342.
Here, of course, Congress was not silent as to its intent to create separate offenses notwithstanding Blockburger, and we can assume it was aware that doing so would authorize cumulative punishments absent some indication of contrary intent.
Moreover, disallowing cumulative sentences would have the anomalous effect in many cases of converting the large fines provided by §848 into ceilings. Congress established the large fines in § 848 in an effort to deprive big-time drug dealers of some of their enormous profits, which often cannot be traced directly to their crimes for forfeiture purposes. The fines for a three-time offender who has been previously convicted of a drug felony could amount to $150,000 for the predicate offenses standing alone — an amount that exceeds the ceiling for a first-time CCE fine. Compare § 841(b)(1)(A) with § 848(a)(1). Congress was bent on depriving the big-time drug dealer of his profits; it is doubtful that Congress intended to force an election of a lower maximum fine in such a situation in order to attempt to obtain the life imprisonment penalty available under the CCE provision.
In Jeffers v. United States, 432 U. S., at 156-157, a plurality of this Court stated that § 848 “reflects a comprehensive penalty structure that leaves little opportunity for pyramiding of penalties from other sections of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.” The focus of the analysis in Jeffers was the permissibility of cumulative punishments for conspiracy under § 846 and for CCE under § 848, and the plurality reasonably concluded that the dangers posed by a conspiracy and a CCE were similar and thus there would be little purpose in cumulating the penalties. The same is not true of the substantive offenses created by the Act and conspiracy, and by the same logic, it is not true of the substantive offenses and CCE. We have been required in the present case, as we were not in Jeffers, to consider the relationship between substantive predicate offenses and a CCE. We think here logic supports the conclusion, also indicated by the legislative history, that Congress intended separate punishments for the underlying substantive predicates and for the CCE offense. Congress may, of course, so provide if it wishes.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Powell took no part in the decision of this case.
Ҥ 848. Continuing criminal enterprise
“(a) Penalties; forfeitures
“(1) Any person who engages in a continuing criminal enterprise shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment which may not be less than 10 years and which may be up to life imprisonment, to a fine of not more than $100,000, and to the forfeiture prescribed in paragraph (2); except that if any person engages in such activity after one or more prior convictions
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.
Pee Curiam.
The motions for leave to file bills of complaint in these cases are denied.
The complaints, which seek to invoke our original jurisdiction, filed by Pennsylvania against New Jersey, and by Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont against New Hampshire, rely on our decision last Term in Austin v. New Hampshire, 420 U. S. 656 (1975), in which we held the New Hampshire Commuters Income Tax unconstitutional.
In Austin, supra, the Court held that the New Hampshire tax violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. That law imposed a 4% tax on the New Hampshire-derived income of nonresidents. Although the law also imposed a tax on the income earned by New Hampshire residents outside the State, it then exempted such income from the tax if the income were either taxed or not taxed by the State from which it was derived. Since New Hampshire also did not tax the domestic income of its residents, the net effect of the Commuters Income Tax was to tax only the incomes of nonresidents working in New Hampshire.
The resident State of the plaintiff in Austin was Maine, and it provided a credit for income taxes paid to other States. Thus, New Hampshire’s beggar-thy-neighbor tax rendered the total state tax liability of nonresidents unchanged, but diverted to New Hampshire tax revenues from the treasury of Maine. We held New Hampshire’s taxing scheme unconstitutional since the tax “ [fell] exclusively on the income of nonresidents . . . and [was] not offset even approximately by other taxes imposed upon residents alone.” Id., at 665 (footnote deleted).
In No. 68, Original, Pennsylvania contends that the New Jersey Transportation Benefits Tax Act, N. J. Stat. Ann. §54:8A-58'ef seq. (Supp. 1976-1977), is infirm under the Privileges and Immunities Clause as interpreted in Austin, supra, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to the complaint filed by Pennsylvania, the New Jersey tax fatally resembles the tax we held unconstitutional in Austin. Like New Hampshire, New Jersey does not tax the domestic income of its residents. Under the Transportation Benefits Tax Act, however, New Jersey does tax the New Jersey-derived income of nonresidents. And while that Act imposes an equivalent tax on the income of New Jersey residents earned outside the State, it exempts such income to the extent it is taxed by the State in which it is earned. Finally, like Maine in the Austin case, Pennsylvania permits a tax credit to any of its residents for income taxes paid to other States, including, of course, New Jersey. Pennsylvania, suing on behalf of itself and as parens patriae on behalf of its citizens, seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and, apparently, an accounting, for the taxes that New Jersey’s allegedly unconstitutional tax has diverted from the Pennsylvania treasury.
The plaintiffs in No, 69, Original, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont, explicitly premise their suit on the decision in Austin, supra. They seek on behalf of themselves an accounting for the taxes, alleged to amount to over $13.5 million, that New Hampshire’s unconstitutional Commuters Income Tax diverted from their respective treasuries.
It has long been the rule that in order to engage this Court’s original jurisdiction, a plaintiff State must first demonstrate that the injury for which it seeks redress was directly caused by the actions of another State. As Mr. Chief Justice Hughes noted on behalf of the Court in Massachusetts v. Missouri, 308 U. S. 1, 15 (1939): “To constitute such a [justiciable] controversy, it must appear that the complaining State has suffered a wrong through the action of the other State, furnishing ground for judicial redress ....”
In Massachusetts v. Missouri, supra, Massachusetts sought a declaration that only it could impose an inheritance tax on the estate of a Massachusetts domiciliary who had died with most of his assets located in several revocable Missouri trusts. The assets located in Massachusetts were insufficient to pay that State’s inheritance taxes. Missouri also claimed the exclusive right to impose its tax on the Missouri trusts. In language that is particularly appropriate for our disposition of these cases, the Court denied leave to file the complaint:
“Missouri, in claiming a right to recover taxes from the . . . trustees, or in taking proceedings for collection, is not injuring Massachusetts. By the allegations, the property held in Missouri is amply sufficient to answer the claims of both States and recovery by either does not impair the exercise of any right the other may have. It is not shown that there is danger of the depletion of a fund or estate at the expense of the complainant’s interest. It is not shown that the tax claims of the two States are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the validity of each claim is wholly independent of that of the other . . . .” Ibid.
In neither of the suits at bar has the defendant State inflicted any injury upon the plaintiff States through the imposition of the taxes held, in No. 69, and alleged, in No. 68, to be unconstitutional. The injuries to the plaintiffs’ fiscs were self-inflicted, resulting from decisions by their respective state legislatures. Nothing required Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont to extend a tax credit to their residents for income taxes paid to New Hampshire, and nothing prevents Pennsylvania from withdrawing that credit for taxes paid to New Jersey. No State can be heard to complain about damage inflicted by its own hand.
Pennsylvania, in attempting to establish its entitlement to taxes collected by New Jersey from its residents, has alleged that the New Jersey Transportation Benefits Tax Act violates both the Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont claim that New Hampshire’s withholding of taxes collected under its unconstitutional commuters tax violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause. The short answer to these contentions is that both Clauses protect people, not States.
What has been said disposes of the claims brought by the plaintiff States on their own behalf. In addition, however, Pennsylvania has filed a claim against New Jersey as parens patriae on behalf of its citizens.
The Court has recognized the legitimacy of parens patriae suits. See Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co., 405 U. S. 251, 257-260 (1972); Louisiana v. Texas, 176 U. S. 1, 19 (1900). It has, however, become settled doctrine that a State has standing to sue only when its sovereign or quasi-sovereign interests are implicated and it is not merely litigating as a volunteer the personal claims of its citizens. Compare, e. g., Oklahoma ex rel. Johnson v. Cook, 304 U. S. 387 (1938); Oklahoma v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 220 U. S. 277 (1911); Kansas v. United States, 204 U. S. 331 (1907) (States may not invoke original jurisdiction of Supreme Court to prosecute purely personal claims of their citizens), with, e. g., North Dakota v. Minnesota, 263 U. S. 365 (1923); Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553 (1923); New York v. New Jersey, 256 U. S. 296 (1921); Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 206 U. S. 230 (1907); Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46 (1907) (original jurisdiction sustained for States protecting quasi-sovereign interests).
This rule is a salutary one. For if, by the simple expedient of bringing an action in the name of a State, this Court’s original jurisdiction could be invoked to resolve what are, after all, suits to redress private grievances, our docket would be inundated. And, more important, the critical distinction, articulated in Art. Ill, § 2, of the Constitution, between suits brought by “Citizens” and those brought by “States” would evaporate.
Pennsylvania’s parens patriae suit against New Jersey represents nothing more than a collectivity of private suits against New Jersey for taxes withheld from private parties. No sovereign or quasi-sovereign interests of Pennsylvania are implicated. Accordingly, Pennsylvania’s motion for leave to file suit as parens patriae on behalf of its citizens is also denied.
Me. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice White dissent and would grant leave to file both bills of complaint.
Mr. Justice Powell and Mr. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a State from revoking an indigent defendant’s probation for failure to pay a fine and restitution. Its resolution involves a delicate balance between the acceptability, and indeed wisdom, of considering all relevant factors when determining an appropriate sentence for an individual and the impermissibility of imprisoning a defendant solely because of his lack of financial resources. We conclude that the trial court erred in automatically revoking probation because petitioner could not pay his fine, without determining that petitioner had not made sufficient bona fide efforts to pay or that adequate alternative forms of punishment did not exist. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Georgia Court of Appeals upholding the revocation of probation, and remand for a new sentencing determination.
I
In September 1980, petitioner was indicted for the felonies of burglary and theft by receiving stolen property. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced on October 8, 1980. Pursuant to the Georgia First Offender’s Act, Ga. Code Ann. § 27-2727 et seq. (current version at § 42-8-60 et seq. (Supp. 1982)), the trial court did not enter a judgment of guilt, but deferred further proceedings and sentenced petitioner to three years on probation for the burglary charge and a concurrent one year on probation for the theft charge. As a condition of probation, the trial court ordered petitioner to pay a $500 fine and $250 in restitution. Petitioner was to pay $100 that day, $100 the next day, and the $550 balance within four months.
Petitioner borrowed money from his parents and paid the first $200. About a month later, however, petitioner was laid off from his job. Petitioner, who has only a ninth-grade education and cannot read, tried repeatedly to find other work but was unable to do so. The record indicates that petitioner had no income or assets during this period.
Shortly before the balance of the fine and restitution came due in February 1981, petitioner notified the probation office he was going to be late with his payment because he could not find a job. In May 1981, the State filed a petition in the trial court to revoke petitioner’s probation because he had not paid the balance. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court revoked probation for failure to pay the balance of the fine and restitution, entered a conviction, and sentenced petitioner to serve the remaining portion of the probationary period in prison. The Georgia Court of Appeals, relying on earlier Georgia Supreme Court cases, rejected petitioner’s claim that imprisoning him for inability to pay the fine violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Georgia Supreme Court denied review. Since other courts have held that revoking the probation of indigents for failure to pay fines does violate the Equal Protection Clause, we granted certiorari to resolve this important issue in the administration of criminal justice. 458 U. S. 1105 (1982).
II
This Court has long been sensitive to the treatment of indigents in our criminal justice system. Over a quarter-century ago, Justice Black declared that “[t]here can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, 19 (1956) (plurality opinion). Griffin’s principle of “equal justice,” which the Court applied there to strike down a state practice of granting appellate review only to persons able to afford a trial transcript, has been applied in numerous other contexts. See, e. g., Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353 (1963) (indigent entitled to counsel on first direct appeal); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U. S. 40 (1967) (indigent entitled to free transcript of preliminary hearing for use at trial); Mayer v. Chicago, 404 U. S. 189 (1971) (indigent cannot be denied an adequate record to appeal a conviction under a fine-only statute). Most relevant to the issue here is the holding in Williams v. Illinois, 399 U. S. 235 (1970), that a State cannot subject a certain class of convicted defendants to a period of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum solely because they are too poor to pay the fine. Williams was followed and extended in Tate v. Short, 401 U. S. 395 (1971), which held that a State cannot convert a fine imposed under a fine-only statute into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot immediately pay the fine in full. But the Court has also recognized limits on the principle of protecting indigents in the criminal justice system. For example, in Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600 (1974), we held that indigents had no constitutional right to appointed counsel for a discretionary appeal. In United States v. MacCollum, 426 U. S. 317 (1976) (plurality opinion), we rejected an equal protection challenge to a federal statute which permits a district court to provide an indigent with a free trial transcript only if the court certifies that the challenge to his conviction is not frivolous and the transcript is necessary to prepare his petition.
Due process and equal protection principles converge in the Court’s analysis in these cases. See Griffin v. Illinois, supra, at 17. Most decisions in this area have rested on an equal protection framework, although Justice Harlan in particular has insisted that a due process approach more accurately captures the competing concerns. See, e. g., Griffin v. Illinois, supra, at 29-39 (Harlan, J., dissenting); Williams v. Illinois, supra, at 259-266 (Harlan, J., concurring). As we recognized in Ross v. Moffitt, supra, at 608-609, we generally analyze the fairness of relations between the criminal defendant and the State under the Due Process Clause, while we approach the question whether the State has invidiously denied one class of defendants a substantial benefit available to another class of defendants under the Equal Protection Clause.
The question presented here is whether a sentencing court can revoke a defendant’s probation for failure to pay the imposed fine and restitution, absent evidence and findings that the defendant was somehow responsible for the failure or that alternative forms of punishment were inadequate. The parties, following the framework of Williams and Tate, have argued the question primarily in terms of equal protection, and debate vigorously whether strict scrutiny or rational basis is the appropriate standard of review. There is no doubt that the State has treated the petitioner differently from a person who did not fail to pay the imposed fine and therefore did not violate probation. To determine whether this differential treatment violates the Equal Protection Clause, one must determine whether, and under what circumstances, a defendant’s indigent status may be considered in the decision whether to revoke probation. This is substantially similar to asking directly the due process question of whether and when it is fundamentally unfair or arbitrary for the State to revoke probation when an indigent is unable to pay the fine. Whether analyzed in terms of equal protection or due process, the issue cannot be resolved by resort to easy slogans or pigeonhole analysis, but rather requires a careful inquiry into such factors as “the nature of the individual interest affected, the extent to which it is affected, the rationality of the connection between legislative means and purpose, [and] the existence of alternative means for effectuating the purpose . . . Williams v. Illinois, supra, at 260 (Harlan, J., concurring).
In analyzing this issue, of course, we do not write on a clean slate, for both Williams and Tate analyzed similar situations. The reach and limits of their holdings are vital to a proper resolution of the issue here. In Williams, a defendant was sentenced to the maximum prison term and fine authorized under the statute. Because of his indigency he could not pay the fine. Pursuant to another statute equating a $5 fine with a day in jail, the defendant was kept in jail for 101 days beyond the maximum prison sentence to “work out” the fine. The Court struck down the practice, holding that “[o]nce the State has defined the outer limits of incarceration necessary to satisfy its penological interests and policies, it may not then subject a certain class of convicted defendants to a period of imprisonment beyond the statutory maximum solely by reason of their indigency.” 399 U. S., at 241-242. In Tate v. Short, 401 U. S. 395 (1971), we faced a similar situation, except that the statutory penalty there permitted only a fine. Quoting from a concurring opinion in Morris v. Schoonfield, 399 U. S. 508, 509 (1970), we reasoned that “ ‘the same constitutional defect condemned in Williams also inheres in jailing an indigent for failing to make immediate payment of any fine, whether or not the fine is accompanied by a jail term and whether or not the jail term of the indigent extends beyond the maximum term that may be imposed on a person willing and able to pay a fine.’” 401 U. S., at 398.
The rule of Williams and Tate, then, is that the State cannot ‘“impos[e] a fine as a sentence and then automatically conver[t] it into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full.’” Tate, supra, at 398. In other words, if the State determines a fine or restitution to be the appropriate and adequate penalty for the crime, it may not thereafter imprison a person solely because he lacked the resources to pay it. Both Williams and Tate carefully distinguished this substantive limitation on the imprisonment of indigents from the situation where a defendant was at fault in failing to pay the fine. As the Court made clear in Williams, “nothing in our decision today precludes imprisonment for willful refusal to pay a fine or court costs.” 399 U. S., at 242, n. 19. Likewise in Tate, the Court “emphasize[d] that our holding today does not suggest any constitutional infirmity in imprisonment of a defendant with the means to pay a fine who refuses or neglects to do so.” 401 U. S., at 400.
This distinction, based on the reasons for nonpayment, is of critical importance here. If the probationer has willfully refused to pay the fine or restitution when he has the means to pay, the State is perfectly justified in using imprisonment as a sanction to enforce collection. See ALI, Model Penal Code §302.2(1) (Prop. Off. Draft 1962). Similarly, a probationer’s failure to make sufficient bona fide efforts to seek employment or borrow money in order to pay the fine or restitution may reflect an insufficient concern for paying the debt he owes to society for his crime. In such a situation, the State is likewise justified in revoking probation and using imprisonment as an appropriate penalty for the offense. But if the probationer has made all reasonable efforts to pay the fine or restitution, and yet cannot do so through no fault of his own, it is fundamentally unfair to revoke probation automatically without considering whether adequate alternative methods of punishing the defendant are available. This lack of fault provides a “substantial reaso[n] which justified] or mitigate[s] the violation and make[s] revocation inappropriate.” Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 790 (1973). Cf. Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374, 400 (1978) (Powell, J., concurring) (distinguishing, under both due process and equal protection analyses, persons who shirk their moral and legal obligation to pay child support from those wholly unable to pay).
The State, of course, has a fundamental interest in appropriately punishing persons — rich and poor — who violate its criminal laws. A defendant’s poverty in no way immunizes him from punishment. Thus, when determining initially whether the State’s penological interests require imposition of a term of imprisonment, the sentencing court can consider the entire background of the defendant, including his employment history and financial resources. See Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241, 250, and n. 15 (1949). As we said in Williams v. Illinois, “[a]fter having taken into consideration the wide range of factors underlying the exercise of his sentencing function, nothing we now hold precludes a judge from imposing on an indigent, as on any defendant, the maximum penalty prescribed by law.” 399 U. S., at 243.
The decision to place the defendant on probation, however, reflects a determination by the sentencing court that the State’s penological interests do not require imprisonment. See Williams v. Illinois, supra, at 264 (Harlan, J., concurring); Wood v. Georgia, 450 U. S. 261, 286-287 (1981) (White, J., dissenting). A probationer’s failure to make reasonable efforts to repay his debt to society may indicate that this original determination needs reevaluation, and imprisonment may now be required to satisfy the State’s interests. But a probationer who has made sufficient bona fide efforts to pay his fine and restitution, and who has complied with the other conditions of probation, has demonstrated a willingness to pay his debt to society and an ability to conform his conduct to social norms. The State nevertheless asserts three reasons why imprisonment is required to further its penal goals.
First, the State argues that revoking probation furthers its interest in ensuring that restitution be paid to the victims of crime. A rule that imprisonment may befall the probationer who fails to make sufficient bona fide efforts to pay restitution may indeed spur probationers to try hard to pay, thereby increasing the number of probationers who make restitution. Such a goal is fully served, however, by revoking probation only for persons who have not made sufficient bona fide efforts to pay. Revoking the probation of someone who through no fault of his own is unable to make restitution will not make restitution suddenly forthcoming. Indeed, such a policy may have the perverse effect of inducing the probationer to use illegal means to acquire funds to pay in order to avoid revocation.
Second, the State asserts that its interest in rehabilitating the probationer and protecting society requires it to remove him from the temptation of committing other crimes. This is no more than a naked assertion that a probationer’s poverty by itself indicates he may commit crimes in the future and thus that society needs for him to be incapacitated. We have already indicated that a sentencing court can consider a defendant’s employment history and financial resources in setting an initial punishment. Such considerations are a necessary part of evaluating the entire background of the defendant in order to tailor an appropriate sentence for the defendant and crime. But it must be remembered that the State is seeking here to use as the sole justification for imprisonment the poverty of a probationer who, by assumption, has demonstrated sufficient bona fide efforts to find a job and pay the fine and whom the State initially thought it unnecessary to imprison. Given the significant interest of the individual in remaining on probation, see Gagnon v. Scarpelli, supra; Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471 (1972), the State cannot justify incarcerating a probationer who has demonstrated sufficient bona fide efforts to repay his debt to society, solely by lumping him together with other poor persons and thereby classifying him as dangerous. This would be little more than punishing a person for his poverty.
Third, and most plausibly, the State argues that its interests in punishing the lawbreaker and deterring others from criminal behavior require it to revoke probation for failure to pay a fine or restitution. The State clearly has an interest in punishment and deterrence, but this interest can often be served fully by alternative means. As we said in Williams, 399 U. S., at 244, and reiterated in Tate, 401 U. S., at 399, “[t]he State is not powerless to enforce judgments against those financially unable to pay a fine.” For example, the sentencing court could extend the time for making payments, or reduce the fine, or direct that the probationer perform some form of labor or public service in lieu of the fine. Justice Harlan appropriately observed in his concurring opinion in Williams that “the deterrent effect of a fine is apt to derive more from its pinch on the purse than the time of payment.” 399 U. S., at 265. Indeed, given the general flexibility of tailoring fines to the resources of a defendant, or even permitting the defendant to do specified work to satisfy the fine, see Williams, supra, at 244, n. 21, a sentencing court can often establish a reduced fine or alternative public service in lieu of a fine that adequately serves the State’s goals of punishment and deterrence, given the defendant’s diminished financial resources. Only if the sentencing court determines that alternatives to imprisonment are not adequate in a particular situation to meet the State’s interest in punishment and deterrence may the State imprison a probationer who has made sufficient bona fide efforts to pay.
We hold, therefore, that in revocation proceedings for failure to pay a fine or restitution, a sentencing court must inquire into the reasons for the failure to pay. If the probationer willfully refused to pay or failed to make sufficient bona fide efforts legally to acquire the resources to pay, the court may revoke probation and sentence the defendant to imprisonment within the authorized range of its sentencing authority. If the probationer could not pay despite sufficient bona fide efforts to acquire the resources to do so, the court must consider alternative measures of punishment other than imprisonment. Only if alternative measures are not adequate to meet the State’s interests in punishment and deterrence may the court imprison a probationer who has made sufficient bona fide efforts to pay. To do otherwise would deprive the probationer of his conditional freedom simply because, through no fault of his own, he cannot pay the fine. Such a deprivation would be contrary to the fundamental fairness required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
HH f — I H-H
We return to the facts of this case. At the probation revocation hearing, the petitioner and his wife testified about their lack of income and assets and of his repeated efforts to obtain work. While the sentencing court commented on the availability of odd jobs such as lawnmowing, it made no finding that the petitioner had not made sufficient bona fide efforts to find work, and the record as it presently stands would not justify such a finding. This lack of findings is understandable, of course, for under the rulings of the Georgia Supreme Court such an inquiry would have been irrelevant to the constitutionality of revoking probation. The State argues that the sentencing court determined that the petitioner was no longer a good probation risk. In the absence of a determination that the petitioner did not make sufficient bona fide efforts to pay or to obtain employment in order to pay, we cannot read the opinion of the sentencing court as reflecting such a finding. Instead, the court curtly rejected counsel’s suggestion that the time for making the payments be extended, saying that “the fallacy in that argument” is that the petitioner has long known he had to pay the $550 and yet did not comply with the court’s prior order to pay. App. 45. The sentencing judge declared that “I don’t know any way to enforce the prior orders of the Court but one way,” which was to sentence him to imprisonment. Ibid.
The focus of the court’s concern, then, was that the petitioner had disobeyed a prior court order to pay the fine, and for that reason must be imprisoned. But this is no more than imprisoning a person solely because he lacks funds to pay the fine, a practice we condemned in Williams and Tate. By sentencing petitioner to imprisonment simply because he could not pay the fine, without considering the reasons for the inability to pay or the propriety of reducing the fine or extending the time for payments or making alternative orders, the court automatically turned a fine into a prison sentence.
We do not suggest by our analysis of the present record that the State may not place the petitioner in prison. If, upon remand, the Georgia courts determine that petitioner did not make sufficient bona fide efforts to pay his fine, or determine that alternative punishment is not adequate to meet the State’s interests in punishment and deterrence, imprisonment would be a permissible sentence. Unless such determinations are made, however, fundamental fairness requires that the petitioner remain on probation.
>
The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The trial court ordered a payment of $200 restitution for the theft by receiving charge; and ordered payment of $50 in restitution and $500 fine for the burglary charge.
The other conditions of probation prohibited petitioner from leaving the jurisdiction of the court without permission, from drinking alcoholic beverages, using or possessing narcotics, or visiting places where alcoholic beverages or narcotics are sold, from keeping company with persons of bad reputation, and from violating any penal law; and required him to avoid places of disreputable character, to work faithfully at suitable employment insofar as possible, and to report to the probation officer as directed and to permit the probation officer to visit him.
The State’s petition alleged two grounds for revoking probation: petitioner’s failure to pay the fine and restitution, and an alleged burglary he committed on May 10,1981. The State abandoned the latter ground at the hearing to revoke probation, and counsel has informed us that petitioner was later acquitted of the charge. Brief for Petitioner 4, n. 1.
The trial court also found that petitioner violated the conditions of probation by failing to report to his probation officer as directed. Since the trial court was unauthorized under state law to revoke probation on a ground not stated in the petition, Radcliff v. State, 134 Ga. App. 244, 214 S. E. 2d 179 (1975), the Court of Appeals upheld the revocation solely on the basis of petitioner’s failure to pay the fine and restitution.
The trial court first sentenced petitioner to five years in prison, with a concurrent 3-year sentence for the theft conviction. Since the record of the initial sentencing hearing failed to reveal that petitioner had been warned that a violation of probation could result in a longer prison term than the original probationary period, as required by Stephens v. State, 245 Ga. 835, 268 S. E. 2d 330 (1980), the court reduced the prison term to the remainder of the probationary period.
Hunter v. Dean, 240 Ga. 214, 239 S. E. 2d 791 (1977), cert. dism’d, 439 U. S. 281 (1978); Calhoun v. Couch, 232 Ga. 467, 207 S. E. 2d 455 (1974).
See, e. g., Frazier v. Jordan, 457 F. 2d 726 (CA5 1972); In re Antazo, 3 Cal. 3d 100, 473 P. 2d 999 (1970); State v. Tackett, 52 Haw. 601, 483 P. 2d 191 (1971); State v. De Bonis, 58 N. J. 182, 276 A. 2d 137 (1971); State ex rel. Pedersen v. Blessinger, 56 Wis. 2d 286, 201 N. W. 2d 778 (1972).
We have, previously applied considerations of procedural and substantive fairness to probation and parole revocation proceedings. In Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471 (1972), where we established certain procedural requirements for parole revocation hearings, we recognized that society has an “interest in treating the parolee with basic fairness.” Id., at 484. We addressed the issue of fundamental fairness more directly in Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778 (1973), where we held that in certain cases “fundamental fairness — the touchstone of due process — will require that the State provide at its expense counsel for indigent probationers or parolees.” Id., at 790. Fundamental fairness, we determined, presumptively requires counsel when the probationer claims that “there are substantial reasons which justified or mitigated the violation and make revocation inappropriate.” Ibid. In Douglas v. Buder, 412 U. S. 430 (1973), we found a substantive violation of due process when a state court had revoked probation with no evidence that the probationer had violated probation. Today we address whether a court can revoke probation for failure to pay a fine and restitution when there is no evidence that the petitioner was at fault in his failure to pay or that alternative means of punishment were inadequate.
A due process approach has the advantage in this context of directly confronting the intertwined question of the role that a defendant’s financial background can play in determining an appropriate sentence. When the court is initially considering what sentence to impose, a defendant’s level of financial resources is a point on a spectrum rather than a classification. Since indigency in this context is a relative term rather than a classification, fitting “the problem of this ease into an equal protection framework is a task too Procrustean to be rationally accomplished,” North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 723 (1969). The more appropriate question is whether consideration of a defendant’s financial background in setting or resetting a sentence is so arbitrary or unfair as to be a denial of due process.
We do not suggest that, in other contexts, the probationer’s lack of fault in violating a term of probation would necessarily prevent a court from revoking probation. For instance, it may indeed be reckless for a court to permit a person convicted of driving while intoxicated to remain on probation once it becomes evident that efforts at controlling his chronic drunken driving have failed. Cf. Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514 (1968); Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962). Ultimately, it must be remembered that the sentence was not imposed for a circumstance beyond the probationer’s control “but because he had committed a crime.” Williams, 399 U. S., at 242. In contrast to a condition like chronic drunken driving, however, the condition at issue here — indigency—is itself no threat to the safety or welfare of society.
Numerous decisions by state and federal courts have recognized that basic fairness forbids the revocation of probation when the probationer is without fault in his failure to pay the fine. For example, in United States v. Boswell, 605 F. 2d 171 (CA5 1979), the court distinguished between revoking probation where the defendant did not have the resources to pay restitution and had no way to acquire them — a revocation the court found improper — from revoking probation where the defendant had the resources to pay or had negligently or deliberately allowed them to be dissipated in a manner that resulted in his inability to pay — an entirely legitimate action by the trial court. Accord, United States v. Wilson, 469 F. 2d 368 (CA2 1972); United States v. Taylor, 321 F. 2d 339 (CA4 1963); In re Antazo, 3 Cal. 3d, at 115-117, 473 P. 2d, at 1007-1009; State v. Huggett, 55 Haw. 632, 525 P. 2d 1119 (1974); Huggett v. State, 83 Wis. 2d 790, 800-802, 266 N. W. 2d 403, 408 (1978). Commentators have similarly distinguished between the permissibility of revoking probation for contumacious failure to pay a fine, and the impermissibility of revoking probation when the probationer made good-faith efforts to pay. See, e. g., ABA Standards for Criminal Justice 18-7.4 and Commentary (2d ed. 1980) (“incarceration should be employed only after the court has examined the reasons for nonpayment”); ALI, Model Penal Code § 302.2 (Prop. Off. Draft 1962) (distinguishing “contumacious” failure to pay fine from “good faith effort” to obtain funds); National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Corrections § 5.5 (1973); National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Model Sentencing and Corrections Act §§ 3-403, 3-404 (1978). See also Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 17-A, § 1304 (Supp. 1982); Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, ¶ 1005-6-4(d) (1981).
The State emphasizes several empirical studies suggesting a correlation between poverty and crime. E. g., Green, Race, Social Status, and Criminal Arrest, 35 Am. Sociological Rev. 476 (1970); M. Wolfgang, R. Figlio, & T. Sellin, Delinquency in a Birth Cohort (1972).
As our holding makes clear, we agree with Justice White that poverty does not insulate a criminal defendant from punishment or necessarily prevent revocation of his probation for inability to pay a fine. We reject as impractical, however, the approach suggested by Justice White. He would require a “good-faith effort” by the sentencing court to impose a term of imprisonment that is “roughly equivalent” to the fine and restitution that the defendant failed to pay. Post, at 675. Even putting to one side'the question of judicial “good faith,” we perceive no meaningful standard by which a sentencing or reviewing court could assess whether a given prison sentence has an equivalent sting to the original fine. Under our holding the sentencing court must focus on criteria typically considered daily by sentencing courts throughout the land in probation revocation hearings: whether the defendant has demonstrated sufficient efforts to comply with the terms of probation and whether nonimprisonment alternatives are adequate to satisfy the State’s interests in punishment and deterrence. Nor is our requirement that the sentencing court consider alternative forms of punishment a “novel” requirement. In both Williams and Tate, the Court emphasized the availability of alternative forms of punishment in holding that indigents could not be subjected automatically to imprisonment.
See cases cited in 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: | 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.
In this case we must determine the most appropriate state statute of limitations to apply to claims enforceable under § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which is codified in its present form as 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
On January 28, 1982, respondent brought this § 1983 action in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico seeking “money damages to compensate him for the deprivation of his civil rights guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and for the personal injuries he suffered which were caused by the acts and omissions of the [petitioners] acting under color of law.” App. 4. The complaint alleged that on April 27, 1979, petitioner Wilson, a New Mexico State Police officer, unlawfully arrested the respondent, “brutally and viciously” beat him, and sprayed his face with tear gas; that petitioner Vigil, the Chief of the New Mexico State Police, had notice of Officer Wilson’s allegedly “violent propensities,” and had failed to reprimand him for committing other unprovoked attacks on citizens; and that Vigil’s training and supervision of Wilson was seriously deficient. Id., at 6-7.
The respondent’s complaint was filed two years and nine months after the claim purportedly arose. Petitioners moved to dismiss on the ground that the action was barred by the 2-year statute of limitations contained in § 41-4~15(A) of the New Mexico Tort Claims Act. The petitioners’.motion was supported by a decision of the New Mexico Supreme Court which squarely held that the Tort Claims Act provides “the most closely analogous state cause of action” to §1983, and that its 2-year statute of limitations is therefore applicable to actions commenced under § 1983 in the state courts. DeVargas v. New Mexico, 97 N. M. 563, 642 P. 2d 166 (1982). In addition to the 2-year statute of limitations in the Tort Claims Act, two other New Mexico statutes conceivably could apply to § 1983 claims: § 37-1-8, which provides a 3-year limitation period for actions “for an injury to the person or reputation of any person”; and § 37-1-4, which provides a 4-year limitation period for “all other actions not herein otherwise provided for.” If either of these longer statutes applies to the respondent’s § 1983 claim, the complaint was timely filed.
In ruling on the petitioners’ motion to dismiss, the District Court concluded that the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision in DeVargas was not controlling because “the characterization of the nature of the right being vindicated under § 1983 is a matter of federal, rather than state, law.” After reviewing various approaches to the question, the District Court concluded that “§ 1983 actions are best characterized as actions based on statute.” Because there is no specific New Mexico statute of limitations governing such claims, the District Court held that § 37-1-4, the residual 4-year statute, applied to § 1983 actions brought in New Mexico. The court denied the petitioners’ motion to dismiss and certified an interlocutory appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1292(b).
The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit accepted the appeal. App. 2. After argument before a three-judge panel, the case was set for reargument before the entire court. In a unanimous en banc opinion, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s order denying the motion to dismiss the complaint. 731 F. 2d 640 (1984).
The Court of Appeals’ reasoning was slightly different from the District Court’s. It agreed that the characterization of a § 1983 claim is a matter of federal law, and that the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision in DeVargas was therefore not conclusive on the question. 731 F. 2d, at 643, 651, n. 5. The opinion reviewed the varying approaches of the United States Courts of Appeals, and concluded that even though § 1983 actions encompass a wide variety of fact situations and legal theories, “[a]ll of the federal values at issue in selecting a limitations period for section 1983 claims are best served by articulating one uniform characterization describing the essential nature underlying all such claims.” Id., at 650. Distilling the essence of the § 1983 cause of action, the court held that every claim enforceable under the.statute is, in reality, “an action for injury to personal rights,” and that “[hjenceforth, all § 1983 claims in [the] circuit will be uniformly so characterized for statute of limitations purposes.” Id., at 651. Accordingly, the appropriate statute of limitations for § 1983 actions brought in New Mexico was the 3-year statute applicable to personal injury actions. It followed that the respondent had filed his complaint in time.
The Court of Appeals acknowledged that its holding is at odds with the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision in DeVargas. It also commented on the extensive conflict in the Federal Courts of Appeals: “the courts vary widely in the methods by which they characterize a section 1983 action, and in the criteria by which they evaluate the applicability of a particular state statute of limitations to a particular claim. The actual process used to select an appropriate state statute varies from circuit to circuit and sometimes from panel to panel.” 731 F. 2d, at 643. “Few areas of the law stand in greater need of firmly defined, easily applied rules than does the subject of periods of limitations.” Chardon v. Fumero Soto, 462 U. S. 650, 667 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). Thus, the conflict, confusion, and uncertainty concerning the appropriate statute of limitations to apply to this most important, and ubiquitous, civil rights statute provided compelling reasons for granting certiorari. 469 U. S. 815 (1984). We find the reasoning in the Court of Appeals’ opinion persuasive, and affirm.
I
The Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts do not contain a specific statute of limitations governing § 1983 actions — “a void which is commonplace in federal statutory law.” Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U. S. 478, 483 (1980). When Congress has not established a time limitation for a federal cause of action, the settled practice has been to adopt a local time limitation as federal law if it is not inconsistent with federal law or policy to do so. In 42 U. S. C. §1988, Congress has implicitly endorsed this approach with respect to claims enforceable under the Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts.
The language of § 1988, directs the courts to follow “a three-step process” in determining the rules of decision applicable to civil rights claims:
“First, courts are to look to the laws of the United States ‘so far as such laws are suitable to carry [the civil and criminal civil rights statutes] into effect.’ [42 U. S. C. § 1988.] If no suitable federal rule exists, courts undertake the second step by considering application of state ‘common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes’ of the forum state. Ibid. A third step asserts the predominance of the federal interest: courts are to apply state law only if it is not ‘inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.’ Ibid.” Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U. S. 42, 47-48 (1984).
This case principally involves the second step in the process: the selection of “the most appropriate,” or “the most analogous” state statute of limitations to apply to this § 1983 claim.
In order to determine the most “most appropriate” or “most analogous” New Mexico statute to apply to the respondent’s claim, we must answer three questions. We must first consider whether state law or federal law governs the characterization of a § 1983 claim for statute of limitations purposes. If federal law applies, we must next decide whether all § 1983 claims should be characterized in the same way, or whether they should be evaluated differently depending upon the varying factual circumstances and legal theories presented in each individual case. Finally, we must characterize the essence of the claim in the pending case, and decide which state statute provides the most appropriate limiting principle. Although the text of neither §1983 nor § 1988 provides a pellucid answer to any of these questions, all three parts of the inquiry are, in final analysis, questions of statutory construction.
II
Our identification of the correct source of law properly begins with the text of §1988. Congress’ first instruction in the statute is that the law to be applied in adjudicating civil rights claims shall be in “conformity with the laws of the United States, so far as such laws are suitable.” This mandate implies that resort to state law — the second step in the process — should not be undertaken before principles of federal law are exhausted. The characterization of § 1983 for statute of limitations purposes is derived from the elements of the cause of action, and Congress’ purpose in providing it. These, of course, are matters of federal law. Since federal law is available to decide the question, the language of § 1988 directs that the matter of characterization should be treated as a federal question. Only the length of the limitations period, and closely related questions of tolling and application, are to be governed by state law.
This interpretation is also supported by Congress’ third instruction in § 1988: state law shall only apply “so far as the same is not inconsistent with” federal law. This requirement emphasizes “the predominance of the federal interest” in the borrowing process, taken as a whole. Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U. S., at 48. Even when principles of state law are borrowed to assist in the enforcement of this federal remedy, the state rule is adopted as “a federal rule responsive to the need whenever a federal right is impaired.” Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 396 U. S. 229, 240 (1969). The importation of the policies and purposes of the States on matters of civil rights is not the primary office of the borrowing provision in § 1988; rather, the statute is designed to assure that neutral rules of decision will be available to enforce the civil rights actions, among them § 1983. Congress surely did not intend to assign to state courts and legislatures a conclusive role in the formative function of defining and characterizing the essential elements of a federal cause of action.
In borrowing statutes of limitations for other federal claims, this Court has generally recognized that the problem of characterization “is ultimately a question of federal law.” Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U. S. 696, 706 (1966) (§ 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U. S. C. §185). In DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S. 151 (1983), for example, we recently declined to apply a state statute of limitations when we were convinced that a federal statute of limitations for another cause of action better reflected the balance that Congress would have preferred between the substantive policies underlying the federal claim and the policies of repose. So here, the federal interest in uniformity and the interest in having “firmly defined, easily applied rules,” see Chardon, 462 U. S., at 667 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting), support the conclusion that Congress intended the characterization of §1983 to be measured by federal rather than state standards. The Court of Appeals was therefore correct in concluding that it was not bound by the New Mexico Supreme Court’s holding in DeVargas.
1 — I I — I t — (
A federal cause of action “brought at any distance of time” would be “utterly repugnant to the genius of our laws.” Adams v. Woods, 2 Cranch 336, 342 (1805). Just determinations of fact cannot be made when, because of the passage of time, the memories of witnesses have faded or evidence is lost. In compelling circumstances, even wrongdoers are entitled to assume that their sins may be forgotten.
The borrowing of statutes of limitations for § 1983 claims serves these policies of repose. Of course, the application of any statute of limitations would promote repose. By adopting the statute governing an analogous cause of action under state law, federal law incorporates the State’s judgment on the proper balance between the policies of repose and the substantive policies of enforcement embodied in the state cause of action. However, when the federal claim differs from the state cause of action in fundamental respects, the State’s choice of a specific period of limitation is, at best, only a rough approximation of “the point at which the interests in favor of protecting valid claims are outweighed by the interests in prohibiting the prosecution of stale ones.” Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454, 463-464 (1975).
Thus, in considering whether all § 1983 claims should be characterized in the same way for limitations purposes, it is useful to recall that § 1983 provides “a uniquely federal remedy against incursions under the claimed authority of state law upon rights secured by the Constitution and laws of the Nation.” Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 239 (1972). The high purposes of this unique remedy make it appropriate to accord the statute “a sweep as broad as its language.” Because the § 1983 remedy is one that can “override certain kinds of state laws,” Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 173 (1961), and is, in all events, “supplementary to any remedy any State might have,” McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S. 668, 672 (1963), it can have no precise counterpart in state law. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S., at 196, n. 5 (Harlan, J., concurring). Therefore, it is “the purest coincidence,” ibid., when state statutes or the common law provide for equivalent remedies; any analogies to those causes of action are bound to be imperfect.
In this light, practical considerations help to explain why a simple, broad characterization of all § 1983 claims best fits the statute’s remedial purpose. The experience of the courts that have predicated their choice of the correct statute of limitations on an analysis of the particular facts of each claim demonstrates that their approach inevitably breeds uncertainty and time-consuming litigation that is foreign to the central purposes of § 1983. Almost every § 1983 claim can be favorably analogized to more than one of the ancient common-law forms of action, each of which may be governed by a different statute of limitations. In the case before us, for example, the respondent alleges that he was injured by a New Mexico State Police officer who used excessive force to carry out an unlawful arrest. This § 1983 claim is arguably analogous to distinct state tort claims for false arrest, assault and battery, or personal injuries. Moreover, the claim could also be characterized as one arising under a statute, or as governed by the special New Mexico statute authorizing recovery against the State for the torts of its agents.
A catalog of other constitutional claims that have been alleged under § 1983 would encompass numerous and diverse topics and subtopics: discrimination in public employment on the basis of race or the exercise of First Amendment rights, discharge or demotion without procedural due process, mistreatment of schoolchildren, deliberate indifference to the medical needs of prison inmates, the seizure of chattels without advance notice or sufficient opportunity to be heard — to identify only a few. If the choice of the statute of limitations were to depend upon the particular facts or the precise legal theory of each claim, counsel could almost always argue, with considerable force, that two or more periods of limitations should apply to each §1983 claim. Moreover, under such an approach different statutes of limitations would be applied to the various § 1983 claims arising in the same State, and multiple periods of limitations would often apply to the same case. There is no reason to believe that Congress would have sanctioned this interpretation of its statute.
When § 1983 was enacted, it is unlikely that Congress actually foresaw the wide diversity of claims that the new remedy would ultimately embrace. The simplicity of the admonition in §1988 is consistent with the assumption that Congress intended the identification of the appropriate statute of limitations to be an uncomplicated task for judges, lawyers, and litigants, rather than a source of uncertainty, and unproduc tive and ever-increasing litigation. Moreover, the legislative purpose to create an effective remedy for the enforcement of federal civil rights is obstructed by uncertainty in the applicable statute of limitations, for scarce resources must be dissipated by useless litigation on collateral matters.
Although the need for national uniformity “has not been held to warrant the displacement of state statutes of limitations for civil rights actions,” Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U. S., at 489, uniformity within each State is entirely consistent with the borrowing principle contained in § 1988. We conclude that the statute is fairly construed as a directive to select, in each State, the one most appropriate statute of limitations for all §1983 claims. The federal interests in uniformity, certainty, and the minimization of unnecessary litigation all support the conclusion that Congress favored this simple approach.
IV
After exhaustively reviewing the different ways that § 1983 claims have been characterized in every Federal Circuit, the Court of Appeals concluded that the tort action for the recovery of damages for personal injuries is the best alternative available. 731 F. 2d, at 650-651. We agree that this choice is supported by the nature of the § 1983 remedy, and by the federal interest in ensuring that the borrowed period of limitations not discriminate against the federal civil rights remedy.
The specific historical catalyst for the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was the campaign of violence and deception in the South, fomented by the Ku Klux Klan, which was denying decent citizens their civil and political rights. See Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U. S. 325, 336-340 (1983). The debates on the Act chronicle the alarming insecurity of life, liberty, and property in the Southern States, and the refuge that local authorities extended to the authors of these outrageous incidents:
“While murder is stalking abroad in disguise, while whippings and lynchings and banishing have been visited upon unoffending American citizens, the local administrations have been found inadequate or unwilling to apply the proper corrective. Combinations, darker than the night that hides them, conspiracies, wicked as the worst of felons could devise, have gone unwhipped of justice. Immunity is given to crime, and the records of public tribunals are searched in vain for any evidence of effective redress.” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong, 1st Sess., 374 (1871) (remarks of Rep. Lowe).
By providing a remedy for the violation of constitutional rights, Congress hoped to restore peace and justice to the region through the subtle power of civil enforcement.
The atrocities that concerned Congress in 1871 plainly sounded in tort. Relying on this premise we have found tort analogies compelling in establishing the elements of a cause of action under §1983, Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S., at 187, and in identifying the immunities available to defendants, Briscoe v. LaHue, 460 U. S., at 330; City of Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247, 258 (1981); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 553-557 (1967). As we have noted, however, the § 1983 remedy encompasses a broad range of potential tort analogies, from injuries to property to infringements of individual liberty.
Among the potential analogies, Congress unquestionably would have considered the remedies established in the Civil Rights Act to be more analogous to tort claims for personal injury than, for example, to claims for damages to property or breach of contract. The unifying theme of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 is reflected in the language of the Fourteenth Amendment that unequivocally recognizes the equal status of every “person” subject to the jurisdiction of any of the several States. The Constitution’s commancty is that all “persons” shall be accorded the full privileges of Citizenship; no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or be denied the equal protection of the laws. A violation of that command is an injury to the individual rights of the person.
Relying on the language of the statute, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has succinctly explained why this analogy is persuasive:
“In essence, § 1983 creates a cause of action where there has been injury, under color of state law, to the person or to the constitutional or federal statutory rights which emanate from or are guaranteed to the person. In the broad sense, every cause of action under § 1983 which is well-founded results from ‘personal injuries.’ ” Almond v. Kent, 459 F. 2d 200, 204 (1972).
Had the 42d Congress expressly focused on the issue decided today, we believe it would have characterized § 1983 as conferring a general remedy for injuries to personal rights.
The relative scarcity of statutory claims when § 1983 was enacted makes it unlikely that Congress would have intended to apply the catchall periods of limitations for statutory claims that were later enacted by many States. Section 1983, of course, is a statute, but it only provides a remedy and does not itself create any substantive rights. Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U. S. 600, 617-618 (1979). Although a few § 1983 claims are based on statutory rights, Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U. S. 1, 4-8 (1980), most involve much more. The rights enforceable under § 1983 include those guaranteed by the Federal Government in the Fourteenth Amendment: that every person within the United States is entitled to equal protection of the laws and to those “fundamental principles of liberty and justice” that are contained in the Bill of Rights and “lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions.” These guarantees of liberty are among the rights possessed by every individual in a civilized society, and not privileges extended to the people by the legislature.
Finally, we are satisfied that Congress would not have characterized § 1983 as providing a cause of action analogous to state remedies for wrongs committed by public officials. It was the very ineffectiveness of state remedies that led Congress to enact the Civil Rights Acts in the first place. Congress therefore intended that the remedy provided in § 1983 be independently enforceable whether or not it duplicates a parallel state remedy. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S., at 173. The characterization of all § 1983 actions as involving claims for personal injuries minimizes the risk that the choice of a state statute of limitations would not fairly serve the federal interests vindicated by § 1983. General personal injury actions, sounding in tort, constitute a major part of the total volume of civil litigation in the state courts today, and probably did so in 1871 when § 1983 was enacted. It is most unlikely that the period of limitations applicable to such claims ever was, or ever would be, fixed in a way that would discriminate against federal claims, or be inconsistent with federal law in any respect.
y
In view of our holding that § 1983 claims are best characterized as personal injury actions, the Court of Appeals correctly applied the 3-year statute of limitations governing actions “for an injury to the person or reputation of any person.” N. M. Stat. Ann. §37-1-8 (1978). The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of the State to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress....” 17 Stat. 13.
That section provides:
“Actions against a governmental entity or a public employee for torts shall be forever barred, unless such action is commenced within two years after the date of occurrence resulting in loss, injury or death... N. M. Stat. Ann. § 41-4-15(A) (1978).
“Under New Mexico law, the most closely analogous state cause of action is provided for by the New Mexico Tort Claims Act under [§ 41-4-12], The statute of limitations applicable to a cause of action under Section 41-4-12 is set forth in [§ 41-4-15(A)]. Under Section 41-4-15, the action must be commenced within two years after the occurrence which results in the injury.” DeVargas v. New Mexico, 97 N. M. 563, 564, 642 P. 2d 166, 167 (1982).
N. M. Stat. Ann. § 37-1-8 (1978) (“Actions... for an injury to the person or reputation of any person [must be brought] within three years”).
N. M. Stat. Ann. § 37-1-4 (1978) (“all other actions not herein otherwise provided for and specified [must be brought] within four years”).
App. to Pet. for Cert. 42.
Id., at 43-44.
That section 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....”
731 F. 2d, at 643-648.
On the same day that it filed the en banc opinion in this case, the Court of Appeals issued en banc opinions adopting the appropriate statute of limitations for §1983 claims brought in Kansas, Utah, and Colorado. Hamilton v. City of Overland Park, 730 F. 2d 613 (CA10 1984) (applying 2-year Kansas statute governing actions for “injuries to the rights of another”), cert. pending, No. 83-2131; Mismash v. Murray City, 730 F. 2d 1366 (CA10 1984) (applying 4-year Utah statute for actions not limited by a specific statute of limitations), cert. pending, No. 83-2140; McKay v. Hammock, 730 F. 2d 1367 (CA10 1984) (applying 3-year Colorado statute governing “[a]ll other actions of every kind for which no other period of limitation is provided by law”). The court also held that its new approach to borrowing statutes of limitations in § 1983 actions would not be applied retroactively to bar “plaintiffs’ right to their day in court when their action was timely under the law in effect at the time their suit was commenced.” Jackson v. City of Bloomfield, 731 F. 2d 652, 655 (CA10 1984).
See O’Sullivan v. Felix, 233 U. S. 318 (1914).
See, e. g., Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160, 180-182 (1976); Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U. S. 696, 704 (1966); Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U. S. 390, 397-398 (1906); McClaine v. Rankin, 197 U. S. 154, 158 (1905); Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U. S. 610, 617 (1895).
Title 42 U. S. C. § 1988 provides, in relevant part:
“The jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters conferred on the district courts by the provisions of this Title, and of Title ‘CIVIL RIGHTS,’ and of Title ‘CRIMES,’ for the protection of all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and for their vindication, shall be exercised and enforced in conformity with the laws of the United States, so far as such laws are suitable to carry the same into effect; but in all cases where they are not adapted to the object, or are deficient in the provisions necessary to furnish suitable remedies and punish offenses against law, the common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State wherein the court having jurisdiction of such civil or ciminal cause is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States, shall be extended to and govern the said courts in the trial and disposition of the cause....”
Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S. 454, 462 (1975).
Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U. S. 478, 488 (1980).
See n. 13, supra.
“In virtually all statutes of limitations the chronological length of the limitation period is interrelated with provisions regarding tolling, revival, and questions of application.” Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U. S., at 464; see also Chardon v. Fumero Soto, 462 U. S. 650, 657 (1983); Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U. S., at 484.
Cf. Occidental Life Insurance Co. v. EEOC, 432 U. S. 355, 367 (1977) (“State legislatures do not devise their limitations periods with national interests in mind, and it is the duty of the federal courts to assure that the importation of state law will not frustrate or interfere with the implementation of national policies”).
The problem we address today often arose in treble-damages litigation under the antitrust laws before Congress enacted a federal statute of limitations. 69 Stat. 283, 15 U. S. C. § 15b. The question whether antitrust claims were more analogous to penal claims or to claims arising in tort, contract, or on a statute, was treated as a matter of federal law by the better reasoned authority. See, e. g., Moviecolor Limited v. Eastman Kodak Co., 288 F. 2d 80, 83 (CA2), cert. denied, 368 U. S. 821 (1961); Fulton v. Loew’s, Inc., 114 F. Supp. 676, 678-682 (Kan. 1953); Electric Theater Co. v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 113 F. Supp. 937, 941-942, (WD Mo. 1953); Wolf Sales Co. v. Rudolf Wurlitzer Co., 105 F. Supp. 506, 509 (Colo. 1952).
See also 383 U. S., at 709 (White, J., dissenting) (“[T]he cases also establish that the silence of Congress is not to be read as automatically putting an imprimatur on state law. Rather, state law is applied only because it supplements and fulfills federal policy, and the ultimate question is what federal policy requires”).
“Nevertheless, when a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking, we have not hesitated to turn away from state law.” DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S., at 171-172. Cf. Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U. S., at 488 (“[T]his Court has... ‘borrowed’ what it considered to be the most analogous state statute of limitations to bar tardily commenced proceedings”) (emphasis added).
The weight of federal authority is consistent with this view. See, e. g., 731 F. 2d, at 643, 651, n. 5 (opinion below); McNutt v. Duke Precision Dental & Orthodontic Laboratories, Inc., 698 F. 2d 676, 679 (CA4 1983) (§ 1981); Pauk v. Board of Trustees of the City University of N. Y., 654 F. 2d 856, 865-866, and n. 6 (CA2 1981) (§ 1983), cert. denied, 455 U. S. 1000 (1982); Clark v. Musick, 623 F. 2d 89, 91 (CA9 1980) (§ 1983); Williams v. Walsh, 558 F. 2d 667, 672 (CA2 1977) (§ 1983); Beard v. Stephens, 372 F. 2d 685, 688 (CA5 1967); but see Kosikowski v. Bourne, 659 F. 2d 105, 108 (CA9 1981) (§ 1983). To the extent that federal courts have, on occasion, deferred to a State’s characterization of § 1983 for statute of limitations purposes, they have done so as a matter of preference or comity — not obligation.
United States v. Price, 388 U. S. 787, 801 (1966); cf. Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U. S. 88, 97 (1971).
For this reason the adoption of one analogy rather than another will often be somewhat arbitrary; in such a case, the losing party may “infer that the choice of a limitations period in his case was result oriented, thereby undermining his belief that he has been dealt with fairly.” 731 F. 2d, at 650.
A comprehensive annotation in a publication that is popular with the practicing bar concludes that there is “uncertainty, confusion, and lack of uniformity in selecting the applicable statute of limitations in § 1983 suits.” Annot., 45 A. L. R. Fed. 548, 554 (1979). See also Biehler, Limiting the Right to Sue, 33 Drake L. Rev. 1 (1983); Comment, 1976 Ariz. State L. J. 97; Notes, 26 Wayne L. Rev. 61 (1979).
E. g., Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U. S. 42 (1984).
E. g., Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U. S. 532 (1985); Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341 (1976).
E. g., Ingraham v.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
Chief Justice Roberts
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III-C, an opinion with respect to Part IV, in which Justice Breyer and Justice Kagan join, and an opinion with respect to Parts III-A, III-B, and III-D.
Today we resolve constitutional challenges to two provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010: the individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase a health insurance policy providing a minimum level of coverage; and the Medicaid expansion, which gives funds to the States on the condition that they provide specified health care to all citizens whose income falls below a certain threshold. We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions.
In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people retain the remainder. Nearly two centuries ago, Chief Justice Marshall observed that “the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted” to the Federal Government “is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819). In this case we must again determine whether the Constitution grants Congress powers it now asserts, but which many States and individuals believe it does not possess. Resolving this controversy requires us to examine both the limits of the Government’s power, and our own limited role in policing those boundaries.
The Federal Government “is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers.” Ibid. That is, rather than granting general authority to perform all the conceivable functions of government, the Constitution lists, or enumerates, the Federal Government’s powers. Congress may, for example, “coin Money,” “establish Post Offices,” and “raise and support Armies.” Art. I, § 8, cls. 5, 7, 12. The enumeration of powers is also a limitation of powers, because “[t]he enumeration presupposes something not enumerated.” Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 195 (1824). The Constitution’s express conferral of some powers makes clear that it does not grant others. And the Federal Government “can exercise only the powers granted to it.” McCulloch, supra, at 405.
Today, the restrictions on government power foremost in many Americans’ minds are likely to be affirmative prohibitions, such as contained in the Bill of Rights. These affirmative prohibitions come into play, however, only where the Government possesses authority to act in the first place. If no enumerated power authorizes Congress to pass a certain law, that law may not be enacted, even if it would not violate any of the express prohibitions in the Bill of Rights or elsewhere in the Constitution.
Indeed, the Constitution did not initially include a Bill of Rights at least partly because the Framers felt the enumeration of powers sufficed to restrain the Government. As Alexander Hamilton put it, “the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A bill op rights.” The Federalist No. 84, p. 515 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). And when the Bill of Rights was ratified, it made express what the enumeration of powers necessarily implied: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution... are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” U. S. Const., Arndt. 10. The Federal Government has expanded dramatically over the past two centuries, but it still must show that a constitutional grant of power authorizes each of its actions. See, e. g., United States v. Comstock, 560 U. S. 126 (2010).
The same does not apply to the States, because the Constitution is not the source of their power. The Constitution may restrict state governments—as it does, for example, by forbidding them to deny any person the equal protection of the laws. But where such prohibitions do not apply, state governments do not need constitutional authorization to act. The States thus can and do perform many of the vital functions of modern government—punishing street crime, running public schools, and zoning property for development, to name but a few—even though the Constitution’s text does not authorize any government to do so. Our cases refer to this general power of governing, possessed by the States but not by the Federal Government, as the “police power.” See, e. g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 618-619 (2000).
“State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.” New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 181 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because the police power is controlled by 50 different States instead of one national sovereign, the facets of governing that touch on citizens’ daily lives are normally administered by smaller governments closer to the governed. The Framers thus ensured that powers which “in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people” were held by governments more local and more accountable than a distant federal bureaucracy. The Federalist No. 45, at 298 (J. Madison). The independent power of the States also serves as a check on the power of the Federal Government: “By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.” Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. 211, 222 (2011).
This case concerns two powers that the Constitution does grant the Federal Government, but which must be read carefully to avoid creating a general federal authority akin to the police power. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Our precedents read that to mean that Congress may regulate “the channels of interstate commerce,” “persons or things in interstate commerce,” and “those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Morrison, supra, at 609 (internal quotation marks omitted). The power over activities that substantially affect interstate commerce can be expansive. That power has been held to authorize federal regulation of such seemingly local matters as a farmer’s decision to grow wheat for himself and his livestock, and a loan shark’s extortionate collections from a neighborhood butcher shop. See Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942); Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146 (1971).
Congress may also “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. Put simply, Congress may tax and spend. This grant gives the Federal Government considerable influence even in areas where it cannot directly regulate. The Federal Government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid, or otherwise control. See, e. g., License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 462, 471 (1867). And in exercising its spending power, Congress may offer funds to the States, and may condition those offers on compliance with specified conditions. See, e.g., College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U. S. 666, 686 (1999). These offers may well induce the States to adopt policies that the Federal Government itself could not impose. See, e. g., South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U. S. 203, 205-206 (1987) (conditioning federal highway funds on States raising their drinking age to 21).
The reach of the Federal Government’s enumerated powers is broader still because the Constitution authorizes Congress to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 18. We have long read this provision to give Congress great latitude in exercising its powers: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” McCulloch, 4 Wheat., at 421.
Our permissive reading of these powers is explained in part by a general reticence to invalidate the acts of the Nation’s elected leaders. “Proper respect for a co-ordinate branch of the government” requires that we strike down an Act of Congress only if “the lack of constitutional authority to pass [the] act in question is clearly demonstrated.” United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, 635 (1883). Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
Our deference in matters of policy cannot, however, become abdication in matters of law. “The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176 (1803). Our respect for Congress’s policy judgments thus can never extend so far as to disavow restraints on federal power that the Constitution carefully constructed. “The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.” Chief Justice John Marshall, A Friend of the Constitution No. V, Alexandria Gazette, July 5, 1819, in John Marshall’s Defense of McCulloch v. Maryland 190-191 (G. Gunther ed. 1969). And there can be no question that it is the responsibility of this Court to enforce the limits on federal power by striking down acts of Congress that transgress those limits. Marbury v. Madison, supra, at 175-176.
The questions before us must be considered against the background of these basic principles.
HH
In 2010, Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 124 Stat. 119. The Act aims to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and decrease the cost of health care. The Act’s 10 titles stretch over 900 pages and contain hundreds of provisions. This case concerns constitutional challenges to two key provisions, commonly referred to as the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion.
The individual mandate requires most Americans to maintain “minimum essential” health insurance coverage. 26 U. S. C. § 5000A. The mandate does not apply to some individuals, such as prisoners and undocumented aliens. § 5000A(d). Many individuals will receive the required coverage through their employer, or from a government program such as Medicaid or Medicare. See §5000A(f). But for individuals who are not exempt and do not receive health insurance through a third party, the means of satisfying the requirement is to purchase insurance from a private company.
Beginning in 2014, those who do not comply with the mandate must make a “[s]hared responsibility payment” to the Federal Government. § 5000A(b)(1). That payment, which the Act describes as a “penalty,” is calculated as a percentage of household income, subject to a floor based on a specified dollar amount and a ceiling based on the average annual premium the individual would have to pay for qualifying private health insurance. §5000A(c). In 2016, for example, the penalty will be 2.5 percent of an individual’s household income, but no less than $695 and no more than the average yearly premium for insurance that covers 60 percent of the cost of 10 specified services (e. g., prescription drugs and hospitalization). Ibid.; 42 U. S. C. § 18022. The Act provides that the penalty will be paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner” as tax penalties, such as the penalty for claiming too large an income tax refund. 26 U. S. C. § 5000A(g)(1). The Act, however, bars the IRS from using several of its normal enforcement tools, such as criminal prosecutions and levies. § 5000A(g)(2). And some individuals who are subject to the mandate are nonetheless exempt from the penalty—for example, those with income below a certain threshold and members of Indian tribes. § 5000A(e).
On the day the President signed the Act into law, Florida and 12 other States filed a complaint in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Those plaintiffs—who are both respondents and petitioners here, depending on the issue—were subsequently joined by 18 more States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business. The plaintiffs alleged, among other things, that the individual mandate provisions of the Act exceeded Congress’s powers under Article I of the Constitution. The District Court agreed, holding that Congress lacked constitutional power to enact the individual mandate. 780 F. Supp. 2d 1256 (ND Fla. 2011). The District Court determined that the individual mandate could not be severed from the remainder of the Act, and therefore struck down the Act in its entirety. Id., at 1305-1306.
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court affirmed the District Court’s holding that the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s power. 648 F. 3d 1235 (2011). The panel unanimously agreed that the individual mandate did not impose a tax, and thus could not be authorized by Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. A majority also held that the individual mandate was not supported by Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce... among the several States.” Id., cl. 3. According to the majority, the Commerce Clause does not empower the Federal Government to order individuals to engage in commerce, and the Government’s efforts to cast the individual mandate in a different light were unpersuasive. Judge Marcus dissented, reasoning that the individual mandate regulates economic activity that has a clear effect on interstate commerce.
Having held the individual mandate to be unconstitutional, the majority examined whether that provision could be severed from the remainder of the Act. The majority determined that, contrary to the District Court’s view, it could. The court thus struck down only the individual mandate, leaving the Act’s other provisions intact. 648 F. 3d, at 1328.
Other Courts of Appeals have also heard challenges to the individual mandate. The Sixth Circuit and the D. C. Circuit upheld the mandate as a valid exercise of Congress’s commerce power. See Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, 651 F. 3d 529 (CA6 2011); Seven-Sky v. Holder, 661 F. 3d 1 (CADC 2011). The Fourth Circuit determined that the Anti-Injunction Act prevents courts from considering the merits of that question. See Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, 671 F. 3d 391 (2011). That statute bars suits “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” 26 U. S. C. § 7421(a). A majority of the Fourth Circuit panel reasoned that the individual mandate’s penalty is a tax within the meaning of the Anti-Injunction Act, because it is a financial assessment collected by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. The majority therefore determined that the plaintiffs could not challenge the individual mandate until after they paid the penalty.
The second provision of the Affordable Care Act directly challenged here is the Medicaid expansion. Enacted in 1965, Medicaid offers federal funding to States to assist pregnant women, children, needy families, the blind, the elderly, and the disabled in obtaining medical care. See 42 U. S. C. § 1396a(a)(10). In order to receive that funding, States must comply with federal criteria governing matters such as who receives care and what services are provided at what cost. By 1982 every State had chosen to participate in Medicaid. Federal funds received through the Medicaid program have become a substantial part of state budgets, now constituting over 10 percent of most States’ total revenue.
The Affordable Care Act expands the scope of the Medicaid program and increases the number of individuals the States must cover. For example, the Act requires state programs to provide Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, whereas many States now cover adults with children only if their income is considerably lower, and do not cover childless adults at all. See § 1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII). The Act increases federal funding to cover the States’ costs in expanding Medicaid coverage, although States will bear a portion of the costs on their own. § 1396d(y)(1). If a State does not comply with the Act’s new coverage requirements, it may lose not only the federal funding for those requirements, but all of its federal Medicaid funds. See § 1396c.
Along with their challenge to the individual mandate, the state plaintiffs in the Eleventh Circuit argued that the Medicaid expansion exceeds Congress’s constitutional powers. The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the Medicaid expansion is a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Spending Clause. U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. And the court rejected the States’ claim that the threatened loss of all federal Medicaid funding violates the Tenth Amendment by coercing them into complying with the Medicaid expansion. 648 F. 3d, at 1264, 1268.
We granted certiorari to review the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with respect to both the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. 565 U. S. 1033-1034 (2011). Because no party supports the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that the individual mandate can be completely severed from the remainder of the Affordable Care Act, we appointed an amicus curiae to defend that aspect of the judgment below. And because there is a reasonable argument that the Anti-Injunction Act deprives us of jurisdiction to hear challenges to the.individual mandate, but no party supports that proposition, we appointed an amicus curiae to advance it.
I—( )—I
Before turmng to the merits, we need to be sure we have the authority to do so. The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” 26 U. S. C. § 7421(a). This statute protects the Government’s ability to collect a consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation to enjoin or otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes. Because of the Anti-Injunction Act, taxes can ordinarily be challenged only after they are paid, by suing for a refund. See Enochs v. Williams Packing & Nav. Co., 370 U. S. 1, 7-8 (1962).
The penalty for not complying with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate first becomes enforceable in 2014. The present challenge to the mandate thus seeks to restrain the penalty’s future collection. Amicus contends that the Internal Revenue Code treats the penalty as a tax, and that the Anti-Injunction Act therefore bars this suit.
The text of the pertinent statutes suggests otherwise. The Anti-Injunction Act applies to suits “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” § 7421(a) (emphasis added). Congress, however, chose to describe the “[sjhared responsibility payment” imposed on those who forgo health insurance not as a “tax,” but as a “penalty.” §§5000A(b), (g)(2). There is no immediate reason to think that a statute applying to “any tax” would apply to a “penalty.”
Congress’s decision to label this exaction a “penalty” rather than a “tax” is significant because the Affordable Care Act describes many other exactions it creates as “taxes.” See Thomas More, 651 F. 3d, at 551. Where Congress uses certain language in one part of a statute and different language in another, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983).
Amicus argues that even though Congress did not label the shared responsibility payment a tax, we should treat it as such under the Anti-Injunction Act because it functions like a tax. It is true that Congress cannot change whether an exaction is a tax or a penalty for constitutional purposes simply by describing it as one or the other. Congress may not, for example, expand its power under the Taxing Clause, or escape the Double Jeopardy Clause’s constraint on criminal sanctions, by labeling a severe financial punishment a “tax.” See Child Labor Tax Case (Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.), 259 U. S. 20, 36-37 (1922); Department of Revenue of Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U. S. 767, 779 (1994).
The Anti-Injunction Act and the Affordable Care Act, however, are creatures of Congress’s own creation. How they relate to each other is up to Congress, and the best evidence of Congress’s intent is the statutory text. We have thus applied the Anti-Injunction Act to statutorily described “taxes” even where that label was inaccurate. See Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16 (1922) (Anti-Injunction Act applies to “Child Labor Tax” struck down as exceeding Congress’s taxing power in Drexel Furniture).
Congress can, of course, describe something as a penalty but direct that it nonetheless be treated as a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. For example, 26 U. S. C. § 6671(a) provides that “any reference in this title to ‘tax’ imposed by this title shall be deemed also to refer to the penalties and liabilities provided by” Subchapter 68B of the Internal Revenue Code. Penalties in Subchapter 68B are thus treated as taxes under Title 26, which includes the Anti-Injunction Act. The individual mandate, however, is not in Subchapter 68B of the Code. Nor does any other provision state that references to taxes in Title 26 shall also be “deemed” to apply to the individual mandate.
Amicus attempts to show that Congress did render the Anti-Injunction Act applicable to the individual mandate, albeit by a more circuitous route. Section 5000A(g)(l) specifies that the penalty for not complying with the mandate “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.” Assessable penalties in Subchapter 68B, in turn, “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes.” § 6671(a). According to amicus, by directing that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes,” §5000A(g)(l) made the Anti-Injunction Act applicable to this penalty.
The Government disagrees. It argues that §5000A(g)(1) does not direct courts to apply the Anti-Injunction Act, because § 5000A(g) is a directive only to the Secretary of the Treasury to use the same “‘methodology and procedures’” to collect the penalty that he uses to collect taxes. Brief for United States 32-33 (quoting Seven-Sky, 661 F. 3d, at 11).
We think the Government has the better reading. As it observes, “Assessment” and “Collection” are chapters of the Internal Revenue Code providing the Secretary authority to assess and collect taxes, and generally specifying the means by which he shall do so. See § 6201 (assessment authority); § 6301 (collection authority). Section 5000A(g)(1)’s command that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner” as taxes is best read as referring to those chapters and giving the Secretary the same authority and guidance with respect to the penalty. That interpretation is consistent with the remainder of §5000A(g), which instructs the Secretary on the tools he may use to collect the penalty. See § 5000A(g)(2)(A) (barring criminal prosecutions); § 5000A(g)(2)(B) (prohibiting the Secretary from using notices of lien and levies). The Anti-Injunction Act, by contrast, says nothing about the procedures to be used in assessing and collecting taxes.
Amicus argues in the alternative that a different section of the Internal Revenue Code requires courts to treat the penalty as a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act. Section 6201(a) authorizes the Secretary to make "assessments of all taxes (including interest, additional amounts, additions to the tax, and assessable penalties).” (Emphasis added.) Amicus contends that the penalty must be a tax, because it is an assessable penalty and § 6201(a) says that taxes include assessable penalties.
That argument has force only if § 6201(a) is read in isolation. The Code contains many provisions treating taxes and assessable penalties as distinct terms. See, e. g., §§ 860(h)(1), 6324A(a), 6601(e)(1)-(2), 6602, 7122(b). There would, for example, be no need for § 6671(a) to deem “tax” to refer to certain assessable penalties if the Code already included all such penalties in the term “tax.” Indeed, ami-cus’s earlier observation that the Code requires assessable penalties to be assessed and collected “in the same manner as taxes” makes little sense if assessable penalties are themselves taxes. In light of the Code’s consistent distinction between the terms “tax” and “assessable penalty,” we must accept the Government’s interpretation: Section 6201(a) instructs the Secretary that his authority to assess taxes includes the authority to assess penalties, but it does not equate assessable penalties to taxes for other purposes.
The Affordable Care Act does not require that the penalty for failing to comply with the individual mandate be treated as a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. The Anti-Injunction Act therefore does not apply to this suit, and we may proceed to the merits.
III
The Government advances two theories for the proposition that Congress had constitutional authority to enact the individual mandate. First, the Government argues that Congress had the power to enact the mandate under the Commerce Clause. Under that theory, Congress may order individuals to buy health insurance because the failure to do so affects interstate commerce, and could undercut the Affordable Care Act’s other reforms. Second, the Government argues that if the commerce power does not support the mandate, we should nonetheless uphold it as an exercise of Congress’s power to tax. According to the Government, even if Congress lacks the power to direct individuals to buy insurance, the only effect of the individual mandate is to raise taxes on those who do not do so, and thus the law may be upheld as a tax.
A
The Government’s first argument is that the individual mandate is a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. According to the Government, the health care market is characterized by a significant cost-shifting problem. Everyone will eventually need health care at a time and to an extent they cannot predict, but if they do not have insurance, they often will not be able to pay for it. Because state and federal laws nonetheless require hospitals to provide a certain degree of care to individuals without regard to their ability to pay, see, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 1395dd; Fla. Stat. §395.1041 (2010), hospitals end up receiving compensation for only a portion of the services they provide. To recoup the losses, hospitals pass on the cost to insurers through higher rates, and insurers, in turn, pass on the cost to policy holders in the form of higher premiums. Congress estimated that the cost of uncompensated care raises family health insurance premiums, on average, by over $1,000 per year. 42 U. S. C. § 18091(2)(F).
In the Affordable Care Act, Congress addressed the problem of those who cannot obtain insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions or other health issues. It did so through the Act's “guaranteed-issue” and “community-rating” provisions. These provisions together prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to those with such conditions or charging unhealthy individuals higher premiums than healthy individuals. See §§300gg, 300gg-1, 300gg-3, 300gg-4.
The guaranteed-issue and community-rating reforms do not, however, address the issue of healthy individuals who choose not to purchase insurance to cover potential health care needs. In fact, the reforms sharply exacerbate that problem, by providing an incentive for individuals to delay purchasing health insurance until they become sick, relying on the promise of guaranteed and affordable coverage. The reforms also threaten to impose massive new costs on insurers, who are required to accept unhealthy individuals but prohibited from charging them rates necessary to pay for their coverage. This will lead insurers to significantly increase premiums on everyone. See Brief for America's Health Insurance Plans et al. as Amici Curiae in No. 11-393 etc. 8-9.
The individual mandate was Congress’s solution to these problems. By requiring that individuals purchase health insurance, the mandate prevents cost shifting by those who would otherwise go without it. In addition, the mandate forces into the insurance risk pool more healthy individuals, whose premiums on average will be higher than their health care expenses. This allows insurers to subsidize the costs of covering the unhealthy individuals the reforms require them to accept. The Government claims that Congress has power under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses to enact this solution.
1
The Government contends that the individual mandate is within Congress’s power because the failure to purchase insurance “has a substantial and deleterious effect on interstate commerce” by creating the cost-shifting problem. Brief for United States 34. The path of our Commerce Clause decisions has not always run smooth, see United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 552-559 (1995), but it is now well established that Congress has broad authority under the Clause. We have recognized, for example, that “[t]he power of Congress over interstate commerce is not confined to the regulation of commerce among the states,” but extends to activities that “have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.” United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 118-119 (1941). Congress’s power, moreover, is not limited to regulation of an activity that by itself substantially affects interstate commerce, but also extends to activities that do so only when aggregated with similar activities of others. See Wickard, 317 U. S., at 127-128.
Given its expansive scope, it is no surprise that Congress has employed the commerce power in a wide variety of ways to address the pressing needs of the time. But Congress has never attempted to rely on that power to compel individuals not engaged in commerce to purchase an unwanted product. Legislative novelty is not necessarily fatal; there is a first time for everything. But sometimes “the most telling indication of [a] severe constitutional problem... is the lack of historical precedent” for Congress’s action. Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U. S. 477, 505 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). At the very least, we should “pause to consider the implications of the Government’s arguments” when confronted with such new conceptions of federal power. Lopez, supra, at 564.
The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. If the power to “regulate” something included the power to create it, many of the provisions in the Constitution would be superfluous. For example, the Constitution gives Congress the power to “coin Money,” in addition to the power to “regulate the Value thereof.” Id., cl. 5. And it gives Congress the power to “raise and support Armies” and to “provide and maintain a Navy,” in addition to the power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” Id., cls. 12-14. If the power to regulate the Armed Forces or the value of money included the power to bring the subject of the regulation into existence, the specific grant of such powers would have been unnecessary. The language of the Constitution reflects the natural understanding that the power to regulate assumes there is already something to be regulated. See Gibbons, 9 Wheat., at 188 (“[T]he enlightened patriots who framed our constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said”).
Our precedent also reflects this understanding. As expansive as our cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they all have one thing in common: They uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” It is nearly impossible to avoid the word when quoting them. See, e. g., Lopez, supra, at 560 ("Where economic activity substantially affects interstate commerce, legislation regulating that activity will be sustained”); Perez, 402 U. S., at 154 (“Where the class of activities is regulated and that class is within the reach of federal power, the courts have no power to excise, as trivial, individual instances of the class” (emphasis in original; internal quotation marks omitted)); Wickard, supra, at 125 (“[E]ven if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce”); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 37 (1937) (“Although activities may be intrastate in character when separately considered, if they have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions, Congress cannot be denied the power to exercise that control”); see also post, at 602, 611-613, 614-615, 618 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part).
The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Every day individuals do not do an infinite number of things. In some cases they decide not to do something; in others they simply fail to do it. Allowing Congress to justify federal regulation by pointing to the effect of inaction on commerce would bring countless decisions an individual could potentially make within the scope of federal regulation, and—under the Government’s theory— empower Congress to make those decisions for him.
Applying the Government’s logic to the familiar case of Wickard v. Filburn shows how far that logic would carry us from the notion of a government of limited powers. In Wickard, the Court famously upheld a federal penalty imposed on a farmer for growing wheat for consumption on his own farm. 317 U. S., at 114-115, 128-129. That amount of wheat caused the farmer to exceed his quota under a program designed to support the price
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | J | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a dispute between the trustee in bankruptcy of a government contractor and the contractor’s payment bond surety over which has the superior right and title to a fund withheld by the Government out of earnings due the contractor.
The petitioner, Pearlman, is trustee of the bankrupt estate of the Dutcher Construction Corporation, which in April 1955 entered into a contract with the United States to do work on the Government’s St. Lawrence Seaway project. At the same time the respondent, Reliance Insurance Company, executed two surety bonds required of the contractor by the Miller Act, one to guarantee performance of the contract, the other to guarantee payment to all persons supplying labor and material for the project. Under the terms of the contract, which was attached to and made a part of the payment bond, the United States was authorized to retain and hold a percentage of estimated amounts due monthly until final completion and acceptance of all work covered by the contract. Before completion Dutcher had financial trouble and the United States terminated its contract by agreement. Another contractor completed the job, which was finally accepted by the Government. At this time there was left in the Government’s withheld fund $87,737.35, which would have been due to be paid to Dutcher had it carried out its obligation to pay its laborers and materialmen. Since it had not met this obligation, its surety had been compelled to pay about $350,000 to discharge debts of the contractor for labor and materials. In this situation the Government was holding over $87,000 which plainly belonged to someone else, and the fund was turned over to the bankrupt’s trustee, who held it on the assumption that it had been property of the bankrupt at the time of adjudication and therefore had vested in the trustee “by operation of law” under § 70 of the Bankruptcy Act. The surety then filed a petition in the District Court denying that the fund had vested in the trustee, alleging that it, the surety, was “the owner of said sum” of $87,737.35 “free and clear of the claims of the Trustee in Bankruptcy or any other person, firm or corporation,” and seeking an order directing the trustee to pay over the fund to the surety forthwith. The referee in bankruptcy, relying chiefly on this Court’s opinion in United States v. Munsey Trust Co., 332 U. S. 234 (1947), held that the surety had no superior rights in the fund, refused to direct payment to the surety, and accordingly ordered the surety’s claim to be allowed as that of a general creditor only to share on an equality with the general run of unsecured creditors. The District Court vacated the referee’s order and held that cases decided prior to Munsey had established the right of a surety under circumstances like this to be accorded priority over general creditors and that Munsey had not changed that rule. The Second Circuit affirmed. Other federal courts have reached a contrary result, and as the question is an important and recurring one, we granted certiorari to decide it.
One argument against the surety’s claim is that this controversy is governed entirely by the Bankruptcy Act and that § 64,11 U. S. C. § 104, which prescribes'priorities for different classes of creditors, gives no priority to a surety’s claim for reimbursement. But the present dispute — who has the property interests in the fund, and how much — is not so simply solved. Ownership of property rights before bankruptcy is one thing; priority of distribution in bankruptcy of property that has passed unencumbered into a bankrupt’s estate is quite another. Property interests in a fund not owned by a bankrupt at the time of adjudication, whether complete or partial, legal or equitable, mortgages, liens, or simple priority of rights, are of course not a part of the bankrupt’s property and do not vest in the trustee. The Bankruptcy Act simply does not authorize a trustee to distribute other peopie’s property among a bankrupt’s creditors. So here if the surety at the time of adjudication was, as it claimed, either the outright legal or equitable owner of this fund, or had an equitable lien or prior right to it, this property interest of the surety never became a part of the bankruptcy estate to be administered, liquidated, and distributed to general creditors of the bankrupt. This Court has recently reaffirmed that such property rights existing before bankruptcy in persons other than the bankrupt must be recognized and respected in bankruptcy. Consequently our question is not who was entitled to priority in distributions under § 64, but whether the surety had, as it claimed, ownership of, an equitable lien on, or a prior right to this fund before bankruptcy adjudication.
Since there is no statute which expressly declares that a surety does acquire a property interest in a fund like this under the circumstances here, we must seek an answer in prior judicial decisions. Some of the relevant factors in determining the question are beyond dispute. Traditionally sureties compelled to pay debts for their principal have been deemed entitled to reimbursement, even without a contractual promise such as the surety here had. And probably there are few doctrines better established than that a surety who pays the debt of another is entitled to all the rights of the person he paid to enforce his right to be reimbursed. This rule, widely applied in this country and generally known as the right of subrogation, was relied on by the Court of Appeals in this case. It seems rather plain that at least two prior decisions of this Court have held that there is a security interest in a withheld fund like this to which the surety is subrogated, unless, as is argued, the rule laid down in those cases has been changed by passage of the Miller Act or by our holding in the Munsey case. Those two cases are Prairie State Bank v. United States, 164 U. S. 227 (1896), and Henningsen v. United States Fid. & Guar. Co., 208 U. S. 404 (1908).
In the Prairie Bank case a surety who had been compelled to complete a government contract upon the contractor’s default in performance claimed that he was entitled to be reimbursed for his expenditure out of a fund that arose from the Government’s retention of 10% of the estimated value of the work done under the terms of the contract between the original contractor and the Government. That contract contained almost the same provisions for retention of the fund as the contract presently before us. The Prairie Bank, contesting the surety’s claim, asserted that it had a superior equitable lien arising from moneys advanced by the bank to the contractor before the surety began to complete the work. The Court, in a well-reasoned opinion by Mr. Justice White, held that this fund materially tended to protect the surety, that its creation raised an equity in the surety’s favor, that the United States was entitled to protect itself out of the fund, and that the surety, by asserting the right of subrogation, could protect itself by resort to the same securities and same remedies which had been available to the United States for its protection against the contractor. The Court then went on to quote with obvious approval this statement from a state case:
“The law upon this subject seems to be, the reserved per cent to be withheld until the completion of the work to be done is as much for the indemnity of him who may be a guarantor of the performance of the contract as for him for whom it is to be performed. And there is great justness in the rule adopted. Equitably, therefore, the sureties in such cases are entitled to have the sum agreed upon held as a fund out of which they may be indemnified, and if the principal releases it without their consent it discharges them from their undertaking.” 164 U. S., at 239, quoting from Finney v. Condon, 86 Ill. 78, 81 (1877).
The Prairie Bank case thus followed an already established doctrine that a surety who completes a contract has an “equitable right” to indemnification out of a retained fund such as the one claimed by the surety in the present case. The only difference in the two cases is that here the surety incurred his losses by paying debts for the contractor rather than by finishing the contract.
The Henning sen case, decided 12 years later in 1908, carried the Prairie Bank case still closer to ours. Henningsen had contracts with the United States to construct public buildings. His surety stipulated not only that the contractor would perform and construct the buildings, but also, as stated by the Court, that he would “pay promptly and in full all persons supplying labor and material in the prosecution of the work contracted for.” Henningsen completed the buildings according to contract but failed to pay his laborers and materialmen. The surety paid. This Court applied the equitable principles declared in the Prairie Bank case so as to entitle the surety to the same equitable claim to the retained fund that the surety in the Prairie Bank case was held to have. Thus the same equitable rules as to subrogation and property interests in a retained fund were held to exist whether a surety completes a contract or whether, though not called upon to complete the contract, it pays the laborers and material-men. These two cases therefore, together with other cases that have followed them, establish the surety’s right to subrogation in such a fund whether its bond be for performance or payment. Unless this rule has been changed, the surety here has a right to this retained fund.
It is argued that the Miller Act changed the law as declared in the Prairie Bank and Henningsen cases. We think not. Certainly no language of the Act does, and we have been pointed to no legislative history that indicates such a purpose. The suggestion is, however, that a congressional purpose to repudiate the equitable doctrine of the two cases should be implied from the fact that the Miller Act required a public contract surety to execute two bonds instead'-of the one formerly required. It is true that the Miller Act did require both a performance bond and an additional payment bond, that is, one to assure completion of the contract and one to assure payments by the contractor for materials and labor. But the prior Acts on this subject, while requiring only one bond, made it cover both performance and payment. Neither this slight difference in the new and the old Acts nor any other argument presented persuades us that Congress in passing the Miller Act intended to repudiate equitable principles so deeply imbedded in our commercial practices, our economy, and our law as those spelled out in the Prairie Bank and Henningsen cases.
The final argument is that the Prairie Bank and Henningsen cases were in effect overruled by our holding and opinion in United States v. Munsey Trust Co., supra. The point at issue in that case was whether the United States while holding a fund like the one in this case could offset against the contractor a claim bearing no relationship to the contractor’s claim there at issue. We held that the Government could exercise the well-established common-law right of debtors to offset claims of their own against their creditors. This was all we held. The opinion contained statements which some have interpreted as meaning that we were abandoning the established legal and equitable principles of the Prairie Bank and Henningsen cases under which sureties can indemnify themselves against losses. But the equitable rights of a surety declared in the Prairie Bank case as to sureties who compíete the performance of a contract were expressly recognized and approved in Munsey, and the Henning sen rule as to sureties who had not completed the contract but had paid laborers was not mentioned. Henning sen was not even cited in the Munsey opinion. We hold that Munsey left the rule in Prairie Bank and Henningsen undisturbed. We cannot say that such a firmly established rule was so casually overruled.
We therefore hold in accord with the established legal principles stated above that the Government had a right to use the retained fund to pay laborers and materialmen; that the laborers and materialmen had a right to be paid out of the fund; that the contractor, had he completed his job and paid his laborers and materialmen, would have become entitled to the fund; and that the surety, having paid the laborers and materialmen, is entitled to the benefit of all these rights to the extent necessary to reimburse it. Consequently, since the surety in this case has paid out more than the amount of the existing fund, it has a right to all of it. On this basis the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Mb. Justice White dissents.
The company was then known as Fire Association of Philadelphia.
40 U. S. C. § 270a provides in part as follows:
“ (a) Before any contract, exceeding $2,000 in amount, for the construction, alteration, or repair of any public building or public work of the United States is awarded to any person, such person shall furnish to the United States the following bonds, which shall become binding upon the award of the contract to such person, who is hereinafter designated as 'contractor’:
“(1) A performance bond with a surety or sureties satisfactory to the officer awarding such contract, and in such amount as he shall deem adequate, for the protection of the United States.
“(2) A payment bond with a surety or sureties satisfactory to such officer for the protection of all persons supplying labor and material in the prosecution of the work provided for in said contract for the use of each such person.”
30 Stat. 565 (1898), 11 U. S. C. § 110.
The surety appears also to have claimed some general priority over all creditors for the entire $350,000 it had paid out for the contractor, based on “liens, subrogation 'and assignment,” but here its petition for certiorari and briefs seem to limit its claim to the net amount of the retained fund turned over to the trustee by the Government.
35 J. N. A. Ref. Bankr. 81 (1961).
In re Dutcher Constr. Cory., 197 F. Supp. 441 (D. C. W. D. N. Y. 1961).
298 F. 2d 655 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1962).
See, e. g., American Sur. Co. v. Hinds, 260 F. 2d 366 (C. A. 10th Cir. 1958); Phoenix Indem. Co. v. Earle, 218 F. 2d 645 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1955).
369 U. S. 847 (1962).
See Justice Holmes’ discussion in Sexton v. Kessler & Co., 225 U. S. 90, 98-99 (1912). As to the difficulties inherent in phrases like “equitable lien,” see Glenn, The “Equitable Pledge”, Creditors’ Rights, and the Chandler Act, 25 Va. L. Rev. 422, 423 (1939).
United States v. Durham Lumber Co., 363 U. S. 522 (1960). See also Security Mortgage Co. v. Powers, 278 U. S. 149 (1928), and cases collected in 6 Am. Jur., Bankruptcy, § 949 (rev. ed. 1950). Cf. Aquilino v. United States, 363 U. S. 509 (1960).
“The right of subrogation is not founded on contract. It is a creature of equity; is enforced solely for the purpose of accomplishing the ends of substantial justice; and is independent of any contractual relations between the parties.” Memphis & L. R. R. Co. v. Dow, 120 U. S. 287, 301-302 (1887).
See, e. g., Hampton v. Phipps, 108 U. S. 260, 263 (1883); Lidderdale’s Executors v. Robinson’s Executor, 12 Wheat. 594 (1827); Duncan, Fox, & Co. v. North and South Wales Bank, 6 App. Cas. 1 (H. L. 1880). See generally Sheldon, Subrogation, §11 (1882).
See cases collected in 50 Am. Jur., Subrogation, § 49 (1944).
208 U. S., at 410.
See, e. g., Martin v. National Sur. Co., 85 F. 2d 135 (C. A. 8th Cir. 1936), aff’d, 300 U. S. 588 (1937); In re Scofield Co., 215 F. 45 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1914); National Sur. Corp. v. United States, 132 Ct. Cl. 724, 133 F. Supp. 381, cert. denied sub nom. First Nat. Bank v. United States, 350 U. S. 902 (1955).
See note 2, supra.
28 Stat. 278 (1894), amended, 33 Stat. 811 (1905).
Among the problems which would be raised by a contrary result would be the unsettling of the usual view, grounded in commercial practice, that suretyship is not insurance. This distinction is discussed in Cushman, Surety Bonds on Public and Private Construction Projects, 46 A. B. A. J. 649, 652-653 (1960).
See note 8, supra.
332 U. S., at 240.
State courts likewise apply the rule that sureties on public contracts are entitled to the benefits of subrogation. See cases collected in 43 Am. Jur., Public Works and Contracts, § 197 (1942).
See the somewhat different but closely related discussion by which Mr. Justice Cardozo, speaking for this Court, reached a similar result in Martin v. National Sur. Co., 300 U. S. 588, 597-598 (1937).
Our result has also been reached by the Court of Claims in cases substantially like ours. Continental Cas. Co. v. United States, 145 Ct. Cl. 99, 169 F. Supp. 945 (1959); National Sur. Corp. v. United States, 132 Ct. Cl. 724, 133 F. Supp. 381, cert. denied sub nom. First Nat. Bank v. United States, 350 U. S. 902 (1955); Royal Indent. Co. v. United States, 117 Ct. Cl. 736, 93 F. Supp. 891 (1950). See generally Speidel, “Stakeholder” Payments Under Federal Construction Contracts: Payment Bond Surety vs. Assignee, 47 Va. L. Rev. 640, 646-648 (1961); note, Reconsideration of Subrogative Rights of the Miller Act Payment Bond Surety, 71 Yale L. J. 1274 (1962); comment, 33 Cornell L. Q. 443 (1948).
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.
Pro se petitioner John R. Demos, Jr., has made 48 informa pauperis filings in this Court since the beginning of the October 1988 Term, many of which challenged sanctions imposed by lower courts for frivolous filings. Almost two years ago, we prospectively denied Demos leave to proceed in forma pauperis “in all future petitions for extraordinary relief.” In re Demos, 500 U. S. 16, 17 (1991) (per curiam). At that time, we said that Demos “remains free under the present order to file in forma pauperis requests for relief other than an extraordinary writ, if he qualifies under this Court’s Rule 39 and does not similarly abuse that privilege.” Ibid.
Since then, Demos has filed 14 petitions for certiorari. We denied the first seven petitions outright, and denied Demos leave to proceed in forma pauperis under our Rule 39.8 as to the following six. Today, we invoke Rule 39.8 again with respect to the instant petition. Demos is allowed until March 29, 1993, within which to pay the docketing fees required by Rule 38 and to submit the petition in compliance with this Court’s Rule 33. Because Demos has refused to heed our prior warning, we further direct the Clerk to reject all future petitions for certiorari from Demos in noncriminal matters unless he pays the docketing fee required by Rule 38 and submits his petition in compliance with Rule 33. See Martin v. District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 506 U. S. 1, 1-2 (1992) (per curiam). Demos’ continued course of abusive filings plainly warrants this sanction.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
PER CURIAM.
The Court granted certiorari in this case to decide whether, when the Government has obtained a warrant under 18 U.S.C. § 2703, a U.S. provider of e-mail services must disclose to the Government electronic communications within its control even if the provider stores the communications abroad. 583 U.S. ----, 138 S.Ct. 356, 199 L.Ed.2d 261 (2017).
In December 2013, federal law enforcement agents applied to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for a § 2703 warrant requiring Microsoft to disclose all e-mails and other information associated with the account of one of its customers. Satisfied that the agents had demonstrated probable cause to believe that the account was being used to further illegal drug trafficking, a Magistrate Judge issued the requested § 2703 warrant. App. 22-26. The warrant directed Microsoft to disclose to the Government the contents of a specified e-mail account and all other records or information associated with the account "[t]o the extent that the information ... is within [Microsoft's] possession, custody, or control." Id., at 24.
After service of the § 2703 warrant, Microsoft determined that the account's e-mail contents were stored in a sole location: Microsoft's datacenter in Dublin, Ireland. Id., at 34. Microsoft moved to quash the warrant with respect to the information stored in Ireland. The Magistrate Judge denied Microsoft's motion. In re Warrant To Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corp., 15 F.Supp.3d 466 (S.D.N.Y.2014). The District Court, after a hearing, adopted the Magistrate Judge's reasoning and affirmed his ruling. See In re Warrant To Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corp., 829 F.3d 197, 204-205 (C.A.2 2016). Soon after, acting on a stipulation submitted jointly by the parties, the District Court held Microsoft in civil contempt for refusing to comply fully with the warrant. Id., at 205. On appeal, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the denial of the motion to quash and vacated the civil contempt finding, holding that requiring Microsoft to disclose the electronic communications in question would be an unauthorized extraterritorial application of § 2703. Id., at 222.
The parties now advise us that on March 23, 2018, Congress enacted and the President signed into law the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, Pub. L. 115-141. The CLOUD Act amends the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq., by adding the following provision:
"A [service provider] shall comply with the obligations of this chapter to preserve, backup, or disclose the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information pertaining to a customer or subscriber within such provider's possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States." CLOUD Act § 103(a)(1).
Soon thereafter, the Government obtained, pursuant to the new law, a new § 2703 warrant covering the information requested in the § 2703 warrant at issue in this case.
No live dispute remains between the parties over the issue with respect to which certiorari was granted. See Department of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. Galioto, 477 U.S. 556, 559, 106 S.Ct. 2683, 91 L.Ed.2d 459 (1986). Further, the parties agree that the new warrant has replaced the original warrant. This case, therefore, has become moot. Following the Court's established practice in such cases, the judgment on review is accordingly vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions first to vacate the District Court's contempt finding and its denial of Microsoft's motion to quash, then to direct the District Court to dismiss the case as moot.
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 United States filed a libel in the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, under §§ 3116 and 3321 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, 53 Stat. 362, 401, for the forfeiture of an automobile which had been used to transport nontax-paid whiskey. Petitioner, a finance company which had accepted an assignment of a conditional sales contract when the automobile was purchased, sought remission of the forfeiture to the extent of its interest under 18 U. S. C. § 3617. That section provides that in a forfeiture proceeding the District Court “shall have exclusive jurisdiction to remit” the forfeiture, but that the court “shall not allow” remission unless the finance company (1) acquired its interest in good faith; (2) had no reason to believe that the automobile would be used in violation of the liquor laws; and (3),
“was informed in answer to [its] inquiry, at the headquarters of the sheriff, chief of police, principal Federal internal-revenue officer engaged in the enforcement of the liquor laws, or other principal local or Federal law-enforcement officer of the locality . . . that [the purchaser] had no . . . record or reputation [for violating laws of the United States or of any State relating to liquor].”
It is conceded that petitioner satisfied the first two requirements. As to the third, petitioner made a timely inquiry regarding the purchaser of the automobile to the state office of the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Unit, from which it received the following reply:
“No record or reputation as a liquor law violator as of [the date of the inquiry]. This office does not keep a complete file of State and local arrests or prosecutions, and has no knowledge of the subject’s reputation among State and local officers.”
It is conceded that the inquiry was made to an appropriate office and that, if the substance of the reply satisfied the statute, no further inquiries were required by the statute. The issue is whether the substance of the reply was adequate.
The reply received by petitioner was a form reply designed by the Internal Revenue Service expressly for the purpose of satisfying this statutory requirement. It had for years been accepted as compliance with the statute in administrative remissions and in forfeiture proceedings in other district courts. Nevertheless, the District Court denied remission on the ground that the reply did not satisfy the statute in that it expressly disclaimed any knowledge of the purchaser’s record or reputation for state liquor law violations. 121 F. Supp. 265. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, 218 F. 2d 702, with one judge dissenting upon rehearing, 220 F. 2d 279. We think the courts below misconstrued the reply. The first sentence affirmatively stated that the purchaser had no record or reputation in that office as a “liquor law violator,” and that statement was not limited to federal violations. The second sentence did not qualify the negative character of the reply but merely made clear that that office’s knowledge was not unlimited.
The District Court also based its decision on the alternative ground that, even if the requirements of the statute were technically met, remission would be denied in the discretion of the court. The sole basis for that holding was that petitioner was “put on notice” by the reply that the purchaser might well have a record as a liquor law violator with the state authorities, and its failure to investigate further disclosed “an indifference on its part which does not commend it to the equitable conscience of this court.” We need not decide the extent of the District Court’s discretionary power to deny remissions, since in any event we think there was no occasion for its exercise here. The very purpose of prescribing in detail in the statute the type of inquiry to be made was to avoid uncertainty over the extent of investigation necessary to protect finance companies against forfeitures. That purpose would be frustrated if a duty to investigate further could be grounded solely upon the alleged inadequacy of a reply clearly satisfying the statutory investigation requirements. In limiting the inquiry duty to any one of several offices, Congress must necessarily have contemplated that the records of one office only would be checked. It considered that adequate.
The judgment below is reversed and the cause is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter dissents.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The federal priority statute, 31U. S. C. § 3713, accords first priority to the United States with respect to a bankrupt debtor’s obligations. An Ohio statute confers only fifth priority upon claims of the United States in proceedings to liquidate an insolvent insurance company. Ohio Rev. Code Arm. §3903.42 (1989). The federal priority statute preempts the inconsistent Ohio law unless the latter is exempt from pre-emption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 59 Stat. 33, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1011 et seq. In order to resolve this ease, we must decide whether a state statute establishing the priority of creditors’ claims in a proceeding to liquidate an insolvent insurance company is a law enacted “for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance,” within the meaning of § 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 15U.S.C. § 1012(b).
We hold that the Ohio priority statute escapes preemption to the extent that it protects policyholders. Accordingly, Ohio may effectively afford priority, over claims of the United States, to the insurance claims of policyholders and to the costs and expenses of administering the liquidation. But when Ohio attempts to rank other categories of claims above those pressed by the United States, it is not free from federal pre-emption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
I
The Ohio priority statute was enacted as part of a complex and specialized administrative structure for the regulation of insurance companies from inception to dissolution. The statute proclaims, as its purpose, “the protection of the interests of insureds, claimants, creditors, and the public generally.” § 3908.02(D). Chapter 3903 broadly empowers the State’s Superintendent of Insurance to place a financially impaired insurance company under his supervision, or into rehabilitation, or into liquidation. The last is authorized when the superintendent finds that the insurer is insolvent, that placement in supervision or rehabilitation would be futile, and that “further transaction of business would be hazardous, financially or otherwise, to [the insurer’s] policyholders, its creditors, or the public.” § 3903.17(C). As liquidator, the superintendent is entitled to take title to all assets, § 3903.18(A); to collect and invest moneys due the insurer, § 3903.21(A)(6); to continue to prosecute and commence in the name of the insurer any and all suits and other legal proceedings, §3903.21(A)(12); to collect reinsurance and unearned premiums due the insurer, §§3903.32 and 3903.33; to evaluate all claims against the estate, § 3903.43; and to make payments to claimants to the extent possible, §3903.44. It seems fair to say that the effect of all this is to empower the liquidator to continue to operate the insurance company in all ways but one — the issuance of new policies.
Pursuant to this statutory framework, the Court of Common Pleas for Franklin County, Ohio, on April 30, 1986, declared American Druggists’ Insurance Company insolvent. The court directed that the company be liquidated, and it appointed respondent, Ohio’s Superintendent of Insurance, to serve as liquidator. The United States, as obligee on various immigration, appearance, performance, and payment bonds issued by the company as surety, filed claims in excess of $10.7 million in the state liquidation proceedings. The United States asserted that its claims were entitled to first priority under the federal statute, 31 U. S. C. §3713(a)(l)(A)(iii), which provides: “A claim of the United States Government shall be paid first when... a person indebted to the Government is insolvent and... an act of bankruptcy is committed.”
Respondent Superintendent brought a declaratory judgment action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio seeking to establish that the federal priority statute does not pre-empt the Ohio law designating the priority of creditors’ claims in insurance-liquidation proceedings. Under the Ohio statute, as noted above, claims of federal,, state, and local governments are entitled only to fifth priority, ranking behind (1) administrative expenses, (2) specified wage claims, (3) policyholders’ claims, and (4) claims of general creditors. §3903.42. Respondent argued that the Ohio priority scheme, rather than the federal priority statute, governs the priority of claims of the United States because it falls within the antipre-emption provisions of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1012.
The District Court granted summary judgment for the United States. Relying upon the tripartite standard for divining what constitutes the “business of insurance,” as articulated in Union Labor Life Ins. Co. v. Pireno, 458 U. S. 119 (1982), the court considered three factors:
“(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.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 36a (quoting Pireno, 468 U. S., at 129).
Reasoning that the liquidation of an insolvent insurer pos-. sesses none of these attributes, the court concluded that the Ohio priority statute does not involve the “business of insurance.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 45a.
A divided Court of Appeals reversed. 939 F. 2d 341 (CA6 1991). The court held that the Ohio priority scheme regulates the “business of insurance” because it protects the interests of the insured. Id., at 350-361. Applying Pireno, the court determined that the Ohio statute (1) transfers and spreads the risk of insurer insolvency; (2) involves an integral part of the policy relationship because it is designed to maintain the reliability of the insurance contract; and (3) focuses upon the protection of policyholders by diverting the scarce resources of the liquidating entity away from other creditors. 939 F. 2d, at 351-352.
Relying upon the same test to reach a different result, one judge dissented. He reasoned that the liquidation of insolvent insurers is not a part of the “business of insurance” because it (1) has nothing to do with the transfer of risk between insurer and insured that is effected by means of the insurance contract and that is complete at the time the contract is entered; (2) does not address the relationship between insurer and the insured, but the relationship among those left at the demise of the insurer; and (3) is not confined to policyholders, but governs the rights of all creditors. Id., at 353-364 (opinion of Jones, J.).
We granted certiorari, 504 U. S. 907 (1992), to resolve the conflict among the Courts of Appeals on the question whether a state statute governing the priority of claims against an insolvent insurer is a “law enacted... for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance,” within the meaning of §2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
HH
The McCarran-Ferguson Act was enacted m response to this Court’s decision in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Assn., 322 U. S. 533 (1944). Prior to that decision, it had been assumed that “[i]ssuing a policy of insurance is not a transaction of commerce,” Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 183 (1869), subject to federal regulation. Accordingly, “the States enjoyed a virtually exclusive domain over the insurance industry.” St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Barry, 438 U. S. 531, 539 (1978).
The emergence of an interconnected and interdependent national economy, however, prompted a more expansive jurisprudential image of interstate commerce. In the intervening years, for example, the Court held that interstate commerce encompasses the movement of lottery tickets from State to State, Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321 (1903), the transport of five quarts of whiskey across state lines in a private automobile, United States v. Simpson, 252 U. S. 465 (1920), and the transmission of an electrical impulse over a wire between Alabama and Florida, Pensacola Telegraph Co. v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 96 U. S. 1 (1878). It was not long before the Court was forced to come to terms with these decisions in the insurance context. Thus, in South-Eastern Underwriters, it held that an insurance company that conducted a substantial part of its business across state lines was engaged in interstate commerce and thereby was subject to the antitrust laws. This result, naturally, was widely perceived as a threat to state power to tax and regulate the insurance industry. To allay those fears, Congress moved quickly to restore the supremacy of the States in the realm of insurance regulation. It enacted the MeCarran-Ferguson Act within a year of the decision in South-Eastern Underwriters.
The first section of the MeCarran-Ferguson Act makes its mission very clear: “Congress hereby declares that the continued regulation and taxation by the several States of the business of insurance is in the public interest, and that silence on the part of the Congress shall not be construed to impose any barrier to the regulation or taxation of such business by the several States.” 15 U. S. C. § 1011. Shortly after passage of the Act, the Court observed: “Obviously Congress’ purpose was broadly to give support to the existing and future state systems for regulating and taxing the business of insurance.” Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U. S. 408, 429 (1946). Congress achieved this purpose in two ways. The first “was by removing obstructions which might be thought to flow from [Congress’] own power, whether dormant or exercised, except as otherwise expressly provided in the Act itself or in future legislation.” Id., at 429-430. The second “was by declaring expressly and affirmatively that continued state regulation and taxation of this business is in the public interest and that the business and all who engage in it ‘shall be subject to’ the laws of the several states in these respects.” Id., at 430.
HH HH
[T]he starting point in a case involving construction of the MeCarran-Ferguson Act, like the starting point in any ease involving the meaning of a statute, is the language of the statute itself.” Group Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Royal Drug Co., 440 U. S. 205, 210 (1979). Section 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act provides: “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.” 15 U. S. C. § 1012(b). The parties agree that application of the federal priority statute would “invalidate, impair, or supersede” the Ohio priority scheme and that the federal priority statute does not “specifically relat[e] to the business of insurance.” All that is left for us to determine, therefore, is whether the Ohio priority statute is a law enacted “for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance.”
This Court has had occasion to construe this phrase only once. On that occasion, it observed: “Statutes aimed at protecting or regulating this relationship [between insurer and insured], directly or indirectly, are laws regulating the ‘business of insurance,’ ” within the meaning of the phrase. SEC v. National Securities, Inc., 393 U. S. 453, 460 (1969). The opinion emphasized that the focus of McCarran-Ferguson is upon the relationship between the insurance company and its policyholders:
“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.’ Undoubtedly, other activities of insurance companies relate so closely to their status as reliable insurers that they too must be placed in the same class. But whatever the exact scope of the statutory term, it is clear where the focus was — it was on the relationship between the insurance company and the policyholder.” Ibid.
In that case, two Arizona insurance companies merged and received approval from the Arizona Director of Insurance, as required by state law. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued to rescind the merger, alleging that the merger-solicitation papers contained material misstatements, in violation of federal law. This Court held that, insofar as the Arizona law was an attempt to protect the intereste of an insurance company’s shareholders, it did not fall within the scope of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. Ibid. The Arizona statute, however, also required the Director, before granting approval, to make sure that the proposed merger “would not ‘substantially reduce the security of and service to be rendered to policyholders.’ ” Id., at 462. The Court observed that this section of the statute “clearly relates to the ‘business of insurance.’” Ibid. But because the “paramount federal interest in protecting shareholders [was] perfectly compatible with the paramount state interest in protecting policyholders,” id., at 463, the Arizona statute did not preclude application of the federal securities laws.
In the present case, on the other hand, there is a direct conflict between the federal priority statute and Ohio law. Under the terms of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 16 U. S. C. § 1012(b), therefore, federal law must yield to the extent the Ohio statute furthers the interests of policyholders.
Minimizing the analysis of National Securities, petitioners invoke Royal Drug and Pireno in support of their argument that the liquidation of an insolvent insurance company is not part of the “business of insurance” exempt from pre-emption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. Those eases identified the three criteria, noted above, that are relevant in determining what activities constitute the “business of insurance.” See Pireno, 458 U. S., at 129. Petitioners argue that the Ohio priority statute satisfies none of these criteria. According to petitioners, the Ohio statute merely determines the order in which creditors’ claims will be paid, and has nothing to do with the transfer of risk from insured to insurer. Petitioners also contend that the Ohio statute is not an integral part of the policy relationship between insurer and insured and is not limited to entities within the insurance industry because it addresses only the relationship between policyholders and other creditors of the defunct corporation.
To be sure, the Ohio statute does not directly regulate the “business of insurance” by prescribing the terms of the insurance contract or by setting the rate charged by the insurance company. But we do not read Pireno to suggest that the business of insurance is confined entirely to the writing of insurance contracts, as opposed to their performance. Pireno and Royal Drug held only that “ancillary activities” that do not affect performance of the insurance contract or enforcement of contractual obligations do not enjoy the antitrust exemption for laws regulating the “business of insurance.” Pireno, 458 U. S., at 134, n. 8. In Pireno, we held that use of a peer review committee to advise the insurer as to whether charges for chiropractic services were reasonable and necessary was not part of the business of insurance. The peer review practice at issue in that case had nothing to do with whether the insurance contract was performed; it dealt only with calculating what fell within the scope of the contract’s coverage. Id., at 130. We found the peer review process to be “a matter of indifference to the policyholder, whose only concern is whether his claim is paid, not why it is paid” (emphases in original). Id., at 132. Similarly, in Royal Drug, we held that an insurer’s agreements with participating pharmacies to provide benefits to policyholders was not part of the business of insurance. “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.” 440 U. S., at 213-214 (footnote omitted).
There can be no doubt that the actual performance of an insurance contract falls within the “business of insurance,” as we understood that phrase in Pireno and Royal Drug. To hold otherwise would be mere formalism. The Court’s statement in Pireno that the “transfer of risk from insured to insurer is effected by means of the contract between the parties... and... is complete at the time that the contract is entered,” 458 U. S., at 130, presumes that the insurance contract in fact will be enforced. Without performance of the terms of the insurance policy, there is no risk transfer at all. Moreover, performance of an insurance contract also satisfies the remaining prongs of the Pireno test: It is central to the policy relationship between insurer and insured and is confined entirely to entities within the insurance industry. The Ohio priority statute is designed to carry out the enforcement of insurance contracts by ensuring the payment of policyholders’ claims despite the insurance company’s intervening bankruptcy. Because it is integrally related to the performance of insurance contracts after bankruptcy, Ohio’s law is one “enacted by any State for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance.” 15 U. S. C. § 1012(b).
Both Royal Drug and Pireno, moreover, involved the scope of the antitrust immunity located in the second clause of § 2(b). We deal here with the first clause, which is not so narrowly circumscribed. The language of §2(b) is unambiguous: The first clause commits laws “enacted... for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance” to the States, while the second clause exempts only “the business of insurance” itself from the antitrust laws. To equate laws “enacted... for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance” with the “business of insurance” itself, as petitioners urge us to do, would be to read words out of the statute. This we refuse to do.
The broad category of laws enacted “for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance” consists of laws that possess the “end, intention, or aim” of adjusting, managing, or controlling the business of insurance. Black’s Law Dictionary 1236,1286 (6th ed. 1990). This category necessarily encompasses more than just the “business of insurance.” For the reasons expressed above, we believe that the actual performance of an insurance contract is an essential part of the “business of insurance.” Because the Ohio statute is “aimed at protecting or regulating” the performance of an insurance contract, National Securities, 393 U. S., at 460, it follows that it is a law “enacted for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance,” within the meaning of the first clause of §2(b).
Our plain reading of the McCarran-Ferguson Act also comports with the statute’s purpose. As was stated in Royal Drug, the first clause of §2(b) was intended to further Congress’ primary objective of granting the States broad regulatory authority over the business of insurance. The second clause accomplishes Congress’ secondary goal, which was to carve out only a narrow exemption for “the business of insurance” from the federal antitrust laws. 440 U. S., at 218, n. 18. Cf. D. Howard, Uncle Sam versus the Insurance Commissioners: A Multi-Level Approach to Defining the “Business of Insurance” Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 25 Willamette L. Rev. 1 (1989) (advocating an interpretation of the two clauses that would reflect their dual purposes); Note, The Definition of “Business of Insurance” Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act After Royal Drug, 80 Colum. L. Rev. 1475 (1980) (same).
Petitioners, however, also contend that the Ohio statute is not an insurance law but a bankruptcy law because it comes into play only when the insurance company has become insolvent and is in liquidation, at which point the insurance company no longer exists. We disagree. The primary purpose of a statute that distributes the insolvent insurer’s assets to policyholders in preference to other creditors is identical to the primary purpose of the insurance company itself: the payment of claims made against policies. And “mere matters of form need not detain us.” National Securities, 393 U. S., at 460. The Ohio statute is enacted “for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance” to the extent that it serves to ensure that, if possible, policyholders ultimately will receive payment on their claims. That the policyholder has become a creditor and the insurer a debtor is not relevant.
IV
Finding little support in the plain language of the statute, petitioners resort to its legislative history. Petitioners rely principally upon a single statement in a House Report:
“It is not the intention of Congress in the enactment of this legislation to clothe the States with any power to regulate or tax the business of insurance beyond that which they had been held to possess prior to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Southeastern Underwriters Association case.” H. R. Rep. No. 143, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1945).
From this statement, petitioners argue that the MeCarranFerguson Act was an attempt to “turn back the clock” to the time prior to South-Eastern Underwriters. At that time, petitioners maintain, the federal priority statute would have superseded any inconsistent state law.
Even if we accept petitioners’ premise, the state of the law prior to South-Eastern Underwriters is far from clear. Petitioners base their argument upon United States v. Knott, 298 U. S. 544 (1936), which involved the use and disposition of funds placed with the Florida treasurer as a condition of an insurer’s conducting business in the State. According to petitioners, Knott stands for the proposition that the federal priority statute pre-empted inconsistent state laws even before South-Eastern Underwriters. But this proffered analogy to Knott unravels upon closer inspection. In that case, the Court applied the federal priority statute only when the State had not specifically legislated the priority of claims. 298 U. S., at 549-550 (“But it is settled that an inchoate lien is not enough to defeat the [Federal Government’s] priority.... Unless the law of Florida effected... either a transfer of title from the company, or a specific perfected lien in favor of the Florida creditors, the United States is entitled to priority”). Moreover, other cases issued at the same time reached a different result. See, e. g., Conway v. Imperial Life Ins. Co., 207 La. 285, 21 So. 2d 151 (1945) (Louisiana statute specifically providing that deposited securities are held by state treasurer in trust for benefit and protection of policyholders supersedes federal priority statute).
More importantly, petitioners’ interpretation of the statute is at odds with its plain language. The MeCarran-Ferguson Act did not simply overrule South-Eastern Underurriters and restore the status quo.. To the contrary, it transformed the legal landscape by overturning the normal rules of preemption. Ordinarily, a federal law supersedes any inconsistent state law. The first clause of § 2(b) reverses this by imposing what is, in effect, a elear-statement rule, a rule that state laws enacted “for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance” do not yield to conflicting federal statutes unless a federal statute specifically requires otherwise. That Congress understood the effect of its language becomes apparent when we examine other parts of the legislative history. The second clause of § 2(b) also broke new ground: It “embodied] a legislative rejection of the concept that the insurance industry is outside the scope of the antitrust laws — a concept that had prevailed before the South-Eastern Underwriters decision.” Royal Drug, 440 U. S., at 220.
Petitioners’ argument appears to find its origin in the Court’s statement in National Securities that “[t]he McCarran-Ferguson Act was an attempt to turn back the clock, to assure that the activities of insurance companies in dealing with their policyholders would remain subject to state regulation.” 393 U. S., at 459. The Court was referring to the primary purpose underlying the Act, namely, to restore to the States broad authority to tax and regulate the insurance industry. Petitioners would extrapolate from this general statement an invitation to engage in a detailed point-by-point comparison between the regime created by McCarran-Ferguson and the one that existed before. But it is impossible to compare our present world to the one that existed at a time when the business of insurance was believed to be beyond the reach of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause.
V
We hold that the Ohio priority statute, to the extent that it regulates policyholders, is a law enacted for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance. To the extent that it is designed to further the interests of other creditors, however, it is not a law enacted for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance. Of course, every preference accorded to the creditors of an insolvent insurer ultimately may redound to the benefit of policyholders by enhancing the reliability of the insurance company. This argument, however, goes too far: “But in that sense, every business decision made by an insurance company has some impact on its reliability... and its status as a reliable insurer.” Royal Drug, 440 U. S., at 216-217. Royal Drug rejected the notion that such indirect effects are sufficient for a state law to avoid preemption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. Id., at 217.
We also hold that the preference accorded by Ohio to the expenses of administering the insolvency proceeding is reasonably necessary to further the goal of protecting policyholders. Without payment of administrative costs, liquidation could not even commence. The preferences conferred upon employees and other general creditors, however, do not escape pre-emption because their connection to the ultimate aim of insurance is too tenuous. Cf. Langdeau v. United States, 363 S. W. 2d 327 (Tex. Civ. App. 1962) (state statute according preference to employee wage claims is not a law enacted for the purpose of regulating the business of insurance). By this decision, we rule only upon the clash of priorities as pronounced by the respective provisions of the federal statute and the Ohio Code. The effect of this decision upon the Ohio Code’s remaining priority provisions — including any issue of severability — is a question of state law to be addressed upon remand. Cf. Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U. S. 7, 17-18 (1975) (invalidating state statute specifying greater age of majority for males than for females and remanding to state court to determine age of majority applicable to both groups under state law).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
In its entirety, §3713 reads:
“(a)(1) A claim of the United States Government shall be paid first when—
“(A) a person indebted to the Government is insolvent and—
“(i) the debtor without enough property to pay all debts makes a voluntary assignment of property;
“(ii) property of the debtor, if absent, is attached; or
“(iii) an act of bankruptcy is committed; or
“(B) the estate of a deceased debtor, in the custody of the executor or administrator, is not enough to pay all debts of the debtor.
“(2) This subsection does not apply to a case under title 11.
“(b) A representative of a person or an estate (except a trustee acting under title 11) paying any part of a debt of the person or estate before paying a claim of the Government is liable to the extent of the payment for unpaid claims of the Government.”
In its entirety, §3903.42 reads:
“The priority of distribution of claims from the insurer’s estate shall be in accordance with the order in which each class of claims is set forth in this section. Every claim in each class shall be paid in full or adequate funds retained for such payment before the members of the next class receive any payment. No subclasses shall be established within any class. The order of distribution of claims shall be:
“(A) Class 1. The costs and expenses of administration, including but not limited to the following:
“(1) The actual and necessary costs of preserving or recovering the assets of the insurer;
“(2) Compensation for all services rendered in the liquidation;
"(3) Any necessary filing fees;
“(4) The fees and mileage payable to witnesses;
“(5) Reasonable attorney’s fees;
“(6) The reasonable expenses of a guaranty association or foreign guaranty association in handling claims.
“(B) Class 2. Debts due to employees for services performed to the extent that they do not exceed one thousand dollars and represent payment for services performed within one year before the filing of the complaint for liquidation. Officers and directors shall not be entitled to the benefit of this priority. Such priority shall be in lieu of any other similar priority that may be authorized by law as to wages or compensation of employees.
“(C) Class 3. All claims under policies for losses incurred, including third party claims, all claims against the insurer for liability for bodily injury or for injury to or destruction of tangible property that are not under policies, and all claims of a guaranty association or foreign guaranty association. All claims under life insurance and annuity policies, whether for death proceeds, annuity proceeds, or investment values, shall be treated as loss claims. That portion of any loss, indemnification for which is provided by other benefits or advantages recovered by the claimant, shall not be included in this class, other than benefits or advantages recovered or recoverable in discharge of familial obligations of support or by way of succession at death or as proceeds of life insurance, or as gratuities. No payment by an employer to an employee shall be treated as a gratuity. Claims under nonassessable policies for unearned premium or other premium refunds.
“(D) Class 4. Claims of general creditors.
“(E) Class 5. Claims of the federal or any state or local government. Claims, including those of any governmental body for a penalty or forfeiture, shall be allowed in this class only to the extent of the pecuniary loss sustained from the act, transaction, or proceeding out of which the penalty or forfeiture arose, with reasonable and actual costs occasioned thereby. The remainder of such claims shall be postponed to the class of claims under division (H) of this section.
“(F) Class 6. Claims filed late or any other claims other than claims under divisions (G) and (H) of this section.
“(G) Class 7. Surplus or contribution notes, or similar obligations, and premium refunds on assessable policies. Payments to members of domestic mutual insurance companies shall be limited in accordance with law.
“(H) Class 8. The claims of shareholders or other owners.”
Section 1012 reads:
“(a) State regulation
“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) Federal regulation
“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, or which imposes a fee or tax upon such business, unless such Act specifically relates to the business of insurance: Provided, That after June 30, 1948, the Act of July 2, 1890, as amended, known as the Sherman Act, and the Act of October 15,1914, as amended, known as the Clayton Act, and the Act of September 26, 1914, known as the Federal Trade Commission Act, as amended,... shall be applicable to the business of insurance to the extent that such business is not regulated by State Law.”
One judge concurred separately on the ground that the McCarranFerguson Act was not intended to modify the longstanding, traditional state regulation of insurance company liquidations. See 939 F. 2d, at 352 (opinion of Edgar, J.).
Compare the result reached by the Sixth Circuit in this litigation with Gordon v. United States Dept. of Treasury, 846 F. 2d 272 (CA4), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 954 (1988), and Idaho ex rel. Soward v. United States, 858 F. 2d 445 (CA9 1988), cert. denied, 490 U. S. 1065 (1989).
The dissent contends that our reading of the McCarran-Ferguson Act “runs counter to the basic rule of statutory construction that identical words used in different parts of the same Act are intended to have the same meaning.” Post, at 515. This argument might be plausible if the two clauses actually employed identical language. But they do not. As explained above, the first clause contains the word “purpose,” a term that is significantly missing from the second clause. By ignoring this word, the dissent overlooks another maxim of statutory construction: “that a court should ‘“give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute.”’” Moskal v. United States, 498 U. S. 103, 109-110 (1990), quoting United States v. Menasche, 348 U. S. 528, 538-539 (1955), and Montclair v. Ramsdell, 107 U. S. 147, 152 (1883).
Elaborating upon the purpose animating the first clause of §2(b) of the MeCarran-Ferguson Act, Senator Ferguson observed:
“What we have in mind is that the insurance business, being interstate commerce, if we merely enact a law relating to interstate commerce, or if there is a law now on the statute books relating in some way to interstate commerce, it would not apply to insurance. We wanted to be sure that the Congress, in its wisdom, would act specifically with reference to insurance in enacting the law.” 91 Cong. Rec. 1487 (1945).
This passage later confirms that “no existing law and no future law should, by mere implication, be applied to the business of insurance” (statement of Mr. Mahoney). Ibid.
The dissent assails our holding at both ends, contending that it at once goes too far and not quite far enough. On the one hand, the dissent suggests that our holding is too “broad” in the sense that “any law which redounds to the benefit of policyholders is, ipso facto, a law enacted to regulate the business of insurance.” Post, at 511. But this is precisely the argument we reject in the text, as evidenced by the narrowness of our actual holding. Uncomfortable with our distinction between the priority-given to policyholders and the priority afforded other creditors, the dissent complains, on the other hand, that this is evidence of a “serious flaw.” Post, at 517. But the dissent itself concedes that a state statute regulating the liquidation of insolvent insurance companies need not be treated as a package which stands or falls in its entirety. Post, at 518. Given this concession, it is the dissent’s insistence upon an all-or-nothing approach to this particular statute that is flawed. The dissent adduces no support for its assertion that we must deal with the various priority provisions of the Ohio law as if they were all designed to further a single end. That was not the approach taken by this Court in National Securities
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.
Opinion of the Court by
Mr. Justice Murphy,
announced by Mr. Justice Rutledge.
A South Carolina statute provides that life insurance companies and their agents may not operate an undertaking business, and undertakers may not serve as agents for life insurance companies. Criminal sanctions are provided. Act No. 787, S. C. Acts of 1948, p. 1947. Respondents brought action before a three-judge District Court in the Eastern District of South Carolina, seeking an injunction forbidding the enforcement of the statute. 28 U. S. C. § 380, now 28 U. S. C. §§ 2281, 2284. The court, one judge dissenting, upheld respondents’ contentions that the statute, as applied in this case, did not provide that due process of law and equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. A permanent injunction issued, 79 F. Supp. 62, and the South Carolina Attorney General has appealed to this Court. 28 U. S. C. § 380, now 28 U. S. C. §§ 1253, 2281.
The respondent insurance company is incorporated and licensed to do business in South Carolina, and conforms with the comprehensive code of insurance regulations established by Act No. 232, S. C. Acts of 1947, p. 322. The other respondents are its officers and directors. It issues life insurance with cash benefits ranging from $125 to $750. The amount of outstanding policies had reached a total of $838,375 in May of 1948, compared to nothing in February of the same year. Most of the company’s agents are undertakers. Parties to the insurance contract contemplate use of the policy’s proceeds to pay funeral expenses. A “facility of payment” clause might justify payment of proceeds .to an undertaker for the insured’s funeral. At the time of the trial, respondent company was the only concern in South Carolina selling “funeral insurance” as an established practice.
For many years South Carolina has prohibited the payment of insurance proceeds in merchandise or services. Act No. 205, S; C. Acts of 1929, p. 234; S. C. Code of 1942, § 7984; Act No. 232, S. C. Acts of 1947, § 65, p. 350. Possibilities of fraud, misunderstanding in valuation, and the comparatively useless character of the merchandise delivered or services rendered make respondents readily concede the desirability of this ban. Other states have similar statutes.
The South Carolina legislature might well have concluded that funeral insurance, although paid in cash, carries the same evils that are present in policies payable in merchandise or services: the beneficiary’s tendency to deliver the policy’s proceeds to the agent-undertaker for whatever funeral the money will buy, whether or not an expensive ceremony is consistent with the needs of the survivors. Considerations which might have been influential include the likelihood of overreach on the part of insurance companies, and the possibilities of monopoly control detailed in affidavits introduced in the court below.
The South Carolina legislature is not alone in seeing evils in this kind of insurance, and in invoking its police powers to combat them. See the similar provisions in N. Y. Insurance Law, § 165(c); Fla. Stat. (1941), § 639.02; Ga. Code Ann. § 56-9920; Page’s Ohio General Code, § 666 (1946) (see Robbins v. Hennessey, 86 Ohio St. 181, 99 N. E. 319); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 48A, § 110 (1939). And see the summary of critical arguments in Business Week, October 20, 1945, pp. 48, 51.
Yet the court below held that the statute is “arbitrary and discriminative and designed to destroy, and will destroy, the plaintiff insurance company and its business . . . .” “It seems obvious from the record that this legislation had its genesis in the desire of the existing insurance companies to eliminate the plaintiff company as a competitor. . . .” 79 F. Supp. at 70, 65. The court found that the respondent’s policies are actuarially sound; that funeral insurance is desirable; and that the other South Carolina insurance regulations are “ample” to correct any evils resulting from respondents’ business. The Court concluded that the statute now before us is so unreasonable that it offends the Due Process Clause.
First. It is said that the “insurance lobby” obtained this statute from the South Carolina legislature. But a judiciary must judge by results, not by the varied factors which may have determined legislators’ votes. We cannot undertake a search for motive in testing constitutionality. See Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U. S. 251, overruled in United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100. Compare Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U. S. 20, and United States v. Constantine, 296 U. S. 287, with Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U. S. 381, 393. Compare United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, with Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U. S. 548, 592, and Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, 301 U. S. 308.
Second. Despite evidence to the contrary, respondents see no evil to be corrected by this legislation. We are asked to agree with respondents and call the statute arbitrary and unreasonable.
Looking through the form of this plea to its essential basis, we cannot fail to recognize it as an argument for invalidity because this Court disagrees with the desirability of the legislation. We rehearse the obvious when we say that our function is thus misconceived. We are not equipped to decide desirability; and a court cannot eliminate measures which do not happen to suit its tastes if it seeks to maintain a democratic system. The forum for the correction of ill-considered legislation is a responsive legislature.
We cannot say that South Carolina is not entitled to call the funeral insurance business an evil. Nor can we say that the statute has no relation to the elimination of those evils. There our inquiry must stop.
This rationale did not find expression in Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U. S. 105, on which respondents rely. According to the majority in Liggett, “a state cannot, ‘under the guise of protecting the public, arbitrarily interfere with private business or prohibit lawful occupations or impose unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions upon them.’ ” 278 U. S. at 113. But a pronounced shift of emphasis since the Liggett case has deprived the words “unreasonable” and “arbitrary” of the content for which respondents contend. See Lincoln Federal Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co., 335 U. S. 525, where the cases are reviewed.
The Liggett case, however, was concerned with a statute far different from the one we are considering now. Pennsylvania required drug store owners to be licensed pharmacists. Because the statute was directed at owners, who might have no connection with the pharmaceutical branches of modern drug stores, a divided Court thought the measure unreasonable. The Pennsylvania statute was clearly less adapted to the recognized evil than the provision now before us. The Liggett case, on its facts, is not authority for the invalidation of the South Carolina Mortuary Act.
The South Carolina statute, on its face, does not contravene the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither does it offend the Amendment as applied to these respondents. We reverse the judgment below.
Reversed.
“SECTION 1: Life insurance companies and their employees not own or operate undertaking business. — It shall be unlawful for any life insurance company, corporation, or association, except fraternal benefit societies licensed to do business in this State to own, manage, supervise, or operate or maintain a mortuary or undertaking establishment, or to permit its officers, agents or employees to own, operate or maintain any such funeral or undertaking business.
“SECTION 2: Life insurance company or sick or funeral benefit company not contract with undertaker conduct funeral of person insured by it.- — It shall be unlawful for any life insurance company, sick or funeral benefit company, or any company, corporation or association engaged in a similar business to contract or agree with any funeral director, undertaker or mortuary to the effect that such funeral director, undertaker, or mortuary shall conduct the funeral of any person insured by such company, corporation or association.
“SECTION 3: Undertaker and his employees not act as agent for life insurance company. — It shall be unlawful for any funeral director, undertaker, or mortuary, or any agent, officer or employee thereof to be licensed as agent, solicitor or salesman for any life insurance company, corporation or association doing business in this State.
“SECTION 4: Penalties. — Any person violating any of the provisions of this Act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and each violation thereof shall be a separate offense, and upon conviction shall be punished by fine not exceeding One Thousand ($1,000.00) Dollars or by imprisonment at hard labor for not exceeding six (6) months, or both such fine and imprisonment within the discretion of the courts. . . .”
See Fla. Stat. (1941), § 639.04; Me. Rev. Stat., c. 56, § 138 (1944) ; Ky. Rev. Stat., § 303.120 (1946); Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 73, § 956 (1947).
“You come to the place of business, the mortuary, to pay it. Month in and month out. The inducement for a funeral director to align himself with this is the fact that it will freeze this business to him. He doesn’t have to, let me hasten to say. You don’t have to call that funeral director, but if he continuously beats a path to his door to pay his insurance, there is no question about it that if he has any decent employees, they are going to convince the man the thing to do is to come to them. Now, is that a healthy situation ?” Proceedings of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, State of South Carolina, March 31, 1948, No. 1382, In re “The Mortuary Bill.” R. 85.
Our deference to the legislative judgment is particularly pronounced in a field as traditionally well regulated as insurance. See Osborn v. Ozlin, 310 U. S. 53, 65, 66; La Tourette v. McMaster, 248 U. S. 465, 467, 468; Prudential Insurance Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U. S. 408, 416, n. 13.
That respondent company is the only concern now affected by the statute does not, of course, mean a denial of equal protection. The statute is drawn in general terms; the company’s success might well induce others to enter the business. See the dissenting opinion below, 79 F. Supp. at 73, 74. And see Mason v. Missouri, 179 U. S. 328.
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.
Me. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, General Electric Co., provides for all of its employees a disability plan which pays weekly nonoccupational sickness and accident benefits. Excluded from the plan’s coverage, however, are disabilities arising from pregnancy. Respondents, on behalf of a class of women employees, brought this action seeking, inter alia a declaration that this exclusion constitutes sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq. The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, following a trial on the merits, held that the exclusion of such pregnancy-related disability benefits from General Electric’s employee disability plan violated Title VII, 375 F. Supp. 367. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 519 F. 2d 661, and we granted certiorari, 423 U. S. 822. We now reverse.
I
As part of its total compensation package, General Electric provides nonoccupational sickness and accident benefits to all employees under its Weekly Sickness and Accident Insurance Plan (Plan) in an amount equal to 60% of an employee’s normal straight-time weekly earnings. These payments are paid to employees who become totally disabled as a result of a nonoccupational sickness or accident. Benefit payments normally start with the eighth day of an employee’s total disability (although if an employee is earlier confined to a hospital as a bed patient, benefit payments will start immediately), and continue up to a maximum of 26 weeks for any one continuous period of disability or successive periods of disability due to the same or related causes.
The individual named respondents are present or former hourly paid production employees at General Electric’s plant in Salem, Va. Each of these employees was pregnant during 1971 or 1972, while employed by General Electric and each presented a claim to the company for disability benefits under the Plan to cover the period while absent from work as a result of the pregnancy. These claims were routinely denied on the ground that the Plan did not provide disability-benefit payments for any absence due to pregnancy. Each of the respondents thereafter filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that the refusal of General Electric to pay disability benefits under the Plan for time lost due to pregnancy and childbirth discriminated against her because of sex. Upon waiting the requisite number of days, the instant action was commenced in the District Court. The complaint asserted a violation of Title VII. Damages were sought as well as an injunction directing General Electric to include pregnancy disabilities within the Plan on the same terms and conditions as other nonoccupational disabilities.
Following trial, the District Court made findings of fact and conclusions of law, and entered an order in which it determined that General Electric, by excluding pregnancy disabilities from the coverage of the Plan, had engaged in sex discrimination in violation of § 703 (a)(1) of Title VII, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (a)(1). The District Court found that normal pregnancy, while not necessarily either a “disease” or an “accident,” was disabling for a period of six to eight weeks; that approximately “[t]en per cent of pregnancies are terminated by miscarriage, which is disabling”; and that approximately 10% of pregnancies are complicated by diseases which may lead to additional disability. The District Court noted the evidence introduced during the trial, a good deal of it stipulated, concerning the relative cost to General Electric of providing benefits under the Plan to male and female employees, all of which indicated that, with pregnancy-related disabilities excluded, the cost of the Plan to General Electric per female employee was at least as high as, if not substantially higher than, the cost per male employee.
The District Court found that the inclusion of pregnancy-related disabilities within the scope of the Plan would “increase G. E.’s [disability benefits plan] costs by an amount which, though large, is at this time undeterminable.” 375 F. Supp., at 378.. The District Court declined to find that the present actuarial value of the coverage was equal as between men and women, but went on to decide that even had it found economic equivalence, such a finding would not in any case have justified the exclusion of pregnancy-related disabilities from an otherwise comprehensive nonoccupational sickness and accident disability plan. Regardless of whether the cost of including such benefits might make the Plan more costly for women than for men, the District Court determined that “[i]f Title VII intends to sexually equalize employment opportunity, there must be this one exception to the cost differential defense.” Id., at 383.
The ultimate conclusion of the District Court was that petitioner had discriminated on the basis of sex in the operation of its disability program in violation of Title VII, id., at 385-386. An order was entered enjoining petitioner,from continuing to exclude pregnancy-related disabilities from the coverage of the Plan, and providing for the future award of monetary relief to individual members of the class affected. Petitioner appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and that court by a divided vote affirmed the judgment of the District Court.
Between the date on which the District Court’s judgment was rendered and the time this case was decided by the Court of Appeals, we decided Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484 (1974), where we rejected a claim that a very similar disability program established under California law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because that plan’s exclusion of pregnancy disabilities represented sex discrimination. The majority of the Court of Appeals felt that Geduldig was not controlling because it arose under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and not under Title VII, 519 F. 2d, at 666-667. The dissenting opinion disagreed with the majority as to the impact of Geduldig, 519 F. 2d, at 668-669. We granted certiorari to consider this important issue in the construction of Title VII.
II
Section 703 (a)(1) provides in relevant part that it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer
“to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,'' 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (a)(1).
While there is no necessary inference that Congress, in choosing this language, intended to incorporate into Title VII the concepts of discrimination which have evolved from court decisions construing the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the similarities between the congressional language and some of those decisions surely indicate that the latter are a useful starting point in interpreting the former. /Particularly in the case of defining the term “discrimination, which Congress has nowhere in Title VII defined, those cases afford an existing body of law analyzing and discussing that term in a legal context not wholly dissimilar to the concerns which Congress manifested in enacting Title VII. \We think, therefore, that our decision in Geduldig v. Aiello, supra, dealing with a strikingly similar disability plan, is quite relevant in determining whether or not the pregnancy exclusion did discriminate on the basis of sex. In Geduldig, the disability insurance system was funded entirely from contributions deducted from the wages of participating employees, at a rate of 1% of the employee’s salary up to an annual maximum of $85. In other relevant respects, the operation of the program was similar to General Electric’s disability benefits plan, see 417 U. S., at 487-489.
We rejected appellee’s equal protection challenge to this statutory scheme. We first noted:
“We cannot agree that the exclusion of this disability from coverage amounts to invidious discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. California does not discriminate with respect to the persons or groups which are eligible for disability insurance protection under the program. The classification challenged in this case relates to the asserted underinclusiveness of the set of risks that the State has selected to insure.” Id., at 494.
This point was emphasized again, when later in the opinion we noted:
“[T]his case is thus a far cry from cases like Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971), and Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973), involving discrimination based upon gender as such. The California insurance program does not exclude anyone from benefit eligibility because of gender but merely removes one physical condition— pregnancy — from the list of compensable disabilities. While it is true that only women can become pregnant, it does not follow that every legislative classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification like those considered in Reed, supra, and Frontiero, supra. Normal pregnancy is an objectively identifiable physical condition with unique characteristics. Absent a showing that distinctions involving pregnancy are mere pretexts designed to effect an invidious discrimination against the members of one sex or the other, lawmakers are constitutionally free to include or exclude pregnancy from the coverage of legislation such as this on any reasonable basis, just as with respect to any other physical condition.
“The lack of identity between the excluded disability and gender as such under this insurance program becomes clear upon the most cursory analysis. The program divides potential recipients into two groups — pregnant women and nonpregnant persons. While the first group is exclusively female, the second includes members of both sexes.” Id., at 496-497, n. 20.
The quoted language from Geduldig leaves no doubt that our reason for rejecting appellee’s equal protection claim in that case was that the exclusion of pregnancy from coverage under California’s disability-benefits plan was not in itself discrimination based on sex.
We recognized in Geduldig, of course, that the fact that there was no sex-based discrimination as such was not the end of the analysis, should it be shown “that distinctions involving pregnancy are mere pretexts designed to effect an invidious discrimination against the members of one sex or the other,” ibid. But we noted that no semblance of such a showing had been made:
“There is no evidence in the record that the selection of the risks insured by the program worked to discriminate against any definable group or class in terms of the aggregate risk protection derived by that group or class from the program. There is no risk from which men are protected and women are not. Likewise, there is no risk from which women are protected and men are not.” Id., at 496-497.
Since gender-based discrimination had not been shown to exist either by the terms of the plan or by its effect, there was no need to reach the question of what sort of standard would govern our review had there been such a showing. See Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971).
The Court of Appeals was therefore wrong in concluding that the reasoning of Geduldig was not applicable to an action under Title VII. Since it is a finding of sex-based discrimination that must trigger, in a case such as this, the finding of an unlawful employment practice under § 703 (a)(1), Geduldig is precisely in point in its holding that an exclusion of pregnancy from a disability-benefits plan providing general coverage is not a gender-based discrimination at all.
There is no more showing in this case than there was in Geduldig that the exclusion of pregnancy benefits is a mere “pretext t] designed to effect an invidious discrimination against the members of one sex or the other.” The Court of Appeals expressed the view that the decision in Geduldig had actually turned on whether or not a conceded discrimination was “invidious” but we think that in so doing it misread the quoted language from our opinion. As we noted in that opinion, a distinction which on its face is not sex related might nonetheless violate the Equal Protection Clause if it were in fact a subterfuge to accomplish a forbidden discrimination. But we have here no question of excluding a disease or disability comparable in all other respects to covered diseases or disabilities and yet confined to the members of one race or sex. Pregnancy is, of course, confined to women, but it is in other ways significantly different from the typical covered disease or disability. The District Court found that it is not a “disease” at all, and is often a voluntarily undertaken and desired condition, 375 F. Supp., at 375, 377. We do not therefore infer that the exclusion of pregnancy disability benefits from petitioner’s plan is a simple pretext for discriminating against women.. The contrary arguments adopted by the lower courts and expounded by our dissenting Brethren were largely rejected in Geduldig.
The instant suit was grounded on Title VII rather than the Equal Protection Clause, and our cases recognize that a prima facie violation of Title VII can be established in some circumstances upon proof that the effect of an otherwise facially neutral plan or classification is to discriminate against members of one class or another. See Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 246-248 (1976). For example, in the context of a challenge, under the provisions of § 703 (a) (2), to a facially neutral employment test, this Court held that a prima facie case of discrimination would be established if, even absent proof of intent, the consequences of the test were “invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification,” Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424, 431 (1971). Even assuming that it is not necessary in this case to prove intent to establish a prima facie violation of § 703 (a)(1), but cf. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S. 792, 802-806 (1973), the respondents have not made the requisite showing of gender-based effects.
As in Geduldig, respondents have not attempted to meet the burden of demonstrating a gender-based discriminatory effect resulting from the exclusion of pregnancy-related disabilities from coverage. Whatever the ultimate probative value of the evidence introduced before the District Court on this subject in the instant case, at the very-least it tended to illustrate that the selection of risks covvered by the Plan did not operate, in fact, to discriminate against women. As in Geduldig, we start from the indisputable baseline that “[t]he fiscal and actuarial benefits of the program... accrue to members of both sexes,” 417 U. S., at 497 n. 20. We need not disturb the findings of the District Court to note that neither is there a finding, nor was there any evidence which would support a finding, that the financial benefits of the Plan “worked to discriminate against any definable group or class in terms of the aggregate risk protection derived by that group or class from the program,” id., at 496. The Plan, in effect (and for all that appears), is nothing more than an insurance package, which covers some risks, but excludes others, see id., at 494, 496-497. The “package” going to relevant identifiable groups we are presently concerned with — General Electric’s male and female employees — covers exactly the same categories of risk, and is facially nondiscriminatory in the sense that “[t]here is no risk from which men are protected and women are not. Likewise, there is no risk from which women are protected and men are not.” Id., at 496-497. As there is no proof that the package is in fact worth more to men than to women,pit is- impossible to find any gender-based discriminatory effect in this scheme simply because women disabled as a result of pregnancy do not receive benefits; that is to say, gender-based discrimination does not result simply because an employer’s disability-benefits plan is less than all-inclusive. For all that appears, pregnancy-related disabilities constitute an additional risk, unique to women, and the failure to compensate them for this risk does not destroy the presumed parity of the benefits, accruing to men and women alike, which results from the facially evenhanded inclusion of risks. To hold otherwise would endanger the commonsense notion that an employer who has no disability benefits program at all does not violate Title VII even though the “underinclusion” of risks impacts, as a result of pregnancy-related disabilities, more heavily upon one gender than upon the other. Just as there is no facial gender-based discrimination in that case, so, too, there is none here.
Ill
We are told, however, that this analysis of the congressional purpose underlying Title VII is inconsistent with the guidelines of the EEOC, which, it is asserted, are entitled to “great deference” in the construction of the Act, Griggs, 401 U. S., at 433-434; Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., 400 U. S. 542, 545 (1971) (Marshall, J., concurring). The guideline upon which respondents rely most heavily was promulgated in 1972, and states in pertinent part:
“Disabilities caused or contributed to by pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, childbirth, and recovery therefrom are, for all job-related purposes, temporary disabilities and should be treated as such under any health or temporary disability insurance or sick leave plan available in connection with employment.... [Benefits] shall be applied to disability due to pregnancy or childbirth on the same terms and conditions as they are applied to other temporary disabilities.” 29 CFR § 1604.10 (b) (1975).
In evaluating this contention it should first be noted that Congress, in enacting Title VII, did not confer upon the EEOC authority to promulgate rules or regulations pursuant to that Title. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 431 (1975). This does not mean that EEOC guidelines are not entitled to consideration in determining legislative intent, see Albemarle, supra; Griggs v. Duke Power Co., supra, at 433-434; Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U. S. 86, 94 (1973). But it does mean that courts properly may accord less weight to such guidelines than to administrative regulations which Congress has declared shall have the force of law, see Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U. S. 481, 484 (1942), or to regulations which under the enabling statute may themselves supply the basis for imposition of liability, see, e. g., § 23 (a), Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78w (a). The most comprehensive statement of the role of interpretative rulings such as the EEOC guidelines is found in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140 (1944), where the Court said:
“We consider that the rulings, interpretations and opinions of the Administrator under this Act, while not controlling upon the courts by reason of their authority, do constitute a body of experience and informed judgment to which courts and litigants may properly resort for guidance. The weight of such a judgment in a particular case will depend upon the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking power to control.”
The EEOC guideline in question does not fare well under these standards. It is not a contemporaneous interpretation of Title VII, since it was first promulgated eight years after the enactment of that Title. More importantly, the 1972 guideline flatly contradicts the position which the agency had enunciated at an earlier date, closer to the enactment of the governing statute. An opinion letter by the General Counsel of the EEOC, dated October 17, 1966, states:
“You have requested our opinion whether the above exclusion of pregnancy and childbirth as a disability under the long-term salary continuation plan would be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“In a recent opinion letter regarding pregnancy, we have stated, ‘The Commission policy in this area does not seek to compare an employer’s treatment of illness or injury with his treatment of maternity since maternity is a temporary disability unique to the female sex and more or less to be anticipated during the working life of most women employees.’ Therefore, it is our opinion that according to the facts stated above, a company’s group insurance program which covers hospital and medical expenses for the delivery of employees’ children, but excludes from its long-term salary continuation program those disabilities which result from pregnancy and childbirth would not be in violation of Title VII.” App. 721-722.
A few weeks later, in an opinion letter expressly issued pursuant to 29 CFR § 1601.30 (1975), the EEOC’s position was that “an insurance or other benefit plan may simply exclude maternity as a covered risk, and such an exclusion would not in our view be discriminatory,” App. 735.
We have declined to follow administrative guidelines in the past where they conflicted with earlier pronouncements of the agency. United Housing Foundation, Inc. v. Forman, 421 U. S. 837, 858-859, n. 25 (1975); Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., supra, at 92-96. In short, while we do not wholly discount the weight to be given the 1972 guideline, it does not receive high marks when judged by the standards enunciated in Skidmore, supra.
There are also persuasive indications that the more recent EEOC guideline sharply conflicts with other indicia of the proper interpretation of the sex-discrimination provisions of Title VII. The legislative history of Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination is notable primarily for its brevity. Even so, however, Congress paid especial attention to the provisions of the Equal Pay Act, 29 U. S. C. § 206(d), when it amended § 703 (h) of Title VII by adding the following sentence:
“It shall not be an unlawful employment practice under this subchapter for any employer to differentiate upon the basis of sex in determining the amount of the wages or compensation paid or to be paid to employees of such employer if such differentiation is authorized by the provisions of section 206 (d) of Title 29.” 42 U. S. C. §2000^-2 (h).
This sentence was proposed as the Bennett Amendment to the Senate bill, 110 Cong. Rec. 13647 (1964), and Senator Humphrey, the floor manager of the bill, stated that the purpose of the amendment was to make it “unmistakably clear” that “differences of treatment in industrial benefit plans, including earlier retirement options for women, may continue in operation under this bill, if it becomes law,” id., at 13663-13664. Because of this amendment, interpretations of § 6 (d) of the Equal Pay Act are applicable to Title VII as well, and an interpretive regulation promulgated by the Wage and Hour Administrator under the Equal Pay Act explicitly states:
“If employer contributions to a plan providing insurance or similar benefits to employees are equal for both men and women, no wage differential prohibited by the equal pay provisions will result from such payments, even though the benefits which accrue to the employees in question are greater for one sex than for the other. The mere fact that the employer may make unequal contributions for employees of opposite sexes in such a situation will not, however, be considered to indicate that the employer’s payments are in violation of section 6 (d), if the resulting benefits are equal for such employees.” 29 CFR § 800.116 (d) (1975).
Thus, even if we were to depend for our construction of the critical language of Title YII solely on the basis of “deference” to interpretative regulations by the appropriate administrative agencies, we would find ourselves pointed in diametrically opposite directions by the conflicting regulations of the EEOC, on the one hand, and the Wage and Hour Administrator, on the other. Petitioner’s exclusion of benefits for pregnancy disability would be declared an unlawful employment practice under §703 (a)(1), but would be declared not to be an unlawful employment practice under § 703 (h).
We are not reduced to such total abdication in construing the statute. The EEOC guideline of 1972, conflicting as it does with earlier pronouncements of that agency, and containing no suggestion that some new source of legislative history had been discovered in the intervening eight years, stands virtually alone. Contrary to it are the consistent interpretation of the Wage and Hour Administrator, and the quoted language of Senator Humphrey, the floor manager of Title VII in the Senate. They support what seems to us to be the “plain meaning” of the language used by Congress when it enacted §703 (a)(1).
The concept of “discrimination,” of course, was well known at the time of the enactment of Title VII, having been associated with the Fourteenth Amendment for nearly a century, and carrying with it a long history of judicial construction. When Congress makes it unlawful for an employer to “discriminate... because of... sex...,” without further explanation of its meaning, we should not readily infer that it meant something different from what the concept of discrimination has traditionally meant, cf. Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 549 (1974); Ozawa v. United States, 260 U. S. 178, 193 (1922). There is surely no reason for any such inference here, see Gemsco v. Walling, 324 U. S. 244, 260 (1945).
We therefore agree with petitioner that its disability-benefits plan does not violate Title VII because of its failure to cover pregnancy-related disabilities. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
All the parties to the suit joined in petitioning for a writ of certiorari. General Electric was the moving party before the Court of Appeals, where the judgment of the District Court was affirmed. The parties have agreed that General Electric is to be deemed the petitioner for purposes of briefing and oral argument, a convention we adopt for the writing of this opinion.
Respondents also represent a class of women employees who have been denied such benefits since September 14, 1971, and seek damages arising from this denial.
With respect to the Plan, General Electric is, In effect, a self-insurer. While General Electric has obtained, for employees outside California, an insurance policy from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., this policy involves the payment of a tentative premium only, subject to adjustment in the light of actual experience. Pretrial Stipulation of Facts, ¶ 11, App. 176-176. In effect, -therefore, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. is used to provide the administrative service of processing claims, while General Electric remains, for all practical purposes, a self-insurer.
Additionally, benefit payment coverage under the Plan for all disabilities, whether or not related to pregnancy, terminates “on the date you cease active work because of total disability or pregnancy, except that if you are entitled to Weekly Benefits for a disability existing on such date of cessation” benefit payments will be continued in accordance with the provisions of the Plan. In cases of personal leave, layoff, or strike, however, the coverage for future nonoccupational sickness or accident disability is continued for 31 days, ibid.
In the case of respondent Emma Furch, who took a pregnancy leave on April 7, 1972, and who was hospitalized with a non-pregnancy-related pulmonary embolism on April 21, 1972, a claim was filed for disability benefits under the Plan solely for the period of absence due to the pulmonary embolism. The claim was rejected “since such benefits have been discontinued in accordance with the provisions of the General Electric Insurance Plan.”
Plaintiffs in the action were seven female employees; the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, AFL-CIO-CLC (IUE); and the latter’s affiliate, Local 161, which is a joint collective-bargaining representative, with the IUE, of the hourly paid production and maintenance employees at General Electric’s Salem, Va., plant.
The District Court made the following “specific findings”:
“1. While pregnancy is perhaps most often voluntary, a substantial incidence of negligent or accidental conception also occurs.
“2. Pregnancy, per se, is not a disease.
“3. A pregnancy without complications is normally disabling for a period of six to eight weeks, which time includes the period from labor and delivery, or slightly before, through several weeks of recuperation.” 375 F. Supp. 367, 377.
Ibid.
“Five percent of pregnancies are complicated by diseases which are found in nonpregnant persons but which may have been stimulated by pregnancy. Five percent of pregnancies are complicated by pregnancy-related diseases. These complications are diseases which may lead to disability.” Ibid.
The District Court included in its opinion the following charts from a stipulation dated July 24,1973:
“143. During 1970, GE’s experience, by sex, with respect to claims under
its weekly sickness and accident disability insurance coverage was as follows:
Male Female
No. of claims (new) 19,045 15,509
Average duration of claim 48 days 52 days
No. of new claims per thousand employees 77 173
Average No. of employees covered 246,492 89,705
Total benefits paid $11,279,110 $7,405,790
Average cost per insured employee of total benefits paid $45.76 $82.57
“144. During 1971, GE's experience, by sex, with respect to claims under its weekly sickness and accident disability insurance coverage was as follows:
Male Female
No. of claims (new) 22,987 17,719
Average duration of claim 47 days 52 days
No. of new claims per thousand employees 99 217
Average No. of employees covered 231,026 81,469
Total benefits paid $14,343,000 $9,191,195
Average cost per insured employee of total benefits paid $62.08 $112.91”
Ibid.
At trial, General Electric introduced, in addition to the material cited in n. 9, supra, the testimony of Paul Jackson, an actuary, who calculated that the Plan presently “costs 170% more for females than males....” Id., at 378.
“The present plan is objectionable in that it excludes from coverage a unique disability which affects only members of the female sex, while no suggestion is made to exclude disabilities which can be said to affect only males. Additionally, the Court gives no weight to the suggestion that the actuarial value of the coverage now provided is equalized as between men and women. Defenses must be bottomed on evidence, and such, in this regard, is lacking here.
“Whatever inferences may be suggested by the statistical data presented, the Court simply cannot presume to draw any precise conclusions as to the actuarial value of the coverage provided under the present plan, or the effect of including pregnancy related disabilities on the basis of that limited data.” Id., at 382-383.
As noted, supra, at 127 n. 1, this is a joint petition. Respondents have presented several additional questions, not all of which merit treatment in this opinion. We have concluded that they are all without merit.
This subsection provides that it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer
“(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2 (a) (2).
Respondents, who seek to establish discrimination, have the traditional civil litigation burden of establishing that the acts they complain of constituted discrimination in violation of Title VII. Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 425 (1975); McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U. S., at 802. In Griggs, the burden placed on the employer “of showing that any given requirement must have a manifest relationship to the employment in question,” 401 U. S., at 432, did not arise until discriminatory effect had been shown, Albemarle, supra, at 425.
Absent a showing of gender-based discrimination, as that term is defined in Geduldig, or a showing of gender-based effect, there can be no violation of §703 (a)(1).
That General Electric self-insures does not change the fact that it is, in effect, acting as an insurer, just as the State of California was acting in Geduldig, 417 U. S., at 492.
Absent proof of different values, the cost to “insure” against the risks is, in essence, nothing more than extra compensation to the employees, in the form of fringe benefits. If the employer were to remove the insurance fringe benefits and, instead, increase wages by an amount equal to the cost of the “insurance,” there would clearly be no gender-based discrimination, even though a female employee who wished to purchase disability insurance that covered all risks would have to pay more than would a male employee who purchased identical disability insurance, due to the fact that her insurance had to cover the “extra” disabilities due to pregnancy. While respondents seem to acknowledge that the failure to provide any benefit plan at all would not constitute sex-based discrimination in violation of Title VII, see n. 18, infra, they illogically also suggest that the present scheme does violate Title VII because:
“A female must spend her own money to buy a personal disability policy covering pregnancy disability if she wants to be fully insured against a period of disability without income, whereas a male without extra expenditure is fully insured by GE against every period of disability.” Supplemental Brief for Respondents on Reargumient 11. Yet, in both cases — the instant case and the case where there is no disability coverage at all — the ultimate result is that a woman who wished to be fully insured would have to pay an incremental amount over her male counterpart due solely to the possibility of pregnancy-related disabilities. Title VIFs proscription on discrimination does not, in either case, require the employer to pay that incremental amount. The District Court was wrong in assuming, as it did, 375 F. Supp., at 383, that Title VII’s ban on employment discrimination necessarily means that “greater economic benefit [s]” must be required to be paid to one sex or the other because of their differing roles in “the scheme of human existence.”
Respondents tacitly admit that this, situation would not violate Title VII. They acknowledge that “GE had no obligation to establish any fringe benefit program,” Brief for Respondents 143. Moreover, the difficulty with their contention that General Electric engaged in impermissible sex discrimination is vividly - portrayed in their closing suggestion that “[i]f paying for pregnancy discriminates within the sphere of classification by sex, so does the failure to pay,” Response of Respondents to Reply Brief for Petitioner on Reargument 7. As that statement, and its converse, indicate, perceiving the issue in terms of “sex discrimination” quickly places resolution of this issue into a no-win situation. See also Supplemental Brief for Respondents on Reargument 59 (“[W]e believe that imposing on employees either unequal costs when benefits are equal or unequal benefits when costs are equal violates the right of each individual employee to be treated equally with each individual employee of the opposite sex...”). Troublesome interpretative problems such as this reinforce our belief that Congress, in prohibiting sex-based discrimination in Title VII, did not intend to depart from the longstanding meaning of “discrimination,” cf. Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 U. S. 535, 548-549 (1972).
The other regulation cited by respondents, 29 CFR § 1604.9 (b) (1975), simply restates the statutory proposition that it is an unlawful employment practice to discriminate “between men and women with regard to fringe benefits.”
The EEOC has been given “
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 an opinion, in which The Chief Justice and Justice Alito join.
This case requires us to interpret §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,79 Stat. 487, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973 (2000 ed.). The question is whether the statute can be invoked to require state officials to draw election-district lines to allow a racial minority to join with other voters to elect the minority’s candidate of choice, even where the racial minority is less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the district to be drawn. To use election-law terminology: In a district that is not a majority-minority district, if a racial minority could elect its candidate of choice with support from crossover majority voters, can § 2 require the district to be drawn to accommodate this potential?
I
The ease arises in a somewhat unusual posture. State authorities who created a district now invoke the Voting Rights Act as a defense. They argue that §2 required them to draw the district in question in a particular way, despite state laws to the contrary. The state laws are provisions of the North Carolina Constitution that prohibit the General Assembly from dividing counties when drawing legislative districts for the State House and Senate. Art. II, §§3, 5. We will adopt the term used by the state courts and refer to both sections of the State Constitution as the Whole County Provision. See Pender County v. Bartlett, 361 N. C. 491, 493, 649 S. E. 2d 364, 366 (2007) (case below).
It is common ground that state election-law requirements like the Whole County Provision may be superseded by federal law — for instance, the one-person, one-vote principle of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964). Here the question is whether §2 of the Voting Rights Act requires district lines to be drawn that otherwise would violate the Whole County Provision. That, in turn, depends on how the statute is interpreted.
We begin with the election district. The North Carolina House of Representatives is the larger of the two chambers in the State’s General Assembly. District 18 of that body lies in the southeastern part of North Carolina. Starting in 1991, the General Assembly drew District 18 to include portions of four counties, including Pender County, in order to create a district with a majority African-American voting-age population and to satisfy the Voting Rights Act. Following the 2000 census, the North Carolina Supreme Court, to comply with the Whole County Provision, rejected the General Assembly’s first two statewide redistricting plans. See Stephenson v. Bartlett, 355 N. C. 354, 375, 562 S. E. 2d 377, 392, stay denied, 535 U. S. 1301 (2002) (Rehnquist, C. J., in chambers); Stephenson v. Bartlett, 357 N. C. 301, 314, 582 S. E. 2d 247, 254 (2003).
District 18 in its present form emerged from the General Assembly’s third redistricting attempt, in 2003. By that time the African-American voting-age population had fallen below 50 percent in the district as then drawn, and the General Assembly no longer could draw a geographically compact majority-minority district. Rather than draw District 18 to keep Pender County whole, however, the General Assembly drew it by splitting portions of Pender and New Hanover counties. District 18 has an African-American voting-age population of 39.36 percent. App. 139. Had it left Pender County whole, the General Assembly could have drawn District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 35.33 percent. Id., at 73. The General Assembly’s reason for splitting Pender County was to give African-American voters the potential to join with majority voters to elect the minority group’s candidate of its choice. Ibid. Failure to do so, state officials now submit, would have diluted the minority group’s voting strength in violation of § 2.
In May 2004, Pender County and the five members of its board of commissioners filed the instant suit in North Carolina state court against the Governor of North Carolina, the Director of the State Board of Elections, and other state officials. The plaintiffs alleged that the 2003 plan violated the Whole County Provision by splitting Pender County into two House districts. Id., at 5-14. The state-official defendants answered that dividing Pender County was required by § 2. Id., at 25. As the trial court recognized, the procedural posture of this case differs from most §2 cases. Here the defendants raise § 2 as a defense. As a result, the trial court stated, they are “in the unusual position” of bearing the burden of proving that a §2 violation would have occurred absent splitting Pender County to draw District 18. App. to Pet. for Cert, 90a.
The trial court first considered whether the defendant state officials had established the three threshold requirements for § 2 liability under Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 50-51 (1986) — namely, (1) that the minority group “is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district,” (2) that the minority group is “politically cohesive,” and (3) “that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it... usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”
As to the first Gingles requirement, the trial court concluded that, although African-Americans were not a majority of the voting-age population in District 18, the district was a “de facto” majority-minority district because African-Americans could get enough support from crossover majority voters to elect the African-Americans’ preferred candidate. The court ruled that African-Americans in District 18 were politically cohesive, thus satisfying the second requirement. And later, the plaintiffs stipulated that the third Gingles requirement was met. App. to Pet. for Cert. 102a-103a, 130a. The court then determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that §2 required the General Assembly to split Pender County. The court sustained the lines for District 18 on that rationale. Id., at 116a-118a.
Three of the Pender County Commissioners appealed the trial court’s ruling that the defendants had established the first Gingles requirement. The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed. It held that a “minority group must constitute a numerical majority of the voting population in the area under consideration before Section 2... requires the creation of a legislative district to prevent dilution of the votes of that minority group.” 361 N. C., at 502, 649 S. E. 2d, at 371. On that premise the State Supreme Court determined District 18 was not mandated by § 2 because African-Americans do not “constitute a numerical majority of citizens of voting age.” Id., at 507, 649 S. E. 2d, at 374. It ordered the General Assembly to redraw District 18. Id,., at 510, 649 S. E. 2d, at 376.
We granted certiorari, 552 U. S. 1256 (2008), and now affirm.
II
Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was an important step in the struggle to end discriminatory treatment of minorities who seek to exercise one of the most fundamental rights of our citizens: the right to vote. Though the Act as a whole was the subject of debate and controversy, §2 prompted little criticism. The likely explanation for its general acceptance is that, as first enacted, §2 tracked, in part, the text of the Fifteenth Amendment. It prohibited practices “imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 79 Stat. 437; cf. U. S. Const., Arndt. 15 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”); see also S. Rep. No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 19-20 (1965). In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 60-61 (1980), this Court held that §2, as it then read, “no more than elaborates upon... the Fifteenth Amendment” and was “intended to have an effect no different from that of the Fifteenth Amendment itself.”
In 1982, after the Mobile ruling, Congress amended §2, giving the statute its current form. The original Act had employed an intent requirement, prohibiting only those practices “imposed or applied... to deny or abridge” the right to vote. 79 Stat. 437. The amended version of § 2 requires consideration of effects, as it prohibits practices “imposed or applied... in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment” of the right to vote. 96 Stat. 134, 42 U. S. C. § 1973(a) (2000 ed.). The 1982 amendments also added a subsection, §2(b), providing a test for determining whether a §2 violation has occurred. The relevant text of the statute now states:
“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color [or membership in a language minority group], as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
“(b) A violation of subsection (a) of this section is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) of this section in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U.S. C. §1973.
This Court first construed the amended version of §2 in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). In Gingles, the plaintiffs were African-American residents of North Carolina who alleged that multimember districts diluted minority voting strength by submerging black voters into the white majority, denying them an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. The Court identified three “necessary preconditions” for a claim that the use of multimember districts constituted actionable vote dilution under § 2: (1) The minority group must be “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district,” (2) the minority group must be “politically cohesive,” and (3) the majority must vote “sufficiently as a bloc to enable it... usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Id., at 50-51.
The Court later held that the three Gingles requirements apply equally in § 2 cases involving single-member districts, such as a claim alleging vote dilution because a geographically compact minority group has been split between two or more single-member districts. Growe v. Emison, 507 U. S. 25, 40-41 (1993). In a §2 case, only when a party has established the Gingles requirements does a court proceed to analyze whether a violation has occurred based on the totality of the circumstances. Gingles, supra, at 79; see also Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U. S. 997, 1013 (1994).
Ill
A
This case turns on whether the first Gingles requirement can be satisfied when the minority group makes up less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the potential election district. The parties agree on all other parts of the Gingles analysis, so the dispositive question is: What size minority group is sufficient to satisfy the first Gingles requirement?
At the outset the answer might not appear difficult to reach, for the Gingles Court said the minority group must “demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” 478 U. S., at 50. This would seem to end the matter, as it indicates the minority group must demonstrate it can constitute “a majority.” But in Gingles and again in Growe the Court reserved what it considered to be a separate question — whether, “when a plaintiff alleges that a voting practice or procedure impairs a minority’s ability to influence, rather than alter, election results, a showing of geographical compactness of a minority group not sufficiently large to constitute a majority will suffice.” Growe, supra, at 41, n. 5; see also Gingles, supra, at 46-47, n. 12. The Court has since applied the Gingles requirements in §2 eases but has declined to decide the minimum size minority group necessary to satisfy the first requirement. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 154 (1993); De Grandy, supra, at 1009; League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 443 (2006) (LULAC) (opinion of Kennedy, J.). We must consider the minimum-size question in this case.
It is appropriate to review the terminology often used to describe various features of election districts in relation to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. In majority-minority districts, a minority group composes a numerical, working majority of the voting-age population. Under present doctrine, §2 can require the creation of these districts. See, e. g., Voinovich, supra, at 154 (“Placing black voters in a district in which they constitute a sizeable and therefore ‘safe’ majority ensures that they are able to elect their candidate of choice”); but see Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 922-923 (1994) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). At the other end of the spectrum are influence districts, in which a minority group can influence the outcome of an election even if its preferred candidate cannot be elected. This Court has held that § 2 does not require the creation of influénee districts. LULAC, supra, at 445 (opinion of Kennedy, J.).
The present case involves an intermediate type of district — a so-called crossover district. Like an influence district, a crossover district is one in which minority voters make up less than a majority of the voting-age population. But in a crossover district, the minority population, at least potentially, is large enough to elect the candidate of its choice with help from voters who are members of the majority and who cross over to support the minority’s preferred candidate. 361 N. C., at 501-502, 649 S. E. 2d, at 371 (case below). This Court has referred sometimes to crossover districts as “coalitional” districts, in recognition of the necessary coalition between minority and crossover majority voters. See Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U. S. 461, 483 (2003); see also Pildes, Is Voting Rights Law Now at War With Itself? Social Science and Voting Rights in the 2000s, 80 N. C. L. Rev. 1517, 1539 (2002) (hereinafter Pildes). But that term risks confusion with coalition-district claims in which two minority groups form a coalition to elect the candidate of the coalition’s choice. See, e. g., Nixon v. Kent County, 76 F. 3d 1381, 1393 (CA6 1996) (en bane). We do not address that type of coalition district here. The petitioners in the present case (the state officials who were the defendants in the trial court) argue that §2 requires a crossover district, in which minority voters might be able to persuade some members of the majority to cross over and join with them.
Petitioners argue that although crossover districts do not include a numerical majority of minority voters, they still satisfy the first Gingles requirement because they are “effective minority districts.” Under petitioners’ theory keeping Pender County whole would have violated §2 by cracking the potential crossover district that they drew as District 18. See Gingles, supra, at 46, n. 11 (vote dilution “may be caused by the dispersal of blacks into districts in which they constitute an ineffective minority of voters”). So, petitioners contend, §2 required them to override state law and split Pender County, drawing District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 39.36 percent rather than keeping Pender County whole and leaving District 18 with an African-American voting-age population of 35.33 percent. We reject that claim.
First, we conclude, petitioners’ theory is contrary to the mandate of § 2. The statute requires a showing that minorities “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to... elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.). But because they form only 39 percent of the voting-age population in District 18, African-Americans standing alone have no better or worse opportunity to elect a candidate than does any other group of voters with the same relative voting strength. That is, African-Americans in District 18 have the opportunity to join other voters — including other racial minorities, or whites, or both — to reach a majority and elect their preferred candidate. They cannot, however, elect that candidate based on their own votes and without assistance from others. Recognizing a § 2 claim in this circumstance would grant minority voters “a right to preserve their strength for the purposes of forging an advantageous political alliance.” Hall v. Virginia, 385 F. 3d 421, 431 (CA4 2004); see also Voinovich, 507 U. S., at 154 (minorities in crossover districts “could not dictate electoral outcomes independently”). Nothing in §2 grants special protection to a minority group’s right to form political coalitions. “[Minority voters are not immune from the obligation to pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground.” De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1020.
Although the Court has reserved the question we confront today and has cautioned that the Gingles requirements “cannot be applied mechanically,” Voinovich, supra, at 158, the reasoning of our cases does not support petitioners’ claims. Section 2 does not impose on those who draw election districts a duty to give minority voters the most potential, or the best potential, to elect a candidate by attracting crossover voters. In setting out the first requirement for §2 claims, the Gingles Court explained that “[ujnless minority voters possess the potential to elect representatives in the absence of the challenged structure or practice, they cannot claim to have been injured by that structure or practice.” 478 U. S., at 50, n. 17. The Growe Court stated that the first Gingles requirement is “needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district.” 507 U. S., at 40. Without such a showing, “there neither has been a wrong nor can be a remedy.” Id., at 41. There is a difference between a racial minority group’s “own choice” and the choice made by a coalition. In Voinovich, the Court stated that the first Gingles requirement “would have to be modified or eliminated” to allow crossover-district claims. 507 U. S., at 158. Only once, in dicta, has this Court framed the first Gingles requirement as anything other than a majority-minority rule. See De Grandy, 512 U. S., at 1008 (requiring “a sufficiently large minority population to elect candidates of its choice”). And in the same case, the Court rejected the proposition, inherent in petitioners’ claim here, that § 2 entities minority groups to the maximum possible voting strength:
“[Rjeading §2 to define dilution as any failure to maximize tends to obscure the very object of the statute and to run counter to its textually stated purpose. One may suspect vote dilution from political famine, but one is not entitled to suspect (much less infer) dilution from mere failure to guarantee a political feast.” Id., at 1016-1017.
Allowing crossover-district claims would require us to revise and reformulate the Gingles threshold inquiry that has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence. Mandatory recognition of claims in which success for a minority depends upon crossover majority voters would create serious tension with the third Gingles requirement that the majority votes as a bloc to defeat minority-preferred candidates. It is difficult to see how the majority-bloc-voting requirement could be met in a district where, by definition, white voters join in sufficient numbers with minority voters to elect the minority’s preferred candidate. (We are skeptical that the bloc-voting test could be satisfied here, for example, where minority voters in District 18 cannot elect their candidate of choice without support from almost 20 percent of white voters. We do not confront that issue, however, because for some reason respondents conceded the third Gingles requirement in state court.)
As the Gingles Court explained, “in the absence of significant white bloc voting it cannot be said that the ability of minority voters to elect their chosen representatives is inferior to that of white voters.” 478 U. S., at 49, n. 15. Were the Court to adopt petitioners’ theory and dispense with the majority-minority requirement, the ruling would call in question the Gingles framework the Court has applied under §2. See LULAC, 548 U. S., at 490, n. 8. (Souter, X, concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“All aspects of our established analysis for majority-minority districts in Gingles and its progeny may have to be rethought in analyzing ostensible coalition districts”); cf. Metts v. Murphy, 363 F. 3d 8, 12 (CA1 2004) (en banc) (per curiam) (allowing influence-district claim to survive motion to dismiss but noting “there is tension in this case for plaintiffs in any effort to satisfy both the first and third prong of Gingles”).
We find support for the majority-minority requirement in the need for workable standards and sound judicial and legislative administration. The rule draws clear lines for courts and legislatures alike. The same cannot be said of a less exacting standard that would mandate crossover districts under § 2. Determining whether a § 2 claim would lie — i. e,, determining whether potential districts could function as crossover districts — would place courts in the untenable position of predicting many political variables and tying them to race-based assumptions. The Judiciary would be directed to make predictions or adopt premises that even experienced polling analysts and political experts could not assess with certainty, particularly over the long term. For example, courts would be required to pursue these inquiries: What percentage of white voters supported minority-preferred candidates in the past? How reliable would the crossover votes be in future elections? What types of candidates have white and minority voters supported together in the past and will those trends continue? Were past crossover votes based on incumbency and did that depend on race? What are the historical turnout rates among white and minority voters and will they stay the same? Those questions are speculative, and the answers (if they could be supposed) would prove elusive. A requirement to draw election districts on answers to these and like inquiries ought not to be inferred from the text or purpose of § 2. Though courts are capable of making refined and exacting factual inquiries, they “are inherently ill-equipped” to “make decisions based on highly political judgments” of the sort that crossover-district claims would require. Holder, 512 U. S., at 894 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). There is an underlying principle of fundamental importance: We must be most cautious before interpreting a statute to require courts to make inquiries based on racial classifications and race-based predictions. The statutory mandate petitioners urge us to find in § 2 raises serious constitutional questions. See infra, at 21-23.
Heightening these concerns even further is the fact that §2 applies nationwide to every jurisdiction that must draw lines for election districts required by state or local law. Crossover-district claims would require courts to make predictive political judgments not only about familiar, two-party contests in large districts but also about regional and local jurisdictions that often feature more than two parties or candidates. Under petitioners’ view courts would face the difficult task of discerning crossover patterns in nonpartisan contests for a city commission, a school board, or a local water authority. The political data necessary to make such determinations are nonexistent for elections in most of those jurisdictions. And predictions would be speculative at best given that, especially in the context of local elections, voters’ personal affiliations with candidates and views on particular issues can play a large role.
Unlike any of the standards proposed to allow crossover-district claims, the majority-minority rule relies on an objective, numerical test: Do minorities make up more than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the relevant geographic area? That rule provides straightforward guidance to courts and to those officials charged with drawing district lines to comply with §2. See LULAC, supra, at 485 (opinion of Souter, J.) (recognizing need for “clear-edged rule”). Where an election district could be drawn in which minority voters form a majority but such a district is not drawn, or where a majority-minority district is cracked by assigning some voters elsewhere, then — assuming the other Gingles factors are also satisfied — denial of the opportunity to elect a candidate of choice is a present and discernible wrong that is not subject to the high degree of speculation and prediction attendant upon the analysis of crossover claims. Not an arbitrary invention, the majority-minority rule has its foundation in principles of democratic governance. The special significance, in the democratic process, of a majority means it is a special wrong when a minority group has 50 percent or more of the voting population and could constitute a compact voting majority but, despite racially polarized bloc voting, that group is not put into a district.
Given the text of § 2, our cases interpreting that provision, and the many difficulties in assessing §2 claims without the restraint and guidance provided by the majority-minority rule, no federal court of appeals has held that §2 requires creation of coalition districts. Instead, all to consider the question have interpreted the first Gingles factor to require a majority-minority standard. See Hall, 385 F. 3d, at 427-430 (CA4 2004), cert. denied, 544 U. S. 961 (2005); Valdespino v. Alamo Heights Independent School Dist., 168 F. 3d 848, 852-853 (CA5 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1114 (2000); Cousin v. Sundquist, 145 F. 3d 818, 828-829 (CA6 1998), cert. denied, 525 U. S. 1138 (1999); Sanchez v. Colorado, 97 F. 3d 1303, 1311-1312 (CA10 1996), cert. denied, 520 U. S. 1229 (1997); Romero v. Pomona, 883 F. 2d 1418, 1424, n. 7, 1425-1426 (CA9 1989), overruled on other grounds, 914 F. 2d 1136, 1141 (CA9 1990); McNeil v. Springfield Park Dist., 851 F. 2d 937, 947 (CA7 1988), cert. denied, 490 U. S. 1031 (1989). Cf. Metts, supra, at 11 (expressing unwillingness “at the complaint stage to foreclose the possibility” of influence-district claims). We decline to depart from the uniform interpretation of § 2 that has guided federal courts and state and local officials for more than 20 years.
To be sure, the Gingles requirements “cannot be applied mechanically and without regard to the nature of the claim.” Voinovich, 507 U. S., at 158. It remains the rule, however, that a party asserting § 2 liability must show by a preponderanee of the evidence that the minority population in the potential election district is greater than 50 percent. No one contends that the African-American voting-age population in District 18 exceeds that threshold. Nor does this case involve allegations of intentional and wrongful conduct. We therefore need not consider whether intentional discrimination affects the Gingles analysis. Cf. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 14 (evidence of discriminatory intent “tends to suggest that the jurisdiction is not providing an equal opportunity to minority voters to elect the representative of their choice, and it is therefore unnecessary to consider the majority-minority requirement before proceeding to the ultimate totality-of-the-circumstanees analysis”); see also Garza v. County of Los Angeles, 918 F. 2d 763, 771 (CA9 1990). Our holding does not apply to cases in which there is intentional discrimination against a racial minority.
B
In arguing for a less restrictive interpretation of the first Gingles requirement petitioners point to the text of §2 and its guarantee that political processes be “equally open to participation” to protect minority voters’ “opportunity... to elect representatives of their choice.” 42 U. S. C. § 1973(b) (2000 ed.). An “opportunity,” petitioners argue, occurs in crossover districts as well as majority-minority districts; and these extended opportunities, they say, require §2 protection.
But petitioners put emphasis on the word “opportunity” at the expense of the word “equally.” The statute does not protect any possible opportunity or mechanism through which minority voters could work with other constituencies to elect their candidate of choice. Section 2 does not guarantee minority voters an electoral advantage. Minority groups in crossover districts cannot form a voting majority without crossover voters. In those districts minority voters have the same opportunity to elect their candidate as any other political group with the same relative voting strength.
The majority-minority rule, furthermore, is not at odds with §2’s totality-of-the-circumstances test. The Court in De Grandy confirmed “the error of treating the three Gingles conditions as exhausting the enquiry required by §2.” 512 U. S., at 1018. Instead the Gingles requirements are preconditions, consistent with the text and purpose of § 2, to help courts determine which claims could meet the totality-of-the-circumstances standard for a § 2 violation. See Growe, 507 U. S., at 40 (describing the “Gingles threshold factors”).
To the extent there is any doubt whether § 2 calls for the majority-minority rule, we resolve that doubt by avoiding serious constitutional concerns under the Equal Protection Clause. See Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371, 381-382 (2005) (canon of constitutional avoidance is “a tool for choosing between competing plausible interpretations of a statutory text, resting on the reasonable presumption that Congress did not intend the alternative which raises serious constitutional doubts”). Of course, the “moral imperative of racial neutrality is the driving force of the Equal Protection Clause,” and racial classifications are permitted only “as a last resort.” Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 518, 519 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). “Racial classifications with respect to voting earry particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters — a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to aspire.” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 657 (1993). If §2 were interpreted to require crossover districts throughout the Nation, “it would unnecessarily infuse race into virtually every redistricting, raising serious constitutional questions.” LULAC, 548 U. S., at 446 (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see also Ashcroft, 539 U. S., at 491 (Kennedy, J., concurring). That interpretation would result in a substantial increase in the number of mandatory districts drawn with race as “the predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision.” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 916 (1995).
On petitioners’ view of the case courts and legislatures would need to scrutinize every factor that enters into districting to gauge its effect on crossover voting. Injecting this racial measure into the nationwide districting process would be of particular concern with respect to consideration of party registration or party influence. The easiest and most likely alliance for a group of minority voters is one with a political party, and some have suggested using minority voters’ strength within a particular party as the proper yardstick under the first Gingles requirement. See, e.g., LULAC, supra, at 485-486 (opinion of Souter, J.) (requiring only “that minority voters... constitute a majority of those voting in the primary of... the party tending to win in the general election”). That approach would replace an objective, administrable rule with a difficult “judicial inquiry into party rules and local politics” to determine whether a minority group truly “controls” the dominant party’s primary process. McLoughlin, Gingles in Limbo: Coalitional Districts, Party Primaries and Manageable Vote Dilution Claims, 80 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 312, 349 (2005). More troubling still is the inquiry's fusion of race and party affiliation as a determinant when partisan considerations themselves may be suspect in the drawing of district lines. See Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 317 (2004) (STEVENS, J., dissenting); id., at 316 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment); see also Pildes 1565 (crossover-district requirement would essentially result in political party “entitlement to... a certain number of seats”). Disregarding the majority-minority rule and relying on a combination of race and party to presume an effective majority would involve the law and courts in a perilous enterprise. It would rest on judicial predictions, as a matter of law, that race and party would hold together as an effective majority over time — at least for the decennial apportionment cycles and likely beyond. And thus would the relationship between race and party further distort and frustrate the search for neutral factors and principled rationales for districting.
Petitioners’ approach would reverse the canon of avoidance. It invites the divisive constitutional questions that are both unnecessary and contrary to the purposes of our precedents under the Voting Rights Act. Given the consequences of extending racial considerations even further into the districting process, we must not interpret § 2 to require crossover districts.
C
Our holding that §2 does not require crossover districts does not consider the permissibility of such districts as a matter of legislative choice or discretion. Assuming a majority-minority district
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Once again, we are faced with an issue under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA or Act), 5 U. S. C. § 552. This time, we are concerned with the Act’s Exemption 7, §552 (b)(7). That provision exempts from disclosure
“records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information (A) could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source, including a State, local, or foreign agency or authority or any private institution which furnished information on a confidential basis, and, in the case of a record or information compiled by criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, information furnished by a confidential source, (E) would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law, or (F) could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual. . .
Our focus is on the Exemption’s threshold requirement that the materials be “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.”
I
Respondent John Doe Corporation (Corporation) is a defense contractor. As such, it is subject to periodic audits by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), the accounting branch of the Department of Defense. See 32 CFR §§ 357.2 and 357.4 (1988). In 1978, in connection with an audit, an exchange of correspondence took place between the DCAA and the Corporation concerning the proper accounting treatment of certain costs. The Government auditor, by letter dated May 2 of that year, claimed that the costs should have been charged to identifiable programs instead of to a technical overhead account. About $4.7 million in 1977 costs were discussed. The Corporation, by letter dated July 11, 1978, replied and defended its allocation. App. 22-28. No further action regarding the allocation of those costs was taken by the DCAA or the Corporation during the next eight years.
In 1985, the office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York instituted an investigation into possible fraudulent practices by the Corporation. A subpoena was issued to the Corporation by a grand jury on February 21, 1986. It requested documents relating to the cost allocation question which was the subject of the 1978 correspondence. On September 30, 1986, the Corporation submitted to the DCAA a request under the FOIA for any documents “that are related in any way to the subject matter” of the 1978 correspondence. Id., at 19. Upon the advice of an Assistant United States Attorney, the DCAA denied the request on November 18, citing Exemptions 7(A) and (E) of the Act. App. 29. Two days later the requested records were transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Id., at 92.
On February 3, 1987, the Corporation renewed its FOIA request but this time directed it to the FBI. Id., at 46. That agency denied the request, citing only Exemption 7(A). Id., at 49.
After exhausting its administrative remedies, the Corporation instituted the present litigation, seeking review of the withholding of the requested documents, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Id., at 6, 11. In due course, the Corporation moved to compel the preparation of a “Vaughn Index.”
The Government opposed disclosure, the preparation of the Index, and answers to propounded interrogatories on the ground that compliance with any of these would interfere with the grand jury proceeding and would provide the Corporation with information that might be useful to it in connection with anticipated criminal litigation. The District Court ordered the Government to prepare a Vaughn Index and to answer the interrogatories. It ordered sua sponte, however, that this material be submitted to the court for examination in camera rather than be given directly to the Corporation. Id., at 62, 66.
After conducting its examination without a hearing, the District Court ruled that petitioners were not required to turn over any of the contested documents to the Corporation. It then dismissed the complaint, stating: “[W]e are satisfied that there is a substantial risk that disclosure of any of this material, the documents, the Vaughn index and the answers to [the] interrogatories, would jeopardize the grand jury proceeding.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 13a-14a.
The Corporation appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That court reversed and remanded the case. 850 F. 2d 105, 110 (1988). It ruled that the law enforcement Exemption 7, upon which the District Court implicitly relied, did not protect the records from disclosure because they were not “compiled for law enforcement purposes.” Id., at 109. It observed that the records “were compiled in 1978, seven years before the investigation began in 1985,” id., at 108, and that the 1974 amendments to the Act “make it clear that a governmental entity cannot withhold materials requested under the FOIA on the ground that materials that were not investigatory records when compiled have since acquired investigative significance.” Id., at 109. The Court of Appeals acknowledged that compliance with the FOIA may compel disclosure of materials that ordinarily are beyond the scope of discovery in a criminal investigation, and thus may enable a potential defendant to prepare a response and construct a defense to a criminal charge. The court concluded, however, that this concern was more properly addressed to Congress. Ibid. The court ruled, nonetheless, that on remand the Government was to be allowed to bring to the District Court’s attention “any particular matter that would, if disclosed, expose some secret aspect of the grand jury’s investigation.” Id., at 110.
The court refused to stay its mandate; it was issued on November 28, 1988. App. to Pet. for Cert. 15a. On remand, the District Court concluded that the Second Circuit’s opinion required that the Vaughn Index be turned over to the Corporation. App. 86. The Court of Appeals on January 10, 1989, refused to stay the District Court’s order requiring the furnishing of the Index, id., at 96, but later that same day the Circuit Justice entered a temporary stay pending a response from the Corporation. On January 30, the Circuit Justice granted a full stay. See 488 U. S. 1306 (Marshall, J., in chambers).
Because of the importance and sensitivity of the issue and because of differing interpretations of the pertinent language of Exemption 7, we granted certiorari. 489 U. S. 1009 (1989).
II
This Court repeatedly has stressed the fundamental principle of public access to Government documents that animates the FOIA. “Without question, the Act is broadly conceived. It seeks to permit access to official information long shielded unnecessarily from public view and attempts to create a judicially enforceable public right to secure such information from possibly unwilling official hands.” EPA v. Mink, 410 U. S. 73, 80 (1973). The Act’s “basic purpose reflected ‘a general philosophy of full agency disclosure unless information is exempted under clearly delineated statutory language.’” Department of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U. S. 352, 360-361 (1976), quoting S. Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1965). “The basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure.an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S. 214, 242 (1978). See also Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of Press, 489 U. S. 749, 772-773 (1989). There are, to be sure, specific exemptions from disclosure set forth in the Act. “But these limited exemptions do not obscure the basic policy that disclosure, not secrecy, is the dominant objective of the Act.” Rose, 425 U. S., at 361. Accordingly, these exemptions “must be narrowly construed.” Ibid. Furthermore, “the burden is on the agency to sustain its action.” 5 U. S. C. § 552(a)(4)(B).
Despite these pronouncements of liberal congressional purpose, this Court has recognized that the statutory exemptions are intended to have meaningful reach and application. On more than one occasion, the Court has upheld the Government’s invocation of FOIA exemptions. See EPA v. Mink, supra; Robbins Tire, supra; Reporters Committee, supra; FBI v. Abramson, 456 U. S. 615 (1982). In the case last cited, the Court observed: “Congress realized that legitimate governmental and private interests could be harmed by release of certain types of information,” and therefore provided the “specific exemptions under which disclosure could be refused.” Id., at 621. Recognizing past abuses, Congress sought “to reach a workable balance between the right of the public to know and the need of the Government to keep information in confidence to the extent necessary without permitting indiscriminate secrecy.” H. R. Rep. No. 1497, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1966). See also EPA v. Mink, 410 U. S., at 80. The Act’s broad provisions favoring disclosure, coupled with the specific exemptions, reveal and present the “balance” Congress has struck.
rH HH 1 — I
We have noted above that our focus here is on § 552(b)(7) s exemption from production of “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes” to the extent that such production meets any one of six specified conditions or enumerated harms. Before it may invoke this provision, the Government has the burden of proving the existence of such a compilation for such a purpose. In deciding whether Exemption 7 applies, moreover, a court must be mindful of this Court’s observations that the FOIA was not intended to supplement or displace rules of discovery. See Robbins Tire, 437 U. S., at 236-239, 242; id., at 243 (Stevens, J., concurring). See also United States v. Weber Aircraft Corp., 465 U. S. 792, 801-802 (1984). Indeed, the Court of Appeals acknowledged that this was not a principal intention of Congress. 850 F. 2d, at 108.
As is customary, we look initially at the language of the statute itself. The wording of the phrase under scrutiny is simple and direct: “compiled for law enforcement purposes.” The plain words contain no requirement that compilation be effected at a specific time. The objects sought merely must have been “compiled” when the Government invokes the Exemption. A compilation, in its ordinary meaning, is something composed of materials collected and assembled from various sources or other documents. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 464 (1961); Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 268 (1983). This definition seems readily to cover documents already collected by the Government originally for non-law-enforcement purposes. See Gould Inc. v. General Services Administration, 688 F. Supp. 689, 698 (DC 1988).
The Court of Appeals, however, throughout its opinion would have the word “compiled” mean “originally compiled.” See 850 F. 2d, at 109. We disagree with that interpretation for, in our view, the plain meaning of the word “compile,” or, for that matter, of its adjectival form “compiled,” does not permit such refinement. This Court itself has used the word “compile” naturally to refer even to the process of gathering at one time records and information that were generated on an earlier occasion and for a different purpose. See FBI v. Abramson, 456 U. S., at 622, n. 5; Reporters Committee, supra.
Respondent, too, has used the word “compile” in its ordinary sense to refer to the assembling of documents, even though those documents were put together at an earlier time for a different purpose. In its FOIA requests of September 30,1986, and February 3,1987, respondent asked that the requested materials be furnished as soon as they were available, and that the response to the request “not await a compilation of all the materials requested.” App. 21, 47-48. This was a recognition, twice repeated, that the documents having been compiled once for the purpose of routine audits were not disqualified from being “compiled” again later for a different purpose.
We thus do not accept the distinction the Court of Appeals drew between documents that originally were assembled for law enforcement purposes and those that were not so originally assembled but were gathered later for such purposes. The plain language of Exemption 7 does not permit such a distinction. Under the statute, documents need only to have been compiled when the response to the FOIA request must be made.
If, despite what we regard as the plain meaning of the statutory language, it were necessary or advisable to examine the legislative history of Exemption 7, as originally enacted and as amended in 1974, we would reach the same conclusion. Justice Marshall, writing for the Court in Robbins Tire, 437 U. S., at 224-236, discussed this legislative history in detail. In its original 1966 form, Exemption 7 permitted nondisclosure of “investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes except to the extent available by law to a private party.” Pub. L. 89-487, § 3(e)(7), 80 Stat. 251. But the Court in Robbins Tire observed: “Congress recognized that law enforcement agencies had legitimate needs to keep certain records confidential, lest the agencies be hindered in their investigations or placed at a disadvantage when it came time to present their cases.” 437 U. S., at 224.
To accommodate these needs, Congress in 1974 amended the Act in several respects. See id., at 226-227. Concern was expressed on the Senate floor that four recent decisions in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had permitted Exemption 7 to be applied whenever an agency could show that the document sought was an investigatory file compiled for law enforcement purposes. Congress feared that agencies would use that rule to commingle otherwise nonexempt materials with exempt materials in a law enforcement investigatory file and claim protection from disclosure for all the contents.
The aim of Congress thus was to prevent commingling. This was accomplished by two steps. The first was to change the language from investigatory “files” to investigatory “records.” The second was to make the compilation requirement necessary rather than sufficient. As amended, Exemption 7 requires the Government to demonstrate that a record is “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and that disclosure would effectuate one or more of the six specified harms. See Robbins Tire, 437 U. S., at 221-222, 229-230, 235. These changes require consideration of the nature of each particular document as to which exemption was claimed. Id., at 229-230. Evasional commingling thus would be prevented. The legislative history of the 1974 amendments says nothing about limiting Exemption 7 to those documents originating as law enforcement records.
A word as to FBI v. Abramson, 456 U. S. 615 (1982), is in order. There the Court was faced with the issue whether information originally compiled for law enforcement purposes lost its Exemption 7 status when it was summarized in a new document not created for law enforcement purposes. See id., at 623. The Court held that such information continued to meet the threshold requirements of Exemption 7. But we do not accept the proposition, urged by respondent, that the converse of this holding — that information originally compiled for a non-law-enforcement purpose cannot become exempt under Exemption 7 when it is recompiled at a future date for law enforcement purposes — is true. See Brief for Respondent 20.
This Court consistently has taken a practical approach when it has been confronted with an issue of interpretation of the Act. It has endeavored to apply a workable balance between the interests of the public in greater access to information and the needs of the Government to protect certain kinds of information from disclosure. The Court looks to the reasons for exemption from the disclosure requirements in determining whether the Government has properly invoked a particular exemption. See e. g., NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132, 148-154 (1975). In applying Exemption 7, the Court carefully has examined the effect that disclosure would have on the interest the exemption seeks to protect. Robbins Tire, 437 U. S., at 242-243; Abramson, 456 U. S., at 625. See also Department of State v. Washington Post Co., 456 U. S. 595 (1982). The statutory provision that records or information must be “compiled for law enforcement purposes” is not to be construed in a nonfunctional way.
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.
Statement of
Justice Blackmun.
I add on my own account a word of caution. Simply because a party is a defense contractor does not mean that all doubts automatically are to be resolved against it and those in any way associated with it. A situation of the kind presented by this case can be abused, and after-the-fact acknowledgment of abuse by the Government hardly atones for the damage done by reason of the abuse. The recent General Dynamics case and the sad consequences for a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration administrator whose indictment was dismissed before trial (“because the Justice Department concedes it ha[d] no case,” Washington Post, June 24, 1987, p. A24, col. 1) are illustrative. Petitioners themselves, see Reply Brief for Petitioners 11, “recognize the theoretical potential for abuse.” I perceive no abuse in the present case, however, that would make it resemble General Dynamics.
All the names in the caption of this case — “John Doe Agency” and “John Doe Government Agency,” petitioners, and “John Doe Corporation,” respondent, are pseudonyms. John Doe Agency, however, is the DCAA, and John Doe Government Agency is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. John Doe Corporation is a private corporation; it tells us, Brief for Respondent 1, n. 1, that its identity is revealed in materials filed under seal with the Court of Appeals.
The Solicitor General’s office states, Brief for Petitioners ii; Tr. of Oral Arg. 26, that the Government has no objection to public disclosure of petitioners’ names. Accordingly, in this opinion we use the real name of each “Agency.” We adhere, however, to the use of respondent’s pseudonym.
“Vaughn Index” is a term derived from Vaughn v. Rosen, 157 U. S. App. D. C. 340, 484 F. 2d 820 (1973), cert. denied, 415 U. S. 977 (1974). The “Index” usually consists of a detailed affidavit, the purpose of which is to “permit the court system effectively and efficiently to evaluate the factual nature of disputed information.” 157 U. S. App. D. C., at 346, 484 F. 2d, at 826.
As to this conclusion, see also North v. Walsh, 279 U. S. App. D. C. 373, 382, 881 F. 2d 1088, 1097 (1989).
See New England Medical Center Hospital v. NLRB, 548 F. 2d 377, 386 (CA1 1976); Gould Inc. v. General Services Administration, 688 F. Supp. 689, 699 (DC 1988); Hatcher v. United States Postal Service, 556 F. Supp. 331 (DC 1982); Fedders Corp. v. FTC, 494 F. Supp. 325, 328 (SDNY), aff’d, 646 F. 2d 560 (CA2 1980); Gregory v. FDIC, 470 F. Supp. 1329, 1333-1334 (DC 1979). See also Crowell & Moring v. Department of Defense. 703 F. Supp. 1004, 1009 (DC 1989).
There is disagreement between the parties as to how the opinion of the Court of Appeals is to be read. Petitioners state that the Second Circuit unequivocally held that a document must originally be compiled for law enforcement purposes in order to qualify for protection under Exemption 7. Brief for Petitioners 15. Respondent disagrees and says: “The court of appeals had no occasion to rule in this case on whether records ‘originally compiled’ for non-law-enforcement purposes but later recompiled for law-enforcement purposes could meet the threshold requirement of Exemption 7.” Brief for Respondent 13-14. Instead, argues respondent, the Court of Appeals merely held that the records in this case were never “compiled” for law enforcement, originally or subsequently, and “no other result was possible based on the facts of this case.” Id., at 14.
We agree with petitioners. The Court of Appeals stated:
“In the instant case, the documents requested were generated by [the DCAA] independent of any investigation in the course of its routine monitoring of Corporation’s accounting procedures with regard to Corporation’s defense contracts. The records were compiled in 1978, seven years before the investigation began in 1985. They were thus not ‘compiled for law-enforcement purposes’ and are not exempted by Subsection (b)(7).” 850 F. 2d 105, 108-109 (CA2 1988).
The court’s use of the word “thus” suggests that it believed a record had to be compiled for law enforcement purposes- from the outset in order to be protected by Exemption 7.
In the instant case, it is not clear when compilation took place. The record does disclose that the documents were transferred from the DCAA to the FBI shortly after the DCAA denied the FOIA request. The timing of the transfer, however, was not stressed by the Court of Appeals or treated by that court as dispositive. Instead, as noted above, the Court of Appeals ruled that Exemption 7 was not available because the documents were obtained originally for non-law-enforcement purposes.
While we leave to the lower courts the determination whether these documents were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” when the Government invoked Exemption 7, we do note that the pendency of the grand jury investigation serves to negate any inference that the chronology of this case raises a question about the bona fides of the Government’s claim that any compilation was not made solely in order to defeat the FOIA request. See Goldberg v. United States Department of State, 260 U. S. App. D. C. 205, 211, 818 F. 2d 71, 77 (1987), cert. denied, 485 U. S. 904 (1988); Miller v. United States Department of State, 779 F. 2d 1378, 1388 (CA8 1985).
The cases were Weisberg v. United States Department of Justice, 160 U. S. App. D. C. 71, 489 F. 2d 1195 (1973), cert. denied, 416 U. S. 993 (1974); Aspin v. Department of Defense, 160 U. S. App. D. C. 231, 491 F. 2d 24 (1973); Ditlow v. Brinegar, 161 U. S. App. D. C. 154, 494 F. 2d 1073 (1974); and Center for National Policy Review on Race and Urban Issues v. Weinberger, 163 U. S. App. D. C. 368, 502 F. 2d 370 (1974).
General Dynamics Corp. v. Department of Army, Civ. Action No. 86-522-FFF (CD Cal.), filed January 9,1986. See Washington Post, June 23, 1987, p. Al, col. 1; N. Y. Times, June 23, 1987, p. Al, col. 3; Washington Post, June 24, 1987, p. A24, col. 1 (editorial: “It is hard to understand how this case was brought in the first place”).
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.
Me. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Texas brought this original action against Louisiana to establish its rights to the jurisdiction and ownership of the western half of Sabine Pass, Sabine Lake, and Sabine River (collectively Sabine) from the mouth of the Sabine in the Gulf of Mexico to the thirty-second degree of north latitude, and to obtain a decree confirming the boundary of the two States as the geographic middle of the Sabine. After the motion to file was granted, 397 U. S. 931 (1970), Louisiana filed motions, answer, and counterclaim asserting that its boundary was on the west bank of the Sabine; and the case was referred to a Special Master, 398 U. S. 934 (1970).
The Report of the Special Master and the parties’ exceptions are now before us. The Special Master’s recommendations are that the geographic middle, not the west bank or the middle of the main channel, is the boundary between the two States; that all islands in the Sabine when Louisiana was admitted as a State in 1812 should be awarded to Louisiana subject to prescriptive claims, if any, by Texas to such islands; that all islands formed in the east half of the Sabine after 1812 belong to Louisiana, and those in the west half to Texas. The Special Master contemplates further proceedings to determine what islands were in the Sabine in 1812 and what prescriptive claims Texas may have to such islands. Louisiana’s exceptions maintain that its boundary is not the geographic middle but the west bank of the Sabine, or alternatively, the main channel of the stream as it existed in 1812 west of the most westerly islands. Louisiana also claims all islands in the Sabine, whether existing in 1812 or thereafter formed. The exception filed by Texas asserts its right to all islands in the west half of the river but proposes that the question of ownership be déferred pending the outcome of the proposed additional proceedings with respect to islands that may have existed as of 1812.
Oral argument was heard on the exceptions. We now approve and adopt the report of the Special Master except his conclusions with respect to ownership of islands in the western half of the Sabine.
I
In an Enabling Act approved February 20,1811, 2 Stat. 641, Congress authorized the inhabitants of a portion of the Louisiana Territory ceded under the Treaty between the United States and France on April 30, 1803, 8 Stat. 200, to seek statehood. The Sabine boundary for what was to become the State of Louisiana was described as “beginning at the mouth of the river Sabine, thence by a line to be drawn along the middle of the said river, including all islands to the thirty-second degree of latitude . . . .” 2 Stat. 641. The 1812 Louisiana Constitution described the State’s western boundary in substantially the same manner, and the Act of Admission of April 8, 1812, 2 Stat. 701, employed language identical to that of the Enabling Act.
Preceding this period, and for some time thereafter, the western boundary of the United States was in doubt. Negotiations between the United States and Spain from 1803 until 1819 culminated in the Treaty of Amity, Settlement, and Limits, 1819, 8 Stat. 252. Under this treaty, the boundary “between the two countries” was in relevant part established along the west bank of the Sabine, 8 Stat. 254; the United States relinquished all of Texas west of that boundary in exchange for Florida and the Spanish claim to the Oregon Territory; and it was provided that all islands in the Sabine belonged to the United States.
The United States renewed its efforts to acquire Texas, and when Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, the United States began negotiating anew for the purchase of Texas. In the Treaty of Limits, 1828, 8 Stat. 372, the United States and Mexico recognized the boundary “between the two countries,” id., at 374, on the west bank of the Sabine as established in the 1819 treaty with Spain. Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, 1 Laws, Republic of Texas, 3-7, in Gammel’s Laws of Texas 1822-1897, was recognized as an independent nation by the United States in 1837, Cong. Globe, 24th Cong., 2d Sess., 83, 270, and in 1838 the Sabine boundary agreed upon with Spain in 1819, and with Mexico in 1828, was adopted by the United States and Texas, 8 Stat. 511. The Sabine boundary remained unchanged when Texas was admitted as a State in 1845, 9 Stat. 108.
In 1848 the legislatures of Texas and Louisiana passed competing resolutions, each requesting consent of Congress to establish its jurisdiction over the Sabine between the middle and the western bank. Congress passed an Act in 1848 giving its consent to Texas to extend its eastern boundary from the west bank of the Sabine to the middle, 9 Stat. 245, the Act stating:
“[T]his Congress consents that the legislature of the State of Texas may extend her eastern boundary so as to include within her limits one half of Sabine Pass, one half of Sabine Lake, also one half of Sabine River, from its mouth as far north as the thirty-second degree of north latitude.” (Emphasis added.)
II
We agree with the Special Master that the western boundary of Louisiana is the geographical middle of the Sabine River, not its western bank or the middle of its main channel. Congress had the authority to admit Louisiana to the Union and to establish the boundaries of that State. U. S. Const., Art. IY, §3; United States v, Louisiana, 363 U. S. 1, 30, 60-62, 67 (1960); Washington v. Oregon, 211 U. S. 127, 134-135 (1908). Hence, our task is to ascertain congressional will when it admitted Louisiana into the Union on April 8, 1812, and established her relevant western boundary as “beginning at the mouth of the river Sabine; thence, by a line to be drawn along the middle of said river, including all islands to the thirty-second degree of latitude . . . .” 2 Stat. 702. The statute in this respect was identical with the Enabling Act of the prior year and differed hardly at all from the Preamble to the Louisiana Constitution of January 22, 1812. The Louisiana Legislature resolved in 1848 that the State’s jurisdiction should be “extended” to the western half of the river, reciting that neither it nor any other State had authority over that portion of the Sabine. See n. 4, supra. Texas made a similar request, see n. 4, supra, Congress acceding to the latter and consenting that Texas could “extend her eastern boundary so as to include within her limits one half of Sabine Pass, one half of the Sabine Lake, also one half of Sabine River, from its mouth . . . [to] the thirty-second degree of north latitude.” 9 Stat. 245. On the floor of the Senate, Mr. Butler, speaking for the Judiciary Committee, stated that the boundaries of the United States extended to the western shore of the Sabine, but that the boundary of the State of Louisiana extended only to the middle, the result being that “the half of the river and lake, to the western shore, belonged to the United States, and was not included in the State of Louisiana . . . Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., 882. Hence the bill, which gave “the half of the river beyond the boundary of the State of Louisiana to the State of Texas . . . .” Ibid. The bill passed, both Senators from Louisiana expressing “their acquiescence in the arrangement.” Ibid.
There is not a whisper in these statutes and instruments that the western boundary of Louisiana was on the west bank of the Sabine. Clearly, the boundary was along the “middle” of the Sabine, not on the west bank. Louisiana argues, without substance we think, that the boundary was extended to the west bank by the Treaties of 1819 and 1828 with Spain and Mexico respectively, when the United States established and confirmed its own western boundary on the west bank of the Sabine. As the Special Master correctly noted, however, the United States was acting in its sovereign capacity throughout these events, and there is no indication that the United States was in any way representing Louisiana or intending to relocate the State’s western border. Nor was there reason to do so. On the contrary, admission of States beyond the Sabine was some day contemplated, and it was more consistent with the policy of the United States to grant only the east half of the river to Louisiana and reserve the west half for a future State or States. See United States v. Holt State Bank, 270 U. S. 49, 55 (1926); Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1, 26-28, 57-58 (1894).
The Special Master was also correct in ruling that the United States intended the geographic middle of the river, not of the main channel, or thalweg, to be the western boundary of the State. The argument that the middle of the main channel was intended rests on the line of cases in this Court beginning with Iowa v. Illinois, 147 U. S. 1 (1893), which hold that in normal circumstances it should be assumed Congress intends the word “middle” to mean “middle of the main channel” in order that each State would have equal access to the main navigable channel. The doctrine was borrowed from international law and has often been adhered to in this Court, although it is plain that within the United States two States bordering on a navigable river would have equal access to it for the purposes of navigation whether the common state boundary was in the geographic middle or along the thalweg. Id., at 7-8, 10; New Jersey v. Delaware, 291 U. S. 361, 380-385 (1934).
In Iowa v. Illinois, however, the Court recognized that the issue was the intent of Congress, 147 U. S., at 11, and that it was merely announcing a rule of construe-' tion with respect to statutes and other boundary instruments. Thus, it was acknowledged that the rule might be “changed by statute or usage of so great a length of time as to have acquired the force of law.” Id., at 10.
When Congress sufficiently indicates that it intends a different boundary in a navigable river, the thalweg rule will not apply. In Washington v. Oregon, 211 U. S. 127 (1908), the usual rule of the thalweg was recognized, but the Court said that “there is no fixed rule making that the boundary between States bordering on a river.” Id., at 134. The Act admitting Oregon was construed by the Court as placing the northern boundary of the State in the northern channel of the Columbia River and as intending it to remain there even though that channel ceased to be the main navigable channel in the Columbia.
It was therefore imperative for the Special Master to look to congressional intent; and if it was sufficiently clear that Congress intended the Louisiana boundary to be the geographic middle of the Sabine rather than the thalweg, it was his duty to establish the border along the former line. His conclusion was surely consistent with the controlling instruments — “along the middle of the . . . river.” It is also apparent that the parties to the Act of Admission, the United States and Louisiana, both evidenced their understanding of the 1811 Enabling Act, the 1812 Constitution of Louisiana, and the 1812 Act of Admission, when the Legislature of Louisiana and the Congress of the United States expressly recited in 1848 that the western boundary of Louisiana included only the east half of the Sabine, not the west half. Whatever may be the normal significance of a later congressional indication of the meaning of an earlier statute, see, e. g., Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 541 (1962); Great Northern R. Co. v. United States, 315 U. S. 262, 273, 277 (1942); Brewster v. Gage, 280 U. S. 327, 337 (1930); Tiger v. Western Investment Co., 221 U. S. 286, 309 (1911), here the question concerns the 1812 boundary between the United States and Louisiana, and in light of Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2, of the Constitution empowering Congress “to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States,” we think the Act of 1848 and the events connected with its passage had special significance as a construction by the United States and Louisiana of the earlier act admitting Louisiana to the Union. Cf. Washington v. Oregon, 211 U. S., at 135. At least, the indications are clear enough to us that we shall not apply the rule of the thalweg in this case.
The Special Master also concluded that even if he was in error in rejecting Louisiana’s claim with respect to the original location of her western boundary, Texas must still prevail by reason of prescription and acquiescence. Because we are satisfied with our conclusion, already reached, with respect to the boundary location, we need not pass upon this aspect of the Special Master’s Report, although we note that the facts relied upon by him are consistent with and support the other ground for his conclusion as to Louisiana’s Sabine boundary.
Ill
With respect to islands in the Sabine it is conceded that Louisiana owns all islands in the eastern half of the river, whether existing in 1812 or thereafter formed. As to islands in the west half, the Special Master concluded that by virtue of the 1812 Act of Admission Louisiana owns all islands that then existed in that portion of the river, but rejected her claims to islands thereafter formed in the western half. All later formed islands in that half of the river, he concluded, belonged to the State of Texas.
We shall withhold judgment with respect to the ownership of islands in the western half of the Sabine River. Further proceedings with respect to these islands are contemplated in any event, and it is our view that the United States should be requested to present any claims it may have to any of the islands in the western half of the Sabine south of 32 degrees north latitude and, if it so desires, to present evidence and argument with respect to the ownership of such islands. The Special Master should then determine whether his Report in this respect should be modified and complete the proceedings with respect to the ownership of the Sabine islands. Our reasons for so directing will be briefly stated.
It is the unquestioned rule that States entering the Union acquire title to the lands under navigable streams and other navigable waters within their borders. Scott v. Lattig, 227 U. S. 229, 242-243 (1913); County of St. Clair v. Lovingston, 23 Wall. 46, 68 (1874); Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212, 228-230 (1845). But the rule does not reach islands or fast lands located within such waters. Title to islands remains in the United States, unless expressly granted along with the stream bed or otherwise. This was the express holding of Scott v. Lattig, supra.
In that case, a dispute arose over the ownership of an island located east of the thalweg of the Snake River, which was the western boundary of the State of Idaho. It appeared that after Idaho came into the Union, and thereby acquired title to the river bed on its side of the thalweg, the United States patented riparian lands opposite the island, and the patentees claimed the island under the laws of Idaho as against a settler seeking to homestead the property under the laws of the United States. The homesteader prevailed in this Court because title to the island remained in the United States:
“But the island, which we have seen was in existence when Idaho became a State, was not part of the bed of the stream or land under the water, and therefore its ownership did not pass to the State or come within the disposing influence of its laws. On the contrary, although surrounded by the waters of the river and widely separated from the shore, it was fast dry land, and therefore remained the property of the United States and subject to disposal under its laws, as did the island which was in controversy in Mission Rock Co. v. United States, 109 Fed. Rep. 763, 769-770, and United States v. Mission Rock Co., 189 U. S. 391.” 227 U. S., at 244.
In the case before us, it is probably correct that once the eastern boundary of Texas was extended to the middle of the river in 1848 that State became entitled to any islands in the west half which formed after the date of that extension. But unless the 1848 Act conveyed to Texas the islands located in the western half of the river at that time, title to those islands remained in the United States, if the United States had not previously conveyed all or part of them to Louisiana. The 1848 Act, however, does not mention islands in the Sabine, and it would therefore appear, if Lattig is to be followed, that the United States has an interest in any proceedings to determine the ownership of islands in the west half of the Sabine and should be a party to, or at least have the opportunity to participate in, such proceedings. Texas claims any such islands existing prior to 1848 by prescription and acquiescence, but, plainly, a State may not acquire property from the United States in this manner. United States v. California, 332 U. S. 19, 39-40 (1947).
We shall accordingly await the result of further proceedings before the Special Master with respect to the ownership of islands in the western portion of the Sabine. In all other respects, the exceptions of the parties are overruled and the report of the Special Master is confirmed.
So ordered.
The preamble to the 1812 Louisiana Constitution described the boundary as along the middle of the Sabine, “including all its islands.” (Emphasis added.)
Neither the 1819 Treaty nor the 1828 Treaty mentions Louisiana or its western boundary.
Texas’ relevant boundary along the Sabine thus began “on the gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the river Sabine, in the sea, continuing north along the western bank of that river, to the 32d degree of latitude . . . .” 8 Stat. 374.
The Louisiana Resolution, passed on March 16, 1848, and presented to Congress, provided in pertinent part:
“Whereas the constitution and the laws of the State of Louisiana, nor those of any other State or territory, extend over the waters of the Sabine river from the middle of said stream to the western bank thereof; and that it is of importance to the citizens living contiguous thereto, and to the people in general, that the jurisdiction of some State should be extended over said territory, in order that crimes and offences committed thereupon should be redressed in a speedy and convenient manner:
“Therefore be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana in General Assembly convened, 1st. That the constitution and the jurisdiction of the State of Louisiana shall be extended over part of the United States, embraced in the following limits (whenever the consent of the Congress of the United States can be procured thereto,) viz:
“Between the middle of the Sabine river and the western bank thereof, to begin at the mouth of said river where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and thence to continue along the said western bank to the place where it intersects the thirty-second degree of north latitude, it being the boundary line between the said State of Louisiana and the States of — .
“2d. Be it further resolved, etc., That our Senators be instructed, and our Representatives in Congress requested, to procure the passage of a law on the part of the United States* consenting to the extension of the constitution, and the jurisdiction of the laws of the State of Louisiana, over the territory in said river.” S. Misc. Doc. No. 135, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.
The Resolution adopted by Texas on March 18, 1848, stated in relevant part:
“Resolution of the Legislature of Texas, in favor of the passage of an act, extending the jurisdiction of that State over the Sabine pass, the Sabine lake, and the Sabine river, April 17, 1848.
“Joint Resolution instructing our Senators and requesting our Representatives in Congress to use their efforts to have a law passed to extend the jurisdiction of Texas over one half of Sabine pass, lake, and river.
“Sec. 1. Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Texas, That our Senators be instructed, and our Representatives in Congress be requested, to use their efforts to have a law passed by Congress, extending the jurisdiction of Texas over one half of the waters of Sabine lake, Sabine pass, and Sabine river, up to the 32° of north latitude.” S. Misc. Doc. No. 123, 30th Cong., 1st Sess.
The full report of the action by the Senate, Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., 882, is as follows:
“Mr. Butler, from the Committee on the Judiciary, reported an act giving the consent of the Government of the United States to the State of Texas to extend the eastern boundary so as to include within her limits one-half of the Sabine Pass, Sabine Lake, and Sabine River as far north as the 32° of north latitude.
“Mr. B. asked for the immediate consideration of the bill, and briefly explained its character. The boundary of the United States, it was known, embraced the Sabine River and lake to its western shore. The boundary of the State of Louisiana extended to the middle of the Sabine; so that the half of the river and lake, to the western shore, belonged to the United States, and was not included in the State of Louisiana; therefore, the boundary of the State and that of the United States, was not identical. The bill before the Senate gives the half of the river beyond the boundary of the State of Louisiana to the State of Texas, for the purpose of enabling the latter to extend her criminal jurisdiction to the Louisiana boundary. There could be no objection to the bill, and he hoped it would now be passed.
“Mr. Johnson, of La., and Mr. Downs in behalf of the State of Louisiana, expressed their acquiescence in the arrangement.
“The bill was then read a third time and passed.” (Emphasis added.)
That the “middle” of a river was to be construed as the thalweg in establishing the boundary between the States newly admitted to the Union was not authoritative doctrine prior to 1892 when Iowa v. Illinois, 147 U. S. 1, was decided and certainly not when Louisiana was admitted to the Union in 1812. The opinion in Iowa v. Illinois, supra, referred to five treatises on international law in support of its holding but noted the sharp conflict on the thalweg rule between the Illinois and Iowa courts. In Dunlieth & Dubuque Bridge Co. v. County of Dubuque, 55 Iowa 558, 8 N. W. 443 (1881), though the phrase in question was “middle of the main channel,” certainly a phrase that would lend itself to a thalweg construction, the court instead ruled that the phrase meant the middle of the river bed, while in Buttenuth v. St. Louis Bridge Co., 123 Ill. 535, 17 N. E. 439 (1888), the court construed the phrase “middle of the Mississippi River” as being under the thalweg doctrine. After reviewing both cases, this Court chose the latter rule of construction.
A sufficiently expressed intent of Congress also overrides the usually applicable “equal-footing” rule, United States v. Louisiana, 363 U. S. 1, 76-77 (1960).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner William James Rummel is presently serving a life sentence imposed by the State of Texas in 1973 under its “recidivist statute,” formerly Art. 63 of its Penal Code, which provided that “[wjhoever shall have been three times convicted of a felony less than capital shall on such third conviction be imprisoned for life in the penitentiary.” On January 19, 1976, Rummel sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, arguing that life imprisonment was “grossly disproportionate” to the three felonies that formed the predicate for his sentence and that therefore the sentence violated the ban on cruel and unusual punishments of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected Rummel’s claim, finding no unconstitutional disproportionality. We granted cer-tiorari, 441 U. S. 960, and now affirm.
I
In 1964 the State of Texas charged Rummel with fraudulent use of a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods or services. Because the amount in question was greater than $50, the charged offense was a felony punishable by a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of 10 years in „ the Texas Department of Corrections. Rummel eventually pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to three years’ confinement in a state penitentiary.
In 1969 the State of Texas charged Rummel with passing a forged check in the amount of $28.36, a crime punishable by imprisonment in a penitentiary for not less than two nor more than five years. Rummel pleaded guilty to this offense and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
In 1973 Rummel was charged with obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses. Because the amount obtained was greater than $50, the charged offense was designated “felony theft,” which, by itself, was punishable by confinement in a penitentiary for not less than 2 nor more than 10 years. The prosecution chose, however, to proceed against Rummel under Texas’ recidivist statute, and cited in the indictment his 1964 and 1969 convictions as requiring imposition of a life sentence if Rummel were convicted of the charged offense. A jury convicted Rummel of felony theft and also found as true the allegation that he had been convicted of two prior felonies. As a result, on April 26, 1973, the trial court imposed upon Rummel the life sentence mandated by Art. 63.
The Texas appellate courts rejectecLRummel’s direct appeal as well as his subsequent collateral attacks on his imprisonment. Rummel then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. In that petition, he claimed, inter alia, that his life sentence was so disproportionate to the crimes he had committed as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The District Court rejected this claim, first noting.that this Court had already rejected a constitutional attack upon Art. 63, see Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554 (1967), and then crediting an argument by respondent that Rummel’s sentence could not be viewed as life imprisonment because he would be eligible for parole in approximately 12 years.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed. 568 F. 2d 1193 (CA5 1978). The majority relied upon this Court’s decision in Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349 (1910), and a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Hart v. Coiner, 483 F. 2d 136 (1973), cert. denied, 415 U. S. 983 (1974), in holding that Rummel’s life sentence was “so grossly. disproportionate”_to his offenses as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. 568 F. 2d, at 1200. The dissenting judge argued that “[n]o neutral principle' of adjudication permits a federal court to hold that in a given situation individual crimes are too trivial in relation to the punishment imposed.” Id., at 1201-1202.
Rummel’s case was reheard by the Court of Appeals sitting en banc. That court vacated the panel opinion and affirmed the District Court’s denial of habeas corpus relief on Rummel’s Eighth Amendment claim. 587 F. 2d 651 (CA5 1978). Of particular importance to the majority of the Court of Appeals en banc was the probability that Rummel would be eligible for parole within 12 years of his initial confinement. Six members of the Court of Appeals dissented, arguing that Rum-mel had no enforceable right to parole and that Weems and Hart compelled a finding that Rummel’s life sentence was unconstitutional.
II
Initially, we believe it important to set forth two propositions that Rummel does not contest. First, Rummel does not challenge the constitutionality of Texas’ recidivist statute as a general proposition. In Spencer v. Texas, supra, this Court upheld the very statute employed here, noting in the course of its opinion that similar statutes had been sustained against contentions that they violated “constitutional strictures dealing with double jeopardy, ex post facto laws, cruel and unusual punishment, due process, equal protection, and privileges and immunities.” 385 U. S., at 560. Here, Rummel attacks only the result of applying this concededly valid statute to the facts of his case.
Second, Rummel does not challenge Texas’ authority to punish each of his offenses as felonies, that is, by imprisoning him in a state penitentiary. Cf. Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962) (statute making it a crime to be addicted to the use of narcotics violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments). See also Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 667 (1977) (Eighth Amendment “imposes substantive limits on what can be made criminal and punished as such.. Under Texas law Rummel concededly could have received sentences totaling 25 years in prison for what he refers to as his “petty property offenses.” Indeed, when Rummel obtained $120.75 by false pretenses he committed a crime punishable as a felony in at least 35 States and the District of Columbia. Similarly, a large number of States authorized significant terms of imprisonment for each of Rummel’s other offenses at the times he committed them. Rummel’s challenge thus focuses only on the State’s authority to impose a sentence of life imprisonment, as opposed, to a substantial term of years, for his third felony.
This Court has on occasion stated that the Eighth Amendment prohibits imposition of a sentence that is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime. See, e. g., Weems v. United States, 217 U. S., at 367; Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S., at 667 (dictum); Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 100 (1958) (plurality opinion). In recent years this proposition has appeared most frequently in opinions dealing with the death penalty. See, e. g., Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584, 592 (1977) (plurality opinion); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 173 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 458 (1972) (Powell, J., dissenting). Pummel cites these latter opinions dealing with capital punishment as compelling the conclusion that his sentence is disproportionate to his offenses. But as Mr. Justice Stewart noted in Furman:
“The penalty of, death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind. It is unique in its total- irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal justice. And it is unique, finally, in its absolute renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity.” Id., at 306.
This theme, the unique nature of the death penalty for purposes of Eighth Amendment analysis, has been repeated time and time again in our opinions. See, e. g., Furman v. Georgia, supra, at 287, 289 (Brennan, J., concurring); Gregg v. Georgia, supra, at 187 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 305 (1976); Coker v. Georgia, supra, at 598 (plurality opinion). Because a sentence of death differs in kind from any sentence of imprisonment, no matter how long, our decisions applying the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments to capital cases are of limited assistance in deciding the constitutionality of the punishment meted out to Rummel.
Outside the context of capital punishment, successful challenges to the proportionality of particular sentences have been exceedingly rare. In Weems v. United States, supra, a case coming to this Court from the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands, petitioner successfully attacked the imposition of a punishment known as “cadena temporal” for the crime of falsifying a public record. Although the Court in Weems invalidated the sentence after weighing “the mischief and the remedy,” 217 U. S., at 379, its finding of disproportionality cannot be wrenched from the extreme facts of that case. As for the “mischief,” Weems was convicted of falsifying a public document, a crime apparently complete upon the knowing entry of a single item of false information in a public record, “though there be no one injured, though there be no fraud or purpose of it, no gain or desire of it.” Id., at 365. The mandatory “remedy” for this offense was cadena temporal, a punishment described graphically by the Court:
“Its minimum degree is confinement in a penal institution for twelve years and one day, a chain at the ankle and wrist of the offender, hard and painful labor, no assistance from friend or relative, no marital authority or parental rights or rights of property, no participation even in the family council. These parts of his penalty endure for the term of imprisonment. From other parts there is no intermission. His prison bars and chains are removed, it is true, after twelve years, but he goes from them to a perpetual limitation of his liberty. He is forever kept under the shadow of his crime, forever kept within voice and view of the criminal magistrate, not being able to change his domicil without giving notice to the ‘authority immediately in charge of his surveillance/ and without permission in writing.” Id., at 366.
Although Rummel argues that the length of Weems’ imprisonment was, by itself, a básis for the Court’s decision, the Court’s opinion does not support such a simple conclusion. The opinion consistently referred jointly to the length of imprisonment and its “accessories” or “accompaniments.” See id., at 366, 372, 377, 380. Indeed, the Court expressly rejected an argument made on behalf of the United States that “the provision for imprisonment in the Philippine Code is separable from the accessory punishment, and that the latter may be declared illegal, leaving the former to have application.” According to the Court, “[t]he Philippine Code unites the penalties of cadena temporal, principal and accessory, and it is not in our power to separate them....” Id., at 382. Thus, we do not believe that Weems can be applied without regard to its peculiar facts: the triviality of the charged offense, the impressive length of the minimum term of imprisonment, and the extraordinary nature of the “accessories” included within the punishment of cadena temporal.
Given the unique nature of the punishments considered in Weems and in the death penalty cases, one could argue without fear of contradiction by any decision of this Court that for crimes concededly classified and classifiable as felonies, that is, as punishable by significant terms of imprisonment in a state penitentiary, the length of the sentence actually imposed is purely a matter of legislative prerogative. Only six years after Weems, for example, Mr. Justice Holmes wrote for a unanimous Court in brushing aside a proportionality challenge to concurrent sentences of five years’ imprisonment and cumulative fines of $1,000 on each of seven counts of mail fraud. See Badders v. United States, 240 U. S. 391 (1916). According to the Court, there was simply “no ground for declaring the punishment unconstitutional.” Id., at 394.
Such reluctance to review legislatively mandated terms of imprisonment is implicit in our more recent decisions as well. As was noted by Mr. Justice White, writing for the plurality in Coker v. Georgia, supra, at 592, our Court’s “Eighth Amendment judgments should not be, or appear to be, merely the subjective views of individual Justices; judgment should be informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent.” Since Coker involved the imposition of capital punishment for the rape of an adult female, this Court could draw a “bright line” between the punishment of death and the various other permutations and commutations of punishments short of that ultimate sanction. For the reasons stated by Mb. Justice Stewart in Furman, see supra, at 272, this line was considerably clearer than would be any constitutional distinction between one term of years and a shorter or longer term of years.
Similarly, in Weems the Court could differentiate in an objective fashion between the highly unusual cadena temporal and more traditional forms of imprisonment imposed under the Anglo-Saxon system. But a more extensive intrusion into the basic line-drawing process that is pre-eminently the province of the legislature when it makes an act criminal would be difficult to square with the view expressed in Coker that the Court’s Eighth Amendment judgments should neither be nor appear to be merely the subjective views of individual Justices.
In an attempt to provide us with objective criteria against which we might measure the proportionality of his life sentence, Rummel points to certain characteristics of his offenses that allegedly render them “petty.” He cites, for example, the absence of violence in his crimes. But the presence or absence of violence does not always affect the strength of society’s interest in deterring a particular crime or in punishing a particular criminal. A high official in a large corporation can commit undeniably serious crimes in the area of antitrust, bribery, or clean air or water standards without coming close to engaging in any “violent” or short-term “life-threatening” behavior. Additionally, Rummel cites the “small” amount of money taken in each of his crimes. But to recognize that the State of Texas could have imprisoned Rummel for life if he had stolen $5,000, $50,000, or $500,000, rather than the $120.75 that a jury convicted him of stealing, is virtually to concede that the lines to be drawn are indeed “subjective,” and' therefore properly within the province of legislatures, not courts. Moreover, if Rummel had attempted to defraud his victim of $50,000, but had failed, no money whatsoever would have changed hands; yet Rummel would be no less blameworthy, only less skillful, than if he had succeeded.
In this case, however, we need not decide whether Texas could impose a life sentence upon Rummel merely for obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses. Had Rummel only committed that crime, under the law enacted by the Texas Legislature he could have been imprisoned for no more than 10 years. In fact, at the time that he obtained the $120.75 by false pretenses, he already had committed and had been imprisoned for two other felonies, crimes that Texas and other States felt were serious enough to warrant significant terms of imprisonment even in the absence of prior offenses. Thus the interest of the State of Texas here is not simply that of making criminal the unlawful acquisition of another person’s property; it is in addition the interest, expressed in all recidivist statutes, in dealing in a harsher manner with those who by repeated criminal acts have shown that they are simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as established by its criminal law. By conceding the validity of recidivist statutes generally, Rummel himself concedes that the State of Texas, or any other State, has a valid interest in so dealing with that class of persons.
Nearly 70 years ago, and only 2 years after Weems, this Court rejected an Eighth Amendment claim that seems factually indistinguishable from that advanced by Rummel in the present case. In Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U. S. 616 (1912), this Court considered the case of an apparently incorrigible horsethief who was sentenced to life imprisonment under West Virginia’s recidivist statute. In 1898 Graham had been convicted of stealing “one bay mare” valued at $50; in 1901 he had been convicted of “feloniously and burglari-ously” entering a stable in order to steal “one brown horse, named Harry, of the value of $100”; finally, in 1907 he was convicted of stealing “one red roan horse” valued at $75 and various tack and accessories valued at $85. Upon conviction of this last crime, Graham received the life sentence mandated by West Virginia’s recidivist statute. This Court did not tarry long on Graham’s Eighth Amendment claim, noting only that it could not be maintained “that cruel and unusual punishment [had] been inflicted.” Id., at 631.
Undaunted by earlier cases like Graham and Badders, Rummel attempts to ground his proportionality attack on an alleged “nationwide” trend away from mandatory life sentences and toward “lighter, discretionary sentences.” Brief for Petitioner 43-44. According to Rummel, “[n]o jurisdiction in the United States or the Free World punishes habitual offenders as harshly as Texas.” Id., at 39. In support of this proposition, Rummel offers detailed charts and tables documenting the history of recidivist statutes in the United States since 1776.
Before evaluating this evidence, we believe it important to examine the exact operation of Art. 63 as interpreted by the Texas courts. In order to qualify for a mandatory life sentence under that statute, Rummel had to satisfy a number of requirements. First, he had to be convicted of a felony and actually sentenced to prison. Second, at some time subsequent to his first conviction, Rummel had to be convicted of another felony and again sentenced to imprisonment. Finally, after having been sent to prison a second time, Rummel had to be convicted of a third felony. Thus, under Art. 63, a three-time felon receives a mandatory life sentence, with possibility of parole, only if commission and conviction of each succeeding felony followed conviction for the preceding one, and only if each prior conviction was followed by actual imprisonment. Given this necessary sequence, a recidivist must twice demonstrate that conviction and actual imprisonment do not deter him from returning to crime once he is released. One in Rummel’s position has been both graphically informed of the consequences of lawlessness and given an opportunity to reform, all to no avail. Article 63 thus is nothing more than a societal decision that when such a person commits yet another felony, he should be subjected to the admittedly serious penalty of incarceration for life, subject only to the State’s judgment as to whether to grant him parole.
In comparing this recidivist program with those presently-employed in other States, Rummel creates a complex hierarchy of statutes and places Texas’ recidivist scheme alone on the top rung. This isolation is not entirely convincing. Both West Virginia and Washington, for example, impose mandatory life sentences upon the commission of a third felony. Rummel would distinguish those States from Texas because the Supreme Court of Washington and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which includes West Virginia, have indicated a willingness to review the proportionality of such sentences under the Eighth Amendment. See State v. Lee, 87 Wash. 2d 932, 937, n. 4, 558 P. 2d 236, 240, n. 4 (1976) (dictum); Hart v. Coiner, 483 F. 2d 136 (CA4 1973). But this Court must ultimately decide the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. If we disagree with the decisions of the Supreme Court of Washington and the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on this point, Washington and West Virginia are for practical purposes indistinguishable from Texas. If we agree with those courts, then of course sentences imposed in Texas, as well as in Washington and West Virginia, are subject to a review for proportionality-under the Eighth Amendment. But in either case, the legislative judgment as to punishment in Washington and West Virginia has been the same as that in Texas.
Rummers charts and tables do appear to indicate that he might have received more lenient treatment in almost any State other than Texas, West Virginia, or Washington. The distinctions, however, are subtle rather than gross. A number of Stages impose a mandatory life sentence upon conviction of four felonies rather than three. Other States require one or more of the felonies to be “violent” to support a life sentence. Still other States leave the imposition of a life sentence after three felonies within the discretion of a judge or jury. It is one thing for a court to compare those States that impose capital punishment for a specific offense with those States that do not. See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S., at 595-596. It is quite another thing for a court to attempt to evaluate the position of any particular recidivist scheme within Rummel’s complex matrix.
Nor do Rummers extensive charts even begin to reflect the complexity of the comparison he asks this Court to make. Texas, we are told, has a relatively liberal policy of granting “good time” credits to its prisoners, a policy that historically has allowed a prisoner serving a life sentence to become eligible for parole in as little as 12 years. See Brief for Respondent 16-17. We agree with Rummel that his inability to enforce any “right” to parole precludes us from treating his life sentence as if it were equivalent to a sentence of 12 years. Nevertheless, because parole is “an established variation on imprisonment of convicted criminals,” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 477 (1972), a proper assessment of Texas’ treatment of Rummel could hardly ignore the possibility that he will not actually be imprisoned for the rest of his life. If nothing else, the possibility of parole, however slim, serves to distinguish Rummel from a person sentenced under a recidivist statute like Mississippi’s, which provides for a sentence of life without parole upon conviction of three felonies including at least one violent felony. See Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-83 (Supp. 1979).
Another variable complicating the calculus is the role of prosecutorial discretion in any recidivist scheme. It is a matter of common knowledge that prosecutors often exercise their discretion in invoking recidivist statutes or in plea bargaining so as to screen out truly “petty” offenders who fall within the literal terms of such statutes. See Oyler v. Boles, 368 U. S. 448, 456 (1932) (upholding West Virginia’s recidivist scheme over contention that it placed unconstitutional discretion in hands of prosecutor). Indeed, in the present case the State of Texas has asked this Court, in the event that we find Rum-mel’s sentence unconstitutionally disproportionate, to remand the case to the sentencing court so that the State might introduce Rummel’s entire criminal record. If, on a remand, the sentencing court were to discover that Rummel had been convicted of one or more felonies in addition to those pleaded in the original indictment, one reasonably might wonder whether that court could then sentence Rummel to life imprisonment even though his recidivist status based on only three felonies had been held to be a “cruel and unusual” punishment.
We offer these additional considerations not as inherent flaws in Rummel’s suggested interjurisdictional analysis but as illustrations of the complexities confronting any court that would attempt such a comparison. Even were we to assume that the statute employed against Rummel was the most stringent found in the 50 States, that severity hardly would render Rummel’s punishment “grossly disproportionate” to his offenses or to the punishment he would have received in the other States. As Mr. Justice Holmes noted in his dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 76 (1905), our Constitution “is made for people of fundamentally differing views....” Until quite recently, Arizona punished as a felony the theft of any “neat or horned animal,” regardless of its value; California considers the theft of “avocados, olives, citrus or deciduous fruits, nuts and artichokes” particularly reprehensible. In one State theft of $100 will earn the offender a fine or a short term in jail; in another State it could earn him a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Absent a constitutionally imposed uniformity inimical to traditional notions of federalism, some State will always bear the distinction of treating particular offenders more severely than any other State.
Perhaps, as asserted in Weems, “time works changes” upon the Eighth Amendment, bringing into existence “new conditions and purposes.” 217 U. S., at 373. We all, of course, would like to think that we are “moving down the road toward human decency.” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 410 (Blackmttn, J., dissenting). Within the confines of this judicial proceeding, however, we have no way of knowing in which direction that road lies. Penologists themselves have been unable to agree whether sentences should be light or heavy, discretionary or determinate. This uncertainty reinforces our conviction that any “nationwide trend” toward lighter, discretionary sentences must find its source and its sustaining force in the legislatures, not in the federal courts.
Ill
The most casual review of the various criminal justice systems now in force in the 50 States of the Union shows that the line dividing felony theft from petty larceny, a line usually based on the value of the property taken, varies markedly from one State to another. We believe that Texas is entitled to make its own judgment as to where such lines lie, subject only to those strictures of the Eighth Amendment that can be informed by objective factors. See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S., at 592. Moreover, given Rummel’s record, Texas was not required to treat him in the same manner as it might treat him were this his first “petty property offense.” Having twice imprisoned him for felonies, Texas was entitled to place upon Rummel the onus of one who is simply unable to bring his conduct within the social norms prescribed by the criminal law of the State.
The purpose of a recidivist statute such as that involved here is not to simplify the task of prosecutors, judges, or juries. Its primary goals are to deter repeat offenders and, at some point in the life of one who repeatedly commits criminal offenses serious enough to be punished as felonies, to segregate that person from the rest of society for an extended period of time. This segregation and its duration are based not merely on that person’s most recent offense but also on the propensities he has demonstrated over a period of time during which he has been convicted of and sentenced for other crimes. Like the line dividing felony theft from petty larceny, the point at which a recidivist will be deemed to have demonstrated the necessary propensities and the amount of time that the recidivist will be isolated from society are matters largely within the discretion of the punishing jurisdiction.
We therefore hold that the mandatory life sentence imposed upon this petitioner does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
With minor revisions, this article has since been recodified as Texas Penal Code Ann. § 12.42 (d) (1974).
In 1964 Texas Penal Code Ann., Art. 1555b, provided:
“Section 1. It shall be unlawful for any person to present a credit card or alleged credit card, with the intent to defraud, to obtain or attempt to obtain any item of value or service of any type; or to present such credit card or alleged credit card, with the intent to defraud, to pay for items of value or services rendered.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 712 (1974).
In 1964 Texas Penal Code Ann., Art. 1555b (4) (d), provided:
“For a violation of this Act, in the event the amount of the credit obtained or the value of the items or services is Fifty Dollars ($50) or more, punishment shall be confinement in the penitentiary for not less than two (2) nor more than ten (10) years.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 713 (1974).
In 1969 Texas Penal Code Ann., Art. 996, provided:
“If any person shall knowingly.pass as true, or attempt to pass as true, any such forged instrument in writing as is mentioned and defined in the preceding articles of this chapter, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than two nor more than five years.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 597 (1974).
In 1973 Texas Penal Code Ann., Art. 1410, provided:
“ ‘Theft’ is the fraudulent taking of corporeal personal property belonging to another from his possession, or from the possession of some person holding the same for him, without his consent, with intent to deprive the owner of the value of the same, and to appropriate it to the use or benefit of the person taking.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 688 (1974).
In 1973 Texas Penal Code Ann., Art. 1413, provided:
“The taking must be wrongful, so that if the property came into the possession of the person accused of theft by lawful means, the subsequent appropriation of it is not theft, but if the taking, though originally lawful, was obtained by false pretext, or with any intent to deprive the owner of the value thereof, and appropriate the property to the use and benefit of the person taking, and the same is so appropriated, the offense of theft is complete.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 689 (1974).
In 1973 Texas Penal Code § 1421 provided:
“Theft of property of the value of fifty dollars or over shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary not less than two nor more than ten years.” App. to Tex. Penal Code Ann., p. 690 (1974).
Preliminarily, the respondent argues that Rummers, claim is barred by Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977), because he did not object at the punishment stage of his trial to the imposition of a mandatory life sentence. Respondent raised this claim for the first time in his petition to the Court of Appeals for rehearing en banc, which was filed shortly after Wainwright was decided. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument because it did not believe that Texas’ contemporaneous-objection requirement extended to a challenge like that raised by Rummell. See 587 F. 2d 651, 653-654 (CA5 1978). Deferring to the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of Texas law, we decline to hold that Wainwright bars Rummel from presenting his claim.
Texas, like most States, defines felonies as offenses that “may — not must — be punishable by death or by confinement in the penitentiary... Tex. Penal Code Ann., Art. 47 (Vernon 1925), recodified without substantive change at Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 1.07 (14) (1974). See also W. LaFave & A. Scott, Handbook on Criminal Law 26 (1972).
See Ala. Code §§ 13-3-50, 13-3-90 (1975) (1 to 10 years); Alaska Stat. Ann. § 11.20.360 (1970) (1 to 5 years); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 13-661 (A)(3), 13-663 (A)(1), 13-671 (1956 and Supp. 1957-1978) (1 to 10 years); Ark. Stat. Ann. §§ 41-1901, 41-3907 (1964) (1 to 21 years); Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 18-4-101, 18-1-105 (1973) (fine or up to 10 years); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §§.841, 843, 4205 (1974) (fine or up to 7 years); D. C. Code § 22-1301 (1973) (1 to 3 years); Fla. Stat. § 811.021 (1965) (fine or up to 5 years); Ga. Code Ann. §§ 26-1803, 26-1812 (1977) (fine or up to 10 years); Ind. Code Ann. §§ 10-3030 (b), 10-3039 (3) (Supp. 1975) (fine of up to 10 years); Kan. Stat. Ann. §§ 21-3701, 21-4501 (1974) (1 to 3 years); Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 514,040, 532.080 (1975) (1 to 5 years); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:67- (West 1974) (up to 2 years); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 17, § 1601 (1965) (fine or up to 7 years); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, § 140 (1957) (fine or up to 10 years); Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 266, § 30 (West 1970) (fine or up to 5 years); Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.218 (1968) (fine or up to 10 years); Minn. Stat. § 609.52 (Supp. 1978) (fine or up to 5 years); Miss. Code Ann. § 97-19-39 (1972) (fine or up to 3 years); Mont. Rev. Code Ann. §§ 94-2701 (1), 94-2704(1), 94-2706 (1947) (1 to 14 years); Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 205.380, 205.380(1) (1977) (fine or 1 to 10 years); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 637:4 (I), 637:11 (II) (a), 651:2 (1974) (fine or up to 7 years); N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-100 (1969) (fine or 4 months to 10 years); N. D. Cent. Code §§ 12.1-23-02, 12.1-23-05 (2) (a), 12.1-32-01 (3) (1976) (fine or up to 5 years);
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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, a native of Tunis, Africa, was ordered deported after a hearing pursuant to § 242 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 209, 8 U. S. C. § 1252 (b). It was found that he had been convicted in 1938 of violation of the Marihuana Tax Act, 26 U. S. C. § 2591, and sentenced to imprisonment for one year. Section 241 (a) (11) of the 1952 immigration law makes such conviction at any time ground for deportation, and § 241 (d) provides that the deportation provisions of § 241 (a) shall apply even though the facts giving rise to the alien’s deportability occurred prior to the date of enactment of the 1952 Act.
At the hearing before a special inquiry officer of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, petitioner did not dispute the fact of his conviction. He did, however, object to the proceedings on the ground that they violated due process and the Administrative Procedure Act, 60 Stat. 237, 5 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. The hearing officer overruled these objections. Petitioner also contended that the ex post jacto clause of the Constitution precluded the retroactive application of the 1952 law to his case. This contention too was rejected by the hearing officer. Petitioner and his counsel were advised of their right to apply to the Attorney General for the discretionary relief of suspension of deportation under § 244 (a) (5) of the Act. At first they declined to do so, but subsequently they moved to reopen the hearing to apply for such relief. The special inquiry officer denied the motion. On appeal, the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the order of deportation. Though no formal application for suspension of deportation under § 244 (a) (5) had been filed, the Board considered whether such relief was merited but exercised its discretion against the remission.
Petitioner then brought this action for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the validity of the deportation order on the grounds, inter alia: (1) that the hearing under § 242 (b) of the Act failed to comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act in that the special inquiry officer was under the supervision and control of officials in the Immigration Service who performed investigative and prosecuting functions; (2) that § 242 (b) violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment because it failed to provide for a fair and impartial hearing; (3) that on the date of petitioner’s arrest the Attorney General made a public statement, which “was bound to have great effect upon the special inquiry officer,” to the effect that petitioner was an undesirable citizen for whose deportation the proceedings were “specially designed,” and, further, that in 1952 the Attorney General “prepared a list of 152 persons [including petitioner] whom he desired to deport”; and (4) that the retroactive application of § 241 (a) (11) was unconstitutional as an ex post facto law.
The Government’s return to the writ alleged that petitioner’s deportation had been conducted in accordance with the Constitution, laws and regulations of the United States. No evidence was introduced by either side save the official Immigration Service record of petitioner’s deportation proceedings. The District Court held the deportation order valid and discharged the writ. 113 F. Supp. 22. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 212 F. 2d 830. Petitioner pursues his four basic objections in this Court, certiorari having been granted to resolve issues having a significant bearing on the administration of our immigration laws. 348 U. S. 805.
Applicability of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Petitioner concedes that § 242 (b) of the Immigration Act, authorizing the appointment of a “special inquiry officer” to preside at the deportation proceedings, does not conflict with the Administrative Procedure Act, since § 7 (a) of that Act excepts from its terms officers specially provided for or designated pursuant to other statutes. He insists, however, that there are several significant discrepancies between the Acts, and claims that in cases of variance the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act must govern unless those of the Immigration Act “shall . . . expressly” negate their application. Administrative Procedure Act, § 12. The discrepancies relied on stem from the “separation of functions” provision of § 5 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act. To the extent here material, this section separates investigative and prosecuting functions from those of adjudication, expressly providing that hearing officers shall not be responsible to or under the supervision of those engaged in investigation and prosecution. The section also prohibits the hearing officer from participating or advising in the decision of a case, or one factually related thereto, in which he has performed investigative or prosecuting functions. Section 242 (b) of the Immigration Act, on the other hand, permits the “special inquiry officer” to take the dual role of prosecutor and hearing officer — presenting evidence and interrogating witnesses — and prohibits him only from hearing cases which he has taken some part in investigating or prosecuting (other than in the permitted dual capacity). An alternative method is permitted by § 242 (b), however, under which an additional immigration officer presents the evidence while the special inquiry officer presides. See 8 CFR § 242.53. Special inquiry officers are subject to such supervision as the Attorney General prescribes, 66 Stat. 171, 8 U. S. C. § 1101 (b)(4), and at present they are subject to the supervision of district directors of the immigration districts to which they are assigned, as well as higher Service officials, all with enforcement responsibilities of the type proscribed by § 5 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Under the allegations here made, the single attack of the petitioner pertains to the supervision of the special inquiry officer by the investigative and prosecuting officials of the Immigration Service. The alternative procedure of § 242 (b) was employed in this case, so the presiding officer did not undertake the functions of prosecutor; and there is no allegation that he engaged in investigative or prosecuting functions in this or any factually related case. For the sake of clarity, however, we shall consider all of the differences in the hearing provisions of the two Acts in determining whether the Administrative Procedure Act is to govern.
The applicability of the Administrative Procedure Act to deportation proceedings under the Immigration Act of 1917 was considered by this Court in Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33 (1950). We there held, contrary to the prevailing interpretation and practice of the Department of Justice, that deportation hearings were subject to the Act. Six months later, Congress provided in the Supplemental Appropriation Act of 1951, 64 Stat. 1048, that proceedings directed toward the exclusion or expulsion of aliens should not be governed by §§ 5, 7 and 8 of the Administrative Procedure Act. The issue here presented is whether the Congress reversed itself in the 1952 Immigration Act and in effect reinstated the Sung case by making the hearing provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act directly applicable to deportation proceedings. A comparison of the pertinent provisions of the two statutes is perhaps the strongest indication that the Congress had no such intention.
1. Section 242 (b) of the Immigration Act begins by enumerating the functions of the special inquiry officer, that he shall administer oaths, receive evidence, etc. A similar though more extensive and detailed provision appears in § 7 (b) of the Administrative Procedure Act, but of course this section makes no mention of functions stemming from the special inquiry officer’s dual role as prosecutor and judge.
2. Section 242 (b) then directs that a determination of deportability be made only upon the record of a proceeding at which the alien had a reasonable opportunity to be present. A similar direction as to the record appears in § 7 (d) of the Administrative Procedure Act, and as to the party’s personal appearance in § 6 (a).
3. Section 242 (b) then deals with matters peculiar to deportation proceedings, which have no direct analogues in the Administrative Procedure Act: safeguards to be established to protect mentally incompetent aliens; the right of the inquiry officer to proceed if the alien deliberately absents himself; the option to pursue the alternative procedure, described above, in which one official prosecutes and another decides.
4. Next in § 242 (b) is the limitation already noted on the special inquiry officer’s sitting in the same case in which he has also engaged in investigative or prosecuting functions. The more restrictive analogue in § 5 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act has also been presented.
5. Section 242 (b) then sets forth various requirements which are to be included in regulations governing deportation proceedings before the special inquiry officer. The first of these gives the alien the right to reasonable notice of the charges against him and of the time and place at which the proceedings shall be held. A similar requirement appears in § 5 (a) of the Administrative Procedure Act.
6. The second provision which § 242 (b) requires to be included in the regulations is the privilege of the alien to be represented by counsel of his own choosing. Section 6 (a) of the Administrative Procedure Act bestows a similar privilege on any person compelled to appear in person before the agency.
7. The regulations under § 242 (b) must also provide that the alien be given a reasonable opportunity to present and examine evidence and to cross-examine witnesses. The same ground is covered in § 7 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act.
8. The regulations promulgated under § 242 (b) must require that decisions of deportability be based upon reasonable, substantial and probative evidence. To the same effect is § 7 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act.
9. Finally, in addition to the requirements of § 242 (b), there is the direction of § 101 (b) (4) of the Immigration Act that the special inquiry officer shall be subject to such supervision as the Attorney General shall prescribe. This covers the same question as the portion of § 5 (c) of the Administrative Procedure Act dealing with the supervision and control of hearing officers.
From the Immigration Act’s detailed coverage of the same subject matter dealt with in the hearing provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, it is clear that Congress was setting up a specialized administrative procedure applicable to deportation hearings, drawing liberally on the analogous provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act and adapting them to the particular needs of the deportation process. The same legislators, Senator McCarran and Congressman Walter, sponsored both the Administrative Procedure Act and the Immigration Act, and the framework of the latter indicates clearly that the Administrative Procedure Act was being used as a model. But it was intended only as a model, and when in this very particularized adaptation there was a departure from the Administrative Procedure Act — based on novel features in the deportation process — surely it was the intention of the Congress to have the deviation apply and not the general model. Were the courts to ignore these provisions and look only to the Administrative Procedure Act, the painstaking efforts detailed above would be completely meaningless. Congress could have accomplished as much simply by stating that there should be a hearing to determine the question of deportability.
Section 242 (b) expressly states: “The procedure [herein prescribed] shall be the sole and exclusive procedure for determining the deportability of an alien under this section.” That this clear and categorical direction was meant to exclude the application of the Administrative Procedure Act is amply demonstrated by the legislative history of the Immigration Act. The original bills included statements to the effect that the § 242 (b) procedures were to be exclusive, “[notwithstanding any other law, including the [Administrative Procedure Act].” S. 3455, 81st Cong., 2d Sess.; S. 716, 82d Cong., 1st Sess.; H. R. 2379, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. The “notwithstanding” clause was dropped in later versions of the Act and did not appear in the bills reported out of committee or in the statute as finally enacted. S. 2055, 82d Cong.; H. R. 5678, 82d Cong.; S. 2550, 82d Cong. The deletion is nowhere explained, but it is possible that the phrase was considered unnecessary — and perhaps inappropriate as a description — as § 242 (b) became more detailed, encompassing in its particularization the greater part of the Administrative Procedure Act’s hearing provisions. In the Senate Report accompanying the revised bill, it is stated that § 242 (b) sets up special procedures for deportation proceedings, that these are made exclusive, and that the exemption from the Administrative Procedure Act in the Supplemental Appropriation Act of 1951 is repealed because it is “no longer necessary.” S. Rep. No. 1137, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 28. The House Report is to the same effect, stating that the prescribed deportation proceedings shall be the sole and exclusive procedure, “notwithstanding the provisions of any other law.” H. R. Rep. No. 1365, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 58. Throughout the debates it is made clear that the Administrative Procedure Act does not apply directly, but that its provisions have been specially adapted to meet the needs of the deportation process. See particularly the detailed statement of Senator McCarran, 98 Cong. Rec. 5625-5626, wherein he recognizes a departure from the “dual-examiner provisions” of the Administrative Procedure Act, the very section here in issue.
Exemptions from the terms of the Administrative Procedure Act are not lightly to be presumed in view of the statement in § 12 of the Act that modifications must be express, cf. Shaughnessy v. Pedreiro, 349 U. S. 48. But we cannot ignore the background of the 1952 immigration legislation, its laborious adaptation of the Administrative Procedure Act to the deportation process, the specific points at which deviations from the Administrative Procedure Act were made, the recognition in the legislative history of this adaptive technique and of the particular deviations, and the direction in the statute that the methods therein prescribed shall be the sole and exclusive procedure for deportation proceedings. Unless we are to require the Congress to employ magical passwords in order to effectuate an exemption from the Administrative Procedure Act, we must hold that the present statute expressly supersedes the hearing provisions of that Act.
The Hearing Procedures and Due Process.
As noted above, the only complaint which petitioner can urge concerning the hearing procedures in this case is the objection that the special inquiry officer was subject to the supervision and control of officials in the Immigration Service charged with investigative and prosecuting functions. Petitioner would have us hold that the presence of this relationship so strips the hearing of fairness and impartiality as to make the procedure violative of due process. The contention is without substance when considered against the long-standing practice in deportation proceedings, judicially approved in numerous decisions in the federal courts, and against the special considerations applicable to deportation which the Congress may take into account in exercising its particularly broad discretion in immigration matters.
The Claim of Prejudgment.
Our opinions in the Accardi cases stand for the proposition that the Attorney General cannot, under present regulations, dictate the actions of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260; Shaughnessy v. Accardi, 349 U. S. 280. Petitioner alleges that his case was prejudged within the meaning of these decisions because on’ the day of his arrest for deportation the Attorney General “announced in a public statement both in Washington and in New Orleans that [petitioner] was an undesirable citizen and had been guilty of many crimes, and that the proceedings were specially designed to deport petitioner,” and that “such publicity was bound to have great effect upon the special inquiry officer.” He alleged, further, that “the Attorney General some time in 1952 prepared a list of 152 persons whom he desired to deport, and that [his] name was included on this list.”
Considering first the alleged list, it is clear that petitioner has not made out a case of prejudgment. He did not allege that either the inquiry officer or the Board of Immigration Appeals had seen the list, had known of its existence, or had been influenced in their decisions by the inclusion of petitioner’s name thereon. In argument before the Board, petitioner stated through counsel that he had “the feeling — and it’s a feeling that’s based upon evidence which we will supply — that the real basis for the denial of suspension here was the fact that Marcello was one of these hundred whom the Attorney General had named . . . .” No evidence of this was forthcoming. As to petitioner’s charges concerning the Attorney General’s “list,”'the record is completely barren.
Nor does petitioner fare better in seeking to base prejudgment on the unfavorable publicity accompanying his arrest. He introduced newspaper clippings into evidence to show the adverse local publicity and alleged that this publicity must have had a “great effect” upon the special inquiry officer. But the record indicates clearly that petitioner’s case could not possibly have been prejudiced in the hearing before the inquiry officer. On the question of petitioner’s deportability, the sole issue decided by him, the hearing officer merely applied the statute to the undisputed facts. Petitioner admitted that he was deportable under the Immigration Act of 1952 if the Act could constitutionally base deportation on his 1938 marihuana conviction. And the hearing officer could be expected in any event to take the law as Congress enacted it. In view of this Court’s decisions on the ex post jacto objection, the only ground of attack, he could do nothing else. Petitioner waived the only issue on which prejudgment was possible when he declined to apply for discretionary relief at the proper time. See 8 CFR § 242.54 (d).
The Board of Immigration Appeals considered the availability of discretionary relief, but as to these officials there was not even an allegation by petitioner that they had known of the unfavorable publicity or had been influenced by it. Indeed, there is every indication that the Board had not prejudged the case, since it considered the question of suspending deportation on the merits although not bound to do so in view of petitioner’s waiver below. The Board denied the requested relief, giving reasons. It is not for us in this proceeding to pass on the factors relied on by the Board in reaching its conclusion. It is sufficient to observe that all had basis in the record and that none stemmed from any sort of dictation by the Attorney General.
Finally, we note that, even as to his claim relating to adverse publicity, petitioner introduced no evidence other than the newspaper clippings. Surely on this meager showing the district judge was warranted in finding — as he did — that the special inquiry officer, the only official mentioned in petitioner’s pleadings, was not controlled in his decision by superiors in the Department of Justice. The decision of the district judge cannot be set aside as clearly erroneous. Accordingly, we hold that under our Accardi decisions petitioner has failed to make out a case for a new hearing.
Ex Post Facto.
Petitioner’s last objection stems from the fact that his conviction under the Marihuana Tax Act was not ground for deportation at the time he committed the offense, and that he was not forewarned of all the consequences of his criminal conduct. It is urged that we depart from our recent decisions holding that the prohibition of the ex post facto clause does not apply to deportation, and strike down as unconstitutional the retroactive application of the new grounds for deportation in § 241 (a) (11) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. We perceive no special reasons, however, for overturning our precedents on this matter, and adhere to our decisions in Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, and Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U. S. 580.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Harlan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
66 Stat. 204, 8 U. S. C. § 1251 (a)(11).
66 Stat. 208, 8 U. S. C. § 1251 (d).
66 Stat. 204, 8 U. S. C. § 1254 (a)(5).
Section 7 (a) of the Administrative Procedure Act directs that, in general, administrative hearings shall be held before hearing officers appointed pursuant to § 11 of the Act.
Petitioner introduced clippings appearing in New Orleans newspapers relating to the statement. While the press release of the Attorney General was not put in evidence, it read as follows:
. “Attorney General James P. McGranery announced today that Carlos Marcello of Miami, Florida, and Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, has been arrested on a deportation warrant by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
“The arrest in New Orleans was the first major deportation move undertaken since the new Immigration and Nationality Act became effective December 24, 1952. The action was another step in the Attorney General’s program of denaturalization and/or deportation of undesirable persons of foreign birth who are engaged in racketeering or other criminal activities.
“Marcello, born February 6, 1910, in Tunis, Africa, entered the United States for permanent residence October 7, 1910, at New Orleans.
• “He allegedly is engaged in large-scale slot machine operations and other gambling activities in Louisiana.
“The deportation warrant was based on his conviction in 1938 for violation of the Marijuana Act. Such a conviction is a deportable offense under the new Immigration and Nationality Act.
“The action follows lengthy investigations by both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. His conviction under the Marijuana Act was one of only two in his checkered career. The other case in which he was convicted was under Louisiana State law, the conviction being for assault and robbery, and on May 13, 1930, he was sentenced to serve a term of 9 to 14 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The Governor of Louisiana gave him a full pardon for this crime July 16, 1935.
“Marcello served a year and a day after his conviction under the Marijuana 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: | 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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellees, identified as the trustee of the “revocable living trust” of Charles W. Hirschi and transferees of Hirschi’s property, seek a refund of $6,000 in estate taxes, on the ground that the Government’s interpretation of a statutory transitional rule, enacted to bridge the old and new regimes for the federal taxation of gifts and estates, violates both the statute and the Constitution.
I
Prior to 1977, the gift tax and the estate tax were imposed, calculated, and collected separately. The gift tax, imposed on donors of certain gifts, permitted each taxpayer a lifetime exemption of $30,000 to be deducted from amounts otherwise taxable. 26 U. S. C. §2521 (1970 ed.). This so-called “specific exemption” could be claimed, in whole or in part, at any time during the taxpayer’s lifetime. Ibid. The estate tax, too, provided certain relief for modest estates. In determining the amount subject to estate tax, the estate was entitled to deduct a “specific exemption” of $60,000. §2052 (1970 ed.).
In considering tax reform in 1976, Congress determined that several changes were necessary to ease the burden of estate and gift taxes on taxpayers of modest means. See H. R. Rep. No. 94-1380, p. 11 (1976). One such change was to transform what had been tax deductions into tax credits so that taxpayers in the lower brackets would benefit as much as those in higher brackets. Id., at 15. In addition, Congress decided to merge the two separate specific exemptions for gifts and estates into a single credit, believing that the prior system had favored those who could afford to make substantial lifetime transfers, while disadvantaging those who needed to maintain access to their assets until death. Id., at 16. Accordingly, the Tax Reform Act of 1976 (Act) erased many of the distinctions in treatment between transfers during life and those after death, in effect treating inheritance as the final taxable gift. It created the so-called “unified credit,” which a taxpayer could apply either toward gift tax during life or toward estate tax after death. 26 U. S. C. §§ 2010(a), 2505(a). The $30,000 specific exemption for gifts and $60,000 specific exemption for estates were eliminated, beginning with estates of taxpayers dying after December 31, 1976, and gifts given after that date. A phase-in schedule was established for the amount of the new unified credit, providing a credit of $30,000 for taxpayers dying in 1977, $34,000 for those dying in 1978, and culminating in $47,000 for decedents dying in 1981 and thereafter. 26 U. S. C. §§2010(b), 2505(b) (1976 ed.).
The transformation from exemptions to credit left unresolved the treatment of taxpayers who, before 1977, had used up some or all of their $30,000 specific exemption to escape taxation of gifts. Without further action by Congress, those taxpayers would have gained that benefit of the old regime and theoretically would still be entitled to the entire unified credit provided by the new scheme, even though the latter credit was intended to be a substitute for the entire $90,000 worth of specific exemptions. Moreover, taxpayers with notice of the new scheme would have a great incentive to make gifts quickly and claim their specific exemptions before the unified credit was to go into effect, deliberately seeking the windfall of double exemption. See Estate of Gawne v. Commissioner, 80 T. C. 478, 483 (1983). Recognizing these possibilities, the House Ways and Means Committee reported out a bill which provided that if any portion of the $30,000 specific exemption for gifts had been claimed by a taxpayer since 1932, the unified credit otherwise available to the taxpayer would be reduced by 20% of the amount of the specific exemption already claimed. H. R. 14844, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., §§ 2010(c), 2505(c) (1976), reprinted in H. R. Rep. No. 94-1380, pp. 94, 131 (1976). While the legislative history does not explain the derivation of the 20% figure, the Committee apparently believed it to represent roughly the proportion of equivalence between the values of the specific exemption and the credit, taking into account average effective tax rates.
This proposed transitional rule was amended by the Conference Committee. The conferees limited the class of covered taxpayers to those who had made gifts after September 8, 1976, the date the Conference Committee approved the measure, but before January 1,1977, the effective date of the Act. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-1515, pp. 607-608 (1976). The Conference Committee evidently was less concerned with the possibility of double tax benefits in general than it was with preventing the intentional accretion of such benefits. See R. Stephens, G. Maxfield, & S. Lind, Federal Estate and Gift Taxation ¶3.02, pp. 3-4, n. 9 (4th ed. 1978); J. McCord, 1976 Estate and Gift Tax Reform: Analysis, Explanation and Commentary §2.13, p. 26 (1977). The Act containing this transitional rule passed both Houses of Congress on September 16, 1976, and the President signed it on October 4, 1976. It is the application of the transitional rule that is at issue in the case before us.
II
The parties have stipulated to the facts. On September 28, 1976, during the period designated as the transitional period, Charles Hirschi made gifts totaling $45,000 to five persons. Two days later, Hirschi filed a federal gift tax return declaring that no tax was due. The first $15,000 consisted of five gifts of $3,000 each, and was exempt from taxation by virtue of a statutory annual exclusion from gift tax of $3,000 per donee. See 26 U. S. C. § 2503(b) (1970 ed.). To render the remaining $30,000 also exempt from tax, Hirschi elected to claim his entire, lifetime specific exemption. By thus claiming the maximum exemptions to which the old law entitled him, Hirschi evidently hoped to reap the benefits of that law before its repeal. Had he lived three years longer, he might have come closer to realizing his hopes.
But, in poignant confirmation of Benjamin Franklin’s adage, Hirschi escaped neither death nor taxes. Just over two years later, Hirschi died, and his estate was required by law to include in the gross estate all gifts made “in contemplation of death,” which presumptively included all gifts made within three years of the decedent’s demise. See 26 U. S. C. §2035 (1970 ed.). After including in the estate the full $45,000 worth of gifts given on September 28, 1976, the estate then claimed its entire unified credit provided by the new Act for decedents dying in 1978, in the amount of $34,000. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), however, concluded that, under the transitional rule, the $34,000 unified credit must be reduced by 20% of the amount of the specific exemption claimed during the decedent’s lifetime, or $6,000. The IRS made an assessment of $6,000, and the estate paid the deficiency. The estate then filed an unsuccessful administrative claim for a refund, and this lawsuit followed.
The District Court for the Southern District of Illinois held that § 2010(c), as applied to Hirschi’s gift, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Because the transitional rule has an effect on gifts made before its enactment, the court reasoned that the case is controlled by Untermyer v. Anderson, 276 U. S. 440 (1928), in which this Court held that the Nation’s first gift tax could not be applied to gifts made before its enactment without violating due process. Id., at 445. The District Court found that the application of § 2010(c) to this transaction was “so arbitrary and capricious as to render it unconstitutional.” App. to Juris. Statement 6a. This Court noted probable jurisdiction of the Government’s appeal, 474 U. S. 814 (1985), and we now reverse the judgment of the District Court.
Ill
Appellees proffer two principal arguments in support of the judgment below. First, they maintain that Congress did not intend the transitional rule to be applied as the IRS applied it in their case. Second, they contend that the employment of the transitional rule in their case offends due process. Although the District Court embarked immediately upon the constitutional claim, we shall undertake the statutory analysis first.
The transitional rule provides as follows:
“The amount of the credit allowable under subsection (a) [the unified credit] shall be reduced by an amount equal to 20 percent of the aggregate amount allowed as a specific exemption under section 2521 (as in effect before its repeal by the Tax Reform Act of 1976) with respect to gifts made by the decedent after September 8, 1976.” 26 U. S. C. § 2010(c).
Appellees focus on the word “allowed.” They contend that, when the $30,000 gift was included in the Hirschi estate by reason of his death within three years of making the gift, the $30,000 specific exemption he had claimed became “disallowed”; it was improper, they argue, for the unified credit to have been diminished as if Hirschi had been “allowed” his specific exemption. Under appellees’ view, a claim to a specific exemption is not “allowed” unless the taxpayer ultimately benefits from that exemption by paying less tax than he otherwise would have paid.
Longstanding interpretation of the tax laws provides appellees little in the way of support. This Court had occasion, in 1943, to consider an argument very similar to that propounded by appellees in this case. In Virginian Hotel Corp. v. Helvering, 319 U. S. 523 (1943), the taxpayer claimed “that ‘allowed,’ unlike ‘allowable,’ connotes the receipt of a tax benefit.” Id., at 526. The provision at issue there required the reduction of the basis of property by the amount of prior depreciation deductions “to the extent allowed.” The taxpayer had claimed depreciation deductions in prior years, but, because other deductions for the years in question had been sufficient to produce overall losses, the deductions for depreciation had not reduced the amount of tax owed in those years. Consequently, the taxpayer argued that those deductions, although claimed, had not been “allowed,” because they had not resulted in a tax benefit. The Court disagreed:
“[W]e find no suggestion that ‘allowed,’ as distinguished from ‘allowable,’ depreciation is confined to those deductions which result in tax benefits. ‘Allowed’ connotes a grant. Under our federal tax system there is no machinery for formal allowances of deductions from gross income. Deductions stand if the Commissioner takes no steps to challenge them.” Id., at 526-527.
In this case, too, we find no suggestion that only those uses of the specific exemption that afford an ultimate tax advantage to the taxpayer are to be considered “allowed” within the meaning of § 2010(c). For the gift-tax scheme has no more machinery for formal allowance of deductions than does the income-tax scheme discussed in Virginian Hotel. While it is true that “the record does not reflect that the specific exemption was allowed,” Brief for Appellees 17, inaction by the IRS under these circumstances suggests allowance, rather than disallowance, of the claim. See Kilgroe v. United States, 664 F. 2d 1168, 1170 (CA10 1981); Blackhawk-Perry Corp. v. Commissioner, 182 F. 2d 319, 321 (CA8 1950); P. Dougherty Co. v. Commissioner, 159 F. 2d 269, 271 (CA4 1946); Repplier Coal Co. v. Commissioner, 140 F. 2d 554, 558 (CA3 1944).
Nor is the mere inclusion of the gift in the gross estate tantamount to disallowance of the $30,000 exemption. Under §2035, the $30,000 would have been included in the estate even if Hirschi had paid gift tax on the gift instead of claiming his specific exemption. The operation of §2035 makes no comment upon the propriety of the claim of exemption. Thus, we cannot conclude that Congress intended inclusion of a gift made in contemplation of death in the gross estate of the donor to render the specific exemption not “allowed” within the meaning of § 2010(c).
The term “allowed” is a familiar denizen of the Tax Code. See, e. g., §§ 1016(a)(20), (25). In some sections it appears unqualified, while in others, Congress has clearly embellished the term with the “tax benefit” qualification that appellees urge here. For example, in certain situations a taxpayer’s “basis” in property is to be reduced “for amounts allowed as deductions . . . and resulting in a reduction of the taxpayer’s taxes.” §§ 1016(a)(9), (14), (16). Congress failed to so qualify the term “allowed” in § 2010(c), and we will not presume to impart to Congress an unstated intention to do so.
More importantly, Hirschi did receive a benefit for his specific exemption. He was permitted the option of deciding, in 1976, whether he would prefer to pay gift tax at that time or to claim his lifetime specific exemption and avoid paying taxes on the gift. He was granted the opportunity, knowing of the disadvantageous laws relating to gifts made in contemplation of death, to calculate the probability that he would live for three more years and escape tax on the $30,000 altogether. During his lifetime he paid no tax on the $30,000 gift, consistent with his election to use the specific exemption. The eventual effect of his decisions upon his estate cannot be said to have deprived him of the benefit Congress intended to bestow upon those in Hirschi’s position. The application of § 2010(c) to reduce the unified credit of Hirschi’s estate by 20% of the amount claimed as a specific exemption, therefore, is consistent with the language and purpose of the statute.
IV
We must now address the argument that led the District Court to find unconstitutional the Government’s application of the transitional rule to appellees. Appellees contend that the rule “effectively imposes a retroactive penalty tax upon Mr. Hirschi’s claim to the specific exemption,” Brief for Appellees 33, and that it is “unreasonably harsh and oppressive,” in violation of the Due Process Clause. Id., at 31. In addition, appellees suggest that they have been subjected to double taxation, also without due process, see id., at 32.
The District Court found that § 2010(c) transgresses the Due Process Clause because its application to appellees is arbitrary and capricious. Relying heavily on Untermyer v. Anderson, 276 U. S. 440 (1928), the court concluded that the “retroactive” operation of the legislation, insofar as it affects the final disposition of a gift made before the enactment of the statute, is unreasonable. In Untermyer, this Court construed the Revenue Act of 1924, which was signed on June 2 of that year and imposed a gift tax on gifts made during the entire calendar year 1924. The Court concluded that, “so far as applicable to bona fide gifts not made in anticipation of death and fully consummated prior to June 2,1924, those provisions are arbitrary and invalid under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Id., at 445. The principal objection to the statute was the absence of notice; the Court endorsed the conclusion, ibid., reached in Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 147 (1927), where a plurality had found it “wholly unreasonable that one who, in entire good faith and without the slightest premonition of such consequence, made absolute disposition of his property by gifts should thereafter be required to pay a charge for so doing.”
In Untermyer, supra, at 445, the Court explicitly recognized a distinction between retroactive taxation of genuine gifts and that of gifts made in contemplation of death; the case, therefore, is not controlling here. Moreover, Untermyer involved the levy of the first gift tax; its authority is of limited value in assessing the constitutionality of subsequent amendments that bring about certain changes in operation of the tax laws, rather than the creation of a wholly new tax. See United States v. Darusmont, 449 U. S. 292, 299 (1981) (per curiam). Indeed, this Court has since made clear that some retrospective effect is not necessarily fatal to a revenue law. In Milliken v. United States, 283 U. S. 15 (1931), for example, the Court upheld the application of an early “gift in contemplation of death” statute, enacted in 1918, to draw into the estate of a decedent who died in 1920 a gift given in 1916, before enactment of the statute. In that case the equities were especially favorable to the taxpayer, because the gift in question was stock that had appreciated substantially following the gift, and inclusion in the estate occasioned taxation of the higher amount. Nevertheless, this Court reasoned that the validity of the tax depended, not upon its retroactive feature, but upon its nature and that of the gift. The Court upheld the levy of estate tax upon the gift on the ground that the notion of taxing gifts made in contemplation of death as part of the estate was not new, and that the donor should have known that there was a chance of increased tax burden if he chose to make what amounted to a testamentary gift during his lifetime. Id., at 24.
Following the approach taken in our prior cases, we must “consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid before it can be said that its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation.” Welch v. Henry, 305 U. S. 134, 147 (1938). One of the relevant circumstances is whether, without notice, a statute gives a different and more oppressive legal effect to conduct undertaken before enactment of the statute. Our first task, accordingly, is to determine whether Hirschi’s conduct was granted a different and more oppressive legal effect as a result of the Act. The key to resolution of this question is § 2035, which has reached back for years to affect the taxation of gifts made in contemplation of death.
Section 2035, as it applied to gifts made before 1977, provided that gifts made within three years of the donor’s death would be deemed to have been made in contemplation of death, unless the estate could establish otherwise. 26 U. S. C. § 2035(b) (1970 ed.). Congress required that gifts made in contemplation of death be included in the amount of the gross estate in order to forestall any temptation on the part of taxpayers to make deathbed transfers for the purpose of evading estate taxes. See Milliken v. United States, supra. Even if the Act had never been passed, Hirschi’s gift would have been subject to the requirements of § 2035. Our inquiry, therefore, must focus upon the operation of that provision both with and without the intervening passage of § 2010(c).
Had Congress not enacted § 2010(c), Hirschi would have claimed his $30,000 specific exemption; he would have paid no tax on that gift. When he died within three years, his estate would have been required, under § 2035, to include the gift in the estate and pay estate taxes on that $30,000. His estate would have been permitted to claim its specific exemption of $60,000 against the estate tax owed. With the enactment of § 2010(c), Hirschi claimed his $30,000 specific exemption; he paid no tax on that gift. When he died within three years, his estate was required, under §2035, to include the gift in the estate and pay estate taxes on that $30,000. His estate was permitted to claim its entire unified credit of $34,000, minus $6,000, against the estate tax owed.
The operative comparison, then, is between a specific exemption of $60,000, available to the estate under the old law, and a unified credit from which $6,000 has been subtracted, available to appellees under the new Act. As discussed above, Congress reasonably determined that the entire unified credit would provide a substitute for both the $30,000 specific exemption for lifetime gifts and the $60,000 specific exemption for estates. Mindful that, under the old law, the estate would have been entitled to claim $60,000 — only two-thirds of the taxpayer’s entire $90,000 exemption — we cannot be surprised to discover that, under the new Act, too, the estate is entitled to something less than the full unified credit otherwise available. Here, Congress quite fairly decided that the credit should be reduced by 20% of the specific exemption previously taken, a favorable exchange for the taxpayer. Taking into account Congress’ equation, then, we cannot but deduce that appellees are no worse off than they would have been without the enactment of the Act. Appellees reach a different conclusion only by comparing Hirschi’s position, not to that of another taxpayer subject to §2035, but to that of a person who did not die within three years of making the gift, a person not similarly situated with respect to the relevant legal criteria.
Other circumstances of Hirschi’s transaction confirm our conclusion that appellees have not suffered different and oppressive treatment as a result of the Act. First, § 2035 had long been in effect at the time Hirschi made his gift, and it is § 2035 that contains the principal retroactive feature involved in this case, requiring the estate to reach back and embrace a gift made over two years previously. Moreover, Hirschi had no expectation at the time of the gift that he would be entitled to any particular amount of a unified credit, that credit not yet having been created. Especially if the amount of the credit that his estate was ultimately allotted resulted in no greater a tax than the estate would have owed under the old law, the retroactive aspect of the law could not be said to be oppressive or inequitable. Appellees concede that, even taking into account the operation of § 2010(c), they still have paid estate taxes of $655.16 less than they would have paid had the 1976 Act never been passed. While the amount of tax is not dispositive, it is one circumstance of the transaction to be considered under Milliken. Under these circumstances, we have no difficulty concluding that, even if § 2010(c) can be considered to be retroactive taxation, a question that we do not answer, the provision represents a fair judgment by Congress that does not deprive appellees of anything to which they can assert a constitutional right.
Appellees also protest that the confluence of §§ 2010(c) and 2035 has required them to pay tax on the same transaction twice. By reducing the unified credit by $6,000, they argue, the IRS has effectively made the estate liable for gift tax on the $30,000, while also assessing estate tax on the same $30,000. Yet we have concluded above that appellees have not been taxed more oppressively than have any taxpayers unfortunate enough to be subject to §2035. “There is no doubt of the power of Congress to provide for including in the gross estate of a decedent, for purposes of the death tax, the value of gifts made in contemplation of death.” Heiner v. Donnan, 285 U. S. 312, 324 (1932). We need not decide here whether that inclusion results in double taxation, for even if it did, the Constitution would not be offended as long as Congress had clearly expressed its intention to occasion the result. Patton v. Brady, 184 U. S. 608, 621 (1902). Congress clearly intended, in §2035, to gather Hirschi’s $30,000 gift into the estate; equally clear is the legislative purpose to reduce the unified credit whenever the specific exemption for lifetime gifts was used during the transitional period. There being no ambiguity in the statute, even if one could construe the treatment of Hirschi as double taxation, the Constitution would not stand in its way. Hellmich v. Hellman, 276 U. S. 233, 238 (1928).
V
The application of § 2010(c) to reduce the credit available to the Hirschi estate by $6,000 is not inconsistent with the statute or the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is
Reversed.
A credit has greater value to the taxpayer than a deduction or exemption. A credit directly reduces the amount of tax that must be paid, dollar for dollar, whereas a deduction reduces tax liability only indirectly by reducing the taxable estate. See R. Stephens, G. Maxfield, & S. Lind, Federal Estate and Gift Taxation ¶3.01 (4th ed. 1978).
This determination was entirely reasonable from the standpoint of the taxpayer, as the unified credit resulted in an overall increase in tax savings over that provided by the specific exemptions. For example, Hirschi’s estate was subject to a 34% marginal rate of tax, and consequently the estate’s $60,000 specific exemption would have yielded a tax reduction of $20,400. Using the unified credit of the new Act, however, the estate enjoyed a tax reduction of $28,000.
Of course, a numerical comparison between the exemptions and the credit is not entirely fruitful because Congress intended in the Act to increase the overall amount of gifts and estates exempted from tax. See H. R. Rep. No. 94-1380, p. 11 (1976). Nevertheless, simple mathematics suggests that, if a unified credit of $47,000 were to be deemed comparable in some sense to $90,000 in exemptions, then one would expect the credit to be reduced by as much as 52% of the exemption claimed, instead of 20%. Taking account of varying tax rates, Congress clearly acted fairly when it settled on the 20% figure.
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.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners were convicted of armed robbery in the Circuit Court of Kankakee County, Ill., and their convictions were affirmed on appeal. At their trial, the prosecution offered into evidence a sawed-off rifle and rifle shells that had been seized by police during a search of an automobile in which petitioners had been passengers. Neither petitioner is the owner of the automobile and neither has ever asserted that he owned the rifle or shells seized. The Illinois Appellate Court held that petitioners lacked standing to object to the allegedly unlawful search and seizure and denied their motion to suppress the evidence. We granted certiorari in light of the obvious importance of the issues raised to the administration of criminal justice, 435 TJ. S. 922 (1978), and now affirm.
I
Because we are not here concerned with the issue of probable cause, a brief description of the events leading to the search of the automobile will suffice. A police officer on a routine patrol received a radio call notifying him of a robbery of a clothing store in Bourbonnais, Ill., and describing the getaway car. Shortly thereafter, the officer spotted an automobile which he thought might be the getaway car. After following the car for some time and after the arrival of assistance, he and several other officers stopped the vehicle. The occupants of the automobile, petitioners and two female companions, were ordered out of the car and, after the occupants had left the car, two officers searched the interior of the vehicle. They discovered a box of rifle shells in the glove compartment, which had been locked, and a sawed-off rifle under the front passenger seat. App. 10-11. After discovering the rifle and the shells, the officers took petitioners to the station and placed them under arrest.
Before trial petitioners moved to suppress the rifle and shells seized from the car on the ground that the search violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. They conceded that they did not own the automobile and were simply passengers; the owner of the car had been the driver of the vehicle at the time of the search. Nor did they assert that they owned the rifle or the shells seized. The prosecutor challenged petitioners’ standing to object to the lawfulness of the search of the car because neither the car, the shells nor the rifle belonged to them. The trial court agreed that petitioners lacked standing and denied the motion to suppress the evidence. App. 23-24. In view of this holding, the court did not determine whether there was probable cause for the search and seizure. On appeal after petitioners’ conviction, the Appellate Court of Illinois, Third Judicial District, affirmed the trial court’s denial of petitioners’ motion to suppress because it held that “without a proprietary or other similar interest in an automobile, a mere passenger therein lacks standing to challenge the legality of the search of the vehicle.” 46 Ill. App. 3d 569, 571, 360 N. E. 2d 1252, 1253 (1977). The court stated:
“We believe that defendants failed to establish any prejudice to their own constitutional rights because they were not persons aggrieved by the unlawful search and seizure.... They wrongly seek to establish prejudice only through the use of evidence gathered as a consequence of a search and seizure directed at someone else and fail to prove an invasion of their own privacy. Alderman v. United States (1969), 394 U. S. 165... Id., at 571-572, 360 N. E. 2d, at 1254.
The Illinois Supreme Court denied petitioners leave to appeal.
II
Petitioners first urge us to relax or broaden the rule of standing enunciated in Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257 (1960), so that any criminal defendant at whom a search was “directed” would have standing to contest the legality of that search and object to the admission at trial of evidence obtained as a result of the search. Alternatively, petitioners argue that they have standing to object to the search under Jones because they were “legitimately on [the] premises” at the time of the search.
The concept of standing discussed in Jones focuses on whether the person seeking to challenge the legality of a search as a basis for suppressing evidence was himself the “victim” of the search or seizure. Id., at 261. Adoption of the so-called “target” theory advanced by petitioners would in effect permit a defendant to assert that a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of a third party entitled him to have evidence suppressed at his trial. If we reject petitioners’ request for a broadened rule of standing such as this, and reaffirm the holding of Jones and other cases that Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights that may not be asserted vicariously, we will have occasion to re-examine the “standing” terminology emphasized in Jones. For we are not at all sure that the determination of a motion to suppress is materially aided by labeling the inquiry identified in Jones as one of standing, rather than simply recognizing it as one involving the substantive question of whether or not the proponent of the motion to suppress has had his own Fourth Amendment rights infringed by the search and seizure which he seeks to challenge. We shall therefore consider in turn petitioners’ target theory, the necessity for continued adherence to the notion of standing discussed in Jones as a concept that is theoretically distinct from the merits of a defendant’s Fourth Amendment claim, and, finally, the proper disposition of petitioners’ ultimate claim in this case.
A
We decline to extend the rule of standing in Fourth Amendment cases in the manner suggested by petitioners. As we stated in Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165,174 (1969), “Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which, like some other constitutional rights, may not be vicariously asserted.” See Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223, 230 (1973); Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 389 (1968); Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 492 (1963); cf. Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961); Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298, 304 (1921). A person who is aggrieved by an illegal search and seizure only through the introduction of damaging evidence secured by a search of a third person's premises or property has not had any of his Fourth Amendment rights infringed. Alderman, swpra, at 174. And since the exclusionary rule is an attempt to effectuate the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment, United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 347 (1974), it is proper to permit only defendants whose Fourth Amendment rights have been violated to benefit from the rule’s protections. See Simmons v. United States, supra, at 389. There is no reason to think that a party whose rights have been infringed will not, if evidence is used against him, have ample motivation to move to suppress it. Alderman, supra, at 174. Even if such a person is not a defendant in the action, he may be able to recover damages for the violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, see Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961), or seek redress under state law for invasion of privacy or trespass.
In support of their target theory, petitioners rely on the following quotation from Jones:
“In order to qualify as a ‘person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure’ one must have been a victim of a search or seizure, one against whom the search was directed, as distinguished from one who claims prejudice only through the use of evidence gathered as a consequence of a search or seizure directed at someone else.” 362 U. S., at 261 (emphasis added).
They also rely on Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543, 548 n. 11 (1968), and United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48 (1951).
The above-quoted statement from Jones suggests that the italicized language was meant merely as a parenthetical equivalent of the previous phrase “a victim of a search or seizure.” To the extent that the language might be read more broadly, it is dictum which was impliedly repudiated in Alderman v. United States, supra, and which we now expressly reject. In Jones, the Court set forth two alternative holdings: It established a rule of “automatic” standing to contest an allegedly illegal search where the same possession needed to establish standing is an essential element of the offense charged; and second, it stated that “anyone legitimately on premises where a search occurs may challenge its legality by way of a motion to suppress.” 362 U. S., at 264, 267. See Combs v. United States, 408 U. S. 224, 227 n. 4 (1972); Mancud v. DeForte, 392 U. S. 364, 368 n. 5 (1968) ; Simmons v. United States, supra, at 390. Had the Court intended to adopt the target theory now put forth by petitioners, neither of the above two holdings would have been necessary since Jones was the “target” of the police search in that case. Nor does United States v. Jeffers, supra, or Bumper v. North Carolina, supra, support the target theory. Standing in Jeffers was based on Jeffers’ possessory interest in both the premises searched and the property seized. 342 U. S., at 49-50, 54; see Mancusi v. DeForte, supra, at 367-368 ; Hoffa v. United States, 385 U. S. 293, 301 (1966); Lanza v. New York, 370 U. S. 139, 143, and n. 10 (1962). Similarly, in Bumper, the defendant had a substantial possessory interest in both the house searched and the rifle seized. 391 U. S., at 548 n. 11.
In Alderman v. United States, Mr. Justice Fortas, in a concurring and dissenting opinion, argued that the Court should “include within the category of those who may object to the introduction of illegal evidence 'one against whom the search was directed.’ ” 394 U. S., at 206-209. The Court did not directly comment on Mr. Justice Fortas’ suggestion, but it left no doubt that it rejected this theory by holding that persons who were not parties to unlawfully overheard conversations or who did not own the premises on which such conversations took place did not have standing to contest the legality of the surveillance, regardless of whether or not they were the “targets” of the surveillance. Id., at 176'. Mr. Justice Harlan, concurring and dissenting, did squarely address Mr. Justice Fortas’ arguments and declined to accept them. Id., at 188-189, n. 1. He identified administrative problems posed by the target theory:
“[T]he [target] rule would entail very substantial administrative difficulties. In the majority of cases, I would imagine that the police plant a bug with the expectation that it may well produce leads to a large number of crimes. A lengthy hearing would, then, appear to be necessary in order to determine whether the police knew of an accused’s criminal activity at the time the bug was planted and whether the police decision to plant a bug was motivated by an effort to obtain information against the accused or some other individual. I do not believe that this administrative burden is justified in any substantial degree by the hypothesized marginal increase in Fourth Amendment protection.” Ibid.
When we are urged to grant standing to a criminal defendant to assert a violation, not of his own constitutional rights but of someone else’s, we cannot but give weight to practical difficulties such as those foreseen by Mr. Justice Harlan in the quoted language.
Conferring standing to raise vicarious Fourth Amendment claims would necessarily mean a more widespread invocation of the exclusionary rule during criminal trials. The Court’s opinion in Alderman counseled against such an extension of the exclusionary rule:
“The deterrent values of preventing the incrimination of those whose rights the police have violated have been considered sufficient to justify the suppression of probative evidence even though the case against the defendant is weakened or destroyed. We adhere to that judgment. But we are not convinced that the additional benefits of extending the exclusionary rule to other defendants would justify further encroachment upon the public interest in prosecuting those accused of crime and having them acquitted or convicted on the basis of all the evidence which exposes the truth.” Id., at 174-175.
Each time the exclusionary rule is applied it exacts a substantial social cost for the vindication of Fourth Amendment rights. Relevant and reliable evidence is kept from the trier of fact and the search for truth at trial is deflected. See United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U. S. 268, 275 (1978); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 489-490 (1976); United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S., at 348-352. Since our cases generally have held that one whose Fourth Amendment rights are violated may successfully suppress evidence obtained in the course of an illegal search and seizure, misgivings as to the benefit of enlarging the class of persons who may invoke that rule are properly considered when deciding whether to expand standing to assert Fourth Amendment violations.
B
Had we accepted petitioners’ request to allow persons other than those whose own Fourth Amendment rights were violated by a challenged search and seizure to suppress evidence obtained in the course of such police activity, it would be appropriate to retain Jones’ use of standing in Fourth Amendment analysis. Under petitioners’ target theory, a court could determine that a defendant had standing to invoke the exclusionary rule without having to inquire into the substantive question of whether the challenged search or seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of that particular defendant. However, having rejected petitioners’ target theory and reaffirmed the principle that the “rights assured by the Fourth Amendment are personal rights, [which]... may be enforced by exclusion of evidence only at the instance of one whose own protection was infringed by the search and seizure,” Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S., at 389, the question necessarily arises whether it serves any useful analytical purpose to consider this principle a matter of standing, distinct from the merits of a defendant’s Fourth Amendment claim. We can think of no decided cases of this Court that would have come out differently had we concluded, as we do now, that the type of standing requirement discussed in Jones and reaffirmed today is more properly subsumed under substantive Fourth Amendment doctrine. Rigorous application of the principle that the rights secured by this Amendment are personal, in place of a notion of “standing,” will produce no additional situations in which evidence must be excluded. The inquiry under either approach is the same. But we think the better analysis forthrightly focuses on the extent of a particular defendant’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, rather than on any theoretically separate, but invariably intertwined concept of standing. The Court in Jones also may have been aware that there was a certain artificiality in analyzing this question in terms of standing because in at least three separate places in its opinion the Court placed that term within quotation marks. 362 U. S., at 261, 263, 265.
It should be emphasized that nothing we say here casts the least doubt on cases which recognize that, as a general proposition, the issue of standing involves two inquiries: first, whether the proponent of a particular legal right has alleged “injury in fact,” and, second, whether the proponent is asserting his own legal rights and interests rather than basing his claim for relief upon the rights of third parties. See, e. g., Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U. S. 106, 112 (1976); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 499 (1975); Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150, 152-153 (1970). But this Court’s long history of insistence that Fourth Amendment rights are personal in nature has already answered many of these traditional standing inquiries, and we think that definition of those rights is more properly placed within the purview of substantive Fourth Amendment law than' within that of standing. Cf. id., at 153, and n. 1; Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 256 n. 4 (1953); Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, 69-70 (1906).
Analyzed in these terms, the question is whether the challenged search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a criminal defendant who seeks to exclude the evidence obtained during it. That inquiry in turn requires a determination of whether the disputed search and seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect. We are under no illusion that by dispensing with the rubric of standing used in Jones we have rendered any simpler the determination of whether the proponent of a motion to suppress is entitled to contest the legality of a search and seizure. But by frankly recognizing that this aspect of the analysis belongs more properly under the heading of substantive Fourth Amendment doctrine than under the heading of standing, we think the decision of this issue will rest on sounder logical footing.
C
Here petitioners, who were passengers occupying a car which they neither owned nor leased, seek to analogize their position to that of the defendant in Jones v. United States. In Jones, petitioner was present at the time of the search of an apartment which was owned by a friend. The friend had given Jones permission to use the apartment and a key to it, with which Jones had admitted himself on the day of the search. He had a suit and shirt at the apartment and had slept there “maybe a night,” but his home was elsewhere. At the time of the search, Jones was the only occupant of the apartment because the lessee was away for a period of several days. 362 U. S., at 259. Under these circumstances, this Court stated that while one wrongfully on the premises could not move to suppress evidence obtained as a result of searching them, “anyone legitimately on premises where a search occurs may challenge its legality.” Id., at 267. Petitioners argue that their occupancy of the automobile in question was comparable to that of Jones in the apartment and that they therefore have standing to contest the legality of the search — or as we have rephrased the inquiry, that they, like Jones, had their Fourth Amendment rights violated by the search.
We do not question the conclusion in Jones that the defendant in that case suffered a violation of his personal Fourth Amendment rights if the search in question was unlawful. Nonetheless, we believe that the phrase “legitimately on premises” coined in Jones creates too broad a gauge for measurement of Fourth Amendment rights. For example, applied literally, this statement would permit a casual visitor who has never seen, or been permitted to visit, the basement of another’s house to object to a search of the basement if the visitor happened to be in the kitchen of the house at the time of the search. Likewise, a casual visitor who walks into a house one minute before a search of the house commences and leaves one minute after the search ends would be able to contest the legality of the search. The first visitor would have absolutely no interest or legitimate expectation of privacy in the basement, the second would have none in the house, and it advances no purpose served by the Fourth Amendment to permit either of them to object to the lawfulness of the search.
We think that Jones on its facts merely stands for the unremarkable proposition that a person can have a legally sufficient interest in a place other than his own home so that the Fourth Amendment protects him from unreasonable governmental intrusion into that place. See 362 U. S., at 263, 265. In defining the scope of that interest, we adhere to the view expressed in Jones and echoed in later cases that arcane distinctions developed in property and tort law between guests, licensees, invitees, and the like, ought not to control. Id., at 266; see Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U. S. 364 (1968); Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 (1967); Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505 (1961). But the Jones statement that a person need only be “legitimately on premises” in order to challenge the validity of the search of a dwelling place cannot be taken in its full sweep beyond the facts of that case.
Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), provides guidance in defining the scope of the interest protected by the Fourth Amendment. In the course of repudiating the doctrine derived from Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 (1928), and Goldman v. United States, 316 U. S. 129 (1942), that if police officers had not been guilty of a common-law trespass they were not prohibited by the Fourth Amendment from eavesdropping, the Court in Katz held that capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place. 389 U. S., at 353; see United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 7 (1977); United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745, 752 (1971). Viewed in this manner, the holding in Jones can best be explained by the fact that Jones had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the premises he was using and therefore could claim the protection' Of the Fourth Amendment with respect to a governmental invasion of those premises, even though his “interest” in those premises might not have been a recognized property interest at common law. See Jones v. United States, 362 U. S., at 261.
Our Brother White in dissent expresses the view that by rejecting the phrase "legitimately on![the] premises” as the appropriate measure of Fourth Amendment rights, we are abandoning a thoroughly workable, “bright line” test in favor of a less certain analysis of whether the facts of a particular case give rise to a legitimate expectation of privacy. Post, at 168. If “legitimately on premises” were the successful litmus test of Fourth Amendment rights that he assumes it is, his approach would have at least the merit of easy application, whatever it lacked in fidelity to the history and purposes of the Fourth Amendment. But a reading of lower court cases that have applied the phrase “legitimately on premises,” and of the dissent itself, reveals that this expression is not a shorthand summary for a bright-line rule which somehow encapsulates the “core” of the Fourth Amendment's protections.
The dissent itself shows that the facile consistency it is striving for is illusory. The dissenters concede that “there comes a point when use of an area is shared with so many that one simply cannot reasonably expect seclusion.” Post, at 164. But surely the “point” referred to is not one demarcating a line which is black on one side and white on another; it is inevitably a point which separates one shade of gray from another. We are likewise told by the dissent that a person “legitimately on private premises..., though his privacy is not absolute, is entitled to expect that he is sharing it only with those persons [allowed there] and that governmental officials will intrude only with consent or by complying with the Fourth Amendment.” Ibid, (emphasis added). This single sentence describing the contours of the supposedly easily applied rule virtually abounds with unanswered questions: What are “private” premises? Indeed, what are the “premises?” It may be easy to describe the “premises” when one is confronted with a 1-room apartment, but what of the case of a 10-room house, or of a house with an attached garage that is searched? Also, if one’s privacy is not absolute, how is it bounded? If he risks governmental intrusion “with consent,” who may give that consent?
Again, we are told by the dissent that the Fourth Amendment assures that “some expectations of privacy are justified and will be protected from official intrusion.” Post, at 166 (emphasis added). But we are not told which of many possible expectations of privacy are embraced within this sentence. And our dissenting Brethren concede that “perhaps the Constitution provides some degree less protection for the personal freedom from unreasonable governmental intrusion when one does not have a possessory interest in the invaded private place.” Ibid. But how much “less” protection is available when one does not have such a possessory interest?
Our disagreement with the dissent is not that it leaves these questions unanswered, or that the questions are necessarily irrelevant in the context of the analysis contained in this opinion. Our disagreement is rather with the dissent's bland and self-refuting assumption that there will not be fine lines to be drawn in Fourth Amendment cases as in other areas of the law, and that its rubric, rather than a meaningful exegesis of Fourth Amendment doctrine, is more desirable or more easily resolves Fourth Amendment cases. In abandoning “legitimately on premises” for the doctrine that we announce today, we are not forsaking a time-tested and workable rule, which- has produced consistent results when applied, solely for the sake of fidelity to the values underlying the Fourth Amendment. Rather, we are rejecting blind adherence to a phrase which at most has superficial clarity and which conceals underneath that thin veneer all of the problems of line drawing which must be faced in any conscientious effort to apply the Fourth Amendment. Where the factual premises for a rule are so generally prevalent that little would be lost and much would be gained by abandoning case-by-case analysis, we have not hesitated to do so. See United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 235 (1973). But the phrase “legitimately on premises” has not been shown to be an easily applicable measure of Fourth Amendment rights so much as it has proved to be simply a label placed by the courts on results which have not been subjected to careful analysis. We would not wish to be understood as saying that legitimate presence on the premises is irrelevant to one’s expectation of privacy, but it cannot be deemed controlling.
D
Judged by the foregoing analysis, petitioners’ claims must fail. They asserted neither a property nor a possessory interest in the automobile, nor an interest in the property seized. And as we have previously indicated, the fact that they were “legitimately on [the] premises” in the sense that they were in the car with the permission of its owner is not determinative of whether they had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the particular areas of the automobile searched. It is unnecessary for us to decide here whether the same expectations of privacy are warranted in a car as would be justified in a dwelling place in analogous circumstances. We have on numerous occasions pointed out that cars are not to be treated identically with houses or apartments for Fourth Amendment purposes. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 12; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 561 (1976); Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583, 590 (1974) (plurality opinion), But here petitioners’ claim is one which would fail even in an analogous situation in a dwelling place, since they made no showing that they had any legitimate expectation of privacy in the glove compartment or area under the seat of the car in which they were merely passengers. Like the trunk of an automobile, these are areas in which a passenger qua passenger simply would not normally have a legitimate expectation of privacy. Supra, at 142.
Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257 (1960) and Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), involved significantly different factual circumstances. Jones not only had permission to use the apartment of his friend, but had a key to the apartment with which he admitted himself on the day of the search and kept possessions in the apartment. Except with respect to his friend, Jones had complete dominion and control over the apartment and could exclude others from it. Likewise in Katz, the defendant occupied the telephone booth, shut the door behind him to exclude all others and paid the toll, which “entitled [him] to assume that the words he utter [ed] into the mouthpiece [would] not be broadcast to the world.” Id., at 352. Katz and Jones could legitimately expect privacy in the areas which were the subject of the search and seizure each sought to contest. No such showing was made by these petitioners with respect to those portions of the automobile which were searched and from which incriminating evidence was seized.
Ill
The Illinois courts were therefore correct in concluding that it was unnecessary to decide whether the search of the car might have violated the rights secured to someone else by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Since it did not violate any rights of these petitioners, their judgment of conviction is
Affirmed.
Petitioners claim that they were never asked whether they owned the rifle or shells seized during the search and, citing Combs v. United States, 408 U. S. 224 (1972), argue that if the Court determines that a property interest in the items seized is an adequate ground for standing to object to their seizure, the Court should remand the case for further proceedings on the question whether petitioners owned the seized rifle or shells. Reply Brief for Petitioners 4 n. 2. Petitioners do not now assert that they own the rifle or the shells.
We reject petitioners’ suggestion. The proponent of a motion to suppress has the burden of establishing that his own Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the challenged search or seizure. See Simmons v. United States, 39(0 U. S. 377, 389-390 (1968); Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257, 261 (1960). The prosecutor argued that petitioners lacked standing to challenge the search because they did not own the rifle, the shells or the automobile. Petitioners did not contest the factual predicates of the prosecutor’s argument and instead, simply stated that they were not required to prove ownership to object to the search. App. 23. The prosecutor’s argument gave petitioners notice that they were to be put to their proof on any issue as to which they had the burden, and because of their failure to assert ownership, we must assume, for purposes of our review, that petitioners do not own the rifle or the shells. Combs v. United States, supra,-vas quite different. In Combs, the Government had not challenged Combs’ standing at the suppression hearing and the issue of standing was not raised until the appellate level, where the Government conceded that its warrant was not based on probable cause. Because the record was “virtually barren of the facts necessary to determine” Combs’ right to contest the search and seizure, the Court remanded the case for further proceedings. 408 U. S., at 227. The Government had requested the Court to remand for 'further proceedings on this issue. Brief for United States in Combs v. United States, O. T. 1971, No. 71-517, pp. 40-41.
Although Jones v. United, States was based upon an interpretation of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 41 (e), the Court stated in Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 173 n. 6 (1969), that Rule 41 (e) conforms to the general standard and is no broader than the constitutional rule. See United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 348-349, n. 6 (1974).
There is an aspect of traditional standing doctrine that was not considered in Jones and which we do not question. It is the proposition that a party seeking relief must allege such a personal stake or interest in the outcome of the controversy as to assure the concrete adverseness which Art. Ill requires. See, e. g., O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 493 (1974); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 99 (1968); Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962). Thus, a person whose Fourth Amendment rights were violated by a search or seizure, but who is not a defendant in a criminal action in which the illegally seized evidence is sought to be introduced, would not have standing to invoke the exclusionary rule to prevent use of that evidence in that action. See Calandra, supra, at 352 n. 8.
The necessity for a showing of a violation of personal rights is not obviated by recognizing the deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule, Alderman v. United States, supra, at 174. Despite the deterrent aim of the exclusionary rule, we never have held that unlawfully seized evidence is inadmissible in all proceedings or against all persons. See, e. g., United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U. S. 268, 275 (1978); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 486 (1976); United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S., at 348. “[T]he application of the rule has been restricted to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served.” Ibid.
We have not yet had occasion to decide whether the automatic-standing rule of Jones survives our decision in Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377 (1968). See Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223, 228-229 (1973). Such a rule is, of course, one which may allow a defendant to assert the Fourth Amendment rights of another.
The search of the apartment in Jones was pursuant to a search warrant naming Jones and another woman as occupants of the apartment. The affidavit submitted in support of the search warrant alleged that Jones and the woman were involved in illicit narcotics traffic and kept a supply of heroin and narcotics paraphernalia in the apartment. 362 U. S., at 267-269, and n. 2; App. in Jones v. United States, O. T. 1959, No. 69, p. 1.
For these same prudential reasons, the Court in Alderman v. United States rejected the argument that any defendant should be enabled to apprise the court of unconstitutional searches and seizures and to exclude all such unlawfully seized evidence from trial, regardless of whether his Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the search or whether he was the “target” of the search. This expansive reading of the Fourth Amendment also was advanced by the petitioner in Jones v. United States and implicitly rejected by the Court. Brief for Petitioner in Jones v. United States, O. T. 1959, No. 69, pp. 21-25.
So, for example, in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 352 (1967), the Court focused on substantive Fourth Amendment law, concluded that a person in a telephone booth “may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment,” and then proceeded to determine whether the search was “unreasonable.” In Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U. S. 364 (1968), on the other hand, the Court concentrated on the issue of standing, decided that the defendant possessed it, and with barely any mention of the threshold substantive question of whether, the search violated DeForte’s own Fourth Amendment rights, went on to decide whether the search was “unreasonable.” In both cases, however, the first inquiry was much the same.
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 of the respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for further consideration in light of Chambers v. Maroney, ante, p. 42.
Mr. Justice Harlan is of the opinion that certiorari should be denied. However, the case having been taken for review, he would affirm the judgment below for the reasons stated in his separate opinion in Chambers v. Maroney, ante, p. 55.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This case represents the aftermath of our decision in Simpson v. Union Oil Co., 377 U. S. 13, where we held that a “consignment” agreement for the sale of gasoline, required by Union Oil of lessees of its retail outlets, violated the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U. S. C. § 1 et seq. The case was remanded for a hearing on other issues and for a determination of damages. The last sentence of the Court’s opinion stated:
“We reserve the question whether, when all the facts are known, there may be any equities that would warrant only prospective application in damage suits of the rule governing price fixing by the ‘consignment’ device which we announce today.” Id., at 24-25.
On remand, the District Court interpreted this sentence as an invitation to determine if any “equities” were present which would warrant precluding the imposition of damages on Union Oil. Its finding was that an application of the rule announced by this Court to the damages action would be unfair, on the ground that the decision in United States v. General Electric Co., 272 U. S. 476, gave Union Oil a reasonable basis for believing that its actions were entirely lawful. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
The petition for certiorari presents the question whether in this case the principles we announced in Simpson v. Union Oil Co. should be made prospective in the present litigation. We grant the petition on that question and deny it on the other questions tendered; and we reverse the judgment below.
We held when the case was here before that on the facts of record the use of the “consignment” device was within the prohibited ban of price fixing for nonpatented articles, 377 U. S., at 16-24, and that “on the issue of resale price maintenance under the Sherman Act there is nothing left to try, for there was an agreement for resale price maintenance, coercively employed.” Id., at 24.
The question we reserved was not an invitation to deny the fruits of successful litigation to this petitioner. Congress has determined the causes of action that arise from antitrust violations; and there has been an adjudication that a cause of action against respondent has been established. Formulation of a rule of law in an Article III case or controversy which is prospective as to the parties involved in the immediate litigation would be most unusual, especially where the rule announced was not innovative. Since parties in other cases might be shown to have structured product distribution on quite different considerations, we reserved the question whether in some of those other situations equity might warrant the conclusion that prospective application was the only fair course.
Reversed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Speedy Trial Act of 1974, 18 U. S.C. §3161 et seq;> provides that in “any case in which a plea of not guilty is entered, the trial.. . shall commence within seventy days” from the later of (1) the “filing date” of the information or indictment or (2) the defendant’s initial appearance before a judicial officer (i <?., the arraignment). § 3161(c)(1). The Act goes on to list a set of exclusions from the 70-day period, including “delay resulting from, any pretrial motion, from the filing of the motion through the conclusion of the hearing on, or other prompt disposition of, such motion.” § 3161(h)(1)(D) (2006 ed., Supp. Ill) (emphasis added).
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held in this case that a pretrial motion falls within this exclusion only if it “actually causefs] a delay, or the expectation of a delay, of trial.” 579 F. 3d 589, 598 (2009). In our view, however, the statutory exclusion does not contain this kind of causation requirement. Rather, the filing of a pretrial motion falls within this provision irrespective of whether it actually causes, or is expected to cause, delay in starting a trial.
I
Jason Louis Tinklenberg, the respondent, was convicted of violating federal drug and gun laws. 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1) (felon in possession of a firearm); 21 U. S. C. § 843(a)(6) (possession of items used to manufacture a controlled substance). He made his initial appearance before a judicial officer on October 31, 2005, and the speedy trial clock then began to run. His trial began on August 14, 2006, 287 days later. Just before trial, TinHenberg asked the District Court to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the trial came too late, violating the Speedy Trial Act’s 70-day requirement. The District Court denied the motion after finding that 218 of the 287 days fell within various Speedy Trial Act exclusions, leaving 69 nonexcludable days, thereby making the trial timely.
On appeal the Sixth Circuit agreed with the District Court that many of the 287 days were excludable. But it disagreed with the District Court about the excludability of time related to three pretrial motions. The Government filed the first motion, an unopposed motion to conduct a video deposition of a witness, on August 1, 2006; the District Court disposed of the motion on August 3, 2006. The Government filed the second motion, an unopposed motion to bring seized firearms into the courtroom as evidence at trial, on August 8, 2006; the District Court disposed of the motion on August 10, 2006. TinHenberg filed the third motion, a motion to dismiss the indictment under the Speedy Trial Act, on Am gust 11, 2006; the District Court denied that motion on August 14, 2006. In the Sixth Circuit’s view, the nine days during which the three motions were pending were not excludable because the motions did not “actually cause a delay, or the expectation of delay, of trial.” 579 F. 3d, at 598. Because these 9 days were sufficient to bring the number of nonexcludable days above 70, the Court of Appeals found a violation of the Act. And given the fact that TinHenberg had already served his prison sentence, it ordered the District Court to dismiss the indictment with prejudice.
We granted certiorari at the Government’s request in order to review the Sixth Circuit’s motion-by-motion causation test. We now reverse its determination. But because we agree with the defendant about a subsidiary matter, namely, the exclusion of certain holidays and weekend days during the period in which he was transported for a competency examination, id., at 597, we affirm the Court of Appeals’ ultimate conclusion.
II
A
In relevant part the Speedy Trial Act sets forth a basic rule:
“In any case in which a plea of not guilty is entered, the trial of a defendant.. . shall commence within seventy days from [the later of (1)] the filing date ... of the information or indictment, or . . . [(2)'] the date the defendant has appeared before a judicial officer of the court in which such charge is pending ....” §-3161(c)(l) (2006 ed.).
The Act then says that the “following periods of delay shall be excluded in computing.. . the time within which the trial . . . must commence.” § 3161(h) (2006 ed., Supp. III). It lists seven such “periods of delay.”
It describes the first of these seven excludable periods as
“(1) Any period of delay resulting from other proceedings concerning the defendant, including but not limited to—
“(A) delay resulting from any proceeding ... to determine the mental competency or physical capacity of the defendant;
“(B) delay resulting from trial with respect to other charges . . .;
“(C) delay resulting from any interlocutory appeal;
“(D) delay resulting from any pretrial motion, from the filing of the motion through the conclusion of the hearing on, or other prompt disposition of, such motion;
“(E) delay resulting from any proceeding relating to the transfer of a case [or defendant] . . . from another district.. . ;
“(F) delay resulting from transportation of any defendant from another district, or to and from places of examination or hospitalization, except that any time consumed in excess of ten days . . . shall be presumed to be unreasonable;
“(G) delay resulting from consideration by the court of a proposed plea agreement.. .;
“(H) delay reasonably attributable to any period, not to exceed thirty days, during which any proceeding concerning the defendant is actually under advisement by the court.” Ibid. (2006 ed. and Supp. Ill) (emphasis added).
B
The particular provision before us, subparagraph (D), excludes from the speedy trial period “delay resulting from any pretrial motion, from the filing of the motion through the conclusion of the hearing on, or other prompt disposition of, such motion.” § 3161(h)(1)(D). The question is whether this provision stops the speedy trial clock from running automatically upon the filing of a pretrial motion irrespective of whether the motion has any impact on when the trial begins. Unlike the Sixth Circuit, we believe the answer to this question is yes.
We begin with the Act’s language. The Sixth Circuit based its answer primarily upon that language. It argued that the phrase “delay resulting from,” read most naturally, requires a court to apply the exclusion provision only to those “motion[s]” that “actually cause a delay, or the expectation of a delay, of trial.” 579 F. 3d, at 598. We agree that such a reading is linguistically reasonable, but the Court of Appeals wrote that there “is no conceivable way to read this language other than to require a delay to result from any pretrial motion before excludable time occurs.” Ibid. See also ibid. (“[T]he statute is clear”). And here we disagree.
When the Court of Appeals says that its reading is the only way any reasonable person could read this language, it overstates its claim. For one thing, even though the word “delay” ordinarily indicates a postponement, it need not inevitably do so. Compare American Heritage Dictionary 480 (4th ed. 2000) (“[t]o postpone until a later time” or “[t]o cause to be later or slower than expected or desired”) with ibid. (“[t]he interval of time between two events”). In any event, terms must be read in their statutory context in order to determine how the provision in question should be applied in an individual case.
Statutory language that describes a particular circumstance, for example, might require a judge to examine each individual case to see if that circumstance is present. But, alternatively, it might ask a judge instead to look at more general matters, such as when a statute requires a judge to increase the sentence of one convicted of a “crime of violence” without requiring the judge to determine whether the particular crime at issue in a particular case was committed in a violent manner. See Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 602 (1990) (“crime of violence” characterizes the generic crime, not the particular act committed). Similarly a statute that forbids the importation of “wild birds” need not require a court to decide whether a particular parrot is, in fact, wild or domesticated. It may intend to place the entire species within that definition without investigation of the characteristics of an individual specimen. See United States v. Fifty-Three (53) Eclectus Parrots, 685 F. 2d 1131, 1137 (CA9 1982).
More than that, statutory language can sometimes specify that a set of circumstances exhibits a certain characteristic virtually as a matter of definition and irrespective of how a court may view it in a particular case. A statute that describes “extortion” as a “crime of violence” makes that fact so by definition, without asking a court to second-guess Congress about the matter. 18 U. S. C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) (2006 ed.) (defining “violent felony” to include extortion for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act).
The statute before us, though more complex, can be read similarly. The pretrial motion subparagraph falls within a general set of provisions introduced by the phrase: “The following periods of delay shall be excluded.” § 3161(h) (2006 ed., Supp. III). That phrase is then followed by a list that includes “[a]ny period of delay resulting from other proceedings concerning the defendant, including ....” § 3161(h)(1). This latter list is followed by a sublist, each member (but one) of which is introduced by the phrase “delay resulting from . . . ,” ibid. (2006 ed. and Supp. Ill), which words are followed by a more specific description, such as “any pretrial motion” from its “filing” “through the conclusion of the hearing on, or other prompt disposition of, such motion.” § 3161(h)(1)(D) (2006 ed., Supp. III). . The whole paragraph can be read as requiring the automatic exclusion of the members of that specific sublist, while referring to those members in general as “periods of délay” and as causing that delay, not because Congress intended the judge to determine causation, but because, in a close to definitional way, the words embody Congress’ own view of the matter.
It is not farfetched to describe the members of the specific sublist in the statute before us in this definitional sense — as “periods of delay” or as bringing about delay. After all, the exclusion of any of the specific periods described always delays the expiration of the 70-day speedy trial deadline. Or Congress might have described the specific periods listed in paragraph (1) as “periods of delay” and “delay[s] resulting from” simply because periods of the type described often do cause a delay in the start of trial. Both explanations show that, linguistically speaking, one can read the statutory exclusion as automatically applying to the specific periods described without leaving to the district court the task of determining whether the period described would or did actually cause a postponement of the trial in the particular case. Thus, language alone cannot resolve the basic question presented in this case. But when read in context and in light of the statute’s structure and purpose, we think it clear that Congress intended subparagraph (D) to apply automatically.
c
We now turn to several considerations, which, taken together, convince us that the subparagraphs that specifically list common pretrial occurrences apply automatically in the way we have just described. First, subparagraph (D) clarifies that the trial court should measure the period of excludable delay for a pretrial motion “from the filing of the motion through the conclusion of the hearing on, or other prompt disposition of, such motion,” but nowhere does it mention the date on which the trial begins or was expected to begin. § 3161(h)(1)(D) (2006 ed., Supp. III). Thus, it is best read to instruct measurement of the time actually consumed by consideration of the pretrial motion. Two other related sub-paragraphs contain clarifying language that contemplates measurement of the time actually consumed by the specified pretrial occurrence without regard to the commencement of the trial. See § 3161(h)(1)(F) (“[A]ny time consumed in excess of ten days from the date an order of removal or an order directing such transportation, and the defendant’s arrival at the destination shall be presumed to be unreasonable”); § 3161(h)(1)(H) (“delay reasonably attributable to any period, not to exceed thirty days, during which any proceeding concerning the defendant is actually under advisement by the court”). If “delay” truly referred to the postponement of trial, then presumably those subparagraphs would instruct that excludable periods should be measured from the date that trial was otherwise scheduled to begin.
Second, we are impressed that during the 37 years since Congress enacted the Speedy Trial Act, every Court of Appeals has considered the question before us now, and every Court of Appeals, implicitly or explicitly, has rejected the interpretation that the Sixth Circuit adopted in this case. See United States v. Wilson, 835 F. 2d 1440, 1443 (CADC 1987) (explicit), abrogated on other grounds by Bloate v. United States, 559 U. S. 196 (2010); United States v. Hood, 469 F. 3d 7, 10 (CA1 2006) (explicit); United States v. Cobb, 697 F. 2d 38, 42 (CA2 1982) (explicit), abrogated on other grounds by Henderson v. United States, 476 U. S. 321 (1986); United States v. Novak, 715 F. 2d 810, 813 (CA3 1983) (explicit), abrogated on other grounds by Henderson, supra; United States v. Dorlouis, 107 F. 3d 248, 253-254 (CA4 1997) (explicit); United States v. Green, 508 F. 3d 195, 200 (CA5 2007) (explicit); United States v. Montoya, 827 F. 2d 143,151 (CA7 1987) (explicit); United States v. Titlbach, 339 F. 3d 692, 698 (CA8 2003) (implicit); United States v. Van Brandy, 726 F. 2d 548, 551 (CA9 1984) (explicit); United States v. Vogl, 374 F. 3d 976, 985-986 (CA10 2004) (explicit); United States v. Stafford, 697 F. 2d 1368, 1371-1372 (CA11 1983) (explicit). This unanimity among the lower courts about the meaning of a statute of great practical administrative importance in the daily working lives of busy trial judges is itself entitled to strong consideration, particularly when those courts have maintained that interpretation consistently over a long period of time. See General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline, 540 U. S. 581, 593-594 (2004).
Third, the Sixth Circuit’s interpretation would make the subparagraph (D) exclusion significantly more difficult to administer. And in doing so, it would significantly hinder the Speedy Trial Act’s efforts to secure fair and efficient criminal trial proceedings. See Zedner v. United States, 547 U. S. 489, 497 (2006) (noting that the Act’s exceptions provide “necessary flexibility”); H. R. Rep. No. 93-1508, p. 15 (1974) (the Act seeks to achieve “efficiency in the processing of cases which is commensurate with due process”); S. Rep. No. 93-1021, p. 21 (1974). Trial judges may, for example, set trial dates beyond 70 days in light of other commitments. And in doing so, a trial judge may well be aware, based on his or her experience, that pretrial motions will likely consume the extra time — even though the judge may know little about which specific motions will be filed, when, and how many. How is that judge to apply the Sixth Circuit’s approach, particularly when several, including unanticipated, pretrial proceedings did consume the time in question?
Moreover, what is to happen if several excludable and several nonexcludable potential causes of delay (e. g., pretrial motions to take depositions, potential scheduling conflicts, various health examinations, etc.) coincide, particularly in multidefendant cases? Can the judge, motion by motion, decide which motions were responsible and which were not responsible for postponing what otherwise might have been an earlier trial date? And how is a defendant or his attorney to predict whether or when a judge will later find a particular motion to have caused a postponement of trial? And if the matter is difficult to predict, how is the attorney to know when or whether he or she should seek further postponement of the 70-day deadline?
With considerable time and judicial effort, perhaps through the use of various presumptions, courts could find methods for overcoming these and other administrative difficulties. In some instances, the judge may know at the time of filing that a given motion is easily resolved or that its complexity will almost certainly postpone the trial. Judges could note on the record their predictions about whether the motion will postpone trial at the time that the motion is filed. Parties could also stipulate as to whether a given motion would be excluded from the speedy trial clock. But those theoretical strategies would not prevent all or even most mistakes, needless dismissals of indictments, and potential retrials after appeal — all of which exact a toll in terms of the fairness of and confidence in the criminal justice system. And any such future strategies for administering the Sixth Circuit’s rule cannot provide a present justification for turning the federal judicial system away from the far less obstacle-strewn path that the system has long traveled.
Fourth, we are reinforced in our conclusion by the difficulty of squaring the Sixth Circuit’s interpretation with this Court’s precedent. In Henderson v. United States, supra, the Court rejected the contention that the exclusion provision for pretrial motions governs only reasonable delays. The Court there concluded (as the Court of Appeals had held) that the exclusion “was intended to be automatic.” Id., at 327 (quoting United States v. Henderson, 746 F. 2d 619, 622 (CA9 1984); internal quotation marks omitted). See also Bloate, 559 U. S. 196 (holding based in part on the view that the exclusion applies “automatically” to the specified period of delay). Henderson did not consider whether a trial court must determine whether the pretrial motion actually caused postponement of the trial in each individual case. But the Sixth Circuit’s interpretation would nonetheless significantly limit the premise of “automatic application” upon which the case rests.
Fifth, for those who find legislative history useful, it is worthwhile noting (as this Court noted in Henderson) that the Senate Report concerning the reenactment of the provision in 1979 described it, along with the other provisions in § 3161(h)(1), as referring to “specific and recurring periods of time often found in criminal cases,” and characterized them as “automatically excludable delay,” S. Rep. No. 96-212, p. 9 (1979). See H. R. Rep. No. 93-1508, at 21 (“The time limits would be tolled by hearings, proceedings and necessary delay which normally occur prior to the trial of criminal cases” (emphasis added)); S. Rep. No. 93-1021, at 21 (“[The Act] has carefully constructed exclusions and exceptions which permit normal pre-trial preparation in the ordinary noncomplex cases which represent the bulk of business in the Federal courts”). But ef. id., at 35 (paragraph (h)(1) excludes “[d]elays caused by proceedings relating to the defendant” (emphasis added)).
Sixth, because all the subparagraphs but one under paragraph (1) begin with the phrase “delay resulting from,” the Sixth Circuit’s interpretation would potentially extend well beyond pretrial motions and encompass such matters as mental and physical competency examinations, interlocutory appeals, consideration of plea agreements, and the absence of essential witnesses. See § 3161(h)(1) (2006 ed., Supp. III); § 3161(h)(3)(A) (2006 ed.). Given the administrative complexity the causation requirement would .bring about in all these areas, those Circuits that have considered a causation requirement in respect to these other matters have rejected it. See, e. g., United States v. Pete, 525 F. 3d 844, 852 (CA9 2008) (interlocutory appeal); United States v. Miles, 290 F. 3d 1341, 1350 (CA11 2002) (unavailability of essential witnesses); United States v. Robinson, 887 F. 2d 651, 656-657 (CA6 1989) (trial on other charges). That further complexity, along with these lower court holdings, reinforce our conclusion.
We consequently disagree with the Sixth Circuit that the Act’s exclusion requires a court to find that the event the exclusion specifically describes, here the filing of the pretrial motion, actually caused or was expected to cause delay of a trial. We hold that the Act contains no such requirement.
Ill
Tinklenberg also argues that the Sixth Circuit wrongly interpreted a different exclusion provision, this time the provision excluding
“delay resulting from transportation of any defendant from another district, or to and from places of examination or hospitalization, except that any time consumed in excess of ten days from the date an order of removal or an order directing such transportation, and the defendant’s arrival at the destination shall be presumed to be unreasonable.” § 3161(h)(1)(F) (2006 ed., Supp. Ill) (emphasis added).
The District Court granted Tinklenberg’s request for a competency evaluation, and he was transported to a medical facility for examination. The lower courts agreed that a total of 20 transportation days elapsed and that since the Government provided no justification, all days in excess of the 10 days specified in the statute were unreasonable. But in counting those excess days, the court exempted weekend days and holidays. Since Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and three weekends all fell within the 20-day period, only 2 days, not 10 days, were considered excessive, during which the 70-day Speedy Trial Act clock continued to tick.
Tinklenberg argues that subparagraph (F) does not exempt weekend days and holidays; hence the court should have considered 10, not 2, days to be excessive. And the parties concede that those eight extra ticking days are enough to make the difference between compliance with, and violation of, the Act.
As the Solicitor General notes, we may consider, or “decline to entertain,” alternative grounds for affirmance. See United States v. Nobles, 422 U. S. 225, 242, n. 16 (1975). In this case, we believe it treats Tinklenberg, who has already served his sentence, more fairly to consider the alternative ground and thereby more fully to dispose of the case.
The Sixth Circuit exempted weekend days and holidays because it believed that subparagraph (F) incorporated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 45(a). At the relevant time, that Rule excluded weekend days and holidays when computing any period of time specified in the “rules,” in “any local rule,” or in “any court order” that was less than 11 days. Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 45(a) (2005). But in our view subparagraph (F) does not incorporate Rule 45. The Act does not say that it incorporates Rule 45. The Government has given us no good reason for reading it as incorporating the Rule. And the Rule itself, as it existed at the relevant time, said that it applied to “rules” and to “orders,” but it said nothing about statutes. Other things being equal, the fact that Rule 45 is revised from time to time also argues against its direct application to subparagraph (F). That is because those changes, likely reflecting considerations other than those related to the Speedy Trial Act, may well leave courts treating similar defendants differently.
Without relying upon a cross-reference to Rule 45, we believe the better reading of subparagraph (F) would include weekend days and holidays in its 10-day time period. Under the common-law rule, weekend days and holidays are included when counting a statutory time period of 10 days unless the statute specifically excludes them. See 74 Am. Jur. 2d, Time §22, p. 589 (2001) (in calculating time periods expressed in statutes, “when the time stipulated must necessarily include one or more Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays, those days will not be excluded, in the absence of an express proviso for their exclusion”). Many courts have treated statutory time periods this way. See, e. g., Howeisen v. Chapman, 195 Ind. 381, 383-884, 145 N. E. 487, 488 (1924); American Tobacco Co. v. Strickling, 88 Md. 500, 508-511, 41 A. 1083, 1086 (1898). And Congress has tended specifically to exclude weekend days and holidays from statutory time periods of 10 days when it intended that result. Compare 18 U. S. C. § 3142(d)(2) (permitting the temporary detention of certain defendants “for a period of not more than ten days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays”) and 5 U. S. C. § 552a(d)(2)(A) (requiring an agency to acknowledge receipt of a request to amend agency records within “10 days (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays)”) with 18 U. S. C. § 2518(9) (establishing a 10-day period for disclosing applications for and court orders authorizing wiretaps without specifically excluding weekends and holidays) and § 4244(a) (providing a 10-day period after conviction for filing a motion to request mental health treatment without specifically excluding weekends and holidays). Indeed, Rule 45 has been recently modified so that now (though not at the time of Tinklenberg’s proceedings) it requires a similar result. Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 45(a)(1) (2010) (instructing that weekend days and holidays are to be counted when calculating all time periods, including statutory time periods for which no alternative method of computing time is specified).
* * ■ *
We disagree with the Sixth Circuit’s interpretation of both subparagraph (D) and subparagraph (F), and now hold that its interpretations of those two provisions are mistaken. Nonetheless the conclusions the court drew from those two interpretations in relevant part cancel each other out such that the court’s ultimate conclusion that Tinklenberg’s trial failed to comply with the Speedy Trial Act’s deadline is correct. Therefore, the Sixth Circuit’s judgment ordering dismissal of the indictment on remand is
Affirmed.
Justice Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Me. Justice Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases present a question of public importance which involves in the first place a construction of the Treaty of Medicine Creek made with the Puyallup and Nisqually Indians in 1854 (10 Stat. 1132) and secondly the constitutionality of certain conservation measures adopted by the State of Washington allegedly impinging on those treaty rights.
These suits were brought by respondents in the state court against the Indians for declaratory relief and for an injunction. The trial court held for respondents and with exceptions not relevant to our problem the Supreme Court affirmed in part and remanded for further findings on the conservation aspect of the problem. Department of Game v. Puyallup Tribe, 70 Wash. 2d 245, 422 P. 2d 754; Department of Game v. Kautz, 70 Wash. 2d 275, 422 P. 2d 771. We granted the petitions for certiorari and consolidated the cases for oral argument. 389 U. S. 1013.
While the Treaty of Medicine Creek created a reservation for these Indians, no question as to the extent of those reservation rights, if any, is involved here. Our question concerns the fishing rights protected by Article III, which so far as relevant reads as follows:
“The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians, in common with all citizens of the Territory, and of erecting temporary houses for the purpose of curing, together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses on open and unclaimed lands . . .
The fish to which the Treaty rights pertain in these cases are salmon and steelhead, anadromous fish that hatch in the fresh water of the Puyallup River and the Nisqually River. The steelhead is a trout; the salmon are of four species — chinook, silver, chum, and pink. They come in from the ocean, pass through the salt water of Puget Sound, enter the fresh waters at the mouths of rivers, and go up these rivers to spawn. The adult salmon die after spawning, but not necessarily the steel-head. In time the fry return to the ocean and start the cycle anew.
People fish for these species far offshore. As respects fishing within its territorial waters, Washington specifies the time when fishing may take place, the areas open to fishing, and the gear that may be used.
Fishing licenses are prescribed. Steelhead may be taken only by hook and not commercially. Salmon may be taken commercially with nets of a certain type in certain areas. Set nets or fixed appliances are barred in “any waters” of the State for the taking of salmon or steelhead. So is “monofilament gill net webbing.”
Nearly every river in the State has a salmon preserve at its mouth; and Commencement Bay at the mouth of the Puyallup River is one of those preserves.
The Puyallup Indians use set nets to fish in Commencement Bay and at the mouth of the Puyallup River and in areas upstream. The Nisqually Indians use set nets in the fresh waters of the Nisqually River. These Indians fish not only for their own needs but commercially as well, supplying the markets with a large volume of salmon. The nets used are concededly illegal if the laws and regulations of the State of Washington are valid; and it is to that question that we now turn.
The “right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with” citizens of the Territory under a treaty with the Yakimas was involved in United States v. Winans, 198 U. S. 371. The lands bordering the Columbia River at those places were acquired by private owners who under license from the State acquired the right to fish there and sought to exclude the Indians by reason of their ownership. The Court held that the right to fish at these places was a “continuing” one that could not be destroyed by a change in ownership of the land bordering the river. 198 U. S., at 381. To construe the treaty as giving the Indians “no rights but such as they would have without the treaty” (198 U. S., at 380) would be “an impotent outcome to negotiations and a convention, which seemed to promise more and give the word of the Nation for more.” Ibid. In Seujert Bros. Co. v. United States, 249 U. S. 194, the Court construed the same provision liberally so as to include all “accustomed places” even though the Indians shared those places with other Indians and with white men, rejecting a strict, technical construction not in keeping with the justice of the case.
It is in that spirit that we approach these cases in determining the scope of the treaty rights which the Puyallups and Nisqually obtained.
The treaty right is in terms the right to fish “at all usual and accustomed places.” We assume that fishing by nets was customary at the time of the Treaty; and we also assume that there were commercial aspects to that fishing as there are at present. But the manner in which the fishing may be done and its purpose, whether or not commercial, are not mentioned in the Treaty. We would have quite a different case if the Treaty had preserved the right to fish at the “usual and accustomed places” in the “usual and accustomed” manner. But the Treaty is silent as to the mode or modes of fishing that are guaranteed. Moreover, the right to fish at those respective places is not an exclusive one. Rather, it is one “in common with all citizens of the Territory.” Certainly the right of the latter may be regulated. And we see no reason why the right of the Indians may not also be regulated by an appropriate exercise of the police power of the State. The right to fish “at all usual and accustomed” places may, of course, not be qualified by the State, even though all Indians born in the United States are now citizens of the United States. Act of June 2, 1924, 43 Stat. 253, as superseded by § 201 (b) of the Nationality Act of 1940, 8 U. S. C. § 1401 (a)(2). But the manner of fishing, the size of the take, the restriction of commercial fishing, and the like may be regulated by the State in the interest of conservation, provided the regulation meets appropriate standards and does not discriminate against the Indians.
In Tulee v. Washington, 315 U. S. 681, we had before us for construction a like treaty with the Yakima Indians which guaranteed the right to fish “at all usual and accustomed places, in common with the citizens” of Washington Territory. 12 Stat. 951. Tulee, a member of the tribe, was fishing without a license off the Yakima Indian Reservation; the State convicted him for failure to obtain a license. We reversed, saying:
“[W]hile the treaty leaves the state with power to impose on Indians, equally with others, such restrictions of a purely regulatory nature concerning the time and manner of fishing outside the reservation as are necessary for the conservation of fish, it forecloses the state from charging the Indians a fee of the kind in question here.” Id., at 684.
In other words, the “right” to fish outside the reservation was a treaty “right” that could not be qualified or conditioned by the State. But “the time and manner of fishing . . . necessary for the conservation of fish,” not being defined or established by the treaty, were within the reach of state power.
The overriding police power of the State, expressed in nondiscriminatory measures for conserving fish resources, is preserved. In United States v. Winans, supra, a forerunner of the Tulee case, the Court said:
“[S]urely it was within the competency of the Nation to secure to the Indians such a remnant of the great rights they possessed as ‘taking fish at all usual and accustomed places.’ Nor does it restrain the State unreasonably, if at all, in the regulation of the right.” 198 U. S., at 384.
Another forerunner of Tulee was Kennedy v. Becker, 241 U. S. 556, which also involved a nonexclusive grant of fishing rights to Indians. Indians were charged with the spearing of fish contrary to New York law, their defense being the fishing rights granted by a treaty. The Court, in sustaining the judgments of conviction, said:
“We do not think that it is a proper construction of the reservation in the conveyance to regard it as an attempt either to reserve sovereign prerogative or so to divide the inherent power of preservation as to make its competent exercise impossible. Rather are we of the opinion that the clause is fully satisfied by considering it a reservation of a privilege of fishing and hunting upon the granted lands in common with the grantees, and others to whom the privilege might be extended, but subject nevertheless to that necessary power of appropriate regulation, as to all those privileged, which inhered in the sovereignty of the State over the lands where the privilege was exercised.” 241 U. S., at 563-564.
The use of purse seines and other nets in the salt waters is permitted for commercial purposes under terms and conditions prescribed by the State; and their use in these areas is open to all, Indians as well as others. The use of set nets in fresh water streams or at their mouths is barred not only to Indians but to all others. An expert for the State testified that the reason for that prohibition was conservation:
“The salmon are milling and delaying, and especially in times of low water or early arrival of the run or for any number of reasons, the delay may be considerable.
“Once again the fish are available to the net again and again. This is the main reason for the preserve, so that the milling stock will not be completely taken.
“Then further, this is a point in the bay at the river mouth where you very definitely have a fun-nelling effect. The entire run is funneled into a smaller area and it is very vulnerable.”
Fishing by hook and line is allowed in these areas because when salmon are “milling near the river mouth,” they are not “feeding and they don’t strike very well, so the hook and line fishery will take but a small percentage of the available stock no matter how hard they fish.”
Whether the prohibition of the use of set nets in these fresh waters was a “reasonable and necessary” (70 Wash. 2d, at 261, 422 P. 2d, at 764) conservation measure was left for determination by the trial court when the Supreme Court, deeming the injunction in No. 247 too broad, remanded the case for further findings. When the case was argued here, much was said about the pros and the cons of that issue. Since the state court has given us no authoritative answer to the question, we leave it unanswered and only add that any ultimate findings on the conservation issue must also cover the issue of equal protection implicit in the phrase “in common with.”
Affirmed.
It should be noted that while a reservation was created by Article II of the Treaty, Article VI provided that the President might remove the Indians from the reservation “on remunerating them for their improvements and the expenses of their removal, or may consolidate them with other friendly tribes or bands.” Article VI also gave the President authority alternatively to divide the reservation into lots and assign them to those individuals or families who were willing to make these places their permanent home. In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act (24 Stat. 388) authorizing the division of the reservation land among the individual Indians. In 1893 Congress passed the Puyallup Allotment Act, 27 Stat. 633, which established a commission to make the allotments. And by the Act of April 28, 1904, 33 Stat. 565, Congress gave “the consent of the United States” to the removal of prior restrictions on alienation by these Indians. The trial court in No. 247 found that all lands within the boundaries of the reservation created by the Treaty have been transferred to private ownership pursuant to these Acts of Congress, with the exception of two small tracts used as a cemetery for members of the tribe; and much of it is now in the City of Tacoma. See State v. Satiacum, 50 Wash. 2d 513, 314 P. 2d 400 (1957). Whether in light of this history the reservation has been extinguished is a question we do not reach. Cf. Seymour v. Superintendent, 368 U. S. 351, 356-359. The Washington Supreme Court seems to hold that the right to fish in streams once within the old reservation is protected by the Article III guarantee. See 70 Wash. 2d, at 261, 262, 422 P. 2d, at 763, 764. There are indeed no other fishing rights specifically reserved in the Treaty of Medicine Creek except those covered by Article III.
Fishing for salmon in the high seas is governed by a convention agreed to by Canada, Japan, and the United States on May 9, 1952. 4 U. S. T., Pt. I, p. 380, T. I. A. S. No. 2786. As to sockeye salmon and pink salmon, the United States and Canada have a separate convention first signed May 26, 1930, and amended as of July 3, 1957. 8 U. S. T., Pt. I, p. 1057, T. I. A. S. No. 3867.
Washington bars the use of nets in fishing for salmon in the international waters of the Pacific. Wash. Rev. Code § 75.12.220.
Wash. Admin. Code §§220-16-010 to 220-48-060 (salmon); Wash. Dept. of Game, Perm. Regs. Nos. 32-35 (1964), Temp. Reg. No. 273 (1968) (steelhead).
Wash. Rev. Code §§75.28.010-75.28.380; §§77.32.005-77.32.280.
Wash. Dept, of Game, Perm. Reg. No. 34 (1964).
Wash. Rev. Code § 75.12.140 defines the permissible areas for reef net fishing. Section 75.12.010, while containing a prohibition against commercial fishing in a large salt water area, allows the director of fisheries to permit commercial fishing there within stated times and with prescribed gear. And see Wash. Admin. Code §§220-32-010 to 220-32-030 (Columbia River area); §§ 220-36-010 to 220-36-020 (Grays Harbor area); §§ 220-40-4)10 to 220-40-4)20 (Willapa Harbor area); §§ 220-48-010 to 220-48-060 (Puget Sound area). Commercial fishing in other areas is banned. Wash. Rev. Code § 75.12.160; Wash. Admin. Code §220-20-010.
Wash. Rev. Code §§ 75.12.060, 77.16.060.
Wash. Rev. Code § 75.12.280. It appears that the monofilament type of gear (made of plastic) is less visible in clear water in daylight than the nylon web.
Wash. Admin. Code §220-48-020.
Wash. Admin. Code §220-48-020 (10).
Petitioners in No. 247 argue that the Washington courts lacked jurisdiction to entertain an action against the tribe without the consent of the tribe or the United States Government (citing United States v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 309 U. S. 506, and Turner v. United States, 248 U. S. 354), viewing the suit as one to “extinguish a Tribal communal fishing right guaranteed by federal Treaty.” This case, however, is a suit to enjoin violations of state law by individual tribal members fishing off the reservation. As such, it is analogous to prosecution of individual Indians for crimes committed off reservation lands, a matter for which there has been no grant of exclusive jurisdiction to federal courts. See, e. g., DeMarrias v. South Dakota, 319 F. 2d 845 (C. A. 8th Cir. 1963); Buckman v. State, 139 Mont. 630, 366 P. 2d 346 (1961). With respect to crimes committed by Indians within reservation boundaries, see 18 U. S. C. §§ 1153, 1162. And see § 401 (a) of Title IV of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, Pub. L. No. 90-284, 82 Stat. 78; Seymour v. Superintendent, 368 U. S. 351; United States v. Celestino, 215 U. S. 278.
A purse seine is a type of gear that encircles a school of fish, lead weights taking the net down, and a boat operating at each end of the net. A line runs through rings on the bottom of the net, making it possible to close the bottom of the net. Wash. Admin. Code §220-16-010 (15).
A gill net has a mesh which fish cannot back out of once their heads get through. Gill net fishing is drift fishing, the net being up to 1,800 feet in length. Wash. Admin. Code §220-16-010 (8).
Purse seines and drift gill nets are used in salt water.
Set gill nets are often anchored at one end, stretched on a cork line, and held down by weights, while drifting at the other end. They are often located one above another at a short distance. Fish are taken by hand out of the nets as a boat travels its length. The mesh in the gill net varies, depending on the size of the species of salmon that are running — ehinook, 8 to 8% inches; silver, chum, and sockeye, 5% inches. Set gill nets run from 40 to 150 feet depending on the width of the river at the point they are used. Wash. Admin. Code §220-16-010 (19).
Much emphasis is placed on Maison v. Confederated, Tribes, 314 F. 2d 169 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1963), where another treaty right pertaining to other Indians was tendered in opposition to Oregon's power to regulate salmon fishing in the interests of conservation. This Treaty gave the Indians the right to fish off the reservation at all “usual and accustomed stations in common with citizens of the United States.” Id., at 170. The Court of Appeals held that Oregon could regulate the Indians’ Treaty right to fish under two conditions: “first, that there is a need to limit the talcing of fish, second, that the particular regulation sought to be imposed is ‘indispensable’ to the accomplishment of the needed limitation.” Id., at 172.
The idea that the conservation measure be “indispensable” is derived from Tulee v. Washington, supra, where in striking down the license fee we said that “the imposition of license fees is not indispensable to the effectiveness of a state conservation program.” 315 U. S., at 685. But that statement in its context meant no more than that it would, indeed, be unusual for a State to have the power to tax the exercise of a “federal right.” As stated by the Court in the sentence immediately following, the license fee “acts upon the Indians as a charge for exercising the very right their ancestors intended to reserve.” Ibid. Cf. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105, 112: “The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control or suppress its enjoyment.”
As to a “regulation” concerning the time and manner of fishing outside the reservation (as opposed to a “tax”), we said that the power of the State was to be measured by whether it was “necessary for the conservation of fish.” 315 U. S., at 684.
The measure of the legal propriety of those kinds of conservation measures is therefore distinct from the federal constitutional standard concerning the scope of the police power of a State. See Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726; Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483; Daniel v. Family Ins. Co., 336 U. S. 220; Olsen v. Nebraska, 313 U. S. 236.
Im No. 319, the parties entered into a stipulation of facts which, because of its scope, made unnecessary “the tailoring of the injunction to meet a specific situation, as in the Puyallup case . . . .” 70 Wash. 2d, at 280, 422 P. 2d, at 774. The Washington Supreme Court did, however, remand to the trial court with instructions to limit the injunction only to those violations of Washington law that had been stipulated to be presently necessary to the conservation of the fish runs. It was stipulated that the “usual and accustomed fishing grounds” (within the meaning of the Treaty) encompassed the Nisqually River and its tributaries downstream from the Nisqually Reservation. The parties further stipulated that the defendants had fished contrary to state fishing conservation laws and regulations since 1960; that “[i]f permitted to continue, the defendants’ commercial fishery would virtually exterminate the salmon and steelhead fish runs of the Nisqually River”; and that “it is necessary for proper conservation of the salmon and steelhead fish runs of the Nisqually River . . . that the plaintiffs enforce state fishery conservation laws and regulations to the fishing activities of the defendants at their usual and accustomed grounds.”
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 Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
For the third time in 50 years the Court is asked specifically to rule that professional baseball’s reserve system is within the reach of.the federal antitrust laws. Collateral issues of state law and of federal labor policy are also advanced.
I
The Game
It is a century and a quarter since the New York Nine defeated the Knickerbockers 23 to 1 on Hoboken’s Elysian Fields June 19, 1346/with Alexander jay Cart-' wright as the instigator and the umpire. The teams were amateur, but the contest marked a significant date in baseball’s beginnings. That early game led ultimately to the development of professional baseball' and its tightly organized structure.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings came into existence in 1869 upon an outpouring of local pride. With only one Cincinnatian on- the payroll, this professional team traveled over 11,000 miles that summer, winning 56 games and tying one. Shortly thereafter,.on St. Patrick’s Day in 1871, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players was founded and the professional league was born.
The ensuing colorful days are well known. The ardent follower and the student of baseball'know of General Abner Doubleday; the formation of the National League in 1876; Chicago’s supremacy in the first year’s competition under the leadership of A1 Spalding and with Cap Anson at third base; the formation of the American Association and then of the Union Association in the 1880’s; the introduction of Sunday baseball; interleague warfare with cut-rate admission prices and player raiding; the developmént of the reserve “clau’se”; the emergence-in 1885 of the Brotherhood of Professional Ball Players, and in 1890 of the Players League; the appearance of the American League, or “junior circuit,” in 1901, rising from. the minor Western Association; the first World Series in 1903, disruption in 1904, and the Series’ resumption in ■ 1905; the short-lived Federal League on the majors’ scene during World War I years; the troublesome and discouraging episode' of the 1919 Series; the home run ball»; the shifting of franchises; the expansion of the leagues; the installation- in 1965 of the major league draft of potential new players; and the formation of the Major League Baseball Players Association in 1966.
Then there are the many names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs and that have provided tinder for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in-season and off-season: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Henry Chadwick, Eddie Collins, Lou Gehrig, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Hooper, Goose Goslin, Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner, Joe McCarthy, John McGraw, Deacon Phillippe, Rube Mar-quard, Christy Mathewson, Tommy Leach, Big Ed Delahanty, Davy Jones, Germany Schaefer, King Kelly, Big Dan Brouthers, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Wee Willie Keeler, Big Ed Walsh, Jimmy Austin, Fred Snodgrass, Satchel Paige, Hugh Jennings, Fred Merkle, Iron Man McGinnity, Three-Finger Brown, Harry and Stan' Coveleski, Connie Mack, Al Bridwell, Red- Ruffing, Amos Rusie, Cy Young, Smokey Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Chief Bender, Bill Klem, Hans Lobert, Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, Roy Campanella, Miller Huggins, Rube Bressler, Dazzy Vance, Edd Roush, Bill Wambsganss, Clark Griffith, Branch Rickey, Frank Chance, Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie, Sad Sam Jones, Bob O’Farrell, Lefty O’Doul, Bobby Veach, Willie Kamm, Heinié Groh, Lloyd and Paul Waner, Stuffy Mclnnis, Charles Comiskey, Roger Bresnahan, Bill Dickey, Zack Wheat, George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer, Eppa Rixey, Harry Heilmann, Fred Clarke, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Pie Traynor, Rube Waddell, Bill Terry, Carl Hubbell, Old Hoss Radbourne, Moe Berg, Rabbit Maranville, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove. The list seems endless.
And one recalls the appropriate reference to the “World Serious,” attributed to Ring Lárdner, Sr.; Ernest L. Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat”; the ring of “Tinker to Evers to Chance”; and all the other happenings, habits,, and superstitions about and around baseball that made. it the “national pastimé” or, depending upon the point of view, “the great American tragedy.” '
II
The Petitioner
The petitioner, Cürtis Charles Flood, born in 1938, began his major league career in 1956 when he signed a contract with the Cincinnati Reds for a salary of $4,000 for the season. He had no attorney or agent to advise him on that occasion. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals before the 1958 season. Flood rose to fame as a center fielder with the Cardinals during the- years 1958-1969. In those. 12 seasons he compiled- a batting average of.293. His best offensive season was 1967 when he achieved.335! He was.301 or better in six of the 12 St. Louis yéars. He participated in the 1964, 1967, and 1968 World Series. He played errorless ball in the field in. 1966, and once enjoyed 223 consecutive errorless games. Flood has received seven Golden Glove Awards. He was co-captain of his team from 1965-1969. He ranks among the 10 major league outfielders possessing the highest lifetime fielding averages:
Flood’s St. Louis compensation for the years shown was:
1961 $13,500 (including a bonus for signing)
1962 $16,000
1963 $17,500
1964 $23,000
1965 $35,000
1966 $45,000
1967 $50,000
1968 $72,500
10B9 $90,000
These figures do not include any so-called fringe benefits or World Series shares.
But at the age of 31, in October 1969, Flood was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League in a multi-player transaction.. He was not consulted about the trade. He was informed by telephone and received formal notice only after the deal had been consummated. In December he complained to the Commissioner of Baseball and asked that he be made a free agent and be placed at liberty to strike his own bargain with any other major league team. His request was denied.
Flood then instituted this antitrust suit- in January 1970 in federal court for the Southern District of New York. The defendants (although not all were named in each cause of action) were the Commissioner of Baseball, the presidents of the two major leagues, and the 24 major league clubs. In general, the complaint charged violations of the federal antitrust laws and civil rights statutes, violation of state statutes and the common law, and the imposition of a form of peonage and involuntary servitude contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment and 42 U. S. C. § 1994, 18 U. S. C. § 1581, and 29 IT. S. C. §§ 102- and 103.. Petitioner sought declaratory and in-junctive relief and treble damages.
Flood declined to play for Philadelphia in 1970, despite a $100,000 salary offer, and he sat out the year. After the season was concluded, Philadelphia^ sold its rights to Flood to the Washington Senators.. Washington and the petitioner were able to conie tó terms for 1971- at a salary ■ of $110,000. Flood started the season but, apparently because he was dissatisfied with his performance,-he left the Washington club on April 27, early in the campaign. He has not played baseball since then.
111
The Present Litigation
Judge Cooper, in a detailed opinion, first denied a preliminary injunction, 309 F. Supp. 793 (SDNY 1970), observing on the way:'
“Baseball has been the national pastime for over one hundred years and/ enjoys a unique place in our American heritage. Major league professional baseball is avidly followed by millions of fans, looked upon with fervor and pride and provides a special source-.of inspiration and competitive team spirit especially for the young.
“Baseball’s status in the life of the nation is so pervasive that it would not strain credulity to say. the Court can take judicial notice that baseball is everybody’s business. To put it mildly and- with restraint, it would be unfortunate indeed if a fine sport, and profession, which brings surcease from daily travail and an escape from the ordinary to most inhabitants of this land, were to suffer in the least because of undue concentration by any one or any group on commercial and profit considerations.'The game is on higher ground; it behooves every one to keep it there.” 309 F. Supp., at 797.
Flood's application for an early trial was granted. The court next deferred until trial its decision on the defendants’ motions to dismiss the primary causes of action, but granted a defense motion for summary judgment on an additional cause of action. 312 F. Supp. 404 (SDNY 1970).
Trial to the court took place in May and June 1970. An- extensive record was developed. In an ensuing opinion, 316 F. Supp. 271 (SDNY 1970), Judge Cooper first noted that:
“Plaintiff’s witnesses in the main concede that some form of reserve on players is a necessary element of the organization of baseball as a league sport, but contend that the present all-embracing system is needlessly restrictive and offer various, alternatives which in their view might loosen the bonds without sacrifice to the game....
“Clearly the preponderance of credible proof does not favor elimination of the reserve clause. With the sole exception of plaintiff himself, it shows that even plaintiff’s witnesses do not contend that it is wholly undesirable; in fact they regard substantial portions meritorious....” 316 F. Supp., at 275-276.
He then held that Federal Baseball Club v. National League,, 259 U. S. 200 (1922), and Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., 346 U. S. 356 (1953), were controlling; that' it was not necessary to reach the issue whether exemption from.the antitrust laws would result because aspects of baseball now are a subject of collective bargaining; that the plaintiff’s state-law claims, those based on common law as well as on statute, were to be. denied because baseball was not “a matter which admits of diversity of treatment,” 316 F. Supp., at 280; that the involuntary servitude claim failed because of the absence' of “the essential element of this cause of action, a showing of compulsory service,” 316 F. Supp., at 281-282; and that judgment was to be entered for the defendants. Judge Cooper included'a statement of personal conviction to the effect that “negotiations could produce an accommodation on the reserve system which would be eminently fair and equitable to all concerned” and that “the reserve clause can be fashioned so as to find acceptance by player and club.” 316 F. Supp., at 282 and 284.
On appeal, the Second Circuit felt “compelled to affirm.” 443 F. 2d 264, 265 (1971). It regarded the issue of state law as one' of first impression, but concluded that the Commerce Clause precluded its application. Judge Moore added a concurring opinion in which he predicted, with respect, to the'suggested overruling of Federal Baseball and Toalson, that “there is no likelihood that such an event will occur.”.- 443 F. 2d, at 268, 272.
We granted certiorari in order to look once, again at this troublesome and unusual, situation. 404 U. S. 880 (1971,);
IV
The Legal Background
A. Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 259 U. S. 200 (1922), was a suit for treble damages instituted by a member of the Federal League (Baltimore) against the National and American Leagues and others. The. plaintiff obtained a. verdict in the trial court, but the Court of Appeals reversed. The main brief filed by the plaintiff with this Court discloses that it was strenuously argued, among other things, that the business in which the defendants were engaged was interstate commerce; that the interstate relationship among the several clubs, located as they were in differént States, was predominant; that organized baseball represented an investment of colossal wealth; that it was an engagement in moneymaking; that gate receipts were divided by agreement between the home club and the visiting club; and that the business of baseball was to be distinguished from the mere playing of the game as a sport for physical exercise and diversion. See also 259 U. S., at 201-206.
• Mr. Justice Holmes, in speaking succinctly for a unanimous Court, said:
“The business is giving exhibitions of base ball, •which are purely staté affairs.... But the fact that in order to give the exhibitions the Leagues must induce free persons to cross state lines and must arrange and pay for their doing so is not enough to change the character of the business.... [T]he transport is a mere incident, not the essential thing. That to which it is incident, the exhibition, although made for money would not be called trade or commerce in the commonly accepted-use of those words. As it is put by the defendants, personal effort, not related to production, is not a subject of commerce. That which in its consummation is not commerce does not become commerce among the States because the transportation That we have- mentioned takes place. To repeat, the illustrations, given by the Court below, a firm of lawyers sending out a member to argue a case, or the Chautauqua lecture bureau sending out lecturers, does not engage in such commerce because the lawyer or leeturer goes to another State.
“If we are right the plaintiff’s business is to be described in the same way and the restrictions by contract that prevented the plaintiff from getting players to break their bargains and the other conduct charged against the defendants were not an interference with commerce among the States.” 259. Ur S., at 208-209.
The Court thus chose not to be persuaded by opposing examples proffered, by the plaintiff, among them.(a) Judge Learned Hand’s decision on a demurrer to a Sherman Act complaint with respéct ’ to. vaudeville entertainers traveling a theater circuit covering several States, H. B. Marienelli, Ltd. v. United Booking Offices, 227 F. 165 (SDNY 1914); (b) the first Mr. Justice Harlan’s opinion in International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91 (1910), to the effect that correspondence courses pursued through the mail constituted commerce among the States; and (c) Mr. Justice Holmes’ own opinion, for another unanimous Court,'on demurrer in a Sherman Act case, relating to cattle shipment, the interstate movement of which was interrupted for the finding of purchasers at the stockyards, Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375 (1905). The only earlier case the' parties wére able to loeate where the question was raised whether organized baseball was within the Sherman Act was American League Baseball Club v. Chase, 86 Misc. 441, 149 N. Y. S. 6 (1914). That court had answered the question in the negative.
B. Federal Baseball was cited a year later, and without, disfavor, in another opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes for a unanimous Court. The complaint charged antitrust violations with respect to vaudeville bookings. It was held, however, that the claim was not frivolous and that the bill should not have been dismissed. Hart v. B. F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U. S. 271 (1923).
It has also been cited, not unfavorably, with respect to the practice of law, United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Assn., 322 U. S. 533, 573 (1944) (Stone, C. J., dissenting)with respect to out-of-state contractors, United States v. Employing Plasterers Assn., 347 U. S. 186, 196-197 (1954) (Minton, J., dissenting); and upon a general comparison reference, North American Co. v. SEC, 327 U. S. 686, 694 (1946).
In the years that followed, baseball continued to be subject to intermittent antitrust attack. The • courts, however, rejected these challenges on the -authority of Federal Baseball. In some cases stress was laid, although unsuccessfully, on new factors such as the development of radio and television with their substantial additional revenues to baseball. For the most part, however, the Holmes opinion was generally and necessarily accepted as controlling authority. And in the 1952 Report of the Subcommittee on Study, of Monopoly Power of the House Committee on the Judiciary, H. R. Rep. No. 2002, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 229, it was said, in conclusion:
“On the other hand the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence established baseball’s need for some, sort of reserve clause. Baseball’s history shows that chaotic conditions prevailed when there _was no reserve clause. Experience points to no feasible substitute to protect the integrity of the game or to guarantee a comparatively even competitive struggle. The evidence adduced at the hearings would clearly not justify the enactment of legislation flatly condemning the reserve clause.”
C. The Court granted certiorari, 345 U. S. 963 (1953), in the Toolson, Kowalski, and Corbett cases, cited in nn. 12 and 13, supra, and, by a short per curiam (Warren, C. J., and Black, Frankfurter, Douglas, Jackson, Clark, and Minton, JJ.), affirmed the judgments of the respective courts of appeals in those three cases. Toolson v. New. York Yankees, Inc., 346 U. S. 356 (1953). Federal Baseball was cited as holding “that the business of providing public baseball games for profit between clubs of professional baseball players was not within the scope of the federal antitrust laws,” 346 U. S., at 357, and:
“Congress has had the ruling under consideration but has not seen fit. to bring such business under these laws by legislation having prospective effect. The business has thus been left for thirty years to develop, on the understanding that it was. not subject to existing antitrust legislation. The present cases ask us to overrule the prior decision and, with retrospective effect, hold the legislation applicable. We think that if there are evils in this field which now warrant application to it of the antitrust laws it should be by legislation. Without re-examination of the underlying issues, the judgments below, are affirmed on the authority of Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, supra, so far as that decision determines that Copgress had no intention of including the business of baseball within the scope of the federal -antitrust laws.” Ibid.
This quotation reveals four reasons for the Court’s affirmance of Toolson and its companion cases: (a) Congressional awareness for three decades of the. Court’s ruling in Federal Baseball, coupled with congressional inaction, (b) The fact that baseball was left alone to develop. for that period upon the understanding that the reserve system was not subject to existing federal antitrust laws, (e) A reluctance to overrule Federal Baseball with consequent retroactive effect, (d) A professed desire that any needed remedy be provided by legislation rather than by court decree. The emphasis in Toolson. was on the determination, attributed evén to Federal Baseball, that Congress had no intention to include baseball within the reach of the federal antitrust laws. Two Justices (Burton and Reed, JJ.) dissented, stressing the factual aspects, revenue sources, and the absence of an express exemption of organized baseball from the Sherman Act. 346 U. S., at 357. The 1952 congressional study was mentioned. Id., at 358, 359, 361.
It is of interest to note that in Toolson the petitioner had argued flatly that Federal Baseball “is wrong and must be overruled,” Brief for Petitioner, No. 18, O. T. 1953, p. 19, and that. Thomas Reed Powell, a constitutional scholar of no small stature, urged, as counsel for an amicus, that “baseball is a unique enterprise,” Brief for Boston American League Base Ball Co. as Amicus Curiae 2, and that “unbridled competition as applied to baseball would not be in the public interest.” Id., at 14.
D. United States v. Shubert, 348 U. S. 222 (1955), was a civil, antitrust action against defendants engaged in the production of legitimate theatrical attractions throughout the United States and in' operating theaters for the presentation of such attractions. The District Court had dismissed the complaint on the authority of Federal Baseball and Toolson. 120 F. Supp. 15 (SDNY 1953). This Court reversed. Mr. Chief Justice Warren noted the Court’s broad conception of “trade or commerce” in the antitrust statutes and the.types of enterprises already held to bé within the reach of that phrase. He stated that Federal Baseball and Toolson afforded no basis for a conclusion that businesses built around the performance of local exhibitions are exempt from the antitrust laws. 348 U. S., at 227. He then went on to elucidate the holding in Toolson by meticulously spelling out the factors mentioned above:
“In Federal Baseball, the Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, was dealing with the business of baseball 'and nothing else.... The travel, the Court concluded, was 'a mere incident, not the essential thing....
“In Toolson, where the issue was the same as in Federal Baseball, the Court was confronted with a unique combination of circumstances. For over 30 years there had stood a decision of this Court specifically fixing the status of the baseball business under the antitrust laws and more particularly the validity of the so-called ‘reserve clause. During this period, in reliance on the Federal Baseball precedent, the baseball business had grown and developed...'And Congress, although it had actively considered the ruling, had not seen fit to reject it by amendatory legislation. Against this' background, the Court in Toolson was asked to overrule Federal Baseball on the ground that it was out of step with subsequent decisions reflecting present-day concepts of interstate commerce. The Court, in view of the circumstances of the case, declined to do so. But neither did the Court necessarily reaffirm all that was said in Federal Baseball.. Instead, ‘[w]ithout re-examination of the.underlying issues, the Court adhered to Federal Baseball. ‘so far as that decision determines that Congress had no intention of including the business of baseball within the seope of the federal antitrust laws. 346 U. S., at 357. In short, Toolson was a narrow application of the rule of stare decisis.
.. If the Toolson holding is to be expanded— or contracted — the appropriate remedy lies with Congress.” 348 U. S., at 228-230.
E. United States v. International Boxing Club, 348 U. S. 236 (1955), was a companion to Shubert and was decided the same day. This was a civil antitrust action against defendants engaged in the business of promoting professional championship boxing contests. Here again the District Court had dismissed the complaint in reliance upon Federal Baseball and Toolson. The Chief Justice observed that “if it were not for Federal Baseball and Toolson, we think that it.would be too clear for dispute that the Government’s allegations bring the defendants within, the scope of the Act.” 348 U. S., at 240-241. He pointed out that the defendants relied on the two baseball cases but also would have been content with a more restrictive interpretation of them than the Shubert defendants, for the boxing defendants argued that the cases immunized only businesses that involve exhibitions of an athletic nature. The Court accepted neither argument. It again noted, 348 U. S., at 242, that “Toolson neither overruled Federal Baseball nor-necessarily reaffirmed all that was said in Federal Baseball." It stated:
“The controlling consideration in Federal Baseball and Hart was, instead, a very practical one— the degree of interstate activity involved in the particular business under- review. It follows that stare decisis cannot help the defendants here; for, contrary to their argument, Federal Baseball did not hold that all businesses based on professional sports were outside the scope of the antitrust laws. The- issue confronting us is, therefore, not whether a previously granted exemption should continue, but whether an exemption should be granted in the first instance. And that issue is for Congress to resolve, not this Court.” 348 U. S., at 243.
The Court noted the presence - then in Congress of various bills forbidding, the application of the antitrust laws to “organized professional sports enterprises”; the holding of extensive hearings on some of these; subcommittee opposition; a postponement recommendation as to baseball; and the fact that “Congress thus left intact the then-existing coverage of the antitrust laws.” 348 U. S., at 243-244.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter, joined by Mr. Justice Minton, dissented. “It would baffle the subtlest ingenuity,” he said,- “to find a single differentiating factor between other sporting, exhibitions... and baseball insofar as the conduct of the sport is relevant to the criteria or considerations by which the Sherman Law becomes applicable to a 'trade or commerce.’ ” 348 U. S., at 248. He went on:
“The Court decided- as it did in the Toolson case as an application of the doctrine of stare decisis. That doctrine is not, to be sure,, an imprisonment of reason. But neither is it a whimsy. It can -hardly be that this Court gave a preferred position to baseball because it is the great American sport.... If stare decisis be one aspect of law, as it is, to disregard it in identic situations is mere caprice.
“Congress, on the.other hand, may yield to sentiment and be capricious, subject only to due process....
“Between them, this case and Shubert illustrate that nice but rational distinctions áre inevitable in adjudication. I agree with the Court’s opinion in' Shubert for precisely the’ reason that constrains me to dissent in this case.” 348 U. S., at 249-250.
Mr. Justice Minton also separately dissented on the ground that boxing is not trade or commerce. He added the comment that “Congress has not attempted” to control baseball and boxing. 348 U. S., at 251, 253. The two dissenting Justices, thus, did not call for the overruling of Federal Baseball and Toolson; they merely felt that boxing should be under the same umbrella of freedom as was baseball and, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter said, 348 U. S., at 250, they could not'exempt baseball “to the exclusion of every other sport different not one legal jot or tittle from it.”
F. The parade marched on. Radovich v. National Football League, 352 U. S. 445 (1957), was a civil Clayton Act case testing the application of the antitrust laws to professional football. The District Court dismissed. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part on the basis of Federal Baseball and Toolson. The court did not hesitate to “confess that the strength of the pull” of the baseball cases and of International Boxing. “is about equal,” but then observed that “[fjootball is a team sport” and boxing an individual one. 231 F. 2d 620, 622.
This Court reversed with an opinion by Mr. Justice Clark. He said that the Court made its ruling in Tool-son “because it was concluded that more harm would be done in overruling -Federal Baseball than in upholding a ruling which at best was of dubious validity.” 352 U. S., at 450. He noted that Congress had not acted. He then said:
“All this, combined with the flood of litigation that woüld follow its repudiation, the harassment that would.ensue, and the retroactive effect of such a decision, led the Court to the practical result that it should sustain the unequivocal line of authority-reaching over many years.
■ “[S]ince Toolson and Federal Baseball are still cited as controlling authority in antitrust actions involving other fields of business, we now specifically limit the rule there established to the facts there involved, i. e., the business of organized professional baseball. As long as the Congress continues to acquiesce wfe should adhere to — but not extend— thé interpretation of the Act made in those cases....
“If this ruling is unrealistic, inconsistent, or illogical) it is sufficient to answer, aside from the distinctions between the businesses, that were we considering the question of baseball for the first time* upon a clean slate we would have no doubts. But Federal Baseball held the business of baseball outside the scope of the Act. No other business claiming the coverage of those cases has such an adjudication. We, therefore, conclude that the orderly way to eliminate error or discrimination, if any there be, is by legislation and not by court decision. Congressional processes are more accom-modative, affording the whole industry hearings and an opportunity to assist in the formulation of new legislation. The resulting product is therefore more likely to protect the industry and the public alike. The. whole scope of congressional action would be known long in advance and effective dates for the legislation could be. set in the future without the injustices of retroactivity and surprise which might follow court action.” 352 U. S., at 450-452 (footnote omitted).
Mr. Justice Frankfurter dissented essentially for the reasons stated in his dissent in International Boxing, 352 U. S., at 455. Mr. Justice Harlan, joined by Mr. Justice Brennan, also dissented because he, too, was “unable to distinguish football from baseball.” 352 U. S., at 456. Here again the dissenting Justices did not. call for.the overruling of the baseball decisions. They merely could not distinguish the two spqrts and, out of respect for stare decisis, voted to affirm.
G. Finally, in Haywood v. National Basketball Assn., 401 U. S. 1204 (1971), Mr. Justice Douglas, in his capacity as Circuit Justiqe, reinstated a District Court’s injunction.pendeníe lite in favor of a professional basketball player and said, “Basketball.... does, not enjoy exemption from-the antitrust laws.” 401 U. S., at 1205. ’
H. This series of decisions understandably spawned extensive commentary, some of it mildly critical and much of it not; nearly all of.it looked to Congress for any remedy that might be deemed essential.
I. Legislative proposals have been numerous arid persistent. Since Toolson more than 50 bills have been introduced in Congress relative to the applicability or nonapplicability of the antitrust laws to baseball. A few of these passed one house or the other. Those that did would have expanded,.not restricted, the reserve system’s exemption to other professional league sports. And the Act of Sept. 30, 1961, Pub.. L.- 87-331, 75 Stat. 732, and the merger addition thereto effected by the Act of Nov. 8, 1966, Pub. L.. 89-800, § 6 (b), 80 Stat. 1515, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1291-1295, were also expansive rather than restrictive as to antitrust exemption.
V
In view of all this, it seems appropriate now to say that:
1. Professional baseball is a business and it is engaged in interstate • commerce.
2. With its reserve system enjoying exemption from the federal antitrust laws, baseball is, in a very-distinct Sense, an exception and an anomaly. Federal Baseball and Toolson have become an aberration confined to baseball.
3. Even though others might regard this as “unrealistic,, inconsistent, or illogical,” see Radovich, 352 TJ. S., at 452, the aberration is an established one, and one that has been recognized not only in Federal Baseball and. Toolson, but in Shubert, International Boxing, and Radovich, as well, a total of five consecutive cases in this Court. It is an aberration that has been with us now for half a century, one heretofore deemed fully entitled to the benefit of stare decisis, and one that has survived the Court's expanding concept of interstate commerce. It rests on a recognition and an acceptance of baseball’s unique characteristics and needs.
4. Other professional sports operating interstate — football, boxing, basketball, and, presumably, hockey and golf — are not so exempt.
5. The advent of radio and television, with their consequent increased coverage and additional revenues,, has not occasioned an overruling of Federal Baseball and Toolson.
6. The Court has emphasized that since 1922 baseball, with full and continuing congressional awareness, has been allowed to develop and to expand unhindered by federal legislative action.. Eemedial legislation has been introduced repeatedly in Congress but none has ever been enacted. The Court, accordingly ^ has. concluded that Congress as yet has had no intention to subject baseball’s reserve system to the reach of the antitrust statutes. This, obviously, has been deemed to be something other than mere congressional silence and passivity. Cf. Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235, 241-242 (1970).
7. The Court has expressed concern about the confusion and the retroactivity problems that inevitably would result with a judicial overturning of Federal Baseball. It has voiced a preference that if any change is to be made, it come by legislative action that, by its nature, is only prospective in operation.
8. The Court noted in Radovich, 352 U. S., at 452, that the slate with respect to baseball is hot clean. Indeed, it has not been clean for half a century.
This emphasis and this concern are still with us. We. continue to be loath, 50 years after Federal Baseball and almost, two decades after Toolson, to overturn those cases judicially when Congress, by its positive inaction, has allowed those decisions to stand for so long and, far,beyond mere inference and implication, has clearly evinced a desire not to disapprove them legislatively.
Accordingly, we adhere once again to Federal Baseball and Toolson and to their application to professional baseball. We adhere also to International Boxing and Rado-vich and to their respective applications to professional boxing and.professional football. If there is any inconsistency or. illogic in all this, it is an inconsistency and illogic of long standing that is to be remedied by the Congress and not by this Court. If we were to
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.
Appellant, a Utah motorist, was involved in a collision. Both drivers and a police officer who investigated the accident filed accident reports with Utah’s Department of Public Safety as required by the Utah Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Act. Without affording appellant a hearing on fault, and based solely on the contents of the accident reports, the Director of the Financial Responsibility Division determined that there was a reasonable possibility that appellant was at fault. Appellant did not carry liability insurance and was unable to post security to show financial responsibility. The Director therefore suspended her license. A Utah District Court sustained the Director, and the Supreme Court of Utah affirmed. 26 Utah 2d 128, 485 P. 2d 1404 (1971).
The proceedings were authorized under Utah Code Ann. §§ 41-12-2 (b) and 41-6-35 (1953). Appellant attacks the statutory scheme as not affording the procedural due process required by our decision in Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535 (1971). We there held that the Georgia version of a motor vehicle responsibility law was constitutionally deficient for failure to afford the uninsured motorist procedural due process. We held that, although a determination that there was a reasonable possibility that the motorist was at fault in the accident sufficed, “before the State may deprive [him] of his driver’s license and vehicle registration,” the State must provide “a forum for the determination of the question” and a “meaningful . . . ‘hearing appropriate to the nature of the case.’ ” Id., at 541, 542. Appellant submits that Utah’s statutory scheme falls short of these requirements in two respects: (1) by not requiring a stay of the Director’s order pending determination of judicial review, the scheme leaves open the possibility of suspension of licenses without prior hearing; (2) in confining judicial review to whether the Director’s determination is supported by the accident reports, and not affording the motorist an opportunity to offer evidence and cross-examine witnesses, the motorist is not afforded a “meaningful” hearing.
There is plainly a substantial question whether the Utah statutory scheme on its face affords the procedural due process required by Bell v. Burson. This case does not, however, require that we address that question. The District Court in fact afforded this appellant such procedural due process. That court stayed the Director’s suspension order pending completion of judicial review, and conducted a hearing at which appellant was afforded the opportunity to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses. Both appellant and the Director testified at that hearing. The testimony of the investigating police officer would also have been heard except that appellant’s service of a subpoena upon him to appear was not timely under the applicable court rules.
The judgment of the Utah Supreme Court is
Affirmed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | D | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 895, 15 U. S. C. § 78n(a), authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to adopt rules for the solicitation of proxies, and prohibits their violation. In J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426 (1964), we first recognized an implied private right of action for the breach of § 14(a) as implemented by SEC Rule 14a-9, which prohibits the solicitation of proxies by means of materially false or misleading statements.
The questions before us are whether a statement couched in conclusory or qualitative terms purporting to explain directors’ reasons for recommending certain corporate action can be materially misleading within the meaning of Rule 14a-9, and whether causation of damages compensable under § 14(a) can be shown by a member of a class of minority shareholders whose votes are not required by law or corporate bylaw to authorize the corporate action subject to the proxy solicitation. We hold that knowingly false statements of reasons may be actionable even though conclusory in form, but that respondents have failed to demonstrate the equitable basis required to extend the § 14(a) private action to such shareholders when any indication of congressional intent to do so is lacking.
I
In December 1986, First American Bankshares, Inc. (FAB I), a bank holding company, began a “freeze-out” merger, in which the First American Bank of Virginia (Bank) eventually merged into Virginia Bankshares, Inc. (VBI), a wholly owned subsidiary of FABI. VBI owned 85% of the Bank’s shares, the remaining 15% being in the hands of some 2,000 minority shareholders. FABI hired the investment banking firm of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) to give an opinion on the appropriate price for shares of the minority holders, who would lose their interests in the Bank as a result of the merger. Based on market quotations and unverified information from FABI, KBW gave the Bank’s executive committee an opinion that $42 a share would be a fair price for the minority stock. The executive committee approved the merger proposal at that price, and the full board followed suit.
Although Virginia law required only that such a merger proposal be submitted to a vote at a shareholders’ meeting, and that the meeting be preceded by circulation of a statement of information to the shareholders, the directors nevertheless solicited proxies for voting on the proposal at the annual meeting set for April 21, 1987. In their solicitation, the directors urged the proposal’s adoption and stated they had approved the plan because of its opportunity for the minority shareholders to achieve a “high” value, which they elsewhere described as a “fair” price, for their stock.
Although most minority shareholders gave the proxies requested, respondent Sandberg did not, and after approval of the merger she sought damages in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia from VBI, FABI, and the directors of the Bank. She pleaded two counts, one for soliciting proxies in violation of § 14(a) and Rule 14a-9, and the other for breaching fiduciary duties owed to the minority shareholders under state law. Under the first count, Sandberg alleged, among other things, that the directors had not believed that the price offered was high or that the terms of the merger were fair, but had recommended the merger only because they believed they had no alternative if they wished to remain on the board. At trial, Sandberg invoked language from this Court’s opinion in Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S. 375, 385 (1970), to obtain an instruction that the jury could find for her without a showing of her own reliance on the alleged misstatements, so long as they were material and the proxy solicitation was an “essential link” in the merger process.
The jury’s verdicts were for Sandberg on both counts, after finding violations of Rule 14a-9 by all defendants and a breach of fiduciary duties by the Bank’s directors. The jury awarded Sandberg $18 a share, having found that she would have received $60 if her stock had been valued adequately.
While Sandberg’s case was pending, a separate action on similar allegations was brought against petitioners in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by several other minority shareholders including respondent Weinstein, who, like Sandberg, had withheld his proxy. This case was transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia. After Sandberg’s action had been tried, the Weinstein respondents successfully pleaded collateral estoppel to get summary judgment on liability.
On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the judgments, holding that certain statements in the proxy solicitation were materially misleading for purposes of the Rule, and that respondents could maintain their action even though their votes had not been needed to effectuate the merger. 891 F. 2d 1112 (1989). We granted certiorari because of the importance of the issues presented. 495 U. S. 903 (1990).
I — I I — I
The Court of Appeals affirmed petitioners liability for two statements found to have been materially misleading in violation of § 14(a) of the Act, one of which was that “The Plan of Merger has been approved by the Board of Directors because it provides an opportunity for the Bank’s public shareholders to achieve a high value for their shares.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a. Petitioners argue that statements of opinion or belief incorporating indefinite and unverifiable expressions cannot be actionable as misstatements of material fact within the meaning of Rule 14a-9, and that such a declaration of opinion or belief should never be actionable when placed in a proxy solicitation incorporating statements of fact sufficient to enable readers to draw their own, independent conclusions.
A
We consider first the actionability per se of statements of reasons, opinion, or belief. Because such a statement by definition purports to express what is consciously on the speaker’s mind, we interpret the jury verdict as finding that the directors’ statements of belief and opinion were made with knowledge that the directors did not hold the beliefs or opinions expressed, and we confine our discussion to statements so made. That such statements may be materially significant raises no serious question. The meaning of the materiality requirement for liability under § 14(a) was discussed at some length in TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U. S. 438 (1976), where we held a fact to be material “if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable shareholder would consider it important in deciding how to vote.” Id., at 449. We think there is no room to deny that a statement of belief by corporate directors about a recommended course of action, or an explanation of their reasons for recommending it, can take on just that importance. Shareholders know that directors usually have knowledge and expertness far exceeding the normal investor’s resources, and the directors’ perceived superiority is magnified even further by the common knowledge that state law customarily obliges them to exercise their judgment in the shareholders’ interest. Cf. Day v. Avery, 179 U. S. App. D. C. 63, 71, 548 F. 2d 1018, 1026 (1976) (action for misrepresentation). Naturally, then, the shareowner faced with a proxy request will think it important to know the directors’ beliefs about the course they recommend and their specific reasons for urging the stockholders to embrace it.
B
1
But, assuming materiality, the question remains whether statements of reasons, opinions, or beliefs are statements “with respect to... material fact[s]” so as to fall within the strictures of the Rule. Petitioners argue that we would invite wasteful litigation of amorphous issues outside the readily provable realm of fact if we were to recognize liability here on proof that the directors did not recommend the merger for the stated reason, and they cite the authority of Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723 (1975), in urging us to recognize sound policy grounds for placing such statements outside the scope of the Rule.
We agree that Blue Chip Stamps is instructive, as illustrating a line between what is and is not manageable in the litigation of facts, but do not read it as supporting petitioners’ position. The issue in Blue Chip Stamps was the scope of the class of plaintiffs entitled to seek relief under an implied private cause of action for violating § 10(b) of the Act, prohibiting manipulation and deception in the purchase or sale of certain securities, contrary to Commission rules. This Court held against expanding the class from actual buyers and sellers to include those who rely on deceptive sales practices by taking no action, either to sell what they own or to buy what they do not. We observed that actual sellers and buyers who sue for compensation must identify a specific number of shares bought or sold in order to calculate and limit any ensuing recovery. Id., at 734. Recognizing liability to merely would-be investors, however, would have exposed the courts to litigation unconstrained by any such anchor in demonstrable fact, resting instead on a plaintiff’s “subjective hypothesis” about the number of shares he would have sold or purchased. Id., at 734-735. Hindsight’s natural temptation to hypothesize boldness would have magnified the risk of nuisance litigation, which would have been compounded both by the opportunity to prolong discovery and by the capacity of claims resting on undocumented personal assertion to resist any resolution short of settlement or trial. Such were the premises of policy, added to those of textual analysis and precedent, on which Blue Chip Stamps deflected the threat of vexatious litigation over “many rather hazy issues of historical fact the proof of which depended almost entirely on oral testimony.” Id., at 743.
Attacks on the truth of directors’ statements of reasons or belief, however, need carry no such threats. Such statements are factual in two senses: as statements that the directors do act for the reasons given or hold the belief stated and as statements about the subject matter of the reason or belief expressed. In neither sense does the proof or disproof of such statements implicate the concerns expressed in Blue Chip Stamps. The root of those concerns was a plaintiff’s capacity to manufacture claims of hypothetical action, unconstrained by independent evidence. Reasons for directors’ recommendations or statements of belief are, in contrast, characteristically matters of corporate record subject to documentation, to be supported or attacked by evidence of historical fact outside a plaintiff’s control. Such evidence would include not only corporate minutes and other statements of the directors themselves, but circumstantial evidence bearing on the facts that would reasonably underlie the reasons claimed and the honesty of any statement that those reasons are the basis for a recommendation or other action, a point that becomes especially clear when the reasons or beliefs go to valuations in dollars and cents.
It is no answer to argue, as petitioners do, that the quoted statement on which liability was predicated did not express a reason in dollars and cents, but focused instead on the “indefinite and unverifiable” term, “high” value, much like the similar claim that the merger’s terms were “fair” to shareholders. The objection ignores the fact that such conclu-sory terms in a commercial context are reasonably understood to rest on a factual basis that justifies them as accurate, the absence of which renders them misleading. Provable facts either furnish good reasons to make a conclusory commercial judgment, or they count against it, and expressions of such judgments can be uttered with knowledge of truth or falsity just like more definite statements, arid defended or attacked through the orthodox evidentiary process that either substantiates their underlying justifications or tends to disprove their existence. In addressing the analogous issue in an action for misrepresentation, the court in Day v. Avery, 179 U. S. App. D. C. 63, 548 F. 2d 1018 (1976), for example, held that a statement by the executive committee of a law firm that no partner would be any “worse off” solely because of an impending merger could be found to be a material misrepresentation. Id., at 70-72, 548 F. 2d, at 1025-1027. Cf. Vulcan Metals Co. v. Simmons Mfg. Co., 248 F. 853, 856 (CA2 1918) (L. Hand, J.) (“An opinion is a fact.... When the parties are so situated that the buyer may reasonably rely upon the expression of the seller’s opinion, it is no excuse to give a false one”); W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts § 109, pp. 760-762 (5th ed. 1984). In this case, whether $42 was “high,” and the proposal “fair” to the minority shareholders, depended on whether provable facts about the Bank’s assets, and about actual and potential levels of operation, substantiated a value that was above, below, or more or less at the $42 figure, when assessed in accordance with recognized methods of valuation.
Respondents adduced evidence for just such facts in proving that the statement was misleading about its subject matter and a false expression of the directors’ reasons. Whereas the proxy statement described the $42 price as offering a premium above both book value and market price, the evidence indicated that a calculation of the book figure based on the appreciated value of the Bank’s real estate holdings eliminated any such premium. The evidence on the significance of market price showed that KBW had conceded that the market was closed, thin, and dominated by FABI, facts omitted from the statement. There was, indeed, evidence of a “going concern” value for the Bank in excess of $60 per share of common stock, another fact never disclosed. However conclusory the directors’ statement may have been, then, it was open to attack by garden-variety evidence, subject neither to a plaintiff’s control nor ready manufacture, and there was no undue risk of open-ended liability or uncontrollable litigation in allowing respondents the opportunity for recovery on the allegation that it was misleading to call $42 “high.”
This analysis comports with the holding that marked our nearest prior approach to the issue faced here, in TSC Industries, 426 U. S., at 454-455. There, to be sure, we reversed summary judgment for a Borak plaintiff who had sued on a description of proposed compensation for minority shareholders as offering a “substantial premium over current market values.” But we held only that on the case’s undisputed facts the conclusory adjective “substantial” was not materially misleading as a necessary matter of law, and our remand for trial assumed that such a description could be both materially misleading within the meaning of Rule 14a-9 and actionable under § 14(a). See TSC Industries, supra, at 458-460, 463-464.
2
Under § 14(a), then, a plaintiff is permitted to prove a specific statement of reason knowingly false or misleadingly incomplete, even when stated in conclusory terms. In reaching this conclusion we have considered statements of reasons of the sort exemplified here, which misstate the speaker’s reasons and also mislead about the stated subject matter (e. g., the value of the shares). A statement of belief may be open to objection only in the former respect, however, solely as a misstatement of the psychological fact of the speaker’s belief in what he says. In this case, for example, the Court of Appeals alluded to just such limited falsity in observing that “the jury was certainly justified in believing that the directors did not believe a merger at $42 per share was in the minority stockholders’ interest but, rather, that they voted as they did for other reasons, e. g., retaining their seats on the board.” 891 F. 2d, at 1121.
The question arises, then, whether disbelief, or undisclosed belief or motivation, standing alone, should be a sufficient basis to sustain an action under § 14(a), absent proof by the sort of objective evidence described above that the statement also expressly or impliedly asserted something false or misleading about its subject matter. We think that proof of mere disbelief or belief undisclosed should not suffice for liability under § 14(a), and if nothing more had been required or proven in this case, we would reverse for that reason.
On the one hand, it would be rare to find a case with evidence solely of disbelief or undisclosed motivation without further proof that the statement was defective as to its subject matter. While we certainly would not hold a director’s naked admission of disbelief incompetent evidence of a proxy statement’s false or misleading character, such an unusual admission will not very often stand alone, and we do not substantially narrow the cause of action by requiring a plaintiff to demonstrate something false or misleading in what the statement expressly or impliedly declared about its subject.
On the other hand, to recognize liability on mere disbelief or undisclosed motive without any demonstration that the proxy statement was false or misleading about its subject would authorize § 14(a) litigation confined solely to what one skeptical court spoke of as the “impurities” of a director’s “unclean heart.” Stedman v. Storer, 308 F. Supp. 881, 887 (SDNY 1969) (dealing with § 10(b)). This, we think, would cross the line that Blue Chip Stamps sought to draw. While it is true that the liability, if recognized, would rest on an actual, not hypothetical, psychological fact, the temptation to rest an otherwise nonexistent § 14(a) action on psychological enquiry alone would threaten just the sort of strike suits and attrition by discovery that Blue Chip Stamps sought to discourage. We therefore hold disbelief or undisclosed motivation, standing alone, insufficient to satisfy the element of fact that must be established under § 14(a).
C
Petitioners’ fail-back position assumes the same relationship between a conclusory judgment and its underlying facts that we described in Part II-B-1, supra. Thus, citing Radol v. Thomas, 534 F. Supp. 1302, 1315, 1316 (SD Ohio 1982), petitioners argue that even if conclusory statements of reason or belief can be actionable under § 14(a), we should confine liability to instances where the proxy material fails to disclose the offending statement’s factual basis. There would be no justification for holding the shareholders entitled to judicial relief, that is, when they were given evidence that a stated reason for a proxy recommendation was misleading and an opportunity to draw that conclusion themselves.
The answer to this argument rests on the difference between a merely misleading statement and one that is materially so. While a misleading statement will not always lose its deceptive edge simply by joinder with others that are true, the true statements may discredit the other one so obviously that the risk of real deception drops to nil. Since liability under § 14(a) must rest not only on deceptiveness but materiality as well (i. e., it has to be significant enough to be important to a reasonable investor deciding how to vote, see TSC Industries, 426 U. S., at 449), petitioners are on perfectly firm ground insofar as they argue that publishing accurate facts in a proxy statement can render a misleading proposition too unimportant to ground liability.
But not every mixture with the true will neutralize the deceptive. If it would take a financial analyst to spot the tension between the one and the other, whatever is misleading will remain materially so, and liability should follow. Gerstle v. Gamble-Skogmo, Inc., 478 F. 2d 1281, 1297 (CA2 1973) (“[I]t is not sufficient that overtones might have been picked up by the sensitive antennae of investment analysts’’). Cf. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U. S. 1, 18-19 (1990) (a defamatory assessment of facts can be actionable even if the facts underlying the assessment are accurately presented). The point of a proxy statement, after all, should be to inform, not to challenge the reader’s critical wits. Only when the inconsistency would exhaust the misleading conclusion’s capacity to influence the reasonable shareholder would a § 14(a) action fail on the element of materiality.
Suffice it to say that the evidence invoked by petitioners in the instant case fell short of compelling the jury to find the facial materiality of the misleading statement neutralized. The directors claim, for example, to have made an explanatory disclosure of further reasons for their recommendation when they said they would keep their seats following the merger, but they failed to mention what at least one of them admitted in testimony, that they would have had no expectation of doing so without supporting the proposal, App. 281-282. And although the proxy statement did speak factually about the merger price in describing it as higher than share prices in recent sales, it failed even to mention the closed market dominated by FABI. None of these disclosures that the directors point to was, then, anything more than a half-truth, and the record shows that another fact statement they invoke was arguably even worse. The claim that the merger price exceeded book value was controverted, as we have seen already, by evidence of a higher book value than the directors conceded, reflecting appreciation in the Bank’s real estate portfolio. Finally, the solicitation omitted any mention of the Bank’s value as a going concern at more than $60 a share, as against the merger price of $42. There was, in sum, no more of a compelling case for the statement’s immateriality than for its accuracy.
HH b-i h — I
The second issue before us, left open in Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S., at 385, n. 7, is whether causation of damages compensable through the implied private right of action under § 14(a) can be demonstrated by a member of a class of minority shareholders whose votes are not required by law or corporate bylaw to authorize the transaction giving rise to the claim. J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426 (1964), did not itself address the requisites of causation, as such, or define the class of plaintiffs eligible to sue under § 14(a). But its general holding, that a private cause of action was available to some shareholder class, acquired greater clarity with a more definite concept of causation in Mills, where we addressed the sufficiency of proof that misstatements in a proxy solicitation were responsible for damages claimed from the merger subject to complaint.
Although a majority stockholder in Mills controlled just over half the corporation’s shares, a two-thirds vote was needed to approve the merger proposal. After proxies had been obtained, and the merger had carried, minority shareholders brought a Borak action. Mills, 396 U. S., at 379. The question arose whether the plaintiffs’ burden to demonstrate causation of their damages traceable to the § 14(a) violation required proof that the defect in the proxy solicitation had had “a decisive effect on the voting.” Id., at 385. The Mills Court avoided the evidentiary morass that would have followed from requiring individualized proof that enough minority shareholders had relied upon the misstatements to swing the vote. Instead, it held that causation of damages by a material proxy misstatement could be established by showing that minority proxies necessary and sufficient to authorize the corporate acts had been given in accordance with the tenor of the solicitation, and the Court described such a causal relationship by calling the proxy solicitation an “essential link in the accomplishment of the transaction. ” Ibid. In the case before it, the Court found the solicitation essential, as contrasted with one addressed to a class of minority shareholders without votes required by law or bylaw to authorize the action proposed, and left it for another day to decide whether such a minority shareholder could demonstrate causation. Id., at 385, n. 7.
In this case, respondents address Mills’ open question by proffering two theories that the proxy solicitation addressed to them was an “essential link” under the Mills causation test. They argue, first, that a link existed and was essential simply because VBI and FAB I would have been unwilling to proceed with the merger without the approval manifested by the minority shareholders’ proxies, which would not have been obtained without the solicitation’s express misstatements and misleading omissions. On this reasoning, the causal connection would depend on a desire to avoid bad shareholder or public relations, and the essential character of the causal link would stem not from the enforceable terms of the parties’ corporate relationship, but from one party’s apprehension of the ill will of the other.
In the alternative, respondents argue that the proxy statement was an essential link between the directors’ proposal and the merger because it was the means to satisfy a state statutory requirement of minority shareholder approval, as a condition for saving the merger from voidability resulting from a conflict of interest on the part of one of the Bank’s directors, Jack Beddow, who voted in favor of the merger while also serving as a director of FAB I. Brief for Respondents 43-44, 45-46. Under the terms of Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-691(A) (1989), minority approval after disclosure of the material facts about the transaction and the director’s interest was one of three avenues to insulate the merger from later attack for conflict, the two others being ratification by the Bank’s directors after like disclosure and proof that the merger was fair to the corporation. On this theory, causation would depend on the use of the proxy statement for the purpose of obtaining votes sufficient to bar a minority shareholder from commencing proceedings to declare the merger void.
Although respondents have proffered each of these theories as establishing a chain of causal connection in which the proxy statement is claimed to have been an “essential link,” neither theory presents the proxy solicitation as essential in the sense of Mills’ causal sequence, in which the solicitation links a directors’ proposal with the votes legally required to authorize the action proposed. As a consequence, each theory would, if adopted, extend the scope of Borak actions beyond the ambit of Mills and expand the class of plaintiffs entitled to bring Borak actions to include shareholders whose initial authorization of the transaction prompting the proxy solicitation is unnecessary.
Assessing the legitimacy of any such extension or expansion calls for the application of some fundamental principles governing recognition of a right of action implied by a federal statute, the first of which was not, in fact, the considered focus of the Borak opinion. The rule that has emerged in the years since Borak and Mills came down is that recognition of any private right of action for violating a federal statute must ultimately rest on congressional intent to provide a private remedy, Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 575 (1979). From this the corollary follows that the breadth of the right once recognized should not, as a general matter, grow beyond the scope congressionally intended.
This rule and corollary present respondents with a serious obstacle, for we can find no manifestation of intent to recognize a cause of action (or class of plaintiffs) as broad as respondents’ theory of causation would entail. At first blush, it might seem otherwise, for the Borak Court certainly did not ignore the matter of intent. Its opinion adverted to the statutory object of “protection of investors” as animating Congress’ intent to provide judicial relief where “necessary,” 377 U. S., at 432, and it quoted evidence for that intent from House and Senate Committee Reports, id., at 431-432. Borak,’s probe of the congressional mind, however, never focused squarely on private rights of action, as distinct from the substantive objects of the legislation, and one Member of the Borak Court later characterized the “implication” of the private right of action as resting modestly on the Act’s “ ‘exclusively procedural provision’ affording access to a federal forum.” Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, 403, n. 4 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted). See generally L. Loss, Fundamentals of Securities Regulation 929 (2d ed. 1988). See also Touche Ross, supra, at 568, 578. In fact, the importance of enquiring specifically into intent to authorize a private cause of action became clear only later, see Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S., at 78, and only later still, in Touche Ross, was this intent accorded primacy among the considerations that might be thought to bear on any decision to recognize a private remedy. There, in dealing with a claimed private right under § 17(a) of the Act, we explained that the “central inquiry remains whether Congress intended to create, either expressly or by implication, a private cause of action.” 442 U. S., at 575-576.
Looking to the Act’s text and legislative history mindful of this heightened concern reveals little that would help toward understanding the intended scope of any private right. According to the House Report, Congress meant to promote the “free exercise” of stockholders’ voting rights, H. R. Rep. No. 1383, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1934), and protect “[f]air corporate suffrage,” id., at 13, from abuses exemplified by proxy solicitations that concealed what the Senate Report called the “real nature” of the issues to be settled by the subsequent votes, S. Rep. No. 792, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 12 (1934). While it is true that these Reports, like the language of the Act itself, carry the clear message that Congress meant to protect investors from misinformation that rendered them unwitting agents of self-inflicted damage, it is just as true that Congress was reticent with indications of how far this protection might depend on self-help by private action. The response to this reticence may be, of course, to claim that § 14(a) cannot be enforced effectively for the sake of its intended beneficiaries without their participation as private litigants. Borak, supra, at 432. But the force of this argument for inferred congressional intent depends on the degree of need perceived by Congress, and we would have trouble inferring any congressional urgency to depend on implied private actions to deter violations of § 14(a), when Congress expressly provided private rights of action in §§ 9(e), 16(b), and 18(a) of the same Act. See 15 U. S. C. §§78i(e), 78p(b), and 78r(a).
The congressional silence that is thus a serious obstacle to the expansion of cognizable Borak causation is not, however, a necessarily insurmountable barrier. This is not the first effort in recent years to expand the scope of an action originally inferred from the Act without “conclusive guidance” from Congress, see Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S., at 737, and we may look to that earlier case for the proper response to such a plea for expansion. There, we accepted the proposition that where a legal structure of private statutory rights has developed without clear indications of congressional intent, the contours of that structure need not be frozen absolutely when the result would be demonstrably inequitable to a class of would-be plaintiffs with claims comparable to those previously recognized. Faced in that case with such a claim for equality in rounding out the scope of an implied private statutory right of action, we looked to policy reasons for deciding where the outer limits of the right should lie. We may do no less here, in the face of respondents’ pleas for a private remedy to place them on the same footing as shareholders with votes necessary for initial corporate action.
A
Blue Chip Stamps set an example worth recalling as a preface to specific policy analysis of the consequences of recognizing respondents’ first theory, that a desire to avoid minority shareholders’ ill will should suffice to justify recognizing the requisite causality of a proxy statement needed to garner that minority support. It will be recalled that in Blue Chip Stamps we raised concerns about the practical consequences of allowing recovery, under § 10(b) of the Act and Rule 10b-5, on evidence of what a merely hypothetical buyer or seller might have done on a set of facts that never occurred, and foresaw that any such expanded liability would turn on “hazy” issues inviting self-serving testimony, strike suits, and protracted discovery, with little chance of reasonable resolution by pretrial process. Id., at 742-743. These were good reasons to deny recognition to such claims in the absence of any apparent contrary congressional intent.
The same threats of speculative claims and procedural intractability are inherent in respondents’ theory of causation linked through the directors’ desire for a cosmetic vote. Causation would turn on inferences about what the corporate directors would have thought and done without the minority shareholder approval unneeded to authorize action. A subsequently dissatisfied minority shareholder would have virtual license to allege that managerial timidity would have doomed corporate action but for the ostensible approval induced by a misleading statement, and opposing claims of hypothetical diffidence and hypothetical boldness on the part of directors would probably provide enough depositions in the usual case to preclude any judicial resolution short of the credibility judgments that can only come after trial. Reliable evidence would seldom exist. Directors would understand the prudence of making a few statements about plans to proceed even without minority endorsement, and discovery would be a quest for recollections of oral conversations at odds with the official pronouncements, in hopes of finding support for ex post facto guesses about how much heat the directors would have stood in the absence of minority approval. The issues would be hazy, their litigation protracted, and their resolution unreliable. Given a choice, we would reject any theory of causation that raised such prospects, and we reject this one.
B
The theory of causal necessity derived from the requirements of Virginia law dealing with postmerger ratification seeks to identify the essential character of the proxy solicitation from its function in obtaining the minority approval that would preclude a minority suit attacking the merger. Since the link is said to be a step in the process of barring a class of shareholders from resort to a state remedy otherwise available, this theory of causation rests upon the proposition of policy that § 14(a) should provide a federal remedy whenever a false or misleading proxy statement results in the loss under state law of a shareholder plaintiff’s state remedy for the enforcement of a state right. Respondents agree with the suggestions of counsel for the SEC and FDIC that causation be recognized, for example, when a minority shareholder has been induced by a misleading proxy statement to forfeit a state-law right to an appraisal remedy by voting to approve a transaction, cf. Swanson v. American Consumers Industries, Inc., 475 F. 2d 516, 520-521 (CA7 1973), or when such a shareholder has been deterred from obtaining an order enjoining a damaging transaction by a proxy solicitation that misrepresents the facts on which an injunction could properly have been issued. Cf. Healey v. Catalyst Recovery of Pennsylvania, Inc., 616 F. 2d 641, 647-648 (CA3 1980); Alabama Farm Bureau Mutual Casualty Co. v. American Fidelity Life Ins. Co., 606 F. 2d 602, 614 (CA5 1979), cert. denied, 449 U. S. 820 (1980). Respondents claim that in this case a predicate for recognizing just such a causal link exists in Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-691(A)(2) (1989), which sets the conditions under which the merger may be insulated from suit by a minority shareholder seeking to void it on account of Beddow’s conflict.
This case does not, however, require us to decide whether § 14(a) provides a cause of action for lost state remedies, since
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.
Opinion of the Court by
Mr. Justice Douglas,
announced by Mr. Justice Brennan.
El Paso Natural Gas Company first acquired the stock of the Pacific Northwest Pipeline Corp. and then applied to the Federal Power Commission for authority to acquire the assets pursuant to § 7 of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 825, 15 U. S. C. § 717f (c). This application was dated August 7, 1957. Prior thereto, on July 22, 1957, the Federal Government commenced an action against El Paso and Pacific Northwest, alleging that El Paso's acquisition of the stock of Pacific Northwest violated § 7 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, as amended, 64 Stat. 1125, 15 U. S. C. § 18. On September 30,1957, El Paso and Pacific Northwest filed a motion to dismiss the antitrust suit or to stay it, pending completion of the proceedings before the Commission. On October 21, 1957, that motion was denied after hearing; and we denied certiorari. 355 U. S. 950.
In May and June 1958, the Department of Justice wrote four letters to the Commission, asking that the proceeding be stayed pending the outcome of the antitrust suit. On July 29, 1958, the Department of Justice was advised by the Commission that it would not stay its proceedings. The Commission invited the Antitrust Division of the Department to participate in the administrative proceedings; but it did not do so.
The hearings before the Commission started September 17,1958. On October 2,1958, El Paso and Pacific Northwest moved in the District Court for a continuance of the antitrust suit. On October 6, 1958, the Department of Justice asked the Commission to postpone its hearing, pending final outcome of the antitrust suit which had then been set for trial November 17,1958. On October 7, 1958, the Commission wrote the District Court that if the court denied El Paso and Pacific Northwest’s motion for a continuance and proceeded with the antitrust trial, the Commission would continue its merger hearings to a date that would not conflict with the trial date of the antitrust case, but that if the court granted the motion for continuance, the Commission would proceed with its hearing. On October 13, 1958, the District Court continued the antitrust suit until the final decision in the administrative proceedings. The latter proceedings were concluded, the Commission authorizing the merger on December 23, 1959. 22 F. P. C. 1091, 23 F. P. C. 350. The merger was consummated December 31, 1959.
Petitioner intervened in the administrative proceedings August 27, 1957, and obtained review by the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the Commission (111 U. S. App. D. C. 226, 296 F. 2d 348), Judge Fahy dissenting. We granted certiorari, 368 U. S. 810.
Evidence of antitrust violations is plainly relevant in merger applications, for part of the content of “public convenience and necessity” as used in § 7 of the Natural Gas Act is found in the laws of the United States. City of Pittsburgh v. Federal Power Commission, 99 U. S. App. D. C. 113, 237 F. 2d 741.
Immunity from the antitrust laws is not lightly implied. The exemption of agricultural cooperatives from the antitrust laws granted by § 6 of the Clayton Act and § 1 and § 2 of the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 became relevant in Milk Producers Assn. v. United States, 362 U. S. 458. While § 7 of the Clayton Act gave immunity to “transactions duly consummated pursuant to authority given by . . . the Secretary of Agriculture under any statutory provision vesting such power in such . . . Secretary,” we held that the only authority of the Secretary was to approve “marketing agreements” (id., 469-470) and not other types of agreements or restraints, typically covered by the antitrust laws. Accordingly, we held that the District Court was authorized to direct the cooperative to dispose as a unit of the assets of an independent producer that had been acquired to stifle competition and restrain trade. We could not assume that Congress, having granted Only a limited exemption from the antitrust laws, nonetheless granted an overall inclusive one. See United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 198-202. “When there are two acts upon the same subject, the rule is to give effect to both if possible.” Id., at 198. Here, as in United States v. R. C. A., 358 U. S. 334, while “antitrust considerations” are relevant to the issue of “public interest, convenience, and necessity” (id., at 351), there is no “pervasive regulatory scheme” (ibid.) including the antitrust laws that has been entrusted to the Commission. And see National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 319 U. S. 190, 223. Under the Interstate Commerce Act, mergers of carriers that are approved have an antitrust immunity, as §5(11) of that Act specifically provides that the carriers involved “shall be and they are hereby relieved from the operation of the antitrust laws . . . .” See McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, 321 U. S. 67.
There is no comparable provision under the Natural Gas Act. Section 7 of the Clayton Act — -which prohibits stock acquisitions “where in any line of commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly” — contains a proviso that “Nothing contained in this section shall apply to transactions duly consummated pursuant to authority given by the . . . Federal Power Commission . . . under any statutory provision vesting such power in such Commission . . . .” The words “transactions duly consummated pursuant to authority” given the Commission “under any statutory provision vesting such power” in it are plainly not a grant of power to adjudicate antitrust issues. Congress made clear that by this proviso in § 7 of the Clayton Act “. . . it is not intended that . . . any . . . agency” mentioned “shall be granted any authority or powers which it does not already possess.” S. Rep. No. 1775, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., p. 7. The Commission’s standard, set forth in § 7 of the Natural Gas Act, is that the acquisition, merger, etc., will serve the “public convenience and necessity.” If existing natural gas companies violate the antitrust laws, the Commission is advised by § 20 (a) to “transmit such evidence” to the Attorney General “who, in his discretion, may institute the necessary criminal proceedings.” Other administrative agencies are authorized to enforce § 7 of the Clayton Act when it comes to certain classes of companies or persons; but the Federal Power Commission is not included in the list.
We do not decide whether in this case there were any violations of the antitrust laws. We rule only on one select issue and that is: should the Commission proceed to a decision on the merits of a merger application when there is pending in the courts a suit challenging the validity of that transaction under the antitrust laws? We think not. We think the Commission in those circumstances should await the decision of the courts.
The Commission considered the interplay between § 7 of the Clayton Act and § 7 of the Natural Gas Act and said:
“Section 7 of the Clayton Act, under which the antitrust suit was brought, prohibits the acquisition by one corporation of the stock or assets of another corporation where 'the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.’ Exempt, however, are transactions consummated pursuant to Commission authority. This shows, reasons the presiding examiner, that Congress placed reliance on the Commission not to approve an acquisition of assets in violation of the injunction of the Clayton Act, unless in the carefully exercised judgement of the Commission, the acquisition would nevertheless be in the public interest. What we are attempting to arrive at is the public convenience and necessity. In reaching our determination, we do not have authority to determine whether a given transaction is in violation of the Clayton Act, but we are required to consider the bearing of the policy of the antitrust laws on the public convenience and necessity. City of Pittsburgh v. F. P. C., 237 F. 2d 741, 754 (CADC). With the presiding examiner, we find that any lessening of competition whether in the consumer markets or the producing fields, does not prevent our approving the merger because there are other factors which outweigh the elimination of Pacific as a competitor. In any case, it appears that any lessening of competition is not substantial.” 22 F. P. C. 1091, 1095.
Apart from the fact that the Commission did undertake to make a finding reserved to the courts by § 7 of the Clayton Act, there are practical reasons why it should have held its hand until the courts had acted.
One is that if the Commission approves the transaction and the courts in the antitrust suit later hold it to be illegal, an unscrambling is necessary. Milk Producers Assn. v. United States, supra. Thus a needless waste of time and money may be involved. Also these unscrambling processes often raise complicated and perplexing problems on tax matters and otherwise, as our recent decision in United States v. du Pont & Co., 353 U. S. 586; 366 U. S. 316, shows. Such complexities are inherent in the situation, as approval of the transaction by the Commission would be no bar to the antitrust suit. See United States v. R. C. A., supra.
Another practical reason is that a transaction consummated under the aegis of the Commission as being a matter of “public convenience and necessity” is bound to carry momentum into the antitrust suit. The very prospect of undoing what was done raises a powerful influence in the antitrust litigation, as United States v. du Pont & Co., supra, illustrates.
The orderly procedure is for the Commission to await decision in the antitrust suit before taking action.
Section 7 of the Clayton Act, so far as material here, prohibits stock acquisitions having a prescribed effect. Section 7 of the Natural Gas Act confers jurisdiction on the Commission over the acquisition of assets of natural gas companies, not over stock acquisitions in them. Had the Commission stayed its hand and had the courts found the stock acquisition unlawful, the entire transaction would have been set aside in limine. Had the courts found the stock acquisition lawful, presumably no problems under § 7 of the Clayton Act would have remained. When the Commission proceeds in the face of a pending but undecided antitrust suit and approves a merger that has been preceded, as this one was, by a stock acquisition, it in substance treats the entire relation of the companies — from the acquisition of stock to the merger — as an integrated transaction. If that administrative action were approved, the Commission would be allowed to do by indirection what it has no jurisdiction to do directly.
It is not for us to say that the complementary legislative policies reflected in § 7 of the Clayton Act on the one hand and in § 7 of the Natural Gas Act on the other should be better accommodated. Our function is to see that the policy entrusted to the courts is not frustrated by an administrative agency. Where the primary jurisdiction is in the agency, courts withhold action until the agency has acted. Texas & Pac. R. Co. v. Abilene Oil Co., 204 U. S. 426. The converse should also be true, lest the antitrust policy whose enforcement Congress in this situation has entrusted to the courts is in practical effect taken over by the Federal Power Commission. Moreover, as noted, the Commission in holding that “any lessening of competition is not substantial” was in the domain of the Clayton Act, a domain which is entrusted to the court in which the antitrust suit was pending.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for proceedings in conformity with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter took no part in the decision of this case.
Mr. Justice White took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Section 7 of the Clayton Act provides in relevant part:
“No corporation engaged in commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no corporation subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another corporation engaged also in commerce, where in any line of commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.
“No corporation shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no corporation subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of one or more corporations engaged in commerce, where in any line of commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition, of such stocks or assets, or of the use of such stock by the voting or granting of proxies or otherwise, may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.”
Section 11 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 21, vests authority to enforce compliance with § 7 by the persons subject thereto:
“. . .in the Interstate Commerce Commission where applicable to common carriers subject to the Interstate Commerce Act, as amended; in the Federal Communications Commission where applicable to common carriers engaged in wire or radio communication or radio transmission of energy; in the Civil Aeronautics Board where applicable to air carriers and foreign air carriers subject to the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938; in the Federal Reserve Board where applicable to banks, banking associations, and trust companies; and in the Federal Trade Commission where applicable to all other character of commerce to be exercised as follows: . . .”
Where “the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition.” Section 7, supra, note 1.
In that case, which also was under § 7 of the Clayton Act, we said: “Section 7 is designed to arrest in its incipiency not only the substantial lessening of competition from the acquisition by one cor-poraton of the whole or any part of the stock of a competing corporation, but also to arrest in their incipiency restraints or monopolies in a relevant market which, as a reasonable probability, appear at the time of suit likely to result from the acquisition by one corporation of all or any part of the stock of any other corporation.” 353 U. S., at 589. As to the remedy we stated in United States v. du Pont & Co., 366 U. S., at 334: “We think the public is entitled to the surer, cleaner remedy of divestiture. The same result would follow even if we were in doubt. For it is well settled that once the Government has successfully borne the considerable burden of establishing a violation of law, all doubts as to the remedy are to be resolved in its favor.”
Section 7 (c) provides in relevant part:
“No natural-gas company or person which will be a natural-gas company upon completion of any proposed construction or extension shall engage in the transportation or sale of natural gas, subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or undertake the construction or extension of any facilities therefor, or acquire or operate any such facilities or extensions thereof, unless there is in force with respect to such natural-gas company a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the Commission authorizing such acts or operations.”
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.
Petitioner, a long-time prison inmate, seeks damages from a corrections officer based on a constitutional claim that requires proof of improper motive. The broad question presented is whether the courts of appeals may craft special procedural rules for such cases to protect public servants from the burdens of trial and discovery that may impair the performance of their official duties. The more specific question is whether, at least in eases brought by prisoners, the plaintiff must adduce- clear and convincing evidence of improper motive in order to defeat a motion for summary-judgment.
I
Petitioner is serving a life sentence in the District of Columbia’s correctional system. During his confinement he has filed several lawsuits and has assisted other prisoners with their cases. He has also provided interviews to reporters who have written news stories about prison conditions. He is a litigious and outspoken prisoner.
The events that gave rise to this ease occurred in 1988 and 1989. Because of overcrowding in the District of Columbia prison in Lorton, Virginia, petitioner and other inmates were transferred to the county jail in Spokane, Washington. Thereafter, he was moved, first to a Washington State prison, later to a facility in Cameron, Missouri, next back to Lorton, then to Petersburg, Virginia, and ultimately to the federal prison in Marianna, Florida. Three boxes containing his personal belongings, including legal materials, were transferred separately. When the District of Columbia Department of Corrections received the boxes from the Washington State facility, respondent, a District correctional officer, asked petitioner’s brother-in-law to pick them up rather than sending them directly to petitioner’s next destination. The boxes were ultimately shipped to Marianna by petitioner’s mother, at petitioner’s expense, but he was initially denied permission to receive them because they had been sent outside official prison channels. He finally recovered the property several months after his arrival in Florida.
Petitioner contends that respondent deliberately misdirected the boxes to punish him for exercising his First Amendment rights and to deter similar conduct in the future. Beyond generalized allegations of respondent’s hostility, he alleges specific incidents in which his protected speech had provoked her. His claimed injury caused by the delay in receiving his boxes includes the costs of having the boxes shipped and purchasing new clothes and other items in the interim, as well as mental and emotional distress. Respondent denies any retaliatory motive and asserts that she entrusted the property to petitioner’s brother-in-law, who was also a District of Columbia corrections employee, in order to ensure its prompt and safe delivery.
Although the factual dispute is relatively simple, it engendered litigation that has been both protracted and complex. We shall briefly describe the proceedings that led to the en bane Court of Appeals decision that we are reviewing, and then summarize that decision.
The Early Proceedings
Petitioner filed suit against respondent and the District of Columbia seeking damages under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The principal theory advanced in his original complaint was that respondent had diverted the boxes containing his legal materials in order to interfere with his constitutional right of access to the courts.
Prior to discovery, respondent, relying in part on a qualified immunity defense, moved for dismissal of the complaint or summary judgment. The motion was denied and respondent appealed, arguing, first, that the complaint did not allege a violation of any constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of her acts; and, second, that the complaint "failed to satisfy the 'heightened pleading standard’ that this circuit applies to damage actions against government officials.” 951 P. 2d 1314, 1316 (CADC 1991).
The Court of Appeals agreed with petitioner that his constitutional right of access to the courts was well established in 1989, and that his allegations of wrongful intent were sufficiently detailed and specific to withstand a motion to dismiss even under the Circuit’s “heightened pleading standard.” Id., at 1318, 1321. The court concluded, however, that the allegations of actual-injury to his ability to litigate were insufficient under that standard; accordingly, the complaint should have been dismissed. Id., at 1321-1322. Because the contours of the pleading standard had been clarified in a decision announced while the case was on appeal, see Hunter v. District of Columbia, 943 F. 2d 69 (CADC 1991), the court concluded that petitioner should be allowed to replead.
On remand, petitioner filed an amended complaint adding more detail to support his access claim and also adding two new claims: a due process claim and the claim that respondent’s alleged diversion of his property was motivated by an intent to retaliate against Mm for exercising Ms First Amendment rights. The District Court dismissed the amended complaint because the court access claim and the due process claim were legally insufficient, and because the First Amendment retaliation claim did not allege “direct evidence of unconstitutional motive.” 844 F. Supp. 795, 802 (DC 1994). The dismissal was, in effect, mandated by prior decisions of the Court of Appeals holding that allegations of circumstantial evidence of such a motivation were insufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss. See Martin v. D. C. Metropolitan Police Department, 812 F. 2d 1425, 1485 (1987); Siegert v. Gilley, 895 F. 2d 797, 800-802 (1990), aff’d on other grounds, 500 U. S. 226 (1991).
The En Banc Proceeding
A panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the first two claims but suggested that the entire court should review the dismissal of the First Amendment retaliation claim. Accordingly, the en bane court ordered the parties to file briefs addressing five specific questions, two of which concerned the power of the Circuit to supplement the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure with special pleading requirements for plaintiffs bringing civil rights claims against government officials, and two of which concerned possible special grounds for granting defense motions for summary judgment in cases “where the unlawfulness depends on the actor’s unconstitutional motive.” The fifth was a catchall question that asked the parties whether there are “any alternative devices which protect defendants with qualified immunity, in cases of constitutional tort depending on the defendant’s motive or intent, from the costs of litigation?” App. to Pet. for Cert. 109a.
The en banc court responded to these questions in five separate opinions. A majority of the judges appear to have agreed on these four propositions: (1) the case should be remanded to the District Court for further proceedings; (2) the plaintiff does not have to satisfy any heightened pleading requirement, and may rely on circumstantial as well as direct evidence; (3) in order to prevail in an unconstitutional-motive case, the plaintiff must establish that motive by clear and convincing evidence; and (4) special procedures to protect defendants from the costs of litigation in unconstitutional-motive eases are required by the reasoning' in this Court’s opinion in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982).
The primary opinion, written by Judge Williams, announced two principal conclusions: “First, we think Harlow allows an official to get summary judgment resolution of the qualified immunity issue, including the question of the official’s state of mind, before the plaintiff has engaged in discovery on that issue. Second, we believe that unless the plaintiff offers clear and convincing evidence on the state-of-mind issue at summary judgment and trial, judgment or directed verdict (as appropriate) should be granted for the individual defendant.” 93 F. 3d 813, 815 (CADC 1996).
Judge Silberman criticized Judge Williams’ approach as confusing, id., at 833, and suggested that Harlow’s reasoning pointed to a “more straightforward solution,” 93 F. 3d, at 834. In his opinion, whenever a defendant asserts a legitimate motive for his or her action, only an objective inquiry into pretextuality should be allowed. “If the facts establish that the purported motivation would have been reasonable, the defendant is entitled to qualified immunity.” Ibid.
Judge Ginsburg agreed with the decision to impose a clear and convincing standard of proof on the unconstitutional motive issue, but he could not accept Judge Williams’ new requirement that the District Court must “grant summary judgment prior to discovery unless the plaintiff already has in hand” sufficient evidence to satisfy that standard. Id., at 839. He described that innovation as “a rather bold intrusion into the district court’s management of the fact-finding process” that would result in the defeat of meritorious claims and “invite an increase in the number of constitutional torts that are committed.” Ibid. He would allow limited discovery on a proper showing before ruling on a summary judgment motion, but noted that in cases involving qualified immunity it would be an abuse of discretion for the trial judge to fail to consider, not only the interests of the parties, “but also the social costs associated with discovery had against a government official.” Id., at 840. With reference to the case at hand, he expressed the view that if petitioner could not show that discovery might reveal more than already appeared in the record, summary judgment would be appropriate without any discovery. Id., at 841-844.
Judge Henderson “fully” endorsed the plurality’s new clear and convincing evidence standard, but thought that it was a mistake for her colleagues to hear this case en bane because the record already made it abundantly clear that petitioner’s claim had no merit. Id., at 844-845.
Chief Judge Edwards, joined by four other judges, criticized the majority for “‘crossing the line between adjudication and legislation.”’ Id., at 847 (quoting Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 535 (1947)). He expressed the view that the new evidentiary standards were unauthorized by statute or precedent and “would make it all but certain that an entire category of constitutional tort claims against government officials — whether or not meritorious — would never be able to survive a defendant’s assertion of qualified immunity.” 93 F. 3d, at 847.
The different views expressed in those five opinions attest to the importance of both the underlying issue and a correct understanding of the relationship between our holding in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982), and the plaintiff’s burden when his or her entitlement to relief depends on proof of an improper motive. Despite the relative unimportance of the facts of this particular ease, we therefore decided to grant certiorari. 520 U. S. 1273 (1997).
1 — I HH
The Court of Appeals’ requirement of clear and convincing evidence of improper motive is that court’s latest effort to address a potentially serious problem: Because an official’s state of mind is “easy to allege and hard to disprove,” insubstantial claims that turn on improper intent may be less amenable to summary disposition than other types of claims against government officials. 93 F. 3d, at 816, 821. This category of claims therefore implicates obvious concerns with the social costs of subjecting public officials to discovery and trial, as well as liability for damages. The other Courts of Appeals have also grappled with this problem, but none has adopted a heightened burden of proof. See id., at 851-852, n. 7 (Edwards, C. J., concurring in judgment) (citing eases).
The new rule established in this ease is not limited to suits by prisoners against local officials, but applies to all classes of plaintiffs bringing damages actions against any government official, whether federal, state, or local. See Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478, 500-504 (1978). The heightened burden of proof applies, moreover, to the wide array of different federal law claims for which an official’s motive is a necessary element, such as claims of race and gender discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and termination of employment based on political affiliation in violation of the First Amendment, as well as retaliation for the exercise of free speech or other constitutional rights. A bare majority of the Court of Appeals regarded this sweeping rule as a necessary corollary to our opinion in Harlow.
There is, of course, an important difference between the holding in a ease and the reasoning that supports that holding. We shall, therefore, begin by explaining why our holding in Harlow does not resolve the issue presented in this case — indeed, it does not even address any question concerning the plaintiff’s affirmative case. We shall then consider whether the reasoning in that opinion nevertheless supports the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals.
Harlow’s Specific Holding
In 1968, A. Ernest Fitzgerald testified before a congressional subcommittee about technical difficulties and excessive costs incurred in the development of a new transport plane. His testimony was widely reported and evidently embarrassed his superiors in the Department of Defense. In 1970, his job as a management analyst with the Department of the Air Force was eliminated in a “departmental reorganization and reduction in force.” Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731, 733 (1982). After the conclusion of extended proceedings before the Civil Service Commission in 1973, Fitzgerald filed suit against the President of the United States and some of his aides alleging that they had eliminated his job in retaliation for his testimony. He sought damages on both statutory grounds and “in a direct action under the Constitution.” Id., at 748. When his charges were reviewed in this Court, we considered the defendants’ claims to immunity in two separate opinions. In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, we held that a former President is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on conduct within the scope of his official duties. Id., at 749. In Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982), we held that the senior aides and advisers of the President were not entitled to absolute immunity, id., at 808-813, but instead were protected by a “qualified immunity standard that would permit the defeat of insubstantial claims without resort to trial.” Id., at 813.
Our definition of that qualified immunity standard was informed by three propositions that had been established by earlier eases. First, in Gomez v. Toledo, 446 U. S. 635, 639-641 (1980), we held that qualified immunity is an affirmative defense and that “the burden of pleading it rests with the defendant.” Second, in Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S., at 503-504, we determined that the scope of that defense was the same in actions against state officials under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and in actions against federal officials under the Federal Constitution, and that in both types of actions the courts are “competent to determine the appropriate level of immunity.” Third, in Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232 (1974), we presumed that the defense protects all officers in the executive branch of government performing discretionary functions, id., at 245-248, but held that the presumption was rebuttable, id., at 249-250.
The actual scope of the defense had been the subject of debate within the Court in Wood v. Strickland, 420 U. S. 308 (1975), a case involving a constitutional claim against the members of a school board. A bare majority in that case concluded that the plaintiff could overcome the defense of qualified immunity in two different ways, either if (1) the defendant “knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of the student affected,” or (2) “he took the action with the malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or other injury to the student.” Id., at 322. In dissent, Justice Powell argued that the majority’s standard was too demanding of public officials, but his proposed standard, like the majority’s, included both an objective and a subjective component. In his view, our opinion in Scheuer had established this standard: “whether in light of the discretion and responsibilities of his office, and under all of the circumstances as they appeared at the time, the officer acted reasonably and in good faith” 420 U. S., at 330 (emphasis added).
In Harlow, the Court reached a consensus on the proper formulation of the standard for judging the defense of qualified immunity. Speaking for the Court, Justice Powell announced a single objective standard:
“Consistently with the balance at which we aimed in Butz, we conclude today that bare allegations of malice should not suffice to subject government officials either to the costs of trial or to the burdens of broad-reaching discovery. We therefore hold that government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” 457 U. S., at 817-818.
Under that standard, a defense of qualified immunity may not be rebutted by evidence that the defendant’s conduct was malicious or otherwise improperly motivated. Evidence concerning the defendant’s subjective intent is simply irrelevant to that defense.
Our holding that “bare allegations of malice” cannot overcome the qualified immunity defense did not implicate the elements of the plaintiff’s initial burden of proving a constitutional violation. It is obvious, of course, that bare allegations of malice would not suffice to establish a constitutional claim. It is equally clear that an essential element of some constitutional claims is a charge that the defendant’s conduct was improperly motivated. For example, A. Ernest Fitzgerald’s constitutional claims against President Nixon and his aides were based on the theory that they had retaliated against him for speaking out on a matter of public concern. Our consideration of the immunity issues in both the Nixon ease and in Harlow itself assumed that Fitzgerald would be entitled to prevail but for the immunity defenses. Thus, although evidence of improper motive is irrelevant on the issue of qualified immunity, it may be an essential component of the plaintiff’s affirmative case. Our holding in Harlow, which related only to the scope of an affirmative defense, provides no support for making any change in the nature of the plaintiff’s burden of proving a constitutional violation.
Nevertheless, the en banc court’s ruling makes just such a change in the plaintiff’s cause of action. The court’s clear and convincing evidence requirement applies to the plaintiff’s showing of improper intent (a pure issue of fact), not to the separate qualified immunity question whether the official’s alleged conduct violated clearly established law, which is an “essentially legal question.” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526-529 (1985); see Gomez, 446 U.S., at 640 (“[TJhis Court has never indicated that qualified immunity is relevant to the existence of the plaintiff’s cause of action”). Indeed, the court’s heightened proof standard logically should govern even if the official never asserts an immunity defense. See 93 F. 3d, at 815, 838. Such a rule is not required by the holding in Harlow.
The Reasoning in Harlow
Two reasons that are explicit in our opinion in Harlow, together with a third that is implicit in the holding, amply justified Harlow’s reformulation of the qualified immunity defense. First, there is a strong public interest in protecting public officials from the costs associated with the defense of damages actions. That interest is best served by a defense that permits insubstantial lawsuits to be quickly terminated. Second, allegations of subjective motivation might have been used to shield baseless lawsuits from summary judgment. 457 U. S., at 817-818. The objective standard, in contrast, raises questions concerning the state of the law at the time of the challenged conduct — questions that normally can be resolved on summary judgment. Third, focusing on “the objective legal reasonableness of an official’s acts,” id., at 819, avoids the unfairness of imposing liability on a defendant who “could not reasonably be expected to anticipate subsequent legal developments, nor... fairly be said to ‘know* that the law forbade conduct not previously identified as unlawful,” id., at 818. That unfairness may be present even when the official conduct is motivated, in part, by hostility to the plaintiff.
This last rationale of fairness does not provide any justification for the imposition of special burdens on plaintiffs who allege misconduct that was plainly unlawful when it occurred. While there is obvious unfairness in imposing liability — indeed, even in compelling the defendant to bear the burdens of discovery and trial — for engaging in conduct that was objectively reasonable when it occurred, no such unfairness can be attributed to holding one accountable for actions that he or she knew, or should have known, violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiff. Harlow itself said as much: “If the law was clearly established, the immunity defense ordinarily should fail, since a reasonably competent public official should know the law governing his conduct.” Id., at 818-819; see also Butz, 438 U. S., at 506 (“[Ijt is not unfair to hold liable the official who knows or should know he is acting outside the law...”).
The first two reasons underlying our holding in Harlow, however, would provide support for a procedural rule that makes it harder for any plaintiff, especially one whose constitutional claim requires proof of an improper motive, to survive a motion for summary judgment. But there are countervailing concerns that must be considered before concluding that the balance struck in the context of defining an affirmative defense is also appropriate when evaluating the elements of the plaintiff’s cause of action. In Harlow, we expressly noted the need for such a balance “between the evils inevitable in any available alternative.” 457 U. S., at 813-814. -We further emphasized: “In situations of abuse of office, an action for damages may offer the only realistic avenue for.vindication of constitutional guarantees.” Id., at 814. Social costs that adequately justified the elimination of the subjective component of an affirmative defense do not necessarily justify serious limitations upon “the only realistic” remedy for the violation of constitutional guarantees.
There are several reasons why we believe that here, unlike Harlow, the proper balance does not justify a judicial revision of the law to bar claims that depend on proof of an official’s motive. Initially, there is an important distinction between the “bare allegations of malice” that would have provided the basis for rebutting a qualified immunity defense under Wood v. Strickland and the allegations of intent that are essential elements of certain constitutional claims. Under Wood, the mere allegation of intent to cause any “other injury,” not just a deprivation of constitutional rights, would have permitted an open-ended inquiry into subjective motivation. 420 U. S., at 322. When intent is an element of a constitutional violation, however, the primary focus is not on any possible animus directed at the plaintiff; rather, it is more specific, such as an intent to disadvantage all members of a class that includes the plaintiff, see, e. g., Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229, 239-248 (1976), or to deter public comment on a specific issue of public importance. Thus, in Harlow, hostility to the content of Fitzgerald’s testimony, rather than an intent to cause him harm, was the relevant component of the constitutional claim. In this case, proof that respondent diverted the plaintiff’s boxes because she hated him would not necessarily demonstrate that she was responding to his public comments about prison conditions, although under Wood such evidence might have rebutted the qualified immunity defense.
Moreover, existing law already prevents this more narrow element of unconstitutional motive from automatically carrying a plaintiff to trial. The immunity standard in Harlow itself eliminates all motive-based claims in which the official’s conduct did not violate clearly established law. Even when the general rule has long been clearly established (for instance, the First Amendment bars retaliation for protected speech), the substantive legal doctrine on which the plaintiff relies may facilitate summary judgment in two different ways. First, there may he doubt as to the illegality of the defendant’s particular conduct (for instance, whether a plaintiff’s speech was on a matter of public concern). See generally Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635, 640-641 (1987). Second, at least with certain types of claims, proof of an improper motive is not sufficient to establish a constitutional violation — there must also be evidence of causation. Accordingly, when a public employee shows that protected speech was a “motivating factor” in an adverse employment decision, the employer still prevails by showing that it would have reached the same decision in the absence of the protected conduct. Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S. 274, 287 (1977). Furthermore, various procedural mechanisms already enable trial judges to weed out baseless claims that feature a subjective element, as we explain in more detail in Part IV, infra.
Thus, unlike the subjective component of the immunity defense eliminated by Harlow, the improper intent element of various causes of action should not ordinarily preclude summary disposition of insubstantial claims. The reasoning in Harlow, like its specific holding, does not justify a rule that places a thumb on the defendant’s side of the scales when the merits of a claim that the defendant knowingly violated the law are being resolved. And, a fortiori, the policy eon-eerns underlying Harlow do not support Justice Scalia’s unprecedented proposal to immunize all officials whose conduct is “objectively valid,” regardless of improper intent, see post, at 612 (dissenting opinion).
III
In fashioning a special rule for constitutional claims that require proof of improper intent, the judges of the Court of Appeals relied almost entirely on our opinion in Harlow, and on the specific policy concerns that we identified in that opinion. As we have explained, neither that case nor those concerns warrant the wholesale change in the law that they have espoused. Without such precedential grounding, for the courts of appeals or this Court to change the burden of proof for an entire category of claims would stray far from the traditional limits on judicial authority.
Neither the text of § 1983 or any other federal statute, nor the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, provide any support for imposing the clear and convincing burden of proof on plaintiffs either at the summary judgment stage or in the trial itself. The same might be said of the qualified immunity defense; but in Harlow, as in the series of earlier cases concerning both the absolute and the qualified immunity defenses, we were engaged in a process of adjudication that we had consistently and repeatedly viewed as appropriate for judicial decision — a process “predicated upon a considered inquiry into the immunity historically accorded the relevant official at common law and the interests behind it.” Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 421 (1976); see also Butz, 438 U. S., at 503-504; Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U. S. 158, 170-172 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The unprecedented change made by the Court of Appeals in this ease, however, lacks any common-law pedigree and alters the cause of action itself in a way that undermines the very purpose of § 1988 — to provide a remedy for the violation of federal rights.
In the past, we have consistently declined similar invitations to revise established rules that are separate from the qualified immunity defense. We refused to change the Federal Rules governing pleading by requiring the plaintiff to anticipate the immunity defense, Gomez, 446 U. S., at 639-640, or requiring pleadings of heightened specificity in cases alleging municipal liability, Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence and Coordination Unit, 507 U. S. 163, 164-169 (1993). We also declined to craft an exception to settled rules of interlocutory appellate jurisdiction and rejected the argument that the policies behind the immunity defense justify interlocutory appeals on questions of eviden-tiary sufficiency. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U. S. 304, 317-318 (1995). Our reasons for those unanimous rulings apply with equal force to the imposition of a clear and convincing burden of proof in cases alleging unconstitutional motive.
As we have noted, the Court of Appeals adopted a heightened proof standard in large part to reduce, the availability of discovery in actions that require proof of motive. To the extent that the court was concerned with this procedural issue, our'eases demonstrate that questions regarding pleading, discovery, and summary judgment are most frequently and most effectively resolved either by the rulemaking process or the legislative process. See, e. g., Leatherman, 507 U. S., at 168-169. Moreover, the Court of Appeals’ indirect effort to regulate discovery employs a blunt instrument that carries a high cost, for its rule also imposes a heightened standard of proof at trial upon plaintiffs with bona fide constitutional claims. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S. 242, 252-255 (1986).
One particular recent action by Congress highlights our concern with judicial rulemaking to protect officials from damages actions. Both Judge Silberman’s opinion below and a brief filed in this Court by 84 States, Guam, and the Virgin Islands suggest that new substantive or procedural rules are warranted because of the very large number of civil rights actions filed by prison inmates. See 93 F. 3d, at 830, 838; Brief for State of Missouri et al. as Amici Curiae 12. Arguably, such cases deserve special attention because many of them are plainly frivolous and some may be motivated more by a desire to obtain a “holiday in court,” than by a realistic expectation of tangible relief.
Even assuming that a perceived problem with suits by inmates could justify the creation of new rules by federal judges, Congress has already fashioned special rules to cover these cases. The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Pub. L. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321, enacted in April 1996, contains provisions that should discourage prisoners from filing claims that are unlikely to succeed. Among the many new changes relating to civil suits, the statute requires all inmates to pay filing fees;' denies informa pauperis status to prisoners with three or more prior “strikes” (dismissals because a filing is frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted) unless the prisoner is “under imminent danger of serious physical injury,” § 804(d); bars suits for mental or emotional injury unless there is a prior showing of physical injury; limits attorney’s fees; directs district courts to screen prisoners’ complaints before docketing and authorizes the court on its own motion to dismiss “frivolous,” “malicious,” or meritless actions; permits the revocation of good time credits for federal prisoners who file malicious or false claims; and encourages hearings by telecommunication or in prison facilities to make it unnecessary for inmate plaintiffs to leave prison for pretrial proceedings. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 1346(b)(2), 1915, 1915A, 1932 (1994 ed., Supp. II); 42 U. S. C. § 1997e (1994 ed., Supp. II). Recent statistics suggest that the Act is already having its intended effect.
Most significantly, the statute draws no distinction between constitutional claims that require proof of an improper motive and those that do not. If there is a compelling need to frame new rules of law based on such a distinction, presumably Congress either would have dealt with the problem in the Reform Act, or will respond to it in future legislation.
IV
In Harlow, we noted that a “ 'firm application of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure’ is fully warranted” and may lead to the prompt disposition of insubstantial claims. 457 U. S., at 819-820, n. 35 (quoting Butz, 438 U. S., at 508). Though we have rejected the Court of Appeals’ solution, we are aware of the potential problem that troubled the court. It is therefore appropriate to add a few words on some of the existing procedures available to federal trial judges in handling claims that involve examination of an official’s state of mind.
When a plaintiff files a complaint against a public official alleging a claim that requires proof of wrongful motive, the trial court must exercise its discretion in a way that protects the substance of the qualified immunity defense. It must exercise its discretion so that officials are not subjected to unnecessary and burdensome discovery or trial proceedings. The district judge has two primary options prior to permitting any discovery at all. First, the court may order a reply to the defendant’s or a third party’s answer under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 7(a), or grant the defendant’s motion for a more definite statement under Rule 12(e). Thus, the court may insist that the plaintiff “put forward specific, non-eonclusory factual allegations” that establish improper motive causing cognizable injury in order to survive a predis-covery motion for dismissal or summary judgment. Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U. S. 226, 236 (1991) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment). This option exists even if the official chooses not to plead the affirmative defense of qualified immunity. Second, if the defendant does plead the immunity defense, the district court should resolve that threshold question before permitting discovery. Harlow, 457 U. S., at 818. To do so, the court must determine whether, assuming the truth of the plaintiff’s allegations, the official’s conduct violated clearly established law. Because the former option of demanding more specific allegations of intent places no burden on the defendant-official, the district judge may choose that alternative before resolving the immunity question, which sometimes requires complicated analysis of legal issues.
If the plaintiff’s action survives these initial hurdles and is otherwise viable, the plaintiff ordinarily will be entitled to some discovery. Rule 26 vests the trial judge with broad discretion to tailor discovery narrowly and to dictate the sequence of discovery. On its own motion, the trial court
“may alter the limits in [the Federal Rules] on the number of depositions and interrogatories and may also limit the length of depositions under Rule 30 and the number of requests under Rule 36. The frequency or extent of use of the discovery methods otherwise permitted under these rules... shall be limited by the court if it determines that... (iii) the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit, taking into account the needs of the case, the amount in controversy, the parties’ resources, the importance of the issues at stake in the litigation, and the importance of the proposed discovery in resolving the issues.” Rule 26(b)(2).
Additionally, upon motion the court may limit the time, place, and manner of discovery, or even bar discovery altogether on certain subjects, as required "to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.” Rule 26(e). And the court may also set the timing and sequence of discovery. Rule 26(d).
These provisions create many options for the district judge. For instance, the court may at first permit the plaintiff to take only a focused deposition of the defendant before allowing any additional discovery. See, e.g., Martin, 812 F. 2d, at 1437 (opinion of R. B. Ginsburg, J.). Alternatively, the court may postpone all inquiry regarding the official’s subjective motive until discovery has been had on objective factual questions such as whether the plaintiff suffered any injury or whether the plaintiff actually engaged in protected conduct that could be the object of unlawful retaliation. The trial judge can therefore manage the discovery process to facilitate prompt and efficient resolution of the lawsuit; as the evidence is gathered, the defendant-official may move for partial summary judgment on objective issues that are potentially dispositive and are more amenable to summary disposition than disputes about the official’s intent, which frequently turn on credibility assessments. Of course, the judge should give priority to discovery concerning issues that bear upon the qualified immunity defense, such as the actions that the official actually took, since that defense should be resolved as early as possible. See Anderson, 483 U. S., at 646, n. 6.
Beyond these procedures and others that we have not mentioned, summary judgment serves as the ultimate screen to weed out truly insubstantial lawsuits prior to trial. At that stage, if the defendant-official has made a properly supported motion, the plaintiff may not respond simply with general attacks upon the defendant’s credibility, but rather must identify affirmative evidence from which
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
Pro se petitioner Antonelli seeks leave to proceed in forma pauperis under Rule 39 of this Court. We deny these requests as frivolous pursuant to Rule 39.8. Antonelli is allowed until November 2,1999, within which to pay the docketing fees required by Rule 38 and to submit his petitions in compliance with this Court’s Rule 33.1. We also direct the Clerk not to accept any further petitions for certiorari or petitions for extraordinary writs from Antonelli in noncriminal matters unless he first pays the docketing fee required by Rule 38 and submits his petitions in compliance with Rule 33.1.
Antonelli has abused this Court’s certiorari and extraordinary writ processes. On June 21, 1993, and November 29, 1993, we invoked Rule 39.8 to deny Antonelli informa pau-peris status with respect to two petitions for certiorari. See Antonelli v. Illinois, 509 U. S. 902, Antonelli v. O’Malley, 510 U. S. 988. Prior to the two Rule 39.8 denials, Anto-nelli had filed 34 petitions for certiorari and 2 petitions for extraordinary writs, all of which were both frivolous and had been denied without recorded dissent. Since the two Rule 39.8 denials, Antonelli has filed 17 petitions for certiorari, all of which were also frivolous and denied without recorded dissent. The instant 2 petitions for certiorari thus bring Antonellfs total number of frivolous filings to 57.
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). Antonellfs abuse of the writ of certiorari and of the extraordinary writs has been in noncriminal cases, and we limit our sanction accordingly. The order therefore will not prevent Antonelli 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 |
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 case presents a substantial question under the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Art. IV, § 1) of the Constitution.
Chicago Lloyds, an unincorporated association, was authorized by Illinois to transact an insurance business in Illinois and other states. It qualified to do business in Missouri. In 1934 petitioner sued Chicago Lloyds in a Missouri court for malicious prosecution and false arrest. In 1938, before judgment was obtained in Missouri, respondent’s predecessor was appointed by an Illinois court as statutory liquidator for Chicago Lloyds. The Illinois court fixed a time for the filing of claims against Chicago Lloyds and issued an order staying suits against it. Petitioner had notice of the stay order but nevertheless continued to prosecute the Missouri suit. At the instance of the liquidator, however, counsel for Chicago Lloyds withdrew from the suit and did not defend it, stating to the Missouri court that the Illinois liquidation proceedings had vested all the property of Chicago Lloyds in the liquidator. Thereafter petitioner obtained a -judgment in the Missouri court and filed an exemplified copy of it as proof of his claim in the Illinois proceedings. An order disallowing the claim was sustained by the Illinois Supreme Court against the contention that its allowance was required by the Full Faith and Credit Clause. 391 Ill. 492, 63 N. E. 2d 479.
The case was brought here by appeal. We postponed the question of jurisdiction to the merits. Under the rule of Roche v. McDonald, 275 U. S. 449, 450, the question whether full faith and credit should have been given the Missouri judgment does not present a ground for appeal. But treating the jurisdictional statement as a petition for certiorari (Judicial Code § 237 (c), 28 U. S. C. § 344 (c)), that writ is granted; and we come to the merits of the controversy.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause and the statute which implements it (R. S. § 905, 28 U. S. C. § 687) require the judgments of the courts of one State to be given the same faith and credit in another State as they have by law or usage in the courts of the State rendering them. The Illinois Supreme Court concluded that compliance with that mandate required that precedence be given to the Illinois decree appointing the statutory liquidator. It held that title to all the property of Chicago Lloyds, wherever located, vested in the liquidator; that the liquidator was entitled to keep and retain possession of the property to the exclusion of the process of any other court; that although Missouri might give priority to Missouri creditors in the property of the debtor located there, Clark v. Williard, 292 U. S. 112, the Missouri judgment could have no priority as respects Illinois assets; that if a liquidator had been appointed in Missouri, petitioner could not have obtained his judgment, or if he had obtained it, he could not have enforced it against the property in the hands of the Missouri liquidator, see McDonald v. Pacific States Life Ins. Co., 344 Mo. 1, 124 S. W. 2d 1157; and that to disallow the judgment in the Illinois proceedings is, therefore, to give it the same effect that it would have had under the same circumstances in Missouri.
First. We can put to one side, as irrelevant to the problem at hand, several arguments which have been pressed upon us. We are not dealing here with any question of priority of claims against the property of the debtor. For in this proceeding petitioner is not seeking, nor is respondent denying him, anything other than the right to prove his claim in judgment form. No question of parity of treatment of creditors, or the lack thereof (see Blake v. McClung, 172 U. S. 239), is in issue. Nor is there involved in this case any challenge to the Illinois rule, which follows Relfe v. Rundle, 103 U. S. 222, that title to all the property of Chicago Lloyds, wherever located, vested in the liquidator. Nor do we have here a challenge to the possession of the liquidator either through an attempt to obtain a lien on the property or otherwise. As pointed out in Riehle v. Margolies, 279 U. S. 218, 224, the distribution of assets of a debtor among creditors ordinarily has a “twofold aspect.” It deals “directly with the property” when it fixes the time and manner of distribution. No one can obtain part of the assets or enforce a right to specific property in the possession of the liquidation court except upon application to it. But proof and allowance of claims are matters distinct from distribution. They do not “deal directly with any of the property.” “The latter function, which is spoken of as the liquidation of a claim, is strictly a proceeding in personam.” Id,., p. 224. The establishment of the existence and amount of a claim against the debtor in no way disturbs the possession of the liquidation court, in no way affects title to the property, and does not necessarily involve a determination of what priority the claim should have. And see Chicago Title & T. Co. v. Fox Theatres Corp., 69 F. 2d 60.
One line of cases holds that where a statutory liquidator or receiver is appointed, the court taking jurisdiction of the property draws unto itself exclusive control over the proof of all claims. But the notion that such control over the proof of claims is necessary for the protection of the exclusive jurisdiction of the court over the property is a mistaken one. As Justice Beach of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut aptly said, “The question is simply one of the admissibility and effect of evidence; and the obligation to receive a judgment in evidence is no more derogatory to the jurisdiction in rem than the obligation to receive in evidence a promissory note or other admissible evidence of debt.” Beach, Judgment Claims in Receivership Proceedings, 30 Yale L. Journ. 674, 680.
Moreover, we do not have here a situation like that involved in Pendleton v. Russell, 144 U. S. 640, where it was sought to prove in a New York receivership of a dissolved corporation a judgment obtained in Tennessee after dissolution. The proof was disallowed, dissolution having operated, like death, as an abatement of the suit. No such infirmity appears to be present in the Missouri judgment; and the Illinois Supreme Court did not hold that the appointment of a liquidator for Chicago Lloyds operated as an abatement of the suit. Nor is it sought on any other ground to bring the Missouri judgment within the exception on which Williams v. North Carolina, 325 U. S. 226, rests, by challenging the jurisdiction of the Missouri court over either the parties or the subject matter. Nor is there any lack of privity between Chicago Lloyds and the Illinois liquidator. Cf. Ingersoll v. Coram, 211 U. S. 335, 362-364. There is no difference in the cause of action, cf. United States v. California Bridge Co., 245 U. S. 337, whether Chicago Lloyds or the liquidator is sued. The Missouri judgment represents a liability for acts committed by Chicago Lloyds, not for those of the liquidator. The claims for which the Illinois assets are being administered are claims against Chicago Lloyds. The Missouri judgment represents one of them. There is no more reason for discharging a liquidator from the responsibility for defending pending actions than there is for relieving a receiver of that task. Riehle v. Margolies, supra.
Second. “A judgment of a court having jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject matter operates as res judi- cata, in the absence of fraud or collusion, even if obtained upon a default.” Riehle v. Margolies, supra, p. 225. Such a judgment obtained in a sister State is, with exceptions not relevant here, see Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 294-295, entitled to full faith and credit in another State, though the underlying claim would not be enforced in the State of the forum. Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290; Fauntleroy v. Lum 210 U. S. 230; Roche v. McDonald, supra; Titus v. Wallick, 306 U. S. 282, 291. It is no more important that the suit on this underlying claim could not have been maintained in Illinois after the liquidator had been appointed than the fact that a statute of limitations of the State of the forum might have barred it. See Christmas v. Russell, supra; Roche v. McDonald, supra. And the Missouri judgment may not be defeated by virtue of the fact that under other circumstances petitioner might not have been able to obtain it in Missouri or to have received any benefit from it there, as, for example, if a liquidator had been appointed for the debtor in Missouri prior to judgment. The full faith and credit to which a judgment is entitled is the credit which it has in the State from which it is taken, not the credit that under other circumstances and conditions it might have had. Moreover, the question whether a judgment is entitled to full faith and credit does not depend on the presence of reciprocal engagements between the States.
Under Missouri law petitioner’s judgment was a final determination of the nature and amount of his claim. See Pitts v. Fugate, 41 Mo. 405; Central Trust Co. v. D’Arcy, 238 Mo. 676, 142 S. W. 294; State ex rel. Robb v. Shain, 347 Mo. 928, 149 S. W. 2d 812. That determination is final and conclusive in all courts. “Because there is a full faith and credit clause a defendant may not a second time challenge the validity of the plaintiff’s right which has ripened into a judgment.” Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 439-440. For the Full Faith and Credit Clause established “throughout the federal system the salutary principle of the common law that a litigation once pursued to judgment shall be as conclusive of the rights of the parties in every other court as in that where the judgment was rendered.” Id., p. 439. And see Riley v. New York Trust Co., 315 U. S. 343, 348-349. The nature and amount of petitioner’s claim may not, therefore, be challenged or retried in the Illinois proceedings.
As to respondent’s contention that the Illinois decree, of which petitioner had notice, should have been given full faith and credit by the Missouri court, only a word need be said. Roche v. McDonald, supra, pp. 454-455, makes plain that the place to raise that defense was in the Missouri proceedings. And see Treinies v. Sunshine Mining Co., 308 U. S. 66, 77. And whatever might have been the ruling on the question, the rights of the parties could have been preserved by a resort to this Court, which is the final arbiter of questions arising under the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 302. In any event, the Missouri judgment is res judicata as to the nature and amount of petitioner’s claim as against all defenses which could have been raised. Roche v. McDonald, supra; Milwaukee County v. White Co., 296 U. S. 268, 275; Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, supra, p. 438.
It is finally suggested that since the Federal Bankruptcy Act provides for exclusive adjudication of claims by the bankruptcy court and excepts insurance companies from the Act (§ 4, 52 Stat. 840, 845, 11 U. S. C. § 22; Vallely v. Northern Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 254 U. S. 348), the state liquidators of insolvent insurance companies should have the same control over the determination of claims as the bankruptcy court has. This is to argue that by reason of its police power a State may determine the method and manner of proving claims against property which is in its jurisdiction and which is being administered by its courts or administrative agencies. We have no doubt that it may do so except as such procedure collides with the federal Constitution or an Act of Congress. See Broderick v. Rosner, 294 U. S. 629. But where there is such a collision, the action of a State under its police power must give way by virtue of the Supremacy Clause. Article VI, Clause 2. There is such a collision here. When we look to the general statute which Congress has enacted pursuant to the Eull Faith and Credit Clause, we find no exception in case of liquidations of insolvent insurance companies. The command is to give full faith and credit to every judgment of a sister State. And where there is no jurisdictional infirmity, exceptions have rarely, if ever, been read into the constitutional provision or the Act of Congress in cases involving money judgments rendered in civil suits. Magnolia Petroleum, Co. v. Hunt, supra, p. 438; Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 294, footnote 6.
The function of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is to resolve controversies where state policies differ. Its need might not be so greatly felt in situations where there was no clash of interests between the States. The argument of convenience in administration is at best only another illustration of how the enforcement of a judgment of one State in another State may run counter to the latter’s policies. But the answer given by Fauntleroy v. Lum, supra, is conclusive. If full faith and credit is not given in that situation, the Clause and the statute fail where their need is the greatest. The argument of convenience, moreover, proves too much. In the first place, it would often be equally appealing to individuals or corporations engaging in multistate activities which might well prefer to defend law suits at home. In the second place, against the convenience of the administration of assets in Illinois is the hardship on the Missouri creditor if he were forced to drop his Missouri litigation, bring his witnesses to Illinois, and start all over again. But full faith and credit is a more inexorable command; its applicability does not turn on a balance of convenience as between litigants. If this were a situation where Missouri’s policy would result in the dismemberment of the Illinois estate so that Illinois creditors would go begging, Illinois would have such a large interest at stake as to prevent it. See Clark v. Williard, 294 U. S. 211. But, as we have said, proof and allowance of claims are matters distinct from distribution of assets.
The single point of our decision is that the nature and amount of petitioner’s claim has been conclusively determined by the Missouri judgment and may not be reliti-gated in the Illinois proceedings, it not appearing that the Missouri court lacked jurisdiction over either the parties or the subject matter. We do not suggest that petitioner by proving his claim in judgment form can gain a priority which he would not have had if he had to relitigate his claim in Illinois. And, as we have said, there is not involved in this case any rule of distribution which departs from the principle of parity as between Illinois creditors and creditors from other States. See Clark v. Williard, 294 U. S. 211; Blake v. McClung, supra.
Reversed.
It does not appear that there is any property of the debtor in Missouri; nor was a liquidator appointed in Missouri.
Attorney General v. Supreme Council, 196 Mass. 151, 159, 81 N. E. 966 (receivership); Hackett v. Supreme Council, 206 Mass. 139, 142, 92 N. E. 133 (receivership).
The Illinois rule announced in the instant case is likewise applicable in receivership proceedings. Evans v. Illinois Surety Co., 319 Ill. 105, 149 N. E. 802.
Contra: Pringle v. Woolworth, 90 N. Y. 502 (receivership). The federal receivership rule permits continuance of suits in other courts at least where they were pending at the time of the appointment of the receiver. Riehle v. Margolies, supra. And see Chicago Title & T. Co. v. Fox Theatres Corp., supra, and Dickinson v. Universal Service Stations, 100 F. 2d 753, 757, applying the Riehle ruling to a suit started in a state court after the receivership. For collection of cases see 96 A. L. R. 485.
See In re Paramount Publix Corp., 85 F. 2d 42, and cases collected in 106 A. L. R. pp. 1121 et seq. Cf. Robinson v. Trustees, 318 Mass. 121, 60 N. E. 2d 593; In re Chicago & E. I. Ry. Co., 121 F. 2d 785.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Faretta v. California, 422 U. S. 806 (1975), this Court recognized a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to conduct his own defense. The Court also held that a trial court may appoint “standby counsel” to assist the pro se defendant in his defense. Today we must decide what role standby counsel who is present at tri,al over the defendant’s objection may play consistent with the protection of the defendant’s Faretta rights.
I
Carl Edwin Wiggins was convicted of robbery and sentenced to life imprisonment as a recidivist. His conviction was set aside because of a defective indictment. When Wiggins was retried he was again convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Standby counsel were appointed to assist Wiggins at both trials. Wiggins now challenges counsel’s participation in his second trial.
Prior to the first trial, a hearing was held on Wiggins’ motion to proceed pro se. The court granted the motion, Record 4a, but simultaneously appointed two attorneys to act as standby counsel. Wiggins initially objected to their presence. Id., at 11a. Shortly thereafter, however, counsel asked Wiggins how they should conduct themselves at trial, and Wiggins expressly requested that they bring appropriate objections directly to the attention of the court, without first consulting him. Id., at 37a. After the trial, newly appointed counsel discovered that the original indictment was defective, and a new trial was granted.
On April 16, 1973, about two months before the second trial began, Wiggins filed a request for appointed counsel, stating that he wished to rescind his earlier waiver of counsel. App. A-54 — A-55. The next day Wiggins filled out and signed a form captioned “Petition for Appointment of Counsel and Order Thereon.” The trial court appointed Benjamin Samples. About a month later Wiggins filed an additional request for counsel. Five days later Wiggins filled out another appointment of counsel form, and the trial court appointed R. Norvell Graham.
Wiggins’ wishes respecting appointed counsel remained volatile as his second trial approached. When pretrial proceedings began on June 4, 1973, Wiggins announced that he would be defending himself pro se; he then firmly requested that counsel not be allowed to interfere with Wiggins’ presentations to the court. Record 8, 12, 39-40. Wiggins reaffirmed his desire to proceed pro se on the following morning, June 5, and objected even to the court’s insistence that counsel remain available for consultation. Id., at 66-67. The trial began later that day, and shortly thereafter Wiggins interrupted his cross-examination of a witness to consult with Graham off the record. Id., at 201. Still later, Wiggins expressly agreed to allow Graham to conduct voir dire of another witness. Id., at 210.
Wiggins started the next day of trial, June 6, with a request that the trial not proceed in Samples’ absence from the courtroom. Id., at 255. Later that morning Wiggins requested that counsel not be allowed to assist or interrupt, id., at 308, but a short while after Wiggins interrupted his own cross-examination of a witness to confer with Samples off the record. Id., at 310. When the trial reconvened in the afternoon, Wiggins agreed to proceed in Samples’ absence. Id., at 328. After Samples returned, however, Wiggins again interrupted his own cross-examination of a witness to confer with him. Id., at 333. Later Wiggins insisted that counsel should not initiate private consultations with him. Id., at 345-346. Before the end of the day Wiggins once again found occasion to interrupt his own examination of a witness to confer with Samples. Id., at 384.
On the following day, June 7, Wiggins agreed that Graham would make Wiggins’ opening statement to the jury. Id., at 486. On June 8, Wiggins was once again willing to have the trial proceed in the absence of one of his standby counsel. Id., at 546. Following his conviction, Wiggins moved for a new trial. At the July 31 hearing on Wiggins’ motion, he denounced the services standby counsel had provided. He insisted that they had unfairly interfered with his presentation of his defense. Id., at 572b.
After exhausting direct appellate and state habeas review Wiggins filed a petition for federal habeas corpus relief. He argued that standby counsel’s conduct deprived him of his right to present his own defense, as guaranteed by Faretta. The District Court denied the habeas petition, but the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. Wiggins v. Estelle, 681 F. 2d 266, rehearing denied, 691 F. 2d 213 (1982). The Court of Appeals held that Wiggins’ Sixth Amendment right of self-representation was violated by the unsolicited participation of overzealous standby counsel:
“[T]he rule that we establish today is that court-appointed standby counsel is ‘to be seen, but not heard.’ By this we mean that he is not to compete with the defendant or supersede his defense. Rather, his presence is there for advisory purposes only, to be used or not used as the defendant sees fit.” 681 F. 2d, at 273 (footnote omitted).
We do not accept the Court of Appeals’ rule, and reverse its judgment.
II
A
In Faretta the Court considered the case of a criminal defendant who was required to present his defense exclusively through counsel. The Court held that an accused has a Sixth Amendment right to conduct his own defense, provided only that he knowingly and intelligently forgoes his right to counsel and that he is able and willing to abide by rules of procedure and courtroom protocol. Faretta concluded that “[u]n-less the accused has acquiesced in [representation through counsel], the defense presented is not the defense guaranteed him by the Constitution, for, in a very real sense, it is not his defense.” 422 U. S., at 821.
Faretta’s holding was based on the longstanding recognition of a right of self-representation in federal and most state courts, and on the language, structure, and spirit of the Sixth Amendment. Under that Amendment, it is the accused, not counsel, who must be “informed of the nature and cause of the accusation,” who has the right to confront witnesses, and who must be accorded “compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.” The Counsel Clause itself, which permits the accused “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence,” implies a right in the defendant to conduct his own defense, with assistance at what, after all, is his, not counsel’s trial.
B
A defendant’s right to self-representation plainly encompasses certain specific rights to have his voice heard. The pro se defendant must be allowed to control the organization and content of his own defense, to make motions, to argue points of law, to participate in voir dire, to question witnesses, and to address the court and the jury at appropriate points in the trial. The record reveals that Wiggins was in fact accorded all of these rights.
Before trial Wiggins moved the trial court to order preparation of a transcript of the first trial. He, not standby counsel, then waived receipt of the transcript and announced ready for trial. Record 7-11, 65-66. He filed and argued at least 12 pro se motions in pretrial proceedings. Wiggins alone conducted the defense’s voir dire of prospective jurors and made the opening statement for the defense to the jury. Id., at 347-348.
Wiggins filed numerous pro se motions in the course of the trial. He cross-examined the prosecution’s witnesses freely, id., at 26-30, 199-206, 224-226, 228-237, 269-286, 290-292, 296-301, 310, 319-326, 332-336, 434-447, 455-468, 532-534, and registered his own objections, id., at 237, 238, 317, 318, 352, 353-359, 418-420, 450, 484, 485, 497, 502-503, 536. Throughout the trial Wiggins selected the witnesses for the defense, id., at 47, 56, 60-61, 348, 368, 381, 383, 384, 393, 396, 398-399, 403, 408, 412, 413, 424, examined them, id., at 47-55, 349-351, 363-367, 368-373, 374-376, 380-381, 381-382, 383-384, 384-387, 399-401, 404-407, 408-412, 424-426, decided that certain questions would not be asked by the defense, id., at 414, 449-450, and decided which witnesses would not be called, id., at 390, 415, 422. Against counsel’s advice, Wiggins announced that the defense rested. Id., at 413. Wiggins filed his own requested charges to the jury, id., at 471-473, and made his own objections to the court’s suggested charge, id., at 473-478. He obtained the removal of one of the court’s proposed charges over counsel’s express objection, id., at 478, approved the verdict form supplied to the jury, id., at 479, and gave a closing argument to the jury, id., at 490-497. Wiggins elected to go to the jury at the punishment phase of his trial, id., at 69, and he argued his case to the jury at that stage as well, id., at 540-541.
c
Wiggins’ complaint is directed not at limits placed on his participation in the trial, for there clearly were none. It is directed instead at the allegedly inadequate limits placed on standby counsel’s participation. At trial Wiggins obj ected to the very fact that counsel would remain available to assist him. Id., at 66-67. Wiggins has abandoned that objection; he now contends only that his Faretta right to present his defense pro se was impaired by the distracting, intrusive, and unsolicited participation of counsel throughout the trial.
HH HH
Wiggins claims, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that the pro se defendant may insist on presenting his own case wholly free from interruption or other uninvited involvement by standby counsel. Wiggins relies primarily on Faretta’s sole reference to standby counsel:
“Of course, a State may — even over objection by the accused — appoint a ‘standby counsel’ to aid the accused if and when the accused requests help, and to be available to represent the accused in the event that termination of the defendant’s self-representation is necessary. See United States v. Dougherty, 154 U. S. App. D. C. 76, 87-89, 473 F. 2d 1113, 1124-1126.” 422 U. S., at 835, n. 46.
Wiggins contends that the “if and when” language defines the limits on standby counsel’s role. He argues that the Faretta right will be eviscerated if counsel is allowed to argue with the defendant, make motions to the court contrary to the defendant’s wishes, and take other steps not specifically approved by the defendant.
In our view, both Faretta’s logic and its citation of the Dougherty case indicate that no absolute bar on standby counsel’s unsolicited participation is appropriate or was intended. The right to appear pro se exists to affirm the dignity and autonomy of the accused and to allow the presentation of what may, at least occasionally, be the accused’s best possible defense. Both of these objectives can be achieved without categorically silencing standby counsel.
In determining whether a defendant’s Faretta rights have been respected, the primary focus must be on whether the defendant had a fair chance to present his case in his own way. Faretta itself dealt with the defendant’s affirmative right to participate, not with the limits on standby counsel’s additional involvement. The specific rights to make his voice heard that Wiggins was plainly accorded, see swpra, at 174-175, form the core of a defendant’s right of self-representation.
We recognize, nonetheless, that the right to speak for oneself entails more than the opportunity to add one’s voice to a cacophony of others. As Wiggins contends, the objectives underlying the right to proceed pro se may be undermined by unsolicited and excessively intrusive participation by standby counsel. In proceedings before a jury the defendant may legitimately be concerned that multiple voices “for the defense” will confuse the message the defendant wishes to convey, thus defeating Faretta’s objectives. Accordingly, the Faretta right must impose some limits on the extent of standby counsel’s unsolicited participation.
First, the pro se defendant is entitled to preserve actual control over the case he chooses to present to the jury. This is the core of the Faretta right. If standby counsel’s participation over the defendant’s objection effectively allows counsel to make or substantially interfere with any significant tactical decisions, or to control the questioning of witnesses, or to speak instead of the defendant on any matter of importance, the Faretta right is eroded.
Second, participation by standby counsel without the defendant’s consent should not be allowed to destroy the jury’s perception that the defendant is representing himself. The defendant's appearance in the status of one conducting his own defense is important in a criminal trial, since the right to appear pro se exists to affirm the accused’s individual dignity and autonomy. In related contexts the courts have recognized that a defendant has a right to be present at all important stages of trial, Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97 (1934), that he may not normally be forced to appear in court in shackles or prison garb, Estelle v. Williams, 425 U. S. 501, 504-505 (1976), and that he has a right to present testimony in his own behalf, see Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 225 (1971); Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U. S. 605, 612 (1972). Appearing before the jury in the status of one who is defending himself may be equally important to the pro se defendant. From the jury’s perspective, the message conveyed by the defense may depend as much on the messenger as on the message itself. From the defendant’s own point of view, the right to appear pro se can lose much of its importance if only the lawyers in the courtroom know that the right is being exercised.
IV
Participation by standby counsel outside the presence of the jury engages only the first of these two limitations. A trial judge, who in any event receives a defendant’s original Faretta request and supervises the protection of the right throughout the trial, must be considered capable of differentiating the claims presented by a pro se defendant from those presented by standby counsel. Cf. United States v. Martinez, 597 F. 2d 509, 510-511 (CA5), cert. denied, 444 U. S. 979 (1979); United States v. Penick, 496 F. 2d 1105, 1108 (CA7), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 897 (1974); United States v. Reeves, 348 F. 2d 469 (CA2 1965), cert. denied, 383 U. S. 929 (1966). Accordingly, the appearance of a pro se defendant’s self-representation will not be unacceptably undermined by counsel’s participation outside the presence of the jury.
Thus, Faretta rights are adequately vindicated in proceedings outside the presence of the jury if the pro se defendant is allowed to address the court freely on his own behalf and if disagreements between counsel and the pro se defendant are resolved in the defendant’s favor whenever the matter is one that would normally be left to the discretion of counsel.
Most of the incidents of which Wiggins complains occurred when the jury was not in the courtroom. In the jury’s absence Wiggins’ two standby counsel frequently explained to the trial judge their views and points of disagreement with Wiggins. Counsel made motions, dictated proposed strategies into the record, registered objections to the prosecution’s testimony, urged the summoning of additional witnesses, and suggested questions that the defendant should have asked of witnesses.
On several occasions Wiggins expressly adopted standby counsel’s initiatives. When counsel moved to quash a jury panel, for example, Wiggins joined the motion. Record 81-82. Wiggins seconded counsel’s requests for a police report and photographs. Id., at 51-52, 54. At least twice, counsel made a motion, the motion was denied,.and Wiggins then registered his exception to the denial.
On several other occasions Wiggins strongly opposed the initiatives of counsel. He resisted counsel’s suggestion that the trial be postponed so that the transcript of his prior trial could be prepared, and he waived counsel’s right to a 10-day preparation period, which counsel wished to invoke. Id., at 64-66. In the course of a pretrial discussion concerning a discovery request Wiggins indignantly demanded that counsel not participate further without invitation. Id., at 39-40. Later, Wiggins successfully opposed the inclusion in the jury instructions of a charge that counsel felt should be included. Id., at 476-478.
The most acrimonious exchange between Graham and Wiggins occurred in the course of questioning a witness on voir dire. Wiggins suggests this exchange was typical of counsel’s overbearing conduct, but he fails to place the incident in context. Wiggins had expressly agreed to have Graham conduct the voir dire, id., at 210, but Wiggins attempted to take over the questioning in midstream. Plainly exasperated, Graham used profanity and curtly directed Wiggins to “[s]it down.”
Though several of these incidents are regrettable, we are satisfied that counsel’s participation outside the presence of the jury fully satisfied the first standard we have outlined. Wiggins was given ample opportunity to present his own position to the court on every matter discussed. He was given time to think matters over, to explain his problems and concerns informally, and to speak to the judge off the record. Standby counsel participated actively, but for the most part in an orderly manner. The one instance of overbearing conduct by counsel was a direct result of Wiggins’ own indecision as to who would question the witness on voir dire. Wiggins was given abundant opportunity to argue his contentions to the court.
Equally important, all conflicts between Wiggins and counsel were resolved in Wiggins’ favor. The trial judge repeatedly explained to all concerned that Wiggins’ strategic choices, not counsel’s, would prevail. Id., at 12-13, 65, 210, 223-224, 306-308, 341-342, 345-346, 414-415, 427, 430, 450, 477-478. Not every motion made by Wiggins was granted, but in no instance was counsel’s position adopted over Wiggins’ on a matter that would normally be left to the defense’s discretion.
V
Participation by standby counsel in the presence of the jury is more problematic. It is here that the defendant may legitimately claim that excessive involvement by counsel will destroy the appearance that the defendant is acting pro se. This, in turn, may erode the dignitary values that the right to self-representation is intended to promote and may undercut the defendant’s presentation to the jury of his own most effective defense. Nonetheless, we believe that a categorical bar on participation by standby counsel in the presence of the jury is unnecessary.
A
In measuring standby counsel’s involvement against the standards we have described, it is important not to lose sight of the defendant’s own conduct. A defendant can waive his Faretta rights. Participation by counsel with a pro se defendant’s express approval is, of course, constitutionally unobjectionable. A defendant’s invitation to counsel to participate in the trial obliterates any claim that the participation in question deprived the defendant of control over his own defense. Such participation also diminishes any general claim that counsel unreasonably interfered with the defendant’s right to appear in the status of one defending himself.
Although this is self-evident, it is also easily overlooked. A defendant like Wiggins, who vehemently objects at the beginning of trial to standby counsel’s very presence in the courtroom, may express quite different views as the trial progresses. Even when he insists that he is not waiving his Faretta rights, a pro se defendant’s solicitation of or acquiescence in certain types of participation by counsel substantially undermines later protestations that counsel interfered unacceptably.
The record in this case reveals that Wiggins’ pro se efforts were undermined primarily by his own, frequent changes of mind regarding counsel’s role. Early in the trial Wiggins insisted he wished to proceed entirely without assistance, but shortly thereafter he expressly agreed that counsel should question a witness on voir dire. Wiggins objected vehemently to some of counsel’s motions, but warmly embraced others. Initially Wiggins objected to standby counsel’s presence; later he refused to allow the trial to proceed in their absence; in the end he agreed that counsel would make a closing statement for the defense. The only two long appearances by counsel at Wiggins’ trial, one before the jury and one outside its presence, were both initiated with Wiggins’ express approval. Record 210-223, 241-243; 486-489. In these circumstances it is very difficult to determine how much of counsel’s participation was in fact contrary to Wiggins’ desires of the moment.
Faretta does not require a trial judge to permit “hybrid” representation of the type Wiggins was actually allowed. But if a defendant is given the opportunity and elects to have counsel appear before the court or jury, his complaints concerning counsel’s subsequent unsolicited participation lose much of their force. A defendant does not have a constitutional right to choreograph special appearances by counsel. Once a pro se defendant invites or agrees to any substantial participation by counsel, subsequent appearances by counsel must be presumed to be with the defendant’s acquiescence, at least until the defendant expressly and unambiguously renews his request that standby counsel be silenced.
B
Faretta rights are also not infringed when standby counsel assists the pro se defendant in overcoming routine procedural or evidentiary obstacles to the completion of some specific task, such as introducing evidence or objecting to testimony, that the defendant has clearly shown he wishes to complete. Nor are they infringed when counsel merely helps to ensure the defendant’s compliance with basic rules of courtroom protocol and procedure. In neither case is there any significant interference with the defendant’s actual control over the presentation of his defense. The likelihood that the defendant’s appearance in the status of one defending himself will be eroded is also slight, and in any event it is tolerable. A defendant does not have a constitutional right to receive personal instruction from the trial judge on courtroom procedure. Nor does the Constitution require judges to take over chores for a pro se defendant that would normally be attended to by trained counsel as a matter of course. Faretta recognized as much. “The right of self-representation is not a license to abuse the dignity of the courtroom. Neither is it a license not to comply with relevant rules of procedural and substantive law.” 422 U. S., at 835, n. 46.
Accordingly, we make explicit today what is already implicit in Faretta: A defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights are not violated when a trial judge appoints standby counsel— even over the defendant’s objection — to relieve the judge of the need to explain and enforce basic rules of courtroom protocol or to assist the defendant in overcoming routine obstacles that stand in the way of the defendant’s achievement of his own clearly indicated goals. Participation by counsel to steer a defendant through the basic procedures of trial is permissible even in the unlikely event that it somewhat undermines the pro se defendant’s appearance of control over his own defense.
At Wiggins’ trial a significant part of standby counsel’s participation both in and out of the jury’s presence involved basic mechanics of the type we have described — informing the court of the whereabouts of witnesses, supplying Wiggins with a form needed to elect to go to the jury at the punishment phase of trial, explaining to Wiggins that he should not argue his case while questioning a witness, and so on. See Record 9, 11-12, 45, 50, 69, 191, 206, 232, 251, 254, 255, 391, 393, 396, 404, 406, 471. When Wiggins attempted to introduce a document into evidence, but failed to mark it for identification or to lay a predicate for its introduction, counsel, at the trial court’s suggestion, questioned the witness to lay an appropriate predicate, and Wiggins then resumed his examination. Id., at 293-296. Similarly, the trial judge repeatedly instructed Wiggins to consult with counsel, not with the court, regarding the appropriate procedure for summoning witnesses. Id., at 204-205, 207-208, 248, 272, 395, 396, 402.
Notwithstanding Wiggins’ several general objections to the presence and participation of counsel, we find these aspects of counsel’s involvement irreproachable. None interfered with Wiggins’ actual control over his defense; none can reasonably be thought to have undermined Wiggins’ appearance before the jury in the status of a pro se defendant.
C
Putting aside participation that was either approved by Wiggins or attendant to routine clerical or procedural matters, counsel’s unsolicited comments in front of the jury were infrequent and for the most part innocuous. On two occasions Graham interrupted a witness’ answer to a question put by Wiggins. Id., at 204, 287. The first interruption was trivial. When the second was made the jury was briefly excused and subsequently given a cautionary instruction as requested by Graham. Wiggins made no objection. Standby counsel also moved for a mistrial three times in the presence of the jury. Id., at 262, 421-422, 498-499. Each motion was in response to allegedly prejudicial questions or comments by the prosecutor. Wiggins did not comment on the first motion, but he opposed the following two. All three motions were immediately denied by the trial court. Regrettably, counsel used profanity to express his exasperation on the second occasion. Finally, counsel played an active role at the punishment phase of the trial. The record supplies no explanation for the sudden change in this regard. Wiggins made no objection to counsel’s participation in this phase of the trial. We can only surmise that by then Wiggins had concluded that appearing pro se was not in his best interests.
The statements made by counsel during the guilt phase of the trial, in the presence of the jury and without Wiggins’ express consent, occupy only a small portion of the transcript. Most were of an unobjectionable, mechanical sort. While standby counsel’s participation at Wiggins’ trial should not serve as a model for future trials, we believe that counsel’s involvement fell short of infringing on Wiggins’ Faretta rights. Wiggins unquestionably maintained actual control over the presentation of his own defense at all times.
We are also persuaded that Wiggins was allowed to appear before the jury in the status of one defending himself. At the outset the trial judge carefully explained to the jury that Wiggins would be appearing pro se. Record 84. Wiggins, not counsel, examined prospective jurors on voir dire, cross-examined the prosecution’s witnesses, examined his own witnesses, and made an opening statement for the defense. Wiggins objected to the prosecutor’s case at least as often as did counsel. If Wiggins’ closing statement to the jury had to compete with one made by counsel, it was only because Wiggins agreed in advance to that arrangement.
By contrast, counsel’s interruptions of Wiggins or witnesses being questioned by Wiggins in the presence of the jury were few and perfunctory. Most of counsel’s uninvited comments were directed at the prosecutor. Such interruptions present little threat to a defendant’s Faretta rights, at least when the defendant’s view regarding those objections has not been clearly articulated. On the rare occasions that disagreements between counsel and Wiggins were aired in the presence of the jury the trial judge consistently ruled in Wiggins’ favor. This was a pattern more likely to reinforce than to detract from the appearance that Wiggins was controlling his own defense. The intrusions by counsel at Wiggins’ trial were simply not substantial or frequent enough to have seriously undermined Wiggins’ appearance before the jury in the status of one representing himself.
HH >
Faretta affirmed the defendant’s constitutional right to appear on stage at his trial. We recognize that a pro se defendant may wish to dance a solo, not a pas de deux. Standby counsel must generally respect that preference. But counsel need not be excluded altogether, especially when the participation is outside the presence of the jury or is with the defendant’s express or tacit consent. The defendant in this case was allowed to make his own appearances as he saw fit. In our judgment counsel’s unsolicited involvement was held within reasonable limits.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore
Reversed.
Justice Blackmun concurs in the result.
Wiggins’ letter to the trial judge stated:
“I wish to rescind my earlier request to waive court appointed assistance counsel — and request that this honorable court appoint counsel to assist me.
“I would appreciate very much if the court would appoint the Honorable Stewart J. Alexander who was previously appointed to assist on appeal, before sentence was set aside.
“And I apologize if I have caused an inconvenience to the court.” Record 584 (original emphasis).
The petition read:
“Now comes Carl Edwin Wiggins, defendant in the above styled and numbered cause, and respectfully petitions the Court to appoint counsel to represent him in said felony cause and would show to the Court that he is too poor to employ counsel.” Id., at 586.
This request read in pertinent part:
“I have been indicted four (4) times of the same offense....
“According to Higgins v. State and Snow v. State, where prosecutions were dismissed — and according to VACCP Art. 28.13, I should’nt [sic] be tried again.
“Will you please appoint counsel to cite authorities on this issue, also, in favor of the state. I find only authorities indicating that further prosecution is barred. None indicating other-wise [sic].” Id., at 623 (original emphasis).
These included a motion for discovery, id,., at 14, a motion to set aside the indictment, id., at 16, a double jeopardy claim, id., at 17-22, a motion in limine, a motion for special relief, id., at 23-24, a motion to correct an offense report, id., at 31, a motion for discovery of any exculpatory material in the prosecutor’s file, id., at 33, a motion to keep a marked document out of the sight of the jury, id., at 42, a motion to sequester the jury, id., at 44-45, another motion in limine, id., at 57-58, a motion for a change of venue (withdrawn by the defendant), id., at 59, a motion for a speedy trial, id., at 60, a motion for a jury shuffle, id., at 67-68, and a motion for witness fees, id., at 69-70.
Wiggins made an opening statement to the venire, id., at 101-103, and examined 33 individual venirepersons. Id., at 106-185.
These included a motion for acquittal, a motion to question a witness out of the presence of the jury, and a motion for the appointment of an investigator. Id., at 342-344, 392-393, 394-395.
A pro se defendant must generally accept any unsolicited help or hindrance that may come from the judge who chooses to call and question witnesses, from the prosecutor who faithfully exercises his duty to present evidence favorable to the defense, from the plural voices speaking “for the defense” in a trial of more than one defendant, or from an amicus counsel appointed to assist the court, see Brown v. United States, 105 U. S. App. D. C. 77, 83, 264 F. 2d 363, 369 (1959) (Burger, J., concurring in part).
Since the right of self-representation is a right that when exercised usually increases the likelihood of a trial outcome unfavorable to the defendant, its denial is not amenable to “harmless error” analysis. The right is either respected or denied; its deprivation cannot be harmless.
As a corollary, however, a defendant who exercises his right to appear pro se “cannot thereafter complain that the quality of his own defense amounted to a denial of ‘effective assistance of counsel.’ ” Faretta, 422 U. S., at 835, n. 46. Moreover, the defendant’s right to proceed pro se exists in the larger context of the criminal trial designed to determine whether or not a defendant is guilty of the offense with which he is charged. The trial judge may be required to make numerous rulings reconciling the participation of standby counsel with a pro se defendant’s objection to that participation; nothing in the nature of the Faretta right suggests that the usual deference to “judgment calls” on these issues by the trial judge should not obtain here as elsewhere.
Faretta anticipated this second requirement. In its footnote on standby counsel Faretta cited three pages of United States v. Dougherty, 154 U. S. App. D. C. 76, 473 F. 2d 1113 (1972), in which we find this statement:
“The utility of an amicus appointment is dependent on explanation to and cooperation by [the] defendant, and on understanding, too, that he may claim with some merit that his pro se rights include his right to appear before the jury in the status of one defending himself, and that this is defeated if a too conspicuous role is played by an attorney, unless it clearly appears to the jury that he does not have the status of defense counsel.” Id., at 88, 473 F. 2d, at 1125 (footnote omitted).
Cf. ABA Standards For Criminal Justice 6-3.7 (2d ed. 1980) (standby counsel may “call the judge’s attention to matters favorable to the accused upon which the judge should rule on his or her motion...”); Uniform Rule of Criminal Procedure 711 (1974) (same); Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U. S. 455, 467-468 (1971) (Burger, C. J., concurring) (same).
Record 344-345, 414-415, 427-428, 449-450, 478.
See id., at 243, 246; 447, 449. On other occasions Wiggins simply did not react to standby counsel’s participation. See, e. g., id., at 32.
Id., at 7-9. Wiggins later came to regret the unavailability of the transcript, and claimed that he had never waived his right to receive it. Id., at 252-254.
Id., at 215, 218, 223. Wiggins was given a full opportunity to question the witness when Graham had finished. Id., at 224-226, 228-237.
“MR. GRAHAM: Objection, Your Honor. The district attorney is testifying.
“THE COURT: Don’t lead.
“MR. GRAHAM: I ask the Court to instruct the jury to disregard the remarks of counsel as not being testimony in the case.
“THE COURT: The Court will instruct the jury to disregard the last statement made by Mr. Rodriguez.
“
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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Mr. Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a civil antitrust case brought by the United States to nullify an association’s canon of ethics prohibiting competitive bidding by its members. The question is whether the canon'may be justified under the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1 et seq. (1976 ed.), because it was adopted by members of a learned profession for the purpose of minimizing the risk that competition would produce inferior engineering work endangering the public safety. The District Court rejected this justification without making any findings on the likelihood that competition would produce the dire consequences foreseen by the association. The Court of Appeals affirmed. We granted certiorari to decide whether the District Court should have considered the factual basis for the proffered justification before rejecting it. 434 U. S. 815. Because we are satisfied that the asserted defense rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Rule of Reason frequently applied in antitrust litigation, we affirm.
I
Engineering is an important and learned profession. There are over 750,000 graduate engineers in the United States, of whom about 325,000 are registered as professional engineers. Registration requirements vary from State to State, but usually require the applicant to be a graduate engineer with at least four years of practical experience and to pass a written examination. About half of those who are registered engage in consulting engineering on a fee basis. They perform services in connection with the study, design, and construction of all types of improvements to real property — bridges, office buildings, airports, and factories are examples. Engineering fees, amounting to well over $2 billion each year, constitute about 5% of total construction costs. In any given facility, approximately 50% to 80% of the cost of construction is the direct result of work performed by an engineer concerning the systems and equipment to be incorporated in the structure.
The National Society of Professional Engineers (Society) was organized in 1935 to deal with the nontechnical aspects of engineering practice, including the promotion of the professional, social, and economic interests of its members. Its present membership of 69,000 resides throughout the United States and in some foreign countries. Approximately 12,000 members are consulting engineers who offer their services to governmental, industrial, and private clients. Some Society members are principals or chief executive officers of some of the largest engineering firms in the country.
The charges of a consulting engineer may be computed in different ways. He may charge the client a percentage of the cost of the project, may set his fee at his actual cost plus overhead plus a reasonable profit, may charge fixed rates per hour for different types of work, may perform an assignment for a specific sum, or he may combine one or more of these approaches. Suggested fee schedules for particular types of services in certain areas have been promulgated from time to time by various local societies. This case does not, however, involve any claim that the National Society has tried to fix specific fees, or even a specific method of calculating fees. It involves a charge that the members of the Society have unlawfully agreed to refuse to negotiate or even to discuss the question of fees until after a prospective client has selected the engineer for a particular project. Evidence of this agreement is found in § 11 (c) of the Society’s Code of Ethics, adopted in July 1964.
The District Court found that the Society’s Board of Ethical Review has uniformly interpreted the “ethical rules against competitive bidding for engineering services as prohibiting the submission of any form of price information to a prospective customer which would enable that customer to make a price comparison on engineering services.” If the client requires that such information be provided, then § 11 (c) imposes an obligation upon the engineering firm to withdraw from consideration for that job. The Society’s Code of Ethics thus “prohibits engineers from both soliciting and submitting such price information,” 389 F. Supp. 1193, 1206 (DC 1974), and seeks to preserve the profession’s “traditional” method of selecting professional engineers. Under the traditional method, the client initially selects an engineer on the basis of background and reputation, not price.
In 1972 the Government filed its complaint against the Society alleging that members had agreed to abide by canons of ethics prohibiting the submission of competitive bids for engineering services and that, in consequence, price competition among the members had been suppressed and customers had been deprived of the benefits of free and open competition. The complaint prayed for an injunction terminating the unlawful agreement.
In its answer the Society admitted the essential facts alleged by the Government and pleaded a series of affirmative defenses, only one of which remains in issue. In that defense, the Society averred that the standard set out in the Code of Ethics was reasonable because competition among professional engineers was contrary to the public interest. It was averred that it would be cheaper and easier for an engineer “to design and specify inefficient and unnecessarily expensive structures and methods of construction.” Accordingly, competitive pressure to offer engineering services at the lowest possible price would adversely affect the quality of engineering. Moreover, the practice of awarding engineering contracts to the lowest bidder, regardless of quality, would be dangerous to the public health, safety, and welfare. For these reasons, the Society claimed that its Code of Ethics was not an “unreasonable restraint of interstate trade or commerce.”
The parties compiled a voluminous discovery and trial record. The District Court made detailed findings about the engineering profession, the Society, its members’ participation in interstate commerce, the history of the ban on competitive bidding, and certain incidents in which the ban appears to have been violated or enforced. The District Court did not, however, make any finding on the question whether, or to what extent, competition had led to inferior engineering work which, in turn, had adversely affected the public health, safety, or welfare. That inquiry was considered unnecessary because the court was convinced that the ethical prohibition against competitive bidding was “on its face a tampering with the price structure of engineering fees in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act.” 389 F. Supp., at 1200.
Although it modified the injunction entered by the District Court, the Court of Appeals affirmed its conclusion that the agreement was unlawful on its face and therefore “illegal without regard to claimed or possible benefits.” 181 U. S. App. D. C. 41, 47, 556 F. 2d 978, 984.
II
In Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U. S. 773, the Court held that a bar association’s rule prescribing minimum fees for legal services violated § 1 of the Sherman Act. In that opinion the Court noted that certain practices by members of a learned profession might survive scrutiny under the Rule of Reason even though they would be viewed as a violation of the Sherman Act in another context. The Court said:
“The fact that a restraint operates upon a profession as distinguished from a business is, of course, relevant in determining whether that particular restraint violates the Sherman Act. It would be unrealistic to view the practice of professions as interchangeable with other business activities, and automatically to apply to the professions antitrust concepts which originated in other areas. The public service aspect, and other features of the professions may require that a particular practice, which could properly be viewed as a violation of the Sherman Act in another context, be treated differently. We intimate no view on any other situation than the one with which we are confronted today.” 421 U. S., at 788-789, n. 17.
Relying heavily on this footnote, and on some of the major cases applying a Rule of Reason — principally Mitchel v. Reynolds, 1 P. Wms. 181, 24 Eng. Rep. 347 (1711); Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1; Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U. S. 231; and Continental T. V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc., 433 U. S. 36 — petitioner argues that its attempt to preserve the profession’s traditional method of setting fees for engineering services is a reasonable method of forestalling the public harm which might be produced by unrestrained competitive bidding. To evaluate this argument it is necessary to identify the contours of the Rule of Reason and to discuss its application to the kind of justification asserted by petitioner.
A. The Rule of Reason.
One problem presented by the language of § 1 of the Sherman Act is that it cannot mean what it says. The statute says that “every” contract that restrains trade is unlawful. But, as Mr. Justice Brandéis perceptively noted, restraint is the very essence of every contract; read literally, § 1 would outlaw the entire body of private contract law. Yet it is that body of law that establishes the enforceability of commercial agreements and enables competitive markets — indeed, a competitive economy — to function effectively.
Congress, however, did not intend the text of the Sherman Act to delineate the full meaning of the statute or its application in concrete situations. The legislative history makes it perfectly clear that it expected the courts to give shape to the statute’s broad mandate by drawing on common-law tradition. The Rule of Reason, with its origins in common-law precedents long antedating the Sherman Act, has served that purpose. It has been used to give the Act both flexibility and definition, and its central principle of antitrust analysis has remained constant. Contrary to its name, the Rule does not open the field of antitrust inquiry to any argument in favor of a challenged restraint that may fall within the realm of reason. Instead, it focuses directly on the challenged restraint’s impact on competitive conditions.
This principle is apparent in even the earliest of cases applying the Rule of Reason, Mitchel v. Reynolds, supra. Mitchel involved the enforceability of a promise by the seller of a bakery that he would not compete with the purchaser of his business. The covenant was for a limited time and applied only to the area in which the bakery had operated. It was therefore upheld as reasonable, even though it deprived the public of the benefit of potential competition. The long-run benefit of enhancing the marketability of the business itself — and thereby providing incentives to develop such an enterprise — outweighed the temporary and limited loss of competition.
The Rule of Reason suggested by Mitchel v. Reynolds has been regarded as a standard for testing the enforceability of covenants in restraint of trade which are ancillary to a legitimate transaction, such as an employment contract or the sale of a going business. Judge (later Mr. Chief Justice) Taft so interpreted the Rule in his classic rejection of the argument that competitors may lawfully agree to sell their goods at the same price as long as the agreed-upon price is reasonable. United States v. Addyston Pipe & Steel Co., 85 F. 271, 282-283 (CA6 1898), aff'd, 175 U. S. 211. That case, and subsequent decisions by this Court, unequivocally foreclose an interpretation of the Rule as permitting an inquiry into the reasonableness of the prices set by private agreement.
The early cases also foreclose the argument that because of the special characteristics of a particular industry, monopolistic arrangements will better promote trade and commerce than competition. United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290; United States v. Joint Traffic Assn., 171 U. S. 505, 573-577. That kind of argument is properly addressed to Congress and may justify an exemption from the statute for specific industries, but it is not permitted by the Rule of Reason. As the Court observed in Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S., at 65, “restraints of trade within the purview of the statute... [can]not be taken out of that category by indulging in general reasoning as to the expediency or non-expediency of having made the contracts or the wisdom or want of wisdom of the statute which prohibited their being made.” The test prescribed in Standard Oil is whether the challenged contracts or acts “were unreasonably restrictive of competitive conditions.” Unreasonableness under that test could be based either (1) on the nature or character of the contracts, or (2) on surrounding circumstances giving rise to the inference or presumption that they were intended to restrain trade and enhance prices. Under either branch of the test, the inquiry is confined to a consideration of impact on competitive conditions.
In this respect the Rule of Reason has remained faithful to its origins. From Mr. Justice Brandéis’ opinion for the Court in Chicago Board of Trade to the Court opinion written by Mr. Justice Powell in Continental T. V., Inc., the Court has adhered to the position that the inquiry mandated by the Rule of Reason is whether the challenged agreement is one that promotes competition or one that suppresses competition. “The true test of legality is whether the restraint imposed is such as merely regulates and perhaps thereby promotes competition or whether it is such as may suppress or even destroy competition.” 246 U. S., at 238, quoted in 433 U. S., at 49 n. 15.
There are, thus, two complementary categories of antitrust analysis. In the first category are agreements whose nature and necessary effect are so plainly anticompetitive that no elaborate study of the industry is needed to establish their illegality — they are “illegal per se." In the second category are agreements whose competitive effect can only be evaluated by analyzing the facts peculiar to the business, the history of the restraint, and the reasons why it was imposed. In either event, the purpose of the analysis is to form a judgment about the competitive significance of the restraint; it is not to decide whether a policy favoring competition is in the public interest, or in the interest of the members of an industry. Subject to exceptions defined by statute, that policy decision has been made by the Congress.
B. The Ban on Competitive Bidding.
Price is the “central nervous system of the economy,” United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 226 n. 59, and an agreement that “interfere[s] with the setting of price by free market forces” is illegal on its face. United States v. Container Corp., 393 U. S. 333, 337. In this case we are presented with an agreement among competitors to refuse to discuss prices with potential customers until after negotiations have" resulted in the initial selection of an engineer. While this is not price fixing as such, no elaborate industry analysis is required to demonstrate the anticompetitive character of such an agreement. It operates as an absolute ban on competitive bidding, applying with equal force to both complicated and simple projects and to both inexperienced and sophisticated customers. As the District Court found, the ban “impedes the ordinary give and take of the market place,” and substantially deprives the customer of “the ability to utilize and compare prices in selecting engineering services.” 404 F. Supp. 457, 460. On its face, this agreement restrains trade within the meaning of § 1 of the Sherman Act.
The Society’s affirmative defense confirms rather than refutes the anticompetitive purpose and effect of its agreement. The Society argues that the restraint is justified because bidding on engineering services is inherently imprecise, would lead to deceptively low bids, and would thereby tempt individual engineers to do inferior work with consequent risk to public safety and health. The logic of this argument rests on the assumption that the agreement will tend to maintain the price level; if it had no such effect, it would not serve its intended purpose. The Society nonetheless invokes the Rule of Reason, arguing that its restraint on price competition ultimately inures to the public benefit by preventing the production of inferior work and by insuring ethical behavior. As the preceding discussion of the Rule of Reason reveals, this Court has never accepted such an argument.
It may be, as petitioner argues, that competition tends to force prices down and that an inexpensive item may be inferior to one that is more costly. There is some risk, therefore, that competition will cause some suppliers to market a defective product. Similarly, competitive bidding for engineering projects may be inherently imprecise and incapable of taking into account all the variables which will be involved in the actual performance of the project. Based on these considerations, a purchaser might conclude that his interest in quality — which may embrace the safety of the end product — outweighs the advantages of achieving cost savings by pitting one competitor against another. Or an individual vendor might independently refrain from price negotiation until he has satisfied himself that he fully understands the scope of his customers’ needs. These decisions might be reasonable; indeed, petitioner has provided ample documentation for that thesis. But these are not reasons that satisfy the Rule; nor are such individual decisions subject to antitrust attack.
The Sherman Act does not require competitive bidding; it prohibits unreasonable restraints on competition. Petitioner’s ban on competitive bidding prevents all customers from making price comparisons in the initial selection of an engineer, and imposes the Society’s views of the costs and benefits of competition on the entire marketplace. It is this restraint that must be justified under the Rule of Reason, and petitioner’s attempt to do so on the basis of the potential threat that competition poses to the public safety and the ethics of its profession is nothing less than a frontal assault on the basic policy of the Sherman Act.
The Sherman Act reflects a legislative judgment that ultimately competition will produce not only lower prices, but also better goods and services. “The heart of our national economic policy long has been faith in the value of competition.” Standard Oil Co. v. FTC, 340 U. S. 231, 248. The assumption that competition is the best method of allocating resources in a free market recognizes that all elements of a bargain— quality, service, safety, and durability — and not just the immediate cost, are favorably affected by the free opportunity to select among alternative offers. Even assuming occasional exceptions to the presumed consequences of competition, the statutory policy precludes inquiry into the question whether competition is good or bad.
The fact that engineers are often involved in large-scale projects significantly affecting the public safety does not alter our analysis. Exceptions to the Sherman Act for potentially dangerous goods and services would be tantamount to a repeal of the statute. In our complex economy the number of items that may cause serious harm is almost endless — automobiles, drugs, foods, aircraft components, heavy equipment, and countless others, cause serious harm to individuals or to the public at large if defectively made. The judiciary cannot indirectly protect the public against this harm by conferring monopoly privileges on the manufacturers.
By the same token, the cautionary footnote in Goldfarb, 421 U. S., at 788-789, n. 17, quoted supra, cannot be read as fashioning a broad exemption under the Rule of Reason for learned professions. We adhere to the view expressed in Goldfarb that, by their nature, professional services may differ significantly from other business services, and, accordingly, the nature of the competition in such services may vary. Ethical norms may serve to regulate and promote this competition, and thus fall within the Rule of Reason. But the Society’s argument in this case is a far cry from such a position. We are faced with a contention that a total ban on competitive bidding is necessary because otherwise engineers will be tempted to submit deceptively low bids. Certainly, the problem of professional deception is a proper subject of an ethical canon. But, once again, the equation of competition with deception, like the similar equation with safety hazards, is simply too broad; we may assume that competition is not entirely conducive to ethical behavior, but that is not a reason, cognizable under the Sherman Act, for doing away with competition.
In sum, the Rule of Reason does not support a defense based on the assumption that competition itself is unreasonable. Such a view of the Rule would create the “sea of doubt” on which Judge Taft refused to embark in Addyston, 85 F., at 284, and which this Court has firmly avoided ever since.
Ill
The judgment entered by the District Court, as modified by the Court of Appeals, prohibits the Society from adopting any official opinion, policy statement, or guideline stating or implying that competitive bidding is unethical. Petitioner argues that this judgment abridges its First Amendment rights. We find no merit in this contention.
Having found the Society guilty of a violation of the Sherman Act, the District Court was empowered to fashion appropriate restraints on the Society’s future activities both to avoid a recurrence of the violation and to eliminate its consequences. See, e. g., International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U. S. 392, 400-401; United States v. Glaxo Group, Ltd., 410 U. S. 52, 64. While the resulting order may curtail the exercise of liberties that the Society might otherwise enjoy, that is a necessary and, in cases such as this, unavoidable consequence of the violation. Just as an injunction against price fixing abridges the freedom of businessmen to talk to one another about prices, so too the injunction in this case must restrict the Society’s range of expression on the ethics of competitive bidding. The First Amendment does not “make it... impossible ever to enforce laws against agreements in restraint of trade....” Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U. S. 490, 502. In fashioning a remedy, the District Court may, of course, consider the fact that its injunction may impinge upon rights that would otherwise be constitutionally protected, but those protections do not prevent it from remedying the antitrust violations.
The standard against which the order must be judged is whether the relief represents a reasonable method of eliminating the consequences of the illegal conduct. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the injunction, as modified, meets this standard. While it goes beyond a simple proscription against the precise conduct previously pursued, that is entirely appropriate.
“The District Court is not obliged to assume, contrary to common experience, that a violator of the antitrust laws will relinquish the fruits of his violation more completely than the court requires him to do. And advantages already in hand may be held by methods more subtle and informed, and more difficult to prove, than those which, in the first place, win a market. When the purpose to restrain trade appears from a clear violation of law, it is not necessary that all of the untraveled roads to that end be left open and that only the worn one be closed.” International Salt Co., supra, at 400.
The Society apparently fears that the District Court’s injunction, if broadly read, will block legitimate paths of expression on all ethical matters relating to bidding. But the answer to these fears is, as the Court held in International Salt, that the burden is upon the proved transgressor “to bring any proper claims for relief to the court’s attention.” Ibid. In this case, the Court of Appeals specifically stated that “[i]f the Society wishes to adopt some other ethical guideline more closely confined to the legitimate objective of preventing deceptively low bids, it may move the district court for modification of the decree.” 181 U. S. App. D. C., at 46, 555 F. 2d, at 983. This is, we believe, a proper approach, adequately protecting the Society’s interests. We therefore reject petitioner’s attack on the District Court’s order.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
389 F. Supp. 1193 (DC 1974).
181 U. S. App. D. C. 41, 555 F. 2d 978 (1977). When the District Court’s original judgment was entered, petitioner was entitled to appeal directly to this Court. We vacated the District Court’s judgment for reconsideration in the light of our then recent decision in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U. S. 773. 422 U. S. 1031. After reconsideration, the District Court re-entered its original judgment, 404 F. Supp. 457 (DC 1975), and petitioner then appealed to the Court of Appeals.
That section, which remained in effect at the time of trial, provided: “Section 11 — The Engineer will not compete unfairly with another engineer by attempting to obtain employment or advancement or professional engagements by competitive bidding....
“c. He shall not solicit or submit engineering proposals on the basis of competitive bidding. Competitive bidding for professional engineering services is defined as the formal or informal submission, or receipt, of verbal or written estimates of cost or proposals in terms of dollars, man days of work required, percentage of construction cost, or any other measure of compensation whereby the prospective client may compare engineering services on a price basis prior to the time that one engineer, or one engineering organization, has been selected for negotiations. The disclosure of recommended fee schedules prepared by various engineering societies is not considered to constitute competitive bidding. An Engineer requested to submit a fee proposal or bid prior to the selection of an engineer or firm subject to the negotiation of a satisfactory contract, shall attempt to have the procedure changed to conform to ethical practices, but if not successful he shall withdraw from consideration for the proposed work. These principles shall be applied by the Engineer in obtaining the services of other professions.” App. 9951.
389 F. Supp., at 1206. In addition to § 11 (c) of the Society’s Code of Ethics, see n. 3, supra, the Society’s Board of Directors has adopted various “Professional Policy” statements. Policy statement 10-F was issued to “make it clear beyond all doubt” that the Society opposed competitive bidding for all engineering projects. 389 F. Supp., at 1206. This policy statement was replaced in 1972 by Policy 10-G which permits price quotations for certain types of engineering work — in particular, research and development projects.
Although the Society argues that it has never “enforced” its ban on competitive bidding, Reply Brief for Petitioner 15-18, the District Court specifically found that the record “support[s] a finding that NSPE and its members actively pursue a course of policing adherence to the competitive bid ban through direct and indirect communication with members and prospective clients.” 389 F. Supp., at 1200. This finding has not been challenged as clearly erroneous.
Having been selected, the engineer may then, in accordance with the Society’s canons of ethics, negotiate a satisfactory fee arrangement with the client. If the negotiations are unsuccessful, then the cliept may withdraw his selection and approach a new engineer. Id., at 1215.
The entire defense pleaded in the answer reads as follows:
“18. (a) The principles and standards contained in the NSPE Code of Ethics, particularly those contained in that part of the NSPE Code of Ethics set out above, are reasonable, necessary to the public health, safety and welfare insofar as they are affected by the work of professional engineers, and serve the public interest.
“(b) Experience has demonstrated that competitive bidding for professional engineering services is inconsistent with securing for the recipients of such services the most economical projects or structures. Testing, calculating and designing the most economical and efficient structures and methods of construction is complex, difficult and expensive. It is cheaper and easier to design and specify inefficient and unnecessarily expensive structures and methods of construction. Consequently, if professional engineers are required by competitive pressures to submit bids in order to obtaip employment of their services, the inevitable tendency will be to offer professional engineering services at the lowest possible price. Although this may result in some lowering of the cost of professional engineering services it will inevitably result in increasing the overall cost and decreasing the efficiency of those structures and projects which require professional engineering design and specification work.
“(c) Experience has also demonstrated that competitive bidding in most instances and situations results in an award of the work to be performed to the lowest bidder, regardless of other factors such as ability, experience, expertise, skill, capability, learning and the like, and that such awards in the case of professional engineers endanger the public health, welfare and safety.
“(d) For the aforesaid reasons, the provisions of the NSPE Code of Ethics set out above are not, in any event, in unreasonable restraint of interstate trade or commerce.” App. 21-22.
The Court of Appeals struck down the portion, of the District Court’s decree that ordered the Society to state that it did not consider competitive bidding to be unethical. 181 U. S. App. D. C., at 47, 555 F. 2d, at 984. The court reasoned that this provision was "more intrusive than necessary to achieve fulfillment of the governmental interest.” Ibid. The Government has not petitioned for review of that decision.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act, as set forth in 15 U. S. C. § 1 (1976 ed.), 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 declared to be illegal....”
“But the legality of an agreement or regulation cannot be determined by so simple a test, as whether it restrains competition. Every agreement concerning trade, every regulation of trade, restrains. To bind, to restrain, is of their very essence.” Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U. S. 231, 238.
See also United States v. Topco Associates, 405 U. S. 596, 606:
“Were § 1 to be read in the narrowest possible way, any commercial contract could be deemed to violate it.”
See 21 Cong. Rec. 2456 (1890) (comments of Sen. Sherman); see generally H. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy 228-229 (1955).
“4thly, The fourth reason is in favour of these contracts, and is, that there may happen instances wherein they may be useful and beneficial, as... in case of an old man, who finding himself under such circumstances either of body or mind, as that he is likely to be a loser by continuing his trade, in this case it will be better for him to part with it for a consideration, that by selling his custom, he may procure to himself a livelihood, which he might probably have lost, by trading longer.” 1 P. Wms., at 191, 24 Eng. Rep., at 350.
85 F., at 293. See also United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290, 340-342.
Congress has exempted certain industries from the full reach of the Sherman Act. See, e. g., 7 U. S. C. §§ 291-292 (1976 ed.) (CapperVolstead Act, agricultural cooperatives); 15 U. S. C. §§ 1011-1013 (1976 ed.) (McCarran-Ferguson Act, insurance); 49 U. S. C. § 5b (ReedBulwinkle Act, rail and motor carrier rate-fixing bureaus); 15 U. S. C. § 1801 (1976 ed.) (newspaper joint operating agreements).
"Without going into detail and but very briefly surveying the whole field, it may be with accuracy said that the dread of enhancement of prices and of other wrongs which it was thought would flow from the undue limitation on competitive conditions caused by contracts or other acts of individuals or corporations, led, as a matter of public policy, to the prohibition or treating as illegal all contracts or acts which were unreasonably restrictive of competitive conditions, either from the nature or character of the contract or act -or where the surrounding circumstances were such as to justify the conclusion that they had not been entered into or performed with the legitimate purpose of reasonably forwarding personal interest and developing trade, but on the contrary were of such a character as to give rise to the inference or presumption that they had been entered into or done with the intent to do wrong to the general public and to limit the right of individuals, thus restraining the free flow of commerce and tending to bring about the evils, such as enhancement of prices, which were considered to be against public policy.” 221 U. S., at 58.
Throughout the Court’s opinion the emphasis is on economic conceptions. For instance, the Court’s description of the common-law treatment of engrossing and forestalling statutes noted that contracts which had been illegal on their face were later recognized as reasonable because they tended to promote competition. Id., at 55. As was pointed out in the Report of the Attorney General’s National Committee To Study the Antitrust Laws 11 (1955):
“While Standard Oil gave the courts discretion in interpreting the word ‘every’ in Section 1, such discretion is confined to consideration of whether in each case the conduct being reviewed under the Act constitutes an undue restraint of competitive conditions, or a monopolization, or an attempt to monopolize. This standard permits the courts to decide whether conduct is significantly and unreasonably anticompetitive in character or effect; it makes obsolete once prevalent arguments, such as, whether monopoly arrangements would be socially preferable to competition in a particular industry, because, for example, of high fixed costs or the risks of ‘cutthroat’ competition or other similar unusual conditions.”
In Continental T. V., Inc., the Court explained the Rule of Reason standard as follows:
“Under this rule, the factfinder weighs all of the circumstances of a case in deciding whether a restrictive practice should be prohibited as imposing an unreasonable restraint on competition.” 433 U. S., at 49.
The Court then analyzed the “market impact” of vertical restraints, noting their complexity because of the potential for a simultaneous reduction of intrabrand competition and stimulation of interbrand competition. Id., at 50-51. -“Competitive impact” and “economic analysis” were emphasized throughout the opinion.
See generally Attorney General’s Report, supra n. 16, at 10-11; Bork, The Rule of Reason and the Per Se Concept: Price Fixing and Market Division, 74 Yale L. J. 775 (1965); L. Sullivan, Law of Antitrust 165-197 (1977).
The Society also points out that competition, in the form of bargaining between the engineer and customer, is allowed under its canon of ethics once an engineer has been initially selected. See n. 6, supra. It then contends that its prohibition of competitive bidding regulates only the timing of competition, thus making this case analogous to Chicago' Board of Trade, where the Court upheld an exchange rule which forbade exchange members from making purchases after the close of the day’s session at any price other than the closing bid price. Indeed, petitioner has reprinted the Government’s brief in that case to demonstrate that the Solicitor General regarded the exchange’s rule as a form of price fixing. Reply Brief for Petitioner A1-A28. We find this reliance on Chicago Board of Trade misplaced for two reasons. First, petitioner’s claim mistakenly treats negotiation between a single seller and a single buyer as the equivalent of competition between two or more potential sellers. Second, even if we were to accept the Society’s equation of bargaining with price competition, our concern with Chicago Board of Trade is in its formulation of the proper test to be used in judging the legality of an agreement; that formulation unquestionably stresses impact on competition. Whatever one’s view of the application of the Rule of Reason in that case, see Sullivan, supra n. 18, at 175-182, the Court considered the exchange’s regulation of price information as having a positive effect on competition. 246 U. S., at 240-241. The District Court’s findings preclude a similar conclusion concerning the effect of the Society’s “regulation.”
We, of course, express m view on the truth of this assertion, although it might be noted that the Society has allowed competitive bidding for some types of engineering projects in this country, see n. 4, supra, and, at one time, allowed competitive bidding for all engineering work in foreign countries “as required by the laws, regulations or practices of the foreign country.” App. 6487. This rule, called the “When-in-Rome” clause, was abolished in 1968. Id., at 6344.
Indeed, Congress has decided not to require competitive bidding for Government purchases of engineering services. The Brooks Act, 40 U. S. C. §§ 541-544
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 Rutledge
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a companion case to Rescue Army v. Municipal Court of the City of Los Angeles, 331 U. S. 549, decided today. Because we dismiss the appeal in this cause for jurisdictional reasons, the facts may be shortly stated.
The Gospel Army is an incorporated religious organization. The trial court found that it is “engaged exclusively in the promulgation, by literature and word of mouth, of its religious beliefs, by and through its auxiliaries, and in the procuring of donations in the form of money and articles of value in the prosecution and furtherance of its religious activities.” More particularly, its activities consist of conducting a mission, distributing religious books without charge, giving aid to the poor. It collects salvage which it either sells in a second-hand goods store, distributes directly to the poor, or sends to a salvage mill.
The Gospel Army instituted this suit to enjoin the enforcement of certain ordinances of the City of Los Angeles on the ground that they violate its religious liberty under the Constitutions of California and the United States.
After trial the Superior Court of Los Angeles County broadly concluded:
“That a permanent injunction should issue herein restraining and enjoining the Defendants and each of them and any and all persons, associations, departments under whom said Defendants or any of them may be employed or acting and any and all persons, associations or departments who may be acting or claiming by, through or under said Defendants, or any of them from the further interference and threatened acts, which would in any way prevent the free exercise of a religious liberty of said Plaintiff.”
From this decision an appeal was taken to the District Court of Appeal of the Second Appellate Division, Division Two, and the cause was then transferred to the Supreme Court of California. That court held, three judges dissenting, that the Superior Court’s action in granting the injunction was erroneous. 27 Cal. 2d 232. Some, if not all, of the ordinances in suit were sustained as constitutional. On appeal to this Court determination of jurisdiction was postponed to the merits.
The jurisdictional difficulties arise from the form of the California Supreme Court’s judgment. That court ended its opinion with the statement, “The judgment is reversed.” Its judgment was in the same form: “It is Ordered, Adjudged, and Decreed by the Court that the Judgment of the Superior Court in and for the County of Los Angeles in the above entitled cause, be and the same is hereby reversed.” In California an unqualified reversal, “that is to say, without direction to the trial court,” is effective to remand the case “for a new trial and places the parties in the same position as if the case had never been tried.” Erlin v. National Union Fire Ins. Co., 7 Cal. 2d 547, 549; Stearns v. Aguirre, 7 Cal. 443, 448; Central Sav. Bank v. Lake, 201 Cal. 438, 443; Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Board of Equalization, 329 U. S. 69, 72; 2 Cal. Jur. § 590.
Under § 237 of the Judicial Code, 28 U. S. C., § 344, only “final judgments” of state courts may be appealed to this Court. And it frequently has been said that for a judgment of an appellate court to be final and reviewable for this purpose it must end the litigation by fully determining the rights of the parties, so that nothing remains to be done by the trial court “except the ministerial act of entering the judgment which the appellate court . . . directed.” Department of Banking v. Pink, 317 U. S. 264, 267. Thus, where the effect of the state court’s direction is to grant a new trial, the judgment will not be final.
Increasingly this Court has become less formal in the matter of final judgments. It is no longer the rule that the face of the judgment is determinative of whether it is final. Today “the test is not whether under local rules of practice the judgment is denominated final . . . but rather whether the record shows that the order of the appellate court has in fact fully adjudicated rights and that that adjudication is not subject to further review by a state court . . . Department of Banking v. Pink, 317 U. S. at 268.
Thus, this term in Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Board of Equalization, supra, despite the fact that the Supreme Court of California had reversed a judgment without directions, we determined on the entire record and upon an independent investigation of California law that the judgment was final for the purposes of § 237. In the first place, the facts had been stipulated and, so far as appeared, the stipulation would have been available and controlling upon a second trial. In the second place, the suit was one for a refund of a tax and under California law only those grounds presented in the prior claim for refund could be urged in the suit. The opinion stated: “Since the facts have been stipulated and the Supreme Court of California has passed on the issues which control the litigation, we take it that there is nothing more to be decided.” 329 U. S. at 73-74.
In this case, however, the facts have not been stipulated, nor are there any special procedural restrictions. Thus, under California law, the Gospel Army on the second trial to which it is entitled may amend its complaint and present new facts. “Such a reversal remands the case for a new trial and places the parties in the same position as if the case had never been tried. . . . Of course, upon a retrial the decision of the appellate court becomes the law of the case upon the facts as then presented. But that law must be applied by the trial court to the evidence presented upon the second trial. 'It is settled beyond controversy that a decision of this court upon appeal, as to a [matter] of fact, does not become the law of the case.’ ” Erlin v. National Union Fire Ins. Co., 7 Cal. 2d at 549.
We cannot assume that the Supreme Court of California would hold the ordinances in question constitutional no matter what facts might be presented upon a second trial. Indeed, experience demonstrates that particularly in constitutional cases issues turn upon factual presentation.
Accordingly, the case does not fall within the specific holding of the Richfield Oil case, for, although the modern rule is that in determining whether the state court’s remand is for a new trial this Court will examine both the judgment and the opinion as well as other circumstances which may be pertinent, Department of Banking v. Pink, supra; Richfield Oil Corporation v. State Board of Equalization, supra, this does not mean that in the ordinary case we will disregard the effect of the judgment under the local law. In this case, for example, the effect of the judgment under state practice is to remand the case for a new trial. Nothing in the opinion of the court is to the contrary. We cannot assume that the state court made an error in its judgment, clerical or otherwise. If the parties had thought so, they could have moved to have it amended. Indeed, that course may still be open to them.
The appeal is dismissed.
The money received from the sales is used to meet the cost of operating the store, including compensation paid to the manager and to those who solicit contributions. Whatever remains goes into the corporate treasury.
Ninety per cent of the money received for the goods sent to the salvage mill is paid to the drivers of trucks used by the Gospel Army to collect the salvage. The other ten per cent goes into the treasury.
It is unnecessary to consider precisely what ordinances were involved in this case or were sustained by the California Supreme Court. See Rescue Army v. Municipal Court, 331 U. S. 549.
For cases incorporating the old “face of the judgment” rule, see, e. g., Bruce v. Tobin, 245 U. S. 18; Schlosser v. Hemphill, 198 U. S. 173; Haseltine v. Central Bank, 183 U. S. 130. There was strong dissent to the abandonment of the rule. See the separate opinion of McReynolds, J., in Clark v. Williard, 292 U. S. 112, 129. And for general discussion, cf. Boskey, Finality of State Court Judgments under the Federal Judicial Code (1943) 43 Col. L. Rev. 1002, 1003-1008; Robertson and Kirkham, Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States (1936) 54-57.
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 motion to dismiss is granted and the appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice KENNEDYdelivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1970, Congress created the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, most often known as Amtrak. Later, Congress granted Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) joint authority to issue "metrics and standards" that address the performance and scheduling of passenger railroad services. Alleging that the metrics and standards have substantial and adverse effects upon its members' freight services, respondent-the Association of American Railroads-filed this suit to challenge their validity. The defendants below, petitioners here, are the Department of Transportation, the FRA, and two individuals sued in their official capacity.
Respondent alleges the metrics and standards must be invalidated on the ground that Amtrak is a private entity and it was therefore unconstitutional for Congress to allow and direct it to exercise joint authority in their issuance. This argument rests on the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and the constitutional provisions regarding separation of powers. The District Court rejected both of respondent's claims. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, finding that, for purposes of this dispute, Amtrak is a private entity and that Congress violated nondelegation principles in its grant of joint authority to Amtrak and the FRA. On that premise the Court of Appeals invalidated the metrics and standards.
Having granted the petition for writ of certiorari, 573 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 2865, 189 L.Ed.2d 805 (2014), this Court now holds that, for purposes of determining the validity of the metrics and standards, Amtrak is a governmental entity. Although Amtrak's actions here were governmental, substantial questions respecting the lawfulness of the metrics and standards-including questions implicating the Constitution's structural separation of powers and the Appointments Clause, U.S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2-may still remain in the case. As those matters have not yet been passed upon by the Court of Appeals, this case is remanded.
I
A
Amtrak is a corporation established and authorized by a detailed federal statute enacted by Congress for no less a purpose than to preserve passenger services and routes on our Nation's railroads. See Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation,513 U.S. 374, 383-384, 115 S.Ct. 961, 130 L.Ed.2d 902 (1995); National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Atchison, T. & S.F.R. Co.,470 U.S. 451, 453-457, 105 S.Ct. 1441, 84 L.Ed.2d 432 (1985);
see also Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, 84 Stat. 1328. Congress recognized that Amtrak, of necessity, must rely for most of its operations on track systems owned by the freight railroads. So, as a condition of relief from their common-carrier duties, Congress required freight railroads to allow Amtrak to use their tracks and facilities at rates agreed to by the parties-or in the event of disagreement to be set by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). See 45 U.S.C. §§ 561, 562 (1970 ed.). The Surface Transportation Board (STB) now occupies the dispute-resolution role originally assigned to the ICC. See 49 U.S.C. § 24308(a) (2012 ed.). Since 1973, Amtrak has received a statutory preference over freight transportation in using rail lines, junctions, and crossings. See § 24308(c).
The metrics and standards at issue here are the result of a further and more recent enactment. Concerned by poor service, unreliability, and delays resulting from freight traffic congestion, Congress passed the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) in 2008. See 122 Stat. 4907. Section 207(a) of the PRIIA provides for the creation of the metrics and standards:
"Within 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak shall jointly, in consultation with the Surface Transportation Board, rail carriers over whose rail lines Amtrak trains operate, States, Amtrak employees, nonprofit employee organizations representing Amtrak employees, and groups representing Amtrak passengers, as appropriate, develop new or improve existing metrics and minimum standards for measuring the performance and service quality of intercity passenger train operations, including cost recovery, on-time performance and minutes of delay, ridership, on-board services, stations, facilities, equipment, and other services." Id.,at 4916.
Section 207(d) of the PRIIA further provides:
"If the development of the metrics and standards is not completed within the 180-day period required by subsection (a), any party involved in the development of those standards may petition the Surface Transportation Board to appoint an arbitrator to assist the parties in resolving their disputes through binding arbitration." Id.,at 4917.
The PRIIA specifies that the metrics and standards created under § 207(a) are to be used for a variety of purposes. Section 207(b) requires the FRA to "publish a quarterly report on the performance and service quality of intercity passenger train operations" addressing the specific elements to be measured by the metrics and standards. Id.,at 4916-4917. Section 207(c) provides that, "[t]o the extent practicable, Amtrak and its host rail carriers shall incorporate the metrics and standards developed under subsection (a) into their access and service agreements." Id.,at 4917. And § 222(a) obliges Amtrak, within one year after the metrics and standards are established, to "develop and implement a plan to improve on-board service pursuant to the metrics and standards for such service developed under [§ 207(a) ]." Id.,at 4932.
Under § 213(a) of the PRIIA, the metrics and standards also may play a role in prompting investigations by the STB and in subsequent enforcement actions. For instance, "[i]f the on-time performance of any intercity passenger train averages less than 80 percent for any 2 consecutive calendar quarters," the STB may initiate an investigation "to determine whether and to what extent delays ... are due to causes that could reasonably be addressed ... by Amtrak or other intercity passenger rail operators." Id.,at 4925-4926. While conducting an investigation under § 213(a), the STB "has authority to review the accuracy of the train performance data and the extent to which scheduling and congestion contribute to delays" and shall "obtain information from all parties involved and identify reasonable measures and make recommendations to improve the service, quality, and on-time performance of the train." Id.,at 4926. Following an investigation, the STB may award damages if it "determines that delays or failures to achieve minimum standards ... are attributable to a rail carrier's failure to provide preference to Amtrak over freight transportation." Ibid.The STB is further empowered to "order the host rail carrier to remit" damages "to Amtrak or to an entity for which Amtrak operates intercity passenger rail service." Ibid.
B
In March 2009, Amtrak and the FRA published a notice in the Federal Register inviting comments on a draft version of the metrics and standards. App. 75-76. The final version of the metrics and standards was issued jointly by Amtrak and the FRA in May 2010. Id.,at 129-144. The metrics and standards address, among other matters, Amtrak's financial performance, its scores on consumer satisfaction surveys, and the percentage of passenger-trips to and from underserved communities.
Of most importance for this case, the metrics and standards also address Amtrak's on-time performance and train delays caused by host railroads. The standards associated with the on-time performance metrics require on-time performance by Amtrak trains at least 80% to 95% of the time for each route, depending on the route and year. Id.,at 133-135. With respect to "host-responsible delays"-that is to say, delays attributed to the railroads along which Amtrak trains travel-the metrics and standards provide that "[d]elays must not be more than 900 minutes per 10,000 Train-Miles." Id.,at 138. Amtrak conductors determine responsibility for particular delays. Ibid.,n. 23.
In the District Court for the District of Columbia, respondent alleged injury to its members from being required to modify their rail operations, which mostly involve freight traffic, to satisfy the metrics and standards. Respondent claimed that § 207 "violates the nondelegation doctrine and the separation of powers principle by placing legislative and rulemaking authority in the hands of a private entity [Amtrak] that participates in the very industry it is supposed to regulate."Id.,at 176-177, Complaint ¶ 51. Respondent also asserted that § 207 violates the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause by "[v]esting the coercive power of the government" in Amtrak, an "interested private part[y]." Id.,at 177, ¶¶ 53-54. In its prayer for relief respondent sought, among other remedies, a declaration of § 207's unconstitutionality and invalidation of the metrics and standards. Id.,at 177.
The District Court granted summary judgment to petitioners on both claims. See 865 F.Supp.2d 22 (D.C.2012). Without deciding whether Amtrak must be deemed private or governmental, it rejected respondent's nondelegation argument on the ground that the FRA, the STB, and the political branches exercised sufficient control over promulgation and enforcement of the metrics and standards so that § 207 is constitutional. See id.,at 35.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the judgment of the District Court as to the nondelegation and separation of powers claim, reasoning in central part that because "Amtrak is a private corporation with respect to Congress's power to delegate ... authority," it cannot constitutionally be granted the "regulatory power prescribed in § 207." 721 F.3d 666, 677 (2013). The Court of Appeals did not reach respondent's due process claim. See ibid.
II
In holding that Congress may not delegate to Amtrak the joint authority to issue the metrics and standards-authority it described as "regulatory power," ibid.-the Court of Appeals concluded Amtrak is a private entity for purposes of determining its status when considering the constitutionality of its actions in the instant dispute. That court's analysis treated as controlling Congress' statutory command that Amtrak " 'is not a department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government.' " Id.,at 675(quoting 49 U.S.C. § 24301(a)(3)). The Court of Appeals also relied on Congress' pronouncement that Amtrak " 'shall be operated and managed as a for-profit corporation.' " 721 F.3d, at 675(quoting § 24301(a)(2)); see also id.,at 677("Though the federal government's involvement in Amtrak is considerable, Congress has both designated it a private corporation and instructed that it be managed so as to maximize profit. In deciding Amtrak's status for purposes of congressional delegations, these declarations are dispositive"). Proceeding from this premise, the Court of Appeals concluded it was impermissible for Congress to "delegate regulatory authority to a private entity." Id.,at 670; see also ibid.(holding Carter v. Carter Coal Co.,298 U.S. 238, 56 S.Ct. 855, 80 L.Ed. 1160 (1936), prohibits any such delegation of authority).
That premise, however, was erroneous. Congressional pronouncements, though instructive as to matters within Congress' authority to address, see, e.g., United States ex rel. Totten v. Bombardier Corp.,380 F.3d 488, 491-492 (C.A.D.C.2004)(Roberts, J.), are not dispositive of Amtrak's status as a governmental entity for purposes of separation of powers analysis under the Constitution. And an independent inquiry into Amtrak's status under the Constitution reveals the Court of Appeals' premise was flawed.
It is appropriate to begin the analysis with Amtrak's ownership and corporate structure. The Secretary of Transportation holds all of Amtrak's preferred stock and most of its common stock. Amtrak's Board of Directors is composed of nine members, one of whom is the Secretary of Transportation. Seven other Board members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.49 U.S.C. § 24302(a)(1). These eight Board members, in turn, select Amtrak's president. § 24302(a)(1)(B); § 24303(a). Amtrak's Board members are subject to salary limits set by Congress, § 24303(b); and the Executive Branch has concluded that all appointed Board members are removable by the President without cause, see 27 Op. Atty. Gen. 163 (2003).
Under further statutory provisions, Amtrak's Board members must possess certain qualifications. Congress has directed that the President make appointments based on an individual's prior experience in the transportation industry, § 24302(a)(1)(C), and has provided that not more than five of the seven appointed Board members be from the same political party, § 24302(a)(3). In selecting Amtrak's Board members, moreover, the President must consult with leaders of both parties in both Houses of Congress in order to "provide adequate and balanced representation of the major geographic regions of the United States served by Amtrak." § 24302(a)(2).
In addition to controlling Amtrak's stock and Board of Directors the political branches exercise substantial, statutorily mandated supervision over Amtrak's priorities and operations. Amtrak must submit numerous annual reports to Congress and the President, detailing such information as route-specific ridership and on-time performance. § 24315. The Freedom of Information Act applies to Amtrak in any year in which it receives a federal subsidy, 5 U.S.C. § 552, which thus far has been every year of its existence. Pursuant to its status under the Inspector General Act of 1978 as a " 'designated Federal entity,' " 5 U.S.C.App. § 8G(a)(2), p. 521, Amtrak must maintain an inspector general, much like governmental agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Furthermore, Congress conducts frequent oversight hearings into Amtrak's budget, routes, and prices. See, e.g., Hearing on Reviewing Alternatives to Amtrak's Annual Losses in Food and Beverage Service before the Subcommittee on Government Operations of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 113th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (2013) (statement of Thomas J. Hall, chief of customer service, Amtrak); Hearing on Amtrak's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget: The Starting Point for Reauthorization before the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 113th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 6 (2013) (statement of Joseph H. Boardman, president and chief executive officer, Amtrak).
It is significant that, rather than advancing its own private economic interests, Amtrak is required to pursue numerous, additional goals defined by statute. To take a few examples: Amtrak must "provide efficient and effective intercity passenger rail mobility," 49 U.S.C. § 24101(b); "minimize Government subsidies," § 24101(d); provide reduced fares to the disabled and elderly, § 24307(a); and ensure mobility in times of national disaster, § 24101(c)(9).
In addition to directing Amtrak to serve these broad public objectives, Congress has mandated certain aspects of Amtrak's day-to-day operations. Amtrak must maintain a route between Louisiana and Florida. § 24101(c)(6). When making improvements to the Northeast corridor, Amtrak must apply seven considerations in a specified order of priority. § 24902(b). And when Amtrak purchases materials worth more than $1 million, these materials must be mined or produced in the United States, or manufactured substantially from components that are mined, produced, or manufactured in the United States, unless the Secretary of Transportation grants an exemption. § 24305(f).
Finally, Amtrak is also dependent on federal financial support. In its first 43 years of operation, Amtrak has received more than $41 billion in federal subsidies. In recent years these subsidies have exceeded $1 billion annually. See Brief for Petitioners 5, and n. 2, 46.
Given the combination of these unique features and its significant ties to the Government, Amtrak is not an autonomous private enterprise. Among other important considerations, its priorities, operations, and decisions are extensively supervised and substantially funded by the political branches. A majority of its Board is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is understood by the Executive to be removable by the President at will. Amtrak was created by the Government, is controlled by the Government, and operates for the Government's benefit. Thus, in its joint issuance of the metrics and standards with the FRA, Amtrak acted as a governmental entity for purposes of the Constitution's separation of powers provisions. And that exercise of governmental power must be consistent with the design and requirements of the Constitution, including those provisions relating to the separation of powers.
Respondent urges that Amtrak cannot be deemed a governmental entity in this respect. Like the Court of Appeals, it relies principally on the statutory directives that Amtrak "shall be operated and managed as a for profit corporation" and "is not a department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government." §§ 24301(a)(2)-(3). In light of that statutory language, respondent asserts, Amtrak cannot exercise the joint authority entrusted to it and the FRA by § 207(a).
On that point this Court's decision in Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corp.,513 U.S. 374, 115 S.Ct. 961, 130 L.Ed.2d 902 (1995), provides necessary instruction. In Lebron,Amtrak prohibited an artist from installing a politically controversial display in New York City's Penn Station. The artist sued Amtrak, alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights. In response Amtrak asserted that it was not a governmental entity, explaining that "its charter's disclaimer of agency status prevent[ed] it from being considered a Government entity." Id.,at 392, 115 S.Ct. 961. The Court rejected this contention, holding "it is not for Congress to make the final determination of Amtrak's status as a Government entity for purposes of determining the constitutional rights of citizens affected by its actions." Ibid.To hold otherwise would allow the Government "to evade the most solemn obligations imposed in the Constitution by simply resorting to the corporate form." Id.,at 397, 115 S.Ct. 961. Noting that Amtrak "is established and organized under federal law for the very purpose of pursuing federal governmental objectives, under the direction and control of federal governmental appointees," id.,at 398, 115 S.Ct. 961, and that the Government exerts its control over Amtrak "not as a creditor but as a policymaker," the Court held Amtrak "is an agency or instrumentality of the United States for the purpose of individual rights guaranteed against the Government by the Constitution." Id.,at 394, 399, 115 S.Ct. 961.
Lebronteaches that, for purposes of Amtrak's status as a federal actor or instrumentality under the Constitution, the practical reality of federal control and supervision prevails over Congress' disclaimer of Amtrak's governmental status. Lebroninvolved a First Amendment question, while in this case the challenge is to Amtrak's joint authority to issue the metrics and standards. But "[t]he structural principles secured by the separation of powers protect the individual as well." Bond v. United States,564 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2355, 2365, 180 L.Ed.2d 269 (2011). Treating Amtrak as governmental for these purposes, moreover, is not an unbridled grant of authority to an unaccountable actor. The political branches created Amtrak, control its Board, define its mission, specify many of its day-to-day operations, have imposed substantial transparency and accountability mechanisms, and, for all practical purposes, set and supervise its annual budget. Accordingly, the Court holds that Amtrak is a governmental entity, not a private one, for purposes of determining the constitutional issues presented in this case.
III
Because the Court of Appeals' decision was based on the flawed premise that Amtrak should be treated as a private entity, that opinion is now vacated. On remand, the Court of Appeals, after identifying the issues that are properly preserved and before it, will then have the instruction of the analysis set forth here. Respondent argues that the selection of Amtrak's president, who is appointed "not by the President ... but by the other eight Board Members," "call[s] into question Amtrak's structure under the Appointments Clause," Brief for Respondent 42; that § 207(d)'s arbitrator provision "is a plain violation of the nondelegation principle" and the Appointments Clause requiring invalidation of § 207(a), id.,at 26; and that Congress violated the Due Process Clause by "giv[ing] a federally chartered, nominally private, for-profit corporation regulatory authority over its own industry," id.,at 43. Petitioners, in turn, contend that "the metrics and standards do not reflect the exercise of 'rulemaking' authority or permit Amtrak to 'regulate other private entities,' " and thus do not raise nondelegation concerns. Reply Brief 5 (internal citation omitted). Because "[o]urs is a court of final review and not first view," Zivotofsky v. Clinton,566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 1421, 1430, 182 L.Ed.2d 423 (2012)(internal quotation marks omitted), those issues-to the extent they are properly before the Court of Appeals-should be addressed in the first instance on remand.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 question whether a State, consistently with the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, may impose a nondiscriminatory ad valorem property tax on foreign-owned instrumentalities (cargo containers) of international commerce.
I
The facts were “stipulated on appeal,” App. 29, and were found by the trial court, id., at 33-36, as follows:
Appellants are six Japanese shipping companies; they are incorporated under the laws of Japan, and they have their principal places of business and commercial domiciles in that country. Id., at 34. Appellants operate vessels used exclusively in foreign commerce; these vessels are registered in Japan and have their home ports there. Ibid. The vessels are specifically designed and constructed to accommodate large cargo shipping containers. The containers, like the ships, are owned by appellants, have their home ports in Japan, and are used exclusively for hire in the transportation of cargo in foreign commerce. Id., at 35. Each container is in constant transit save for time spent undergoing repair or awaiting loading and unloading of cargo. All appellants’ containers are subject to property tax in Japan and, in fact, are taxed there.
Appellees are political subdivisions of the State of California. Appellants’ containers, in the course of their international journeys, pass through appellees’ jurisdictions intermittently. Although none of appellants’ containers stays permanently in California, some are there at any given time; a container’s average stay in the State is less than three weeks. Ibid. The containers engage in no intrastate or interstate transportation of cargo except as continuations of international voyages. Id., at 30. Any movements or periods of nonmovement of containers in appellees’ jurisdictions are essential to, and inseparable from, the containers’ efficient use as instrumentalities of foreign commerce. Id., at 35-36.
Property present in California on March 1 (the “lien date” under California law) of any year is subject to ad valorem property tax. Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §§ 117, 405, 2192 (West 1970 and Supp. 1979). A number of appellants’ containers were physically present in appellees’ jurisdictions on the lien dates in 1970, 1971, and 1972; this number was fairly representative of the containers’ “average presence” during each year. App. 35. Appellees levied property taxes in excess of $550,000 on the assessed value of the containers present on March 1 of the three years in question. Id., at 36. During the same period, similar containers owned or controlled by steamship companies domiciled in the United States, that appeared from time to time in Japan during the course of international commerce, were not subject to property taxation in Japan, and therefore were not, in fact, taxed in that country. Id., at 35.
Appellants paid the taxes, so levied, under protest and sued for their refund in the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles. That court awarded judgment in appellants’ favor. Id., at 39-40. The court found that appellants’ containers were instrumentalities of foreign commerce that had their home ports in Japan where they were taxed. The federal courts, however, in the trial court’s view, had “consistently held that vessels which are instrumentalities of foreign eom-merce and engaged in foreign commerce can be taxed in their home port only.” Id., at 24. This rule, said the court, was necessary to avoid multiple taxation, id., at 23; whereas apportionment of taxes can be used to prevent duplicative taxation in interstate commerce, apportionment is “not practical” when one of the taxing entities is a foreign sovereign. In such cases, “[t]here is no tribunal that can adjudicate [competing] rights unless it be the International Court and to invoke its services jurisdiction must be consented to by all parties.” Id., at 24. The application of appellees’ taxes in derogation of the “home port doctrine,” the court concluded, subjected international commerce to multiple taxation and thus was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. In so holding, the court followed Scandinavian Airlines System, Inc. v. County of Los Angeles, 56 Cal. 2d 11, 363 P. 2d 25, cert. denied, 368 U. S. 899 (1961) (hereinafter SAS) (ruling that ad valorem property tax levied by California upon aircraft owned, based, and registered abroad and used exclusively in international commerce, was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause).
The Court of Appeal reversed. 132 Cal. Rptr. 531 (1976). The court appeared to conclude that SAS had been effectively overruled by Sea-Land Service, Inc. v. County of Alameda, 12 Cal. 3d 772, 528 P. 2d 56 (1974). In Sea-Land, the Supreme Court of California had criticized the home port doctrine and labeled it “anachronistic,” and had upheld apportioned property taxation of containers owned by a domestic corporation and used in both intercoastal and foreign commerce. Id., at 787, 528 P. 2d, at 66. The Court of Appeal rejected appellants’ arguments that a different result was required here in view of their containers’ foreign ownership and exclusively international use. The court likewise dismissed any argument as to multiple taxation. “[T]he possibility of international double taxation of instrumentalities of foreign commerce,” it concluded, is “no reason to limit the local power to tax them upon a nondiscriminatory apportioned basis.” 132 Cal. Rptr., at 533.
The California Supreme Court granted a hearing of the case and it, too, reversed the judgment of the Superior Court, essentially adopting the opinion of the Court of Appeal. 20 Cal. 3d 180, 571 P. 2d 254 (1977). It concluded that “the threat of double taxation from foreign taxing authorities has no role in commerce clause considerations of multiple burdens, since burdens in international commerce are not attributable to discrimination by the taxing state and are matters for international agreement.” Id., at 185, 571 P. 2d, at 257. Deeming the containers’ foreign ownership and use irrelevant for purposes of constitutional analysis, id., at 186, 571 P. 2d, at 257-258, the court rejected appellants’ Commerce Clause challenge and sustained the validity of the tax as applied.
Appellants appealed. We postponed consideration of our jurisdiction to the hearing on the merits. 436 U. S. 955 (1978).
II
This Court has appellate jurisdiction to review a final judgment rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had “where is drawn in question the validity of a statute of any state on the ground of its being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States, and the decision is in favor of its validity.” 28 U. S. C. § 1257 (2). In this case, appellants drew in question the validity of California’s ad valorem property tax, contending that the tax, as applied to their containers, was repugnant to the Commerce Clause and various treaties, and the California Supreme Court sustained the validity of the tax. Under these circumstances, this Court’s appellate jurisdiction would seem manifest.
Appellees suggest that the California courts did not in reality uphold the tax statute against constitutional attack, but simply refused to extend to appellants a constitutional immunity from taxation. Motion to Dismiss or Affirm 2. Appellees’ suggested recharacterization is unpersuasive. Appellants squarely challenged the constitutionality of the tax statute, as applied, and the California Supreme Court just as squarely sustained its validity, as applied. We have held consistently that a state statute is sustained within the meaning of § 1257 (2) when a state court holds it applicable to a particular set of facts as against the contention that such application is invalid on federal grounds. E. g., Cohen v. California, 403 U. S. 15, 17-18 (1971); Warren Trading Post v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 380 U. S. 685, 686, and n. 1 (1965); Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 61 n. 3 (1963) ; Dahnke-Walker Milling Co. v. Bondurant, 257 U. S. 282, 288-290 (1921). We conclude that we have appellate jurisdiction of this case.
Ill
A
The “home port doctrine” was first alluded to in Hays v. Pacific Mail S. S. Co., 17 How. 596 (1855). In Hays, California sought to impose property taxes on oceangoing vessels intermittently touching its ports. The vessels’ home port was New York City, where they were owned, registered, and based; they engaged in intercoastal commerce by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and remained in California briefly to unload cargo and undergo repairs. This Court held that the ships had established no tax situs in California:
“We are satisfied that the State of California had no jurisdiction over these vessels for the purpose of taxation; they were not, properly, abiding within its limits, so as to become incorporated with the other personal property of the State; they were there but temporarily, engaged in lawful trade and commerce, with their situs at the home port, where the vessels belonged, and where the owners were liable to be taxed for the capital invested, and where the taxes had been paid.” Id., at 599-600.
Because the vessels were properly taxable in their home port, this Court concluded, they could not be taxed in California at all.
The “home port doctrine” enunciated in Hays was a corollary of the medieval maxim mobilia sequuntur personam (“movables follow the person,” see Black’s Law Dictionary 1154 (rev. 4th ed. 1968)) and resulted in personal property being taxable in full at the domicile of the owner. This theory of taxation, of course, has fallen into desuetude, and the “home port doctrine,” as a rule for taxation of moving equipment, has yielded to a rule of fair apportionment among the States. This Court, accordingly, has held that various instrumen-talities of commerce may be taxed, on a properly apportioned basis, by the nondomiciliary States through which they travel. E. g., Pullman’s Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U. S. 18 (1891); Ott v. Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co., 336 U. S. 169 (1949); Braniff Airways, Inc. v. Nebraska State Bd. of Equalization, 347 U. S. 590 (1954). In discarding the “home port” theory for the theory of apportionment, however, the Court consistently has distinguished the case of oceangoing vessels. E. g., Pullman’s Palace, 141 U. S., at 23-24 (approving apportioned tax on railroad rolling stock, but distinguishing vessels “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce upon the high seas”); Ott, 336 U. S., at 173-174 (approving apportioned tax on barges navigating inland waterways, but “not reach [ing] the question of taxability of ocean carriage”) ; Braniff, 347 U. S., at 600 (approving apportioned tax on domestic aircraft, but distinguishing vessels “used to plow the open seas”). Relying on these cases, appellants argue that the “home port doctrine,” yet vital, continues to prescribe the proper rule for state taxation of oceangoing ships. Since containers are “functionally a part of the ship,” Leather’s Best, Inc. v. S. S. Mormaclynx, 451 F. 2d 800, 815 (CA2 1971), appellants conclude, the containers, like the ships, may be taxed only at their home ports in Japan, and thus are immune from tax in California.
Although appellants' argument, as will be seen below, has an inner logic, we decline to cast our analysis of the present case in this mold. The “home port doctrine” can claim no unequivocal constitutional source; in assessing the legitimacy of California’s tax, the Hays Court did not rely on the Commerce Clause, nor could it, in 1854, have relied on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The basis of the “home port doctrine,” rather, was common-law jurisdiction to tax. Given its origins, the doctrine could be said to be “anachronistic”; given its underpinnings, it may indeed be said to have been “abandoned.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U. S. 292, 320 (1944) (Stone, C. J., dissenting). As a theoretical matter, then, to rehabilitate the “home port doctrine” as a tool of Commerce Clause analysis would be somewhat odd. More importantly, to hold in this case that the “home port doctrine” survives would be to prove too much. If an oceangoing vessel could indeed be taxed only at its home port, taxation by a nondomiciliary State logically would be barred, regardless of whether the vessel were domestically or foreign owned, and regardless of whether it were engaged in domestic or foreign commerce. In Hays itself, the vessel was owned in New York and was engaged in interstate commerce through international waters. There is no need in this case to decide currently the broad proposition whether mere use of international routes is enough, under the “home port doctrine,” to render an instrumentality immune from tax in a nondomiciliary State. The question here is a much more narrow one, that is, whether instrumentalities of commerce that are owned, based, and registered abroad and that are used exclusively in international commerce, may be subjected to apportioned ad valorem property taxation by a State.
B
The Constitution provides that “Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. In construing Congress' power to “regulate Commerce... among the several States,” the Court recently has affirmed that the Constitution confers no immunity from state taxation, and that “interstate commerce must bear its fair share of the state tax burden.” Washington Revenue Dept. v. Association of Wash. Stevedoring Cos., 435 U. S. 734, 750 (1978). Instrumentalities of interstate commerce are no exception to this rule, and the Court regularly has sustained property taxes as applied to various forms of transportation equipment. See Pullman’s Palace, supra (railroad rolling stock); Ott, supra (barges on inland waterways); Braniff, supra (domestic aircraft). Cf. Central Greyhound Lines v. Mealey, 334 U. S. 653, 663 (1948) (motor vehicles). If the state tax “is applied to an activity with a substantial nexus with the taxing State, is fairly apportioned, does not discriminate against interstate commerce, and is fairly related to the services provided by the State,” no impermissible burden on interstate commerce will be found. Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady, 430 U. S. 274, 279 (1977); Washington Revenue Dept., 435 U. S., at 750.
Appellees contend that cargo shipping containers, like other vehicles of commercial transport, are subject to property taxation, and that the taxes imposed here meet Complete Auto’s fourfold requirements. The containers, they argue, have a “substantial nexus” with California because some of them are present in that State at all times; jurisdiction to tax is based on “the habitual employment of the property within the State,” Braniff, 347 U. S., at 601, and appellants’ containers habitually are so employed. The tax, moreover, is “fairly apportioned,” since it is levied only on the containers’ “average presence” in California. The tax “does not discriminate,” thirdly, since it falls evenhandedly on all personal property in the State; indeed, as an ad valorem tax of general application, it is of necessity nondiscriminatory. The tax, finally, is “fairly related to the services provided by” California, services that include not only police and fire protection, but also the benefits of a trained work force and the advantages of a civilized society.
These observations are not without force. We may assume that, if the containers at issue here were instrumentalities of purely interstate commerce, Complete Auto would apply and be satisfied, and our Commerce Clause inquiry would be at an end. Appellants’ containers, however, are instrumentalities of foreign commerce, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. The premise of appellees’ argument is that the Commerce Clause analysis is identical, regardless of whether interstate or foreign commerce is, involved. This premise, we have concluded, must be rejected. When construing Congress’ power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” a more extensive constitutional inquiry is required.
When a State seeks to tax the instrumentalities of foreign commerce, two additional considerations, beyond those articulated in Complete Auto, come into play. The first is the enhanced risk of multiple taxation. It is a commonplace of constitutional jurisprudence that multiple taxation may well be offensive to the Commerce Clause. E. g., Evco v. Jones, 409 U. S. 91, 94 (1972); Central R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 370 U. S. 607, 612 (1962); Standard Oil Co. v. Peck, 342 U. S. 382, 384-385 (1952); Ott, 336 U. S., at 174; J. D. Adams Mfg. Co. v. Storen, 304 U. S. 307, 311 (1938). In order to prevent multiple taxation of interstate commerce, this Court has required that taxes be apportioned among taxing jurisdictions, so that no instrumentality of commerce is subjected to more than one tax on its full value. The corollary of the apportionment principle, of course, is that no jurisdiction may tax the instrumentality in full. “The rule which permits taxation by two or more states on an apportionment basis precludes taxation of all of the property by the state of the domicile.... Otherwise there would be multiple taxation of interstate operations.” Standard Oil Co. v. Peck, 342 U. S., at 384-385; Braniff, 347 U. S., at 601. The basis for this Court’s approval of apportioned property taxation, in other words, has been its ability to enforce full apportionment by all potential taxing bodies.
Yet neither this Court nor this Nation can ensure full apportionment when one of the taxing entities is a foreign sovereign. If an instrumentality of commerce is domiciled abroad, the country of domicile may have the right, consistently with the custom of nations, to impose a tax on its full value. If a State should seek to tax the same instrumentality on an apportioned basis, multiple taxation inevitably results. Hence, whereas the fact of apportionment in interstate commerce means that “multiple burdens logically cannot occur,” Washington Revenue Dept., 435 U. S., at 746-747, the same conclusion, as to foreign commerce, logically cannot be drawn. Due to the absence of an authoritative tribunal capable of ensuring that the aggregation of taxes is computed on no more than one full value, a state tax, even though “fairly apportioned” to reflect an instrumentality’s presence within the State, may subject foreign commerce “ ‘to the risk of a double tax burden to which '[domestic] commerce is not exposed, and which the commerce clause forbids.’ ” Evco v. Jones, 409 U. S., at 94, quoting J. D. Adams Mfg. Co., 304 U. S., at 311.
Second, a state tax on the instrumentalities of foreign commerce may impair federal uniformity in an area where federal uniformity is essential. Foreign commerce is preeminently a matter of national concern. “In international relations and with respect to foreign intercourse and trade the people of the United States act through a single government with unified and adequate national power.” Board of Trustees v. United States, 289 U. S. 48, 59 (1933). Although the Constitution, Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, grants Congress power to regulate commerce “with foreign Nations” and “among the several States” in parallel phrases, there is evidence that the Founders intended the scope of the foreign commerce power to be the greater. Cases of this Court, stressing the need for uniformity in treating with other nations, echo this distinction. In approving state taxes on the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, the Court consistently has distinguished oceangoing traffic, supra, at 442; these cases reflect an awareness that the taxation of foreign commerce may necessitate a uniform national rule. Indeed, in Pullman’s Palace, the Court wrote that the “ Vehicles of commerce by water being instruments of intercommunication with other nations, the regulation of them is assumed by the national legislature/ ” 141 U. S., at 24, quoting Railroad Co. v. Maryland, 21 Wall. 456, 470 (1875). Finally, in discussing the Import-Export Clause, this Court, in Michelin Tire Corp. v. Wages, 423 U. S. 276, 285 (1976), spoke of the Framers’ overriding concern that “the Federal Government must speak with one voice when regulating commercial relations with foreign governments.” The need for federal uniformity is no less paramount in ascertaining the negative implications of Congress’ power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” under the Commerce Clause.
A state tax on instrumentalities of foreign commerce may frustrate the achievement of federal uniformity in several ways. If the State imposes an apportioned tax, international disputes over reconciling apportionment formulae may arise. If a novel state tax creates an asymmetry in the international tax structure, foreign nations disadvantaged by the levy may retaliate against American-owned instrumentalities present in their jurisdictions. Such retaliation of necessity would be directed at American transportation equipment in general, not just that of the taxing State, so that the Nation as a whole would suffer. If other States followed the taxing State’s example, various instrumentalities of commerce could be subjected to varying degrees of multiple taxation, a result that would plainly prevent this Nation from “speaking with one voice” in regulating foreign commerce.
For these reasons, we believe that an inquiry more elaborate than that mandated by Complete Auto is necessary when a State seeks to tax the instrumentalities of foreign, rather than of interstate, commerce. In addition to answering the nexus, apportionment, and nondiscrimination questions posed in Complete Auto, a court must also inquire, first, whether the tax, notwithstanding apportionment, creates a substantial risk of international multiple taxation, and, second, whether the tax prevents the Federal Government from “speaking with one voice when regulating commercial relations with foreign governments.” If a state tax contravenes either of these precepts, it is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
C
Analysis of California's tax under these principles dictates that the tax, as applied to appellants’ containers, is impermissible. Assuming, arguendo, that the tax passes muster under Complete Auto, it cannot withstand scrutiny under either of the additional tests that a tax on foreign commerce must satisfy.
First, California’s tax results in multiple taxation of the instrumentalities of foreign commerce. By stipulation, appellants’ containers are owned, based, and registered in Japan; they are used exclusively in international commerce; and they remain outside Japan only so long as needed to complete their international missions. Under these circumstances, Japan has the right and the power to tax the containers in full. California’s tax, however, creates more than the risk of multiple taxation; it produces multiple taxation in fact. Appellants’ containers not only “are subject to property tax... in Japan,” App. 32, but, as the trial court found, “are, in fact, taxed in Japan.” Id., at 35. Thus, if appellees’ levies were sustained, appellants “would be paying a double tax.” Id., at 23.
Second, California’s tax prevents this Nation from “speaking with one voice” in regulating foreign trade. The desirability of uniform treatment of containers used exclusively in foreign commerce is evidenced by the Customs Convention on Containers, which the United States and Japan have signed. See n. 10, supra. Under this Convention, containers temporarily imported are admitted free of “all duties and taxes whatsoever chargeable by reason of importation.” 20 U. S. T., at 304. The Convention reflects a national policy to remove impediments to the use of containers as “ir struments of international trafile.” 19 U. S. C. § 1322 (a). California’s tax, however, will frustrate attainment of federal uniformity. It is stipulated that American-owned containers are not taxed in Japan. App. 35. California’s tax thus creates an asymmetry in international maritime taxation operating to Japan’s disadvantage. The risk of retaliation by Japan, under these circumstances, is acute, and such retaliation of necessity would be felt by the Nation as a whole. If other States follow California’s example (Oregon already has done so), foreign-owned containers will be subjected to various degrees of multiple taxation, depending on which American ports they enter. This result, obviously, would make “speaking with one voice” impossible. California, by its unilateral act, cannot be permitted to place these impediments before this Nation’s conduct of its foreign relations and its foreign trade.
Because California’s ad valorem tax, as applied to appellants’ containers, results in multiple taxation of the instrumentalities of foreign commerce, and because it prevents the Federal Government from “speaking with one voice” in international trade, the tax is inconsistent with Congress’ power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” We hold the tax, as applied, unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
D
Appellees proffer several objections to this holding. They contend, first, that any multiple taxation in this case is attributable, not to California, but to Japan. California, they say, is just trying to take its share; it should not be foreclosed by Japan’s election to tax the containers in full. California’s tax, however, must be evaluated in the realistic framework of the custom of nations. Japan has the right and the power to tax appellants’ containers at their full value; nothing could prevent it from doing so. Appellees’ argument may have force in the interstate commerce context. Cf. Moorman Mfg. Co. v. Bair, 437 U. S. 267, 277, and n. 12 (1978). In interstate commerce, if the domiciliary State is “to blame” for exacting an excessive tax, this Court is able to insist upon rationalization of the apportionment. As noted above, however, this Court is powerless to correct malapportionment of taxes imposed from abroad in foreign commerce.
Appellees contend, secondly, that any multiple taxation created by California’s tax can be cured by congressional action or by international agreement. We find no merit in this contention. The premise of appellees’ argument is that a State is free to impose demonstrable burdens on commerce, so long as Congress has not pre-empted the field by affirmative regulation. But it long has been “accepted constitutional doctrine that the commerce clause, without the aid of Congressional legislation... affords some protection from state legislation inimical to the national commerce, and that in such cases, where Congress has not acted, this Court, and not the state legislature, is under the commerce clause the final arbiter of the competing demands of state and national interests.” Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona ex rel. Sullivan, 325 U. S. 761, 769 (1945). Accord, Hughes v. Oklahoma, ante, at 326, and n. 2; Boston Stock Exchange v. State Tax Comm’n, 429 U. S. 318, 328 (1977). Appellees’ argument, moreover, defeats, rather than supports, the cause it aims to promote. For to say that California has created a problem susceptible only of congressional — indeed, only of international — solution is to concede that the taxation of foreign-owned containers is an area where a uniform federal rule is essential. California may not tell this Nation or Japan how to run their foreign policies.
Third, appellees argue that, even if California’s tax results in multiple taxation, that fact, after Moorman, is insufficient to condemn a state tax under the Commerce Clause. In Moorman, the Court refused to invalidate Iowa’s single-factor income tax apportionment formula, even though it posed a credible threat of overlapping taxation because of the use of three-factor formulae by other States. See also the several opinions in Moorman in dissent. 437 U. S., at 281, 282, and 283. That case, however, is quite different from this one. In Moorman, the existence of multiple taxation, on the record then before the Court, was “speculative,” id., at 276; on the record of the present case, multiple taxation is a fact. In Moorman, the problem arose, not from lack of apportionment, but from mathematical imprecision in apportionment formu-lae. Yet, this Court consistently had held that the Commerce Clause “does not call for mathematical exactness nor for the rigid application of a particular formula; only if the resulting valuation is palpably excessive will it be set aside.” Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U. S., at 325 (Stone, C. J., dissenting). Accord, Moorman, 437 U. S., at 274 (citing cases). See Hellerstein, State Taxation Under the Commerce Clause: An Historical Perspective, 29 Vand. L. Rev. 335, 347 (1976). This case, by contrast, involves no mere mathematical imprecision in apportionment; it involves a situation where true apportionment does not exist and cannot be policed by this Court at all. Moorman, finally, concerned interstate commerce. This case concerns foreign commerce. Even a slight overlapping of tax — a problem that might be deemed de minimis in a domestic context — assumes importance when sensitive matters of foreign relations and national sovereignty are concerned.
Finally, appellees present policy arguments. If California cannot tax appellants’ containers, they complain, the State will lose revenue, even though the containers plainly have a nexus with California; the State will go uncompensated for the services it undeniably renders the containers; and, by exempting appellants’ containers from tax, the State in effect will be forced to discriminate against domestic, in favor of foreign, commerce. These arguments are not without weight, and, to the extent appellees cannot recoup the value of their services through user fees, they may indeed be disadvantaged by our decision today. These arguments, however, are directed to the wrong forum. “Whatever subjects of this [the commercial] power are in their nature national, or admit only of one uniform system, or plan of regulation, may justly be said to be of such a nature as to require exclusive legislation by Congress.” Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 12 How. 299, 319 (1852). The problems to which appellees refer are problems that admit only of a federal remedy. They do not admit of a unilateral solution by a State.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of California is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Substantially for the reasons set forth by Justice Manuel in his opinion for the unanimous Supreme Court of California, 20 Cal. 3d 180, 571 P. 2d 254, Mr. Justice Rehnquist is of the opinion that the judgment of that court should be affirmed.
“A container is a permanent reusable article of transport equipment... durably made of metal, and equipped with doors for easy access to the goods and for repeated use. It is designed to facilitate the handling, loading, stowage aboard ship, carriage, discharge from ship, movement, and transfer of large numbers of packages simultaneously by mechanical means to minimize the cost and risks of manually processing each package.” Simon, The Law of Shipping Containers, 5 J. Mar. L. & Com. 507, 513 (1974).
See Customs Convention on Containers, Art. I (6), May 18,1956, [1969] 20 U. S. T. 301, 304, T. I. A. S. No. 6634. Although containers may be as small as 1 cubic meter (35.3 cubic feet), 49 CFR §420.3 (c)(5) (1977), they are typically 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and between 8 and 40 feet long. Simon, 5 J. Mar. L. & Com., at 510.
The opinion of the Superior Court is not officially reported.
The Court of Appeal also rejected, 132 Cal. Rptr., at 534, appellants’ argument that California’s tax was prohibited by Art. XI, §§ 1 and 4, and by Art. XXII, § 2, of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Between the United States of America and Japan, Apr. 2, 1953, [1953] 4 U. S. T. 2063, T. I. A. S. No. 2863 (providing that Japanese nationals residing in the United States may not be subjected to payment of taxes “more burdensome than those borne by” United States nationals, and according Japan “most favored nation” status). Appellants repeat this argument here, and we reject it. The provisions appellants cite interdict discrimination against Japanese nationals; there is no evidence that California has treated Japanese containers differently from domestic containers for purposes of applying its property tax.
The Court of Appeal likewise rejected, 132 Cal. Rptr., at 533, appellants’ argument that California’s tax constituted an indirect “Duty of Tonnage” proscribed by U. S. Const., Art. I, § 10, cl. 3. Appellants repeat this argument here; in view of oür disposition, we do not reach it. The Court of Appeal noted that appellants did not challenge California’s tax on due process grounds. See 132 Cal. Rptr., at 532 n. 2. Although appellants proffer a due process challenge here, we need not reach it either.
The California Supreme Court also rejected appellants’ argument that California’s tax constituted “Imposts or Duties” proscribed by U. S. Const., Art. I, § 10, cl. 2. 20 Cal. 3d, at 186-188, 571 P. 2d, at 258-259. Appellants reiterate this argument here; in view of our disposition, we do not consider it. In their petition for rehearing, appellants argued that the tax contravened Art. Ill, §§ 1 and 2 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 61 Stat. A18 (providing that “imported products” may not be subjected to heavier taxes, or to less favorable treatment, than like products of domestic origin). Pet. for Rehearing 35-40. The court rejected this latter argument sub silentio. 20 Cal. 3d, at 190. Appellants repeat this argument here, and we deem it frivolous. Assuming, argu
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.
For over 15 years, the Indian Tribe known as the Navajo Nation has been pursuing a claim for money damages against the Federal Government based on an asserted breach of trust by the Secretary of the Interior in connection with his approval of amendments to a coal lease executed by the Tribe. The original lease took effect in 1964. The amendments were approved in 1987. The litigation was initiated in 1993. Six years ago, we held that “the Tribe’s claim for compensation... fails,” United States v. Navajo Nation, 537 U. S. 488, 493 (2003) (Navajo I), but after further proceedings on remand the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit resuscitated it. 501 F. 3d 1327 (2007). Today we hold, once again, that the Tribe’s claim for compensation fails. This matter should now be regarded as closed.
I. Legal Background
The Federal Government cannot be sued without its consent. FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U. S. 471, 475 (1994). Limited consent has been granted through a variety of statutes, including one colloquially referred to as the Indian Tucker Act:
“The United States Court of Federal Claims shall have jurisdiction of any claim against the United States accruing after August 13, 1946, in favor of any tribe ... whenever such claim is one arising under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States, or Executive orders of the President, or is one which otherwise would be cognizable in the Court of Federal Claims if the claimant were not an Indian tribe, band or group.” 28 U. S. C. § 1505.
The last clause refers to the (ordinary) Tucker Act, which waives immunity with respect to any claim “founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort.” § 1491(a)(1).
Neither the Tucker Act nor the Indian Tucker Act creates substantive rights; they are simply jurisdictional provisions that operate to waive sovereign immunity for claims premised on other sources of law (e. g., statutes or contracts). United States v. Testan, 424 U. S. 392, 400 (1976); United States v. Mitchell, 445 U. S. 535, 538 (1980) (Mitchell I). The other source of law need not explicitly provide that the right or duty it creates is enforceable through a suit for damages, but it triggers liability only if it “ ‘can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation by the Federal Government.’” Testan, supra, at 400 (quoting Eastport S. S. Corp. v. United States, 178 Ct. Cl. 599, 607, 372 F. 2d 1002, 1009 (1967)); see also United States v. Mitchell, 463 U. S. 206, 218 (1983) (Mitchell II); Navajo I, 537 U. S., at 503.
As we explained in Navajo I, there are thus two hurdles that must be cleared before a tribe can invoke jurisdiction under the Indian Tucker Act. First, the tribe “must identify a substantive source of law that establishes specific fiduciary or other duties, and allege that the Government has failed faithfully to perform those duties.” Id., at 506. “If that threshold is passed, the court must then determine whether the relevant source of substantive law ‘can fairly be interpreted as mandating compensation for damages sustained as a result of a breach of the duties [the governing law] impose[s].’” Ibid, (alteration in original). At the second stage, principles of trust law might be relevant “in drawing the inference that Congress intended damages to remedy a breach.” United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 537 U. S. 465, 477 (2003).
II. History of the Present Case
A. The Facts
A comprehensive recitation of the facts can be found in Navajo I, supra, at 495-502. By way of executive summary: The Tribe occupies a large Indian reservation in the American Southwest, on which there are significant coal deposits. In 1964 the Secretary of the Interior approved a lease (Lease 8580), executed by the Tribe and the predecessor of Peabody Coal Company, allowing the company to engage in coal mining on a tract of the reservation in exchange for royalty payments to the Tribe. The term of the lease was set at “ten (10) years from the date hereof, and for so long thereafter as the substances produced are being mined by the Lessee in accordance with its terms, in paying quantities,” App. 189; it is still in effect today. The royalty rates were originally set at a maximum of 37.5 cents per ton of coal, but the lease also said that the rates were “subject to reasonable adjustment by the Secretary of the Interior” after 20 years and again “at the end of each successive ten-year period thereafter.” Id., at 194.
The dispute in this case concerns the Tribe’s attempt to secure such an adjustment to the royalty rate after the initial 20-year period elapsed in 1984. At that point, the Tribe requested that the Secretary exercise his power to increase the royalty rate, and the Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the Navajo Area issued an opinion letter imposing a new rate of 20 percent of gross proceeds. Id., at 8-9. But Peabody filed an administrative appeal, and while it was pending the Tribe and the company reached a negotiated agreement to set a rate of 12.5 percent of gross proceeds instead. As a result, the Area Director’s decision was vacated, the administrative appeal was dismissed, and the Secretary approved the amendments to the lease.
B. This Litigation Through Navajo I
The Tribe launched the present lawsuit in 1993, claiming that the Secretary’s actions in connection with the approval of the lease amendments constituted a breach of trust. In particular, the Tribe alleged that the Secretary, following upon improper ex parte contacts with Peabody, had delayed action on Peabody’s administrative appeal in order to pressure the economically desperate Tribe to return to the bargaining table. This, the complaint charged, was in violation of the United States’ fiduciary duty to act in the Indians’ best interests. The Tribe sought $600 million in damages, invoking the Indian Tucker Act to bypass sovereign immunity.
The Court of Federal Claims granted summary judgment to the United States, concluding that “the Navajo Nation has failed to present statutory authority which can be fairly interpreted as mandating compensation for the government’s fiduciary wrongs,” Navajo Nation v. United States, 46 Fed. Cl. 217, 236 (2000), and therefore could not sue under the Indian Tucker Act. The Federal Circuit reversed that ruling and held that the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938 (IMLA), Ch. 198, 52 Stat. 347, 25 U. S. C. §396a et seq., among other statutes, gave the Government broad control over mineral leasing on Indian lands, thus creating a fiduciary duty enforceable through suits for monetary damages. Navajo Nation v. United States, 263 F. 3d 1325, 1330-1332 (2001). Finding that the Government had in fact violated its obligations, the Court of Appeals reinstated the suit.
We granted certiorari, United States v. Navajo Nation, 535 U. S. 1111 (2002), and (as described by the author of the ensuing opinion, concurring in a companion case) considered “the threshold question” presented by the Tribe’s attempt to invoke the Indian Tucker Act: “whether the IMLA and its regulations impose any concrete substantive obligations, fiduciary or otherwise, on the Government,” White Mountain, supra, at 480 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). The answer was an unequivocal no.
The relevant provision of the IMLA provided as follows:
“[U]nallotted lands within any Indian reservation or lands owned by any tribe . .. may, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, be leased for mining purposes, by authority of the tribal council or other authorized spokesmen for such Indians, for terms not to exceed ten years and as long thereafter as minerals are produced in paying quantities.” 25 U. S. C. § 396a.
Another provision of the IMLA authorized the Secretary to promulgate regulations governing operations under such leases, § 396d, but during the relevant period the regulations applicable to coal leases, beyond setting a minimum royalty rate of 10 cents per ton, 25 CFR § 211.15(c) (1985), did not limit the Secretary’s approval authority.
We construed the IMLA in light of its purpose: to “enhance tribal self-determination by giving Tribes, not the Government, the lead role in negotiating mining leases with third parties.” Navajo I, 537 U. S., at 508. Consistent with that goal, the IMLA gave the Secretary not a “comprehensive managerial role,” id., at 507, but only the power to approve coal leases already negotiated by Tribes. That authority did not create, expressly or otherwise, a trust duty with respect to coal leasing and so there existed no enforceable fiduciary obligations that the Tribe could sue the Government for having neglected. Id., at 507-508.
We distinguished Mitchell II, which involved a series of statutes and regulations that gave the Federal Government “full responsibility to manage Indian resources and land for the benefit of the Indians.” 463 U. S., at 224. Title 25 U. S. C. § 406(a) permitted Indians to sell timber with the consent of the Secretary of the Interior, but directed the Secretary to base his decisions on “a consideration of the needs and best interests of the Indian owner and his heirs” and enumerated specific factors to guide that decision-making. We understood that statute — in combination with several other provisions and the applicable regulations — to create a fiduciary duty with respect to Indian timber. Mitchell II, supra, at 219-224. But neither the IMLA nor its regulations established any analogous duties or obligations in the coal context. Navajo I, supra, at 507-508.
Nor did the other statutes cited by the Tribe — 25 U. S. C. §399 and the Indian Mineral Development Act of 1982 (IMDA), 96 Stat. 1938, 25 U. S. C. §2101 et seq. — help its case. Section 399 “is not part of the IMLA and [did] not govern Lease 8580,” Navajo I, 537 U. S., at 509; rather, it granted to the Secretary the power to lease Indian land on his own say-so. We therefore found it irrelevant to the question whether “the Secretary’s more limited approval role under the IMLA” created any enforceable duties. Ibid. And while the IMDA did set standards to govern the Secretary’s approval of other mining-related agreements, Lease 8580 “falls outside the IMDA’s domain,” ibid.; that law was accordingly beside the point.
Having resolved that “we ha[d] no warrant from any relevant statute or regulation to conclude that [the Secretary’s] conduct implicated a duty enforceable in an action for damages under the Indian Tucker Act,” this Court reversed the Federal Circuit’s judgment in favor of the Tribe and “remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” Id., at 514.
C. Proceedings on Remand
On remand, the Tribe argued that even if its suit could not be maintained on the basis of the IMLA, the IMDA, or § 399, a “network” of other statutes, treaties, and regulations could provide the basis for its claims. The Government objected that our opinion foreclosed that possibility, but the Federal Circuit disagreed and remanded for consideration of the argument in the first instance. 347 F. 3d 1327 (2003). The Court of Federal Claims, however, persisted in its original decision to dismiss the Tribe’s claim, explaining that nothing in the suggested “network” succeeded in tying “specific laws or regulatory provisions to the issue at hand,” namely, the Secretary’s approval of royalty rates in coal leases negotiated by tribes. 68 Fed. Cl. 805, 811 (2005).
Once again the Federal Circuit reversed, this time relying primarily on three statutory provisions — two sections of the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950, §§5,8,64 Stat. 46,25 U. S. C. §§ 635(a), 638; and one section of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, 30 U. S. C. § 1300(e)— to allow the Tribe’s claim to proceed. The court held that the Government had violated the specific duties created by those statutes, as well as “common law trust duties of care, candor, and loyalty” that arise from the comprehensive control over tribal coal that is exercised by the Government. 501 F. 3d 1327, 1346 (2007).
Once again we granted the Government’s petition for a writ of certiorari. 554 U. S. 944 (2008).
III. Analysis
A. Threshold Matter
The Government points to our categorical concluding language in Navajo I: “[W]e have no warrant from any relevant statute or regulation to conclude that [the Secretary’s] conduct implicated a duty enforceable in an action for damages under the Indian Tucker Act,” 537 U. S., at 514. This proves, the Government claims, that this Court definitively terminated the Tribe’s claim last time around, so that the lower court’s later resurrection of the suit was flatly inconsistent with our mandate. But, to be fair, our opinion (like the Court of Appeals decision we were reviewing, Navajo Nation, 263 F. 3d, at 1327, 1330-1331) did not analyze any statutes beyond the IMLA, the IMDA, and § 399. It is thus conceivable, albeit unlikely, that some other relevant statute, though invoked by the Tribe at the outset of the litigation, might have gone unmentioned by the Federal Circuit and unanalyzed by this Court.
So we cannot say that our mandate completely foreclosed the possibility that such a statute might allow for the Tribe to succeed on remand. What we can say, however, is that our reasoning in Navajo I — in particular, our emphasis on the need for courts to “train on specific rights-creating or duty-imposing statutory or regulatory prescriptions,” 537 U. S., at 506 — left no room for that result based on the sources of law that the Court of Appeals relied upon.
B. 25U.S.C. § 635(a)
The first of the two discussed provisions of the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950 — like the IMLA — permits Indians to lease reservation lands if the Secretary approves of the deal:
“Any restricted Indian lands owned by the Navajo Tribe, members thereof, or associations of such members . . . may be leased by the Indian owners, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, for public, religious, educational, recreational, or business purposes, including the development or utilization of natural resources in connection with operations under such leases. All leases so granted shall be for a term of not to exceed twenty-five years, but may include provisions authorizing their renewal for an additional term of not to exceed twenty-five years, and shall be made under such regulations as may be prescribed by the Secretary.... Nothing contained in this section shall be construed to repeal or affect any authority to lease restricted Indian lands conferred by or pursuant to any other provision of law.” 25 U. S. C. § 635(a).
The Tribe contends that this section renders the Government liable for any breach of trust in connection with the approval of leases executed pursuant to the authority it grants. Whether or not that is so, the provision only even arguably matters if Lease 8580 was issued under its authority.
In Navajo I we presumed, as did the parties, that the lease had been issued pursuant to the IMLA. 537 U. S., at 495. But now the Tribe has changed its tune, and contends that Lease 8580 was approved under § 635(a), not under the IMLA at all. Brief for Respondent 39. The Government says otherwise. Section 635(a) permits leasing only for “public, religious, educational, recreational, or business purposes,” and the Government contends that mining is not embraced by those terms. While leases under § 635(a) may provide for “the development or utilization of natural resources,” they may do so only “in connection with operations under such leases,” i. e., in connection with operations for the enumerated purposes. By contrast, mining leases were permitted and governed by the IMLA even before the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act was enacted in 1950.
We need not decide whether the Government is correct on that point, or whether mining could ever qualify as a “business purpos[e]” under the statute, because the Tribe’s argument suffers from a more fundamental problem. Section 635(a) authorizes leases only for terms of up to 25 years, renewable for up to another 25 years. In contrast, the IMLA allows “for terms not to exceed ten years and as long thereafter as minerals are produced in paying quantities.” 25 U. S. C. § 396a. Lease 8580, mirroring the latter language, sets a term of “ten (10) years from the date hereof, and for so long thereafter as the substances produced are being mined by the Lessee in accordance with its terms, in paying quantities.” App. 189. That indefinite lease term strongly suggests that it was negotiated by the Tribe and approved by the Secretary under the powers authorized by the IMLA, not the Rehabilitation Act.
The Tribe’s only responses to this apparently fatal defect in its argument are (1) that § 635(a) expressly leaves unaffected “any authority to lease restricted Indian lands conferred by or pursuant to any other provision of law,” including the authority to lease for indefinite terms; and (2) that Stewart Udall, who served as Secretary of the Interior during the 1960’s, recently testified that “coal leasing and related development was the centerpiece of the resources development program” under the Rehabilitation Act, id., ¶3, at 569.
As to the former: That is precisely the point. Section 635(a) creates a supplemental authority for leasing Indian land; it does not displace authority granted elsewhere. But in light of the different conditions attached to the different grants, it is apparent that a particular lease must be executed and approved pursuant to a particular authorization. The saving clause in § 635(a) does not allow the Tribe to mix-and-match, to combine the (allegedly) duty-creating mechanism of the Rehabilitation Act with the indefinite lease term of the IMLA. It must be one or the other, and the record persuasively demonstrates that Lease 8580 is an IMLA lease.
As to Secretary Udall’s testimony: That is not inconsistent with our conclusion. The Interior Department may have viewed coal leasing as an important part of the program to rehabilitate the Navajo Tribe but that does not prove that Lease 8580 was issued pursuant to the supplemental leasing authority granted by the Rehabilitation Act, rather than the pre-existing leasing authority of the IMLA preserved by the Rehabilitation Act. The latter, perhaps because of its longer lease terms, was evidently preferable to the Tribe or the coal company or both.
Because the lease in this case “falls outside” § 635(a)’s “domain,” Navajo I, supra, at 509, the Tribe cannot invoke it as a source of money-mandating rights or duties.
C. 25 U. S. C. §638
Next, the Tribe points to a second provision in the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act:
“The Tribal Councils of the Navajo and Hopi Tribes and the Indian communities affected shall be kept informed and afforded opportunity to consider from their inception plans pertaining to the program authorized by this subchapter. In the administration of the program, the Secretary of the Interior shall consider the recommendations of the tribal councils and shall follow such recommendations whenever he deems them feasible and consistent with the objectives of this subchapter.” 25 U.S. C. §638.
In the Tribe’s view, the Secretary violated this provision by failing promptly to abide by its wishes to affirm the Area Director’s order increasing the royalty rate under Lease 8580 to a full 20 percent of gross proceeds.
We cannot agree. The “program” twice mentioned in §638 refers back to the Act’s opening provision, which directs the Secretary to undertake “a program of basic improvements for the conservation and development of the resources of the Navajo and Hopi Indians, the more productive employment of their manpower, and the supplying of means to be used in their rehabilitation.” § 631. The statute then enumerates various projects to be included in that program, and authorizes appropriation of funds (in specific amounts) for each. E. g., “Soil and water conservation and range improvement work, $10,000,000.” §631(1).
The only listed project even remotely related to this case is “[s]urveys and studies of timber, coal, mineral, and other physical and human resources.” § 631(3). Of course a lease is neither a survey nor a study. To read §688 as imposing a money-mandating duty on the Secretary to follow recommendations of the Tribe as to royalty rates under coal leases executed pursuant to another Act, and to allow for the enforcement of that duty through the Indian Tucker Act, would simply be too far a stretch.
D. 30 U.S.C. §1201 etseq.
The final statute invoked by the Tribe is the most easily dispensed with. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), 91 Stat. 445, 30 U. S. C. § 1201 et seq., is a comprehensive statute that regulates all surface coal mining operations. See generally § 1202; Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452 U. S. 264, 268-272 (1981). One section of the Act, §1300, deals with coal mining specifically on Indian lands, and the Tribe cites subsection (e): “With respect to leases issued after [the date of enactment of this Act], the Secretary shall include and enforce terms and conditions in addition to those required by subsections (c) and (d) of this section as may be requested by the Indian tribe in such leases.”
According to the Tribe, this provision requires the Secretary to enforce whatever terms the Indians request with respect to coal leases. In light of the fact that the referenced subsections (c) and (d) refer exclusively to environmental protection standards, that interpretation is highly suspect. In any event, because Lease 8580 was issued in 1964 — some 13 years before the date of enactment of the SMCRA — the provision is categorically inapplicable. The Federal Circuit concluded otherwise on the theory that the amendments to the lease were approved after 1977. But § 1300(e) is limited to leases “issued” after that date; and even the Tribe does not contend that a lease is “issued” whenever it is amended. The SMCRA is irrelevant here.
E. Government’s “Comprehensive Control” Over Coal
The Federal Circuit’s opinion also suggested that the Government’s “comprehensive control” over coal on Indian land gives rise to fiduciary duties based on common-law trust principles. It noted that the Government had conducted surveys and studies of the Tribe’s coal resources, 501 F. 3d, at 1341; that the Interior Department imposed various requirements on coal mining operations on Indian land — regulating, for example, “signs and markers, postmining use of land, backfilling and grading, waste disposal, topsoil handling, protection of hydrologic systems, revegetation, and steep-slope mining,” id., at 1342; and that the Government in practice exercised control over the calculation of coal values and quantities for royalty purposes, even though such control was codified by regulation only after the events at issue here, id., at 1342-1343.
The Federal Government’s liability cannot be premised on control alone. The text of the Indian Tucker Act makes clear that only claims arising under “the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States, or Executive orders of the President” are cognizable (unless the claim could be brought by a non-Indian plaintiff under the ordinary Tucker Act). 28 U. S. C. § 1505. In Navajo I we reiterated that the analysis must begin with “specific rights-creating or duty-imposing statutory or regulatory prescriptions.” 537 U. S., at 506. If a plaintiff identifies such a prescription, and if that prescription bears the hallmarks of a “conventional fiduciary relationship,” White Mountain, 537 U. S., at 473, then trust principles (including any such principles premised on “control”) could play a role in “inferring that the trust obligation [is] enforceable by damages,” id., at 477. But that must be the second step of the analysis, not (as the Federal Circuit made it) the starting point.
Navajo I determined that the IMLA, which governs the lease at issue here, does not create even a “‘limited trust relationship’ ” with respect to coal leasing. 537 U. S., at 508 (quoting Mitchell I, 445 U. S., at 542). Since the statutes discussed in the preceding subparts, supra, at 296-300, do not apply to the lease at all, they likewise create no such relationship. Because the Tribe cannot identify a specific, applicable, trust-creating statute or regulation that the Government violated, we do not reach the question whether the trust duty was money mandating. Thus, neither the Government’s “control” over coal nor common-law trust principles matter.
* * *
None of the sources of law cited by the Federal Circuit and relied upon by the Tribe provides any more sound a basis for its breach-of-trust lawsuit against the Federal Government than those we analyzed in Navajo I. This case is at an end. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to affirm the Court of Federal Claims’ dismissal of the Tribe’s complaint.
It is so ordered.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens joins, concurring.
I am not through regretting that my position in United States v. Navajo Nation, 537 U. S. 488, 514-521 (2003) (dissenting opinion), did not carry the day. But it did not, and I agree that the precedent of that case calls for the result reached here.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declared unconstitutional two sections of a licensing ordinance governing coin-operated amusement establishments in the city of Mesquite, Texas. Section 6 of Ordinance 1353, which directs the Chief of Police to consider whether a license applicant has any “connections with criminal elements,” was held to be unconstitutionally vague. Section 5, which prohibits a licensee from allowing children under 17 years of age to operate the amusement devices unless accompanied by a parent or legal guardian, was held to be without a rational basis. The first holding rests solely on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court of Appeals stated that its second holding rested on two provisions of the Texas Constitution as well as the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Because Congress has limited our jurisdiction to review questions of state law, and because there is ambiguity in the Court of Appeals’ second holding, we conclude that a remand for clarification of that holding is necessary. There is, however, no impediment to our review of the first holding.
On April 5, 1976, to accommodate the proposal of Aladdin’s Castle, Inc. (Aladdin), to open an amusement center in a shopping mall, the city exempted from the prohibition against operation of amusement devices by unattended children certain amusement centers, the features of which were defined in terms of Aladdin’s rules, as long as children under the age of seven were accompanied by an adult. Thereafter, Aladdin entered into a long-term lease and made other arrangements to open a center in the mall. In August, however, its application for a license was refused because the Chief of Police had concluded that Aladdin’s parent corporation was connected with criminal elements. Aladdin then brought suit in a Texas state court and obtained an injunction requiring the city to issue it a license forthwith. The Texas court found that neither Aladdin nor its parent corporation had any connection with criminal elements and that#he vagueness in the ordinance contravened both the Texas and the Federal Constitutions.
On February 7, 1977, less than a month after the city had complied with the state-court injunction by issuing the license to Aladdin, the city adopted a new ordinance repealing Aladdin’s exemption, thereby reinstating the 17-year age requirement, and defining the term “connections with criminal elements” in some detail. Aladdin then commenced this action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, praying for an injunction against enforcement of the new ordinance. After a trial, the District Court held that the language “connections with criminal elements,” even as defined, was unconstitutionally vague, but the District Court upheld the age restriction in the ordinance. As already noted, the Court of Appeals affirmed the former holding and reversed the latter.
Invoking our appellate jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1254(2), the city now asks us to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. After we noted probable jurisdiction, 451 U. S. 981, Aladdin advised us that the ordinance reviewed by the Court of Appeals had been further amended in December 1977 by eliminating the phrase “connections with criminal elements.” The age restriction, however, was retained.
I
A question of mootness is raised by the revision of the ordinance that became effective while the case was pending in the Court of Appeals. When that court decided that the term “connections with criminal elements” was unconstitutionally vague, that language was no longer a part of the ordinance. Arguably, if the court had been fully advised, it would have regarded the vagueness issue as moot. It is clear to us, however, that it was under no duty to do so.
It is well settled that a defendant’s voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not deprive a federal court of its power to determine the legality of the practice. Such abandonment is an important factor bearing on the question whether a court should exercise its power to enjoin the defendant from renewing the practice, but that is a matter relating to the exercise rather than the existence of judicial power. In this case the city’s repeal of the objectionable language would not preclude it from reenacting precisely the same provision if the District Court’s judgment were vacated. The city followed that course with respect to the age restriction, which was first reduced for Aladdin from 17 to 7 and then, in obvious response to the state court’s judgment, the exemption was eliminated. There is no certainty that a similar course would not be pursued if its most recent amendment were effective to defeat federal jurisdiction. We therefore must confront the merits of the vagueness holding.
“It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 108 (emphasis added). We may assume that the definition of “connections with criminal elements” in the city’s ordinance is so vague that a defendant could not be convicted of the offense of having such a connection; we may even assume, without deciding, that such a standard is also too vague to support the denial of an application for a license to operate an amusement center. These assumptions are not sufficient, however, to support a holding that this ordinance is invalid.
After receiving recommendations from the Chief of Police, the Chief Building Inspector, and the City Planner, the City Manager decides whether to approve the application for a license; if he disapproves, he must note his reasons in writing. The applicant may appeal to the City Council. If the City Manager disapproved the application because of the Chief of Police’s adverse recommendation as to the applicant’s character, then the applicant must show to the City Council that “he or it is of good character as a law abiding citizen,” which is defined in the ordinance to “mean substantially that standard employed by the Supreme Court of the State of Texas in the licensing of attorneys as set forth in [the Texas statutes].” § 9 of Ordinance 1353, App. to Juris. Statement 13. An applicant may further appeal to the state district court. It is clear from this summary that the phrase “connections with criminal elements,” as used in this ordinance, is not the standard for approval or disapproval of the application.
The applicant’s possible connection with criminal elements is merely a subject that the ordinance directs the Chief of Police to investigate before he makes a recommendation to the City Manager either to grant or to deny a pending application. The Federal Constitution does not preclude a city from giving vague or ambiguous directions to officials who are authorized to make investigations and recommendations. There would be no constitutional objection to an ordinance that merely required an administrative official to review “all relevant information” or “to make such investigation as he deems appropriate” before formulating a recommendation. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was therefore incorrect insofar as it held that the directive to the Chief of Police is unconstitutionally vague.
II
The Court of Appeals stated that its conclusion that the age requirement in the ordinance is invalid rested on its interpretation of the Texas Constitution as well as the Federal Constitution:
“We hold that the seventeen year old age requirement violates both the United States and Texas constitutional guarantees of due process of law, and that the application of this age requirement to coin-operated amusement centers violates the federal and Texas constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the law.” 630 F. 2d 1029, 1038-1039 (1980) (footnotes omitted).
In the omitted footnotes the court quoted two provisions of the Texas Constitution that are similar, but by no means identical, to parts of the Federal Constitution.
Because our jurisdiction of this appeal is based on 28 U. S. C. §1254(2), we are precluded from reviewing the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Texas Constitution. For the federal statute provides:
“Cases in the courts of appeals may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by the following methods:
“(2) By appeal by a party relying on a State statute held by a court of appeals to be invalid as repugnant to the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States, but such appeal shall preclude review by writ of certio-rari at the instance of such appellant, and the review on appeal shall be restricted to the Federal questions presented . . . .”
If the Texas Constitution provides an independent ground for the Court of Appeals’ judgment, our possible disagreement with its exposition of federal law would not provide a sufficient basis for reversing its judgment. If that be so, we should simply dismiss the appeal insofar as the city seeks review of the invalidation of the age requirement. Cf. United States v. Hastings, 296 U. S. 188, 193.
The city contends, however, that the Court of Appeals did not place independent reliance on Texas law but merely treated the Texas constitutional protections as congruent with the corresponding federal provisions. Under this reading of the Court of Appeals’ opinion, our correction of any federal error automatically would result in a revision of the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Texas Constitution. Instead of providing independent support for the judgment below, the Texas law, as understood by the Court of Appeals, would be dependent on our reading of federal law. Although the city’s contention derives support from the Court of Appeals’ greater reliance on federal precedents than on Texas cases, we nevertheless decline, for the reasons that follow, to decide the federal constitutional question now.
It is first noteworthy that the language of the Texas constitutional provision is different from, and arguably significantly broader than, the language of the corresponding federal provisions. As a number of recent State Supreme Court decisions demonstrate, a state court is entirely free to read its own State’s constitution more broadly than this Court reads the Federal Constitution, or to reject the mode of analysis used by this Court in favor of a different analysis of its corresponding constitutional guarantee. See generally Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 489 (1977), and cases cited therein. Because learned members of the Texas Bar sit on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and because that court confronts questions of Texas law in the regular course of its judicial business, that court is in a better position than are we to recognize any special nuances of state law. The fact that the Court of Appeals cited only four Texas cases is an insufficient basis for concluding that it did not make an independent analysis of Texas law.
Second, it is important to take note of the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Texas “requirement of legislative rationality.” That interpretation seems to adopt a standard requiring that a legislative classification rests “ ‘ “upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation . . . 630 F. 2d, at 1039. This formulation is derived from this Court’s opinion in F. S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U. S. 412, 415. But it is unclear whether this Court would apply the Royster Guano standard to the present case. See United States Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U. S. 166; Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190. Therefore, it is surely not evident that the Texas standard and the federal standard are congruent.
Finally, and of greater importance, is this Court’s policy of avoiding the unnecessary adjudication of federal constitutional questions. As we recently have noted, see Minnick v. California Dept. of Corrections, 452 U. S. 105, this self-imposed limitation on the exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction has an importance to the institution that transcends the significance of particular controversies. No reason for hasty decision of the constitutional question presented by this case has been advanced. If Texas law provides independent support for the Court of Appeals’ judgment, there is no need for decision of the federal issue. On the other hand, if the city is correct in suggesting that the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of state law is dependent on its federal analysis, that court can so advise us and we can then discharge our responsibilities free of concern that we may be unnecessarily reaching out to decide a novel constitutional question.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in part, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
630 F. 2d 1029 (1980).
Section 6 of Ordinance 1353 of the Code of the city of Mesquite provided in pertinent part:
“Any person desiring to obtain a license for a coin-operated amusement establishment shall apply to the City Secretary by original and five (5) copies, one of which shall be routed to the City Manager, Chief of Police, Chief Building Inspector and City Planner, for review.
“Upon approval by each of the parties and payment of the license fee, the City Secretary shall issue a license for such establishment, which shall be valid for one (1) year and shall be non-transferable.
“The Chief of Police shall make his recommendation based upon his investigation of the applicant’s character and conduct as a law abiding person and shall consider past operations, if any, convictions of felonies and crimes involving moral turpitude and connections with criminal elements, taking into consideration the attraction by such establishments of those of tender years.
“The Chief Building Inspector and City Planner shall determine compliance with applicable building and zoning ordinances of the City.
“When the City Manager has received the recommendations from the Chief of Police, Chief Building Inspector and City Planner, he shall review such application together with such recommendations as may be furnished and shall approve such application or disapprove same with written notation of his reasons for disapproval.
“Upon disapproval, the applicant may make such corrections as noted and request approval, request withdrawal and refund of license fee, or give notice of appeal from the City Manager’s decision.
“In the event of appeal from the City Manager’s decision the applicant shall give written notice of his intention to appeal within ten (10) days of notice of the City Manager’s decision. Such appeal shall be heard by the City Council within thirty (30) days from date of such notice unless a later date is agreed upon by applicant.
“Upon appeal to the City Council of the City Manager’s decision based upon an adverse recommendation by the Chief of Police as to applicant’s character, the applicant shall have the same burden as prescribed in Article 305, V. A. C. S. to show to the Council that he or it is of good character as a law abiding citizen to such extent that a license should be issued.
“Upon hearing the Council may reverse the decision of the City Manager in whole or in part or may affirm such decision.
“An applicant may appeal such decision to the District Court within thirty (30) days but such appeal shall be upon the substantial evidence rule.
“For violation of any of the requirements of this ordinance the City Manager may upon three (3) days notice of Licensee revoke the license granted hereunder. The same rights of appeal shall exist upon revocation as upon disapproval of the original application.” App. to Juris. Statement 9-10.
Section 5 provides:
“It shall be unlawful for any owner, operator or displayer of coin-operated amusement machines to allow any person under the age of seventeen (17) years to play or operate a coin-operated amusement machine unless such minor is accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.” Id., at 8.
See Ordinance 1310.
The judgment of the trial court was affirmed by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals, 559 S. W. 2d 92 (1977), and the Texas Supreme Court refused an application for a writ of error, 570 S. W. 2d 377 (1978), finding no reversible error in the conclusion that the denial of the license was not supported by substantial evidence, but declining to reach the vagueness question.
Section 9 of Ordinance 1353 defined terms used in § 6 of the ordinance (quoted in n. 2, supra), which had been reenacted without change. Section 9 provided in pertinent part:
“Connection With Criminal Elements is defined as that state of affairs wherein an applicant, or an officer of, principal stockholder of, person having a substantial interest in or management responsibility for, a corporation or other organization wherein such organization is the applicant, directly or as parent, subsidiary or affiliate, has such association, acquaintance, or business association with parties having been convicted of a felony or crime involving moral turpitude or are otherwise involved in unlawful activities, whether convicted or not, to the extent that the fencing of stolen merchandise or illegally obtained funds, the procuring of prostitutes, the transfer or sale of narcotics or illegal substances is made more feasible or likely or the protection of those of tender years from such unwholesome influences are rendered more difficult.
“A determination by the United States Department of Justice that a party is a member of the ‘mafia’ or ‘Cosa Nostro’ family or that such party is engaged in or affiliated with a nationwide crime organization, whether formally or informally, shall be prima facia evidence, so far as the issuance of a license hereunder, that such person has ‘connections with criminal elements’ and constitute, within the meaning of this ordinance, ‘criminal elements’.” App. to Juris. Statement 12-13.
434 F. Supp. 473 (1977), aff d in part, rev’d and remanded in part, 630 F. 2d 1029 (1980).
See Ordinance 1410, App. to Brief for Appellee Al-All.
If it becomes apparent that a case has become moot while an appeal is pending, the judgment below normally is vacated with directions to dismiss the complaint. See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36.
"The test for mootness in cases such as this is a stringent one. Mere voluntary cessation of allegedly illegal conduct does not moot a case; if it did, the courts would be compelled to leave ‘[t]he defendant. . . free to return to his old ways.’ United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 632 (1953); see, e. g., United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290 (1897). A case might become moot if subsequent events made it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur. ... Of course it is still open to appellees to show, on remand, that the likelihood of further violations is sufficiently remote to make injunctive relief unnecessary. [345 U. S.] at 633-636. This is a matter for the trial judge. But this case is not technically moot, an appeal has been properly taken, and we have no choice but to decide it.” United States v. Concentrated Phosphate Export Assn., 393 U. S. 199, 203-204.
Indeed, the city has announced just such an intention. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 18-20.
The Court of Appeals summarized the relevant authorities as follows:
“A law is void for vagueness if persons ‘of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application . . . Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S. 566, 572 n. 8, quoting Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U. S. 385, 391. See generally Note, The Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 109 U. Pa. L. Rev. 67 (1960). The offense to due process lies in both the nature and consequences of vagueness. First, vague laws do not give individuals fair notice of the conduct proscribed. Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U. S. 156, 162. Accord Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 108 & n. 3. Second, vague laws do not limit the exercise of discretion by law enforcement officials; thus they engender the possiblity of arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. at 108-09 & n. 4; Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U. S. at 168-70. Third, vague laws defeat the intrinsic promise of, and frustrate the essence of, a constitutional regime. We remain ‘a government of laws, and not of men,’ Marbury v. Madison, 5 U. S. (1 Cranch.) 137, 163, only so long as our laws remain clear.” 630 F. 2d, at 1037 (citations abbreviated).
The ordinance is quoted in pertinent part in n. 2, supra.
Article 1, § 19, of the Texas Constitution provides:
“No citizen of this State shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, privileges or immunities, or in any manner disfranchised, except by the due course of the law of the land.”
Article 1, § 3, of the Texas Constitution provides in pertinent part:
“All free men, when they form a social compact, have equal rights . . . .”
“Review of a judgment which we cannot disturb, because it rests adequately upon a basis not subject to our examination, would be an anomaly.”
If this contention is correct, we may review the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of federal law. Cf. Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U. S. 562, 568; Mental Hygiene Dept. v. Kirchner, 380 U. S. 194, 198; Missouri ex rel. Southern R. Co. v. Mayfield, 340 U. S. 1, 5; Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551, 554-555; State Tax Comm’n v. Van Cott, 306 U. S. 511, 514.
In a section of its opinion entitled “Rational Basis,” the Court of Appeals twice set forth a rational-basis test. See 630 F. 2d, at 1039. In the first paragraph, the court stated that “[t]he test requires that legislative action be rationally related to the accomplishment of a legitimate state purpose,” and cited both federal and state decisions in support of that formulation. In the second paragraph, the court stated that “[t]he test requires that legislation constitute a means that is ‘reasonable, not arbitrary and rests “upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation . . . quoting from a decision of the Texas Supreme Court, Texas Woman’s University v. Chayklintaste, 530 S. W. 2d 927, 928 (1975), which in turn quoted from Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 76. A number of this Court’s decisions were cited as in accord with this formulation. Although we cannot be sure, we might reasonably infer that the second formulation of the test represents the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of Texas law.
Our dissenting Brethren suggest that our “view allows federal courts overruling state statutes to avoid appellate review here simply by adding citations to state cases when applying federal law,” post, at 300 (Powell, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We are unwilling to assume that any federal judge would discharge his judicial responsibilities in that fashion. In any event, in this case we merely hold that the Court of Appeals must explain the basis for its conclusion, if there be one, that the state ground is adequate and independent of the federal ground.
Cf. Mental Hygiene Dept. v. Kirchner, supra, at 196-197 (footnotes omitted):
“The California Supreme Court did not state whether its holding was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States or the equivalent provisions of the California Constitution, or both. While we might speculate from the choice of words used in the opinion, and the authorities cited by the court, which provision was the basis for the judgment of the state court, we are unable to say with any degree of certainty that the judgment of the California Supreme Court was not based on an adequate and independent nonfederal ground. This Court is always wary of assuming jurisdiction of a case from a state court unless it -is plain that a federal question is necessarily presented, and the party seeking review here must show that we have jurisdiction of the case. Were we to assume that the federal question was the basis for the decision below, it is clear that the California Supreme Court, either on remand or in another case presenting the same issues, could inform us that its opinion was in fact based, at least in part, on the California Constitution, thus leaving the result untouched by whatever conclusions this Court might have reached on the merits of the federal question. For reasons that follow we conclude that further clarifying proceedings in the California Supreme Court are called for under the principles stated in Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551.”
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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent has applied for a patent on what is described in his patent application as a “machine system for automatic record-keeping of bank checks and deposits.” The system permits a bank to furnish a customer with subtotals of various categories of transactions completed in connection with the customer’s single account, thus saving the customer the time and/or expense of conducting this bookkeeping himself. As respondent has noted, the “invention is being sold as a computer program to banks and to other data processing companies so that they can perform these data processing services for depositors.” Brief for Respondent 19A; Application of Johnston, 502 F. 2d 765 (CCPA 1974).
Petitioner and respondent, as well as various amici, have presented lengthy arguments addressed to the question of the general patentability of computer programs. Cf. Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63 (1972). We find no need to treat that question in this case, however, because we conclude that in any event respondent’s system is unpatentable on grounds of obviousness. 35 U. S. C. § 103. Since the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA) found respondent’s system to be patentable, Application of Johnston, supra, the decision of that court is accordingly reversed.
I
While respondent’s patent application pertains to the highly esoteric field of computer technology, the basic functioning of his invention is not difficult to comprehend. Under respondent’s system a bank customer labels each check that he writes with a numerical category code corresponding to the purpose for which the funds are being expended. For instance, “food expenditures” might be a category coded “123,” “fuel expenditures” a category coded “124,” and “rent” still another category coded “125.” Similarly, on each deposit slip, the customer, again through a category code, indicates the source of the funds that he is depositing. When the checks and deposit slips are processed by the bank, the category codes are entered upon them in magnetic ink characters, just as, under existing procedures, the amount of the check or deposit is entered in such characters. Entries in magnetic ink allow the information associated with them to be “read” by special document-reading devices and then processed by data processors. On being read by such a device, the coded records of the customer’s transactions are electronically stored in what respondent terms a “transaction file.” Respondent’s application describes the steps from this point as follows:
“To process the transaction file, the . . . system employs a data processor, such as a programmable electronic digital computer, having certain data storage files and a control system. In addition to the transaction file, a master record-keeping file is used to store all of the records required for each customer in accordance with the customer’s own chart of accounts. The latter is individually designed to the customer’s needs and also constructed to cooperate with the control system in the processing of the customer’s transactions. The control system directs the generation of periodic output reports for the customer which present the customer’s transaction records in accordance with his own chart of accounts and desired accounting procedures.” Pet. for Cert. 4A-5A.
Thus, when the time comes for the bank customer’s regular periodic statement to be rendered, the programmed computer sorts out the entries in the various categories and produces a statement which groups the entries according to category and which gives subtotals for each category. The customer can then quickly see how much he spent or received in any given category during the period in question. Moreover, according to respondent, the system can “[adapt] to whatever variations in ledger format a user may specify.” Brief for Respondent 66.
In further description of the control system that is used in the invention, respondent’s application recites that it is made up of a general control and a master control. The general control directs the processing operations common to most customers and is in the form of a software computer program, i. e., a program that is meant to be used in a general-purpose digital computer. The master control, directing the operations that vary on an individual basis with each customer, is in the form of a separate sequence of records for each customer containing suitable machine-instruction mechanisms along with the customer’s financial data. Respondent’s application sets out a flow chart of a program compatible with an IBM 1400 computer which would effectuate his system.
Under respondent’s invention, then, a general purpose computer is programmed to provide bank customers with an individualized and categorized breakdown of their transactions during the period in question.
II
After reviewing respondent’s patent application, the patent examiner rejected all the claims therein. He found that respondent’s claims were invalid as being anticipated by the prior art, 35 U. S. C. § 102, and as not “particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming” what respondent was urging to be his invention. § 112.
Respondent appealed to the Patent and Trademark Office Board of Appeals. The Board rejected respondent’s application on several grounds. It found first that under § 112, the application was indefinite and did not distinctly enough claim what respondent was urging to be his invention. It also concluded that respondent’s claims were invalid under § 101 because they claimed nonstatutory subject matter. According to the Board, computer-related inventions which extend “beyond the field of technology . . . are nonstatutory,” Pet. for Cert. 31 A. See Application of Foster, 58 C. C. P. A. (Pat.) 1001, 1004, 438 F. 2d 1011, 1015 (1971); Application of Musgrave, 57 C. C. P. A. (Pat.) 1352, 431 F. 2d 882 (1970), and respondent’s claims were viewed to be “non-technological.” Finally, respondent’s claims were rejected on grounds of obviousness. 35 U. S. C. § 103. The Board found that respondent’s claims were obvious variations of established uses of digital computers in banking and obvious variations of an invention, developed for use in business organizations, that had already been patented. Dirks, U. S. Patent No. 3,343,133.
The CCPA, in a 3-2 ruling, reversed the decision of the Board and held respondent’s invention to be patentable. The court began by distinguishing its view of respondent’s invention as a “ ‘record-keeping machine system for financial accounts’ ” from the Board’s rather negative view of the claims as going solely to the “ ‘relationship of a bank and its customers.' ” 502 F. 2d, at 770 (emphasis in CCPA opinion). As such, the CCPA held, respondent’s system was “clearly within the 'technological arts,’ ” id., at 771, and was therefore statutory subject matter under 35 U. S. C. § 101. Moreover, the court held that respondent’s claims were narrowly enough drawn and sufficiently detailed to pass muster under the definiteness requirements of § 112. Dealing with the final area of the Board’s rejection, the CCPA found that neither established banking practice nor the Dirks patent rendered respondent’s system “obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art who did not have [respondent’s] specification before him.” 502 F. 2d, at 772.
In order to hold respondent’s invention to be patentable, the CCPA also found it necessary to distinguish this Court’s decision in Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63 (1972), handed down some 13 months subsequent to the Board’s ruling in the instant case. In Benson, the respondent sought to patent as a “new and useful process,” 35 U. S. C. § 101, “a method of programming a general-purpose digital computer to convert signals from binary-coded decimal form into pure binary form.” 409 U. S., at 65. As we observed: “The claims were not limited to any particular art or technology, to any particular apparatus or machinery, or to any particular end use.” Id., at 64. Our limited holding, id., at 71, was that respondent’s method was not a patentable “process” as that term is defined in 35 U. S. C. § 100 (b).
The Solicitor of the Patent Office argued before the CCPA that Benson’s holding of nonpatentability as to the computer program in that case was controlling here. However, the CCPA concluded that while Benson involved a claim as to the patentability of a “process,” respondent in this case was advancing claims as to the patentability of an “apparatus” or “machine” which did not involve discoveries so abstract as to be unpatentable:
“ “The issue considered by the Supreme Court in Benson was a narrow one, namely, is a formula for converting binary coded decimal numerals into pure binary numerals by a series of mathematical calculations a patentable process?’ (Emphasis added.) [Quoting In re Christensen, 478 F. 2d 1392, 1394 (CCPA 1973).]
“[T]he instant claims in apparatus form do not claim or encompass a law of nature, a mathematical formula, or an algorithm.” 502 F. 2d, at 771 (emphasis in CCPA opinion).
Having disposed of the Board’s rejections and having distinguished Benson to its satisfaction, the court held respondent’s invention to be patentable. The Commissioner of Patents sought review in this Court and we granted certiorari. 421 U. S. 962 (1975). We hold that respondent’s invention was obvious under 35 U. S. C. § 103 and therefore reverse.
Ill
As a judicial test, “invention” — i. e., “an exercise of the inventive faculty,” McClain v. Ortmayer, 141 U. S. 419, 427 (1891) — has long been regarded as an absolute prerequisite to patentability. See, e. g., Keystone Driller Co. v. Northwest Engineering Corp., 294 U. S. 42 (1935); Sharp v. Stamping Co., 103 U. S. 250 (1880); Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 11 How. 248 (1851). However, it was only in 1952 that Congress, in the interest of “uniformity and definiteness,” articulated the requirement in a statute, framing it as a requirement of “nonobviousness.” Section 103 of the Patent Act of 1952, 35 U. S. C. § 103, provides in full:
“A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.”
This Court treated the scope of § 103 in detail in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S. 1 (1966). There, we held that § 103 “was not intended by Congress to change the general level of patentable invention,” but was meant “merely as a codification of judicial precedents . . . with congressional directions that inquiries into the obviousness of the subject matter sought to be patented are a prerequisite to patentability.” Id., at 17. While recognizing the inevitability of difficulty in making the determination in some cases, we also set out in Graham, supra, the central factors relevant to any inquiry into obviousness: “the scope and content of the prior art,” the “differences between the prior art and the claims at issue,” and “the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.” Ibid. Guided by these factors, we proceed to an inquiry into the obviousness of respondent’s system.
As noted, supra, at 223, the Patent and Trademark Office Board of Appeals relied on two elements in the prior art in reaching its conclusion that respondent’s system was obvious. We find both to be highly significant. The first was the nature of the current use of data processing equipment and computer programs in the banking industry. As respondent's application itself observes, that use is extensive:
“Automatic data processing equipments employing digital computers have been developed for the handling of much of the record-keeping operations involved in a banking system. The checks and deposit slips are automatically processed by forming those items as machine-readable records .... With such machine systems, most of the extensive data handling required in a bank can be performed automatically." Pet. for Cert. 3A.
It is through the use of such data processing equipment that periodic statements are ordinarily given to a bank customer on each of the several accounts that he may have at a given bank. Under respondent's system, what might previously have been separate accounts are treated as a single account, and the customer can see on a single statement the status and progress of each of his “sub-accounts.” Respondent's “category code" scheme, see supra, at 221, is, we think, closely analogous to a bank's offering its customers multiple accounts from which to choose for making a deposit or writing a check. Indeed, as noted by the Board, the addition of a category number, varying with the nature of the transaction, to the end of a bank customer’s regular account number, creates “in effect, a series of different and distinct account numbers Pet. for Cert. 34A. Moreover, we note that banks have long segregated debits attributable to service charges within any given separate account and have rendered their customers subtotals for those charges.
The utilization of automatic data processing equipment in the traditional separate account system is, of course, somewhat different from the system encompassed by respondent’s invention. As the CCPA noted, respondent’s invention does something other than “provide a customer with ... a summary sheet consisting of net totals of plural separate accounts which a customer may have at a bank.” 502 F. 2d, at 771. However, it must be remembered that the “obviousness” test of § 103 is not one which turns on whether an invention is equivalent to some element in the prior art but rather whether the difference between the prior art and the subject matter in question “is a difference sufficient to render the claimed subject matter unobvious to one skilled in the applicable art. . . .” Id., at 772 (Markey, C. J., dissenting).
There is no need to make the obviousness determination in this case turn solely on the nature of the current use of data processing and computer programming in the banking industry. For, as noted, the Board pointed to a second factor — a patent issued to Gerhard Dirks — which also supports a conclusion of obviousness. The Dirks patent discloses a complex automatic data processing system using a programmed digital computer for use in a large business organization. Under the system transaction and balance files can be kept and updated for each department of the organization. The Dirks system allows a breakdown within each department of various areas, e. g., of different types of expenses. Moreover, the system is sufficiently flexible to provide additional ^ breakdowns of “sub-areas” within the areas and can record and store specially designated information regarding each of any department’s transactions. Thus, for instance, under the Dirks system the disbursing office of a corporation can continually be kept apprised of the precise level and nature of the corporation’s disbursements within various areas or, as the Dirks patent terms them, “Item Groups.”
Again, as was the case with the prior art within the banking industry the Dirks invention is not equivalent to respondent’s system. However, the departments of the business organization and the areas-or “Item Groups” under the Dirks system are closely analogous to the bank customers and category number designations respectively under respondent’s system. And each shares a similar capacity to provide breakdowns within its “Item Groups” or category numbers. While the Dirks invention is not designed specifically for application to the banking industry many of its characteristics and capabilities are similar to those of respondent’s system. Cf. Graham, 383 U. S., at 35.
In making the determination of “obviousness,” it is important to remember that the criterion is measured not in terms of what would be obvious to a layman, but rather what would be obvious to one “reasonably skilled in [the applicable] art.” Id., at 37. In the context of the subject matter of the instant case, it can be assumed that such a hypothetical person would have been aware both of the nature of the extensive use of data processing systems in the banking industry and of the system encompassed in the Dirks patent. While computer technology is an exploding one, “[i]t is but an evenhanded application to require that those persons granted the benefit of a patent monopoly be charged with an awareness” of that technology. Id., at 19.
Assuming such an awareness, respondent’s system would, we think, have been obvious to one “reasonably skilled in [the applicable] art.” There may be differences between respondent’s invention and the state of the prior art. Respondent makes much of his system’s ability to allow “a large number of small users to get the benefit of large-scale electronic computer equipment and still continue to use their individual ledger format and bookkeeping methods.” Brief for Respondent 65. It may be that that ability is not possessed to the same extent either by existing machine systems in the banking industry or by the Dirks system. But the mere existence of differences between the prior art and an invention does not establish the invention’s nonobviousness. The gap between the prior art and respondent’s system is simply not so great as to render the system nonobvious to one reasonably skilled in the art.
Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and remand this case to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Blackmun and Mr. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
"The term 'process' means process, art or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material.” 35 U. S. C. § 100 (b).
S. Rep. No. 1979, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1952); H. R. Rep. No. 1923, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1952).
The Dirks patent does allow “the departments or other organizational users [t e., the analogues to bank customers under respondent’s invention, to] retain their authority over operative file systems” and indicates that "[programming is very easy and different programs are very easily coordinated.”
While “commercial success without invention will not make patentability,” A&P Tea Co. v. Supermarket Corp., 340 U. S. 147, 153 (1950), we did indicate in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S. 1 (1966), that "secondary considerations [such] as commercial success, long felt but unsolved needs, [and] failure of others” may be relevant in a determination of obviousness. Id., at 17. Respondent does not contend nor can we conclude that any of these secondary considerations offer any substantial support for his claims of nonobviousness.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before the Court is whether Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA or Act), 5 U. S. C. § 7101 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. IV), confers on federal employees a private cause of action against a breach by a union representing federal employees of its statutory duty of fair representation. Because we decide that Congress vested exclusive enforcement authority over this duty in the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and its General Counsel, we agree with the Court of Appeals that no private cause of action exists. Hence we affirm.
Petitioner, Efthimios Karahalios, is a Greek language instructor for the Defense Language Institute/Foreign Language Center, Presidio of Monterey, California (Institute). Karahalios was not a union member but was within a bargaining unit of professional employees for which respondent, the National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1263 (Union), was the exclusive bargaining agent. In 1976, the Institute reopened its “course developer” position, for which opening Karahalios applied. Previously, the position had been occupied by one Simon Kuntelos, who had been demoted to instructor in 1971, when the Institute first abolished the course developer position. Because Kuntelos declined to seek the reopened job through the competitive application process, Karahalios won the position after scoring 81 on the required examination.
Kuntelos filed a grievance, asserting that the Institute’s job award to Karahalios infringed the collective-bargaining agreement, and that Kuntelos should have been assigned the position without a competitive application process. The Union agreed to arbitrate on behalf of Kuntelos (a Union board member), and successfully argued that the position be declared vacant for refilling. Because promotion selection procedures had altered, Kuntelos was permitted considerably more time on the examination. He scored 83, and in May 1978, the Institute reassigned the course developer opening to Kuntelos and demoted Karahalios to instructor-ship status.
The Institute denied Karahalios’ direct protest against the substitution; likewise, the Union refused to prosecute his grievances because of a perceived conflict of interest with its previous Kuntelos advocacy. Karahalios filed unfair labor practice charges with the FLRA challenging both adverse decisions: He alleged, first, that the Institute violated its collective-bargaining agreement; and, second, that the Union breached its duty of fair representation. The General Counsel of the FLRA upheld Karahalios’ second charge, and ordered that a complaint be issued against the Union. The Union and the FLRA’s Regional Director, however, entered into a settlement whereby the Union posted notice guaranteeing representation to all employees seeking a single position. The General Counsel rejected Karahalios’ contention on appeal that the settlement provided him no relief.
Karahalios then filed a damages suit in the District Court, restating his charges against the Institute and the Union. The District Court, in its first of three published orders, dismissed on jurisdictional grounds Karahalios’ claim against the Institute, but declared judicially cognizable his unfair labor practice charge against the Union. Specifically, the District Court held that 28 U. S. C. § 1331 supports jurisdiction because the CSRA’s grant of exclusive union representation impliedly supplies to federal employees a private right of action to safeguard their right to fair representation. After trial, the District Court ruled that the Union’s actions — notably its decisions to arbitrate for Kuntelos without consulting, or even notifying, Karahalios, and, subsequently, to refuse to represent Karahalios — breached its duty of fair representation owed to him. The court confined damages to attorney’s fees, however, explaining that both applicants were too similarly matched to allow judicial distinction.
The Court of Appeals reversed, stating that the CSRA’s statutory scheme, which creates both an express duty of fair representation and a remedy in the FLRA for infringement of this duty, precludes implication of a parallel right to sue in federal courts. We granted Karahalios’ petition for certio-rari. 486 U. S. 1041 (1988).
Prior to 1978, labor relations in the federal sector were governed by a 1962 Executive Order administered by a Federal Labor Relations Council whose decisions were not subject to judicial review. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U. S. 89, 91-92 (1983). Since 1978, Title VII of the CSRA has been the controlling authority. Of particular relevance here, 5 U. S. C. § 7114(a)(1) provides that a labor organization that has been accorded the exclusive right of representing employees in a designated unit “is responsible for representing the interests of all employees in the unit it represents without discrimination and without regard to labor organization membership.” This provision is “virtually identical” to that found in the Executive Order and is the source of the collective-bargaining agent’s duty of fair representation. See National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1453, 23 F. L. R. A. 686, 690 (1986). This duty also parallels the fair representation obligation of a union in the private sector that has been found implicit in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 49 Stat. 449, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. IV), and the Railway Labor Act (RLA), 44 Stat. 577, as amended, 45 U. S. C. § 151 et seq. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 180-183 (1967); Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U. S. 192, 205-207 (1944).
Title VII also makes it clear that a breach of the duty of fair representation is an unfair labor practice, for it provides that it is “an unfair labor practice for a labor organization . . . to otherwise fail or refuse to comply with any provision of this chapter.” §7116(b)(8). Under §7118, unfair labor practice complaints are adjudicated by the FLRA, which is authorized to order remedial action appropriate to carry out the purposes of Title VII, including an award of backpay against either the agency or the labor organization that has committed the unfair practice.
There is no express suggestion in Title VII that Congress intended to furnish a parallel remedy in a federal district court to enforce the duty of fair representation. The Title provides recourse to the courts in only three instances: with specified exceptions, persons aggrieved by a final FLRA order may seek review in the appropriate court of appeals, § 7123(a); the FLRA may seek judicial enforcement of its orders, § 7123(b); and temporary injunctive relief is available to the FLRA to assist it in the discharge of its duties, § 7123(d).
Petitioner nevertheless insists that a cause of action to enforce the Union’s fair representation duty should be implied. Such a claim poses an issue of statutory construction: The “ultimate issue is whether Congress intended to create a private cause of action,” California v. Sierra Club, 451 U. S. 287, 293 (1981) (citations omitted); see also Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 569 (1979). Unless such “congressional intent can be inferred from the language of the statute, the statutory structure, or some other source, the essential predicate for implication of a private remedy simply does not exist.” Thompson v. Thompson, 484 U. S. 174 (1988). It is also an “elemental canon” of statutory construction that where a statute expressly provides a remedy, courts must be especially reluctant to provide additional remedies. Trans-america Mortgage Advisers, Inc. v. Lewis, 444 U. S. 11, 19 (1979). In such cases, “[i]n the absence of strong indicia of contrary congressional intent, we are compelled to conclude that Congress provided precisely the remedies it considered appropriate.” Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. Sea Clammers, 453 U. S. 1, 15 (1981); see also Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Russell, 473 U. S. 134, 147 (1985); Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Transport Workers, 451 U. S. 77, 93 (1981).
These guideposts indicate that the Court of .Appeals was quite correct in concluding that neither the language nor the structure of the Act shows any congressional intent to provide a private cause of action to enforce federal employees unions’ duty of fair representation. That duty is expressly recognized in the Act, and an administrative remedy for its breach is expressly provided for before the FLRA, a body created by Congress to enforce the duties imposed on agencies and unions by Title VII, including the duty of fair representation. Nothing in the legislative history of Title VII has been called to our attention indicating that Congress contemplated direct judicial enforcement of the union’s duty. Indeed, the General Counsel of the FLRA was to have exclusive and final authority to issue unfair labor practice complaints, and only those matters mentioned in § 7123 were to be judicially reviewable. H. R. Rep. No. 95-1403, p. 52 (1978). All complaints of unfair labor practices were to be filed with the FLRA. S. Rep. No. 95-969, p. 107 (1978). Furthermore, Title VII contemplates the arbitration of unsettled grievances, but a House proposal that the duty to ar- ■ bitrate could be enforced in federal court in the first instance was ultimately rejected. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-1717, p. 157 (1978). There exists no equivalent to § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185, which permits judicial enforcement of private collective-bargaining contracts.
Petitioner, however, relies on another source to find the necessary congressional intent to provide him with a cause of action. Petitioner urges that Title VII was modeled after the NLRA and that the authority of the FLRA was meant to be similar to that of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Because this Court found implicit in the NLRA a private cause of action against unions to enforce their fair representation duty even after the NLRB had construed the NLRA to make a breach of the duty an unfair labor practice, petitioner argues that Congress must have intended to preserve this judicial role under Title VII. Much of the argument rests on our decision in Vaca v. Sipes, supra. There are, however, several difficulties with this argument.
In the first place, Title VII is not a carbon copy of the NLRA, nor is the authority of the FLRA the same as that of the NLRB. The NLRA, like the RLA, did not expressly make a breach of the duty of fair representation an unfair labor practice and did not expressly provide for the enforcement of such a duty by the NLRB. That duty was implied by the Court because members of bargaining units were forced to accept unions as their exclusive bargaining agents. Because employees had no administrative remedy for a breach of the duty, we recognized a judicial cause of action on behalf of the employee. This occurred both under the RLA, Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., supra; Trainmen v. Howard, 343 U. S. 768 (1952), and also under the LMRA, Syres v. Oil Workers, 350 U. S. 892 (1955); Vaca v. Sipes, supra. Very dissimilarly, Title VII of the CSRA not only expressly recognizes the fair representation duty but also provides for its administrative enforcement.
To be sure, prior to Vaca, the NLRB had construed §§7 and 8(b) of the NLRA to impose a duty of fair representation on union bargaining agents and to make its breach an unfair labor practice. See Miranda Fuel Co., 140 N. L. R. B. 181 (1962), enf. denied, NLRB v. Miranda Fuel Co., 326 F. 2d 172 (CA2 1963). The issue in Vaca, some years later, was whether, in light of Miranda Fuel Co., the courts still had jurisdiction to enforce the unions’ duty. As we understood our inquiry, it was whether Congress, in enacting § 8(b) in 1947, had intended to oust the courts of their role of enforcing the duty of fair representation implied under the NLRA. We held that the “tardy assumption” of jurisdiction by the NLRB was insufficient reason to abandon our prior cases, such as Syres.
In the case before us, there can be no mistaking Congress’ intent to create a duty previously without statutory basis, and no mistaking the authority of the FLRA to enforce that duty. Also, because the courts played no role in enforcing a union’s fair representation duty under Executive Order No. 11491 §10e, 3 CFR 861 (1966-1970 Comp.), and subsequent amended orders, under the pre-CSRA regulatory regime, there was not in this context any pre-existing judicial role that at least arguably Congress intended to preserve.
Moreover, in Vaca and the earlier cases, it was stressed that by providing for exclusive bargaining agents, the pertinent statutes deprived bargaining unit employees of their individual rights to bargain for wages, hours, and working conditions. Hence it was critical that unions be required to represent all in good faith. Again, Title VII operates in a different context. As the United States as amicus explains, federal employment does not rest on contract in the private sector sense; nor is it clear that the deprivation a federal employee suffers from the election of a bargaining agent — if there is such a deprivation — is comparable to the private sector predicament. Moreover, the collective-bargaining mechanisms created by Title VII do not deprive employees of recourse to any of the remedies otherwise provided by statute or regulation. See the CSRA, 5 U. S. C. §§ 7114(a)(5) and 7121(e)(1).
We also note that Vaca rested in part on the fact that private collective-bargaining contracts were enforceable in the federal courts under LMRA §301. Because unfair representation claims most often involve a claim of breach by the employer and since employers are suable under § 301, the implied fair representation cause of action allows claims against an employer and a union to be adjudicated in one action. Section 301 has no equivalent under Title VII; there is no provision in that Title for suing an agency in federal court.
We therefore discern no basis for finding congressional intent to provide petitioner with a cause of action against the Union. Congress undoubtedly was aware from our cases such as Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975), that the Court had departed from its prior standard for resolving a claim urging that an implied statutory cause of action should be recognized, and that such issues were being resolved by a straightforward inquiry into whether Congress intended to provide a private cause of action. Had Congress intended the courts to enforce a federal employees union’s duty of fair representation, we would expect to find some evidence of that intent in the statute or its legislative history. We find none. Just as in United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 445 (1988), we held that the CSRA’s “integrated scheme of administrative and judicial review” foreclosed an implied right to Court of Claims review, we follow a similar course here. See also Bush v. Lucas, 462 U. S. 367, 388 (1983). To be sure, courts play a role in CSRA § 7116(b)(8) fair representation cases, but only sitting in review of the FLRA. To hold that the district courts must entertain such cases in the first instance would seriously undermine what we deem to be the congressional scheme, namely to leave the enforcement of union and agency duties under the Act to the General Counsel and the FLRA and to confine the courts to the role given them under the Act.
Accordingly the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Section 7114(a)(1) reads, in full: “A labor organization which has been accorded exclusive recognition is the exclusive representative of the employees in the unit it represents, and is entitled to act for, and negotiate collective bargaining agreements covering, all employees in the unit. An exclusive representative is responsible for representing the interests of all employees in the unit it represents without discrimination and without regard to labor organization membership.”
The Executive Order precursor provision likewise was interpreted to impose on federal unions the duty of fair representation. See National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1153, 23 F. L. R. A., at 690.
Because such orders were not legislative, courts generally refused judicial enforcement. See, e. g.. Kuhn v. National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 5, 570 F. 2d 757, 760-761 (CA8 1978).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This action was initiated by the Securities and Exchange Commission to enjoin respondent (United) from offering its “Flexible Fund Annuity” contract without undertaking the registration required by § 5 of the Securities Act of 1933, and to compel United to register the “Flexible Fund” itself as an “investment company” pursuant to § 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The “Flexible Fund Annuity” is a deferred, or optional, annuity plan having characteristics somewhat similar to those of the variable annuities this Court held, in S. E. C. v. Variable Annuity Life Insurance Co., 359 U. S. 65 (VALIC), to be subject to the Securities Act. Like the variable annuity, it is a recent effort to meet the challenge of inflation by allowing the purchaser to reap the benefits of a professional investment program while at the same time gaining the security of an insurance annuity. There are, however, significant differences between the “Flexible Fund” contract and the variable annuity, and it is claimed that these differences suffice to bring the “Flexible Fund” contract within the “optional annuity contract” exemption of § 3 (a)(8) of the Securities Act and to bring the “Flexible Fund” itself within the “insurance company” exemption of § 3 (c) (3) of the Investment Company Act, 54 Stat. 798, 15 U. S. C. § 80a-3(c)(3).
The purchaser of a “Flexible Fund” annuity agrees to pay a fixed monthly premium for a number of years before a specified maturity date. That premium, less a deduction for expenses (the net premium), is placed in a “Flexible Fund” account which United maintains separately from its other funds, pursuant to Nebraska law. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 44-310.06 (1963 Cum. Supp.). United undertakes to invest the “Flexible Fund” with the object of producing capital gains as well as an interest return, and the major part of the fund is invested in common stocks. The purchaser, at all times before maturity, is entitled to his proportionate share of the total fund and may withdraw all or part of this interest. The purchaser is also entitled to an alternative cash value measured by a percentage of his net premiums which gradually increases from 50% of that sum in the first year to 100% after 10 years. Other features, common to conventional annuity contracts, are also incorporated in United’s plan.
At maturity, the purchaser may elect to receive the cash value of his policy, measured either by his interest in the fund or by the net premium guarantee, whichever is larger. He may also choose to convert his interest into a life annuity under conditions specified in the “Flexible Fund” contract. These conditions relate future benefits to dollars available at maturity so the dollar benefits to be received will vary with the cash value at maturity. However, the net premium guarantee is, because of this conversion system, also a guarantee that a certain amount of fixed-amount payment life annuity will be available at maturity.
After maturity the policyholder has no further interest in the “Flexible Fund.” He has either received the value of his interest in cash, or converted to a fixed-payment annuity in which case his interest has been transferred from the “Flexible Fund” to the general reserves of the company, and mingled, on equal terms per dollar of cash value, with the interests of holders of conventional deferred annuities.
Because of the termination of interest in the “Flexible Fund” at maturity, the SEC contended that the portion of the “Flexible Fund” contract which dealt with the pre-maturity period was separable and a “security,” within the meaning of the Securities Act. It was agreed that the provisions dealing with the operation of the fixed-payment annuity were purely conventional insurance provisions, and thus beyond the purview of the SEC. The District Court held that the guarantee of a fixed-payment annuity of a substantial amount gave the entire contract the character of insurance. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed. 123 U. S. App. D. C. 305, 359 F. 2d 619. That court rejected “the SEC’s basic premise that the contract should be fragmented and the risk during the deferred period only should be considered.” Considering the contract as a whole, it found, as the SEC had urged, that this Court’s decision in VALIC, supra, was controlling. But it read that decision to hold only “that a company must bear a substantial part of the investment risk associated with the contract ... in order to qualify its products as ‘insurance.’ ” 123 U. S. App. D. C., at 308, 359 F. 2d, at 622. Because of the net premium guarantee and the conversion to payments which included an interest element during the fixed-payment period, the court concluded that the “Flexible Fund” met this test. Because of the importance of the issue, and the need for clarifying the implications of the VALIC decision, we granted certiorari, 385 U. S. 918. We now reverse for reasons given below.
First, we do not agree with the Court of Appeals that the “Flexible Fund” contract must be characterized in its entirety. Two entirely distinct promises are included in the contract and their operation is separated at a fixed point in time. In selling a deferred annuity contract of any type, United must first decide what amount of annuity payment is to be allowed for each dollar paid into the annuity fund at maturity. In making that calculation United must analyze expected mortality, interest, and expenses of administration. The outcome of that calculation is shown in the conversion table which is included in the “Flexible Fund” contract.
The second problem United must face in a deferred annuity is to determine what amount will be available for the annuity fund at maturity. In a conventional annuity where a fixed amount of benefits is stipulated it is essential that the premiums both cover expenses and produce a fund sufficient to support the promised benefits. In fixing the necessary premium mortality experience is a subordinate factor and the planning problem is to decide what interest and expense rates may be expected. There is some shifting of risk from policyholder to insurer, but no pooling of risks among policyholders. In other words, the insurer is acting, in a role similar to that of a savings institution, and state regulation is adjusted to this role. The policyholder has no direct interest in the fund and the insurer has a dollar target to meet.
The “Flexible Fund” program completely reverses the role of the insurer during the accumulation period. Instead of promising to the policyholder an accumulation to a fixed amount of savings at interest, the insurer promises to serve as an investment agency and allow the policyholder to share in its investment experience. The insurer is obligated to produce no more than the guaranteed minimum at maturity, and this amount is substantially less than that guaranteed by the same premiums in a conventional deferred annuity contract. The fixed-payment benefits are adjusted to reflect the number of dollars available, as opposed to the conventional annuity where the amount available is planned to reflect the promised benefits.
The insurer may plan to meet the minimum guarantee by split funding — that is, treating part of the net premium as it would a premium under a conventional deferred annuity contract with a cash value at maturity equal to the minimum guarantee and investing only the remainder — or by setting the minimum low enough that the risk of not being able to meet it through investment is insignificant. The latter is the course United seems to have pursued. In either case the guarantee cannot be said to integrate the pre-maturity operation into the post-maturity benefit scheme. United could as easily attach a “Flexible Fund” option to a deferred life insurance contract or any other benefit which could otherwise be provided by a single payment. And the annuity portion of the contract could be offered independently of the “Flexible Fund.” We therefore conclude that we must assess independently the operation of the “Flexible Fund” contract during the deferred period to determine whether that separable portion of the contract falls within the class of those exempted by Congress from the requirements of the Securities Act, and, if not, whether the contract constitutes a “security” within § 2 of that Act, 48 Stat. 74, 15 U. S. C. § 77b.
The provisions to be examined are less difficult of classification than the ones presented to us in VALIC. There it was held that the entire plan under which benefits continued to fluctuate with the fortunes of the. fund after maturity, was not a contract of insurance within the § 3 (a) exemption. A pooling of mortality risk was operative during the payment period, and the contract was one of insurance under state law, but a majority of this Court held that “the meaning of 'insurance’. . . under these Federal Acts is a federal question,” 359 U. S., at 69, and “that the concept of 'insurance’ involves some investment risk-taking on the part of the company.” Id., at 71. The argument “that the existence of adequate state regulation was the basis for the exemption [the position taken by four dissenting Justices] . . . was conclusively rejected ... in YALIC for the reason that variable annuities are ‘securities’ and involve considerations of investment not present in the conventional contract of insurance.” Prudential Insurance Co. v. S. E. C., 326 F. 2d 383, 388. It was implied in the majority opinion in YALIC and made explicit by the two concurring Justices, that the exemption was to be considered a congressional declaration “that there then was a form of ‘investment’ known as insurance (including ‘annuity contracts’) which did not present very squarely the sort of problems that the Securities Act . . . [was] devised to deal with, and which were, in many details, subject to a form of state regulation of a sort which made the federal regulation even less relevant.” VALIC, at 75 (opinion of Brennan, J.). In considering YALIC to have turned solely on the absence of any substantial investment risk-taking on the part of the insurer there, we think that the Court of Appeals in the present case viewed that decision too narrowly.
Approaching the accumulation portion of this contract, in this light, we have little difficulty in concluding that it does not fall within the insurance exemption of § 3 (a) of the Securities Act. “Flexible Fund” arrangements require special modifications of state law, and are considered to appeal to the purchaser not on the usual insurance basis of stability and security but on the prospect of “growth” through sound investment management. And while the guarantee of cash value based on net premiums reduces substantially the investment risk of the contract holder, the assumption of an investment risk cannot by itself create an insurance provision under the federal definition. Helvering v. Le Gierse, 312 U. S. 531, 542. The basic difference between a contract which to some degree is insured and a contract of insurance must be recognized.
We find it equally clear that the accumulation provisions constitute an “investment contract” within the terms of § 2 of the Securities Act. As the Court said in S. E. C. v. Joiner Leasing Corp., 320 U. S. 344, 352-353, “The test ... is what character the instrument is given in commerce by the terms of the offer, the plan of distribution, and the economic inducements held out to the prospect. In the enforcement of an act such as this it is not inappropriate that promoters’ offerings be judged as being what they were represented to be.” Contracts such as the “Flexible Fund” offer important competition to mutual funds, see Johnson, The Variable Annuity— Insurance, Investment, or Both?, 48 Geo. L. J. 641, and are pitched to the same consumer interest in growth through professionally managed investment. It seems eminently fair that a purchaser of such a plan be afforded the same advantages of disclosure which inure to a mutual fund purchaser under § 5 of the Securities Act. “At the state level the Uniform Securities Act makes explicit what seems to be the view of the great majority of blue sky administrators to the effect that variable annuities are securities . . . 1 Loss, Securities Regulation 499. Given VALIC, we hold that for the purposes of the Securities Act these contracts are also to be considered nonexempt securities and cannot be offered to the public without conformity to the registration requirements of § 5.
Because the courts below considered the contract itself to be exempt, they did not reach the question whether the “Flexible Fund” was an “investment company” under the Investment Company Act of 1940. In VALIC the sole business of the insurer was the issuance of the contracts held to be securities, and thus the Court held the insurer to be an investment company. It is clear, however, that United in the main is an insurance company exempt from the requirements of the Investment Company Act. Moreover, the provisions of that Act are substantive and go well beyond the disclosure requirements of the Securities Act. Thus the question whether the. fund may be separated from United's other activities and considered an investment company is a difficult one. See Comment, 61 Mich. L. Rev. 1374; Note, Regulation of Variable Annuity Sales: The Aftermath of SEC v. VALIC, 1959 Wash. U. L. Q. 206. An investigation into the relationship between the “Flexible Fund” and United’s insurance business, as well as an investigation of the possible conflicts between state and federal regulation, is required for a proper resolution. The SEC has requested us to remand the case for further consideration of this issue, and in view of its complexity, we deem this the wisest course.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
/f is so ordered.
48 Stat. 77, 15 U. S. C. § 77e.
54 Stat. 803, 15 U. S. C. § 80a-8.
United’s sales brochure describes the plan as featuring “a method of accumulation modernized to keep pace with today’s living . . . and a chance to share in the growth of the country’s economy.” At the same time it is claimed that the plan “combines this new method of accumulation with the time-tested advantages of a lifetime annuity ... a savings and accumulation plan that guarantees a lifetime income at maturity.”
48 Stat. 76, 15 U. S. C. § 77c (a) (8) exempts from the operation of the Securities Act “Any insurance or endowment policy or annuity contract or optional annuity contract, issued by a corporation subject to the supervision of the insurance commissioner, bank commissioner, or any agency or officer performing like functions, of any State or Territory of the United States or the District of Columbia.”
For example a refund of premiums is provided in case of death before maturity. Deferred periods of varying duration may be chosen, and the purchaser may elect to turn his cash value into an annuity at a date before specified maturity. Standard incontestability clauses and assignment clauses are incorporated into the contract. The contract at issue in S. E. C. v. Variable Annuity Life Insurance Co., 359 U. S. 65, also had some ancillary features common to all standard annuity contracts. The Court did not find them determinative. Id., at 73, n. 15.
Annuities may indeed be purchased for a single premium, and it is the basic single-premium calculation which controls the benefits of all deferred plans. See Johnson, The Variable Annuity— Insurance, Investment, or Both?, 48 Geo. L. J. 641, 655; Mehr & Osier, Modem Life Insurance 79-102 (3d ed. 1961).
For such a calculation the retum-of-premium provision can be considered to be a form of term insurance provided by the company and included within the expense arrangements.
See Huebner & Black, Life Insurance 518-524 (5th ed. 1958).
See Johnson, supra, n. 6, at 673.
The table below compares the cash values of the “Flexible Fund” contracts with those of United’s standard deferred annuities:
Respondent’s Flexible Fund standard deferred Years Paid in guarantee annuity
1. 1,200 300 624
5. 6,000 3,461 5,460
10. 12,000 10,374 12,504
20. 24,000 21,774 30,792
30. 36,000 33,174 54,828
40 . 48,000 44,574 87,156
See O’Brien, Static Dollars? Dynamic Dollars? Why Not Have Both!, Apr. 25, 1960 Investment Dealers’ Digest (Mutual Fund Supplement) 56. Cf. Spellacy v. American Life Ins. Assn., 144 Conn. 346, 131 A. 2d 834.
The record shows that United set its guarantee by analyzing the performance of common stocks during the first half of the 20th century and adjusting the guarantee so that it would not have become operable under any prior conditions.
Advisers Fund, Inc., a mutual fund, sells shares on an installment plan and simultaneously guarantees that an affiliated insurance company will allow the proceeds on redemption to be applied to the purchase of an annuity at specified conversion rates.
Mr. Justice BrennaN and Mr. Justice Stewart joined in a concurring opinion written by Mr. Justice BrennaN and also joined in the opinion of the Court.
United’s primary advertisement for the “Flexible Fund” was headed “New Opportunity for Financial Growth.” United’s sales aid kit included displays emphasizing the possibility of investment return and the experience of United’s management in professional investing.
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.
Based upon the recommendation of the Special Master, the Joint Motion for Entry of Stipulated Judgment (Joint Motion) is granted, and the Court hereby enters judgment as follows:
STIPULATED JUDGMENT
1. On or before March 1, 1990, New Mexico shall pay Texas $14 million, to be disbursed by Texas in accordance with Exhibit B to the Joint Motion which is herein reproduced, by either delivering a check or draft in that amount made payable to the State of Texas or transferring that amount to the State of Texas by electronic wire transfer.
2. Texas releases New Mexico from all claims for equitable or legal relief, other than the relief embodied in the March 28, 1988, Amended Decree and actions thereunder, arising out of New Mexico’s breaches of the Pecos River Compact for the years 1952 through 1986, plus all claims for attorney’s fees and other costs incurred prior to August 10, 1989.
3. Nothing herein affects the Court’s March 28, 1988, Amended Decree and actions thereunder.
EXHIBIT B
Texas shall deposit $13.8 million in the Texas Water Assistance Fund No. 480 of the Texas Water Development Board (Board), created pursuant to Chapter 15 of the Texas Water-Code, to be used for agricultural and irrigation projects (including associated water quality improvement projects) and any necessary associated studies in the Texas counties of Loving, Ward, Reeves, and Pecos. In funding such projects and studies, the Board shall give preference to projects and studies affecting surface water irrigators in the Red Bluff Water Power Control District in the four designated Texas counties, if appropriate. The remaining $200,000 maybe treated by the Attorney General of the State of Texas as attorney’s fees or investigative costs; provided, however, Texas and New Mexico agree that any use of the settlement funds in this manner does not constitute, and shall not be construed as, an admission, express or implicit, that New Mexico has any liability for Texas’ attorney’s fees and costs incurred in this litigation.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The petition for writ of certiorari is granted. The Supreme Court of Alabama held that “there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that there was negligence on the part of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company.” 264 Ala. 522, 527, 88 So. 2d 189, 193. We agree. We now hold that the evidence also presented a jury question whether the employee’s death resulted in whole or in part from such negligence. 35 Stat. 65, 45 U. S. C. § 51; Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500; Schulz v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 350 U. S. 523. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama is therefore reversed and the cause is remanded for consideration of any grounds not disposed of on the first appeal; and, if none has merit, with instructions to reinstate the judgment entered on the jury verdict of June 12, 1953, awarding the petitioner damages of $46,600. Urie v. Thompson, 337 U. S. 163.
For the reasons set forth in his opinion in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500, 524, Mr. Justice Frankfurter is of the view that the writ of certiorari is improvidently granted.
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.
Tried by a jury for the third time, petitioner Paul Allen Dye was convicted in the Recorders Court in Detroit, Michigan, on two counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm during commission of a felony. His defense in each of his three trials was that the crimes were committed by one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, who was present at the scene of the crimes.
The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the convictions on direct review, People v. Dye, No. 136707 (Nov. 28, 1995) (per curiam), App. to Pet. for Cert. 109, and further review was denied by the Supreme Court of Michigan, People v. Dye, 453 Mich. 852, 551 N. W. 2d 189 (1996). Petitioner sought relief in habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging various federal constitutional claims. Denied relief, petitioner appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Over the next five years, the Court of Appeals issued various orders and two opinions in the case. 45 Fed. Appx. 428 (CA6 2002) (Dye I); 111 Fed. Appx. 363 (CA6 2004) (Dye II). In Dye I, a majority of a divided three-judge panel ruled the state prosecutor had engaged in flagrant misconduct during the jury trial. On this ground it reversed the District Court’s order denying habeas relief. The panel did not address petitioner’s other claims. 45 Fed. Appx., at 428, n. 1.
Respondent moved for panel or en banc rehearing. In the time between this motion and its disposition one of the judges in the majority retired, and the record was returned to the District Court.
In Dye II, a reconstituted panel granted the petition for rehearing and ruled in favor of respondent. In an opinion authored by the original panel’s dissenting judge, the Court of Appeals held that, although Dye had raised a prosecutorial misconduct claim in state court, the record did not show that he presented it there as a violation of a federal right. “Because the brief filed by the petitioner in his direct appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals is not in the record, we have no way of determining exactly how he framed the issue in state court.” 111 Fed. Appx., at 364. As further support for its conclusion, the panel noted the Michigan Court of Appeals’ decision analyzed the relevant claim only in terms of state law. The panel concluded, moreover, it would decline . to address the claim even if Dye had properly raised it in state court because the federal habeas corpus petition’s allegations were too vague and general to be considered fairly presented. Ibid. Stating that its previous opinion, Dye I, had disposed of any remaining claims, the Dye II panel vacated the prior judgment and affirmed the District Court’s denial of the habeas corpus petition.
Dye seeks review here. There are two errors in Dye II meriting reversal of the judgment.
First, the Court of Appeals was incorrect in Dye II to conclude that, when seeking review in the state appellate court, petitioner failed to raise the federal claim based on prosecutorial misconduct. The Court of Appeals examined the opinion of the state appellate court and noted that it made no mention of a federal claim. That, however, is not dispositive. Failure of a state appellate court to mention a federal claim does not mean the claim was not presented to it. “It is too obvious to merit extended discussion that whether the exhaustion requirement. . . has been satisfied cannot turn upon whether a state appellate court chooses to ignore in its opinion a federal constitutional claim squarely raised in petitioner’s brief in the state court. . . .” Smith v. Digmon, 434 U. S. 332, 333 (1978) (per curiam).
Contrary to the holding of the Court of Appeals, the District Court record contains the brief petitioner filed in state court, and the brief sets out the federal claim. The fourth argument heading in his brief before the Michigan Court of Appeals states: “THE PROSECUTOR DENIED DEFENDANT DUE PROCESS OF LAW AND A FAIR TRIAL BY NUMEROUS INSTANCES OF MISCONDUCT.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 80 (capitalization in original). Outlining specific allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, the text of the brief under this argument heading cites the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It further cites the following federal cases, all of which concern alleged violations of federal due process rights in the context of prosecutorial misconduct: Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U. S. 637 (1974); Berger v. United States, 295 U. S. 78 (1935); United States v. Valentine, 820 F. 2d 565 (CA2 1987); United States v. Burse, 531 F. 2d 1151 (CA2 1976).
This is not an instance where the habeas petitioner failed to “apprise the state court of his claim that the ... ruling of which he complained was not only a violation of state law, but denied him the due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Duncan v. Henry, 513 U. S. 364, 366 (1995) (per curiam). Nor is this a case where a state court needed to look beyond “a petition or a brief (or a similar document)” to be aware of the federal claim. Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U. S. 27, 32 (2004). The state-court brief was clear that the prosecutorial misconduct claim was based, at least in part, on a federal right. It was error for the Court of Appeals to conclude otherwise.
A second reason the Dye II panel denied relief was that the habeas petition filed in the United States District Court presented the prosecutorial misconduct claim in too vague and general a form. This alternative holding cannot rescue the Dye II judgment, for it, too, is incorrect. The habeas corpus petition made clear and repeated references to an appended supporting brief, which presented Dye’s federal claim with more than sufficient particularity. See Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 81(a)(2), 10(c). As the prosecutorial misconduct claim was presented properly, it, and any other federal claims properly presented, should be addressed by the Court of Appeals on remand.
The motion to proceed informa pauperis and the petition for eertiorari 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.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the rather rare claim of conflict between an otherwise valid exercise of a State’s so-called police power and the overriding authority of the Bankruptcy Act. The statute before us is Utah’s Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Act — a measure directed towards promoting safety in automobile traffic by administrative and compensatory remedies calculated to restrain careless driving. Its purpose is wholly unrelated to the purposes of the Bankruptcy Act.
In June 1957, a Utah court entered judgments in damages against appellant, based on his allegedly negligent operation of an automobile. On appeal to the State’s Supreme Court the judgments were affirmed. After the judgments had remained unpaid for sixty days or more, the judgment creditors requested the court clerk to forward to the Department of Public Safety certified copies of the judgments, as provided by the Safety Responsibility Act. Thereupon the Department suspended appellant’s automobile registration and his operator’s license. On December 31, 1959, appellant was granted a voluntary discharge in bankruptcy, releasing him from the judgment debts. He then sought restoration of his license and registration. This was denied. The Safety Responsibility Act requires satisfaction of judgments due to auto accidents as a condition of reinstatement and specifically provides that a discharge in bankruptcy shall not relieve the judgment debtor from this requirement. Appellant initiated this ancillary bankruptcy proceeding, Local Loan Co. v. Hunt, 292 U. S. 234, 239, in the United States District Court for Utah, seeking an order requiring restoration of his privileges and a declaration that the Utah law was invalid insofar as it disrespected the discharge of the judgment debt by virtue of § 17 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 35. A three-judge District Court, 28 U. S. C. § 2281, upheld the statute and denied relief, 187 F. Supp. 277 (1960). The case was brought here on direct appeal, 28 U. S. C. § 1253, and we noted probable jurisdiction, 364 U. S. 940.
A preliminary point of jurisdiction is noted though it was not adverted to either by the District Court or by the parties. Was this a proper case for convening a three-judge court, as it must have been to justify direct appeal to this Court? The present suit asks that state officials be “restrained and enjoined” from enforcing designated sections of the Utah Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Act because they “are unconstitutional and void,” in that they are in conflict with § 17 of the Bankruptcy Act and therefore necessarily violative of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States, Art. VI. It would seem to be compellingly clear that this case falls within § 2281 of Title 28 of the United States Code, which bars a suit for an injunction “upon the ground of the unconstitutionality” of a state statute “unless the application therefor is heard and determined by a district court of three judges.” This was so heard and appeal was properly brought directly here, unless invalidation of a state statute by virtue of the Supremacy Clause rests on a different constitutional basis than such invalidation because of conflict with any other clause of the Constitution, at least to the extent of reading such an implied exception into the procedure devised by § 2281. Neither the language of § 2281 nor the purpose which gave rise to it affords the remotest reason for carving out an unfrivolous claim of unconstitutionality because of the Supremacy Clause from the comprehensive language of § 2281.
Bearing in mind that the requirement for District Court litigation of three judges, of whom one must be a Justice of this Court or a circuit judge, involves a serious drain upon the federal judicial manpower, “particularly in regions where, despite modem facilities, distance still plays an important part in the effective administration of justice...,” this Court has been led by a long series of decisions, in a variety of situations, to generalize that this procedural device was not to be viewed “as a measure of broad social policy to be construed with great liberality, but as an enactment technical in the strict sense of the term and to be applied as such.” Phillips v. United States, 312 U. S. 246, 250-251. The Court had already held that the three-judge requirement is not to be invoked on a contingent constitutional question. International Ladies’ Garment Workers v. Donnelly Co., 304 U. S. 243, 251. The Court has been consistent in this view in dealing with claims of conflict between a state statute and a federal statute which has the constitutional right of way.
Bearing in mind that due regard for the healthy working of the federal judicial system demands that the three-judge court requirement be treated as “an enactment technical in the strict sense of the term,” we must examine the basis of the plaintiff’s claim to determine whether it must come before a single judge or three judges. If in immediate controversy is not the unconstitutionality of a state law but merely the construction of a state law or the federal law, the three-judge requirement does not become operative. Such was the ruling in Ex parte Buder, 271 U. S. 461, where the Supremacy Clause was not invoked and therefore the three-judge court was not required. In Ex parte Bransford, 310 U. S. 354, Buder was followed. A three-judge court was not required because the issue was “merely the construction of an act of Congress, not the constitutionality of the state enactment.” 310 U. S., at 359. Contrariwise, in Query v. United States, 316 U. S. 486, the complainant sought to restrain the state officers from enforcing a state statute on the score of unconstitutionality of its threatened application. 316 U. S., at 489. Accordingly, the requirement of a three-judge court applied. Query v. United States and Ex parte Bransford were clearly differentiated from one another in Case v. Bowles, 327 U. S. 92, where, as in Bransford, “the complaint did not challenge the constitutionality of the state statute but alleged merely that its enforcement would violate the Emergency Price Control Act. Consequently a three-judge court is not required.” 327 U. S., at 97.
Here, no question of statutory construction, either of a state or a federal enactment, is in controversy. We are confronted at once with the constitutional question whether the discharge in bankruptcy of a debt ousts the police power of a State from a relevant safety measure, the indirect and episodic consequence of which may have some bearing on a discharged debt but which in no wise resuscitates it as an obligation. The general principle elucidated by Mr. Justice Cardozo in differentiating between different stages of adjudication at which issues are reached, Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109, 117-118, serves to guide disposition of this case as it differently did Phillips v. United States, supra. This case presents a sole, immediate constitutional question, differing from Buder, Bransford, and Case, which presented issues of statutory construction even though perhaps eventually leading to a constitutional question.
The problem of highway safety has concerned legislatures since the early years of the century. Utah, like other States, has responded to this problem by requiring the registration and inspection of vehicles and prescribing certain necessary equipment; by requiring examination and licensing of operators and excluding unqualified persons from driving; by providing comprehensive regulations of speed and other traffic conditions; and by authorizing extraterritorial service of process on nonresident motorists involved in accidents within the State. And, like every other State, Utah has responded by enacting a financial-responsibility law.
Financial-responsibility laws are intended to discourage careless driving or to mitigate its consequences by requiring as a condition of licensing or registration the satisfaction of outstanding accident judgments, the posting of security to cover possible liability for a past accident, or the filing of an insurance policy or other proof of ability to respond in damages in the future. By 1915 a San Francisco ordinance required a bond or liability insurance for all buses; a number of other cities and States early enacted similar provisions. In 1925 Massachusetts forbade the registration of any motor vehicle without proof of adequate liability insurance or other evidence of ability to satisfy a judgment. Mass. Laws 1925, c. 346. That same year the Commissioners on Uniform Laws appointed a committee to consider a uniform compulsory insurance law. Handbook of the National Conference on Uniform State Laws (1932), p. 261.
Unwilling to require insurance or its equivalent from all highway users, six other States — five of them in New England — adopted within the next two years laws with the same design but limited to careless drivers. The first of these, Connecticut Acts 1925, c. 183, provided for suspension of the registration of those convicted of certain infractions relating to motor vehicles and of those causing accidents of specified gravity, requiring proof of financial responsibility as a condition to restoration. Vermont enacted a similar provision, Acts 1927, No. 81. Maine’s law, Laws 1927, c. 210, and Minnesota’s, Laws 1927, c. 412, § 61 (b), applied only to violations. Rhode Island, Acts 1927, c. 1040, originally required proof only after accidents resulting from violations; Acts 1929, c. 1429, required proof in addition not only of persons violating certain laws but of all minors as well. In New Hampshire, Laws 1927, c. 54, security to cover a potential judgment was required on request of the plaintiff in an accident case, if fault appeared after preliminary inquiry.
In 1929 seven States enacted laws providing for the first time that driving privileges be suspended following an adverse judgment in damages. Vermont added to her earlier statute a provision suspending privileges of anyone against whom there was an outstanding judgment based on a traffic violation until proof was made of financial responsibility. Vt. Acts 1929, No. 76. Connecticut, Maine, and Wisconsin suspended the privileges of the judgment debtor until the judgment was satisfied. Conn. Acts 1929, c. 297, §25; Me. Laws 1929, c. 209; Wis. Laws 1929, c. 76. In Connecticut, however, suspension was only to occur if the judgment remained unpaid for sixty days, and then only “[u]pon complaint... by any prevailing party” in the lawsuit. Iowa’s law was substantially similar, giving the creditor control by providing that “a transcript of such judgment... may be filed” to initiate suspension. Iowa Laws 1929, c. 118. California required court clerks to transmit to the vehicle administrator notice of judgments unpaid for fifteen days; the debtor’s license and registration were thereupon to be suspended until both the debt was discharged and proof of financial responsibility was given. Cal. Stat. 1929, c. 258, § 4. New York adopted a law materially the same as California’s, providing in addition that a discharge in bankruptcy should not relieve the judgment debtor of these requirements and also suspending privileges pending proof after conviction for certain violations. N. Y. Laws 1929, c. 695.
Abandoning the drive for a uniform compulsory-insurance law as not then feasible, the Commissioners on Uniform Laws in 1929 began work on a more limited financial-responsibility act. As finally approved by the Conference in 1932, the Uniform Automobile Liability Security Act combined features from several of the statutes already in force. Proof of financial responsibility was required to be maintained for a minimum of three years by four classes of persons: (1) those convicted of certain violations; (2) those wishing to obtain or renew driving privileges, and who had been at fault in two accidents of specified gravity during the preceding year; (3) minors; (4) those against whom a judgment of a certain magnitude had remained unsatisfied for fifteen days. The provisions regarding judgments followed those of California and New York: the court or clerk was to forward notice of all unsatisfied judgments, and the debtor’s privileges were to be suspended until both satisfaction of the obligation, to the extent of the minimum required insurance amount, and proof of future responsibility. 11 U. L. A. 125 (1938).
The Uniform Act as such was adopted only in Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and Washington; its provisions regarding accidents and minors found little favor. Yet during the two decades following 1929 a large majority of States enacted one or another form of financial-responsibility law. Utah’s first such statute, enacted in 1943, was typical of the most common enactment. Twelve other States and the District of Columbia adopted this same basic law; and, with relatively minor modifications, it was paralleled by five more in addition to the earlier California and New York laws. This law provided for suspension of privileges following certain convictions and after a judgment remained unpaid a specified time. Restoration in either case was conditioned on proof of future responsibility; in the case of a judgment, the debt must be discharged as well. The unpaid judgment was required to be forwarded on the initiative of the court or clerk. Six States adopted laws differing from Utah’s principally in that proof of future responsibility, without satisfaction of the debt, was sufficient to terminate suspension. In addition, most of these statutes provided that a discharge in bankruptcy should not relieve the judgment debtor from suspension.
Indiana and Maryland in 1931, like Connecticut and Iowa before, placed control of suspension for unpaid judgments in the hands of the creditor by requiring that notice be forwarded to the administrator only on the creditor’s request. Ind. Acts 1931, c. 179, §2; Md. Laws 1931, c. 498. Neither specified the effect of a discharge. Maryland’s law was in other respects like that of Utah; Indiana’s, which required only proof of future responsibility and not discharge for reinstatement, was replaced in 1935 by a statute on the Utah model. In Massachusetts suspension followed when the registrar was “satisfied by such evidence as he may require” that the judgment was sixty days unpaid. Mass. Acts 1932, c. 304. Delaware’s law was similar in this respect. Del. Laws 1931, c. 14. New Hampshire’s 1937 law required proof of future responsibility following certain convictions and certain accidents but not after unpaid judgments; it required those involved in accidents not only to provide proof for the future but to deposit security to cover the past accident as well. N. H. Laws 1937, c. 161. Provisions requiring security after accidents, but without the need of proof for the future, were adopted by a number of other States in the next few years.
New York's law, one source of most of this early legislation, underwent a gradual evolution after its enactment. In 1936 the legislature provided that if proof of future responsibility was given the maximum period of suspension should be three years. The same year the statute was further amended to add a novel provision. If the judgment creditor consented, and if proof of future responsibility was given, a defaulting judgment debtor might continue to enjoy driving privileges for six months, and thereafter so long as consent was not withdrawn. In 1937 it was made clear the requirement of judgment payment did not apply to insured owners or drivers. In 1939 report of the unpaid judgment was made dependent upon request by the creditor. Finally, in 1941, New York adopted the New Hampshire requirement of proof and security for damages arising out of certain accidents. The 1941 law also provided, as a number of States had done before, for payment in installments, with suspension upon default of payments.
It was against this background that the Uniform Act of 1932 was withdrawn for further study in light of the States’ extensive experience. Handbook of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (1943), p. 69. The result of this study was an entirely revised model act, indorsed by the National Conference, which now appears as Chapter 7 of the Uniform Vehicle Code of 1956.
The new Uniform Code reflects most of the changes wrought in New York’s law from 1929 to 1941. It requires persons involved in certain accidents to deposit security to cover the past if they were not insured. It requires proof of future responsibility from those convicted of certain violations and from those owing judgments unsatisfied after thirty days. In addition, unless insured, the judgment debtor must satisfy the obligation, to the extent of the minimum amounts of financial responsibility required, before his privileges are restored. Installment payments, until default, are allowed. Bankruptcy is no release; unpaid judgments are to be reported only on request by the judgment creditor; with the creditor’s consent the debtor may be permitted to drive for six months, if he shows financial responsibility, and longer until consent is revoked.
The material provisions of the new Uniform Code with respect to financial responsibility are currently in effect in twenty-one States, including Utah, and in the District of Columbia. Fifteen other States have enacted statutes substantially similar except that unpaid judgments are reported by the court or clerk without request by the creditor. Nine more retain statutes differing from the last foregoing principally in the absence of provisions for restoration of privileges without payment on the consent of the creditor; these are in substance the same as the common statute earlier in force, in Utah, except that security is usually required in the event of accident. Vermont’s statute, requiring only proof and not payment to reinstate privileges after judgment, differs in other particulars as well. Maine and New Hampshire make no provisions for judgments, suspending only after accidents and violations. In Massachusetts and New York insurance or its equivalent is compulsory.
Twenty years ago, the Court had before it the New York variant of this legislation. This provided for suspension of license and registration whenever a judgment remained unpaid for fifteen days, as certified by the county clerk on his initiative. Proof of future responsibility was required for reinstatement; unless three years had elapsed, so was satisfaction of the judgment other than by discharge in bankruptcy. In 1936 the statute was amended to terminate the suspension with creditor consent on proof of responsibility, and in 1939 to require certification of the judgment only on request by the creditor or his attorney. The Court held that this statute, as it stood before 1936, was an appropriate measure to promote highway safety and did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the statute was not designed to aid collection of debts but to enforce a policy against irresponsible driving, and because this policy would be frustrated if negligent drivers could avoid the statute by “the simple expedient of voluntary bankruptcy,” no conflict with the Bankruptcy Act was found. The Court expressly left unanswered the claim that the amendments giving the creditor control over initiation and duration of the suspension were contrary to the Bankruptcy Act. Reitz v. Mealey, 314 U. S. 33 (1941).
The Utah law here challenged is in substance that which the Court did not have to pass on in Reitz v. Mealey, with two exceptions. Not only is the creditor permitted to initiate, lift, and restore suspension as under the New York amendments; he is also given power to restore suspension - for default on payment of installments, and, if the judgment is not satisfied, the suspension is permanent rather than limited to three years. Appellant urges that the Utah creditor’s added control over the license and registration procedures demonstrates that the State is acting as a collecting agent for the creditor rather than furthering an interest in highway safety, and that to make suspension perpetual rather than for three years only renders the collection pressure more effective. Do these differences make a constitutional difference, in light of the considerations that underlay the decision in the Reitz case?
Section 17 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 35, provides that “A discharge in bankruptcy shall release a bankrupt from all of his provable debts,” with exceptions not here material. See also 11 U. S. C. § 1 (15). A discharge relieves the bankrupt “from legal liability to pay a debt that was provable,” Zavelo v. Reeves, 227 U. S. 625, 629 (1913); it is a valid defense in an action brought in a state court to recover the debt. A State cannot deal with the debtor-creditor relationship as such and circumvent the aim of the Bankruptcy Act in lifting the burden of debt from a worthy debtor and affording him a new start. The limitations imposed upon the States by the Act raise constitutional questions under the Supremacy Clause, Art. VI. Thus, a discharge does not free the bankrupt from all traces of the debt, as though it had never been incurred. This Court has held that a moral obligation to pay the debt survives discharge and is sufficient to permit a State to grant recovery to the creditor on the basis of a promise subsequent to discharge, even though the promise is not supported by new consideration. Zavelo v. Reeves, supra. The theory, the Court declared, is that “the discharge destroys the remedy but not the indebtedness,” 227 U. S., at 629. And in Spalding v. New York ex rel. Backus, 4 How. 21 (1846), under an earlier bankruptcy law, the Court held that a discharge did not prevent the State from collecting a fine for contempt in violation of an injunction issued to aid in the execution of a judgment debt, although the fine was turned over to the creditor. States are not free to impose whatever sanctions they wish, other than an action of debt or assumpsit, to enforce collection of a discharged debt. But the lesson Zavelo and Spalding teach is that the Bankruptcy Act does not forbid a State to attach any consequence whatsoever to a debt which has been discharged.
The Utah Safety Responsibility Act leaves the bankrupt to some extent burdened by the discharged debt. Certainly some inroad is made on the consequences of bankruptcy if the creditor can exert pressure to recoup a discharged debt, or part of it, through the leverage of the State’s licensing and registration power. But the exercise of this power is deemed vital to the State’s well-being, and, from the point of view of its interests, is wholly unrelated to the considerations which propelled Congress to enact a national bankruptcy law. There are here overlapping interests which cannot be uncritically resolved by exclusive regard to the money consequences of enforcing a widely adopted measure for safeguarding life and safety.
When Reitz v. Mealey was in the District Court, 34 F. Supp. 532 (N. D. N. Y. 1940), Judge Learned Hand upheld the statute, as did this Court, without deciding the validity of the creditor-control amendments; but in passing he dealt with the realities of the situation and demonstrated the thin difference they made. As for the 1936 amendment, “The original statute in fact gave the creditor power at any time to restore the license by a complete satisfaction of the judgment; and the amendment merely added to this by enabling him to withdraw his consent, once given, after six months.” The 1939 amendment
“merely relieved the clerk of an irksome duty. He had been obliged to find out whenever a judgment had remained unpaid for fifteen days, whether it was for damages due to negligent driving. Instead of this the amendment set up an automatic system depending upon the creditor’s interest in starting the clerk into action. This distinction is, however, more apparent than real because under the section as it stood before 1939, the creditor had the same incentive and he was as likely as thereafter to advise the clerk of the judgment.... [T]he chance that the clerk would have acted without being prodded by the creditor must have been very remote.” 34 F. Supp., at 535.
This Court was of course aware of the practical pressures of the New York statute as a device to collect debts discharged in bankruptcy; the argument was pressed upon it in the dissent. Yet the statute was upheld. Why? Because the “police power” of a State, especially when exerted for the protection of life and limb, is as pervasive as any of the reserved powers of the States and should be respected unless there is a clear collision with a national law which has the right of way under the Supremacy Clause of Article VI. The fact that the consequences of the New York Safety Act may in fact have subjected a debtor to the payment of money of which as an obligation in the creditor-debtor relation he was quit did not lead this Court to hold that the State had intruded into the bankruptcy domain or subverted the purpose of the bankruptcy law. Why? At the heart of the matter are the complicated demands of our federalism.
Are the differences between the Utah statute and that of New York so significant as to make a constitutionally decisive difference? A State may properly decide, as forty-five have done, that the prospect of a judgment that must be paid in order to regain driving privileges serves as a substantial deterrent to unsafe driving. We held in Reitz that it might impose this requirement despite a discharge, in order not to exempt some drivers from appropriate protection of public safety by easy refuge in bankruptcy. To make suspension of privileges dependent upon the creditor’s request, as twenty-one have done, and as Congress has done for the District of Columbia, is nothing more than to make explicit what happens in the real world regardless of the statutory language. Even if the creditor-request provision makes suspension more likely, we see no reason why a State may not so provide in order that the deterrent be made more effective by authorizing the party most likely to be interested in the enforcement of the sanction to set it in motion. Nor do we think in excess of their power the action of thirty-five States that have attempted, as Congress has done, to authorize the creditor to lift and restore the suspension, or the forty-three that, again as Congress, have provided that in the absence of creditor consent the suspension shall last forever unless the judgment is extinguished. To whatever extent these provisions make it more probable that the debt will be paid despite the discharge, each no less reflects the State’s important deterrent interest. Congress had no thought of amending the Bankruptcy Act when it adopted this law for the District of Columbia; we do not believe Utah’s identical statute conflicts with it either.
Utah is not using its police power as a devious collecting agency under the pressure of organized creditors. Victims of careless car drivers are a wholly diffused group of shifting and uncertain composition, not even remotely united by a common financial interest. The Safety Responsibility Act is not an Act for the Relief of Mulcted Creditors. It is not directed to bankrupts as such. Though in a particular case a discharged bankrupt who wants to have his rightfully suspended license and registration restored may have to pay the amount of a discharged debt, or part of it, the bearing of the statute on the purposes served by bankruptcy legislation is essentially tangential.
There are no apothecary’s scales by which the differences between the Utah and New York statutes can be constitutionally weighed. The matter rests in judgment. That organon of adjudication leads us to conclude that the differences are too insubstantial, too tenuous as a matter of practical reality, to reach constitutional solidity.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Whittaker took no part in the decision of this case.
This Court has a number of times considered alleged conflicts between the Bankruptcy Act and state insolvency laws, or other laws designed to affect the debtor-creditor relationship as such. E. g., Pobreslo v. Joseph M. Boyd Co., 287 U. S. 518 (1933); International Shoe Co. v. Pinkus, 278 U. S. 261 (1929). See Williston, The Effect of a National Bankruptcy Law Upon State Laws, 22 Harv. L. Rev. 547 (1909). In addition, several courts have been confronted with possible conflicts between the Bankruptcy Act and other laws. E. g., Spalding v. New York ex rel. Backus, 4 How. 21 (1846) (contempt for defying injunction in aid of debt later discharged); In re Hicks, 133 F. 739 (N. D. N. Y. 1905) (fireman suspended for nonpayment of discharged debt); Public Finance Corp. v. Londeree, 200 Va. 607, 106 S. E. 2d 760 (1959) (financial statement from borrower to lender inadmissible in bankruptcy proceeding). But there are relatively few reported cases in this Court or any other in which such a conflict was asserted with state laws designed to protect health, safety, or the public peace, and all those found deal with automobile financial security laws. Reitz v. Mealey, 314 U. S. 33 (1941); In re Locker, 30 F. Supp. 642 (S. D. N. Y. 1939); Munz v. Harnett, 6 F. Supp. 158 (S. D. N. Y. 1933); In re Perkins, 3 F. Supp. 697 (N. D. N. Y. 1933); Doyle v. Kahl, 242 Iowa 153, 46 N. W. 2d 52 (1951); Ellis v. Rudy, 171 Md. 280, 189 A. 281 (1937); DeVries v. Secretary of State, 329 Mich. 68, 44 N. W. 2d 872 (1950); Smith v. Hayes, 133 N. E. 2d 443 (Ohio C. P. 1955).
Utah Laws 1951, c. 71, as amended, Utah Code Ann., 1953, Tit. 41, c. 12.
Utah Code Ann., 1953, Tit. 41, c. 1, Art. 3.
Id., 41-6-158.
Id., Tit. 41, c. 6, Art. 16.
Id., Tit. 41, c. 2.
Id., Tit. 41, c. 6, Arts. 1-15.
Id., 41-12-8.
Sustained in In re Cardinal, 170 Cal. 519, 150 P. 348 (1915).
E. g., N. J. Laws 1916, c. 136; N. Y. Laws 1922, c. 612. See Packard v. Banton, 264 U. S. 140 (1924); Willis v. City of Fort Smith, 121 Ark. 606, 611, 182 S. W. 275 (1916); Opinion of the Justices, 81 N. H. 566, 568, 129 A. 117, 118-119 (1925), and eases cited; Annot., 22 A. L. R. 230 (1923).
North Dakota (Laws 1929, c. 163) adopted a similar law.
This Act was repealed by Conn. Acts 1931, c. 82, § 294a, and the 1925 provision for proof following certain accidents was not re-enacted. Id., § 295a.
South Dakota (Laws 1933, c. 144) adopted a similar law.
Hawaii Laws 1933, c. 166; Pa. Laws 1933, No. 110; Wash. Laws 1939, c. 158.
Alabama (Laws 1947, No. 276); District of Columbia (49 Stat. 167 (1935)); Idaho (Laws 1939, c. 117); Illinois (Laws 1938 (1st sp. sess.), p. 51); Indiana (Acts 1935, c. 113); Kentucky (Acts 1936, c. 70); Michigan (Acts 1933, No. 203); Missouri (Laws 1945, p. 1207); Montana (Laws 1937, c. 129); Nebraska (Laws 1931, c. 108); North Dakota (Laws 1939, c. 167); Oregon (Laws 1935, c. 434); Utah (Laws 1943, c. 68); West Virginia (Acts 1935, c. 61). The ultimate source of these laws seems to have been a bill sponsored by the American Automobile Association as early as 1928. See Association of Casualty & Surety Executives, Comments on “Report by the Committee to Study Compensation for Automobile Accidents to the Columbia University Council for Research in the Social Sciences” (1932), pp. 14-15.
Arizona (Laws 1935, c. 45) limited suspension to a maximum of five years, and Kansas (Laws 1939, c. 86) to three. Virginia (Acts 1932, c. 272) required satisfaction of the debt before reinstatement, but after one year proof alone was sufficient. Virginia did not provide for suspension and proof following violations. New Jersey (Laws 1929, c. 116, as amended, Laws 1931, c. 169) and New Mexico (Laws 1947, c. 201) required proof after certain accidents as well. Arizona did not require the clerk to give notice of unpaid judgments; suspension was ordained “on report” of failure to pay.
Georgia (Laws 1945, No. 332), North Carolina (Laws 1931, c. 116), and apparently Colorado (Laws 1935, c. 163. The section title reads “and,” but the text “or”), restored privileges on either proof or satisfaction rather than both; Minnesota (Laws 1933, c. 351), Ohio (Laws 1935, p. 218), and Wisconsin (Laws 1941, c. 206) on proof without more. In Ohio and Wisconsin, suspension terminated automatically after one year. Ohio after 1943 (p. 658) required satisfaction but not proof and extended suspension to five years. Georgia and North Carolina did not require proof after violations.
Alabama, Arizona, California (Stat. 1937, c. 840), Colorado, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey (Laws 1941, c. 296), New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, and West Virginia.
This law extended only to property judgments, and only satisfaction of the debt, not proof of future ability to respond, was required.
Maine (Laws 1941, c. 255), Michigan (Acts 1943, No. 248), and New York (Laws 1941, c. 872), enacted comparable accident provisions. Maine at the same time repealed its requirements pertaining to unpaid judgments.
Colorado (Laws 1947, c. 124); Florida (Laws 1947, c. 23626) ; Illinois (Laws 1945, p. 1078); Indiana (Acts 1943, c. 175); Maryland (Laws 1945, c. 456); Minnesota (Laws 1945, c. 285); Nevada (Laws 1949, c. 127); Tennessee (Acts 1949, c. 75); Wisconsin (Laws 1945, c. 375).
N. Y. Laws 1936, c. 293.
N. Y. Laws 1936, c. 448.
N. Y. Laws 1937, c. 463.
N. Y. Laws 1939, c. 618.
N. Y. Laws 1941, c. 872.
Arizona, California (Stat. 1935, c. 591; see id., p. 159), Colorado, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana (1935), Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota (1939), Ohio, Oregon, and West Virginia.
National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances, Uniform Vehicle Code (1956), §§7-101 to 7
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.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held below that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution barred the resentencing of respondent. 507 Pa. 236, 489 A. 2d 1307 (1985). We grant certiorari, and, on the basis of our decision in United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U. S. 117 (1980), we reverse and remand. The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted.
Respondent was convicted in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on 56 counts of forgery and 56 counts of theft. He was sentenced by the trial court to two-to-five years of imprisonment on a single theft count and five years of probation on one of the forgery counts. Sentence was suspended on the remaining counts.
Respondent appealed all 112 convictions to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. That court ruled that the statute of limitations barred the prosecution of 34 of the theft counts, including the count on which respondent had received his sentence of imprisonment.
On appeal by the Commonwealth, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the Superior Court’s ruling on the statute of limitations. In addition, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied petitioner’s request that the case be remanded to the trial court for resentencing on the remaining 22 theft counts. The court acknowledged that a defendant could be twice sentenced for the same count when there was an intervening retrial at the request of the defendant, but it held that resentencing on the counts which were affirmed after an appeal by the Commonwealth is barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause when the sentence of imprisonment on another count is vacated. 507 Pa., at 248-251, 489 A. 2d, at 1314-1315, citing North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711 (1969).
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s rationale is inconsistent with the rationale of the holding of this Court in DiFrancesco, supra. In DiFrancesco we upheld the constitutionality of 18 U. S. C. §3576, which allows the United States to appeal to the court of appeals the sentence given a “dangerous special offender” by a district court, and allows the court of appeals to affirm the sentence, impose a different sentence, or remand to the district court for further sentencing proceedings.
We noted that the decisions of this Court “clearly establish that a sentencing in a noncapital case] does not have the qualities of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal.” DiFrancesco, supra, at 134. In North Carolina v. Pearce, supra, we held that a court could sentence a defendant on retrial more severely than after the first trial. Any distinction between the situation in Pearce and that in DiFrancesco is “no more than a ‘conceptual nicety.’” DiFrancesco, supra, at 136 (quoting Pearce, supra, at 722). Indeed, a resentenc-ing after an appeal intrudes even less upon the values protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause than does a resentenc-ing after retrial:
“[T]he basic design of the double jeopardy provision [is to] bar . . . repeated attempts to convict, with consequent subjection of the defendant to embarrassment, expense, anxiety, and insecurity, and the possibility that he may be found guilty even though innocent. These considerations, however, have no significant application to the prosecution’s statutorily granted right to review a sentence. This limited appeal does not involve a retrial or approximate the ordeal of a trial on the basic issue of guilt or innocence.” DiFrancesco, supra, at 136.
In DiFrancesco a federal statute clearly allowed the appellate review of the sentences at issue. The Court noted that, in light of that statute, the defendant could not claim any expectation of finality in his original sentencing. 449 U. S., at 136,139. Here, because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that resentencing was barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause, there was no need to consider below whether the Pennsylvania laws in effect at the time allowed the State to obtain review of the sentences on the counts for which the sentence had been suspended. We reverse and remand the case to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania for a determination of that issue, and for further consideration of this case in light of DiFrancesco, supra.
Reversed and remanded.
Justice Brennan dissents from summary disposition and would vote to deny the petition.
Justice Marshall dissents from this summary disposition, which has been ordered without affording the parties prior notice or an opportunity to file briefs on the merits. See Maggio v. Fulford, 462 U. S. 111, 120-121 (1983) (Marshall, J., dissenting); Wyrick v. Fields, 459 U. S. 42, 51-52 (1982) (Marshall, J., dissenting).
Justice Blackmun would grant the petition and set the case for argument.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
At the close of the prosecution’s case in chief, the trial court dismissed certain charges against petitioners on the ground that the evidence presented was legally insufficient to support a conviction. The question presented is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars the prosecution from appealing this ruling.
I
Petitioners, husband and wife, owned a building housing a restaurant and some apartments that burned under suspicious circumstances, killing two of the tenants. Petitioners were charged with various crimes in connection with this fire, including criminal homicide, reckless endangerment, and causing a catastrophe. They opted for a bench trial, and at the close of the prosecution’s case in chief challenged the sufficiency of the evidence by filing a demurrer pursuant to Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 1124(a)(1). The trial court sustained petitioners’ demurrer to charges of murder, voluntary manslaughter, and causing a catastrophe, stating:
“As the trier of fact and law, the court was not satisfied, after considering all of the facts together with all reasonable inferences which the Commonwealth’s evidence tended to prove, that there was sufficient evidence from which it could be concluded that either of the defendants was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of setting or causing to be set the fire in question.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 101a-102a.
The Commonwealth sought review of this ruling in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, but a panel of that court quashed the appeal, holding it barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Superior Court granted review en banc and affirmed. 331 Pa. Super. 307, 480 A. 2d 1046 (1984). Citing a number of our decisions as controlling authority, the court set out two relevant principles of law. First, a judgment that the evidence is legally insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict constitutes an acquittal for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause. See, e. g., United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U. S. 564 (1977); Burks v. United States, 437 U. S. 1 (1978); Sanabria v. United States, 437 U. S. 54 (1978); United States v. Scott, 437 U. S. 82, 91 (1978) (dicta); Hudson v. Louisiana, 450 U. S. 40 (1981). Second, when a trial court enters such a judgment, the Double Jeopardy Clause bars an appeal by the prosecution not only when it might result in a second trial, but also if reversal would translate into further proceedings devoted to the resolution of factual issues going to the elements of the offense charged. The Superior Court concluded that because reversal of the trial court’s granting of petitioners’ demurrer would necessitate further trial proceedings, the Commonwealth’s appeal was improper under Martin Linen.
The Commonwealth appealed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which reversed. Commonwealth v. Zoller, 507 Pa. 344, 490 A. 2d 394 (1985). The court relied heavily on the statement in United States v. Scott, supra, that a trial judge’s ruling in a defendant’s favor constitutes an acquittal “only when ‘the ruling of the judge, whatever its label, actually represents a resolution [in the defendant’s favor], correct or not, of some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged.’” Id., at 97 (quoting Martin Linen, supra, at 571). The court gave the following explanation of why the trial court’s ruling on petitioners’ demurrer is not within this definition of an acquittal:
“In deciding whether to grant a demurrer, the court does not determine whether or not the defendant is guilty on such evidence, but determines whether the evidence, if credited by the jury, is legally sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. . . .
“Hence, by definition, a demurrer is not a factual determination. . . . [T]he question before the trial judge in ruling on a demurrer remains purely one of law.
“We conclude, therefore, that a demurrer is not the functional equivalent of an acquittal, and that the Commonwealth has the right to appeal from an order sustaining defendant’s demurrer to its case-in-chief. In such a situation, the defendant himself elects to seek dismissal on grounds unrelated to his factual guilt or innocence.” Commonwealth v. Zoller, supra, at 357-358, 490 A. 2d, at 401.
Accordingly, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court remanded the case to the Superior Court for a determination on the merits of the appeal. We granted certiorari, 474 U. S. 944 (1985), and now reverse.
II
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court erred in holding that, for purposes of considering a plea of double jeopardy, a defendant who demurs at the close of the prosecution’s case in chief “elects to seek dismissal on grounds unrelated to his factual guilt or innocence.” Commonwealth v. Zoller, supra, at 358, 490 A. 2d, at 401. What the demurring defendant seeks is a ruling that as a matter of law the State’s evidence is insufficient to establish his factual guilt. Our past decisions, which we are not inclined to reconsider at this time, hold that such a ruling is an acquittal under the Double Jeopardy Clause. See, e. g., United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., supra; Sanabria v. United States, supra. United States v. Scott does not overturn these precedents; indeed, it plainly indicates that the category of acquittals includes “judgments] ... by the court that the evidence is insufficient to convict.” 437 U.S., at 91.
The Commonwealth argues that its appeal is nonetheless permissible under Justices of Boston Municipal Court v. Lydon, 466 U. S. 294 (1984), because resumption of petitioners’ bench trial following a reversal on appeal would simply constitute “continuing jeopardy.” Brief for Respondent 87-88. But Lydon teaches that “[ajcquittals, unlike convictions, terminate the initial jeopardy.” 466 U. S., at 308. Thus, whether the trial is to a jury or to the bench, subjecting the defendant to postacquittal factfinding proceedings going to guilt or innocence violates the Double Jeopardy Clause. Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 211-212 (1984).
When a successful postacquittal appeal by the prosecution would lead to proceedings that violate the Double Jeopardy Clause, the appeal itself has no proper purpose. Allowing such an appeal would frustrate the interest of the accused in having an end to the proceedings against him. The Superior Court was correct, therefore, in holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a postacquittal appeal by the prosecution not only when it might result in a second trial, but also if reversal would translate into “ ‘further proceedings of some sort, devoted to the resolution of factual issues going to the elements of the offense charged.’ ” Martin Linen, 430 U. S., at 570.
We hold, therefore, that the trial judge’s granting of petitioners’ demurrer was an acquittal under the Double Jeopardy Clause, and that the Commonwealth’s appeal was barred because reversal would have led to further trial proceedings.
The judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is
Reversed.
Various misdemeanor charges were also filed against petitioners, as well as charges relating to a previous fire in another building that they owned. These other charges are not relevant to this petition.
Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 1124, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. (1985 Pamphlet), provides in relevant part:
“Challenges to Sufficiency of Evidence
“(a) A defendant may challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction of one or more of the offenses charged by a:
“(1) demurrer to the evidence presented by the Commonwealth at the close of the Commonwealth’s case-in-ehief;
“(b) A demurrer to the evidence shall not constitute an admission of any facts or inferences except for the purpose of deciding the demurrer. If the demurrer is not sustained, the defendant may present evidence and the ease shall proceed.”
Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, petitioners’ ease was consolidated with another ease presenting the same double jeopardy issue, Commonwealth v. Zoller, 318 Pa. Super. 402, 465 A. 2d 16 (1983).
For purposes of our jurisdiction, the judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was final and subject to review at this time under 28 U. S. C. § 1257(3). Harris v. Washington, 404 U. S. 55 (1971). As explained in Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977):
“[T]he guarantee against double jeopardy assures an individual that, among other things, he will not be forced, with certain exceptions, to endure the personal strain, public embarrassment, and expense of a criminal trial more than once for the same offense. . . . Obviously, these aspects of the guarantee’s protections would be lost if the accused were forced to ‘run the gauntlet’ a second time before an appeal could be taken; even if the accused is acquitted, or, if convicted, has his conviction ultimately reversed on double jeopardy grounds, he has still been forced to endure a trial that the Double Jeopardy Clause was designed to prohibit.” Id., at 661-662 (footnote omitted).
We of course accept the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s definition of what the trial judge must consider in ruling on a defendant’s demurrer. But just as “the trial judge’s characterization of his own action cannot control the classification of the action [under the Double Jeopardy Clause],” United States v. Scott, 437 U. S. 82, 96 (1978) (citation omitted), so too the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s characterization, as a matter of double jeopardy law, of an order granting a demurrer is not binding on us.
See also Burks v. United States, 437 U. S. 1 (1978), where a Court of Appeals’ reversal of the defendant’s conviction on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the jury verdict “unquestionably. . . ‘represente[d] a resolution, correct or not, of some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged.’” Id. at 10 (quoting Martin Linen, 430 U. S., at 571).
The status of the trial court’s judgment as an acquittal is not affected by the Commonwealth’s allegation that the court “erred in deciding what degree of recklessness was . . . required to be shown under Pennsylvania’s definition of [third-degree] murder.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 24. “[T]he fact that ‘the acquittal may result from erroneous evidentiary rulings or erroneous interpretations of governing legal principles’. . . affects the accuracy of that determination but it does not alter its essential character.” United States v. Scott, 437 U. S., at 98 (quoting id., at 106 (Brennan, J., dissenting)). Accord, Sanabria v. United States, 437 U. S. 54 (1978); Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203 (1984).
In Rumsey, a trial judge sitting as a sentencer in a death-penalty proceeding entered an “acquittal,” i. e., a life sentence, based on an erroneous construction of the law governing a particular aggravating circumstance. The Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred a second sentencing hearing. It distinguished United States v. Wilson, 420 U. S. 332 (1975), which holds that the prosecution may appeal when the trial court enters judgment n.o.v. following a jury verdict of guilty. Rumsey explains that “[n]o double jeopardy problem was presented in Wilson because the appellate court, upon reviewing asserted legal errors of the trial judge, could simply order the jury’s guilty verdict reinstated; no new factfinding would be necessary, and the defendant therefore would not be twice placed in jeopardy.” 467 U. S., at 211-212.
The fact that the “further proceedings” standard which the Superior Court quoted from Martin Linen was first articulated in United States v. Jenkins, 420 U. S. 358, 370 (1975), does not detract from its authority. United States v. Scott, supra, overrules Jenkins only insofar as Jenkins bars an appeal by the government when a defendant successfully moves for dismissal on a ground “unrelated to factual guilt or innocence. ...” Scott, supra, at 99. The issue before us in Scott was what constitutes an acquittal under the Double Jeopardy Clause; the question of the circumstances under which an acquittal is appealable was not presented.
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.
In No. 78-1871, Prank W. Snepp III seeks review of a judgment enforcing an agreement that he signed when he accepted employment with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He also contends that punitive damages are an inappropriate remedy for the breach of his promise to submit all writings about the Agency for prepublication review. In No. 79-265, the United States conditionally cross petitions from a judgment refusing to find that profits attributable to Snepp’s breach .are impressed with a constructive trust. We grant the petitions for certiorari in order to correct the judgment from which both parties seek relief.
I
Based on his experiences as a CIA agent, Snepp published a book about certain CIA activities in South Vietnam. Snepp published the account without submitting it to the Agency for prepublication review. As an express condition of his employment with the CIA in 1968, however, Snepp had executed an agreement promising that he would “not . . . publish . . . any information or material relating to the Agency, its activities or intelligence activities generally, either during or after the term of [his] employment . . . without specific prior approval by the Agency.” App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 78-1871, p. 59a. The promise was an integral part of Snepp’s concurrent undertaking “not to disclose any classified information relating to the Agency without proper authorization.” Id., at 58a. Thus, Snepp had pledged not to divulge classified information and not to publish any information without prepublication clearance. The Government brought this suit to enforce Snepp’s agreement. It sought a declaration that Snepp had breached the contract, an injunction requiring Snepp to submit future writings for prepublication review, and an order imposing a constructive trust for the Government’s benefit on all profits that Snepp might earn from publishing the book in violation of his fiduciary obligations to the Agency.
The District Court found that Snepp had “willfully, deliberately and surreptitiously breached his position of trust with the CIA and the [1968] secrecy agreement” by publishing his book without submitting it for prepublication review. 456 F. Supp. 176, 179 (ED Ya. 1978). The court also found that Snepp deliberately misled CIA officials into believing that he would submit the book for prepublication clearance. Finally, the court determined as a fact that publication of the book had “caused the United States irreparable harm and loss.” Id., at 180. The District Court therefore enjoined future breaches of Snepp’s agreement and imposed a constructive trust on Snepp’s profits.
The Court of Appeals accepted the findings of the District Court and agreed that Snepp had breached a valid contract. It specifically affirmed the finding that Snepp’s failure to submit his manuscript for prepublication review had inflicted “irreparable harm” on intelligence activities vital to our national security. 595 F. 2d 926, 935 (CA4 1979). Thus, the court upheld the injunction against future violations of Snepp’s prepublication obligation. The court, however, concluded that the record did not support imposition of a constructive trust. The conclusion rested on the court’s perception that Snepp had a First Amendment right to publish unclassified information and the Government’s concession— for the purposes of this litigation — that Snepp’s book divulged no classified intelligence. Id., at 935-936. In other words, the court thought that Snepp’s fiduciary obligation extended only to preserving the confidentiality of classified material. It therefore limited recovery to nominal damages and to the possibility of punitive damages if the Government — in a jury trial — could prove tortious conduct.
Judge Hoffman, sitting by designation, dissented from the refusal to find a constructive trust. The 1968 agreement, he wrote, “was no ordinary contract; it gave life to a fiduciary relationship and invested in Snepp the trust of the CIA.” Id., at 938. Prepublication clearance was part of Snepp’s undertaking to protect confidences associated with his trust. Punitive damages, Judge Hoffman argued, were both a speculative and inappropriate remedy for Snepp’s breach. We agree with Judge Hoffman that Snepp breached a fiduciary obligation and that the proceeds of his breach are impressed with a constructive trust.
II
Snepp’s employment with the CIA involved an extremely high degree of trust. In the opening sentence of the agreement that he signed, Snepp explicitly recognized that he was entering a trust relationship. The trust agreement specifically imposed the obligation not to publish any information relating to the Agency without submitting the information for clearance. Snepp stipulated at trial that — after undertaking this obligation — he had been “assigned to various positions of trust” and that he had been granted “frequent access to classified information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods.” 456 F. Supp., at 178. Snepp published his book about CIA activities on the basis of this background and exposure. He deliberately and surreptitiously violated his obligation to submit all material for prepublication review. Thus, he exposed the classified information with which he had been entrusted to the risk of disclosure.
Whether Snepp violated his trust does not depend upon whether his book actually contained classified information. The Government does not deny — as a general principle— Snepp’s right to publish unclassified information. Nor does it contend — at this stage of the litigation — that Snepp’s book contains classified material. The Government simply claims that, in light of the special trust reposed in him and the agreement that he signed, Snepp should have given the CIA an opportunity to determine whether the material he proposed to publish would compromise classified information or sources. Neither of the Government’s concessions undercuts its claim that Snepp’s failure to submit to prepublication review was a breach of his trust.
Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals found that a former intelligence agent’s publication of unreviewed material relating to intelligence activities can be detrimental to vital national interests even if the published information is unclassified. When a former agent relies on his own judgment about what information is detrimental, he may reveal information that the CIA — with its broader understanding of what may expose classified information and confidential sources — could have identified as harmful. In addition to receiving intelligence from domestically based or controlled sources, the CIA obtains information from the intelligence services of friendly nations and from agents operating in foreign countries. The continued availability of these foreign sources depends upon the CIA’s ability to guarantee the security of information that might compromise them and even endanger the personal safety of foreign agents.
Undisputed evidence in this case shows that a CIA agent’s violation of his obligation to submit writings about the Agency for prepublication review impairs the CIA’s ability to perform its statutory duties. Admiral Turner, Director of the CIA, testified without contradiction that Snepp’s book and others like it have seriously impaired the effectiveness of American intelligence operations. He said:
“Over the last six to nine months, we have had a number of sources discontinue work with us. We have had more sources tell us that they are very nervous about continuing work with us. We have had very strong complaints from a number of foreign intelligence services with whom we conduct liaison, who have questioned whether they should continue exchanging information with us, for fear it will not remain secret. I cannot estimate to you how many potential sources or liaison arrangements have never germinated because people were unwilling to enter into business with us.” 456 F. Supp., at 179-180.
In view of this and other evidence in the record, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals recognized that Snepp’s breach of his explicit obligation to submit his material— classified or not — for prepublication clearance has irreparably harmed the United States Government. 595 F. 2d, at 935; 456 F. Supp., at 180.
Ill
The decision of the Court of Appeals denies the Government the most appropriate remedy for Snepp’s acknowledged wrong. Indeed, as a practical matter, the decision may well leave the Government with no reliable deterrent against similar breaches of security. No one disputes that the actual damages attributable to a publication such as Snepp’s generally are unquantifiable. Nominal damages are a hollow alternative, certain to deter no one. The punitive damages recoverable after a jury trial are speculative and unusual. Even if recovered, they may bear no relation to either the Government’s irreparable loss or Snepp’s unjust gain.
The Government could not pursue the only remedy that the Court of Appeals left it without losing the benefit of the bargain it seeks to enforce. Proof of the tortious conduct necessary to sustain an award of punitive damages might force the Government to disclose some of the very confidences that Snepp promised to protect. The trial of such a suit, before a jury if the defendant so elects, would subject the CIA and its officials to probing discovery into the Agency’s highly confidential affairs. Rarely would the Government run this risk. In a letter introduced at Snepp’s trial, former CIA Director Colby noted the analogous problem in criminal cases. Existing law, he stated, “requires the revelation in open court of confirming or additional information of such a nature that the potential damage to the national security precludes prosecution.” App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 78-1871, p. 68a. When the Government cannot secure its remedy without unacceptable risks, it has no remedy at all.
A constructive trust, on the other hand, protects both the Government and the former agent from unwarranted risks. This remedy is the natural and customary consequence of a breach of trust. It deals fairly with both parties by conforming relief to the dimensions of the wrong. If the agent secures prepublication clearance, he can publish with no fear of liability. If the agent publishes unreviewed material in violation of his fiduciary and contractual obligation, the trust remedy simply requires him to disgorge the benefits of his faithlessness. Since the remedy is swift and sure, it is tailored to deter those who would place sensitive information at risk. And since the remedy reaches only funds attributable to the breach, it cannot saddle the former agent with exemplary damages out of all proportion to his gain. The decision of the Court of Appeals would deprive the Government of this equitable and effective means of protecting intelligence that may contribute to national security. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals insofar as it refused to impose a constructive trust on Snepp’s profits, and we remand the cases to the Court of Appeals for reinstatement of the full judgment of the District Court.
So ordered.
Upon the eve of his departure from the Agency in 1976, Snepp also executed a “termination secrecy agreement.” That document reaffirmed his obligation “never” to reveal “any classified information, or any information concerning intelligence or CIA that has not been made public by CIA . . . without the express written consent of the Director of Central Intelligence or his representative.” App. to Pet. for Cert, in No. 78-1871, p. 61a.
At the time of suit, Snepp already had received about $60,000 in advance payments. His contract with his publisher provides for royalties and other potential profits. 456 F. Supp. 176, 179 (ED Va. 1978).
The Court of Appeals and the District Court rejected each of Snepp’s defenses to the enforcement of his contract. 595 F. 2d 926, 931-934 (CA4 1979); 456 F. Supp., at 180-181. In his petition for certiorari, Snepp relies primarily on the claim that his agreement is unenforceable as a prior restraint on protected speech.
When Snepp accepted employment with the CIA, he voluntarily signed the agreement that expressly obligated him to submit any proposed publication for prior review. He does not claim that he executed this agreement under duress. Indeed, he voluntarily reaffirmed his obligation when he left the Agency. We agree with the Court of Appeals that Snepp’s agreement is an “entirely appropriate” exercise of the CIA Director’s statutory mandate to "protec [t] intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure,” 50 U. S. C. §403 (d)(3). 595 F. 2d, at 932. Moreover, this Court’s cases make clear that — even in the absence of an express agreement — the CIA could have acted to protect substantial government interests by imposing reasonable restrictions on employee activities that in other contexts might be protected by the First Amendment. CSC v. Letter Carriers, 413 U. S. 548, 565 (1973); see Brown v. Glines, ante, p. 348; Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 25-28 (1976); Greer v. Spock, 424 U. S. 828 (1976); id., at 844-848 (Fowell, J., concurring); Cole v. Richardson, 405 U. S. 676 (1972). The Government has a compelling interest in protecting both the secrecy of information important to our national security and the appearance of confidentiality so essential to the effective operation of our foreign intelligence service. See infra, at 511— 512. The agreement that Snepp signed is a reasonable means for protecting this vital interest.
The Government's concession distinguished this litigation from United States v. Marchetti, 466 F. 2d 1309 (CA4), cert. denied, 409 U. S. 1063 (1972). There, the Government claimed that a former CIA employee intended to violate his agreement not to publish any classified information. 466 F. 2d, at 1313. Marchetti therefore did not consider the appropriate remedy for the breach of an agreement to submit all material for prepub-lication review. By relying on Marchetti in this litigation, the Court of Appeals overlooked the difference between Snepp’s breach and the violation at issue in -Marchetti.
The first sentence of the 1968 agreement read: “I, Frank W. Snepp, III, understand that upon entering duty with the Central Intelligence Agency I am undertaking a position of trust in that Agency of the Government. . . .” App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 78-1871, p. 58a.
Quite apart from the plain language of the agreement, the nature of Snepp’s duties and his conceded access to confidential sources and materials could establish a trust relationship. See 595 F. 2d, at 939 (Hoffman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Few types of governmental employment involve a higher degree of trust than that reposed in a CIA employee with Snepp’s duties.
Every major nation in the world has an intelligence service. Whatever fairly may be said about some of its past activities, the CIA (or its predecessor the Office of Strategic Services) is an agency thought by every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be essential to the security of the United States and — in a sense — the free world. It is impossible for a government wisely to make critical decisions about foreign policy and national defense without the benefit of dependable foreign intelligence. See generally T. Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (1979).
In questioning the force of Admiral Turner’s testimony, Mr. Justice SteveNs’ dissenting opinion suggests that the concern of foreign intelligence services may not be occasioned by the hazards of allowing an agent like Snepp to publish whatever he pleases, but by the release of classified information or simply the disagreement of foreign agencies with our Government’s classification policy. Post, at 522-523. Mr. Justice Stevens’ views in this respect not only find no support in the record, but they also reflect a misapprehension of the concern reflected by Admiral Turner’s testimony. If in fact information is unclassified or in the public domain, neither the CIA nor foreign agencies would be concerned. The problem is to ensure in advance, and by proper procedures, that information detrimental to national interest is not published. Without a dependable prepublication review procedure, no intelligence agency or responsible Government official could be assured that an employee privy to sensitive information might not conclude on his own — innocently or otherwise — that it should be disclosed to the world.
The dissent argues that the Court is allowing the CIA to “censor” its employees’ publications. Post, at 522. Snepp’s contract, however, requires no more than a clearance procedure subject to judicial review. If Snepp, in compliance with his contract, had submitted his manuscript for review and the Agency had found it to contain" sensitive material, presumably— if one accepts Snepp’s present assertion of good intentions — an effort would have been made to eliminate harmful disclosures. Absent agreement in this respect, the Agency would have borne the burden of seeking an injunction against publication. See Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. v. Colby, 509 F. 2d 1362 (CA4), cert. denied, 421 U. S. 992 (1975); United States v. Marchetti, 466 F. 2d 1309 (CA4), cert. denied, 409 U. S. 1063 (1972).
Although both the District Court and the Court of Appeals expressly found otherwise, Mr. Justice Stevens says that “the interest in confidentiality that Snepp’s contract was designed to protect has not been compromised.” Post, at 516-517. Thus, on the basis of a premise wholly at odds with the record, the dissent bifurcates Snepp’s 1968 agreement and treats its interdependent provisions as if they imposed unrelated obligaT tions. Mr. Justice SteveNS then analogizes Snepp’s prepublication review agreement with the Government to a private employee’s covenant not to compete with his employer. Post, at 518-520. A body of private law intended to preserve competition, however, simply has no bearing on a contract made by the Director of the CIA in conformity with his statutory obligation to “protec [t] intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.” 50 U. S. C. §403 (d)(3).
Judge Hoffman’s dissent suggests that even this remedy may be unavailable if the Government must bring suit in a State that allows punitive damages only upon proof of compensatory damages. 595 F. 2d., at 940. The Court of Appeals majority, however, held as a matter of federal law that the nominal damages recoverable for any breach of a trust agreement will support an exemplary award. See id., at 936, and n. 10, 937-938.
See id., at 939 (Hoffman, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Mr. Justice Stevens concedes that, even in the absence of a written contract, an employee has a fiduciary obligation to protect confidential information obtained during the course of his employment. Post, at 518. He also concedes that all personal profits gained from the exploitation of such information are impressed with a constructive trust in favor of the employer. Post, at 521. In this case, he seems to think that the common law would not treat information as “confidential” unless it were “classified.” See, e. g., post, at 518. We have thought that the common-law obligation was considerably more expansive. See, e. g., Restatement (Second) of Agency §§ 396 (c), 400 and Comment c, 404 and Comments b, d (1958); 5 A. Scott, Trusts § 505 (3d ed. 1967). But since this case involves the breach of a trust agreement that specifically required the prepublication review of all information about the employer, we need not look to the common law to determine the scope of Snepp’s fiduciary obligation.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
PER CURIAM.
Federal habeas courts generally refuse to hear claims "defaulted ... in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule." Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). State rules count as "adequate" if they are "firmly established and regularly followed." Walker v. Martin, 562 U.S. 307, 316, 131 S.Ct. 1120, 179 L.Ed.2d 62 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Like all States, California requires criminal defendants to raise available claims on direct appeal. Under the so-called "Dixon bar," a defendant procedurally defaults a claim raised for the first time on state collateral review if he could have raised it earlier on direct appeal. See In re Dixon, 41 Cal.2d 756, 759, 264 P.2d 513, 514 (1953). Yet, in this case, the Ninth Circuit held that the Dixon bar is inadequate to bar federal habeas review. Because California's procedural bar is longstanding, oft-cited, and shared by habeas courts across the Nation, this Court now summarily reverses the Ninth Circuit's judgment.
I
Respondent Donna Kay Lee and her boyfriend Paul Carasi stabbed to death Carasi's mother and his ex-girlfriend. A California jury convicted the pair of two counts each of first-degree murder. Carasi received a death sentence, and Lee received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In June 1999, Lee unsuccessfully raised four claims on direct appeal. After the California appellate courts affirmed, Lee skipped state postconviction review and filed the federal habeas petition at issue. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). The petition raised mostly new claims that Lee failed to raise on direct appeal. Because Lee had not exhausted available state-court remedies, however, the District Court temporarily stayed federal proceedings to allow Lee to pursue her new claims in a state habeas petition. The California Supreme Court denied Lee's petition in a summary order citing Dixon .
Having exhausted state remedies, Lee returned to federal court to litigate her federal habeas petition. The District Court dismissed her new claims as procedurally defaulted. Then, for the first time on appeal, Lee challenged the Dixon bar's adequacy. In her brief, Lee presented a small sample of the California Supreme Court's state habeas denials on a single day about six months after her default. Lee claimed that out of the 210 summary denials on December 21, 1999, the court failed to cite Dixon in 9 cases where it should have been applied. The court instead denied the nine petitions without any citation at all. In Lee's view, these missing citations proved that the California courts inconsistently applied the Dixon bar. Without evaluating this evidence, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded "to permit the Warden to submit evidence to the contrary, and for consideration by the district court in the first instance." Lee v. Jacquez, 406 Fed.Appx. 148, 150 (2010).
On remand, the warden submitted a study analyzing more than 4,700 summary habeas denials during a nearly 2-year period around the time of Lee's procedural default. From August 1998 to June 2000, the study showed, the California Supreme Court cited Dixon in approximately 12% of all denials-more than 500 times. In light of this evidence, the District Court held that the Dixon bar is adequate.
The Ninth Circuit again reversed. Lee v. Jacquez, 788 F.3d 1124 (2015). Lee's 1-day sample proved the Dixon bar's inadequacy, the court held, because the "failure to cite Dixon where Dixon applies ... reflects [its] irregular application." 788 F.3d, at 1130. The general 12% citation rate proved nothing, the court reasoned, because the warden "d[id] not purport to show to how many cases the Dixon bar should have been applied." Id., at 1133. In the Ninth Circuit's view, without this "baseline number" the warden's 2-year study was "entirely insufficient" to prove Dixon 's adequacy. 788 F.3d, at 1133.
II
The Ninth Circuit's decision profoundly misapprehends what makes a state procedural bar "adequate." That question is a matter of federal law. Lee v. Kemna, 534 U.S. 362, 375, 122 S.Ct. 877, 151 L.Ed.2d 820 (2002). "To qualify as an 'adequate' procedural ground," capable of barring federal habeas review, "a state rule must be 'firmly established and regularly followed.' " Martin, supra, at 316, 131 S.Ct. 1120 (quoting Beard v. Kindler, 558 U.S. 53, 60, 130 S.Ct. 612, 175 L.Ed.2d 417 (2009) ).
California's Dixon bar satisfies both adequacy criteria. It is "firmly established" because, decades before Lee's June 1999 procedural default, the California Supreme Court warned defendants in plain terms that, absent "special circumstances," habeas "will not lie where the claimed errors could have been, but were not, raised upon a timely appeal from a judgment of conviction." Dixon, supra, at 759, 264 P.2d, at 514. And the California Supreme Court eliminated any arguable ambiguity surrounding this bar by reaffirming Dixon in two cases decided before Lee's default. See In re Harris, 5 Cal.4th 813, 825, n. 3, 829-841, 21 Cal.Rptr.2d 373, 855 P.2d 391, 395, n. 3, 398-407 (1993) ; In re Robbins, 18 Cal.4th 770, 814-815, and n. 34, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 153, 959 P.2d 311, 340-341, and n. 34 (1998).
The California Supreme Court's repeated Dixon citations also prove that the bar is "regularly followed." Martin recently held that another California procedural bar-a rule requiring prisoners to file state habeas petitions promptly-met that requirement because "[e]ach year, the California Supreme Court summarily denies hundreds of habeas petitions by citing" the timeliness rule. 562 U.S., at 318, 131 S.Ct. 1120. The same goes for Dixon . Nine purportedly missing Dixon citations from Lee's 1-day sample of summary orders hardly support an inference of inconsistency. See Dugger v. Adams, 489 U.S. 401, 410, n. 6, 109 S.Ct. 1211, 103 L.Ed.2d 435 (1989) (holding that the Florida Supreme Court applied its similar procedural bar "consistently and regularly" despite "address[ing] the merits in several cases raising [new] claims on postconviction review"). Indeed, all nine orders in that sample were denials. None ignored the Dixon bar to grant relief, so there is no sign of inconsistency.
Nor is California's rule unique. Federal and state habeas courts across the country follow the same rule as Dixon . "The general rule in federal habeas cases is that a defendant who fails to raise a claim on direct appeal is barred from raising the claim on collateral review." Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 548 U.S. 331, 350-351, 126 S.Ct. 2669, 165 L.Ed.2d 557 (2006). Likewise, state postconviction remedies generally "may not be used to litigate claims which were or could have been raised at trial or on direct appeal." 1 D. Wilkes, State Postconviction Remedies and Relief Handbook § 1:2, p. 3 (2015-2016 ed.). It appears that every State shares this procedural bar in some form. See Brief for State of Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae 1, n. 2 (collecting citations). For such well-established and ubiquitous rules, it takes more than a few outliers to show inadequacy. Federal habeas courts must not lightly "disregard state procedural rules that are substantially similar to those to which we give full force in our own courts."
Kindler, 558 U.S., at 62, 130 S.Ct. 612. And it would be "[e]ven stranger to do so with respect to rules in place in nearly every State." Ibid. Nothing suggests, moreover, that California courts apply the Dixon bar in a way that disfavors federal claims. The Court therefore holds that it qualifies as adequate to bar federal habeas review.
III
The Ninth Circuit's contrary reasoning is unpersuasive and inconsistent with this Court's precedents. Applying the Dixon bar may be a "straightforward" or "mechanica[l]" task for state courts. 788 F.3d, at 1130. But simplicity does not imply that missing citations reflect state-court inconsistency. To begin with, since the Dixon bar has several exceptions, see Robbins, supra, at 814-815, and n. 34, 77 Cal.Rptr.2d 153, 959 P.2d, at 340-341, and n. 34, the California Supreme Court can hardly be faulted for failing to cite Dixon whenever a petitioner raises a claim that he could have raised on direct appeal.
More importantly, California courts need not address procedural default before reaching the merits, so the purportedly missing citations show nothing. Cf. Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. 447, 451, n. 3, 125 S.Ct. 847, 160 L.Ed.2d 881 (2005) ( per curiam ) (declining to address the warden's procedural-default argument); Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 525, 117 S.Ct. 1517, 137 L.Ed.2d 771 (1997) (explaining that "[j]udicial economy might counsel" bypassing a procedural-default question if the merits "were easily resolvable against the habeas petitioner"). Ordinarily, "procedural default ... is not a jurisdictional matter." Trest v. Cain, 522 U.S. 87, 89, 118 S.Ct. 478, 139 L.Ed.2d 444 (1997). As a result, the appropriate order of analysis for each case remains within the state courts' discretion. Such discretion will often lead to "seeming inconsistencies." Martin, 562 U.S., at 320, and n. 7, 131 S.Ct. 1120. But that superficial tension does not make a procedural bar inadequate. "[A] state procedural bar may count as an adequate and independent ground for denying a federal habeas petition even if the state court had discretion to reach the merits despite the default." Id., at 311, 131 S.Ct. 1120 ; see Kindler, supra, at 60-61, 130 S.Ct. 612.
The Ninth Circuit's attempt to get around Martin and Kindler fails. The Court of Appeals distinguished those cases on the ground that California's Dixon bar is "mandatory" rather than discretionary because it involves a discretion-free general rule, notwithstanding exceptions that might involve discretion. 788 F.3d, at 1130. The Court assumes, without deciding, that this description is accurate and the Dixon bar's exceptions leave some room for discretion. Even so, there is little difference between discretion exercised through an otherwise adequate procedural bar's exceptions and discretion that is a part of the bar itself. In any event, the Ninth Circuit's reasoning ignores the state courts' discretion to assume, without deciding, that a claim is not procedurally defaulted and instead hold that the claim lacks merit.
The Ninth Circuit was accordingly wrong to dismiss the 500-plus summary denials citing Dixon simply because they do not reveal which cases potentially implicate the bar. 788 F.3d, at 1133. Martin already rejected this precise reasoning. There, the habeas petitioner unsuccessfully argued that "[u]se of summary denials makes it impossible to tell why the California Supreme Court decides some delayed petitions on the merits and rejects others as untimely." 562 U.S., at 319, 131 S.Ct. 1120 (internal quotation marks omitted). So too here, "[w]e see no reason to reject California's [procedural] bar simply because a court may opt to bypass the [Dixon ] assessment and summarily dismiss a petition on the merits, if that is the easier path." Ibid.
By treating every missing citation as a sign of inconsistency, the Court of Appeals "pose[d] an unnecessary dilemma" for California. Kindler, 558 U.S., at 61, 130 S.Ct. 612. The court forced the State to choose between the "finality of [its] judgments" and a burdensome opinion-writing requirement. Ibid. ; see Martin, supra, at 312-313, 131 S.Ct. 1120 (noting that the California Supreme Court "rules on a staggering number of habeas petitions each year"); Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 99, 131 S.Ct. 770, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011) (discussing the advantages of summary dispositions). "[F]ederal courts have no authority," however, "to impose mandatory opinion-writing standards on state courts" as the price of federal respect for their procedural rules. Johnson v. Williams, 568 U.S. ----, ----, 133 S.Ct. 1088, 1095, 185 L.Ed.2d 105 (2013). The Ninth Circuit's decision is thus fundamentally at odds with the "federalism and comity concerns that motivate the adequate state ground doctrine in the habeas context." Kindler, supra, at 62, 130 S.Ct. 612.
* * *
"A State's procedural rules are of vital importance to the orderly administration of its criminal courts; when a federal court permits them to be readily evaded, it undermines the criminal justice system." Lambrix, supra, at 525, 117 S.Ct. 1517. Here, the Ninth Circuit permitted California prisoners to evade a well-established procedural bar that is adequate to bar federal habeas review. The petition for a writ of certiorari and respondent's motion to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
This case involves a suit by respondent’s decedent, a civilian employee of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), claiming wrongful discharge from his employment. He asserted jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1491, which provides for suits in the Court of Claims upon any express or implied contract with such military exchanges. The Government moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The Court of Claims concluded that it had jurisdiction because respondent’s decedent’s relationship with the AAFES was based upon an implied contract of employment and such a contract is covered, since 1970, by the Tucker Act. 206 Ct. Cl. 303, 513 F. 2d 1360. We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict between this decision and a contrary holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Young v. United States, 498 F. 2d 1211 (1974). 423 U. S. 821.
The status of claims against military post exchanges has been in some doubt since the decision of this Court in Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U. S. 481 (1942). There the Court, in striking down a state tax on the distribution of motor fuel by Army post exchanges, held that such exchanges “are arms of the Government deemed by it essential for the performance of governmental functions. They are integral parts of the War Department ....’’ However, the Court also observed that the “Government assumes none of the ’financial obligations of the exchange.” Id., at 485.
The latter observation was the basis of a series of decisions by the Court of Claims to the effect that it lacked jurisdiction over claims concerning the activities of non-appropriated fund instrumentalities. That court held that it could not entertain suits based on a contract for services with such an entity, because, since the Government had assumed no liability for the entity’s financial obligations it could not be said to have consented to a suit designed to vindicate such obligations. Therefore, no “claim against the United States” existed under the Tucker Act which is the source of Court of Claims jurisdiction, Borden v. United States, 126 Ct. Cl. 902, 116 F. Supp. 873 (1953); Pulaski Cab Co. v. United States, 141 Ct. Cl. 160, 157 F. Supp. 955 (1958); Kyer v. United States, 177 Ct. Cl. 747, 369 F. 2d 714 (1966), cert. denied, 387 U. S. 929 (1967).
The Court of Claims, while denying jurisdiction, recognized the harsh consequences of this result since it could leave claimants against the exchanges with no forum in which to seek relief. However, the court recognized that “it is up to Congress to remedy this apparent harsh result.... [T]he courts should refrain from legislating by judicial fiat.” Keetz v. United States, 168 Ct. Cl. 205, 207 (1964).
In 1970 Congress amended the Tucker Act and provided:
“For the purpose of this paragraph, an express or implied contract with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service . . . shall be considered an express or implied contract with the United States.” Pub. L. 91-350, 84 Stat. 449.
The purpose of this amendment, as the reports of both Houses made clear, was to afford contractors a federal forum in which to sue nonappropriated fund instru-mentalities by doing away with the inequitable “loophole” in the Tucker Act. S. Rep. No. 91-268, p. 2 (1969); H. R. Rep. No. 91-933, p. 2 (1970). Borden, supra; Pulaski, supra; Keetz, supra; and Kyer, supra, were cited as examples of the “harsh result” which the amendment would correct. The purpose of the bill was clearly to provide a remedy to “contractors” with non-appropriated fund instrumentalities, e. g., S. Rep. No. 91-268, pp. 4-5, and there is nothing in the legislative history to indicate, as the Government contends, that “contractors” did not include anyone who had formed a contractual employment relationship. Since the statute applies, by its terms, to “any express or implied contract” we hold that it is applicable to employment contracts as well as those for goods or other services. The fact that Congress has dealt specifically with exchange employees when it wanted to bring them within or leave them without the provisions of a law dealing with federal employees generally (e. g., 5 U. S. C. § 8171 (b)) is not of controlling weight here. This statute deals with those who have a contractual relationship with military exchanges rather than with different classes of federal employees. If employees of military exchanges are within its general language, they are not removed from its effect by congressional practices in enacting other kinds of statutes.
The Government alternatively contends that AAFES employees do not have a contractual relationship with their employer, and that like orthodox federal employees they serve by “appointment” to a particular position. While there is some ambiguity in the opinion of the Court of Claims, that court apparently agreed that plaintiff and others like him did have a contractual employment relationship with the AAFES. We think it would be both unnecessary and unwise for us to decide the question at this stage of the case, and we think that the Court of Claims gave insufficient attention to applicable administrative regulations when it undertook to decide the question.
The exchange services are created and administered pursuant to the general authority granted the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force by 10 U. S. C. §§ 3012 and 8012. The nonappropriated-fund status of the exchanges places them in a position whereby the Federal Government, absent special legislation, does not assume the obligations of those exchanges in the manner that contracts entered into by appropriated fund agencies are assumed. Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U. S., at 485. The nonappropriated-fund status of the exchanges, however, does not alter the fact that the Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force may engage employees by “appointment,” in the same manner as other personnel hired by the Secretaries may be employed. See Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, supra; Crenshaw v. United States, 134 U. S. 99 (1890); Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402 (1851).
The regulations governing the AAFES, state that ordinary employees are deemed employees of an instrumentality of the United States, and hold their positions by appointment. AR 60-21/AFR 147-15, c. 1, § I, ¶ 1-7; c. 2, § I (Nov. 12, 1974) , There is congressional reeognition of the power of the Secretaries to employ exchange employees by appointment. The House and Senate Reports on Pub. L. 91-350 explicitly recognized that employees of nonappropriated-fund activities, when performing their official duties, are employees of the United States. S. Rep. No. 91-268, supra, at 2; H. R. Rep. No. 91-933, supra, at 2. Further, Congress has specifically granted exchange employees certain rights afforded only appointed employees, and, more important, has specifically excluded them from the coverage of certain statutes granting rights to appointed federal employees. See statutes cited in AR 60-21/AFR 147-15, c. 1, § I, ¶ 1-8. Of particular import is their exclusion, through the operation of 5 U. S. C. § 2105 (c), from the provisions of the Back Pay Act, 5 U. S. C. § 5596. The Back Pay Act is the means by which appointed employees subjected to unjustified personnel action are given a cause of action against the United States. The Act is made necessary by the fact that, absent specific command of statute or authorized regulation, an appointed employee subjected to unwarranted personnel action does not have a cause of action against the United States. Keim v. United States, 177 U. S. 290, 293-296 (1900); Sampson v. Murray, 415 U. S. 61, 69-70 (1974); United States v. Testan, 424 U. S. 392, 405-407 (1976). Since the Act deals only with appointees, the specific exclusion of AAFES employees from the coverage of the Act would seem to indicate a congressional recognition that they may be appointed, but that appointed AAFES employees should not be allowed to sue under the Act.
This is not to say that an exchange may never employ a person pursuant to a contract of employment. The Secretaries have provided, by separate regulation, for a process under which a person may be employed by contract. AR 60-20/AFR 147-14, c. 4, §§ II and III (Mar. 21, 1974). Such employment is subject to different procedures for negotiation, approval, and administrative remedies from those applicable to employment under AR 60-21/AFR 147-15. The regulation governing contracts defines “service contract” as including contracts both for services performed off a military installation and “direct services such as janitorial and window cleaning service.” AR 60-20/AFR 147-14, App. A, ftA-6e. Under the regulation in effect at the time of plaintiff’s discharge, it was specifically provided that exchanges “will not enter into [a service contract] with military personnel on active duty, civil service employees, or exchange employees.” AR 60-20/AFR 147-14, § XIX, ¶ 886 (Apr. 14, 1965) (emphasis added). The regulation thus clearly distinguished between employment pursuant to appointment and employment pursuant to contract, a distinction that existed prior to plaintiff’s hiring and continues today in the use of separate regulations for “contracting” and “appointment.”
When Congress enacted Pub. L. 91-350, making contracts entered into by the post exchanges cognizable in the Court of Claims, it did not change in any way the other provisions of the United States Code dealing with exchange employees, nor did it purport to require that the exchanges employ all persons pursuant to contract.
The Court of Claims, in reaching its conclusion that plaintiff held his position by virtue of an express or implied contract assumed that once it was determined he was not an appointed federal employee this result followed as a matter of course. It concluded that in such event his employment status was governed by a series of cases from the private sector of the economy holding that the typical employee-employer relationship was contractual in nature. While we do not question the relevance of these cases by way of analogy should plaintiff be determined not to have been an appointee we hold that the Court of Claims erred in its threshold determination that AAFES employees could never serve by appointment. Rather, the question depends upon an analysis of the statutes and regulations previously described in light of whatever evidence is adduced on remand as to plaintiff's particular status in this case.
It is thus apparent that the question of whether plaintiff was employed by virtue of a contract or by appointment is not susceptible of determination at this time. Rather, the issue is one which must receive additional consideration from the Court of Claims after development of a fuller record.
Respondent in her brief in this Court advanced a second theory upon which the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims in this case could be sustained. She urged that plaintiff’s discharge in violation of executive regulations constituted a claim enforceable under the Tucker Act, and that his discharge without due process constituted a claim founded on the Constitution and therefore enforceable under the Tucker Act. Brief for Respondent 51. At oral argument, counsel conceded that our decision in United States v. Testan, supra, which had been handed down between the time of the filing of his brief and the oral argument, foreclosed such a claim.
Plaintiff’s allegation that his discharge constituted a breach of a contract of employment was sufficient, under the provisions of Pub. L. 91-350, to withstand the Government’s motion to dismiss the complaint on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction in the Court of Claims, and the judgment of the court so holding is therefore affirmed. That portion of its judgment deciding that plaintiff held his employment position by virtue of an express or implied contract, rather than by appointment, is vacated and the cause remanded for further proceedings on that question.
It is so ordered.
The named respondent is the widow of the original plaintiff.
A “nonappropriated fund instrumentality” is one which does not receive its monies by congressional appropriation. See 10 U. S. G. §§ 4779(e), 9779 (e).
Except where otherwise noted, the regulations cited are those presently in effect. These differ in some respects from the regulations in effect at the time of respondent’s decedent’s hiring and at the time of his discharge. On remand it will be necessary for the Court of Claims to determine which regulations are applicable to 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 | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a direct appeal by the United States from dismissal by the District Court of its complaint seeking an injunction to prevent and restrain violations of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1, 2.
Appellees are the Oregon State Medical Society, eight county medical societies, Oregon Physicians’ Service (an Oregon corporation engaged in the sale of prepaid medical care), and eight doctors who are or have been at some time responsible officers in those organizations.
This controversy centers about two forms of “contract practice” of medicine. In one, private corporations organized for profit sell what amounts to a policy of insurance by which small periodic payments purchase the right to certain hospital facilities and medical attention. In the other¡ railroad and large industrial employers of labor contract with one or more doctors to treat their ailing or injured employees. Both forms of “contract practice,” for rendering the promised medical and surgical service, depend upon doctors or panels of doctors who cooperate on a fee basis or who associate themselves with the plan on a full- or part-time employment basis.
' Objections of the organized medical profession to contract practice are both monetary and ethical. Such practice diverts patients from independent practitioners to contract doctors. It tends to standardize fees. The ethical objection has been that intervention by employer or insurance company makes a tripartite matter of the doctor-patient relation. Since the contract doctor owes his employment and looks for his pay to the employer or the insurance company rather than to the patient, he serves two masters with conflicting interests. In many cases companies assumed liability for medical or surgical service only if they approved the treatment in advance. There was evidence of instances where promptly needed treatment was delayed while obtaining company approval, and where a lay insurance official disapproved treatment advised by a doctor.
In 1936, five private associations were selling prepaid medical certificates in Oregon, and doctors of that State, alarmed at the extent to which private practice was being invaded and superseded by contract practice, commenced a crusade to stamp it out. A tooth-and-claw struggle ensued between the organized medical profession, on the one hand, and the organizations employing contract doctors on the other. The campaign was bitter on both sides. State and county medical societies adopted resolutions and policy statements condemning contract practice and physicians who engaged in it. They brought pressure on individual doctors to decline or abandon it. They threatened expulsion from medical societies, and one society did expel several doctors for refusal to terminate contract practices.
However, in 1941, seven years before this action was commenced, there was an abrupt about-face on the part of the organized medical profession in Oregon. It was apparently convinced that the public demanded and was entitled to purchase protection against unexpected costs of disease and accident, which are catastrophic to persons without reserves. The organized doctors completely reversed their strategy, and, instead of trying to discourage prepaid medical service, decided to render it on a nonprofit basis themselves.
In that year, Oregon Physicians’ Service, one of the defendants in this action, was formed. It is a nonprofit Oregon corporation, furnishing prepaid medical, surgical, and hospital care on a contract basis. As charged in the complaint, “It is sponsored and approved by the Oregon State Medical Society and is controlled and operated by members of that society. It sponsors, approves, and cooperates with component county societies and organizations controlled by the latter which offer prepaid medical plans.” 95 F. Supp., at 121. After seven years of successful operation, the Government brought this suit against the doctors, their professional organizations and their prepaid medical care company, asserting two basic charges: first, that they conspired to restrain and monopolize the business of providing prepaid medical care in the State of Oregon, and, second, that they conspired to restrain competition between doctor-sponsored prepaid medical plans within the State of Oregon in that Oregon Physicians’ Service would not furnish prepaid medical care in an area serviced by a local society plan.
The District Judge, after a long trial, dismissed the complaint on the ground that the Government had proved none of its charges by a preponderance of evidence. The direct appeal procedure does not give us the benefit of review by a Court of Appeals of findings of fact.
The appeal brings to us no important questions of law or unsettled problems of statutory construction. It is much like United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 338 U. S. 338. Its issues are solely ones of fact. The record is long, replete with conflicts in testimony, and includes quantities of documentary material taken from the appellees’ files and letters written by doctors, employers, and employees. The Government and the appellees each put more than two score of witnesses on the stand. At the close of the trial the judge stated that his work “does not permit the preparation of a formal opinion in so complex a case. I will state my conclusions on the main issues and then will append some notes made at various stages throughout the trial. These may be of aid to counsel in the preparation of Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law to be submitted as a basis for final judgment.” 95 F. Supp., at 104. These notes indicated his disposition of the issues, but the Government predicates a suggestion of bias on irrelevant soliloquies on socialized medicine, socialized law, and the like, which they contained. Admitting that these do not add strength ór persuasiveness to his opinion, they do not becloud his clear disposition of the main issues of the case, in all of which he ruled against the Government. Counsel for the doctors submitted detailed findings in accordance therewith. The Government did not submit requests to find, but by letter raised objections to various proposals of the appellees.
The trial judge found that appellees did not conspire to restrain or attempt to monopolize prepaid medical care in Oregon in the period 1936-1941, and that, even if such conspiracy during that time was proved, it was abandoned in 1941 with the formation of Oregon Physicians’ Service marking the entry of appellees into the prepaid medical care business. He ruled that what restraints were proved could be justified as reasonable to maintain proper standards of medical ethics. He found that supplying prepaid medical care within the State of Oregon by doctor-sponsored organizations does not constitute trade or commerce within the meaning of the Sherman Act, but he declined to rule on the question whether supplying prepaid medical care by the private associations is interstate commerce.
The Government asks us to overrule each of these findings as contrary to the evidence, and to find that the business of providing prepaid medical care is interstate commerce. We are asked to review the facts and reverse and remand the case “for entry of a decree granting appropriate relief.” We are asked in substance to try the case de novo on the record, make findings and determine the nature and form of relief. We have heretofore declined to give such scope to our review. United States v. Yellow Cab Co., supra.
While Congress has provided direct appeal to this Court, it also has provided that where an action is tried by a court without a jury “Findings of fact shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous, and due regard shall be given to the opportunity of the trial court to judge of the credibility of the witnesses.” Rule 52 (a), Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. There is no case more appropriate for adherence to this rule than one in which the complaining party creates a vast record of cumulative evidence as to long-past transactions, motives, and purposes, the effect of which depends largely on credibility of witnesses.
The trial court rejected a grouping by the Government of its evidentiary facts into four periods, 1930-1936, the year 1936, 1936-1941, and 1941 to trial. That proposal projected the inquiry over an eighteen-year period before the action was instituted. The court accepted only the period since the organization of Oregon Physicians’ Service as significant and rejected the earlier years as “ancient history” of a time “when the Doctors were trying to find themselves. ... It was a period of groping for the correct position to take to accord with changing times.” 95 F. Supp., at 105. Of course, present events have roots in the past, and it is quite proper to trace currently questioned conduct backwards to illuminate its connections and meanings. But we think the trial judge was quite right in rejecting pre-1941 events as establishing the cause of action the Government was trying to maintain, and adopt his division of the time involved into two periods, 1936-1941, and 1941 to trial.
It will simplify consideration of such cases as this to keep in sight the target at which relief is aimed. The sole function of an action for injunction is to forestall future violations. It is so unrelated to punishment or reparations for those past that its pendency or decision does not prevent concurrent or later remedy for past violations by indictment or action for damages by those injured. All it takes to make the cause of action for relief by injunction is a real threat of future violation or a contemporary violation of a nature likely to continue or recur. This established, it adds nothing that the calendar of years gone by might have been filled with transgressions. Even where relief is mandatory in form, it is to undo existing conditions, because otherwise they are likely to continue. In a forward-looking action such as this, an examination of “a great amount of archeology” is justified only when it illuminates or explains the present and predicts the shape of things to come.
When defendants are shown to have settled into a continuing practice or entered into a conspiracy violative of antitrust laws, courts will not assume that it has been abandoned without clear proof. Local 167 v. United States, 291 U. S. 293, 298. It is the duty of the courts to beware of efforts to defeat injunctive relief by protestations of repentance and reform, especially when abandonment seems timed to anticipate suit, and there is probability of resumption. Cf. United States v. United States Steel Corp., 251 U. S. 417, 445.
But we find not the slightest reason to doubt the genuineness, good faith or permanence of the changed attitude and strategy of these defendant-appellees which took place in 1941. It occurred seven years before this suit was commenced and, so far as we are informed, before it was predictable. It did not consist merely of pretensions or promises but was an overt and visible reversal of policy, carried out by extensive operations which have every appearance of being permanent because wise and advantageous for the doctors. The record discloses no threat or probability of resumption of the abandoned warfare against prepaid medical service and the contract practice it entails. We agree with the trial court that conduct discontinued in 1941 does not warrant the issuance of an injunction in 1949. Industrial Assn. v. United States, 268 U. S. 64, 84.
Appellees, in providing prepaid medical care, may engage in activities which violate the antitrust laws. They are now competitors in the field and restraints, if any are to be expected, will be in their methods of promotion and operation of their own prepaid plan. Our duty is to inquire whether any restraints have been proved of a character likely to continue if not enjoined.
Striking the events prior to 1941 out of the Government’s case, except for purposes of illustration or background information, little of substance is left. The case derived its coloration and support almost entirely from the abandoned practices. It would prolong this opinion beyond useful length, to review evidentiary details peculiar to this case. We mention what appear to be some highlights.
Only the Multnomah County Medical Society resorted to expulsions of doctors because of contract-practice activities, and there have been no expulsions for such cause since 1941. There were hints in the testimony that Multnomah was reviving the expulsion threat a short time before this action was commenced, but nothing came of it, and what that Society might do within the limits of its own membership does not necessarily indicate a joint venture or conspiracy with other appellees.
Some emphasis is placed on a report of a meeting of the House of Delegates of the State Society at which it was voted that the “private patient status” policy theretofore applied to private commercial hospital association contracts be extended to the industrial and railroad type of contracts. Any significance of this provision seems neutralized -by another paragraph in the same report, which reads: “A receipt should be furnished each patient at the time of each visit, as it is understood the [industrial and railroad plan] companies concerned will probably establish a program of reimbursement to the affected employees.” That does not strike us as a threat to restrict the practice of industrial and railroad companies of reimbursing employees for medical expenses and we cannot say that any ambiguity was not properly resolved in appellees’ favor by the trial court.
The record contains a number of letters from doctors to private associations refusing to accept checks directly from them. Some base refusal on a policy of their local medical society, others are silent as to reasons. Some may be attributed to the writers’ personal resistance to dealing directly with the private health associations, for it is clear that many doctors objected to filling out the company forms and supplying details required by the associations, and preferred to confine themselves to direct dealing with the patient and leaving the patient to deal with the associations. Some writers may have mistaken or misunderstood the policy of local associations. Others may have avoided disclosure of personal opposition by the handy and impersonal excuse of association “policy.” The letters have some evidentiary value, but it is not compelling and, weighed against the other post-1941 evidence, does not satisfy us that the trial court's findings are “clearly erroneous.”
Since no concerted refusal to deal with private health associations has been proved, we need not decide whether it would violate the antitrust laws. We might observe in passing, however, that there are ethical considerations where the historic direct relationship between patient and physician is involved which are quite different than the usual considerations prevailing in ordinary commercial matters. This Court has recognized that forms of competition usual in the business world may be demoralizing to the ethical standards of a profession. Semler v. Oregon State Board of Dental Examiners, 294 U. S. 608.
Appellees’ evidence to disprove conspiracy is not conclusive, is necessarily largely negative, but is too persuasive for us to say it was clear error to accept it. In 1948, 1,210 of the 1,660 licensed physicians in Oregon were members of the Oregon State Medical Society, and between January 1, 1947, and June 30, 1948, 1,085 Oregon doctors billed and received payment directly from the Industrial Hospital Association, only one of the several private plans operating in the State. Surely there was no effective boycott, and ineffectiveness, in view of the power over its members which the Government attributes to the Society, strongly suggests the lack of an attempt to boycott these private associations. A parade of local medical society members from all parts of the State, apparently reputable, credible, and informed professional men, testified that their societies now have no policy of discrimination against private health associations, and that no attempts are made to prevent individual doctors from cooperating with them. Members of the governing councils of the State and Multnomah County Societies testified that since 1940 there have been no suggestions in their meetings of attempts to prevent individual doctors from serving private associations. The manager of Oregon Physicians' Service testified that at none of the many meetings and conferences of local societies attended by him did he hear any proposal to prevent doctors from cooperation with private plans.
If the testimony of these many responsible witnesses is given credit, no finding of conspiracy to restrain or monopolize this business could be sustained. Certainly we cannot say that the trial court's refusal to find such a conspiracy was clearly erroneous.
The other charge is that appellees conspired to restrain competition between the several doctor-sponsored organizations within the State of Oregon. The charge here, as we understand it from paragraph 33 (i) of the complaint, 95 F. Supp., at 124, is that Oregon Physicians' Service, the state-wide organization, and the county-medical-society-sponsored plans agreed not to compete with one another. Apparently if a county was provided with prepaid medical care by a local society, the state society would stay out, or if the county society wanted to inaugurate a local plan, the state society would withdraw from the area.
This is not a situation where suppliers of commercial commodities divide territories and make reciprocal agreements to exploit only the allotted market, thereby depriving allocated communities of competition. This prepaid plan does not supply to, and its allocation does not withhold from, any community medical service or facilities of any description. No matter what organization issues the certificate, it will be performed, in the main, by the local doctors. The certificate serves only to prepay their fees. The result, if the state association should enter into local competition with the county association, would be that the inhabitants could prepay medical services through either one of two medical society channels. There is not the least proof that duplicating sources of the prepaid certificates would make them cheaper, more available or would result in an improved service or have any beneficial effect on anybody. Through these nonprofit organizations the doctors of each locality, in practical effect, offer their services and hospitalization on a prepaid basis instead of on the usual cash fee or credit basis. To hold it illegal because they do not offer their services simultaneously and in the same locality through both a state and a county organization would be to require them to compete with themselves in sale of certificates. Under the circumstances proved here, we cannot regard the agreement by these nonprofit organizations not to compete as an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act.
With regard to this charge, the court found, “The sale of medical services, by Doctor Sponsored Organizations, as conducted within the State of Oregon, is not trade or commerce within the meaning of Section 1 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, nor is it commerce within the meaning of the constitutional grant of power to Congress 'To regulate Commerce ... among the several States.’ ” 95 F. Supp., at 118. If that finding in both aspects is not to be overturned as clearly erroneous, it, of course, disposes of this charge, for if there was no restraint of interstate commerce, the conduct charged does not fall within the prohibitions of the Sherman Act.
Almost everything pointed to in the record by the Government as evidence that interstate commerce is involved in this case relates to across-state-line activities of the private associations. It is not proven, however, to be adversely affected by any allocation of territories by doctor-sponsored plans. So far as any evidence brought to our attention discloses, the activities of the latter are wholly intrastate. The Government did show that Oregon Physicians’ Service made a number of payments to out-of-state doctors and hospitals, presumably for treatment of policyholders who happened to remove or temporarily to be away from Oregon when need for service arose. These were, however, few, sporadic and incidental. Cf. Industrial Assn. v. United States, supra, at 84.
American Medical Assn. v. United States, 317 U. S. 519, does not stand for the proposition that furnishing of prepaid medical care on a local plane is interstate commerce. That was a prosecution under § 3 of the Sherman Act of a conspiracy to restrain trade or commerce in the District of Columbia. Interstate commerce was not necessary to the operation of the statute there.
We conclude that the Government has not clearly proved its charges. Certainly the court’s findings are not clearly erroneous. “A finding is ‘clearly erroneous’ when, although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U. S. 364, 395. The Government’s contentions have been plausibly and earnestly argued but the record does not leave us with any “definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.”
As was aptly stated by the New York Court of Appeals, although in a case of a rather different substantive nature: “Face to face with living witnesses the original trier of the facts holds a position of advantage from which appellate judges are excluded. In doubtful cases the exercise of his power of observation often proves the most accurate method of ascertaining the truth. . . . How can we say the judge is wrong? We never saw the witnesses. . . . To the sophistication and sagacity of the trial judge the law confides the duty of appraisal.” Boyd v. Boyd, 252 N. Y. 422, 429, 169 N. E. 632, 634.
Affirmance is, of course, without prejudice to future suit if practices in conduct of the Oregon Physicians’ Service or the county services, whether or not involved in the present action, shall threaten or constitute violation of the antitrust laws. Cf. United States v. Reading Co., 226 U. S. 324, 373.
Judgment affirmed.
Mr. Justice Black is of opinion that the judgment below is clearly erroneous and should be reversed.
Mr. Justice Clark took no part in the consideration or decision of this ease.
Pursuant to § 2 of the Expediting Act of 1903, 32 Stat. 823, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 29.
95 F. Supp. 103.
26 Stat. 209, 15 U. S. C. § 1: “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States ... is declared to be illegal . . . .”
15 U. S. C. § 2: “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States . . . shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor . . .
Judge Augustus Hand, “Trial Efficiency,” dealing with antitrust cases, Business Practices Under Federal Antitrust Laws, Symposium, New York State Bar Assn. (C. C. H. 1951) 31-32. See also Sec. VIII, Procedure in Anti-Trust and Other Protracted Cases, a Report adopted September 26, 1951, by the Judicial Conference of the United States.
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 Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari in this case to determine whether the respondent has standing to bring an action as a federal taxpayer alleging that certain provisions concerning public reporting of expenditures under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, 63 Stat. 208, 50 U. S. C. § 403a et seq., violate Art. I, § 0, cl. 7, of the Constitution which provides:
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Respondent brought this suit in the United States District Court on a complaint in which he recites attempts to obtain from the Government information concerning detailed expenditures of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the complaint, respondent wrote to the Government Printing Office in 1967 and requested that he be provided with the documents “published by the Government in compliance with Article I, section 9, clause (7) of the United States Constitution.” The Fiscal Service of the Bureau of Accounts of the Department of the Treasury replied, explaining that it published the document known as the Combined Statement of Receipts, Expenditures, and Balances of the United States Government. Several copies of the monthly and daily reports of the office were sent with the letter. Respondent then wrote to the same office and, quoting part of the CIA Act, asked whether this statute did not “cast reflection upon the authenticity of the Treasury’s Statement.” He also inquired as to how he could receive further information on the expenditures of the CIA. The Bureau of Accounts replied stating that it had no other available information.
In another letter, respondent asserted that the CIA Act was repugnant to the Constitution and requested that the Treasury Department seek an opinion of the Attorney General. The Department answered declining to seek such an opinion and this suit followed. Respondent’s complaint asked the court to “issue a permanent injunction enjoining the defendants from publishing their 'Combined Statement of Receipts, Expenditures and Balances of the United States Government’ and representing it as the fulfillment of the mandates of Article I Section 9 Clause 7 until same fully complies with those mandates.” In essence, the respondent asked the federal court to declare unconstitutional that provision of the Central Intelligence Agency Act which permits the Agency to account for its expenditures "solely on the certificate of the Director . . . 50 U. S. C. § 403j (b). The only injury alleged by respondent was that he “cannot obtain a document that sets out the expenditures and receipts” of the CIA but on the contrary was “asked to accept a fraudulent document.” The District Court granted a motion for dismissal on the ground respondent lacked standing under Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83 (1968), and that the subject matter raised political questions not suited for judicial disposition.
The Court of Appeals sitting en banc, with three judges dissenting, reversed, 465 F. 2d 844 (CA3 1972), holding that the respondent had standing to bring this action. The majority relied chiefly on Flast v. Cohen, supra, and its two-tier test that taxpayer standing rests on a showing of (a) a “logical link” between the status as a taxpayer and the challenged legislative enactment, i. e., an attack on an enactment under the Taxing and Spending Clause of Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution; and (b) a “nexus” between the plaintiff’s status and a specific constitutional limitation imposed on the taxing and spending power. 392 U. S., at 102-103. While noting that the respondent did not directly attack an appropriations act, as did the plaintiff in Flast, the Court of Appeals concluded that the CIA statute challenged by the respondent was “integrally related,” 465 F. 2d, at 853, to his ability to challenge the appropriations since he could not question an appropriation about which he had no knowledge. The Court of Appeals seemed to rest its holding on an assumption that this case was a prelude to a later case challenging, on the basis of information obtained in this suit, some particular appropriation for or expenditure of the CIA; respondent stated no such an intention in his complaint. The dissenters took a different approach urging denial of standing principally because, in their view, respondent alleged no specific injury but only a general interest common to all members of the public.
We conclude that respondent lacks standing to maintain a suit for the relief sought and we reverse.
I
As far back as Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), this Court held that judicial power may be exercised only in a case properly before it — a “case or controversy” not suffering any of the limitations of the political-question doctrine, not then moot or calling for an advisory opinion. In Baker v. Can, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962), this limitation was described in terms that a federal court cannot
“ ‘pronounce any statute, either of a State or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the Constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.’ Liverpool Steamship Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U. S. 33, 39.”
Recently in Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150 (1970), the Court, while noting that “ [generalizations about standing to sue are largely worthless as such,” id., at 151, emphasized that “[o]ne generalization is, however, necessary and that is that the question of standing in the federal courts is to be considered in the framework of Article III which restricts judicial power to ‘cases’ and ‘controversies.’ ”
Although the recent holding of the Court in Flast v. Cohen, supra, is a starting point in an examination of respondent’s claim to prosecute this suit as a taxpayer, that case must be read with reference to its principal predecessor, Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923). In Frothingham, the injury alleged was that the congressional enactment challenged as unconstitutional would, if implemented, increase the com plain - ant's future federal income taxes. Denying standing, the Frothingham Court rested on the “comparatively minute[,] remote, fluctuating and uncertain,” id., at 487, impact on the taxpayer, and the failure to allege the kind of direct injury required for standing.
“The party who invokes the [judicial] power must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.” Id., at 488.
When the Court addressed the question of standing in Flast, Mr. Chief Justice Warren traced what he described as the “confusion” following Frothingham as to whether the Court had announced a constitutional doctrine barring suits by taxpayers challenging federal expenditures as unconstitutional or simply a policy rule of judicial self-restraint. In an effort to clarify the confusion and to take into account intervening developments, of which class actions and joinder under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were given as examples, the Court embarked on “a fresh examination of the limitations upon standing to sue in a federal court and the application of those limitations to taxpayer suits.” 392 U. S., at 94. That re-examination led, however, to the holding that a “taxpayer will have standing consistent with Article III to invoke federal judicial power when he alleges that congressional action under the taxing and spending clause is in derogation of those constitutional provisions which operate to restrict the exercise of the taxing and spending power.” Id., at 105-106. (Emphasis supplied.) In so holding, the Court emphasized that Art. Ill requirements are the threshold inquiry:
“The ‘gist of the question of standing’ is whether the party seeking relief has ‘alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness . . . upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.’ ” Id., at 99, citing Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S., at 204.
The Court then announced a two-pronged standing test which requires allegations: (a) challenging an enactment under the Taxing and Spending Clause of Art. I, §8, of the Constitution; and (b) claiming that the challenged enactment exceeds specific constitutional limitations imposed on the taxing and spending power. 392 U. S., at 102-103. While the “impenetrable barrier to suits against Acts of Congress brought by individuals who can assert only the interest of federal taxpayers,” id., at 85, had been slightly lowered, the Court made clear it was reaffirming the principle of Frothingham, precluding a taxpayer’s use of “a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government or the allocation of power in the Federal System.” Id., at 106. The narrowness of that holding is emphasized by the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart in Flast:
“In concluding that the appellants therefore have standing to sue, we do not undermine the salutary principle, established by Frothingham and reaffirmed today, that a taxpayer may not 'employ a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government or the allocation of power in the Federal System.' ” Id., at 114.
II
Although the Court made it very explicit in Flast that a “fundamental aspect of standing” is that it focuses primarily on the party seeking to get his complaint before the federal court rather than “on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated,” id., at 99, it made equally clear that
“in ruling on [taxpayer] standing, it is both appropriate and necessary to look to the substantive issues for another purpose, namely, to determine whether there is a logical nexus between the status asserted and the claim sought to be adjudicated.” Id., at 102.
We therefore turn to an examination of the issues sought to be raised by respondent’s complaint to determine whether he is “a proper and appropriate party to invoke federal judicial power,” ibid., with respect to those issues.
We need not and do not reach the merits of the constitutional attack on the statute; our inquiry into the “substantive issues” is for the limited purpose indicated above. The mere recital of the respondent’s claims and an examination of the statute under attack demonstrate how far he falls short of the standing criteria of Flast and how neatly he falls within the Frothingham holding left undisturbed. Although the status he rests on is that he is a taxpayer, his challenge is not addressed to the taxing or spending power, but to the statutes regulating the CIA, specifically 50 U. S. C. §403j(b). That section provides different accounting and reporting requirements and procedures for the CIA, as is also done with respect to other governmental agencies dealing in confidential areas.
Respondent makes no claim that appropriated funds are being spent in violation of a “specific constitutional .limitation upon the . . . taxing and spending power . . . .” 392 U. S., at 104. Rather, he asks the courts to compel the Government to give him information on precisely how the CIA spends its funds. Thus there is no “logical nexus” between the asserted status of taxpayer and the claimed failure of the Congress to require the Executive to supply a more detailed report of the expenditures of that agency.
The question presented thus is simply and narrowly whether these claims meet the standards for taxpayer standing set forth in Flast; we hold they do not. Respondent is seeking “to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government.” 392 U. S., at 106. Both Frothingham and Flast, supra, reject that basis for standing.
Ill
The Court of Appeals held that the basis of taxpayer standing
“need not always be the appropriation and the spending of [taxpayer’s] money for an invalid purpose. The personal stake may come from an injury in fact even if it is not directly economic in nature. Association of Data Processing Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, [397 U. S. 150,] 154 (1970).” 465 F. 2d, at 853.
The respondent’s claim is that without detailed information on CIA expenditures — and hence its activities— he cannot intelligently follow the actions of Congress or the Executive, nor can he properly fulfill his obligations as a member of the electorate in voting for candidates seeking national office.
This is surely the kind of a generalized grievance described in both Frothingham and Flast since the impact on him is plainly undifferentiated and “common to all members of the public." Ex parte Levitt, 302 U. S. 633, 634 (1937); Laird v. Tatum, 408 U. S. 1, 13 (1972). While we can hardly dispute that this respondent has a genuine interest in the use of funds and that his interest may be prompted by his status as a taxpayer, he has not alleged that, as a taxpayer, he is in danger of suffering any particular concrete injury as a result of the operation of this statute. As the Court noted in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727 (1972):
“[A] mere ‘interest in a problem,’ no matter how longstanding the interest and no matter how qualified the organization is in evaluating the problem, is not sufficient by itself to render the organization ‘adversely affected’ or ‘aggrieved’ within the meaning of the APA.” Id., at 739.
Ex parte Levitt, supra, is especially instructive. There Levitt sought to challenge the validity of the commission of a Supreme Court Justice who had been nominated and confirmed as such while he was a member of the Senate. Lévitt alleged that the appointee had voted for an increase in the emoluments provided by Congress for Justices of the Supreme Court during the term for which he was last elected to the United States Senate. The claim was that the appointment violated the explicit prohibition of Art. I, § 6, cl. 2, of the Constitution. The Court disposed of Lévitt’s claim, stating:
“It is an established principle that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has sustained or is immedi ately in danger of sustaining a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public.” 302 U. S., at 634. (Emphasis supplied.)
Of course, if Levitt’s allegations were true, they made out an arguable violation of an explicit prohibition of the Constitution. Yet even this was held insufficient to support standing because, whatever Levitt’s injury, it was one he shared with “all members of the public.” Respondent here, like the petitioner in Lévitt, also fails to clear the threshold hurdle of Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S., at 204. See supra, at 171, and Flast, supra.
It can. be argued that if respondent is not permitted to litigate this issue, no one can do so. In a very real sense, the absence of any particular individual or class to litigate these claims gives support to the argument that the subject matter is committed to the surveillance of Congress, and ultimately to the political process. Any other conclusion would mean that the Founding Fathers intended to set up something in the nature of an Athenian democracy or a New England town meeting to oversee the conduct of the National Government by means of lawsuits in federal courts. The Constitution created a representative Government with the representatives directly responsible to their constituents at stated periods of two, four, and six years; that the Constitution does not afford a judicial remedy does not, of course, completely disable the citizen who is not satisfied with the “ground rules” established by the Congress for reporting expenditures of the Executive Branch. Lack of standing within the narrow confines of Art. Ill jurisdiction does not impair the right to assert his views in the political forum or at the polls. Slow, cumbersome, and unresponsive though the traditional electoral process may be thought at times, our system provides for changing members of the political branches when dissatisfied citizens convince a sufficient number of their fellow electors that elected representatives are delinquent in performing duties committed to them.
As our society has become more complex, our numbers more vast, our lives more varied, and our resources more strained, citizens increasingly request the intervention of the courts on a greater variety of issues than at any period of our national development. The acceptance of new categories of judicially cognizable injury has not eliminated the basic principle that to invoke judicial power the claimant must have a “personal stake in the outcome,” Baker v. Carr, supra, at 204, or a “particular, concrete injury,” Sierra Club, supra, at 740-741, n. 16, or “a direct injury,” Ex parte Levitt, supra, at 634; in short, something more than “generalized grievances,” Flast, supra, at 106. Respondent has failed to meet these fundamental tests; accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals 1S
Reversed.
[For dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan, see post, p. 235.]
Respondent’s complaint alleged that he was “a member of the electorate, and a loyal citizen of the United States.” At the same time, he states that he ‘‘does not challenge the formulation of the issue contained in the petition for certiorari.” Brief for Respondent in Opposition to Pet. for Cert. 1. The question presented there was: “Whether a federal taxpayer has standing to challenge the provisions of the Central Intelligence Act which provide that appropriations to and expenditures by that Agenc shall not be made public, on the ground that such secrecy contravenes Article I, section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution.” Pet. for Cert. 2.
App. 15-16. Respondent’s complaint also asked for a three-judge district court and this application was denied by a single District Judge with directions to place the case on the calendar in the usual manner. The Court of Appeals, in the judgment under review, ordered that, on remand, the case be considered by a three-judge court. The District Court has granted a stay of respondent’s motion to convene a three-judge court, pending disposition of this petition for writ of certiorari. On September 26, 1972, the Third Circuit denied a petition for mandamus,, filed by respondent, to compel the immediate convening of a three-judge court.
The majority found that the respondent had standing to bring this suit as a taxpayer. One judge held that he had standing as a citizen. This case was originally argued before a panel consisting of two Circuit Judges and one District Judge sitting by designation. After a second round of briefs, the Court of Appeals determined sita sponte to hear the case en banc without further argument. The District Judge sat with the Court of Appeals en banc. This point was not raised in the question presented in the petition for certiorari but the Solicitor General, in a footnote, called attention to the District Judge’s participation. He expressed the view that, although 28 U. S. C. § 4G (c) limits en banc hearings to circuit judges in active service (and any retired circuit judge who participated in the initial hearing), the error was harmless. Brief for United States 5-6, n. 4. In these circumstances we need not reach the question.
397 U. S., at 161. See also K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 22.09-6, p. 753 (Supp. 1970).
In Frothingham, the plaintiff sought to enjoin enforcement of the Federal Maternity Act of 1921, 42 Stat. 224, which provided for financial grants to States with programs for reducing maternal and infant mortality. She alleged violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause on the ground that the legislation encroached on an area reserved to the States.
In some cases, the operative effect of this “look at the substantive issues” could lead to the conclusion that the “substantive issues” were nonjusticiable and in consequence no one would have standing. See Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U. S. 1, 9 (1973); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968); Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 508-509 (1961).
See 28 U. S. C. § 537 (Federal Bureau of Investigation); 31 U. S. C. § 107 (foreign affairs); 42 U. S. C. § 2017 (b) (Atomic Energy Commission).
Congress has taken notice of the need of the public for more information concerning governmental operations, but at the same time it has continued traditional restraints on disclosure of confidential information. See Freedom of Information Act, 5 U. S. C. §552; Environmental Protection Agency v. Mink, 410 U. S. 73 (1973).
The Court of Appeals thus appeared to rely on Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U. S. 150 (1970). Abstracting some general language of that opinion from the setting and controlling facts of that case, the Court of Appeals overlooked the crucial factor that standing in that case arose under a specific statute, Bank Service Corporation Act of 1962, 76 Stat. 1132, 12 U. S. C. § 1861. The petitioners in Data Processing alleged competitive economic injury to private business enterprise due to a ruling by the Comptroller of the Currency permitting national banks to sell their data processing services to other banks and to bank customers whose patronage the data processing companies sought. We recognized standing for those private business proprietors who were engaged in selling the same kind of services the Comptroller- allowed banks to sell; we held only that the claims of impermissible competition were “arguably . . . within the zone of interests protected” by § 4 of the Bank Service Corporation Act. 397 U. S., at 156. In short, Congress had provided competitor standing. The Court saw no indication that Congress had sought to preclude judicial review of administrative ridings of the Comptroller of the Currency as to the limitations Congress placed on national banks.
“No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time . . . .”
Although we need not reach or decide precisely what is meant by “a regular Statement and Account,” it is clear that Congress has plenary power to exact any reporting and accounting it considers appropriate in the public interest. It is therefore open to serious question whether the Framers of the Constitution ever imagined that general directives to the Congress or the Executive would be subject to enforcement by an individual citizen. While the available evidence is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively conclusive, historical analysis of the genesis of cl. 7 suggests that it was intended to permit some degree of secrecy of governmental operations. The ultimate weapon of enforcement available to the Congress would, of course, be the “power of the purse.” Independent of the statute here challenged by respondent, Congress could grant standing to taxpayers or citizens, or both, limited, of course, by the “cases” and “controversies” provisions of Art. III.
Not controlling, but surely not unimportant, are nearly two centimes of acceptance of a reading of cl. 7 as vesting in Congress plenary power to spell out the details of precisely when and with what specificity Executive agencies must report the expenditure of appropriated funds and to exempt certain secret activities from comprehensive public reporting. See 2 M. Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 618-619 (1911); 3 id., at 326-327; 3 J. Elliot, Debates on the Federal Constitution 462 (1836); D. Miller, Secret Statutes of the United States 10 (1918).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this action petitioners assert materialmen's liens under state law for materials furnished to a prime contractor building boats for the United States, and seek just compensation under the Fifth Amendment for the value of their liens on accumulated materials and uncompleted work which have been conveyed to the United States.
The United States entered into a contract with the Rice Shipbuilding Corporation for the construction of 11 navy personnel boats. The contract provided that in the event of default by Rice, the Government could terminate the contract and require Rice to transfer title and deliver to the Government all completed and uncompleted work together with all manufacturing materials acquired by Rice for building the boats. Petitioners furnished various materials to Rice for use in construction of the boats. Upon Rice's default, the Government exercised its option as to 10 of the boat hulls still under construction; Rice executed an itemized “Instrument of Transfer of Title” conveying to the United States the hulls and all manufacturing materials then on hand; and the Government removed all of these properties to out-of-state naval shipyards for use in the completion of the boats. When the transfer occurred, petitioners had not been paid for their materials and they have not been paid since. Petitioners therefore contended that they had liens under Maine law which provides that “[wjhoever furnishes labor or materials for building a vessel has a lien on it therefor, which may be enforced by attachment thereof within 4 days after it is launched .... He also has a lien on the materials furnished before they become part of the vessel, which may be enforced by attachment . . . .” Maine Rev. Stat., 1954, c. 178, § 13.
Claiming valid liens on the hulls and manufacturing materials at the time they were transferred by Rice to the United States, petitioners asserted that the Government’s action destroyed their liens by making them unenforceable and that this constituted a taking of their property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Court of Claims, relying on United States v. Ansonia Brass & Copper Co., 218 U. S. 452, held that petitioners never acquired valid liens on the hulls or the materials transferred to the Government and that therefore there had been no taking of any property owned by them. -Ct. Cl.-, 169 F. Supp. 259. We granted certiorari. 361 U. S. 812.
L
The Court of Claims reached its conclusion from the correct premise that laborers and materialmen can acquire no liens on a “public work.” Hill v. American Surety Co., 200 U. S. 197, 203; Equitable Surety Co. v. McMillan, 234 U. S. 448, 455; United States v. Munsey Trust Co., 332 U. S. 234, 241. It reasoned that because the contract between Rice and the United States contemplated that title to the vessels would eventually vest in the Government, the Government had “inchoate title” to the materials supplied by petitioners, rendering such materials “public works” immune from the outset to petitioners’ liens. We cannot agree that a mere prospect that property will later be owned by the United States renders that property immune from otherwise valid liens.
The sovereign’s immunity against materialmen’s liens has never been extended beyond property actually owned by it. The Ansonia case itself, upon which the Court of Claims relied, makes this clear, where in dealing with one aspect of the issues there involved, the Court said:
“We are not now dealing with the right of a State to provide for such liens while property to the chattel in process of construction remains in the builder, who may be constructing the same with a view to transferring title therein to the United States upon its acceptance under a contract with the Government. We are now treating of property which the United States owns. Such property, for the most obvious reasons of public policy, cannot be seized by authority of another sovereignty against the consent of the Government.” 218 U. S., at 471.
The terms of the contract between Rice and the United States show conclusively that Rice, not the United States, had title to the property when petitioners furnished their materials. The agreement provided for delivery, preliminary acceptance, and final acceptance of the boats, the contractor to remain responsible for all supplies until delivery. The contractor was required to insure the property for the Government’s benefit only to the extent of progress payments made and materials furnished by the Government. The very clause here invoked by the Government provided that upon default and termination of the contract the Government might “require the Contractor to transfer title and deliver” the work, supplies and materials on hand. (Emphasis added.) While the Government was obliged to make progress payments based on the percentage of the work completed, nothing in the contract provided that ownership of the portion of the work paid for should vest in the United States. On the contrary, it was stipulated that all progress payments should be secured by a paramount government lien on the property. And finally, the contractor was required to discharge immediately any lien or right in rem asserted against the property. In their totality, these provisions clearly recognize that title was to remain in Rice during performance of the work, and show that private liens could attach to the property while Rice owned it.
We think, therefore, that the Court of Claims was in error in holding as it did. This, however, does not end the case in petitioners’ favor since the United States urges other grounds to support its judgment.
II.
It is contended that petitioners’ asserted liens gave them no compensable property interests within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Under Maine law, material-men become entitled to a lien when they furnish supplies; however, the lien must subsequently be enforced by attachment of the vessel or supplies. There is no allegation that any of the petitioners had taken steps to attach the uncompleted work. Nevertheless, they were entitled to resort to the specific property for the satisfaction of their claims. That such a right is compensable by virtue of the Fifth Amendment was decided in Louisville Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555. In that case, a bank acquired a mortgage which under state law constituted a lien enforceable only by suit to foreclose. Subsequently, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Act so as to deprive mortgagees of substantial incidents of their rights to resort to mortgaged property. This Court held that the bank’s property had been taken without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. No reason has been suggested why the nature of the liens held by petitioners should be regarded as any different, for this purpose, from the interest of the bank held compensable in the Radford case.
The Government, however, suggests that because it held a paramount lien on the property to secure its progress payments, petitioners’ claimed liens were in fact worthless. Petitioners, on the other hand, argue that when the Government chose to acquire title to the property rather than to enforce its lien, the lien merged with the title, thus making petitioners’ liens paramount, and that even if it did not, and their liens remained subordinate to that of the Government, the value of the hulls and materials would have been sufficient to satisfy the Government’s claims and some or all of petitioners’ claims as well.
We need not decide whether, as a matter of law, the Government’s lien "merged” in its title. At the very least, petitioners, prior to the transfer of title, had the right to whatever proceeds the property might bring over and above the Government’s claim to the amount of its progress payments. By the date of default, Rice had expended some $198,000, while the Government had advanced only about $141,000 in progress payments. We have no way of knowing what the property would have brought had it been sold, but it cannot be said with certainty that it would have brought no more than the amount of the Government’s claim. Moreover, petitioners themselves might have been able to purchase the property and realize some amount on their claims after the Government’s claims had been satisfied. While these factors may present a difficult problem of valuation, we cannot say on this record that petitioners’ interests were valueless.
The Government also seems to suggest that because the contract between Rice and the United States expressly gave the Government the option of requiring a conveyance of title upon default, petitioners’ liens attached subject to that limitation. Petitioners, however, were not parties to the contract. Furthermore, their liens attached by operation of law and nothing in the record indicates that the scope of such liens is affected by contractual arrangements into which the owner of the property may have entered.
We conclude, therefore, that on this record petitioners must be considered to have had compensable property interests within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment prior to transfer of title to the Government.
III.
The final question is whether the Government’s action constituted a “taking” of petitioners’ property interests within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Before the United States compelled Rice to transfer the hulls and all materials held for future use in building the boats, petitioners had valid liens under Maine law against both the hulls and whatever unused materials which petitioners had furnished. Before transfer these liens were enforceable by attachment against both the hulls and all materials. After transfer to the United States the liens were still valid, United States v. Alabama, 313 U. S. 274, 281-282, but they could not be enforced because of the sovereign immunity of the Government and its property from suit. The result of this was a destruction of all petitioners’ property rights under their liens, although, as we have pointed out, the liens were valid and had com-pensable value. Petitioners contend that destruction of their liens under the circumstances here is a “taking.” The United States denies this, largely on the premise that inability of petitioners to enforce their liens because of immunity of the Government and its property from suit cannot amount to a “taking.”
The Government argues that the Ansonia case is dis-positive of this Fifth Amendment issue. In that case, the contract between the shipbuilder and the United States provided, as to one of the ships contracted for, the dredge Benyuard, that as progress payments were made, the portion of the- work paid for should become the property of the United States. Subcontractors claimed liens on the uncompleted vessel under the Virginia supply-lien law. This Court merely held that, as the property had passed to the United States by virtue of the terms of the contract, no lien could be enforced against it. No question was raised as to the rights possessed by the subcontractors prior to the acquisition of title by the United States nor as to whether that event entitled them to just compensation under the Fifth Amendment. There is, to be sure, reason to believe that the subcontractors’ liens in that case, like those of petitioners here, did attach as soon as materials were furnished, which would necessarily be prior to the making of a progress payment for the portion of the work incorporating those materiáls and the consequent passage of title to the United States. See Hawes & Co. v. Trigg Co., 110 Va. 165, 185-186, 199, 65 S. E. 538, 546-547, 551-552. But the Fifth Amendment question was not raised or passed upon. In these circumstances we cannot regard the court’s decision as dispositive on the precise point now under, consideration, and must proceed to decide that question.
We hold that there was a taking of these liens for which just compensation is due under the Fifth Amendment. It is true that not every destruction or injury to property by governmental action has been held to be a “taking” in the constitutional sense. Omnia Commercial Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 502, 508-510. This case and many others reveal the difficulty of trying to draw the line between what destructions of property by lawful governmental actions are compensable “takings” and what destructions are “consequential” and therefore not compensable. See, e. g., United States v. Central Eureka Mining Co., 357 U. S. 155; United States v. Causby, 328 U. S. 256; United States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U. S. 373; United States v. Sponenbarger, 308 U. S. 256; Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393; Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 219 U. S. 467; Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wall. 457, 551.
The total destruction by the Government of all value of these liens, which constitute compensable property, has every possible element of a Fifth Amendment “taking” and is not a mere “consequential incidence” of a valid regulatory measure. Before the liens were destroyed, the lienholders admittedly had compensable property. Immediately afterwards, they had none. This was not because their property vanished into thin air. It was because the Government for its own advantage destroyed the value of the liens, something that the Government could do because its property was not subject to suit, but which no private purchaser could have done. Since this acquisition was for a public use, however accomplished, whether with an intent and purpose of extinguishing the liens or not, the Government’s action did destroy them and in the circumstances of this case did thereby take the property value of those liens within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Neither the boats’ immunity, after being acquired by the Government, from enforcement of the liens nor the use of a contract to take title relieves the Government from its constitutional obligation to pay just compensation for the value of the liens the petitioners lost and of which loss the Government was the direct, positive beneficiary.
The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole. A fair interpretation of this constitutional protection entitles these lienholders to just compensation here. Cf. Thibodo v. United States, 187 F. 2d 249.
The judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded to the Court of Claims for further proceedings to determine the value of the property taken. .
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Stewart concurs in the result.
The relevant portion of the Fifth Amendment provides, "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
While Rice was also liable to the Government for an additional amount approximating $146,000 representing the excess cost to the Government of having the boats completed, the contract does not provide, and there is no allegation, that this amount was secured by a lien on the property.
Questions of value of the liens were not determined by the Court of Claims since it entered a summary judgment for the United States for reasons stated on p. 42, supra.
United States v. Ansonia Brass & Copper Co., 218 U. S. 452; Hill v. American Surety Co., 200 U. S. 197; Equitable Surety Co. v. McMillan, 234 U. S. 448; United States v. Munsey Trust Co., 332 U. S. 234; The Siren, 7 Wall. 152; Minnesota v. United States, 305 U. S. 382; United States v. Alabama, 313 U. S. 274.
The Government also cites Mullen Benevolent Corp. v. United States, 290 U. S. 89. The facts there, however, revealed that the Government’s action could not have destroyed any liens existing at the time the Government acquired the land because as the Court said, “None remained upon the land, when the purchases were consummated,” 290 U. S., at 95.
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 White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
At issue here is the ownership of a tract of land on the east bank of the Missouri River in Iowa. Respondent Omaha Indian Tribe, supported by the United States as trustee of the Tribe’s reservation lands, claims the tract as part of reservation lands created for it under an 1854 treaty. Petitioners, including the State of Iowa and several individuals, argue that past movements of the Missouri River washed away part of the reservation and the soil accreted to the Iowa side of the river, vesting title in them as riparian landowners.
Two principal issues are presented. First, we are faced with novel questions regarding the interpretation and scope of Rev. Stat. § 2126, as set forth in 25 U. S. C. § 194, a 145-year-old, but seldom used, statute that provides:
“In all trials about the right of property in which an Indian may be a party on one side, and a white person on the other, the burden of proof shall rest upon the white person, whenever the Indian shall make out a presumption of title in himself from the fact of previous possession or ownership.”
Second, we must decide whether federal or state law determines whether the critical changes in the course of the Missouri River in this case were accretive or avulsive.
I
In 1854, the Omaha Indian Tribe ceded most of its aboriginal lands by treaty to the United States in exchange for money and assistance to enable the Tribe to cultivate its retained lands. Treaty of Mar. 16, 1854, 10 Stat. 1043; see United States v. Omaha Indians, 253 U. S. 275, 277-278 (1920). The retained lands proved unsatisfactory to the Tribe, and it exercised its option under the treaty to exchange those lands for a tract of 300,000 acres to be designated by the President and acceptable to the Tribe. The Blackbird Hills area, on the west bank of the Missouri, all of which was then part of the Territory of Nebraska, was selected. The eastern boundary of the reservation was fixed as the center of the main channel of the Missouri River, the thalweg. That land, as modified by a subsequent treaty and statutes, has remained the home of the Omaha Indian Tribe.
In 1867, a survey by T. H. Barrett of the General Land Office established that the reservation included a large peninsula jutting east toward the opposite, Iowa, side of the river, around which the river flowed in an oxbow curve known as Blackbird Bend. Over the next few decades, the river changed course several times, sometimes moving east, sometimes west. Since 1927, the river has been west of its 1867 position, leaving most of the Barrett survey area on the Iowa side of the river, separated from the rest of the reservation.
As the area, now on the Iowa side, dried out, Iowa residents settled on, improved, and farmed it. These non-Indian owners and their successors in title occupied the land for many years prior to April 2, 1975, when they were dispossessed by the Tribe, with the assistance of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Four lawsuits followed the seizure, three in federal court and one in state court. The Federal District Court for the Northern District of Iowa consolidated the three federal actions, severed claims to damages and lands outside the Barrett survey area, and issued a temporary injunction that permitted the Tribe to continue possession. The court then tried the case without a jury. At trial, the Government and the Tribe argued that the river’s movement had been avul-sive, and therefore the change in location of the river had not affected the boundary of the reservation. Petitioners argued that the river had gradually eroded the reservation lands on the west bank of the river, and that the disputed land on the east bank, in Iowa, had been formed by gradual accretion and belonged to the east-bank riparian owners. Both sides sought to quiet title in their names.
The District Court concluded that state rather than federal law should be the basis of decision. United States v. Wilson, 433 F. Supp. 57 (1977). The court interpreted the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1652, as not requiring the application of federal law in land disputes, even though the United States and an Indian tribe were claimants, unless the Constitution, a treaty, or an Act of Congress specifically supplanted state law. The court found no indication in those sources that federal law was to govern. It then went on to conclude that 25 U. S. C. § 194 was not applicable to the case because it was impossible for the Tribe to make out a prima facie case that it possessed the disputed lands in the past without proving its case on the merits. Thus, § 194 had no significance because it was “inextricably entwined with the merits.” 433 F. Supp., at 66.
Applying Nebraska law, which places the burden of proof on the party seeking to quiet title, the court concluded that the key changes in the river had been accretive, and that the east-bank riparians, the petitioners, were thus the owners of the disputed area. 433 F. Supp. 67 (1977).
The Court of Appeals reversed. 575 F. 2d 620 (CA8 1978). It began by ruling that the District Court should have applied federal rather than state law for two distinct reasons. First, the boundary of the reservation was coincidental with an interstate boundary at the time the river moved. Therefore, under Oregon ex rel. State Land Board v. Corvallis Sand & Gravel Co., 429 U. S. 363, 375 (1977), and other cases of this Court, the governing law is federal because
“[t]he rendering of a decision in a private dispute which would ‘press back’ an interstate boundary sufficiently implicates the interests of the states to require the application of federal common law.” 575 F. 2d, at 628.
Second, the Court of Appeals construed our decision in Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S. 661, 677 (1974), as requiring the application of federal law because the Tribe asserted a right to reservation land based directly on the 1854 treaty and therefore arising under and protected by federal law.
The Court of Appeals also ruled that the District Court had erred by refusing to apply 25 U. S. C. § 194. Because the Tribe had proved that the 1854 treaty included the land area within the Barrett survey, it had made a sufficient showing of “previous possession or ownership” to invoke the statute and place the burden of proof on petitioners. Adopting the District Court’s construction “would negate the application of the § 194 statutory burden upon a pleading that simply recites Indian land had been destroyed by the erosive action of a river.” 575 F. 2d, at 631.
Reviewing what it perceived to be the federal common law of accretion and avulsion and with no more than passing reference to Nebraska law on the issue, the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court had based its ruling on a too narrow definition of avulsion. The court then applied the law to the evidence and found that the evidence was in equipoise. Because § 194 placed the burden of proof on the non-Indians, however, the court ruled that judgment must be entered for the Tribe.
We granted separate petitions for certiorari filed by the State of Iowa and its Conservation Commission in No. 78-161 and by the individual petitioners in No. 78-160, but limited to the questions whether 25 U. S. C. § 194 is applicable in the circumstances of this litigation, in particular with respect to the State of Iowa, and whether federal or state law governs the substantive aspects of these cases. 439 U. S. 963 (1978). We are in partial, but serious, disagreement with the Court of Appeals, and vacate its judgment.
II
Petitioners challenge on several grounds the Court of Appeals’ construction and application of § 194 to these cases. First, they argue that by its plain language the section does not apply when an Indian tribe, rather than one or more individual Indians, is the litigant. We think the argument is untenable. The provision first appeared in slightly different form in 1822, Act of May 6, 1822, 3 Stat. 683, as part of an Act amending the 1802 Indian Trade and Intercourse Act, Act of Mar. 30, 1802, 2 Stat. 139, which was one of a series of Acts originating in 1790 and designed to regulate trade and other forms of intercourse between the North American Indian tribes and non-Indians. Because of recurring trespass upon and illegal occupancy of Indian territory, a major purpose of these Acts as they developed was to protect the rights of Indians to their properties. Among other things, non-Indians were prohibited from settling on tribal properties, and the use of force was authorized to remove persons who violated these restrictions. The 1822 provision was part of this design ; and with only slight change in wording, it was incorporated in the 1834 consolidation of the various statutes dealing with Indian affairs. Act of June 30, 1834, 4 Stat. 729. Section 22 of that Act is now 25 U. S. C. § 194, already set out in this opinion. Although the word “Indian” in the second line of § 22 of the 1834 Act replaced the word “Indians” in the 1822 provision, there is no indication that any change in meaning was intended; and none should be implied at this late date, particularly in light of 1 U. S. C. § 1, which provides that unless the context indicates otherwise, “words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things.”
Even construed as including the plural, however, it is urged that the word “Indians” does not literally include an Indian tribe, and that it is plain from other provisions of the Act that Congress intended to distinguish between Indian tribes and individual Indians. But as we see it, this proves too much. At the time of the enactment of the predecessors of § 194, Indian land ownership was primarily tribal ownership; aboriginal title, a possessory right, was recognized and was extinguishable only by agreement with the tribes with the consent of the United States. Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S., at 669-670. Typically, this was accomplished by treaty between the United States and the tribe, and typically the land reserved or otherwise set aside was held in trust by the United States for the tribe itself. “ 'Whatever title the Indians have is in the tribe, and not in the individuals, although held by the tribe for the common use and equal benefit of all the members.’ ” United States v. Jim, 409 U. S. 80, 82 (1972), quoting Cherokee Nation v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 294, 307 (1902). It is clear enough that, when enacted, Congress intended the 1822 and 1834 provisions to protect Indians from claims made by non-Indian squatters on their lands. To limit the force of these provisions to lands held by individual Indians would be to drain them of all significance, given the historical fact that at the time of the enactment virtually all Indian land was tribally held. Legislation dealing with Indian affairs “cannot be interpreted in isolation but must be read in light of the common notions of the day and the assumptions of those who drafted [it].” Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U. S. 191, 206 (1978). Furthermore, “'statutes passed for the benefit of dependent Indian tribes... are to be liberally construed, doubtful expressions being resolved in favor of the Indians.' ” Bryan v. Itasca County, 426 U. S. 373, 392 (1976), quoting Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U. S. 78, 89 (1918).
The second argument, presented in its most acute form by the State of Iowa, is that § 194 applies only where the Indians' antagonist is an individual white person and has no force at all where the adverse claimant is an artificial entity. We cannot accept this broad submission. The word “person” for purposes of statutory construction, unless the context indicates to the contrary, is normally construed to include “corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” 1 U. S. C. § 1. And in terms of the protective purposes of the Acts of which § 194 and its predecessors were a part, it would make little sense to construe the provision so that individuals, otherwise subject to its burdens, could escape its reach merely by incorporating and carrying on business as usual. As we said in Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U. S. 658, 687 (1978), “by 1871, it was well understood that corporations should be treated as natural persons for virtually all purposes of constitutional and statutory analysis.” It stands to reason that in re-enacting this provision in the Revised Statutes, now codified in the United States Code, Congress was fully aware that it would be interpreted to cover artificial entities as well as individuals.
It nevertheless does not follow that the “white persons” to whom will be shifted the burden of proof in title litigation with Indians also include the sovereign States of the Union. “[I]n common usage, the term 'person’ does not include the sovereign, [and] statutes employing the phrase are ordinarily construed to exclude it.” United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 604 (1941); accord, United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 275 (1947). Particularly is this true where the statute imposes a burden or limitation, as distinguished from conferring a benefit or advantage. United States v. Knight, 14 Pet. 301, 315 (1840). There is nevertheless “no hard and fast rule of exclusion,” United States v. Cooper Corp., supra, at 604-605; and much depends on the context, the subject matter, legislative history, and executive interpretation. The legislative history here is uninformative, and executive interpretation is unhelpful with respect to this dormant statute. But in terms of the purpose of the provision — that of preventing and providing remedies against non-Indian squatters on Indian lands — it is doubtful that Congress anticipated such threats from the States themselves or intended to handicap the States so as to offset the likelihood of unfair advantage. Indeed, the 1834 Act, which included § 22, the provision identical to the present § 194, was “intended to apply to the whole Indian country, as defined in the first section.” H. R. Rep. No. 474, 23d Cong., 1st Sess., 10 (1834). Section 1 defined Indian country as being “all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi, and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas, and, also, that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, and not within any state to which the Indian title has not been extinguished... 4 Stat. 729. Although this definition was discarded in the Revised Statutes, see Rev. Stat. § 5596, it is apparent that in adopting § 22 Congress had in mind only disputes arising in Indian country, disputes that would not arise in or involve any of the States.
Nor have we discovered anything since its passage or in connection with the definition of Indian country now contained in the Criminal Code, 18 U. S. C. § 1151, indicating that Congress intended the words “white person” in § 194 to include any of the original or any of the newly admitted States of the Union. We hesitate, therefore, to hold that the State of Iowa must necessarily be disadvantaged by § 194 when litigating title to the property to which it claims ownership, particularly where its opposition is an organized Indian tribe litigating with the help of the United States of America. It may well be that a State, like other litigants and like the State of Iowa did in this case, will often bear the burden of proof on various issues in litigating the title to real estate. But § 194 operates regardless of the circumstances once the Tribe or its champion, the United States, has demonstrated that the Tribe was once in possession of or had title to the area under dispute.
Petitioners also defend the refusal of the District Court to apply § 194 on the grounds that a precondition to applying it is proof of prior possession or title in the Indians and that this involves the merits of the issue on which this case turns— whether the changes in the river were avulsive or accretive. We think the Court of Appeals had the better view of the statute in this regard. Section 194 is triggered once the Tribe makes out a prima facie case of prior possession or title to the particular area under dispute. The usual way of describing real property is by identifying an area on the surface of the earth through the use of natural or artificial monuments. There seems to be no question here that the area within the Barrett survey was once riparian land lying on the west bank of the Missouri River and was long occupied by the Tribe as part of the reservation set apart for it in consequence of the treaty of 1854. This was enough, it seems to us, to bring § 194 into play. Of course, that would not foreclose the State of Iowa from offering sufficient evidence to prove its own title or from prevailing on any affirmative defenses it may have.
Petitioners also assert that even if § 194 is operative and even if the Tribe has made out its prima facie case, only the burden of going forward with the evidence, and not the burden of persuasion, is shifted to the State. Therefore they, the petitioners, should prevail if the evidence is in equipoise. The term “burden of proof” may well be an ambiguous term connoting either the burden of going forward with the evidence, the burden of persuasion, or both. But in view of the evident purpose of the statute and its use of the term “presumption” which the “white man” must overcome, we are in agreement with the two courts below that § 194 contemplates the non-Indian’s shouldering the burden of persuasion as well as the burden of producing evidence once the tribe has made out its prima facie case of prior title or possession.
Ill
A
In Oregon ex rel. State Land Board v. Corvallis Sand & Gravel Co., 429 U. S. 363 (1977), this Court held that, absent an overriding federal interest, the laws of the several States determine the ownership of the banks and shores of waterways. This was expressive of the general rule with respect to the incidents of federal land grants:
“ 'We hold the true principle to be this, that whenever the question in any Court, state or federal, is, whether a title to land which had once been the property of the United States has passed, that question must be resolved by the laws of the United States; but that whenever, according to those laws, the title shall have passed, then that property, like all other property in the state, is subject to state legislation; so far as that legislation is consistent with the admission that the title passed and vested according to the laws of the United States.' ” Id., at 377, quoting Wilcox v. Jackson, 13 Pet. 498, 517 (1839) (emphasis added by the Corvallis Court).
The Court’s conclusion in the particular dispute before it in Corvallis was that state law governed the rights of the riparian owner because there was no claim of an applicable federal right other than the equal-footing origin of the State’s title.
As the Court of Appeals held, however, the general rule recognized by Corvallis does not oust federal law in this case. Here, we are not dealing with land titles merely derived from a federal grant, but with land with respect to which the United States has never yielded title or terminated its interest. The area within the survey was part of land to which the Omahas had held aboriginal title and which was reserved by the Tribe and designated by the United States as a reservation and the Tribe’s permanent home. The United States continues to hold the reservation lands in trust for the Tribe and to recognize the Tribe pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 984, 25 U. S. C. § 461 et se.q.
In these circumstances, where the Government has never parted with title and its interest in the property continues, the Indians’ right to the property depends on federal law, “wholly apart from the application of state law principles which normally and separately protect a valid right of possession.” Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S., at 677. It is rudimentary that “Indian title is a matter of federal law and can be extinguished only with federal consent” and that the termination of the protection that federal law, treaties, and statutes extend to Indian occupancy is “exclusively the province of federal law.” Id,., at 670. Insofar as the applicable law is concerned, therefore, the claims of the Omahas are “clearly distinguishable from the claims of land grantees for whom the Federal Government has taken no such responsibility.” Id., at 684 (RehNQUIst, J., concurring). This is not a case where the United States has patented or otherwise granted lands to private owners in a manner that terminates its interest and subjects the grantees’ incidents of ownership to determination by the applicable state law. The issue here is whether the Tribe is no longer entitled to possession of an area that in the past was con-cededly part of the reservation as originally established. That question, under Oneida, is a matter for the federal law to decide.
B
Although we have determined that federal law ultimately controls the issue in this case, it is still true that “[c]ontro-versies... governed by federal law, do not inevitably require resort to uniform federal rules.... Whether to adopt state law or to fashion a nationwide federal rule is a matter of judicial policy '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.' ” United States v. Kimbell Foods, Inc., 440 U. S. 715, 727-728 (1979), quoting United States v. Standard Oil Co., 332 U. S. 301, 310 (1947). The Court of Appeals, noting the existence of a body of federal law necessarily developed by this Court in the course of adjudicating boundary disputes between States having their common border on a navigable stream, purported to find in those doctrines the legal standards to apply in deciding whether the changes in the course of the Missouri River involved in this case had been avulsive or ac-cretive in nature.
The federal law applied in boundary cases, however, does not necessarily furnish the appropriate rules to govern this case. No dispute between Iowa and Nebraska as to their common border on or near the Missouri River is involved here. The location of that border on the ground was settled by Compact in 1943 and by further litigation in this Court, Nebraska v. Iowa, 406 U. S. 117 (1972). The federal interest in this respect has thus been satisfied, except to the extent that the Compact itself may bear upon a dispute such as this. United States v. Kimbell Foods, Inc., supra, advises that at this juncture we should consider whether there is need for a nationally uniform body of law to apply in situations comparable to this, whether application of state law would frustrate federal policy or functions, and the impact a federal rule might have on existing relationships under state law. An application of these factors suggests to us that state law should be borrowed as the federal rule of decision here.
First, we perceive no need for a uniform national rule to determine whether changes in the course of a river affecting riparian land owned or possessed by the United States or by an Indian tribe have been avulsive or accretive. For this purpose, we see little reason why federal interests should not be treated under the same rules of property that apply to private persons holding property in the same area by virtue of state, rather than federal, law. It is true that States may differ among themselves with respect to the rules that will identify and distinguish between avulsions and accretions, but as long as the applicable standard is applied evenhandedly to particular disputes, we discern no imperative need to develop a general body of federal common law to decide cases such as this, where an interstate boundary is not in dispute. We should not accept “generalized pleas for uniformity as substitutes for concrete evidence that adopting state law would adversely affect [federal interests].” United States v. Kimbell Foods, Inc., supra, at 730.
Furthermore, given equitable application of state law, there is little likelihood of injury to federal trust responsibilities or to tribal possessory interests. On some occasions, Indian tribes may lose some land because of the application of a particular state rule of accretion and avulsion, but it is as likely on other occasions that the tribe will stand to gain. The same would be the case under a federal rule, including the rule that the Court of Appeals announced in this case. The United States fears a hostile and unfavorable treatment at the hands of state law, but, as we have said, the legal issues are federal and the federal courts will have jurisdiction to hear them. Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida, 414 U. S. 661 (1974). Adequate means are thus available to insure fair treatment of tribal and federal interests.
This is also an area in which the States have substantial interest in having their own law resolve controversies such as these. Private landowners rely on state real property law when purchasing real property, whether riparian land or not. There is considerable merit in not having the reasonable expectations of these private landowners upset by the vagaries of being located adjacent to or across from Indian reservations or other property in which the United States has a substantial interest. Borrowing state law will also avoid arriving at one answer to the avulsive-accretion riddle in disputes involving Indians on one side and possibly quite different answers with respect to neighboring land where non-Indians are the disputants. Indeed, in this case several hundred acres of land within the Barrett survey are held in fee, and concededly are not Indian property. These tracts would not be governed by the federal rule announced by the Court of Appeals.
We have borrowed state law in Indian cases before. In Board of Comm’rs v. United States, 308 U. S. 343 (1939), the question was what law, federal or state, would apply in a claim to recover taxes improperly levied by a political subdivision of a State upon Indians’ trust lands. The Court observed that “[s]ince the origin of the right to be enforced is the Treaty, plainly whatever rule we fashion is ultimately attributable to the Constitution, treaties or statutes of the United States, and does not owe its authority to the law-making agencies of Kansas.” Id., at 349-350. The Court, nevertheless, elected to adopt state law as the federal rule of decision. There was no reason in the circumstances of the case for the beneficiaries of federal rights to have a privileged position over other aggrieved taxpayers, and “[t]o respect the law of interest prevailing in Kansas in no wise impinges upon the exemption which the Treaty of 1861 has commanded Kansas to respect and the federal courts to vindicate.”
The importance of attending to state law, once an interstate boundary has been determined, is underlined by Arkansas v. Tennessee, 246 U. S. 158 (1918). In that case, because the disputed boundary between Arkansas and Tennessee had been determined, the question of title to riparian land and to the river bottom was a matter to be determined by local law:
“How the land that emerges on either side of an interstate boundary stream shall be disposed of as between public and private ownership is a matter to be determined according to the law of each State, under the familiar doctrine that it is for the States to establish for themselves such rules of property as they deem expedient with respect to the navigable waters within their borders and the riparian lands adajacent to them.... But these dispositions are in each case limited by the interstate boundary, and cannot be permitted to press back the boundary line from where otherwise it should be located.” Id., at 175-176.
Likewise, in the present case, the Compact of 1943 settled the location of the interstate boundary, within and without the river; and the question of land ownership within or adjacent to the river is best settled by reference to local law even where Indian trust land, a creature of the federal law, is involved.
C
The passage quoted above from Arkansas v. Tennessee was quoted with approval in Nebraska v. Iowa, 406 U. S., at 126-127, where the central question was the interpretation of the Interstate Compact determining the location of the entire border between Nebraska and Iowa. Our opinion in Nebraska v. Iowa is also instructive with respect to which state law, Iowa or Nebraska, the federal court should refer to in determining the federal standard applicable to this case.
Under § 2 of the Compact, each State ceded to the other and relinquished jurisdiction over all lands within the Compact boundary of the other State. Under § 3, “Titles, mortgages, and other liens” affecting such lands that are “good in” the ceding State “shall be good in” the other State. Thus, ceded lands east of the Compact line came under Iowa jurisdiction; but Iowa was obligated to respect title to any-ceded land east of the new boundary if that title was “good in” Nebraska. Accepting the Special Master’s recommendations in this respect, the Court ruled that one claiming a Nebraska title to land east of the Compact line need show only “good title” under Nebraska law and need not also prove either the location of the original boundary between the two States or that the land at issue was on the Nebraska side of that original boundary. The Court further ruled, in agreement with the Special Master, that in litigating with private claimants seeking to prove good Nebraska title to land east of the Compact line, the State of Iowa was disentitled to rely on certain doctrines of Iowa common law bearing on riparian land ownership.
In this case, the District Court ruled that even though the United States and an Indian tribe rather than private parties were plaintiffs, title to the Barrett survey land, which was once in Nebraska but is now unquestionably in Iowa, should be governed by Nebraska law in accordance with the terms of the Compact. Proceeding to adjudicate the case in accordance with Nebraska law, the District Judge found that the Tribe and the Government, respondents here, had failed to prove that the Blackbird Bend area had been separated from the rest of the reservation by avulsive changes in the Missouri River and that the defendants, petitioners here, without the aid of any presumption of accretion available under Iowa law if applicable, had instead proved that the river changes had been by accretion. In the course of arriving at this conclusion, the District Court, relying on Nebraska cases, rejected the Government’s definition of avulsion, later embraced by the Court of Appeals, as contrary to the common law of Nebraska. The defendants, petitioners here, having carried the burden of proving their good title to the land at issue, were entitled to a decree quieting title in them.
Although we have already held that the District Court erred in concluding that determination of titles to reservations lands is not a matter for the federal law, we have also indicated that the federal law should incorporate the applicable state property'law to resolve the dispute. Therefore, it seems to us that the District Court reached the correct result in ruling that under the construction of the Compact in Nebraska v. Iowa, Nebraska law should be applied in determining whether the changes in the river that moved the Blackbird Bend area from Nebraska to Iowa had been avulsive or accretive. It should also be noted that the District Court, although wrong in wholly rejecting the applicability of § 194, concluded as a matter of fact and law that the defendants, petitioners here, had carried the burden of persuasion normally incumbent upon a plaintiff in a quiet-title action, and had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the reservation lands had eroded and had accreted to the Iowa shoreline. Apparently for this reason, the trial judge observed at the end of his memorandum opinion that were he wrong in refusing to apply § 194, his findings and conclusions “would not be altered by any different allocation of the burden of persuasion.” 433 F. Supp., at 67.
IV
In sum, the Court of Appeals was partially correct in ruling that § 194 was applicable in this case. By its terms, § 194 applies to the private petitioners but not to petitioner State of Iowa. We also agree with the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that federal law governed the substantive aspects of the dispute, but find it in error for arriving at a federal standard, independent of state law, to determine whether there had been an avulsion or an accretion. Instead, the court should have incorporated the law of the State that otherwise would have been applicable which, as we have said, is the law of Nebraska. Of course, because of its view of the controlling law, the Court of Appeals did not consider whether'the District Court had correctly interpreted Nebraska law and had properly applied it to the facts of this case. These tasks are still to be performed, and we vacate the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
In Heckman v. United States, 224 U. S. 413 (1912), the Court explained the source and nature of this trust relationship. In the exercise of its plenary authority over Indian affairs, Congress has the power to place restrictions on the alienation of Indian lands. Where it does so, it continues guardianship over Indian lands and “[d]uring the continuance of this guardianship, the right and duty of the Nation to enforce by all appropriate means the restrictions designed for the security of the Indians cannot be gainsaid.... A transfer of the [Indian land] is not simply a violation of the proprietary rights of the Indian. It violates the governmental rights of the United States.” Id., at 437-438. Accordingly, the United States is entitled to go into court as trustee to enforce Indian land rights. “It [is] not essential that it should have a pecuniary interest in the controversy.” Id., at 439. See also Morrison v. Work, 266 U. S. 481, 485 (1925); Choate v. Trapp, 224 U. S. 665, 678 (1912); F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 94-96 (1942).
The State of Iowa claims title to certain lands deeded to it by quitclaim and to the bed of the Missouri between the thalweg (see n. 3, infra) and the ordinary high-water mark, any islands formed in that portion of the river, and any abandoned channels. The latter claims are based upon the equal-footing doctrine, see Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212 (1845), and the 1943 Boundary Compact between Iowa and Nebraska, see n. 6, infra.
The term is commonplace in boundary disputes between riparian States. See, e. g., Minnesota v. Wisconsin, 252 U. S. 273, 282 (1920) :
“The doctrine of Thalweg, a modification of the
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In these cases, we decide whether § 525 of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U. S. C. § 525, prohibits the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) from revoking licenses held by a debtor in bankruptcy upon the debtor’s failure to make timely payments owed to the Commission for purchase of the licenses.
I
In 1993, Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to authorize the FCC to award spectrum licenses “through a system of competitive bidding.” 48 Stat. 1085, as amended, 107 Stat. 387,47 U. S. C. §309(j)(1). It directed the Commission to “promot[e] economic opportunity and competition” and “avoi[d] excessive concentration of licenses” by “disseminating licenses among a wide variety of applications, including small businesses [and] rural telephone companies.” § 309(j)(3)(B). In order to achieve this goal, Congress directed the FCC to “consider alternative payment schedules and methods of calculation, including lump sums or guaranteed installment payments ... or other schedules or methods . . . .” § 309(j)(4)(A).
The FCC decided to award licenses for broadband personal communications services through simultaneous, multiple-round auctions. In re Implementation of Section 309(j) of the Communications Act — Competitive Bidding, 9 FCC Red. 2348, ¶¶54, 68 (1994). In accordance with §§309(j) (3)(B) and (4)(A), it restricted participation in two of the six auction blocks (Blocks “C” and “F”) to small businesses and other designated entities with total assets and revenues below certain levels, and it allowed the successful bidders in these two blocks to pay in installments over the term of the license. 47 CFR § 24.709(a)(1) (1997).
Respondents NextWave Personal Communications, Inc., and NextWave Power Partners, Inc. (both wholly owned subsidiaries of NextWave Telecom, Inc., and hereinafter jointly referred to as respondent NextWave), participated, respectively, in the FCC’s “C-Block” and “F-Block” auctions. NextWave was awarded 63 C-Block licenses on winning bids totaling approximately $4.74 billion, and 27 F-Block licenses on winning bids of approximately $123 million. In accordance with FCC regulations, NextWave made a downpayment on the purchase price, signed promissory notes for the balance, and executed security agreements that the FCC perfected by filing under the Uniform Commercial Code. The security agreements gave the Commission a first “lien on and continuing security interest in all of the Debtor’s rights and interest in [each] License.” Security Agreement between NextWave and FCC ¶ 1 (Jan. 3, 1997), 2 App. to Pet. for Cert. 402a. In addition, the licenses recited that they were “conditioned upon the full and timely payment of all monies due pursuant to . . . the terms of the Commission’s installment plan as set forth in the Note and Security Agreement executed by the licensee,” and that “[f]ailure to comply with this condition will result in the automatic cancellation of this authorization.” Radio Station Authorization for Broadband PCS (issued to NextWave Jan. 3,1997), 2 App. to Pet. for Cert. 388a.
After the C-Block and F-Block licenses were awarded, several successful bidders, including NextWave, experienced difficulty obtaining financing for their operations and petitioned the Commission to restructure their installment-payment obligations. See 12 FCC Red. 16436, ¶ 11 (1997). The Commission suspended the installment payments, 12 FCC Red. 17325 (1997); 13 FCC Red. 1286 (1997), and adopted several options that allowed C-Block licensees to surrender some or all of their licenses for full or partial forgiveness of their outstanding debt. See 12 FCC Red. 16436, ¶ 6; 13 FCC Red. 8345 (1998). It set a deadline of June 8, 1998, for licensees to elect a restructuring option, and of October 29, 1998, as the last date to resume installment payments. 13 FCC Red. 7413 (1998).
On June 8, 1998, after failing to obtain stays of the election deadline from the Commission or the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, NextWave filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York. See In re NextWave Personal Communications, Inc., 235 B. R. 263, 267 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SDNY 1998). It suspended payments to all creditors, including the FCC, pending confirmation of a reorganization plan. NextWave initiated an adversary proceeding in the Bankruptcy Court, alleging that its $4.74 billion indebtedness on the C-Block licenses was avoidable as a “fraudulent conveyance” under §544 of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U. S. C. §544, because, by the time the Commission actually conveyed the licenses, their value had declined from approximately $4.74 billion to less than $1 billion. The Bankruptcy Court agreed — ruling in effect that the company could keep its C-Block licenses for the reduced price of $1.02 billion — and the District Court affirmed. NextWave Personal Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 241 B. R. 311, 318-319 (SDNY 1999). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, holding that, although the Bankruptcy Court might have jurisdiction over NextWave’s underlying debts to the FCC, it could not change the conditions attached to NextWave’s licenses. In re NextWave Personal Communications, Inc., 200 F. 3d 43, 55-56 (1999) (per curiam). The Second Circuit also held that since, under FCC regulations, “NextWave’s obligation attached upon the close of the auction,” there had been no fraudulent conveyance by the FCC acting in its capacity as creditor. Id., at 58.
Following the Second Circuit’s decision, NextWave prepared a plan of reorganization that envisioned payment of a single lump sum to satisfy the entire remaining $4.3 billion obligation for purchase of the C-Block licenses, including interest and late fees. The FCC objected to the plan, asserting that NextWave’s licenses had been canceled automatically when the company missed its first payment deadline in October 1998. The Commission simultaneously announced that NextWave’s licenses were “available for auction under the automatic cancellation provisions” of the FCC’s regulations. Public Notice, Auction of C and F Block Broadband PCS Licenses, 15 FCC Rcd. 693 (2000). NextWave sought emergency relief in the Bankruptcy Court, which declared the FCC’s cancellation of respondent’s licenses “null and void” as a violation of various provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. In re NextWave Personal Communications, Inc., 244 B. R. 253, 257-258 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SDNY 2000). Once again, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. In re Federal Communications Commission, 217 F. 3d 125 (2000). Granting the FCC’s petition for a writ of mandamus, the Second Circuit held that “[exclusive jurisdiction to review the FCC’s regulatory action lies in the courts of appeals” under 47 U. S. C. § 402, and that since the reauction decision was regulatory, proclaiming it to be arbitrary was “outside the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court.” 217 F. 3d, at 139, 136. The Second Circuit noted, however, that “NextWave remains free to pursue its challenge to the FCC’s regulatory acts.” Id., at 140.
NextWave filed a petition with the FCC seeking reconsideration of the license cancellation, denial of which is the gravamen of the cases at bar. In the Matter of Public Notice DA 00-49 Auction of C and F Block Broadband PCS Licenses, Order on Reconsideration, 15 FCC Rcd. 17500 (2000). NextWave appealed that denial to the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit pursuant to 47 U. S. C. § 402(b), asserting that the cancellation was arbitrary and capricious, and contrary to law, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 706, and the Bankruptcy Code. The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that the FCC’s cancellation of NextWave’s licenses violated 11 U. S. C. §525: “Applying the fundamental principle that federal agencies must obey all federal laws, not just those they administer, we conclude that the Commission violated the provision of the Bankruptcy Code that prohibits governmental entities from revoking debtors’ licenses solely for failure to pay debts dis-chargeable in bankruptcy.” 254 F. 3d 130, 133 (2001). We granted certiorari. 535 U. S. 904 (2002).
II
The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal courts to set aside federal agency action that is “not in accordance with law,” 5 U. S. C. § 706(2)(A) — which means, of course, any law, and not merely those laws that the agency itself is charged with administering. See, e. g., Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U. S. 402, 413-414 (1971) (“In all cases agency action must be set aside if the action was ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law’ or if the action failed to meet statutory, procedural, or constitutional requirements”). Respondent contends, and the Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit held, that the FCC’s revocation of its licenses was not in accordance with § 525 of the Bankruptcy Code.
Section 525(a) provides, in relevant part:
“[A] governmental unit may not... revoke ... a license ... to ... a person that is ... a debtor under this title ... solely because such ... debtor... has not paid a debt that is dischargeable in the case under this title . . . .”
No one disputes that the Commission is a “governmental unit” that has “revoke[d]” a “license,” nor that NextWave is a “debtor” under the Bankruptcy Act. Petitioners argue, however, that the FCC did not revoke respondent’s licenses “solely because” of nonpayment, and that, in any event, Next Wave’s obligations are not “dischargeable” “debt[s]” within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Code. They also argue that a contrary interpretation would unnecessarily bring § 525 into conflict with the Communications Act. We find none of these contentions persuasive, and discuss them in turn.
A
The FCC has not denied that the proximate cause for its cancellation of the licenses was Next Wave’s failure to make the payments that were due. It contends, however, that § 525 does not apply because the FCC had a “valid regulatory motive” for the cancellation. Brief for Petitioners Arctic Slope Regional Corp. et al. 19; see Brief for Petitioner FCC 17. In our view, that factor is irrelevant. When the statute refers to failure to pay a debt as the sole cause of cancellation (“solely because”), it cannot reasonably be understood to include, among the other causes whose presence can preclude application of the prohibition, the governmental unit’s motive in effecting the cancellation. Such a reading would deprive § 525 of all force. It is hard to imagine a situation in which a governmental unit would not have some further motive behind the cancellation — assuring the financial solvency of the licensed entity, e. g., Perez v. Campbell, 402 U. S. 637 (1971); In re The Bible Speaks, 69 B. R. 368, 374 (Bkrtcy. Ct. Mass. 1987), or punishing lawlessness, e. g., In re Adams, 106 B. R. 811, 827 (Bkrtcy. Ct. NJ 1989); In re Colon, 102 B. R. 421, 428 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ED Pa. 1989), or even (quite simply) making itself financially whole. Section 525 means nothing more or less than that the failure to pay a dischargeable debt must alone be the proximate cause of the cancellation — the act or event that triggers the agency’s decision to cancel, whatever the agency’s ultimate motive in pulling the trigger may be.
Some may think (and the opponents of § 525 undoubtedly thought) that there ought to be an exception for cancellations that have a valid regulatory purpose. Besides the fact that such an exception would consume the rule, it flies in the face of the fact that, where Congress has intended to provide regulatory exceptions to provisions of the Bankruptcy Code, it has done so clearly and expressly, rather than by a device so subtle as denominating a motive a cause. There are, for example, regulatory exemptions from the Bankruptcy Code’s automatic stay provisions. 11 U. S. C. § 362(b)(4). And even § 525(a) itself contains explicit exemptions for certain Agriculture Department programs, see n. 2, supra. These latter exceptions would be entirely superfluous if we were to read § 525 as the Commission proposes — which means, of course, that such a reading must be rejected. See United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30, 35-36 (1992).
B
Petitioners contend that NextWave’s license obligations to the Commission are not “debt[s] that [are] dischargeable” in bankruptcy. 11 U. S. C. § 525(a). First, the FCC argues that “regulatory conditions like the full and timely payment condition are not properly classified as ‘debts’” under the Bankruptcy Code. Brief for Petitioner FCC 33. In its view, the “financial nature of a condition” on a license “does not convert that condition into a debt.” Ibid. This is nothing more than a retooling of petitioners’ recurrent theme that “regulatory conditions” should be exempt from §525. No matter how the Commission casts it, the argument loses. Under the Bankruptcy Code, “debt” means “liability on a claim,” 11 U. S. C. § 101(12), and “claim,” in turn, includes any “right to payment,” § 101(5)(A). We have said that “[c]laim” has “the broadest available definition,” Johnson v. Home State Bank, 501 U. S. 78, 83 (1991), and have held that the “plain meaning of a ‘right to payment’ is nothing more nor less than an enforceable obligation, regardless of the objectives the State seeks to serve in imposing the obligation,” Pennsylvania Dept. of Public Welfare v. Davenport, 495 U. S. 552, 559 (1990). See also Ohio v. Kovacs, 469 U. S. 274 (1985). In short, a debt is a debt, even when the obligation to pay it is also a regulatory condition.
Petitioners argue that respondent’s obligations are not “dischargeable” in bankruptcy because it is beyond the jurisdictional authority of bankruptcy courts to alter or modify regulatory obligations. Brief for Petitioners Arctic Slope Regional Corp. et al. 28-29; Brief for Petitioner FCC 30-31. Dischargeability, however, is not tied to the existence of such authority. A preconfirmation debt is dischargeable unless it falls within an express exception to discharge. Subsection 1141(d) of the Bankruptcy Code states that, except as otherwise provided therein, the “confirmation of a plan [of reorganization] . . . discharges the debtor from any debt that arose before the date of such confirmation,” 11 U. S. C. § 1141(d)(1)(A) (emphasis added), and the only debts it excepts from that prescription are those described in § 523, see § 1141(d)(2). Thus, “[e]xcept for the nine kinds of debts saved from discharge by 11 U. S. C. § 523(a), a discharge in bankruptcy discharges the debtor from all debts that arose before bankruptcy. § 727(b).” Kovacs, supra, at 278 (emphasis added).
Artistically symmetrical with petitioners’ contention that the Bankruptcy Court has no power to alter regulatory obligations is their contention that the D. C. Circuit has no power to modify or discharge a debt. See Brief for Petitioner FCC 31-32; Brief for Petitioner Arctic Slope Regional Corp. et al. 32, n. 9. Just as the former is irrelevant to whether the Bankruptcy Court can discharge a debt, so also the latter is irrelevant to whether the D. C. Circuit can set aside agency action that violates § 525. That court did not seek to modify or discharge the debt, but merely prevented the FCC from violating § 525 by canceling licenses because of failure to pay debts dischargeable by bankruptcy courts.
C
Finally, our interpretation of § 525 does not create any conflict with the Communications Act. It does not, as petitioners contend, obstruct the functioning of the auction provisions of 47 U. S. C. §309(j), since nothing in those provisions demands that cancellation be the sanction for failure to make agreed-upon periodic payments. Indeed, nothing in those provisions even requires the Commission to permit payment to be made over time, rather than leaving it to impecunious bidders to finance the full purchase price with private lenders. What petitioners describe as a conflict boils down to nothing more than a policy preference on the FCC’s part for (1) selling licenses on credit and (2) canceling licenses rather than asserting security interests in licenses when there is a default. Such administrative preferences cannot be the basis for denying respondent rights provided by the plain terms of a law. “‘[W]hen two statutes are capable of coexistence, it is the duty of the courts, absent a clearly expressed congressional intention to the contrary, to regard each as effective.’” J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., 534 U. S. 124, 143-144 (2001) (quoting Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 551 (1974)). There being no inherent conflict between § 525 and the Communications Act, “we can plainly regard each statute as effective.” J. E. M., supra, at 144. And since §525 circumscribes the Commission’s permissible action, the revocation of Next-Wave’s licenses is not in accordance with law. See 5 U.S. C. §706.
III
The dissent finds it “dangerous... to rely exclusively upon the literal meaning of a statute’s words,” post, at 311 (opinion of Breyer, J.). Instead, it determines, in splendid isolation from that language, the purpose of the statute, which it takes to be “to forbid discrimination against those who are, or were, in bankruptcy and, more generally, to prohibit governmental action that would undercut the ‘fresh start’ that is bankruptcy’s promise,” post, at 313. It deduces these language-trumping “purposes” from the most inconclusive of indications. First, the ambiguous title of § 525(a), “Protection against discriminatory treatment,” ibid. This, of course, could as well refer to discrimination against impending bankruptcy, aka insolvency. Second, its perception that the other prohibitions of § 525(a) apply only to acts “done solely for bankruptcy-related reasons.” Ibid. We do not share that perception. For example, the prohibition immediately preceding the one at issue here forbids adverse government action taken because the debtor “has been insolvent before the commencement of the case under this title, or during the case but before the debtor is granted or denied a discharge.” That seems to us clearly tied to insolvency alone (plus the mere fact of subsequent or contemporaneous bankruptcy), and does not require some additional motivation based on bankruptcy. The dissent’s third indication of “purpose” consists of the ever-available snippets of legislative history, post, at 314-315.
The dissent does eventually get to the statutory text at issue here: Step two of its analysis is to ask what interpretation of that text could possibly fulfill its posited “purposes.” “One obvious way,” the dissent concludes, “is to interpret the relevant phrase, ‘solely because’ of nonpayment of ‘a debt that is dischargeable,’ as requiring something more than a purely factual connection .... The statute’s words are open to the interpretation that they require a certain relationship between (1) the dischargeability of the debt and (2) the decision to revoke the license.” Post, at 316. To demonstrate that “openness,” the dissent gives the example of a “rule telling apartment owners that they cannot refuse to rent ‘solely because a family has children who are adopted.’” Post, at 319. Such a rule, it says quite correctly, is most reasonably read as making the adoptive nature of the children part of the prohibited motivation. But the example differs radically from the cases before us in two respects: (1) because an adopted child is the exception rather than the rule, and (2) because the class of children other than adopted children is surely not a disfavored one. In the cases before us, by contrast, the descriptive clause describes the rule rather than the exception. (As the dissent acknowledges, “virtually all debts” are dischargeable, post, at 310.) And the debts that do not fall within the rule (nondischargeable debts) are clearly disfavored by the Bankruptcy Code. To posit a text similar to the one before us, the dissent should have envisioned a rule that prohibited refusal to rent “solely because a family has children who are no more than normally destructive.” Would the “no-more-than-normal-destructiveness” of the children be a necessary part of the apartment owner’s motivation before he is in violation of the rule? That is to say, must he refuse to rent specifically because the children are no more than normally destructive? Of course not. The provision is most reasonably read as establishing an exception to the prohibition, rather than adding a motivation requirement: The owner may refuse to rent to families with destructive children. And the same is obviously true here: The government may take action that is otherwise forbidden when the debt in question is one of the disfavored class that is nondischargeable.
In addition to distorting the text of the provision, the dissent’s interpretation renders the provision superfluous. The purpose of “forbid[ding] discrimination against those who are, or were, in bankruptcy,” post, at 313, is already explicitly achieved by another portion of § 525(a), which prohibits termination of a license “solely because [the] bankrupt or debtor is or has been ... a bankrupt or debtor under the Bankruptcy Act.” 11 U. S. C. §525(a) (emphasis added). The dissent would have us believe that the language “solely because [the] bankrupt or debtor ... has not paid a debt that is dischargeable” merely achieves the very same objective through inappropriate language. We think Congress meant what it said: The government is not to revoke a bankruptcy debtor’s license solely because of a failure to pay his debts.
The dissent makes much of the “serious anomaly” that would arise from permitting “every car salesman, every residential home developer, every appliance company [to] threaten repossession of its product if a buyer does not pay,” but denying that power to the government alone, post, at 312. It is by no means clear than any anomaly exists. The ear salesman, residential home developer, etc., can obtain repossession of his product only (as the dissent acknowledges) “if [he] has taken a security interest in the product,” ibid. It is neither clear that a private party can take and enforce a security interest in an FCC license, see, e. g., In re Cheskey, 9 FCC Rcd. 986, ¶ 8 (1994), nor that the FCC cannot. (As we described in our statement of facts, the FCC purported to take such a security interest in the present cases. What is at issue, however, is not the enforcement of that interest in the bankruptcy process, but rather elimination of the licenses through the regulatory step of “revoking” them— action that the statute specifically forbids.) In any event, if there is an anomaly it is one that has been created by Congress — a state of affairs the dissent does not think intolerable, since its own disposition creates the anomaly of allowing the government to reclaim its property by means other than the enforcement of a security interest, but not permitting private individuals to do so.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is
Affirmed.
We do not reach the merits of the determination that the licenses should be valued as of the time they were conveyed, rather than as of the time NextWave won the auction entitling it to conveyance.
The full text of 11 U. S. C. § 525(a) reads as follows:
“Except as provided in the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act, 1930, the Packers and Stockyards Act, 1921, and section 1 of the Act entitled ‘An Act making appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1944, and for other purposes,’ approved July 12, 1943, a governmental unit may not deny, revoke, suspend, or refuse to renew a license, permit, charter, franchise, or other similar grant to, condition such a grant to, discriminate with respect to such a grant against, deny employment to, terminate the employment of, or discriminate with respect to employment against, a person that is or has been a debtor under this title or a bankrupt or a debtor under the Bankruptcy Act, or another person with whom such bankrupt or debtor has been associated, solely because such bankrupt or debtor is or has been a debtor under this title or a bankrupt or debtor under the Bankruptcy Act, has been insolvent before the commencement of the case under this title, or during the case but before the debtor is granted or denied a discharge, or has not paid a debt that is dischargeable in the case under this title or that was discharged under the Bankruptcy Act.”
Justice Stevens does not join this Part.
The portion of the dissenting opinion that deduces the statute’s purposes, Part II, post, at 313-315, contains no discussion of the portion of § 525(a) at issue here.
The second of the purposes, by the way — prohibiting government action that “would undercut the ‘fresh start’ that is bankruptcy’s promise,” post, at 313 — plays no real role in the dissent’s analysis, if indeed such a circular criterion could ever play a role in any analysis. The whole issue before us can be described as asking what the Bankruptcy Code’s promise of a “fresh start” consists of. Rather than reframing the question, our interpretation concretely accords a “fresh start” where the dissent would not — where there is revocation of a license solely because of a bankrupt’s failure to pay dischargeable debts.
The FCC initially participated in the bankruptcy proceedings as a creditor. See, e. g., In re NextWave Personal Communications, Inc., 235 B. R. 314 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SDNY 1999). However, after NextWave prepared a plan of reorganization the FCC asserted that the licenses had been automatically canceled and gave notice of its intent to reauction them. The Second Circuit treated this decision as “regulatory,” and thus outside the scope of the Bankruptcy Court’s jurisdiction. See In re Federal Communications Commission, 217 F. 3d 125, 139, 136 (2000). The decision by the D. C. Circuit recognized and seemingly approved that distinction. See 254 F. 3d 130, 143 (2001).
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 Whittaker
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Upon an information charging “Assault to Murder in the First Degree,” petitioner was put to trial, without counsel, before a jury in a Florida court, was convicted of “Assault to Murder in the Second Degree” and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 20 years which he is now serving. No appeal was taken, but within a year from his conviction petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Florida.
In that rather inartfully drawn petition, prepared in the penitentiary, at least the following allegations were made with reasonable clarity: When brought before the court for trial, petitioner, an indigent, ignorant and mentally ill Negro then 29 years of age, advised the court that he was without, and unable to obtain, counsel to conduct his defense and asked that counsel be appointed to represent him. The judge declined to do so, saying (1) “[S]ince this is not a capital offence you are not entitled to a court appointed attorney,” and (2) “you won’t need a Lawyer in this case.” Immediately, a jury was impaneled, the trial began, and petitioner was left to conduct his own defense. But, having “never before appeared in any court on a felony, and . . . not understand [ing] court procedure or know [ing] how to defend himself,” petitioner was unable effectively to conduct and present his defense, and, in consequence, the court’s denial of his request for counsel deprived him of due process of law guaranteed by both the Florida and the United States Constitutions.
The Florida Supreme Court issued a provisional writ of habeas corpus directing respondent to make a proper return. Respondent’s return denied that “petitioner’s constitutional rights were violated by the court’s alleged refusal to appoint counsel in his behalf,” attached a copy of (1) a partial transcript of proceedings at the trial, (2) the judgment of conviction and sentence, and (3) the commitment, and asserted that petitioner was being lawfully imprisoned under the latter document. Finding nothing “in this record of the trial to show whether or not any request was made of the trial judge to appoint counsel to aid the petitioner in his defense,” and believing “that the issues were [not] so complex, or [that] the petitioner was [not] so young, ignorant and inexperienced, as to bring into play the exception to the rule requiring appointment of counsel only in capital cases and to require further inquiry into the procedure culminating in his conviction and sentence,” the Florida Supreme Court, without any hearing upon petitioner's allegations, discharged the writ and remanded petitioner to custody. 113 So. 2d 381. We granted certiorari to determine whether the allegations in the habeas corpus petition, as supplemented by other portions of the record, are such as entitled him to a full hearing thereon, and, if so and if those allegations be found true, whether petitioner was denied due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. 362 U. S. 910.
It is thoroughly settled that:
“ Where the gravity of the crime and other factors — such as the age and education of the defendant, the conduct of the court or the prosecuting officials, and the complicated nature of the offense charged and the possible defenses thereto — render criminal proceedings without counsel so apt to result in injustice as to be fundamentally unfair/ the Constitution requires that the accused must have legal assistance at his trial.” Cash v. Culver, 358 U. S. 633, 637, and cases cited.
The record shows that petitioner was involved in a minor altercation with the proprietors — two men named Scurry — of what is referred to as a “jook,” called the “Blue Chip,” located in the “colored quarters” of Lake Wales, Florida, during the evening of December 10, 1957, and was ordered to leave the place, which he did. Soon afterward, petitioner, “without shirt or shoes” and armed with a shotgun, approached the “Blue Chip” and, although a number of persons, including one of the Scurrys, were standing on the sidewalk, petitioner fired the gun in their direction. Some of the pellets struck the lower legs of four persons, but Scurry was not hit. City police officers immediately arrested petitioner. They stated that, in the course of transporting him to jail, petitioner said that “he was sorry he shot these other boys, he intended to kill Scurry.” On this premise, petitioner was charged with and tried for “Assault to Murder in the First Degree.”
Although the record does not disclose the extent of petitioner’s education, there is abundant evidence that it was slight. Moreover, the record shows that he suffered head injuries in the Army in 1952, and ever since has been subject to “blackout spells” when excited. For a period of months following April 8, 1956, he underwent treatment for his mental condition in the Veterans Hospital at Bay Pines, Florida, and during four months of that period he was detained in the psychopathic ward. In October 1956, he was released, apparently to his mother as his guardian, but he continued to return to the hospital to “get pills.”
The record shows that petitioner was incapable of questioning witnesses and otherwise unable to conduct his defense. The State produced four witnesses — the complaining witness, Ellix Scurry, and three police officers. Petitioner asked two questions of the witness Scurry and obtained answers thereto. His third “question” was precluded by the judge, although not objected to by the State, because “that is testifying and it isn’t time for you to testify.” Petitioner asked no further questions of Scurry, did not cross-examine the other three witnesses, nor did he make a single objection during the trial. When the State rested, the judge said to petitioner: “All right, now, Elijah, that is the State’s case. If you want to, you can take the stand and tell your side of it. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to . . . .” Petitioner then took the stand and, after mentioning his head injury, “blackout spells” and hospital treatment for his mental illness, testified that he must have suffered a “blackout spell” preceding and during the shooting incident as “that part is a complete blank,” but that he is sure he did not “intend to kill anybody.” He then attempted to put in evidence a doctor’s statement which he said verified his claim of suffering “blackout spells.” Although the State did not object, the judge said “This statement would not be admissible. You could put the doctor on and have him testify; but we cannot admit any statement like this,” and the statement was not received in evidence. At the conclusion of petitioner’s testimony, the judge said to petitioner: “Now, Lige, if you had an attorney, he would argue the case before the jury” and advised petitioner that, if he desired, he could “plead [his] case.” Petitioner replied: “Well, sir, I don’t quite understand the meaning of that,” and he did not make any argument to the jury.
These facts tend strongly to show that petitioner’s ignorance, coupled with his mental illness and complete unfamiliarity with the law and court procedures, and the scant, if any, help he received from the court, made the trial fundamentally unfair.
In addition to this showing of petitioner’s lack of education and mental illness and his consequent inability to defend himself, the record at least implicitly discloses a number of highly complex legal questions, beyond the comprehension of almost any layman.
The Florida assault law appears to be replete with distinctions and degrees. Mayhem, bare assault, assault and battery, aggravated assault and assault with intent to commit felony are all statutory offenses. Assault with intent to commit felony — apparently the crime intended to be charged against petitioner — incorporates by reference all Florida felonies and the degrees thereof. The Florida homicide statutes appear to create four separate offenses — manslaughter, and murder in the first, second and third degrees. In considering the interplay between homicide and assault with intent to commit felony, the Florida courts have held that, although one may be guilty of assault with intent to commit manslaughter, Lassiter v. State, 98 Fla. 370, 123 So. 735, there is no such thing as assault with intent to commit murder in the second or third degree because — inasmuch as those crimes do not require a finding of “intent” — such would be “an assault with intent to commit an act without intent.” Tillman v. State, 81 Fla. 558, 564, 88 So. 377, 380.
To establish the requisite “intent” to commit any of the grades or degrees of unlawful homicide “it will not be sufficient to show that the killing, had it occurred, would have been unlawful and a felony, but it must be found that the accused committed the assault with intent to take life, for although an unintentional or involuntary killing may in some cases be unlawful and a felony, no man can intentionally do an unintentional act; and without the intent the assault can not be punished under this statute, even though the killing, had it been committed, would have amounted to a felony. . . .” Williams v. State, 41 Fla. 295, 298, 26 So. 184, 185.
If, in firing the gun, petitioner did not have this felonious “intent to kill,” his greatest possible crime would have been “Aggravated Assault” — an assault “with a deadly weapon, without intent to kill.” This is not an academic distinction, for 15 years' difference in punishment is involved. The only testimony in this record of “intent to kill” was that of the police officers who testified that while transporting him to jail on the night of the occurrence, petitioner stated that he “intended to kill Scurry.” That testimony appears to have been admitted without the slightest inquiry as to whether the statement was freely and voluntarily made by petitioner. Admission of that crucial evidence, in those circumstances, shows a patent violation of the Florida law which renders inadmissible all admissions made to law officers by an accused while under arrest unless the State affirmatively shows that they were freely and voluntarily made. Louette v. State, 152 Fla. 495, 12 So. 2d 168; Thomas v. State (Fla. 1957), 92 So. 2d 621; Williams v. State (Fla. 1954), 74 So. 2d 797. These complex and intricate legal questions were obviously “beyond the ken of a layman.” Cash v. Culver, supra, at 638.
Indeed, it is questionable whether such a crime as the one upon which petitioner was charged, tried and convicted — “Assault to Murder,” not “Assault with Intent to Commit Felony” — actually exists under the Florida law, Williams v. State, supra, and it is equally uncertain whether the verdict, convicting petitioner of “Assault to Murder in the Second Degree,” is sufficient to support the judgment in the light of 2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2957, § 921.03, which contains the provision that “no judgment of guilty shall be rendered on a verdict unless the jurors clearly express in it a finding against the defendant upon the issue.” See also French v. State, 96 Fla. 657, 118 So. 815.
Moreover, the record contains facts which would have instantly suggested to counsel that petitioner might have a good insanity defense. “[W]hen there is testimony of insanity sufficient to present a reasonable doubt of sanity the presumption [of sanity] vanishes. The defendant is then entitled to an acquittal if the state does not overcome the reasonable doubt.” Farrell v. State (Fla. 1958), 101 So. 2d 130, 133. It is too much to expect this mentally ill petitioner effectively to raise and establish the defense of his own insanity, and, so far as this record shows, neither thé prosecutor nor the trial court took any notice of the matter.
The question treated in the separate concurring opinion only lurks in the record, as it was not raised, briefed or argued here, and therefore we do not reach or express any views upon it.
For the totality of the reasons reviewed, due process of law required that petitioner have the assistance of counsel at the trial of this case, if the facts and circumstances alleged in his habeas corpus petition are true. On the present record it is not possible to determine their truth. But the allegations themselves made it incumbent on the Florida court to grant petitioner a hearing and to determine what the true; facts are.
Reversed.
Such is the rule, in those circumstances, whether or not the accused requested the appointment of counsel. Uveges v. Pennsylvania, 335 U. S. 437, 441.
The following statements, made by petitioner at his trial, are clear evidence of his lack of education: “when I gets excited, I blacks out”; “I had it because I throwed it down myself”; "... without no shirt and no shoes”; “I goes and gets pills.”
On this score petitioner testified:
“When I was in the hospital, I stayed over there four months locked in the ward, psycho part of it; and the four months I was over there, I had to stay in there locked up all the time. Mama was the only one that could come and see me. And, well, about the latter part of the four months he give me a weekend pass. He was trying me to see if I would come back.
“And I went home and I come back on time. And I asked mama to come and sign for me as that was the only way I could get back. I had to have a guardian to sign. And she come over there that day and begged the doctor to let me go home.”
2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2800, §§ 784.01-784.06.
2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2800, §784.06, which provides:
“ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO COMMIT FELONY. — Whoever commits an assault on another, with intent to commit any felony punishable with death or imprisonment for life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding twenty years. An assault with intent to commit any other felony shall be punished to an extent not exceeding one-half the punishment which could have been inflicted had the crime been committed.”
2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2798, § 782.07.
2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2797, § 782.04.
2 Fla. Stat. 1957, p. 2800, § 784.04.
Five years is the maximum sentence for aggravated assault under § 784.04, whereas a 20-year sentence may be imposed for assault with intent to commit felony under § 784.06.
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 Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari in these cases to decide whether the venue provisions contained in § 2 of the Mandamus and Venue Act of 1962, 28 U. S. C. f 1391 (e), apply to actions for money damages brought against federal officials in their individual capacities. 439 U. S. 1113 (1979).
I
No. 77-1546
Stafford et al. v. Briggs et al.
In 1972, petitioner William Stafford was United States Attorney and petitioner Stuart Carrouth was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. Guy Goodwin was an attorney in the Department of Justice. Together they conducted grand jury proceedings in Florida, inquiring into the possibility that various individuals had conspired and engaged in interstate travel with intent to cause a riot. Respondents were among those subpoenaed to appear. At the request of respondents’ counsel, the District Judge responsible for the proceedings called Goodwin to the stand and asked him to state, under oath, whether any of the witnesses represented by respondents’ counsel was an agent or informant of the Government. Goodwin replied that none W&S.
Respondents later brought this suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Goodwin, Stafford, Carrouth, and petitioner Claude Meadow, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Each was sued individually and in his official capacity. Respondents alleged that Goodwin had testified falsely in furtherance of a conspiracy among petitioners and Goodwin to deprive respondents of various statutory and constitutional rights. Each respondent sought a declaratory judgment, $50,000 in compensatory damages, and $100,000 in punitive damages. Petitioners, each of whom resided in Florida, were served by certified mail; Goodwin, whose residence was in the District of Columbia, was served personally.
Respondents relied on § 2 of the Mandamus and Venue Act of 1962, which, as amended and codified in Title 28 of the United States Code, provides:
Ҥ 1391. Venue generally
“(e) A civil action in which a defendant is an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof acting in his official capacity or under color of legal authority, or an agency of the United States, or the United States, may, except as otherwise provided by law, be brought in any judicial district in which (1) a defendant in the action resides, or (2) the cause of action arose, or (3) any real property involved in the action is situated, or (4) the plaintiff resides if no real property is involved in the action. Additional persons may be joined as parties to any such action in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and with such other venue requirements as would be applicable if the United States or one of its officers, employees, or agencies were not a party.
“The summons and complaint in such an action shall be served as provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure except that the delivery of the summons and complaint to the officer or agency as required by the rules may be made by certified mail beyond the territorial limits of the district in which the action is brought.”
Petitioners requested transfer of the action to the Northern District of Florida, or, alternatively, dismissal for improper venue and insufficiency of process. The District Court denied the motion to transfer but granted the motion to dismiss, ruling that venue was improper and that the court lacked in personam jurisdiction over the petitioners.
Respondents appealed the District Court’s order dismissing the case against petitioners, and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, holding that 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (e) permits damages actions against federal officials to be brought in any district in which any one defendant resides. Briggs v. Goodwin, 186 U. S. App. D. C. 170, 569 F. 2d 1 (1977). Because Goodwin was a resident of the District of Columbia, venue there was proper. The court also held that there was no constitutional infirmity in the statute as applied. It refused to apply the “minimum contacts” analysis of International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310 (1945), and held that in a case such as this there is no constitutional requirement that defendants have any contacts with the place in which a particular federal court sits before they may be sued in that court.
No. 78-303
Colby et al. v. Driver et al.
From 1953 to 1973 at the International Airport in New York, the Central Intelligence Agency opened and made photographic copies of certain mail traveling between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Petitioner Vernon Walters was appointed Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in 1972; petitioner William Colby was appointed Director of Central Intelligence in 1973. Both petitioners were in office in 1975 when respondents, acting on behalf of themselves and others whose mail had allegedly been opened by the CIA, brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Respondents alleged that the interference with their mail to and from the Soviet Union violated their constitutional rights. Their suit, brought against both present and former federal officials in their individual and official capacities, requested declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief, including $20,000 for each letter opened and punitive damages of $100,000 for each member of the plaintiff class.
Petitioners and the other defendants were served outside of Rhode Island by certified mail. All the defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction, improper venue, and insufficiency of process, claiming that no defendant resided in or had substantial contacts with Rhode Island and that the complaint failed to allege that any activity had occurred there. The District Court denied these motions but certified the questions involved for an immediate appeal.
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the order of the District Court as to petitioners, who were CIA officials when the complaint was filed, but it reversed as to those defendants who had left their Government positions at the time of filing. Driver v. Helms, 577 F. 2d 147 (1978). The court held that § 1391 (e) applied to damages actions against federal officials in their individual capacities and provided the mechanism for obtaining personal jurisdiction over them. Venue was proper in Rhode Island because one of the respondents resided there. The court also rejected petitioners’ challenge, to the constitutionality of the statute^ ruling that minimum contacts analysis was not relevant in this situation.
II
Soon after the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, this Court held that Congress had not granted the federal trial courts generally the power to issue writs of mandamus. McIntire v. Wood, 7 Cranch 504 (1813). The federal courts in the District of Columbia, which derived power to issue the writ from the common law of the State of Maryland, were the sole exception. Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 12 Pet. 524 (1838).
To avoid this jurisdictional obstacle, litigants seeking mandamus-type relief outside of the District of Columbia often brought suits for injunctive or declaratory relief instead. But in most cases a superior federal officer was an indispensable party. See, e. g., Williams v. Fanning, 332 U. S. 490 (1947). Because of the legal fiction that officers of such rank resided only where they were stationed — usually the District of Columbia — effective service could be obtained only there. And with the restrictive venue provisions then in effect, joinder of such an official required that the action be brought in the District of Columbia. See 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (b) (1946 ed., Supp. II), amended in Pub. L. 89-714, 80 Stat. 1111 (1966). The net result was that persons in distant parts of the country claiming injury by reason of the acts or omissions of a federal officer or agency were faced with significant expense and inconvenience in bringing suits for enforcement of claimed rights.
In response to this problem, Congress enacted the Mandamus and Yenue Act of 1962. Section 1 of the Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1361, provides that actions in the nature of mandamus can be brought in any district court of the United States. Section 2 of the Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (e), provides a similarly expanded choice of venue and authorizes service by certified mail on federal officers or agencies located outside the district in which such a suit is filed.
“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any action in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff.”
The 1962 legislation thus makes it more convenient for aggrieved persons to file actions in the nature of mandamus. Respondents argue, however, that much more was intended. They contend that by using the general language “civil action,” Congress intended to include in the expanded venue provision not only mandamus-type actions but all civil actions, including those seeking money damages from federal officers as individuals.
The language of § 1391 (e) does refer to “a civil action.” Recitation of that fact, however, but begins our inquiry, as this Court noted over a century ago when faced with a similar problem of statutory interpretation:
“The general words used in the clause . . . taken by themselves, and literally construed, without regard to the object in view, would seem to sanction the claim of the plaintiff. But this mode of expounding a statute has never been adopted by any enlightened tribunal— because it is evident that in many cases it would defeat the object which the Legislature intended to accomplish. And it is well settled that, in interpreting a statute, the court will not look merely to a particular clause in which general words may be used, but will take in connection with it the whole statute . . . and the objects and policy of the law. . . .” Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How. 183, 194 (1857).
Looking first to “the whole statute,” two things are apparent: (1) § 1 of the Mandamus and Venue Act of 1962 is explicitly limited to “action [s] in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff.” 28 U. S. C. § 1361. (2) The “civil action” referred to in § 2 of the Act is one “in which a defendant is an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof acting in his official capacity or under color of legal authority. . . 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (e) (emphasis added). The highlighted language, cast by Congress in the present tense, can reasonably be read as describing the character of the defendant at the time of the suit. So read, it limits a covered “civil action” to one against a federal official or agency who is at that time acting — or failing to act — in an official or apparently official way. Such “civil actions” are those referred to in § 1 of the Act, i. e., “action [s] in the nature of mandamus.”
Our analysis does not stop with the language of the statute; we must also look to “the objects and policy of the law.” Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How., at 194. In order to “give [the Act] such a construction as will carry into execution the will of the Legislature . . . according to its true intent and meaning,” ibid., we turn to the legislative history. Schlanger v. Seamans, 401 U. S. 487, 490, n. 4 (1971). See also United States v. Culbert, 435 U. S. 371, 374, n. 4 (1978); Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, 426 U. S. 1, 9-10 (1976).
Ill
H. R. 10089, 86th Cong., 2d Sess. (1960), was a precursor of the bill which eventually became the 1962 Act. Congressman Budge, the author of H. R. 10089, explained its purpose:
“As it is now, there is no opportunity for a judicial review of the action of any decision that is made by a Federal officer in charge out there [in the field], no matter how arbitrary or capricious, because it is too expensive to come back here [to Washington, D. C.] to litigate it.” Hearings on H. R. 10089 before Subcommittee No. 4 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 19-20 (May 26 and June 2, I960).
As often happens, the dialogue between witnesses, Members, and Committee Counsel reveals considerable initial confusion as to the extent of the problem and the proposed solution. Of course, the very purpose of hearing witnesses is to expose problems, probe for solutions, and reach a .consensus. At one point Congressman Poff, in an obvious effort to clarify the responses, asked the Department of Justice witness, Donald MacGuineas:
“Mr. POFF. Wouldn’t you say the author’s objective is to give a citizen who has a legitimate complaint against his Government the right to sue his Government at the place where the wrong was committed?
“Mr. MacGUINEAS. The difficulty, if I may say so, Congressman, with your statement, is you speak of the right to sue his Government. Now, that proposition in itself raises very difficult and complicated legal questions which I touched upon at my appearance last week.
“You must first decide whether a particular suit is actually a suit against the man in his official capacity or whether it i[s] a suit against the Government officer in his individual capacity. If it is the latter, it is not in any sense a suit against the Government.” Id., at 54.
Committee Counsel later asked the Department of Justice witness:
“Suppose in order to take care of a body of law which seems to say that when a government official does something wrong he is acting in his individual capacity, we added the following language — 'acting in his official capacity or under color of legal authority’?” Id., at 61.
Mr. MacGuineas’ response, which must now be recognized as prophetic, was that such language might later be misinterpreted as covering a damages action against a person holding Government office. This, he said, would raise “serious policy questions” by allowing a Government official to be sued in the plaintiff’s home district while a private defendant in the same kind of action could be sued only in the district of his residence. The Chairman, Mr. Forrester, and the ranking senior Committee Member, Mr. Poff, both stated that they shared the same concern. Id., at 62-63.
Judge Albert Maris, then Chairman of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, testified that such an “injustice” to the Government officer could be avoided only by requiring a damages suit to be brought in the district of his residence or where the cause of action arose. “That,” said Judge Maris, “is the normal procedure in the law. That is what ordinarily happens in the ordinary law suit.” Id., at 86. Congressman Dowdy, one of the four Members present, then said:
“Speaking to the point you were talking about, I don’t understand that we have in consideration suits for money damages. That would be maybe where a person is being sued as an individual.” Id., at 87.
When Judge Maris stated his view that cases involving money damages would not be involved, Mr. Dowdy agreed: “They would not be covered by this [proposed legislation].” Ibid.
Finally, near the conclusion of the hearing, the bill’s author, Mr. Budge, stated:
“We always get off into these slander type actions which is not what I am seeking at all. When Mr. MacGuineas stated here this morning that he was not sure of the purpose of the legislation, I think that is perhaps true, because I have no intention of bringing [within this bill] tort actions against individual government employees. All I am seeking to do is to have the review of their official actions take place in the United States District Court where the determination was made.” Id., at 102 (emphasis added).
Following the hearings, the Subcommittee redrafted H. R. 10089. The revised version, H. R. 12622, 86th Cong., 2d Sess. (1960), among other things, added the language “or under color of legal' authority” to the phrase “acting in his official capacity.” Far from being intended as the master key which would unlock the door to nationwide venue for money damages actions brought against an official as an individual, this language was specifically intended only to alleviate the hardships caused by a relatively narrow but nagging problem, as the Committee Report made clear:
“By including the officer or employee, both in his official capacity and acting under color of legal authority, the committee intends to make the proposed section 1391 (e) applicable not only to those cases where an action may be brought against an officer or employee in his official capacity. It intends to include also those cases where the action is nominally brought against the officer in his individual capacity even though he was acting within the apparent scope of his authority and not as a private citizen. Such actions are also in essence against the United States but are brought against the officer or employee as an individual only to circumvent what remains of the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The considerations of policy which demand that an action against an official may be brought locally rather than in the District of Columbia require similar venue provisions where the action is based upon the fiction that the officer is acting as an individual. There is no intention, however, to alter the venue requirements of Federal law insofar as suits resulting from the official’s private actions are concerned.” H. R. Rep. No. 1936, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 3-4 (1960) (emphasis added).
The Committee’s statement of the legislation’s purpose also sheds considerable light on the congressional intent:
“The purpose of this bill is to make it possible to bring actions against Government officials and agencies in U. S. district courts outside the District of Columbia, which, because of certain existing limitations on jurisdiction and venue, may now be brought only in the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia.” Id., at 1 (emphasis added).
In context, this clearly confines the intended thrust of § 1391 (e) to mandamus-type actions. See supra, at 533-534. The Report continues:
“Section 2 [§ 1391 (e)] is the venue section of the bill. Its purpose is similar to that of section 1. It is designed to permit an action which is essentially against the United States to be brought locally rather than requiring that it be brought in the District of Columbia simply because Washington is the official residence of the officer or agency sued.” H. R. Rep. No. 1936, supra, at 2 (emphasis added).
Although H. R. 12622 passed the House in 1960, the Senate adjourned without acting on it. See H. R. Rep. No. 536, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1961). The same bill was reintroduced in the next Congress as H. R. 1960, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. (1961). The Committee Report was republished as H. R. Rep. No. 536, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. (1961), and the bill was referred to the Senate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also solicited comments on the bill from the Department of Justice. The Department suggested, inter alia, that it would be prudent to effect the venue reform by amending the Administrative Procedure Act so that “suits for money judgments against officers” would be “unquestionably eliminate [d].” See Letter from Deputy Attorney General White to Senator Eastland (Feb. 28, 1962), reprinted in S. Rep. No. 1992, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1962). Although the Senate Committee in its Report commented on other suggestions proffered by the Justice Department, in this instance it made no response at all. Respondents and the Courts of Appeals rely on this failure to respond as indicating an intention that the venue provisions were to apply to actions for money damages brought against a federal official in his individual capacity.
We are not persuaded by this negative inference. Several passages affirmatively state the limited nature of the bill: The Senate Committee’s statement of the bill’s purpose is exactly the same as that found in the House Report. Compare S. Rep. No. 1992, supra, at 2, with H. R. Rep. No. 536, supra, at 1. The Committee also states that “ [t]he bill, as amended, is intended to facilitate review by the Federal courts of administrative actions,” S. Rep. No. 1992, supra, at 2 (emphasis added), which does not afford a basis for reading the language of the statute to include money damages actions against individuals. And the following comment as to the bill’s venue provisions appears in the Report:
“The committee is of the view that the current state of the law respecting venue in actions against Government officials is contrary to the sound and equitable administration of justice. Frequently, the administrative determinations involved are made not in Washington but in the field. In either event, these are actions which are in essence against the United States. The Government official is defended by the Department of Justice whether the action is brought in the District of Columbia or in any other district. U. S. attorneys are present in every judicial district. Requiring the Government to defend Government officials and agencies in places other than Washington would not appear to be a burdensome imposition.” S. Rep. No. 1992, supra, at 3 (emphasis added).
Here again is confirmation that there was no thought to expand the venue provisions except as to actions “in essence against the United States,” since the Government is not “required” to defend personal actions in which a Government employee is a defendant.
What emerges is that the bill’s author, the Committees, and the Congress intended nothing more than to provide nationwide venue for the convenience of individual plaintiffs in actions which are nominally against an individual officer but are in reality against the Government. A suit for money damages which must be paid out of the pocket of the private individual who happens to be — or formerly was — employed by the Federal Government plainly is not one “essentially against the United States,” and thus is not encompassed by the venue provisions of § 1391 (e).
This is not the first time an overbroad interpretation of § 1391 (e) has been rejected by this Court. In Schlanger v. Seamans, 401 U. S. 487 (1971), the question was whether in a habeas corpus proceeding “any custodian, or one in the chain of command, as well as the person detained, must be in the territorial jurisdiction of the District Court.” Id., at 489. While recognizing that habeas corpus is “a civil action,” we noted that reference to § 1391 (e) did not provide the answer. In the opinion for the Court, Mr. Justice Douglas stated:
“Although by 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (e) . . . Congress has provided for nationwide service of process in a 'civil action in which each defendant is an officer or employee of the United States,’ the legislative history of that section is barren of any indication that Congress extended habeas corpus jurisdiction. That section was enacted to broaden the venue of civil actions which could previously have been brought only in the District of Columbia. See H. R. Rep. No. 536, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 1; S. Rep. No. 1992, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 2.” 401 U. S., at 490, n. 4. (Emphasis added.)
As we have noted, the “civil actions which could previously have been brought only in the District of Columbia” were suits for mandamus, not actions for money damages. See supra, at 533-534. The clear purport of our statement in Schlanger is that Congress did not intend the phrase “civil action” to be given the sweeping definition argued for it in that case, and that the Court was required to turn to the legislative history to determine which “civil actions” § 1391 (e) governed.
IV
The conclusion derived from the legislative history that § 1391 (e) does not cover the type of suits here at issue is buttressed by consideration of the consequences of the broad interpretation urged upon us by respondents. The conditions and venue provisions under which officers of the United States may be sued, while in office or after leaving office, have serious implications for defendants as well as for those seeking relief. An officer of the Government while so employed may have numerous mandamus-type suits naming him or her as a party. Without doubt, under § 1391 (e), venue lies in every one of the 95 federal districts, and suits may be pending in a dozen or several dozen at any one time. Even though the burden of defending multiple suits while in office may be onerous, the United States Attorney in each of the districts and the Department of Justice carry that burden. In a mandamus suit only rarely would the officer himself be obliged to travel to the district in which the case was heard; if so obliged, the travel would be at Government expense. When an official leaves office, his personal involvement in a mandamus suit effectively ends and his successor carries on. No personal cost or inconvenience is incurred, either while in office or later. It was with this understanding that Congress sought to ameliorate the inconvenience and expense to private plaintiffs seeking relief from the action or inaction of their Government. H. R. Rep. No. 536, at 3; S. Rep. No. 1992, at 3.
Suits for money damages for which an individual officeholder may be found personally liable are quite different. If § 1391 (e) were construed to govern actions for money damages against federal officers individually, suits could be brought against these federal officers while in Government service— and could be pressed even after the official has left federal service — in any one of the 95 federal districts covering the 50 states and other areas within federal jurisdiction. This would place federal officers, solely by reason of their Government service, in a very different posture in personal damages suits from that of all other persons, since under 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (b), suits against private persons for money damages must be brought “in the judicial district where all defendants reside, or in which the claim arose.”
There is, however, no indication that a Congress concerned with “the sound and equitable administration of justice,” H. R. Rep. No. 536, at 3; S. Rep. No. 1992, at 3, intended to impose on those serving their Government the burden of defending personal damages actions in a variety of distant districts after leaving office. Absent a clear indication that Congress intended such a sweeping effect, we will not infer such a purpose npr will we interpret a statute to effect that result. “We think these laws ought to be construed in the spirit in which they were made — that is, as founded in justice — and should not be strained by technical constructions to reach cases which Congress evidently could not have contemplated, without departing from the principle upon which they were legislating, and going far beyond the object they intended to accomplish.” Brown v. Duchesne, 19 How., at 197.
The judgments of the Courts of Appeals in No. 77-1546 and No. 78-303 are reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Me. Justice White took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Me. Justice Maeshall took no part in the decision of these cases.
Goodwin is not a party in the case before this Court.
Goodwin joined petitioners in making the transfer request. He also moved for dismissal on grounds of prosecutorial immunity. This motion was denied. See Briggs v. Goodwin, 384 F. Supp. 1228 (DC 1974), aff’d, 186 U. S. App. D. C. 179, 569 F. 2d 10 (1977), cert. denied, 437 U. S. 904 (1978).
See Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, S. Rep. No. 94-755, Book 3, pp. 559-677 (1976).
The court concluded that because 28 U. S. C. § 1391 (e) was drafted in the present tense, Congress did not mean it to apply to former officials. Although respondents sought certiorari' on this question, we declined review. 439 U. S. 1114 (1979).
Ҥ 1361. Action to compel an officer of the United States to perform his duty
Congress’ use of the language “under color of legal authority” is explained in the House Committee Report as an effort to circumvent the sovereign immunity doctrine. See infra, at 538-539.
A certified copy of these unpublished hearings has been lodged with the Clerk of this Court.
Respondents’ argument that § 1391 (e) should apply to personal damages actions is based on an isolated passage in the Committee Report:
“The venue problem also arises in an action against a Government official seeking damages from him for actions which are claimed to be without legal authority but which were taken by the official in the course of performing his duty.” EL R. Rep. No. 1936, at 3.
In the face of the consistently expressed intent of the Committee to include only actions essentially against the Government, we decline to treat this one cryptic sentence as dispositive of the legislative intent. See Blackburn v. Goodwin, 608 F. 2d 919 (CA2 1979).
The only arguable reference is a passage taken verbatim from the House Report which mentions that the venue problem also arises in suits against officials for damages for acts taken in the course of performing official duties. See S. Rep. No. 1992, at 3. Inasmuch as this passage, like much of the Senate Report, is but a recitation of language used earlier in the House Report, see n. 8, supra, it obviously was not drafted in response to the Justice Department’s letter.
In deciding whether an action is in reality one against the Government, the identity of the named parties defendant is not controlling; the dis-positive inquiry is “who will pay the judgment?” See Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U. S. 682 (1949). Here, it is against individuals and not against the Government that a money judgment is sought.
Under this provision the case against petitioner Stafford could have been brought only in the Northern District of Florida where the alleged claim arose. As to petitioner Colby, the proper venue would have been the Eastern District of New York where the alleged claim arose, or perhaps the Eastern District of Virginia, where some acts may have occurred at the headquarters of the CIA.
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 motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The motion to affirm is also granted and the judgment is affirmed. Cameron v. Johnson, 390 U. S. 611.
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether § 104(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code authorizes a taxpayer to exclude from his gross income the amount received in settlement of a claim for backpay and liquidated damages under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA).
I
Erich Schleier (respondent) is a former employee of United Airlines, Inc. (United). Pursuant to established policy, United fired respondent when he reached the age of 60. Respondent then filed a complaint in Federal District Court alleging that his termination violated the ADEA.
The ADEA “broadly prohibits arbitrary discrimination in the workplace based on age.” Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, 577 (1978); Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S. 111, 120 (1985); see also McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., 513 U. S. 352, 357 (1995). Subject to certain defenses, see 29 U. S. C. § 623(f) (1988 ed. and Supp. V), §§4 and 12 of the ADEA make it unlawful for an employer, inter alia, to discharge any individual between the ages of 40 and 70 “because of such individual’s age.” 29 U. S. C. §§ 623(a)(1), 631(a). The ADEA incorporates many of the enforcement and remedial mechanisms of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Like the FLSA, the ADEA provides for “such legal or equitable relief as may be appropriate to effectuate the purposes of this chapter.” 29 U. S. C. § 626(b). That relief may include “without limitation judgments compelling employment, reinstatement or promotion.” Ibid. More importantly for respondent’s purposes, the ADEA incorporates FLSA provisions that permit the recovery “of wages lost and an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” §216(b). See generally McKennon, 513 U. S., at 357.
Despite these broad remedial mechanisms, there are two important constraints on courts’ remedial power under the ADEA. First, unlike the FLSA, the ADEA specifically provides that “liquidated damages shall be payable only in cases of willful violations of this chapter.” 29 U. S. C. § 626(b); see Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S., at 125. Second, the Courts of Appeals have unanimously held, and respondent does not contest, that the ADEA does not permit a separate recovery of compensatory damages for pain and suffering or emotional distress.
Respondent’s ADEA complaint was consolidated with a class action brought by other former United employees challenging United’s policy. The ADEA claims were tried before a jury, which determined that United had committed a willful violation of the ADEA. The District Court entered judgment for the plaintiffs, but that judgment was reversed on appeal. See Monroe v. United Air Lines, Inc., 736 F. 2d 394 (CA7 1984). The parties then entered into a settlement, pursuant to which respondent received $145,629. Half of respondent’s award was attributed to “backpay” and half to “liquidated damages.” United did not withhold any payroll or income taxes from the portion of the settlement attributed to liquidated damages.
When respondent filed his 1986 federal income tax return, he included as gross income the backpay portion of the settlement, but excluded the portion attributed to liquidated damages. The Commissioner issued a deficiency notice, asserting that respondent should have included the liquidated damages as gross income. Respondent then initiated proceedings in the Tax Court, claiming that he had properly excluded the liquidated damages. Respondent also sought a refund for the tax he had paid on the backpay portion of the settlement. The Tax Court agreed with respondent that the entire settlement constituted “damages received ... on account of personal injuries or sickness” within the meaning of § 104(a)(2) of the Tax Code and was therefore excludable from gross income. Relying on a prior Circuit decision that had in turn relied on our decision in United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229 (1992), the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Judgt. order reported at 26 F. 3d 1119 (1994). Because the Courts of Appeals have reached inconsistent conclusions as to the taxability of ADEA recoveries in general and of the United settlement in particular, compare Downey v. Commissioner, 33 F. 3d 836 (CA7 1994) (United settlement award is taxable), with Schmitz v. Commissioner, 34 F. 3d 790 (CA9 1994) (United settlement award is excludable), we granted certiorari, 513 U. S. 998 (1994). Our consideration of the plain language of § 104(a), the text of the regulation implementing § 104(a)(2), and our reasoning in Burke convince us that a recovery under the ADEA is not excludable from gross income.
II
Section 61(a) of the Internal Revenue Code provides a broad definition of “gross income”: “Except as otherwise provided in this subtitle, gross income means all income from whatever source derived.” 26 U. S. C. § 61(a). We have repeatedly emphasized the “sweeping scope” of this section and its statutory predecessors. Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U. S. 426, 429 (1965). See also United States v. Burke, 504 U. S., at 233; Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U. S. 331, 334 (1940). We have also emphasized the corollary to § 61(a)’s broad construction, namely, the “default rule of statutory interpretation that exclusions from income must be narrowly construed.” United States v. Burke, 504 U. S., at 248 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment); see United States v. Centennial Savings Bank FSB, 499 U. S. 573, 583-584 (1991); Commissioner v. Jacobson, 336 U. S. 28, 49 (1949); United States v. Burke, 504 U. S., at 244 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).
Respondent recognizes § 61(a)’s “sweeping” definition and concedes that his settlement constitutes gross income unless it is expressly excepted by another provision in the Tax Code. Respondent claims, however, that his settlement proceeds are excluded from § 61(a)’s reach by 26 U. S. C. § 104(a). Section 104(a) provides an exclusion for five categories of “compensation for personal injuries or sickness.” Respondent argues that his settlement award falls within the second of those categories, which excludes from gross income “the amount of any damages received ... on account of personal injuries or sickness.” § 104(a)(2).
In our view, the plain language of the statute undermines respondent’s contention. Consideration of a typical recovery in a personal injury case illustrates the usual meaning of “on account of personal injuries.” Assume that a taxpayer is in an automobile accident, is injured, and as a result of that injury suffers (a) medical expenses, (b) lost wages, and (c) pain, suffering, and emotional distress that cannot be measured with precision. If the taxpayer settles a resulting lawsuit for $30,000 (and if the taxpayer has not previously deducted her medical expenses, see § 104(a)), the entire $30,000 would be excludable under § 104(a)(2). The medical expenses for injuries arising out of the accident clearly constitute damages received “on account of personal injuries.” Similarly, the portion of the settlement intended to compensate for pain and suffering constitutes damages “on account of personal injury.” Finally, the recovery for lost wages is also excludable as being “on account of. personal injuries,” as long as the lost wages resulted from time in which the taxpayer was out of work as a result of her injuries. See, e. g., Threlkeld v. Commissioner, 87 T. C. 1294, 1300 (1986) (hypothetical surgeon who loses finger through tortious conduct may exclude any recovery for lost wages because “[t]his injury ... will also undoubtedly cause special damages including loss of future income”), aff’d, 848 F. 2d 81 (CA6 1988). The critical point this hypothetical illustrates is that each element of the settlement is recoverable not simply because the taxpayer received a tort settlement, but rather because each element of the settlement satisfies the requirement set forth in § 104(a)(2) (and in all of the other subsections of § 104(a)) that the damages were received “on account of personal injuries or sickness.”
In contrast, no part of respondent’s ADEA settlement is excludable under the plain language of § 104(a)(2). Respondent’s recovery of back wages, though at first glance comparable to our hypothetical accident victim’s recovery of lost wages, does not fall within § 104(a)(2)’s exclusion because it does not satisfy the critical requirement of being “on account of personal injury or sickness.” Whether one treats respondent’s attaining the age of 60 or his being laid off on account of his age as the proximate cause of respondent’s loss of income, neither the birthday nor the discharge can fairly be described as a “personal injury” or “sickness.” Moreover, though respondent’s unlawful termination may have caused some psychological or “personal” injury comparable to the intangible pain and suffering caused by an automobile accident, it is clear that no part of respondent’s recovery of back wages is attributable to that injury. Thus, in our automobile hypothetical, the accident causes a personal injury which'in turn causes a loss of wages. In age discrimination, the discrimination causes both personal injury and loss of wages, but neither is linked to the other. The amount of back wages recovered is completely independent of the existence or extent of any personal injury. In short, § 104(a)(2) does not permit the exclusion of respondent’s back wages because the recovery of back wages was not “on account of” any personal injury and because no personal injury affected the amount of back wages recovered.
Respondent suggests, nonetheless, that the liquidated damages portion of his settlement fits comfortably within the plain language of § 104(a)(2)’s exclusion. He cites our observation in Overnight Motor Transp. Co. v. Missel, 316 U. S. 572 (1942), that liquidated damages under the FLSA “are compensation, not a penalty or punishment,” and that such damages might compensate for “damages too obscure and difficult of proof for estimate.” Id., at 584-585; see also Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O’Neil, 324 U. S. 697, 707 (1945). He argues that Congress must be presumed to have known of our interpretation of liquidated damages when it incorporated FLSA’s liquidated damages provision into the ADEA, and that Congress must therefore have intended that liquidated damages under the ADEA serve, at least in part, to compensate plaintiffs for personal injuries that are difficult to quantify.
We agree with respondent that if Congress had intended the ADEA’s liquidated damages to compensate plaintiffs for personal injuries, those damages might well come within § 104(a)(2)’s exclusion. There are, however, two weaknesses in respondent’s argument. First, even if we assume that Congress was aware of the Court’s observation in Overnight Motor that the liquidated damages authorized by the FLSA might provide compensation for some “obscure” injuries, it does not necessarily follow that Congress would have understood that observation as referring to injuries that were personal rather than economic. Second, and more importantly, we have previously rejected respondent’s argument: We have already concluded that the liquidated damages provisions of the ADEA were a significant departure from those in the FLSA, see Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S., at 581; Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U. S., at 126, and we explicitly held in Thurston: “Congress intended for liquidated damages to be punitive in nature.” Id., at 125.
Our holding in Thurston disposes of respondent’s argument and requires the conclusion that liquidated damages under the ADEA, like back wages under the ADEA, are not received “on account of personal injury or sickness.”
HH ► — I HH
Respondent seeks to circumvent the plain language of § 104(a)(2) by relying on the Commissioner’s regulation interpreting that section. Section 1.104-l(c) of the Treasury Regulations, 26 CFR § 1.104-l(c) (1994), provides:
“Section 104(a)(2) [of the Internal Revenue Code] excludes from gross income the amount of any damages received (whether by suit or agreement) on account of personal injuries or sickness. The term ‘damages received (whether by suit or agreement)’ means an amount received (other than workmen’s compensation) through prosecution of a legal suit or action based upon tort or tort type rights, or through a settlement agreement entered into in lieu of such prosecution.”
Respondent contends that an action to- recover damages for a violation of the ADEA is “based upon tort or tort type rights” as those terms are used in that regulation, and that his settlement is thus excludable under the plain language of the regulation.
Even if we accept respondent’s characterization of the action, but see infra, at 336, there is no basis for excluding the proceeds of his settlement from his gross income. The regulatory requirement that the amount be received in a tort type action is not a substitute for the statutory requirement that the amount be received “on account of personal injuries or sickness”; it is an additional requirement. Indeed, the statutory requirement is repeated in the regulation. As the Commissioner argues in her reply brief, an exclusion from gross income is authorized by the regulation “only when it both (i) was received through prosecution or settlement of an ‘action based upon tort or tort type rights’... and (ii) was received ‘on account of personal injuries or sickness.’” Reply Brief for Petitioner 2. We need not decide whether the Commissioner would have authority to dispense entirely with the statutory requirement, because she disclaims any intent to do so, and the text of the regulation does not belie her disclaimer. Thus, respondent’s reliance on the text of the regulation is unpersuasive.
IV
Respondent also suggests that our decision in United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229 (1992), compels the conclusion that his settlement award is excludable. In Burke, we rejected the taxpayer’s argument that the payment received in settlement of her backpay claim under the pre-1991 version of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was excludable from her gross income. Our decision rested on the conclusion that such a claim was not based upon “tort or tort type rights” within the meaning of the regulation quoted above. For two independent reasons, we think Burke provides no foundation for respondent’s argument.
First, respondent’s ADEA recovery is not based upon “tort or tort type rights” as that term was construed in Burke. In Burke, we examined the remedial scheme established by the pre-1991 version of Title VII. Noting that “Title VII does not allow awards for compensatory or punitive damages,” and that “instead, it limits available remedies to backpay, injunctions, and other equitable relief,” we con-eluded that Title VII was not tortlike because it addressed “‘legal injuries of an economic character.’” 504 U. S., at 238, 239.
Respondent points to two elements of the ADEA that he argues distinguish it from the remedial scheme at issue in Burke: First, the ADEA provides for jury trial, see 29 U. S. C. § 626(b); Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S., at 585; but cf. Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U. S. 156 (1981); and second, the ADEA allows for liquidated damages. We do not believe that these features of the ADEA are sufficient to bring it within Burke’s conception of a “tort type righ[t].” It is true, as respondent notes, that we emphasized in Burke the lack of a right to a jury trial and the absence of any provision for punitive damages as factors distinguishing the pre-1991 Title VII action from traditional tort litigation, 504 U. S., at 238-240. We did not, however, indicate that the presence of either or both of those factors would be sufficient to bring a statutory claim within the coverage of the regulation.
In our view, respondent’s argument gives insufficient attention to what the Burke Court recognized as the primary characteristic of an “action based upon ... tort type rights”: the availability of compensatory remedies. Indeed, we noted that “one of the hallmarks of traditional tort liability is the availability of a broad range of damages to compensate the plaintiff ‘fairly for injuries caused by the violation of his legal rights.’ ” Id., at 235. We continued: “Although these damages often are described in compensatory terms ..., in many cases they are larger than the amount necessary to reimburse actual monetary loss sustained or even anticipated by the plaintiff, and thus redress intangible elements of injury that are deemed important, even though not pecuniary in [their] immediate consequence[s].” Ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted). Against this background, we found critical that the pre-1991 version of Title VII provided no compensation “for any of the other traditional harms associated with personal injury, such as pain and suffering, emotional distress, harm to reputation, or other consequential damages.” Id., at 239.
Like the pre-1991 version of Title VII, the ADEA provides no compensation “for any of the other traditional harms associated with personal injury.” Monetary remedies under the ADEA are limited to back wages, which are clearly of an “economic character,” and liquidated damages, which we have already noted serve no compensatory function. Thus, though this is a closer case than Burke, we conclude that a recovery under the ADEA is not one that is “based upon tort or tort type rights.”
Second, and more importantly, the holding of Burke is narrower than respondent suggests. In Burke, following the framework established in the Internal Revenue Service regulations, we noted that § 104(a)(2) requires a determination whether the underlying action is “based upon tort or tort type rights.” Id., at 234. In so doing, however, we did not hold that the inquiry into “tort or tort type rights” constituted the beginning and end of the analysis. In particular, though Burke relied on Title VII’s failure to qualify as an action based upon tort type rights, we did not intend to eliminate the basic requirement found in both the statute and the regulation that only amounts received “on account of personal injuries or sickness” come within § 104(a)(2)’s exclusion. Thus, though satisfaction of Burke’s “tort or tort type” inquiry is a necessary condition for excludability under § 104(a)(2), it is not a sufficient condition.
In sum, the plain language of § 104(a)(2), the text of the applicable regulation, and our decision in Burke establish two independent requirements that a taxpayer must meet before a recovery may be excluded under § 104(a)(2). First, the taxpayer must demonstrate that the underlying cause of action giving rise to the recovery is “based upon tort or tort type rights”; and second, the taxpayer must show that the damages were received “on account of personal injuries or sickness.” For the reasons discussed above, we believe that respondent has failed to satisfy either requirement, and thus no part of his settlement is excludable under § 104(a)(2).
The judgment is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Scalia concurs in the judgment.
Helen Schleier is also a respondent because she and her husband Erich filed a joint return.
See, e. g., Vazquez v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 579 F. 2d 107 (CA1 1978); Johnson v. Al Tech Specialties Steel Corp., 731 F. 2d 143, 147 (CA2 1984); Rogers v. Exxon Research & Engineering Co., 550 F. 2d 834 (CA3 1977); Slatin v. Stanford Research Institute, 590 F. 2d 1292 (CA4 1979); Dean v. American Security Ins. Co., 559 F. 2d 1036 (CA5 1977), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1066 (1978); Hill v. Spiegel, Inc., 708 F. 2d 233 (CA6 1983); Pfeiffer v. Essex Wire Corp., 682 F 2d 684, 687-688 (CA7), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 1039 (1982); Fiedler v. Indianhead Truck Line, Inc., 670 F. 2d 806 (CA8 1982); Schmitz v. Commissioner, 34 F. 3d 790 (CA9 1994); Perrell v. FinanceAmerica Corp., 726 F. 2d 654 (CA10 1984); Goldstein v. Manhattan Industries, Inc., 758 F. 2d 1435, 1446 (CA11 1985). See generally H. Eglit, 2 Age Discrimination § 18.19 (1982 and Supp. 1984); J. Kalet, Age Discrimination in Employment Law 110-111 (1986).
At the time of respondent’s return, § 104(a) provided in relevant part:
“Compensation for injuries or sickness
“(a) In general. — Except in the case of amounts attributable to (and not in excess of) deductions allowed under section 213 (relating to medical, etc., expenses) for any prior taxable year, gross income does not include—
“(1) amounts received under workmen’s compensation acts as compensation for personal injuries or sickness;
“(2) the amount of any damages received (whether by suit or agreement and whether as lump sums or as periodic payments) on account of personal injuries or sickness;
“(3) amounts received through accident or health insurance for personal injuries or sickness (other than amounts received by an employee, to the extent such amounts (A) are attributable to contributions by the employer which were not includible in the gross income of the employee, or (B) are paid by the employer);
“(4) amounts received as a pension, annuity, or similar allowance for personal injuries or sickness resulting from active service in the armed forces of any country or in the Coast and Geodetic Survey or the Public Health Service, or as a disability annuity payable under the provisions of section 808 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980; and
“(5) amounts received by an individual as disability income attributable .to injuries incurred as a direct result of a violent attack which the Secretary of State determines to be a terrorist attack and which occurred while such individual was an employee of the United States engaged in the performance of his official duties outside the United States.” 26 U. S. C. § 104 (1988 ed. and Supp. V).
In 1989, § 104(a) was amended, adding, inter alia, the following provision: “Paragraph (2) shall not apply to any punitive damages in connection with a case not involving physical injury or physical sickness.” Ibid.
Though the text of § 104(a)(2) might be considered ambiguous on this point, it is by now clear that § 104(a)(2) encompasses recoveries based on intangible as well as tangible harms. See United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229, 235, n. 6 (1992); id., at 244, and n. 3 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment) (acknowledging that “ 'personal injuries or sickness’ ” includes nonphysical injuries).
We find it noteworthy that the Court in Thurston was presented with many of the arguments offered by respondent today. For example, to counter the argument that “the ADEA liquidated damages provision is punitive,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) argued that "the legislative history of the liquidated damages provision in the ADEA — as in the FLSA — shows that such damages are designed to provide full compensation to the employee, rather than primarily to punish the employer.” Brief for EEOC in Transworld Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, O. T. 1984, Nos. 83-997 and 83-1325, p. 36. The EEOC continued: “Thus, Congress focused on the need to be fair to the employee, and to provide him full compensation for nonpecuniary damages not readily calculable, including emotional injuries such as humiliation and loss of self respect.” Id., at 36-37. See also id., at 37 (relying on Overnight Motor Transp. Co. v. Missel, 316 U. S. 672 (1942)). Against this background, the Court’s statement that “Congress intended for liquidated damages to be punitive in nature” can only be taken as a rejection of the argument that those damages are also (or are exclusively) compensatory.
We recognize that the House Conference Report accompanying the 1978 Amendments to the ADEA contains language that supports respondent. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-950 (1978). However, this evidence was before the Court in Thurston, see Brief for EEOC, at 37, and the Court did not find it persuasive. We see no reason to reach a different result now.
Moreover, there is much force to the Court’s conclusion in Thurston that the ADEA’s liquidated damages provisions are punitive. Under our decision in Thurston, liquidated damages are only available under the ADEA if “the employer . . . knew or showed reckless disregard for the matter of whether its conduct was prohibited by the ADEA.” 469 U. S., at 126 (internal quotation marks omitted). If liquidated damages were designed to compensate ADEA victims, we see no reason why the employer’s knowledge of the unlawfulness of his conduct should be the determinative factor in the award of liquidated damages.
We find odd the dissent’s suggestion, post, at 341-342, that our holding today assumes that the intangible harms of discrimination do not constitute personal injuries. We of course have no doubt that the intangible harms of discrimination can constitute personal injury, and that compensation for such harms may be excludable under § 104(a)(2). However, to acknowledge that discrimination may cause intangible harms is not to say that the ADEA compensates for such harms, or that any of the damages received were on account of those harms.
We recognize that the Commissioner has arguably in the past treated the regulation as though its second sentence superseded the first sentence. See, e. g., United States v. Burke, 504 U. S., at 242, n. 1 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). In this case, however, the Commissioner unambiguously contends that the regulation is not intended to eliminate the “on account of” requirement from the statutory language. In view of the Commissioner’s differing interpretations of her own regulation, we do not accord her present litigating position any special deference. We do agree, however, that she reads the regulation correctly in this case.
We recognize that a recent Revenue Ruling from the IRS seems to rely on the same reading of Burke urged by respondent. See Rev. Rul. 93-88, 1993-2 Cum. Bull. 61. Though this Revenue Ruling is not before us, we note that “the Service’s interpretive rulings do not have the force and effect of regulations,” Davis v. United States, 495 U. S. 472, 484 (1990), and they may not be used to overturn the plain language of a statute. See, e. g., Bartels v. Birmingham, 332 U. S. 126, 132 (1947).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | L | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner and an accomplice robbed a country store in South Carolina in 1981. After petitioner left the store, a fight occurred in which the accomplice and the storekeeper’s mother were both killed. Petitioner was convicted of murder and armed robbery and sentenced to death. His conviction and sentence were affirmed by the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1982. State v. Yates, 280 S. C. 29, 310 S. E. 2d 805, cert. denied, 462 U. S. 1124 (1983).
At his trial, petitioner testified that the victim had not even entered the store before he left and that he had not intended to kill or to harm anyone. The jury, however, was instructed “that malice is implied or presumed from the use of a deadly weapon.” A few months after petitioner’s conviction was affirmed, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that it was error to give such an instruction. See State v. Elmore, 279 S. C. 417, 308 S. E. 2d 781 (1983). Thereafter, petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus from the South Carolina Supreme Court, arguing that the burden-shifting instruction given at his trial was unconstitutional under the state court’s reasoning in Elmore and under our decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 (1979). While the application for habeas corpus was pending, we decided another case involving a burden-shifting instruction, Francis v. Franklin, 471 U. S. 307 (1985), and petitioner promptly called that decision to the attention of the State Supreme Court. The court denied the writ without opinion.
Petitioner then sought a writ of certiorari in this Court. We summarily vacated the judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court and remanded the case “for further consideration in light of Francis v. Franklin.” Yates v. Aiken, 474 U. S. 896 (1985). On remand, the state court determined that the jury instruction at petitioner’s trial “suffered from the same infirmities present in Elmore and addressed in Francis v. Franklin.” 290 S. C. 231, 233, 349 S. E. 2d 84, 85 (1986). Nevertheless, the court held that petitioner was not entitled to relief. As an explanation for its holding, the court stated that its decision in Elmore should not be applied retroactively to invalidate a conviction that was final when Elmore was decided. The opinion did not consider whether the decision in Francis v. Franklin might apply retroactively and also did not discuss our decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, on which petitioner had relied.
In dissent, Justice Finney reasoned that Elmore and Francis v. Franklin should be applied retroactively because an instruction that shifts the burden of proof on an element of the offense — particularly in a capital case — substantially impairs the truth-finding function of the jury. Moreover, he reasoned, given our decision in Sandstrom v. Montana in 1979, the case did not represent a significant change in the law.
We granted certiorari because we were concerned that the South Carolina Supreme Court had not fully complied with our mandate. 480 U. S. 945 (1987). We now reverse.
I
Our order remanding the case for further consideration in the light of Francis v. Franklin was predicated entirely on the fact that petitioner’s challenge to the jury instruction asserted a substantial federal question. Our opinion in Francis explained why a challenge of this kind is supported by the Federal Constitution:
“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.’ In re Winship, [397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970)]. This ‘bedrock, “axiomatic and elementary” [constitutional] principle,’ id., at 363, prohibits the State from using evidentiary presumptions in a jury charge that have the effect of relieving the State of its burden of persuasion beyond a reasonable doubt of every essential element of a crime. Sandstrom v. Montana, supra, at 520-524; Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 210, 215 (1977); Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 698-701 (1975); see also Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 274-275 (1952). The prohibition protects the ‘fundamental value determination of our society,’ given voice in Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Winship, that ‘it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.’ 397 U. S., at 372. See Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 525-526 (1958).” 471 U. S., at 313.
The portion of the state court’s opinion concluding that the instruction in petitioner’s case was infirm for the reasons “addressed in Francis” was responsive to our mandate, but the discussion of the question whether the decision in Elmore should be applied retroactively was not. Our mandate contemplated that the state court would consider whether, as a matter of federal law, petitioner’s conviction could stand in the light of Francis. Since the state court did not decide that question, we shall do so.
II
The South Carolina Attorney General submits that we should adopt Justice Harlan’s theory that a newly announced constitutional rule should not be applied retroactively to cases pending on collateral review unless the rule places “certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe,” Mackey v. United States, 401 U. S. 667, 692 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), or enunciates a procedural rule that is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” id., at 693. Under this theory, the Attorney General argues, petitioner would not be entitled to the benefit of our ruling in Franklin.
We have already endorsed Justice Harlan’s retroactivity analysis for cases pending on direct appeal, see Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 322 (1987); United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537 (1982), and we have noted, as Justice Harlan did, Mackey, supra, at 682-687; Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 260 (1969) (Harlan, J., dissenting), the important distinction between direct review and collateral review. Compare Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255 (1986) (holding that Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986) does not apply retroactively to cases on collateral review), with Griffith, supra, at 322-323 (holding that Batson does apply retroactively to cases pending on direct review); see, e. g., Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U. S. 551 (1987) (right to appointed counsel on direct appeal not applicable in collateral proceedings). To decide this case, however, it is not necessary to determine whether we should go further and adopt Justice Harlan’s reasoning as to the retroactivity of cases announcing new constitutional rules to cases pending on collateral review.
Although Justice Harlan believed that most collateral attacks on final judgments should be resolved by reference to the state of the law at the time of the petitioner’s conviction, he emphasized the proposition that many “new” holdings are merely applications of principles that were well settled at the time of conviction. As he explained in Desist:
“The theory that the habeas petitioner is entitled to the law prevailing at the time of his conviction is, however, one which is more complex than the Court has seemingly recognized. First, it is necessary to determine whether a particular decision has really announced a ‘new’ rule at all or whether it has simply applied a well-established constitutional principle to govern a case which is closely analogous to those which have been previously considered in the prior case law. . . . One need not be a rigid partisan of Blackstone to recognize that many, though not all, of this Court’s constitutional decisions are grounded upon fundamental principles whose content does not change dramatically from year to year, but whose meanings are altered slowly and subtly as generation succeeds generation. In such a context it appears very difficult to argue against the application of the ‘new’ rule in all habeas cases since one could never say with any assurance that this Court would have ruled differently at the time the petitioner’s conviction became final.” 394 U. S., at 263-264.
This reasoning, which we previously have endorsed, is controlling in this case because our decision in Francis was merely an application of the principle that governed our decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, which had been decided before petitioner’s trial took place. We explicitly so held in Francis itself:
“The question before the Court in this case is almost identical to that before the Court in Sandstrom: whether the challenged jury instruction had the effect of relieving the State of the burden of proof enunciated in Winship on the critical question of . . . state of mind,’ 442 U. S., at 521, by creating a mandatory presumption of intent upon proof by the State of other elements of the offense.” 471 U. S., at 313.
“Sandstrom v. Montana made clear that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the State from making use of jury instructions that have the effect of relieving the State of the burden of proof enunciated in Winship on the critical question of intent in a criminal prosecution. 442 U. S., at 521. Today we reaffirm the rule of Sandstrom and the wellspring due process principle from which it was drawn. The Court of Appeals faithfully and correctly applied this rule, and the court’s judgment is therefore affirmed.” Id., at 326-327.
Ill
Respondents also argue that South Carolina has the authority to establish the scope of its own habeas corpus proceedings and to refuse to apply a new rule of federal constitutional law retroactively in such a proceeding. We reject this argument for two reasons. First, as we have just explained, Francis did not announce a new rule. Second, we do not read the South Carolina Supreme Court’s opinion as having placed any limit on the issues that it will entertain in collateral proceedings. Since it has considered the merits of the federal claim, it has a duty to grant the relief that federal law requires.
The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
See App. 7; Tr. 1208.
“The doctrine against burden shifting presumptions set out in Francis v. Franklin, [471 U. S. 307 (1985)], is not a clear break with prior law. The United States Supreme Court in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 . . . (1979), decided prior to Yates, held that conclusive presumptions or instructions which shift the burden of persuasion violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that in every criminal trial, the state is required to prove each element of the criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court went on to hold, concerning Elmore-type errors, that conclusive presumptions conflict with the presumption of innocence with which the law endows the accused. These presumptions, likewise, extend to every element of the crime and invade the truth-finding function which, in a criminal case, the law assigns solely to the jury.” 290 S. C., at 239, 349 S. E. 2d, at 88-89.
We stated in United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537, 549 (1982):
“[ WJhen a decision of this Court merely has applied settled precedents to new and different factual situations, no real question has arisen as to whether the later decision should apply retrospectively. In such cases, it has been a foregone conclusion that the rule of the later ease applies in earlier eases, because the later decision has not in fact altered that rule in any material way.”
See also Truesdale v. Aiken, 480 U. S. 527 (1987) (per curiam); Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200 (1979); Lee v. Missouri, 439 U. S. 461, 462 (1979) (per curiam).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents an important question under the Natural Gas Act. This question, central to the case, is: When a company, proposing to make, under contract, jurisdictional sales of natural gas in interstate commerce, applies for a certificate of public convenience and necessity as required by the Act, and requests that the certificate be limited in time to the duration of a contract for the sale of gas which it has entered, does the Federal Power Commission have the authority to tender it, instead, a certificate without time limitation?
Petitioner, Sunray Mid-Continent Oil Company, an independent producer of natural gas, entered into a contract with United Gas Pipeline Company, an interstate transmission company. The contract covered considerable acreage owned by, or under mineral lease to, petitioner in Vermilion and Lafayette Parishes, Louisiana, in and about what is called the Ridge field. Under it, United agreed to take an annual amount of gas from petitioner equivalent to 4.5625 per cent of petitioner’s gas reserves in the area covered by the agreement; and United had the right, in addition, to call for any amount up to 150 per cent of the amount it had annually agreed to take. The term of the agreement was 20 years. The initial price provided was 20.5 cents per thousand cubic feet (Mcf.); and the price was to increase one cent per Mcf. every five years.
Section 7 (c) of the Natural Gas Act provides that “no natural-gas company... shall engage in the transportation or sale of natural gas, subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission... unless there is in force with respect to such natural-gas company a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the Commission authorizing such acts or operations.” This Court held in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672, that by virtue of § 1 (b) of the Act, sales of gas by an independent producer to a pipeline “in interstate commerce... for resale for ultimate public consumption” came within the scope of the Act. Petitioner had no certificate of public convenience and necessity authorizing sales in interstate commerce from the field in question. Accordingly, in order to carry out its contract with United, it was necessary for petitioner to apply for a certificate from the Commission, which it did.
Petitioner’s application for the certificate contained the request that the certificate sought “provide for its own expiration on the expiration of the... contract term so as to authorize Applicant to cease the delivery and sale of gas thereunder at that time.” The Commission, upholding its examiner’s recommendations, rejected the contentions of petitioner that there should be issued to cover the contract only a certificate limited to the term of the contract itself, and tendered it a certificate without time limitation. 19 F. P. C. 618. Petitioner applied for a rehearing of the Commission’s order. Basic to this application was the contention that “The Commission is without authority to issue a certificate to an applicant authorizing more than the whole or some part of the sale covered by the application for certificate of public convenience and necessity....” The Commission denied the rehearing application. 19 F. P. C. 1107.
Petitioner did not avail itself of its undoubted right to stand firm on its own application, and rejfect the proffered certificate. Cf. Atlantic Refining Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 360 U. S. 378, 387-388. Instead it accepted the Commission’s certificate and commenced deliveries of gas under it, reserving its right to object, on review, to the certificate’s unlimited nature. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected petitioner’s objections, and affirmed the order of the Commission, 267 F. 2d 471. In view of the importance of the central question presented, to which we have already alluded, we granted certiorari. 361 U. S. 880. We are in agreement with the Court of Appeals, and affirm its judgment.
The practical reasons behind petitioner’s superficially self-abnegating desire to have a limited rather than an unlimited authorization from the Commission are obvious from a study of the Natural Gas Act’s provisions. Obvious also is the damaging effect that acceptance of petitioner’s central contention would have upon the policies of the Act.
I.
Section 7 (b) of the Natural Gas Act regulates the abandonment by natural-gas companies of their facilities and services subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission. The section follows a common pattern in federal utility regulation in forbidding such abandonment “without the permission and approval of the Commission first had and obtained.” The Commission is to' extend permission for an abandonment of service only on a finding “that the available supply of natural gas is depleted to the extent that the continuance of service is unwarranted, or that the present or future public convenience or necessity permit such abandonment.” The proposal of petitioner was for a certificate that would by its own terms expire when the contract with United expired. Thus at the end of the period, petitioner would become free to cease supplying gas to the interstate market from the Ridge area without further leave of the Commission, and without there having been made the findings that Congress deemed necessary.
If petitioner’s contentions, as to the want of authority in the Commission to grant a permanent certificate where one of limited duration has been sought for, were to be sustained, the way would be clear for every independent producer of natural gas to seek certification only for the limited period of its initial contract with the transmission company, and thus automatically be free at a future date, untrammeled by Commission regulation, to reassess whether it desired to continue serving the interstate market. And contracts — as did the 1947 contract in the companion case to the one at bar, Sun Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, post, p. 170 — might provide for termination in the event of a rate reduction by the Commission. Petitioner’s theory, by tying the term of the certificate to the contract, would mean that such a reduction of rates would under those circumstances enable the producer to cease supplying gas, without obligation to justify its cessation of this service as being consistent with the public convenience and necessity.
The consequences of petitioner’s argument do not stop there. The identical provisions of the Natural Gas Act. regulate pipeline companies as well as independent producers. If producers can insist in their certificates on the inclusion of a provision relieving them in advance from their obligation to continue the supply of gas, as of a date certain, pipeline companies — whose dealings with local distributing companies generally also take the form of a “sale” of gas to them — could insist on a similar provision. If an individual producer were thus left free to discontinue his supply, the transmission company would be forced to find a supplier of gas elsewhere, and make connection with him, to continue its service; and the consumer ultimately would pay the bill for the rearrangement. If the pipeline company were left free to cease its service to the local distribution company, a local economy which had grown dependent on natural gas as a fuel would be at its mercy. And this, though the primary practical problem that led to the passage of the Act was the great economic power of the pipeline companies as compared with that of communities seeking natural gas service. See Federal Power Comm’n v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591, 610.
And there are practical consequences, related to rate control, which are even more concrete. The companion case, Sun Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, post, p. 170, illustrates them. If petitioner’s certificate of public convenience must expire with its first contract with United, service after then — under a new contract or otherwise— will require a new certificate. And under that certificate, petitioner may file, pursuant to § 4 (c) of the Act, its rates for the “new” service. The only power the Commission would have, under the Act, with respect to those rates, would be to bear the burden of proof in an investigation under § 5 of the Act, that the rates are unjust or unreasonable, and thereupon order a new rate, solely for prospective application. Last Term in the so-called Catco case, Atlantic Refining Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, supra, at 389, we had occasion to remark that “the delay incident to determination in § 5 proceedings through which initial certificated rates are reviewable appears nigh interminable.” At oral argument, counsel for the Commission confirmed that no contested major producer’s § 5 case had been finally adjudicated by the Commission in the six years since this Court’s decision in the Phillips case. In contrast to § 5 are the protections that would be available if at the conclusion of the original contract the producer’s certificate remained in full force and effect. Then the rates to be charged under a new contract or otherwise would have to be filed as rate changes under § 4 (d) of the Act, with 30 days’ notice to the Commission and the public. Under § 4 (e), the Commission, on complaint of any State, state commission, or municipality, or sua sponte, may order a hearing on the new rate, and suspend the effectiveness of the rate for five months. At the hearing, the gas company would have to shoulder the burden of proving that its new rates were just and reasonable. If the hearing were not concluded by the end of the suspension period, the increased rate could be collected ad interim; but the Commission is empowered to require the company to collect the increment under bond and accounting, and refund it if it could not make out its case for the increase.
Clearly, the rate change provisions of §§ 4 (d) and 4 (e), rather than the “initial rate” provisions of § 4 (c), are better tailored to the situation that exists when an initial contract of sale of natural gas terminates, and the supply of gas continues, whether under a new contract or without one. When a producer commences interstate sales from a particular field, or when an interstate transmission company commences sales to a local distributing company, there are by definition no existing rates, and accordingly the protective provisions of §§ 4 (d) and (e), which are bottomed on delaying the effectiveness of, and suspending, changes, are not relevant. But of course this is not the case where one sales contract expires and service continues; in this situation, where a rate change is proposed, the protective provisions fit as well as they do in the case of a rate change made pursuant to a contract, during its term.
Thus it is apparent that petitioner’s position would enable it to make what in practical effect would be rate changes, but without compliance with the procedures of §§ 4 (d) and 4 (e), and subject to revision only in procedures which are likely to “provide a windfall for the natural gas company with a consequent squall for the consumers,” as we said in Catco. 360 U. S., at 390. When attached to the leverage of a power to abandon service, at a contract’s termination, without contemporaneous Commission approval, this power to exercise contractual control not only over rates but over the mode of their regulation, would be a substantial one indeed. And, like the power to force an advance license for the abandonment of the continued supply of gas, the power would be one enjoyed by pipeline companies and producers alike. Further, declaration today of a want of authority in the Commission to issue a certificate of longer duration than that of a sales contract attached to the application would have a retroactive effect; it would at least furnish a guide to the construction of certificates issued previously on such applications. See Sun Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, post, p. 170.
This Court declared as early as the Hope Natural Gas case that the primary aim of the Natural Gas Act was “to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies.” 320 U. S. 591, 610. We reiterated that declaration last Term in Cateo, and observed that “The Act was so framed as to afford consumers a complete, permanent and effective bond of protection from excessive rates and charges.” 360 U. S., at 388. Against the backdrop of the practical consequences of the petitioner’s claim and the purposes of the Act, we look to the details of its argument that the Commission is limited, in granting its certificate of public convenience and necessity, to a term certificate of the duration petitioner has proposed.
First. Petitioner’s argument is based primarily on its construction of § 7 (e) of the Act. That section provides that a certificate of public convenience and necessity shall be issued “to any qualified applicant therefor, authorizing the whole or any part of the operation, sale, service, construction, éxtension, or acquisition covered by the application.” This, petitioner urges, makes it clear that the outside limit of what the Commission may authorize is what the applicant proposes. Further, petitioner urges that the language requiring a finding “that the applicant is able and willing properly to do the acts and to perform the service proposed” negates the Commission’s authority to go beyond the time limitations the applicant inserts in its proposal; for it is claimed that it cannot be found that petitioner is willing to do more than what it has proposed. Under petitioner’s theory, the abandonment provisions of § 7 (b) would have application only if it was desired to abandon service while the contract was still in effect.
The argument seems to us unpersuasive even on the face of the statutory language. It depends in the first instance upon freighting the phrase “the whole or any part,” obviously intended to give the Commission power to grant less than the whole of an application, with a load of negative meaning which nothing in the legislative history indicates that it was to bear. Even without the-illumination of the purpose of the Act, it could be argued with equal force that all that was meant was that the certificate to be granted be one sufficient to authorize the specific “sale” proposed; which an unlimited certificate clearly is, in any case. But apart from this, petitioner’s contention depends on the assumption that the provisions relied upon speak only in terms of the specific “sale” contemplated by the parties and not in terms of a “service” in the movement of gas in interstate commerce, of which “service” the initial “sale” is the commencement. For under § 7 (e) the Commission is authorized to issue a certificate authorizing the “service” covered by the application, as well as a “sale”; and since § 7 (c), which details the acts for which a certificate is a prerequisite, sets forth no specific antecedent for the “service” to which § 7 (e) refers, it might well be thought that one who “engage [s] in the transportation or sale of natural gas,” which § 7 (c) does refer to, is performing a “service” within the meaning of § 7 (e). Certainly there is no more likely antecedent in § 7 (e). The structure of § 4 (c) presents the same feature, and that of the abandonment provisions of § 7 (b) themselves looks the same way.
Furthermore, within § 7 (e) itself, there is found the further requirement to which petitioner itself points— that with respect to an application for a certificate of any nature, a two-part finding must be made: that the applicant is willing and able “to do the acts and to perform the service proposed.” Thus, it is evident that all the matters for which a certificate is required — the construction of facilities or their extension, as well as the making of jurisdictional sales — must be justified in terms of a “service” to which they relate. Accordingly, § 7 (e) itself gives positive indication that the “service” which the Commission’s certificate may authorize is something quite apart from simply the specific sales which § 7 (c) forbids without a certificate sufficient to authorize them. To be sure, § 7 (e) requires that the applicant be found willing to perform the “service” in question; but surely such willingness can be inferred from its willingness to enter into a long-term sales contract. To say that the finding cannot be made in view of the applicant’s declared desire to stop and have a look in 20 years as to its continued desire to be subject to regulation, and that this is a limit on its willingness to perform the service that the certificates must respect, is to make effective regulation turn on the desire of the regulated enterprise to be subject to it. The willingness to make the proposed “sale” thus must imply willingness to perform the “service” which it represents. Thus even as a verbal argument, petitioner’s contentions lack persuasiveness.
Second. Once we pass beyond parsing the Act to a consideration of its purpose, and of the practice under it, the construction we have given it becomes inescapable. We have outlined the serious consequences for the regulatory scheme that acceptance of the petitioner’s argument would entail. These consequences cannot readily be averted by other means suggested by the Act.
It is urged that if it is in the public interest to award only an unlimited certificate, the Commission might attain this end by refusing all applications for a limited one, intimating that an unlimited application would be favorably regarded. But the action of the Commission in refusing the certificate as originally applied for would be subject to judicial review; and once it were held that the Commission had no authority to award a certificate of longer duration than that prayed for, such an indirect method of attaining the same end might well meet judicial condemnation as arbitrary. There is also some suggestion that the Commission might use its power, under §7 (e), of attaching to the certificate “such reasonable terms and conditions as the public convenience and necessity may require,” to attach the “condition” that the certificate be permanent. But again, once want of power to do this directly were established, the existence of power to achieve the same end indirectly through the conditioning power might well be doubted; and the acceptance of a certificate for a longer duration than requested might not be said properly to be a “term or condition” of a limited one at all. We think the Commission’s power to protect the public interest under § 7 (e) need not be restricted to these indirect and dubious methods.
The Commission’s practice supports its authority here in the terms of § 7 (e). It has long drawn a distinction between the underlying service to the public a natural gas company performs and the specific manifestation — the contractual relationship — which that service takes at a given moment. For example, an independent producer may file as its rate schedule its contract of sale with a pipeline company. That contract may provide in explicit terms for an adjustment of rates at a future time — even one foreordained in a precise amount. Yet when the adjustment is made pursuant to the contract, the adjustment is subject,- as a “change” in rates, to the procedures of §| 4 (d) and 4(e) — however explicit the upward adjustment was in the contract from the start. Cf. Texas Gas Transmission Corp. v. Shell Oil Co., 363 U. S. 263. This position of the Power Commission is evidence that the service in which the producer engages is distinct from the contract which regulates his relationship with the transmission company in performing the service. And it has been upheld in every Court of Appeals case on the question. Episcopal Theological Seminary v. Federal Power Comm’n, 269 F. 2d 228; Bel Oil Corp. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 255 F. 2d 548, and companion cases; Continental Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 236 F. 2d 839; Cities Service Gas Producing Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 233 F. 2d 726; Mississippi River Fuel Corp. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 121 F. 2d 159. See United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div., 358 U. S. 103, 110. If the Act does not contemplate that in a seller’s contract there may inhere the power, of the contract’s own accord, to effect a rate change at a future date unchecked by the regulatory scheme, it is hard to believe that it contemplated that contracts would of necessity have the effect of providing for a discontinuance of service, without further leave of the Commission.
Further, the Power Commission has from an early date taken the view that there is a continuing obligation to perform “service” imposed by the Act which outlasts the term of a seller’s original contract of sale. As early as 1942 it held that an abandonment of service after the expiry of such a. contract had to have Commission approval under § 7 (b). United Gas Pipe Line Co., 3 F. P. C. 3, 9. This ruling was made by Commissioners who had been in office during the passage of the Act. It was not a fundamental ruling on a broad question of jurisdiction as to which a court might enjoy a wider latitude of review. See Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672, 678. It was rather an early implementation and application of a detail of the statutory scheme by the Commission in a regulatory setting before it. The ruling has been followed, see Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co., 11 F. P. C. 167, 172, and we think this contemporaneous and consistent construction, pointing again to a distinction between the underlying "service” to the public and the contractual means by which it is implemented, is to be afforded weight in the construction we make.
Third. But against these considerations, it is urged that United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Mobile Gas Service Corp., 350 U. S. 332, establishes dominant factors which impel one to the construction petitioner would put on the Act. Petitioner claims that Mobile establishes a principle that the Act (unlike many other regulatory schemes) in general preserves the integrity of private contracts, and that the judgment below is in conflict with that principle.
The petitioner states accurately enough the principle that Mobile establishes. See 350 U. S., at 338, 344. But the conclusion petitioner asserts does not follow. In Mobile, this Court held that where a seller of gas had entered into a contract for the sale, it could not, by virtue of the provision in § 4 for rate changes, file an increase in rates that violated the terms of the contract. This was because the scheme of the Act was one which built the regulatory system on a foundation of private contracts. It was held in the Memphis case, United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div., supra, that the corollary of Mobile was that where the contract left the seller free to act, he could act unilaterally under § 4.
It is apparent that the Commission’s order in no way violates the integrity of petitioner’s contract with United. During its term, both parties are bound by it to the same extent as any members of this regulated industry. When it expires, petitioner, to be sure, will be under an obligation to continue to deliver gas to United on the latter’s request unless it can justify an abandonment before the Commission; but we do not see how this in any way disturbs the integrity of the contract during its term. The. obligation that petitioner will be under after the contract term will not be one imposed by contract but by the Act. It will be free then, as it was not free during the contract term under the contract here in question, to make rate changes under § 4 without United’s consent. It is said that petitioner will be in a position of inequality, because it must supply gas then to United without a corresponding obligation on United to take it. But United, subject to the Act in its sales to local distributors, has its obligations too; and if in fulfilling them it desires to have a continuing supply of gas with the stability of price protection which a contract furnishes under Mobile, it may be discovered that each side has its bargaining strength. In any event, we do not see how the prospect of this situation after the term of petitioner’s contract in any way impairs the integrity of any contract. Mobile is thus simply beside the point.
The short of the matter is that Mobile recognized that there were two sources of price and supply stability inherent in the regulatory system established by the Natural Gas Act — the provisions of private contracts and the public regulatory power. See 350 U. S., at 344. Petitioner now urges an application of that decision that could make private contracts the only stabilizing factor under the Act. Not only does this reading have nothing to do with the integrity of private contracts which Mobile underwrote, but it makes a severe incursion into the sources of that stability of natural-gas prices and supply to which that decision gave confirmation. Our consideration of this, as well as the rest of petitioner’s arguments, leads us to reiterate as our holding the clear implication of what we recently said in Cateo: An initial application of an independent producer, to make movements of natural gas in interstate commerce, leads to a certificate of public convenience and necessity under which the Commission controls the basis on which “gas may be initially dedicated to interstate use. Moreover, once so dedicated there can be no withdrawal of that supply from continued interstate movement without Commission approval. The gas operator, although to this extent a captive subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, is not without, remedy to protect himself.” 360 U. S., at 389. That remedy he has, as the Court there said, in the “change” power -under § 4 (d) when his contract has expired or where his contract permits its use during its term. Under a similar Act, this Court has held to the same effect as we hold today. Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 343 U. S. 414, 423-424.
II.
Once the power of the Commission to issue the certificate without time limitation is established, the other objections of the petitioner fall readily. It is contended that the Commission’s order, by requiring the petitioner to supply gas beyond the term of its contract, may, by requiring petitioner to produce more gas than it has contemplated, offend the provision of § 1 (b) of the Act that the Act does not apply “to the production or gathering of natural gas.” The point was not raised before the Commission, and accordingly is not for our consideration here; and we might say in any event that the point is not for evaluation in this certification proceeding, but rather on the specific facts presented in the context of an abandonment application by petitioner under § 7 (b), after the expiration of its contract, when and if it desires to make one. We intimate no view as to its merit.
Other objections seem primarily directed to the point that the Commission imposed the burden of proof on the petitioner to show that the certificate should be limited, in the public interest, rather than itself taking on the burden of supporting its issuance of an unlimited certificate. There is no contention that the Commission was again indulging in the erroneous notion that it had no power to issue a limited certificate. Cf. Sunray Mid-Continent Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 239 F. 2d 97, reversed on other grounds, 353 U. S. 944. This procedural formulation seems to us well within the Commission’s discretion as an implementation of the Act’s protective provisions which we have discussed. And, though much urged by petitioner, the fact that the Commission has certificated pipeline operations despite their showing of gas resources of a shorter duration than petitioner’s contract term is not inconsistent with the Commission’s approach here. From the fact that the Commission has issued certificates in the presence of what may prove to be physical limitations on the service to be rendered under them, it does not follow that the Commission cannot take care lest these physical problems in the continuation of supply become further complicated by the legal certificate term limitations for which the petitioner contends.
Finally it is suggested that for various reasons which petitioner claims to be related to the public interest, it would be more advantageous if gas producers were given a free hand, after the completion of each contract, to determine for themselves whether they should continue to serve the interstate market. These considerations were not urged before the Commission, and hence we are not called upon to decide whether they would compel a different approach by the Commission to the question of time limitations in certificates, or even whether, in the light of the Act’s provisions — particularly the policy expressed in § 7 (b) — it would be proper for it so to rely on them. There is no contention made that petitioner demonstrated any specific circumstances in its own case indicating that, despite the Commission’s general policy, the public convenience and necessity warranted a limited certificate for it.
Affirmed.
52 Stat. 821, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§ 717-717w.
Section 1 (b) of the Act provides that “The provisions of this Act shall apply to the transportation of natural gas in interstate commerce, to the sale in interstate commerce of natural gas for resale for ultimate public consumption for domestic, commercial, industrial, or any other use, and to natural-gas companies engaged in such transportation or sale, but shall not apply to any other transportation or sale of natural gas or to the local distribution of natural gas or to the facilities used for such distribution or to the production or gathering of natural gas.” 52 Stat. 821, 15 U. S. C. § 717 (b).
The amount of the reserves was subject to redetermination during the term of the contract pursuant to its Article IV, but only prospective effect would be given the redeterminations.
Article IX of the contract also provided for adjustment of these prices, by way of upward or downward escalation, in accordance with a price index of the Department of Labor.
See note 2, supra.
The Commission reached this conclusion without dissent. There was one dissent, by Commissioner Connole, from the issuance of the certificate, but only insofar as the Commission failed to attach a rate condition for which the Commission staff had contended. This aspect of the case was not brought before the court below for review in these proceedings.
Of course the economics of the industry might preclude an unyielding assumption of such a position. See 360 U. S., at 394.
The text of the section provides: “No natural-gas company shall abandon all or any portion of its facilities subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or any service rendered by means of such facilities, without the permission and approval of the Commission first had and obtained, after due hearing, and a finding by the Commission that the available supply of natural gas is depleted to the extent that the continuance of service is unwarranted, or that the present or future public convenience or necessity permit such abandonment.” 52 Stat. 824, 15 U. S. C. §717f (b).
See § 1 (18) of the Interstate Commerce Act, as added by the Transportation Act of 1920, 41 Stat. 477, 49 U. S. C. § 1 (18) ; § 214 (a) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Act of March 6, 1943, 57 Stat. 11, 47 U. S. C. § 214 (a).
“Under such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe, every natural-gas company shall file with the Commission... schedules showing all rates and charges for any transportation or sale subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, and the classifications, practices, and regulations affecting such rates and charges, together with all contracts which in any manner affect or relate to such rates, charges, classifications, and services.” 52 Stat. 822, 15 U. S. C. § 717c (c).
In pertinent part, § 5 (a) of the Act provides: “Whenever the Commission, after a hearing had upon its own motion or upon complaint of any State, municipality, State commission, or gas distributing company, shall find that any rate, charge, or classification demanded, observed, charged, or collected by any natural-gas company in connection with any transportation or sale of natural gas, subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or that any rule, regulation, practice, or contract affecting such rate, charge, or classification is unjust', unreasonable, unduly discriminatory, or preferential, the Commission shall determine the just and reasonable rate, charge, classification, rule, regulation, practice, or contract to be thereafter observed and in force, and shall fix the same by order...” 52 Stat. 823, 15 U. S. C. § 717d (a).
“Unless the Commission otherwise orders, no change shall be made by any natural-gas company in any such rate, charge, classification or service, or in any rule, regulation, or contract relating thereto, except after thirty days’ notice to the Commission and to the public. Such notice shall be given by filing with the Commission and keeping open for public inspection new schedules stating plainly the change or changes to be made in the schedule or schedules then in force and the time when the change or changes will go into effect....” 52 Stat. 823, 15 U. S. C. § 717c (d).
“Whenever any such new schedule is filed the Commission shall have authority, either upon complaint of any State, municipality, or State commission, or upon its own initiative without complaint, at once, and if it so orders, without answer or formal pleading by the natural-gas company, but upon reasonable notice, to enter upon a hearing concerning the lawfulness of such rate, charge, classification, or service; and, pending such hearing and the decision thereon, the Commission, upon filing with such schedules and delivering to the natural-gas company affected thereby a statement in writing of its reasons for such suspension, may suspend the operation of such schedule and defer the use of such rate, charge, classification, or service, but not for a longer period than five months beyond the time when it would otherwise go into effect: Provided, That the Commission shall not have authority to suspend the rate, charge, classification, or service for the sale of natural gas for resale for industrial use only; and after full hearings, either completed before or after the rate, charge, classification, or service goes into effect, the Commission may make such orders with reference thereto as would be proper in a proceeding initiated after it had become effective. If the proceeding has not been concluded and an order made at the expiration of the suspension period, on motion of the natural-gas company making the filing, the proposed change of rate, charge, classification, or service shall go into effect. Where increased rates or charges are thus made effective, the Commission may, by order, require the natural-gas company to furnish a bond, to be approved by the Commission, to refund any amounts ordered by the Commission, to keep accurate accounts in detail of all amounts received by reason of such increase, specifying by whom and in whose behalf such amounts were paid, and, upon completion of the hearing and decision, to order such natural-gas company to refund, with interest, the portion of such increased rates or charges by its decision found not justified. At any hearing involving a rate or charge sought to be increased, the burden of proof to show that the increased rate or charge is just and reasonable shall be upon the natural-gas company, and the Commission shall give to the hearing and decision of such questions preference over other questions pending before it and decide the same as speedily as possible.” 52 Stat. 823, 15 U. S. C. § 717c (e).
“Except in the cases governed by the provisos contained in subsection (c) of this section, a certificate shall be issued to any qualified applicant therefor, authorizing the whole or any part of the operation, sale, service, construction, extension, or acquisition covered by the application, if it is found that the applicant is able and willing properly to do the acts and to perform the service proposed and to conform to the provisions of the Act and the requirements, rules, and regulations of the Commission thereunder, and that the proposed service, sale, operation, construction, extension, or acquisition, to the extent authorized by the certificate, is or will be required by the present or future public convenience and necessity; otherwise such application shall be denied. The Commission shall have the power to attach to the issuance of the certificate and to the exercise of the rights granted thereunder such reasonable terms and conditions as the public convenience and necessity
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.
From beginning to end, judicial proceedings conducted for the purpose of deciding whether a defendant shall be put to death must be conducted with dignity and respect. The disturbing facts of this case raise serious questions concerning the conduct of the trial, and this petition raises a serious question about whether the Court of Appeals carefully reviewed those facts before addressing petitioner’s constitutional claims. We know that the Court of Appeals committed the same procedural error that we corrected in Cone v. Bell, 556 U. S. 449, 466-467 (2009). We do not know how the court would have ruled if it had the benefit of our decision in that case.
Petitioner Marcus Wellons was convicted in Georgia state court of rape and murder and sentenced to death. Although the trial looked typical, there were unusual events going on behind the scenes. Only after the trial did defense counsel learn that there had been unreported ex parte contacts between the jury and the judge, that jurors and a bailiff had planned a reunion, and that “either during or immediately following the penalty phase, some jury members gave the trial judge chocolate shaped as male genitalia and the bailiff chocolate shaped as female breasts,” 554 F. 3d 923, 930 (CA11 2009). The judge had not reported any of this to the defense.
Neither Wellons nor any court has ascertained exactly what went on at this capital trial or what prompted such “gifts.” Wellons has repeatedly tried, in both state and federal court, to find out what occurred, but he has found himself caught in a procedural morass: He raised the issue on direct appeal but was constrained by the nonexistent record, and the State Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence. Wellons v. State, 266 Ga. 77, 88, 463 S. E. 2d 868, 880 (1995). He sought state habeas relief and moved to develop evidence. But the court held that the matter had been decided on appeal and thus was res judicata. See 554 F. 3d, at 932. He raised the issue again in his federal habeas petition, seeking discovery and an evidentiary hearing. But the District Court “concluded that Wellons’s claims ... were procedurally barred, and accordingly denied his motion for an evidentiary hearing on these claims.” Id., at 933. Before the Eleventh Circuit, Wellons “argue[d] that the district court erred in denying his motions for discovery and an evidentiary hearing to develop his judge, juror, and bailiff misconduct claims because they are not procedurally barred.” Id., at 935. The court disagreed, holding that Wellons’ claims were procedurally barred. Ibid.
As our dissenting colleagues acknowledge, post, at 226-227 (opinion of Scalia, J.); post, at 229 (opinion of Alito, J.), the Eleventh Circuit’s holding was an error under Cone, 556 U. S., at 466-467. “When a state court declines to review the merits of a petitioner’s claim on the ground that it has done so already, it creates no bar to federal habeas review.” Id., at 466. Both dissenting opinions assume that “the issue on which Cone throws light does not affect the outcome” because “the Eleventh Circuit . .. also decided that petitioner was not entitled to habeas relief on the merits.” Post, at 227 (opinion of Scalia, J.). Having found a procedural bar, however, the Eleventh Circuit had no need to address whether petitioner was otherwise entitled to an evidentiary hearing and gave this question, at most, perfunctory consideration that may well have turned on the District Court’s finding of a procedural bar.
Although Wellons appealed the denial of “his motions for discovery and an evidentiary hearing,” 554 F. 3d, at 935, the Eleventh Circuit did not purport to address the merits of that issue at all. The court stated only that “[e]ven if we assume that Wellons’s misconduct claims are not procedurally barred, they do not entitle Wellons to habeas relief” Id., at 936 (emphasis added). This opaque statement appears to address only whether petitioner was entitled to ultimate relief in the form of a new trial, not whether petitioner’s allegations, combined with the facts he had learned, entitled him to the discovery and evidentiary hearing that he sought.
The Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning does not suggest otherwise. The court observed that Wellons’ claims of misconduct were “grounded in his speculation as to the meaning underlying the jurors’ chocolate ‘gifts’” and “the surmise attached to their passive receipt of these gifts.” Ibid. This statement likewise indicates only that on the existing record, habeas relief was inappropriate, not that an evidentiary hearing should be denied. After all, had there been discovery or an evidentiary hearing, Wellons may have been able to present more than “speculation” and “surmise.” The Eleventh Circuit also pointed to the state court’s decision on direct appeal, see id., at 937, and reviewed that decision “[i]n light of the evidence presented before the Georgia Supreme Court,” ibid. This, too, is typical of a court reviewing the denial of habeas relief, not the denial of discovery or an evidentiary hearing.
Moreover, even assuming that the Eleventh Circuit intended to address Wellons’ motions for discovery and an evidentiary hearing, we cannot be sure that its reasoning really was independent of the Cone error. The fact that his claims rested on “speculation” and “surmise” was due to the absence of a record, which was in part based on the Cone error. And as the Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning turned on “the evidence presented before the Georgia Supreme Court,” 554 F. 3d, at 937, there is serious doubt about whether it necessarily relied on the very holes in the record that Wellons was trying to fill.
Our dissenting colleagues allege that the Court is “degrading] ... our traditional requirements for a GVR.” Post, at 228 (opinion of Scalia, J.); see post, at 232 (opinion of Alito, J.). But the standard for an order granting certiorari, vacating the judgment below, and remanding the ease (GVR) remains as it always has been: A GVR is appropriate when “intervening developments ... reveal a reasonable probability that the decision below rests upon a premise that the lower court would reject if given the opportunity for further consideration, and where it appears that such a redetermination may determine the ultimate outcome” of the matter. Lawrence v. Chater, 516 U. S. 163, 167 (1996) (per curiam). As already discussed, there is, at least, a “reasonable probability,” ibid., that the denial of discovery and an evidentiary hearing rested in part on the Cone error. And in light of the unusual facts of the case, a “redetermination may determine the ultimate outcome,” 516 U. S., at 167; cf. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 442 (2000) (holding that several “omissions as a whole disclose the need for an evidentiary hearing”); Smith v. Phillips, 455 U. S. 209, 215 (1982) (“This Court has long held that the remedy for allegations of juror partiality is a hearing in which the defendant has the opportunity to prove actual bias”). The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion is ambiguous in significant respects. It would be highly inappropriate to assume away that ambiguity in respondent’s favor. That is especially so in a case in which petitioner’s allegations and the unusual facts raise a serious question about the fairness of a capital trial.
Both dissenting opinions suggest that if there is a strong case for discovery and an evidentiary hearing, then the Court “should summarily reverse or set the case for argument.” Post, at 227 (opinion of Scalia, J.); see also post, at 232 (opinion of Alito, J.). But as we have explained, “a GVR order conserves the scarce resources of this Court,” “assists the court below by flagging a particular issue that it does not appear to have fully considered,” and “assists this Court by procuring the benefit of the lower court’s insight before we rule on the merits.” Lawrence, supra, at 167.
Unlike Justice Scalia, post, at 228, we do not believe that a “self-respecting” court of appeals would or should respond to our remand order with a “summary reissuance” of essentially the same opinion, absent the procedural default discussion. To the contrary, in light of our decision in Cone, we assume the court will consider, on the merits, whether petitioner’s allegations, together with the undisputed facts, warrant discovery and an evidentiary hearing.
The petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and the motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Eleventh Circuit for further consideration in light of Cone, 556 U. S., at 466-467.
It is so ordered.
Although the District Court found most of petitioner’s claims to be proeedurally barred, it alternatively declined to permit an evidentiary hearing because Wellons did not have enough evidence of bias or misconduct. Justice Altto wrongly suggests that the District Court reached that conclusion by reviewing a proffer that Wellons' attorneys assembled by “contacting all but 1 of the jurors,” many of whom “spoke freely.” Post, at 230 (dissenting opinion). Even apart from the fact that these interviews were informal and unsworn, they shed almost no light on what had occurred. The juror who allegedly “gave the penis to the judge,” App. C to Pet. for Cert. 36, was “hostile and refused to talk,” id., at 37; one “refused to talk about the trial,” id., at 36; another “did not want to talk about the case,” id., at 37; and one “conferr[ed]” with his wife who then “slammed and bolted the door,” ibid. Of those jurors who were willing to talk at all, one admitted to being “concerned that she might say something that would be used for a mistrial,” id., at 35, and none admitted to knowing how or why the jury selected its “gifts,” see id., at 35-37. (Implausibly, Justice Auto suggests that Wellons’ lawyers may not have asked how or why the jury selected its “gifts,” post, at 230-231, though he bases that speculation only on the fact that no questions appeared in the proffer of facts.) Rather, the jurors discussed other matters and did so in the briefest of terms. All told, “everything that Petitioner ... learned,” App. C to Pet. for Cert. 38, filled only a few sheets of paper, see id., at 35-37.
Moreover, the subjects that the jurors did discuss may very well support Wellons’ view that his trial was tainted by bias or misconduct. For example, one interviewee “was surprised” that a fellow juror had been allowed to serve on a capital trial, given that her sister had been murdered by a man after he completed serving a life sentence. Id., at 36.
As Justice Auto explains at some length, see post, at 229-232, the District Court did discuss the merits of that issue, but the District Court’s analysis has little relevance on whether the Court of Appeals made an alternative holding or rather affirmed the District Court’s decision on the ground that petitioner’s claim was procedurally barred.
Justice Auto asserts that the Eleventh Circuit “stated in unequivocal terms that its holding on the merits of petitioner’s claim was independent of its holding on the question of procedural default.” Post, at 229. But that does not address the question: The merits of what? The question whether to grant habeas relief or whether to permit discovery and an evidentiary hearing?
Contrary to our dissenting colleagues, post, at 281-232 (opinion of Auto, J.), we do not find it dispositive that the section of the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion about judge, juror, and bailiff misconduct began with a full page statement of the standard of review, which in turn included a sentence about the circumstances under which an evidentiary hearing is warranted. See 554 F. 3d, at 934-935. Immediately following the standard of review that Justice Auto quotes, the panel explained that “‘if the record ... precludes habeas relief, a district court is not required to hold an evidentiary hearing,”’ and that “the record reveals that [Wellons’] claims ... are procedurally barred.” Id., at 935.
Moreover, the allegedly “unequivocal” holding that Justice Auto quotes was preceded by a discussion of the deference owed under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) to the “Georgia Supreme Court’s judgment as to the substance and effect of the ex parte communication.” Id., at 937. This is the classic formulation of a decision whether to grant habeas relief. Indeed, it would be bizarre if a federal court had to defer to state-court factual findings, made without any evidentiary record, in order to decide whether it could create an evidentiary record to decide whether the factual findings were erroneous. If that were the case, then almost no habeas petitioner could ever get an evidentiary hearing: So long as the state court found a fact that the petitioner was trying to disprove through the presentation of evidence, then there could be no hearing. AEDPA does not require such a crabbed and illogical approach to habeas procedures, and there is no reason to believe that the Eleventh Circuit thought otherwise.
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 Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a question not resolved by a majority of the Court in a case before us three Terms ago. See Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420 (1998). Title 8 U. S. C. § 1409 governs the acquisition of United States citizenship by persons born to one United States citizen parent and one noncitizen parent when the parents are unmarried and the child is born outside of the United States or its possessions. The statute imposes different requirements for the child’s acquisition of citizenship depending upon whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father. The question before us is whether the statutory distinction is consistent with the equal protection guarantee embedded in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
I
Petitioner Tuan Anh Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, on September 11, 1969, to copetitioner Joseph Boulais and a Vietnamese citizen. Boulais and Nguyen’s mother were not married. Boulais always has been a citizen of the United States, and he was in Vietnam under the employ of a corporation. After he and Nguyen’s mother ended their relationship, Nguyen lived for a time with the family of Boulais’ new Vietnamese girlfriend. In June 1975, Nguyen, then almost six years of age, came to the United States. He became a lawful permanent resident and was raised in Texas by Boulais.
In 1992, when Nguyen was 22, he pleaded guilty in a Texas state court to two counts of sexual assault on a child. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on each count. Three years later, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiated deportation proceedings against Nguyen as an alien who had been convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude, as well as an aggravated felony. See 8 U. S. C. §§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(ii) and (iii) (1994 ed., Supp. IV). Though later he would change his position and argue he was a United States citizen, Nguyen testified at his deportation hearing that he was a citizen of Vietnam. The Immigration Judge found him deportable.
Nguyen appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in 1998, while the matter was pending, his father obtained an order of parentage from a state court, based on DNA testing. By this time, Nguyen was 28 years old. The Board dismissed Nguyen’s appeal, rejecting his claim to United States citizenship because he had failed to establish compliance with 8 U. S. C. § 1409(a), which sets forth the requirements for one who was born out of wedlock and abroad to a citizen father and a noncitizen mother.
Nguyen and Boulais appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing that § 1409 violates equal protection by providing different rules for attainment of citizenship by children born abroad and out of wedlock depending upon whether the one parent with American citizenship is the mother or the father. The court rejected the constitutional challenge to § 1409(a). 208 F. 3d 528, 535 (2000).
The constitutionality of the distinction between unwed fathers and mothers was argued in Miller, but a majority of the Court did not resolve the issue. Four Justices, in two different opinions, rejected the challenge to the gender-based distinction, two finding the statute consistent with the Fifth Amendment, see 523 U. S., at 423 (opinion of Stevens, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J.), and two concluding that the court could not confer citizenship as a remedy even if the statute violated equal protection, see id., at 452 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Three Justices reached a contrary result, and would have found the statute violative of equal protection. Id., at 460 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter and Breyer, JJ., dissenting); id., at 471 (Breyer, J., joined by Souter and Gins-BURG, JJ., dissenting). Finally, two Justices did not reach the issue as to the father, having determined that the child, the only petitioner in Miller, lacked standing to raise the equal protection rights of his father. Id., at 445 (O’Connor, J., joined by Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment).
Since Miller, the Courts of Appeal have divided over the constitutionality of §1409. Compare 208 F. 3d 528 (CA5 2000) (case below) with Lake v. Reno, 226 F. 3d 141 (CA2 2000), and United States v. Ahumada-Aguilar, 189 F. 3d 1121 (CA9 1999). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 530 U. S. 1305 (2000). The father is before the Court in this case; and, as all agree he has standing to raise the constitutional claim, we now resolve it. We hold that § 1409(a) is consistent with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
II
The general requirement for acquisition of citizenship by a child born outside the United States and its outlying possessions and to parents who are married, one of whom is a citizen and the other of whom is an alien, is set forth in 8 U. S. C. § 1401(g). The statute provides that the child is also a citizen if, before the birth, the citizen parent had been physically present in the United States for a total of five years, at least two of which were after the parent turned 14 years of age.
As to an individual born under the same circumstances, save that the parents are unwed, § 1409(a) sets forth the following requirements where the father is the citizen parent and the mother is an alien:
"(1) a blood relationship between the person and the father is established by clear and convincing evidence,
“(2) the father had the nationality of the United States at the time of the person’s birth,
“(3) the father (unless deceased) has agreed in writing to provide financial support for the person until the person reaches the age of 18 years, and
“(4) while the person is under the age of 18 years—
“(A) the person is legitimated under the law of the person’s residence or domicile,
“(B) the father acknowledges paternity of the person in writing under oath, or
“(C) the paternity of the person is established by adjudication of a competent court.”
In addition, § 1409(a) incorporates by reference, as to the citizen parent, the residency requirement of § 1401(g).
When the citizen parent of the child born abroad and out of wedlock is the child’s mother, the requirements for the transmittal-of citizenship are described in § 1409(c):
“(c) Notwithstanding the provision of subsection (a) of this section, a person born, after December 23, 1952, outside the United States and out of wedlock shall be held to have acquired at birth the nationality status of his mother, if the mother had the nationality of the United States at the time of such person’s birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year.”
Section 1409(a) thus imposes a set of requirements on the children of citizen fathers born abroad and out of wedlock to a noncitizen mother that are not imposed under like circumstances when the citizen parent is the mother. All concede the requirements of §§ 1409(a)(3) and (a)(4), relating to a citizen father’s acknowledgment of a child while he is under 18, were not satisfied in this case. We need not discuss § 1409(a)(3), however. It was added in 1986, after Nguyen’s birth; and Nguyen falls within a transitional rule which allows him to elect application of either the current version of the statute, or the pre-1986 version, which contained no parallel to § 1409(a)(3). See Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1986, 100 Stat. 3655; note following 8 U. S. C. § 1409; Miller, supra, at 426, n. 3, 432 (opinion of Stevens, J.). And in any event, our ruling respecting § 1409(a)(4) is dispositive of the case. As an individual seeking citizenship under § 1409(a) must meet all of its preconditions, the failure to satisfy § 1409(a)(4) renders Nguyen ineligible for citizenship.
rH hH b-H
For a gender-based classification to withstand equal protection scrutiny, it must be established “‘at least that the [challenged] classification serves “important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed” are “substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.” ’ ” United States v. Virginia, 518 U. S. 515, 533 (1996) (quoting Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 468 U. S. 718, 724 (1982), in turn quoting Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U. S. 142, 150 (1980)). For reasons to follow, we conclude §1409 satisfies this standard. Given that determination, we need not decide whether some lesser degree of scrutiny pertains because the statute implicates Congress’ immigration and naturalization power. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 434, n. 11 (explaining that the statute must be subjected to a standard more deferential to the congressional exercise of the immigration and naturalization power, but that “[ejven if . . . the heightened scrutiny that normally governs gender discrimination claims applied in this context,” the statute would be sustained (citations omitted)).
Before considering the important governmental interests advanced by the statute, two observations concerning the operation of the provision are in order. First, a citizen mother expecting a child and living abroad has the right to reenter the United States so the child can be born here and be a 14th Amendment citizen. From one perspective, then, the statute simply ensures equivalence between two expectant mothers who are citizens abroad if one chooses to reenter for the child’s birth and the other chooses not to return, or does not have the means to do so. This equivalence is not a factor if the single citizen parent living abroad is the father. For, unlike the unmarried mother, the unmarried father as a general rule cannot control where the child will be born.
Second, although § 1409(a)(4) requires certain conduct to occur before the child of a citizen father, born out of wedlock and abroad, reaches 18 years of age, it imposes no limitations on when an individual who qualifies under the statute can claim citizenship. The statutory treatment of citizenship is identical in this respect whether the citizen parent is the mother or the father. A person born to a citizen parent of either gender may assert citizenship, assuming compliance with statutory preconditions, regardless of his or her age. And while the conditions necessary for a citizen mother to transmit citizenship under § 1409(c) exist at birth, citizen fathers and/or their children have 18 years to satisfy the requirements of § 1409(a)(4). See Miller, supra, at 435 (opinion of Stevens, J.).
The statutory distinction relevant in this case, then, is that § 1409(a)(4) requires one of three affirmative steps to be taken if the citizen parent is the father, but not if the citizen parent is the mother: legitimation; a declaration of paternity under oath by the father; or a court order of paternity. Congress’ decision to impose requirements on unmarried fathers that differ from those on unmarried mothers is based on the significant difference between their respective relationships to the potential citizen at the time of birth. Specifically, the imposition of the requirement for a paternal relationship, but not a maternal one, is justified by two important governmental objectives. We discuss each in turn.
A
The first governmental interest to be served is the importance of assuring that a biological parent-child relationship exists. In the case of the mother, the relation is verifiable from the birth itself. The mother’s status is documented in most instances by the birth certificate or hospital records and the witnesses who attest to her having given birth.
In the case of the father, the uncontestable fact is that he need not be present at the birth. If he is present, furthermore, that circumstance is not incontrovertible proof of fatherhood. See Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U. S. 248, 260, n. 16 (1983) (“ ‘The mother carries and bears the child, and in this sense her parental relationship is clear. The validity of the father’s parental claims must be gauged by other measures’ ” (quoting Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U. S. 380, 397 (1979) (Stewart, J., dissenting))); Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U. S. 762, 770 (1977) (“The more serious problems of proving paternity might justify a more demanding standard for illegitimate children claiming under their fathers’ estates than that required . . . under their mothers’ estates . . Fathers and mothers are not similarly situated with regard to the proof of biological parenthood. The imposition of a different set of rules for making that legal determination with respect to fathers and mothers is neither surprising nor troublesome from a constitutional perspective. Cf. Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 439 (1985) (explaining that the Equal Protection Clause “is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike”); F S. Royster Guano Co. v. Virginia, 253 U. S. 412, 415 (1920). Section 1409(a)(4)’s provision of three options for a father seeking to establish paternity — legitimation, paternity oath, and court order of paternity — is designed to ensure an acceptable documentation of paternity.
Petitioners argue that the requirement of § 1409(a)(1), that a father provide clear and convincing evidence of parentage, is sufficient to achieve the end of establishing paternity, given the sophistication of modern DNA tests. Brief for Petitioners 21-24. Section 1409(a)(1) does not actually mandate a DNA test, however. The Constitution, moreover, does not require that Congress elect one particular mechanism from among many possible methods of establishing paternity, even if that mechanism arguably might be the most scientifically advanced method. With respect to DNA testing, the expense, reliability, and availability of such testing in various parts of the world may have been of particular concern to Congress. See Miller, supra, at 437 (opinion of Stevens, J.). The requirement of § 1409(a)(4) represents a reasonable conclusion by the legislature that the satisfaction of one of several alternatives will suffice to establish the blood link between father and child required as a predicate to the child’s acquisition of citizenship. Cf. Lehr, supra, at 267-268 (upholding New York statutory requirement that gave mothers of children born out of wedlock notice of an adoption hearing, but only extended that right to fathers ¡ who mailed a postcard to a “putative fathers registry”). Given the proof of motherhood that i^ inherent in birth itself, it is unremarkable that Congress did not require the same affirmative steps of mothers.
Finally, to require Congress to speak without reference to the gender of the parent with regard to its objective of ensuring a blood tie between parent and child would be to insist on a hollow neutrality. As Justice Stevens pointed out in Miller, Congress could have required both mothers and fathers to prove parenthood within 30 days or, for that matter, 18 years, of the child’s birth. 523 U. S., at 436. Given that the mother is always present at birth, but that the father need not be, the facially neutral rule would sometimes require fathers to take additional affirmative steps which would not be required of mothers, whose names will appear on the birth certificate as a result of their presence at the birth, and who will have the benefit of witnesses to the birth to call upon. The issue is not the use of gender specific terms instead of neutral ones. Just as neutral terms can mask, discrimination that is unlawful, gender specific terms can mark a permissible distinction. The equal protection question is whether the distinction is lawful. Here, the use of gender specific terms takes into account a biological difference between the parents. The differential treatment is inherent in a sensible statutory scheme, given the unique relationship of the mother to the event of birth.
B
1
The second important governmental interest furthered in a substantial manner by § 1409(a)(4) is the determination to ensure that the child and the citizen parent have some demonstrated opportunity or potential to develop not just a relationship that is recognized, as a formal matter, by the law, but one that consists of the real, everyday ties that provide a connection between child and citizen parent and, in turn, the United States. See id., at 438-440 (opinion of Stevens, J.). In the case of a citizen mother and a child born overseas, the opportunity for a meaningful relationship between citizen parent and child inheres in the very event of birth, an event so often critical to our constitutional and statutory understandings of citizenship. The mother knows that the child is in being and is hers and has an initial point of contact with him. There is at least an opportunity for mother and child to develop a real, meaningful relationship.
The same opportunity does not result from the event of birth, as a matter of biological inevitability, in the case of the unwed father. Given the 9-month interval between conception and birth, it is not always certain that a father will know that a child was conceived, nor is it always clear that even the mother will be sure of the father’s identity. This fact takes on particular significance in the case of a child born overseas and out of wedlock. One concern in this context has always been with young people, men for the most part, who are on duty with the Armed Forces in foreign countries. See Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 48, 74 (1999) (reporting that in 1969, the year in which Nguyen was born, there were 3,458,072 active duty military personnel, 39,506 of whom were female); Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 29 (1970) (noting that 1,041,094 military personnel were stationed in foreign countries in 1969); Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics 49, 76 (1999) (reporting that in 1999 there were 1,385,703 active duty military personnel, 200,287 of whom were female); id., at 33 (noting that 252,763 military personnel were stationed in foreign countries in 1999).
When we turn to the conditions which prevail today, we find that the passage of time has produced additional and even more substantial grounds to justify the statutory distinction. The ease of travel and the willingness of Americans to visit foreign countries have resulted in numbers of trips abroad that must be of real concern when we contemplate the prospect of accepting petitioners’ argument, which would mandate, contrary to Congress’ wishes, citizenship by male parentage subject to no condition save the father’s previous length of residence in this country. In 1999 alone, Americans made almost 25 million trips abroad, excluding trips to Canada and Mexico. See U. S. Dept. of Commerce, 1999 Profile of U. S. Travelers to Overseas Destinations 1 (Oct. 2000). Visits to Canada and Mexico add to this figure almost 34 million additional visits. See U. S. Dept, of Commerce, U. S. Resident Travel to Overseas Countries, Historical Visitation 1989-1999, p. 1 (Oct. 2000). And the average American overseas traveler spent 15.1 nights out of the United States in 1999. 1999 Profile of U. S. Travelers to Overseas Destinations, supra, at 4.
Principles of equal protection do not require Congress to ignore this reality. To the contrary, these facts demonstrate the critical importance of the Government’s interest in ensuring some opportunity for a tie between citizen father and foreign born child which is a reasonable substitute for the opportunity manifest between mother and child at the time of birth. Indeed, especially in light of the number of Americans who take short sojourns abroad, the prospect that a father might not even know of the conception is a realistic possibility. See Miller, supra, at 489 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Even if a father knows of the fact of conception, moreover, it does not follow that he will be present at the birth of the child. Thus, unlike the case of the mother, there is no assurance that the father and his biological child will ever meet. Without an initial point of contact with the child by a father who knows the child is his own, there is no opportunity for father and child to begin a relationship. Section 1409 takes the unremarkable step of ensuring that such an opportunity, inherent in the event of birth as to the mother-child relationship, exists between father and child before citizenship is conferred upon the latter.
The importance of the governmental interest at issue here is too profound to be satisfied merely by conducting a DNA test. The fact of paternity can be established even without the father’s knowledge, not to say his presence. Paternity can be established by taking DNA samples even from a few strands of hair, years after the birth. See Federal Judicial Center, Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 497 (2d ed. 2000). Yet scientific proof of biological paternity does nothing, by itself, to ensure contact between father and child during the child’s minority.
Congress is well within its authority in refusing, absent proof of at least the opportunity for the development of a relationship between citizen parent and child, to commit this country to embracing a child as a citizen entitled as of birth to the full protection of the United States, to the absolute right to enter its borders, and to full participation in the political process. If citizenship is to be conferred by the unwitting means petitioners urge, so that its acquisition abroad bears little relation to the realities of the child’s own ties and allegiances, it is for Congress, not this Court, to make that determination. Congress has not taken that path but has instead chosen, by means of § 1409, to ensure in the case of father and child the opportunity for a relationship to develop, an opportunity which the event of birth itself provides for the mother and child. It should be unobjectionable for Congress to require some evidence of a minimal opportunity for the development of a relationship with the child in terms the male can fiilfill.
While the INS’ brief contains statements indicating the governmental interest we here describe, see Brief for Respondent 38, 41, it suggests other interests as well. Statements from the INS’ brief are not conclusive as to the objects of the statute, however, as we are concerned with the objectives of Congress, not those of the INS. We ascertain the purpose of a statute by drawing logical conclusions from its text, structure, and operation.
Petitioners and their amici argue in addition that, rather than fulfilling an important governmental interest, §1409 merely embodies a gender-based stereotype. Although the above discussion should illustrate that, contrary to petitioners’ assertions, § 1409 addresses an undeniable difference in the circumstance of the parents at the time a child is born, it should be noted, furthermore, that the difference does not result from some stereotype, defined as a frame of mind resulting from irrational or uncritical analysis. There is nothing irrational or improper in the recognition that at the moment of birth — a critical event in the statutory scheme and in the whole tradition of citizenship law — the mother’s knowledge of the child and the fact of parenthood have been established in a way not guaranteed in the case of the unwed father. This is not a stereotype. See Virginia, 518 U. S., at 533 (“The heightened review standard our precedent establishes does not make sex a proscribed classification. . . . Physical differences between men and women . . . are enduring”).
2
Having concluded that facilitation of a relationship between parent and child is an important governmental interest, the question remains whether the means Congress chose to further its objective — the imposition of certain additional requirements upon an unwed father — substantially relate to that end. Under this test, the means Congress adopted must be sustained.
First, it should be unsurprising that Congress decided to require that an opportunity for a parent-child relationship occur during the formative years of the child’s minority. In furtherance of the desire to ensure some tie between this country and one who seeks citizenship, various other statutory provisions concerning citizenship and naturalization require some act linking the child to the United States to occur before the child reaches 18 years of age. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. § 1431 (child born abroad to one citizen parent and one noncitizen parent shall become a citizen if, inter alia, the noncitizen parent is naturalized before the child reaches 18 years of age and the child begins to reside in the United States before he or she turns 18); § 1432 (imposing same conditions in the case of a child born abroad to two alien parents who are naturalized).
Second, petitioners argue that § 1409(a)(4) is not effective. In particular, petitioners assert that, although a mother will know of her child’s birth, “knowledge that one is a parent, no matter how it is acquired, does not guarantee a relationship with one’s child.” Brief for Petitioners 16. They thus maintain that the imposition of the additional requirements of § 1409(a)(4) only on the children of citizen fathers must reflect a stereotype that women are more likely than men to actually establish a relationship with their children. Id., at 17.
This line of argument misconceives the nature of both the governmental interest at issue and the manner in which we examine statutes alleged to violate equal protection. As to the former, Congress would of course be entitled to advance the interest of ensuring an actual, meaningful relationship in every case before citizenship is conferred. Or Congress could excuse compliance with the formal requirements when an actual father-child relationship is proved. It did neither here, perhaps because of the subjectivity, intrusiveness, and difficulties of proof that might attend an inquiry into any particular bond or tie. Instead, Congress enacted an easily administered scheme to promote the different but still substantial interest of ensuring at least an opportunity for a parent-child relationship to develop. Petitioners’ argument confuses the means and ends of the equal protection inquiry; § 1409(a)(4) should not be invalidated because Congress elected to advance an interest that is less demanding to satisfy than some other alternative.
Even if one conceives of the interest Congress pursues as the establishment of a real, practical relationship of considerable substance between parent and child in every case,. as opposed simply to ensuring the potential for the relationship to begin, petitioners’ misconception of the nature of the equal protection inquiry is fátal to their argument. A statute meets the equal protection standard we here apply so long as it is “‘“substantially related to the achievement of’”” the governmental objective in question. Virginia, supra, at 533 (quoting Hogan, 458 U. S., at 724, in turn quoting Wengler, 446 U. S., at 150). It is almost axiomatic that a policy which seeks to foster the opportunity for meaningful parent-child bonds to develop has a close and substantial bearing on the governmental interest in the actual formation of that bond. None of our gender-based classification equal protection cases have required that the statute under consideration must be capable of achieving its ultimate objective in every instance. In this difficult context of conferring citizenship on vast numbers of persons, the means adopted by Congress are in substantial furtherance of important governmental objectives. The fit between the means and the important end is “exceedingly persuasive.” See Virginia, supra, at 533. We have explained that an “exceedingly persuasive justification” is established “by showing at least that the classification serves • ‘important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed’ are ‘substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.’ ” Hogan, supra, at 724 (citations omitted). Section 1409 meets this standard.
C
In analyzing § 1409(a)(4), we are mindful that the obligation it imposes with respect to the acquisition of citizenship by the child of a citizen father is minimal. This circumstance shows that Congress has not erected inordinate and unnecessary hurdles to the conferral of citizenship on the children of citizen fathers in furthering its important objectives. Only the least onerous of the three options provided for in § 1409(a)(4) must be satisfied. If the child has been legitimated under the law of the relevant jurisdiction, that will be the end of the matter. See § 1409(a)(4)(A). In the alternative, a father who has not legitimated his child by formal means need only make a written acknowledgment of paternity under oath in order to transmit citizenship to his child, hardly a substantial burden. See § 1409(a)(4)(B). Or, the father could choose to obtain a court order of paternity. See § 1409(a)(4)(C). The statute can be satisfied on the day of birth, or the next day, or for the next 18 years. In this case, the unfortunate, even tragic, circumstance is that Boulais did not pursue, or perhaps did not know of, these simple steps and alternatives. Any omission, however, does not nullify the statutory scheme.
Section 1409(a), moreover, is not the sole means by which the child of a citizen father can attain citizenship. An individual who fails to comply with § 1409(a), but who has substantial ties to the United States, can seek citizenship in his or her own right, rather than via reliance on ties to a citizen parent. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. §§ 1423, 1427. This option now may be foreclosed to Nguyen, but any bar is due to the serious nature of his criminal offenses, not to an equal protection denial or to any supposed rigidity or harshness in the citizenship laws.
IV
The statutory scheme’s satisfaction of the equal protection scrutiny we apply to gender-based classifications constitutes a sufficient basis for upholding it. It should be noted, however, that, even were we to conclude that the statute did not meet this standard of review, petitioners would face additional obstacles before they could prevail.
The INS urges that, irrespective of whether § 1409(a) is constitutional, the Court cannot grant the relief petitioners request: the conferral of citizenship on terms other than those specified by Congress. There may well be “potential problems with fashioning a remedy” were we to find the statute unconstitutional. See Miller, 523 U. S., at 451 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); cf. id., at 445, n. 26 (opinion of Stevens, J.) (declining to address the question whether the Court could confer the sought-after remedy). Two Members of today’s majority said in Miller that this argument was dispositive. See id., at 452-459 (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., concurring in judgment). Petitioners ask us to invalidate and sever §§ 1409(a)(3) and (a)(4), but it must be remembered that severance is based on the assumption that Congress would have intended the result. See id., at 457 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (citing New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992)). In this regard, it is significant that, although the Immigration and Nationality Act contains a general severability provision, Congress expressly provided with respect to the very sub-chapter of the United States Code at issue and in a provision entitled “Sole procedure” that “[a] person may only be naturalized as a citizen of the United States in the manner and under the conditions prescribed in this subchapter and not otherwise.” 8 U. S. C. § 1421(d); see also Miller, supra, at 457-458 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). Section 1421(d) refers to naturalization, which in turn is defined as “conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth.” 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(23). Citizenship under § 1409(a) is retroactive to the date of birth, but it is a naturalization under § 1421(d) nevertheless. The conditions specified by § 1409(a) for conferral of citizenship, as a matter of definition, must take place after the child is born, in some instances taking as long as 18 years. Section 1409(a), then, is subject to the limitation imposed by § 1421(d).
In light of our holding that there is no equal protection violation, we need not rely on this argument. For the same reason, we need not assess the implications of statements in our earlier cases regarding the wide deference afforded to Congress in the exercise of its immigration and naturalization power. See, e. g., Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792-793, and n. 4 (1977) (quoting Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, 531 (1954)); 430 U. S., at 792 (quoting Oceanic Steam Nav. Co. v. Stranakan, 214 U. S. 320, 339 (1909)). These arguments would have to be considered, however, were it to be determined that §1409 did not withstand conventional equal protection scrutiny.
V
To fail to acknowledge even our most basic biological differences — such as the fact that a mother must be present at birth but the father need not be — risks making the guarantee of equal protection superficial, and so disserv-ing it. Mechanistic classification of all our differences as stereotypes would operate to obscure those misconceptions and prejudices that are real. The distinction embodied in the statutory scheme here at issue is not marked by misconception and prejudice, nor does it show disrespect for either class. The difference between men and women in relation to the birth process is a real one, and the principle of equal protection does not forbid Congress to address the problem at hand in a manner specific to each gender.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Daniel Siebert was convicted and sentenced to death in the State of Alabama for the • murder of Linda Jarman. Siebert’s conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal, and the certificate of judgment issued on May 22,1990. This Court denied certiorari on November 5, 1990. Siebert v. Alabama, 498 U. S. 963. On August 25,1992, Siebert filed a petition for postconviction relief in Alabama state court. The state courts denied the petition as untimely, however, because it was filed approximately three months after the expiration of the then-applicable 2-year statute of limitations, Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 32.2(c) (2000-2001), which began to run from the date the certificate of judgment issued. The Alabama Supreme Court denied certiorari on September 15,2000. Siebert did not seek review in this Court. On September 14,2001, Siebert filed a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus, see 28 U. S. C. § 2254, in the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) established a 1-year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas petition. § 2244(d)(1). The limitations period is tolled, however, while “a properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending.” § 2244(d)(2). Because Siebert’s direct appeal became final before AEDPA became effective, the 1-year limitations period began to run from April 24, 1996, AEDPA’s effective date. See Carey v. Saffold, 536 U. S. 214, 217 (2002). Thus, absent tolling, Siebert’s federal habeas petition would be untimely by over four years.
The District Court dismissed Siebert’s habeas petition as untimely, reasoning that an application for state postconviction relief is not “properly filed” if it was rejected by the state court on statute-of-limitations grounds. The Court of Appeals reversed, however, holding that Siebert’s state post-conviction petition was “properly filed” within the meaning of § 2244(d)(2), because the state time bar was not jurisdictional and the Alabama courts therefore had discretion in enforcing it. See Siebert v. Campbell, 334 F. 3d 1018, 1030 (CA11 2003) (per curiam). The Court of Appeals accordingly remanded to the District Court to consider the merits of Siebert’s petition.
While Siebert’s habeas petition was pending on remand in the District Court, we decided Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U. S. 408 (2005). In Pace, we held that a state postconviction petition rejected by the state court as untimely is not “properly filed” within the meaning of § 2244(d)(2). Id., at 414, 417. Relying on Pace, the District Court again found that Siebert’s state postconviction petition was not “properly filed,” and dismissed his federal habeas petition as untimely. The Court of Appeals, however, reversed and remanded. In a one-paragraph opinion, the court distinguished Pace on the ground that Rule 32.2(c), unlike the statute of limitations at issue in Pace, “operated] as an affirmative defense.” 480 F. 3d 1089,1090 (CA112007). Thus, the court found its prior holding — that Siebert’s state postconviction petition was “properly filed” because the state court rejected it on a non-jurisdictional ground — stood as the law of the case. Ibid.
The Court of Appeals’ carveout of time limits that operate as affirmative defenses is inconsistent with our holding in Pace. Although the Pennsylvania statute of limitations at issue in Pace happens to have been a jurisdictional time bar under state law, see Commonwealth v. Banks, 556 Pa. 1, 5-6, 726 A. 2d 374,376 (1999), the jurisdictional nature of the time limit was not the basis for our decision. Rather, we built upon a distinction that we had earlier articulated in Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U. S. 4 (2000), between postconviction petitions rejected on the basis of “‘filing’ conditions,” which are not “properly filed” under § 2244(d)(2), and those rejected on the basis of “procedural bars [that] go to the ability to obtain relief,” which are. Pace, supra, at 417 (citing Artuz, supra, at 10-11). We found that statutes of limitations are “filing” conditions because they “go to the very initiation of a petition and a court’s ability to consider that petition.” Pace, 544 U. S., at 417. Thus, we held “that time limits, no matter their form, are ‘filing’ conditions,” and that a state post-conviction petition is therefore not “properly filed” if it was rejected by the state court as untimely. Ibid, (emphasis added).
In short, our holding in Pace turned not on the nature of the particular time limit relied upon by the state court, but rather on the fact that time limits generally establish “conditions to filing” a petition for . state postconviction relief. Whether a time limit is jurisdictional, an affirmative defense, or something in between, it is a “condition to filing,” Artuz, supra, at 9 — it places a limit on how long a prisoner can wait before filing a postconviction petition. The fact that Alabama’s Rule 32.2(c) is an affirmative defense that can be waived (or is subject to equitable tolling) renders it no less a “filing” requirement than a jurisdictional time bar would be; it only makes it a less stringent one. Indeed, in Pace we cited the very statute at issue in this case as an example of such a “filing” requirement. See 544 U. S., at 417, n. 7 (citing Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 32.2(c) (2004-2005)).
Excluding from Pace’s scope those time limits that operate as affirmative defenses would leave a gaping hole in what we plainly meant to be a general rule, as statutes of limitations are often affirmative defenses. See, e.g., Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 8(c); Kirkland v. State, 143 Idaho 544, 546, 149 P. 3d 819, 821 (2006) (“The statute of limitations for petitions for post-conviction relief is not jurisdictional. It ‘is an affirmative defense that may be waived if it is not pleaded by the defendant’” (quoting Cole v. State, 135 Idaho 107, 110, 15 P. 3d 820, 823 (2000); citation omitted)); People v. Boclair, 202 Ill. 2d 89, 101, 789 N. E. 2d 734, 742 (2002) (holding that time bar for filing postconviction petition is “an affirmative defense and can be raised, waived, or forfeited, by the State”). What is more, whether a time limit is jurisdictional or an affirmative defense is often a disputed question, as the interpretive history of Rule 32.2(c) itself illustrates, see Ex parte Ward, 46 So. 3d 888, 894 (2007) (noting confusion in the Alabama lower courts over whether Rule 32.2(c) is jurisdictional). Under the Court of Appeals’ approach, federal habeas courts would have to delve into the intricacies of state procedural law in deciding whether a postconviction petition rejected by the state courts as untimely was nonetheless “properly filed” under § 2244(d)(2). Our decision in Pace precludes such an approach.
We therefore reiterate now what we held in Pace: “When a postconviction petition is untimely under state law, That [is] the end of the matter’ for purposes of § 2244(d)(2).” 544 U. S., at 414 (quoting Carey, 536 U. S., at 226; alteration in original). Because Siebert’s petition for state postconviction relief was rejected as untimely by the Alabama courts, it was not “properly filed” under § 2244(d)(2). Accordingly, he was not entitled to tolling of AEDPA’s 1-year statute of limitations.
The petition for certiorari is 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.
At the time Siebert’s petition was before the Alabama courts, Rule 32.2(c) provided that “the court shall not entertain any petition,” with certain exceptions not applicable here, “unless the petition is filed . . . within two (2) years after the issuance of the certificate of judgment by the Court of Criminal Appeals.” The Rule has since been amended to provide for a 1-year limitations period, but is otherwise unchanged. See Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 32.2(c) (2007-2008).
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.
Pursuant to § 301 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Act), as added by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 844, and amended by the Clean Water Act of 1977, 91 Stat. 1582, 33 U. S. C. § 1311 (1976 ed. and Supp. II), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgates regulations limiting the amount of. effluent that can be discharged into navigable waters from a category or class of point sources of pollution. Requirements for particular plants or mills are implemented through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. EPA issues NPDES permits directly except in those States authorized by EPA to issue permits through their own programs. §§ 402 (b), 402 (c) of the Act, 33 U. S. C. §§ 1342 (b), 1342 (c) (1976 ed. and Supp. II). EPA is notified of the actions taken by state permit-issuing authorities and may veto the issuance of any permit by state authorities by objecting in writing within 90 days. § 402 (d)(2), 33 U. S. C. § 1342 (d)(2) (1976 ed., Supp. II). This case presents the question of whether the EPA’s action denying a variance and disapproving effluent restrictions contained in a permit issued by an authorized state agency is directly reviewable in the United States Court of Appeals under § 509 (b) of the Act, 86 Stat. 892, 33 U. S. C. § 1369 (b).
Petitioners operate bleached kraft pulpmills which discharge pollutants into the Pacific Ocean near Eureka, Cal. In 1976, they sought NPDES permits from the California Regional Water Resources Board, North Coast Region (Regional Board). The Director of EPA’s Region IX Enforcement Division objected to the permits proposed by the Regional Board. Petitioners sought direct review of the EPA’s action in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Those direct review proceedings were stayed pending action by the California State Water Resources Control Board (State Board). The State Board set aside the orders of the Regional Board and proposed to issue new permits in their stead. App. to Pet. for Cert. 54. It granted petitioners’ requests for variances from EPA’s effluent limitations for Biochemical Oxygen' Demand (BOD) and pH, but established alternative effluent limitations for BOD and pH to apply in case ÉPA disapproved the variances in the proposed permits. EPA denied the requested variances and vetoed the permits to the extent that they exempted petitioners from full compliance with the BOD and pH effluent limitations. Petitioners brought a direct review action in the Ninth Circuit, which was consolidated with the actions which they had individually filed earlier.
The Court of Appeals dismissed the petitions for lack of jurisdiction. 599 F. 2d 897 (1979). It concluded that it had no jurisdiction under § 509 (b)(1)(E) of the Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1369 (b)(1)(E), which provides for review in the courts of appeals of actions “approving or promulgating any effluent limitation or other limitation. . . .” The Court of Appeals found this subsection inapplicable since EPA did not approve or promulgate anything when it rejected a proposed permit. 599 F. 2d, at 902. Further, the court found that the subsection applied to effluent limitations affecting categories of point sources rather than to decisions affecting particular plants only. Ibid.
The court also found jurisdiction lacking under § 509 (b) (1) (F) of the Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1369 (b)(1)(F), which provides for review in the courts of appeals of EPA actions “in issuing or denying any permit under [§ 402 of the Act]. . . .” The court recognized that in States where EPA itself administers the permit program, this subsection unquestionably provides for direct review in the courts of appeals. 599 F. 2d, at 903. However, because California administers its own permit-issuing program, EPA in the present case did no more than veto an NPDES permit proposed by the state authority. The Court of Appeals found that under its decision in Washington v. EPA, 573 F. 2d 583 (1978) (Scott Paper), EPA’s veto of a state-issued permit did not constitute “issuing or denying” a permit and therefore did not clothe the court with jurisdiction.
District Judge Renfrew, sitting by designation, concurred in the majority’s analysis of § 509 (b)(1) (E), and also agreed that the § 509 (b) (1) (F) question was foreclosed by Scott Paper. 599 F. 2d, at 905. However, Judge Renfrew, believing that Scott Paper was wrongly decided, urged the Court of Appeals to take the present case en banc in order to consider overruling that decision. He argued that vesting jurisdiction in the courts of appeals under § 509 (b)(1)(F) would best comport with the congressional goal of ensuring prompt resolution of challenges to EPA’s actions and would recognize that EPA’s veto of a state-issued permit is functionally similar to its denial of a permit in. States which do not administer an approved permit-issuing program.
We agree with the concurring opinion and hold that the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction over this action under § 509 (b) (1) (F). When EPA, as here, objects to effluent limitations contained in a state-issued permit, the precise effect of its action is to “den[y]” a permit within the meaning of § 509 (b)(1)(F). Under the contrary construction of the Court of Appeals, denials of NPDES permits would be reviewable at different levels of the federal-court system depending on the fortuitous circumstance of whether the State in which the case arose was or was not authorized to issue permits. Moreover, the additional level of judicial review in those States with permit-issuing authority would likely cause delays in resolving disputes under the Act. Absent a far clearer expression of congressional intent, we are unwilling to read the Act as creating such a seemingly irrational bifurcated system. We therefore grant the petition for cer-tiorari, reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
We refer to the Administrator of EPA and to the Agency itself as EPA.
Section 402 was amended in 1977, after the permits in the present case were vetoed, to give EPA the power, which it did not then have, to issue its own permit if the State fails to meet EPA’s objection within a specified time. § 402 (d) (4) of the Act, as added, 91 Stat. 1599, 33 U. S. C. § 1342 (d)(4) (1976 ed., Supp. II). We do not consider the impact, if any, of this amendment on the jurisdictional issue presented herein.
The EPA has authorized the State of California to administer the NPDES program through the State Water Resources Control Board. The Regional Board exercises power delegated by the latter agency.
EPA’s national effluent limitations for the bleached segment of the American paper industry were substantially upheld in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Costle, 191 U. S. App. D. C. 309, 590 F. 2d 1011 (1978).
The petitions challenging the actions of the Regional Board became moot once the State Board set aside the Regional Board’s orders. The only live administrative decision under review at the time of the Court of Appeals’ decision would appear to be that of the State Board.
State-proposed NPDES permits are issued under authority of § 402 (b) of the Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1342 (b) (1976 ed. and Supp. II).
Because we find that the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction over this action under § 509 (b) (1) (F), we do not decide whether it might also have had jurisdiction under § 509 (b) (1) (E).
Cf. E. I. du Pent de Nemours & Co. v. Train, 430 U. S. 112, 127-128, n. 18 (1977).
Our holding is consistent with the approach taken by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Republic Steel Corp. v. Costle, 581 F. 2d 1228, 1230, n. 1 (1978), cert. denied, 440 U. S. 909 (1979); Ford Motor Co. v. EPA, 567 F. 2d 661, 668 (1977), and with dicta in the Second and Ninth Circuits, Mianus River Preservation Comm. v. Administrator, EPA, 541 F. 2d 899, 909 (CA2 1976); Shell Oil Co. v. Train, 585 F. 2d 408, 412 (CA9 1978). The Court of Appeals in the present case relied on decisions holding that the EPA’s failure to object to a state-issued permit is not reviewable in the courts of appeals under § 509. Save the Bay, Inc. v. Administrator, EPA, 556 F. 2d 1282 (CA5 1977); Mianus River Preservation Comm., supra. However, those cases may be distinguishable because EPA’s failure to object, as opposed to its affirmative veto of a state-issued permit, would not necessarily amount to “Administrator’s action” within the meaning of §509 (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: | 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 Iris Mena was detained in handcuffs during a search of the premises that she and several others occupied. Petitioners were lead members of a police detachment executing a search warrant of these premises. She sued the officers under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and the District Court found in her favor. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, holding that the use of handcuffs to detain Mena during the search violated the Fourth Amendment and that the officers’ questioning of Mena about her immigration status during the detention constituted an independent Fourth Amendment violation. Mena v. Simi Valley, 332 F. 3d 1255 (CA9 2003). We hold that Mena’s detention in handcuffs for the length of the search was consistent with our opinion in Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692 (1981), and that the officers’ questioning during that detention did not violate her Fourth Amendment rights.
* * *
Based on information gleaned from the investigation of a gang-related, driveby shooting, petitioners Muehler and Brill had reason to believe at least one member of a gang — the West Side Locos — lived at 1363 Patricia Avenue. They also suspected that the individual was armed and dangerous, since he had recently been involved in the driveby shooting. As a result, Muehler obtained a search warrant for 1363 Patricia Avenue that authorized a broad search of the house and premises for, among other things, deadly weapons and evidence of gang membership. In light of the high degree of risk involved in searching a house suspected of housing at least one, and perhaps multiple, armed gang members, a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team was used to secure the residence and grounds before the search.
At 7 a.m. on February 3, 1998, petitioners, along with the SWAT team- and other officers, executed the warrant. Mena was asleep in her bed when the SWAT team, clad in helmets and black vests adorned with badges and the word “POLICE,” entered her bedroom and placed her in handcuffs at gunpoint. The SWAT team also handcuffed three other individuals found on the property. The SWAT team then took those individuals and Mena into a converted garage, which contained several beds and some other bedroom furniture. While the search proceeded, one or two officers guarded the four detainees, who were allowed to move around the garage but remained in handcuffs.
Aware that the West Side Locos gang was composed primarily of illegal immigrants, the officers had notified the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that they would be conducting the search, and an INS officer accompanied the officers executing the warrant. During their detention in the garage, an officer asked for each detainee’s name, date of birth, place of birth, and immigration status. The INS officer later asked the detainees for their immigration documentation. Mena’s status as a permanent resident was confirmed by her papers.
The search of the premises yielded a .22 caliber handgun with .22 caliber ammunition, a box of .25 caliber ammunition, several- baseball bats with gang writing, various additional gang paraphernalia, and a bag of marijuana. Before the officers left the area, Mena was released.
In her § 1983 suit against the officers she alleged that she was detained “for an unreasonable time and in an unreasonable manner” in violation of the Fourth Ameñdment. App. 19. In addition, she claimed that the warrant and its execution were overbroad, that the officers failed to comply with the “knock and announce” rule, and that the officers had needlessly destroyed property during the search. The officers moved for summary judgment, asserting that they were entitled to qualified immunity, but the District Court denied their motion. The Court of Appeals affirmed that denial, except for Mena’s claim that the warrant was overbroad; on this claim the Court of Appeals held that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. Mena v. Simi Valley, 226 F. 3d 1031 (CA9 2000). After a trial, a jury, pursuant to a special verdict form, found that Officers Muehler and Brill violated Mena’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures by detaining her both with force greater than that which was reasonable and for a longer period than that which was reasonable. The jury awarded Mena $10,000 in actual damages and $20,000 in punitive damages against each petitioner for a total of $60,000.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on two grounds. 332 F. 3d 1255 (CA9 2003). Reviewing the denial of qualified immunity de novo, id., at. 1261, n. 2, it first held that the officers’ detention of Mena violated the Fourth Amendment because it was objectively unreasonable to confine her in the converted garage and keep her in handcuffs during the search, id., at 1263-1264. In the Court of Appeals’ view, the officers should have released Mena as soon as it became clear that she posed no immediate threat. Id., at 1263. The court additionally held that the questioning of Mena about her immigration status constituted an independent Fourth Amendment violation. Id., at 1264-1266. The Court of Appeals went on to hold that those rights were clearly established at the time of Mena’s questioning, and thus the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity. Id., at 1266-1267. We granted certiorari, 542 U. S. 903 (2004), and now vacate and remand.
* * *
In Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692 (1981), we held that officers executing a search warrant for contraband have the authority “to detain the occupants of the premises while a proper search is conducted.” Id., at 705. Such detentions are appropriate, we explained, because the character of the additional intrusion caused by detention is slight and because the justifications for detention are substantial. Id., at 701-705. We made clear that the detention of an occupant is “surely less intrusive than the search itself,” and the presence of a warrant assures that a neutral magistrate has determined that probable cause exists to search the home. Id., at 701. Against this incremental intrusion, we posited three legitimate law enforcement interests that provide substantial justification for detaining an occupant: “preventing flight in the event that incriminating evidence is found”; “minimizing the risk of harm to the officers”; and facilitating “the orderly completion of the search,” as detainees’ “self-interest may induce them to open locked doors or locked containers to avoid the use of force.” Id., at 702-708.
Mena’s detention was, under Summers, plainly permissible. An officer’s authority to detain incident to a search is categorical; it does not depend on the “quantum of proof justifying detention or the extent of the intrusion to be imposed by the seizure.” Id., at 705, n. 19. Thus, Mena’s detention for the duration of the search was reasonable under Summers because a warrant existed to search 1363 Patricia Avenue and she was an occupant of that address at the time of the search.
Inherent in Summers’ authorization to detain an occupant of the place to be searched is the authority to use reasonable force to effectuate the detention. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386, 396 (1989) (“Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has long recognized that the right to make an arrest or investigatory stop necessarily carries with it the right to use some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof to effect it”). Indeed, Summers itself stressed that the risk of harm to officers and occupants is minimized “if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation.” 452 U. S., at 703.
The officers’ use of force in the form of handcuffs to effectuate Mena’s detention in the garage, as well as the detention of the three other occupants, was reasonable because the governmental interests outweigh the marginal intrusion. See Graham, supra, at 396-397. The imposition of correctly applied handcuffs on Mena, who was already being lawfully detained during a search of the house, was undoubtedly a separate intrusion in addition to detention in the converted garage. The detention was thus more intrusive than that which we upheld in Summers. See 452 U. S., at 701-702 (concluding that the additional intrusion in the form of a detention was less than that of the warrant-sanctioned search); Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U. S. 408, 413-414 (1997) (concluding that the additional intrusion from ordering passengers out of a car, which was already stopped, was minimal).
But this was no ordinary search. The governmental interests in not only detaining, but using handcuffs, are at their maximum when, as here, a warrant authorizes a search for weapons and a wanted gang member resides on the premises. In such inherently dangerous situations, the use of handcuffs minimizes the risk of harm to both officers and occupants. Cf. Summers, supra, at 702-703 (recognizing the execution of a warrant to search for drugs “may give rise to sudden violence or frantic efforts to conceal or destroy evidence”). Though this safety risk inherent in executing a search warrant for weapons was sufficient to justify the use of handcuffs, the need to detain multiple occupants made the use of handcuffs all the more reasonable. Cf. Maryland v. Wilson, supra, at 414 (noting that “danger to an officer from a traffic stop is likely to be greater when there are passengers in addition to the driver in the stopped car”).
Mena argues that, even if the use of handcuffs to detain her in the garage was reasonable as an initial matter, the duration of the use of handcuffs made the detention unreasonable. The duration of a detention can, of course, affect the balance of interests under Graham. However, the 2- to 3-hour detention in handcuffs in this case does not outweigh the government’s continuing safety interests. As we have noted, this case involved the detention of four detainees by two officers during a search of a gang house for dangerous weapons. We conclude that the detention of Mena in handcuffs during the search was reasonable.
The Court of Appeals also determined that the officers violated Mena’s Fourth Amendment rights by questioning her about her immigration status during the detention. 332 F. 3d, at 1264-1266. This holding, it appears, was premised on the assumption that the officers were required to have independent reasonable suspicion in order to question Mena concerning her immigration status because the questioning constituted a discrete Fourth Amendment event. But the premise is faulty. We have “held repeatedly that mere police questioning does not constitute a seizure.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U. S. 429, 434 (1991); see also INS v. Delgado, 466 U. S. 210, 212 (1984). “[E]ven when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they may generally ask questions of that individual; ask to examine the individual’s identification; and request consent to search his or her luggage.” Bostick, supra, at 434-435 (citations omitted). As the Court of Appeals did not hold that the detention was prolonged by the questioning, there was no additional seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Hence, the officers did not need reasonable suspicion to ask Mena for her name, date and place of birth, or immigration status.
Our recent opinion in Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U. S. 405 (2005), is instructive. There, we held that a dog sniff performed during a traffic stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment. We noted that a lawful seizure “can become unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission,” but accepted the state court’s determination that the duration of the stop was not extended by the dog sniff. Id., at 407. Because we held that a dog sniff was not a search subject to the Fourth Amendment, we rejected the notion that “the shift in purpose” “from a lawful traffic stop into a drug investigation” was unlawful because it “was not supported by any reasonable suspicion.” Id., at 408. Likewise here, the initial Summers detention was lawful; the Court of Appeals did not find that the questioning extended the time Mena was detained. Thus no additional Fourth Amendment justification for inquiring about Mena’s immigration status was required.
In summary, the officers’ detention of Mena in handcuffs during the execution of the search warrant was reasonable and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, the officers’ questioning of Mena did not constitute an independent Fourth Amendment violation. Mena has advanced in this Court, as she did before the Court of Appeals, an alternative argument for affirming the judgment below. She asserts that her detention extended beyond the time the police completed the tasks incident to the search. Because the Court of Appeals did not address this contention, we too decline to address it. See Pierce County v. Guillen, 537 U. S. 129, 148, n. 10 (2003); National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Smith, 525 U. S. 459, 469-470 (1999).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
In determining whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred we draw all reasonable factual inferences in favor of the jury verdict, but as we made clear in Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 697-699 (1996), we do not defer to the jury’s legal conclusion that those facts violate the Constitution.
In finding the officers should have released Mena from the handcuffs, the Court of Appeals improperly relied upon the fact that the warrant did not include Mena as a suspect. See Mena v. Simi Valley, 332 F. 3d 1255, 1263, n. 5 (CA9 2003). The warrant was concerned not with individuals but with locations and property. In particular, the warrant in this case authorized the search of 1363 Patricia Avenue and its surrounding grounds for, among other things, deadly weapons and evidence of street gang membership. In this respect, the warrant here resembles that at issue in Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692 (1981), which allowed the search of a residence for drugs without mentioning any individual, including the owner of the home whom police ultimately arrested. See People v. Summers, 407 Mich. 432, 440-443, 286 N. W. 2d 226, 226-227 (1979), rev’d, Michigan v. Summers, supra. Summers makes clear that when a neutral magistrate has determined police have probable cause to believe contraband exists, “[t]he connection of an occupant to [a] home” alone “justifies a detention of that occupant.” 452 U. S., at 703-704.
The Court of Appeals’ reliance on United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873 (1975), is misplaced. Brignoni-Ponce held that stops by roving patrols near the border “may be justified on facts that do not amount to the probable cause require[ment] for an arrest.” Id., at 880. We considered only whether the patrols had the “authority to stop automobiles in areas near the Mexican border,” id., at 874 (emphasis added), and expressed no opinion as to the appropriateness of questioning when an individual was already seized. See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 556-562 (1976). We certainly did not, as the Court of Appeals suggested, create a “requirement of particularized reasonable suspicion for purposes of inquiry into citizenship status.” 332 F. 3d, at 1267.
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.
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(2) prohibits public disclosure by Government attorneys of “matters occurring before the grand jury” except in certain specified circumstances. This case presents the question whether a district court order denying a criminal defendant’s motion to dismiss an indictment for an alleged violation of Rule 6(e) is immediately appealable.
I
On January 23, 1987, a federal grand jury in the Western District of New York returned an indictment against petitioners Midland Asphalt Corporation, a business engaged in the sale of liquid bituminous material used to resurface roads, and Albert C. Litteer, Midland’s president and part owner. The indictment alleged that they had violated § 1 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1, by conspiring with other unindicted persons to allocate contracts and to submit collusive bids to the State of New York and certain counties in western New York. On July 21, 1987, petitioners moved to dismiss the indictment on grounds which included an alleged violation by federal prosecutors of Rule 6(e)(2).
Petitioners’ Rule 6(e) allegations arose from the following facts: When the grand jury that ultimately returned the Sherman Act indictment was sitting, Midland and another company under investigation brought suit seeking to have the Government pay for the cost of compliance with grand jury subpoenas. In re Grand Jury Subpoenas to Midland Asphalt Corp. and Krantz Asphalt Co., Civ. No. 85-633E (WDNY, Feb. 12, 1985) (In re Grand Jury Subpoenas). In that action Midland filed a motion asking that the District Court compel the Government to retain its rough and final notes of witness interviews. In response, the Government filed a memorandum in which it agreed to retain rough notes and final reports prepared by prosecutors and other Government personnel during its investigation of the western New York road-paving business. Approximately one year later, the defendants in a separate criminal case, also involving allegations of asphalt contract bid rigging in western New York State, United States v. Allegany Bitumens, Inc., Crim. No. 86-59C (WDNY, Apr. 14, 1986), filed a similar motion to require the Government to preserve its interview notes. Again the Government filed a memorandum agreeing to do so, noting that it had already made such a commitment to the District Court, and attaching a copy of its earlier memorandum in the In re Grand Jury Subpoenas case.
Petitioners’ motion to dismiss the indictment in the present case alleged that the Government’s filing, in Allegany Bitumens, of its memorandum from the In re Grand Jury Subpoenas case, publicly “disclose[d] matters occurring before the grand jury” in violation of Rule 6(e)(2). Specifically, the motion alleged that the memorandum disclosed the nature and focus of the investigation, the name of a grand jury witness, and the fact that the witness was to testify as an individual and not as a document custodian for Midland. Finding that the prosecution had not violated Rule 6(e)(2), the District Court denied petitioners’ motion to dismiss the indictment.
On appeal in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Government moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, contending that the District Court’s order declining to dismiss the indictment was not a “final decision” under 28 U. S. C. §1291. Petitioners responded that this Court’s decision in United States v. Mechanik, 476 U. S. 66 (1986), in which we held that an alleged violation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(d) was rendered harmless beyond a reasonable doubt by a petit jury’s guilty verdict, would make district court orders denying motions to dismiss indictments based on alleged violations of Rule 6(e) “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment,” Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463, 468 (1978), and hence immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine, see ibid. The Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ contention on the ground that Rule 6(d), the subsection at issue in Mechanik, exists primarily “to protect the person under investigation from being indicted in the absence of probable cause,” 840 F. 2d 1040, 1046 (1988), whereas Rule 6(e) serves the different function of “protecting] society’s interest in keeping secret the identity of grand jury witnesses and persons under investigation,” ibid. It concluded that ‘Mechanik [would not] preclud[e] a federal court of appeals from exercising post-trial review of an order denying a motion to dismiss an indictment for violation of Rule 6(e),” ibid., that denials of motions to dismiss indictments for alleged violations of Rule 6(e) are therefore not immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine, and that the Government’s motion to dismiss the appeal in the case before it should be granted.
We granted certiorari to resolve a disagreement among the Courts of Appeals. 487 U. S. 1217 (1988).
II
In the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, the First Congress established the principle that only “final judgments and decrees” of the federal district courts may be reviewed on appeal. Id., at 84. The statute has changed little since then: 28 U. S. C. § 1291 today provides that federal courts of appeals “shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts . . . except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court.” For purposes of this provision, a final judgment is normally deemed not to have occurred “until there has been a decision by the District Court that ‘ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.’” Van Cauwenberghe v. Biard, 486 U. S. 517, 521 (1988), quoting Catlin v. United States, 324 U. S. 229, 233 (1945). In criminal cases, this prohibits appellate review until after conviction and imposition of sentence. Flanagan v. United States, 465 U. S. 259, 263 (1984); Berman v. United States, 302 U. S. 211, 212 (1937). Since petitioners have not yet even been tried, much less convicted or sentenced, it is plain that the District Court’s order denying their motion to dismiss falls within this prohibition.
In Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541 (1949), we carved out a narrow exception to the normal application of the final judgment rule, which has come to be known as the collateral order doctrine. This exception considers as “final judgments,” even though they do not “end the litigation on the merits,” decisions “which finally determine claims of right separate from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate jurisdiction be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Id., at 546. To fall within the limited class of final collateral orders, an order must (1) “conclusively determine the disputed question,” (2) “resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action,” and (3) “be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, supra, at 468.
We have interpreted the collateral order exception “with the utmost strictness” in criminal cases. Flanagan, supra, at 265. Although we have had numerous opportunities in the 40 years since Cohen to consider the appealability of prejudgment orders in criminal cases, we have found denials of only three types of motions to be immediately appealable: motions to reduce bail, Stack v. Boyle, 342 U. S. 1 (1951), motions to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds, Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977), and motions to dismiss under the Speech or Debate Clause, Helstoski v. Meanor, 442 U. S. 500 (1979). These decisions, along with the far more numerous ones in which we have refused to permit interlocutory appeals, manifest the general rule that the third prong of the Coopers & Lybrand test is satisfied only where the order at issue involves “an asserted right the legal and practical value of which would be destroyed if it were not vindicated before trial.” United States v. MacDonald, 435 U. S. 850, 860 (1978).
We have little difficulty concluding that an order denying a motion to dismiss an indictment for an alleged violation of Rule 6(e) does not satisfy our “stringent conditions for qualification as an immediately appealable collateral order.” Flanagan, supra, at 270. Whether a violation of Rule 6(e) will be reviewable on appeal following conviction, as the Court of Appeals below held, 840 F. 2d, at 1046, or will be rendered harmless as a matter of law by the conviction, as the Ninth Circuit has decided, United States v. Benjamin, 812 F. 2d 548, 553 (1987), a district court order declining to dismiss an indictment for an alleged violation of the Rule fails one or the other of the final two requirements set out in Coopers & Lybrand. If Mechanik is not extended beyond violations of Rule 6(d), and if Rule 6(e) violations can accordingly provide the basis for reversal of a conviction on appeal, it is obvious that they are not “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” Coopers & Lybrand, 437 U. S., at 468. If, on the other hand, Mechanik is applied to bar postconviction review of alleged violations of Rule 6(e), it will be because the purpose of that Rule is the same as the purpose of Rule 6(d), namely, to “protec[t] against the danger that a defendant will be required to defend against a charge for which there is no probable cause to believe him guilty,” Mechanik, 475 U. S., at 70, which danger has demonstrably been avoided whenever there is a guilty verdict at trial. If this latter analysis is correct, however, orders denying motions to dismiss for Rule 6(e) violations cannot be said to “resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action,” Coopers & Lybrand, supra, at 468, but rather involve “considerations enmeshed in the merits of the dispute,” Van Cauwenberghe, supra, at 528, and would “affect ... or be affected by” the decision on the merits of the case, DiBella v. United States, 369 U. S. 121, 126 (1962) (emphasis added). Thus, whatever view one takes of the scope of Mechanik (an issue we need not resolve here), the present order is not immediately appealable.
Petitioners attempt to avoid this reasoning by suggesting that orders of this sort, even if theoretically reviewable after conviction, are “effectively unreviewable,” Coopers & Lybrand, supra, at 468, once trial has been held, because they pertain to a right “the . . . practical value of which [is] destroyed if it [is] not vindicated before trial,” MacDonald, supra, at 860 — namely, the right not merely not to be convicted, but not to be tried at all “on an indictment returned by a grand jury whose decision to indict was substantially influenced by the government’s violation of 6(e).” Brief for Petitioner 24. We do not agree. It is true that deprivation of the right not to be tried satisfies the Coopers & Lybrand requirement of being “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” See Abney v. United States, supra; Helstoski v. Meanor, supra. One must be careful, however, not to play word games with the concept of a “right not to be tried.” In one sense, any legal rule can be said to give rise to a “right not to be tried” if failure to observe it requires the trial court to dismiss the indictment or terminate the trial. But that is assuredly not the sense relevant for purposes of the exception to the final judgment rule.
“Certainly, the fact that this Court has held dismissal of the indictment to be the proper remedy when the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been violated . . . does not mean that a defendant enjoys a ‘right not to be tried’ which must be safeguarded by interlocutory appellate review. Dismissal of the indictment is the proper sanction when a, defendant has been granted immunity from prosecution, when his indictment is defective, or, usually, when the only evidence against him was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Obviously, however, this has not led the Court to conclude that such defendants can pursue interlocutory appeals.” MacDonald, supra, at 860, n. 7.
There is a “crucial distinction between a right not to be tried and a right whose remedy requires the dismissal of charges.” United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U. S. 263, 269 (1982). A right not to be tried in the sense relevant to the Cohen exception rests upon an explicit statutory or constitutional guarantee that trial will not occur — as in the Double Jeopardy Clause (“nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb”), see Abney v. United States, supra, or the Speech or Debate Clause (“[F]or any Speech or Debate in either House, [the Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other Place”), see Helstoski v. Meanor, supra. Neither Rule 6(e) nor the Constitution affords such a guarantee in the event of a violation of grand jury secrecy.
The text of Rule 6(e) contains no hint that a governmental violation of its prescriptions gives rise to a right not to stand trial. To be sure, we held last Term in Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U. S. 250, 263 (1988), that a district court has authority in certain circumstances to dismiss an indictment for violations of Rule 6(e). But as just noted, that has nothing to do with a “right not to be tried” in the sense relevant here.
As for the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment, that reads in relevant part as follows: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” That does indeed confer a right not to he tried (in the pertinent sense) when there is no grand jury indictment. Undoubtedly the common-law protections traditionally associated with the grand jury attach to the grand jury required by this provision — including the requisite secrecy of grand jury proceedings. But that is far from saying that every violation of those protections, like the lack of a grand jury indictment itself, gives rise to a right not to be tried. We have held that even the grand jury’s violation of the defendant’s right against self-incrimination does not trigger the Grand Jury Clause’s “right not to be tried.” Lawn v. United States, 355 U. S. 339, 349 (1958). Only a defect so fundamental that it causes the grand jury no longer to be a grand jury, or the indictment no longer to be an indictment, gives rise to the constitutional right not to be tried. An isolated breach of the traditional secrecy requirements does not do so.
* * *
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals was correct to grant the Government’s motion to dismiss the appeal, and its judgment is
Affirmed.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has read Mechanik to forbid postconviction review of alleged violations of Rule 6(e), and accordingly has held that district court orders denying motions to dismiss indictments for violations of the Rule are immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine. United States v. Benjamin, 812 F. 2d 548, 553 (1987). The Courts of Appeals for the Third, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have read Mechanik more narrowly to bar postconviction review only of “technical” violations of Rule 6, not violations calling into question the “fundamental fairness” of the criminal proceedings, and therefore have held that the latter type are not immediately appealable. United States v. Johns, 858 F. 2d 154, 159-160 (CA3 1988); United States v. Taylor, 798 F. 2d 1337, 1340 (CA10 1986); United States v. Kramer, 864 F. 2d 99, 101 (CA11 1988). The First, Seventh, and District of Columbia Circuits have held that claims which may not be reviewed following conviction pursuant to Mechanik are insufficiently important to fit within the small class of claims eligible for interlocutory review. United States v. LaRouche Campaign, 829 F. 2d 250, 253-254 (CA1 1987); United States v. Daniels, 848 F. 2d 758, 760 (CA7 1988); United States v. Poindexter, 273 U. S. App. D. C. 240, 245-246, 859 F. 2d 216, 221-222 (1988).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Minton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This Court is again called upon to determine the meaning of the “finality clause” of a standard form government contract. Respondents agreed tó build a dam for the United States under a contract containing the usual “Article 15.” That Article provides that all disputes involving questions of fact shall be decided by the contracting officer, with the right of appeal to the head of the department “whose decision shall be final and conclusive upon the parties thereto.” Dissatisfied with the resolution of various disputes by the department head, in this instance the Secretary of the Interior, respondents brought suit in the Court of Claims. That court reviewed their contentions, and in the one claim involved in this proceeding set aside the decision' of the department head. 117 Ct. Cl. 92. Although there was some dispute below, the parties now agree that the question decided by the department head was a question of fact. We granted certiorari, 341 U. S. 924, to clarify the rule of this Court which created an exception to the conclusiveness of such administrative decision.
The same Article 15 of a government contract was before this Court recently, and we held, after a review of the authorities, that such Article was valid. United States v. Moorman, 338 U. S. 457. Nor was the Moor-man case one of first impression. Contracts, both governmental and private, have been before this Court in several cases in which provisions equivalent to Article 15 have been approved and enforced “in the absence of fraud or such gross mistake as would necessarily imply bad faith, or a failure to exercise an honest judgment . . . .” Kihlberg v. United States, 97 U. S. 398, 402; Sweeney v. United States, 109 U. S. 618, 620; Martinsburg & P. R. Co. v. March; 114 U. S. 549, 553; Chicago, S. F. & C. R. Co. v. Price, 138 U. S. 185, 195.
In Ripley v. United States, 223 U. S. 695, 704, gross mistake implying bad faith is equated to “fraud.” Despite the fact that other words such as “negligence,” “incompetence,” “capriciousness,” and “arbitrary” have been used in the course of the opinions, this Court has consistently upheld the finality of the department head’s decision unless it was founded on fraud, alleged and proved. So. fraud is in essence the exception. By fraud we mean conscious wrongdoing, an intention to cheat or be dishonest. The 'decision of the department head, absent fraudulent conduct, must stand under the plain meaning of the contract.
If the decision of the department head finder Article 15 is to be set aside for fraud, fraud should be alleged and proved, as it is never presumed. United States v. Colorado Anthracite Co., 225 U. S. 219, 226. In the case at bar,’ there was no allegation of fraud. There was no finding of fraud nor request for such a finding. The finding of the Court of Claims was that the decision of the department head was “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and “grossly erroneous.” But these words are not the equivalent of fraud, the exception which this Court has heretofore laid down and to which it now adheres without qualification.
Respondents were, not compelled or coerced into making the contract. It was a voluntary undertaking on their part. As competent parties they have contracted for the settlement of disputes in an arbitral manner. This, we have said in Moorman, Congress has left them free to do. United States v. Moorman, supra, at 462. The limitation upon this arbitral process is fraud, placed there by this Court. If the standard of fraud that we adhere to is too limited, that is a matter for Congress.
. Since there was no pleading of fraud, and no finding of fraud, and no request for such a finding, we are not’ disposed to remand the case for any further findings, as respondents urge. We assume that if the evidence had been sufficient to constitute fraud, the Court of Claims would have so found. In the absence of such finding, the decision of the department head must stand as conclusive, and the judgment is
Reversed.
“ Article 15. Disputes. — Except as otherwise: specifically provided in this contract, all disputes concerning questions of fact arising under this contract shall be decided by the contracting officer subject to written appeal by the contractor within 30 days to the head of the department concerned or his duly authorized representative, whose decision shall be final and conclusive upon the parties thereto. In the meantime the contractor shall diligently proceed with the work as directed.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondent, Walter Korpan, was indicted in a Federal District Court in Illinois for willfully failing to pay the $250 per device tax imposed by 26 U. S. C. (Supp. IV) § 4461 on any person who maintains for use any gaming device. For purposes of this tax, 26 U. S. C. (Supp. IV) § 4462 (a) defines gaming devices as:
“so-called 'slot’ machines which operate by means of insertion of a coin . . . and which, by application of the element of chance, may deliver, or entitle the person playing . . . the machine to receive cash, premiums, merchandise, or tokens.”
The evidence at the trial showed that Korpan maintained on his premises a number of coin-operated gambling machines. These machines were played by inserting a coin into the machine through a slot. The player was then able to shoot several balls onto a playing surface which was interspersed with pockets or holes. If he succeeded in getting balls into certain holes he received a varying number of free games. He had the option of either playing the free games or of cashing them in at a designated rate. By inserting extra coins the player could sometimes secure additional balls or increased “odds” (in other words, increase the number of free games he could win). The machines were equipped with electrical devices which over a period of time controlled the number of free games won.
The district judge found respondent guilty as charged and fined him $750. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that respondent’s machines did not come within the definition laid down by §4462 (a) (2). 237 F. 2d 676. On the Government’s petition we granted certiorari because the case raised important questions in the administration of the revenue laws. 352 U. S. 980. The issue before us is whether the machines maintained by petitioner were included within the definition given by § 4462 (a) (2). For the reasons stated hereafter we believe that they were within that definition and that the judgment of the Court of Appeals setting aside Korpan’s conviction on the ground that they were not must be reversed.
It is clear that respondent’s machines were operated by the insertion of a coin and that persons playing them could receive cash for any free games won. The machines also involved an element of chance sufficient to meet the requirements of § 4462 (a) (2), although skill may have had some part in playing them successfully. In short, they were “slot-machine” gambling devices.
Respondent argues, however, that when Congress used the phrase “so-called 'slot' machines” in § 4462 (a) (2) it intended to restrict the scope of that section to those “slot machines” gambling devices colloquially known as “one-armed bandits.” He describes the latter as machines in which the insertion of a coin releases a lever or handle which, in turn, when pulled activates a series of spring-driven drums or reels with various insignia painted thereon, usually bells and fruit, and which automatically dispense coins to a player when certain combinations of these insignia are aligned. The Government, on the other hand, takes the position that Congress intended to cover all “slot machines” which come within the specific requirements of § 4462 (a) (2). It argues that the qualifying phrase “so-called” was added because (1) the draftsmen were apprehensive that the term “slot-machine” might be a slang expression not. accepted as proper English or (2) they wanted to cover every gambling device operated by the insertion of coins through a slot even though the device might go under a label other than “slot machine.”
On its face the language of § 4462 (a) (2) and related sections does not manifest an intent to limit the application of the otherwise broad terms of § 4462 (a) (2) to any particular kind of “slot-machine” gambling device. The phrase “so-called 'slot’ machine” is, if anything, more consistent with the position advanced by the Government than that taken by Korpan. And the remainder of § 4462 (a)(2), as well as § 4462 (c), has language which affirmatively suggests that § 4462 (a) (2) was designed to include all sorts of coin-operated gambling devices regardless of their particular structure or the method by which they paid off players.
This interpretation is supported by the relevant legislative history. Apart from the amount of tax imposed, § 4462 (a) (2) is substantially the same as its original predecessor, § 3267 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, as amended, 55 Stat. 722. Senator Clark, the sponsor of the amendment which became § 3267, declared during the Senate debates on his amendment that his objective was to impose a heavy tax on “any machine which returns any sort of a premium, and that was the intention of the amendment, and it was the intention of the committee in adopting it.” The Senate report which • accompanied Clark's amendment stated:
“The House bill places a special tax of $25 per year upon each coin-operated amusement or gaming device maintained for use on any premises.
“Your committee divides these devices into two categories. Upon so-called pinball or other amusement devices operated by the insertion of a coin or token, the tax is reduced to $10 per year. Upon so-called slot machines, however, the tax is placed at $200 per year.” (Emphasis added.)
Respondent contends that this report as well as similar language in other parts of the legislative history is indicative of an intent on the part of Congress to draw a distinction between “one-armed bandits” and other coin-operated gambling or amusement machines. We interpret this history, however, as demonstrating a congressional purpose to place a heavy tax on all “slot-machine” gambling devices, regardless of their particular structure, and a substantially smaller tax on machines played purely for amusement which offered the player no expectation of receiving “cash, premiums, merchandise, or tokens.”
The administrative interpretation of § 4462 (a)(2) and its predecessors adds additional strength to this view. In 1942 the Treasury Department published interpretative regulations which included so-called “pin-ball” gambling machines under § 4462 (a) (2) . This administrative ruling was publicized in the trade paper of the coin-operated machine industry. In both 1942 and 1954 the representatives of that industry complained to Congress about the Treasury’s interpretation, which is still in effect, and asked that § 4462 (a) (2) be amended so that it expressly excluded “pin-ball” gambling machines. In each instance Congress left the existing provisions of § 4462 (a) (2) standing, although, at the request of others in the industry, it did provide an exception for certain penny-operated gambling machines.
If the respondent’s position were adopted § 4462 (a) (2) would be restricted to a peculiar type of gambling device — the so-called “one-armed bandit” — even though ingenuity, a desire to avoid taxes, and technological progress provide a multitude of new devices which permit substantially the same kind of gambling but only with a different kind of coin-operated machine. We are convinced that Congress had no such purpose and meant only to distinguish between “slot-machines” operated as gambling devices and “slot-machines” which were used exclusively for amusement.
Reversed.
In full the pertinent statutory provisions read as follows:
Ҥ 4461. Imposition op Tax.
“There shall be imposed a special tax to be paid by every person who maintains for use or permits the use of, on anj' place or premises occupied by him, a coin-operated amusement or gaming device at the following rates:
“(1) $10 a year, in the case of a device defined in paragraph (1) of section 4462 (a) ;
“ (2) $250 a year, in the case of a device defined in paragraph (2) of section 4462 (a); and
“(3) $10 or $250 a year, as the case may be, for each additional device so maintained or the use of which is so permitted. If one such device is replaced by another, such other device shall not be considered an additional device.
Ҥ 4462. Definition of Coin-Operated Amusement or Gaming Device.
“(a) In general.
“As used in sections 4461 to 4463, inclusive, the term 'coin-operated amusement or gaming device’ means—
“(1) any amusement or music machine operated by means of the insertion of a coin, token, or similar object, and
“(2) so-called 'slot’ machines which operate by means of insertion of a coin, token, or similar object and which, by application of the element of chance, may deliver, or entitle the person playing or operating the machine to receive cash, premiums, merchandise, or tokens.
“(b) Exclusion.
“The term ‘coin-operated amusement or gaming device’ does not include bona fide vending machines in which are not incorporated gaming or amusement features.
“(c) 1-cent vending machine.
“For purposes of sections 4461 to 4463, inclusive, a vending machine operated by means of the insertion of a 1-cent coin, which, when it dispenses a prize, never dispenses a prize of a retail value of, or entitles a person to receive a prize of a retail value of, more than 5 cents, and if the only prize dispensed is merchandise and not cash or tokens, shall be classified under paragraph (1) and not under paragraph (2) of subsection (a).”
Respondent contends that § 4462 (a) (2) as interpreted by the District Court is unconstitutionally vague. This contention is without merit.
87 Cong. Rec. 7301.
S. Rep. No. 673, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 21.
For the legislative history of what became § 3267 see: H. R. Rep. No. 1040, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 60; H. R. Rep. No. 1203, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 18; S. Rep. No. 673, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 21; 87 Cong. Rec. 6476, 7297-7307.
59 Treas. Reg. § 323.22, as amended by T. D. 5203, 7 Fed. Reg. 10835, Dec. 22, 1942.
See Hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means on Revenue Revision of 1942, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 2055-2061, 2682-2688; Hearings before the Senate Committee on Finance on H. R. 7378, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 1132-1141; Hearings before House Committee on Ways and Means on General Revision of the Internal Revenue Code, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. 2505-2522; Hearings before Senate Committee on Finance on H. R. 8300, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 1874-1879.
56 Stat. 978-979.
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 Vinson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
A Special Term of the Court was convened upon the Attorney General’s application to review a stay of execution in this case, issued by Mr. Justice Douglas.
Our action was unusual. So were the circumstances which led to it. The Court’s action should be considered in the context of the full history of the proceedings which have marked this case.
On August 17, 1950, the defendants were indicted for conspiring to commit espionage in wartime, in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, 50 U. S. C. §§ 32 (a), 34. After a lengthy jury trial they were found guilty, and on April 5,1951, they were sentenced to death. Upon appeal the Court of Appeals affirmed. A petition for rehearing was denied.
A petition for certiorari was filed here. It was denied on October 13, 1952. A petition for rehearing was filed October 28, 1952. It was denied on November 17, 1952.
One week thereafter, a motion was filed in the District Court under § 2255 of the Judicial Code (28 U. S. C. § 2255) to vacate the judgment and sentence. That motion (hereafter called the first § 2255 motion) did not challenge the power of the District Court to impose the death sentence. It was denied. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Certiorari was again sought here, and denied on May 25, 1953. The stay entered by the Court of Appeals was vacated by this Court on the same date. On the next day, a petition for a stay, pending the consideration of a petition for rehearing, to be filed by June 9, 1953, was denied by The Chief Justice. A petition for rehearing was filed and was pending during the last week of the 1952 Term of the Court, the adjournment of the Term having been announced for June 15, 1953.
In the meantime, execution of the sentence was set for the week of June 15th by the District Judge, and two further motions under § 2255 to vacate judgment and sentence were denied in District Court, one on June 1, 1953 and another on June 8, 1953. Those denials were affirmed by the Court of Appeals on June 5 and June 11, 1953, respectively.
In addition to those two motions under § 2255, a petition was also presented to the Court of Appeals asking that a writ of mandamus be issued, directing the sentencing judge to resentence the defendants. On June 2, 1953, the Court of Appeals denied relief by way of mandamus. Thus, as of June 12, 1953, three decisions had been entered by the Court of Appeals in collateral attacks upon the sentence, all three attacks having been instituted by the defendants after our denial of certiorari on May 25, 1953, as to the first motion under § 2255.
On June 12, 1953, an application for a stay of execution was filed with the Clerk of this Court and presented to Mr. Justice Jackson, the appropriate Circuit Justice. This stay was requested to enable the Rosenbergs to seek review of the three most recent decisions of the Court of Appeals “within the time ordered by the applicable statute.” Mr. Justice Jackson referred this application to the full Court, with a recommendation that oral argument be heard on it. On June 15, 1953, the last session of the 1952 Term, the Court declined to hear oral argument on this application and denied the stay. The pending petition for rehearing as to the May 25, 1953, denial of certiorari, was also denied. Thus the Court had in effect, disposed of all collateral attacks upon the sentence then pending in the courts — as to the first § 2255 motion by adhering to its original denial of certiorari and as to the three subsequent decisions of the Court of Appeals in the further collateral proceedings by denying a stay, a decision which showed that the Court saw no substantial question in those proceedings to be preserved for its further consideration.
Just a moment before adjournment of the 1952 Term, on June 15, 1953, a petition for an original writ of habeas corpus, including a request for a stay, was presented to the Court. On account of the imminence of the execution, counsel urged immediate action. They were advised that prompt consideration would be given to the application. The Court met in Special Term on the afternoon of that day and denied the application. The Special Term was then adjourned.
Late on June 15, 1953, counsel for the defendants applied to Mr. Justice Douglas for a stay. On June 16, 1953, counsel representing one Edelman, who described himself as “next friend” to the Rosenbergs, presented to Mr. Justice Douglas a petition for habeas corpus. That petition included a prayer for a stay. More than two months before their appearance before Mr. Justice Douglas, Edelman’s attorneys had asked counsel for the Rosenbergs to raise the very question which they urged upon Mr. Justice Douglas. The argument was not adopted at that time by counsel for the defendants. In this recitation of facts, we do not hold in this case that a waiver of this claim precluded its consideration.
On the morning of June 17,1953, Mr. Justice Douglas denied the stay requested by counsel for the defendants, since it raised questions already passed upon by the Court.
Edelman’s counsel raised the claim that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, 42 U. S. C. § 1810 (b)(2) and (3), superseded the Espionage Act and rendered the District Court without power to impose the death sentence. Mr. Justice Douglas was of the opinion that this contention posed a substantial question; he denied the application for habeas corpus, but granted a stay, effective until the applicability of the Atomic Energy Act could be determined in the District Court and the Court of Appeals.
The Attorney General then applied to the Court, asking that we convene a Special Term of Court and vacate the stay. The Court was convened in Special Term on June 18, 1953, Mr. Justice Black objecting.
Thus we were brought to this particular proceeding. The case was argued for several hours on June 18. The Court then recessed and deliberated in conference for several hours. During the next morning the Court held another conference, and then met at noon and announced its decision in a per curiam opinion. We vacated the stay.
Immediately following the announcement of this decision, counsel for the Rosenbergs moved for a further stay asking that the Court grant them an additional period in which they might seek executive clemency. Counsel for Edelman moved that the Court reconsider the question of its power to vacate the stay. After a recess and deliberation, the Court denied both motions, with Mr. Justice Black noting dissents, and Mr. Justice Frankfurter appending a separate memorandum to each order.
The Special Term was adjourned. Thereafter executive clemency was denied. The sentence of death was carried out.
We have recited the history of this unusual case at length because we think a full recitation is necessary to a proper understanding of the decision rendered. We proceed to discuss two questions of power: the power of Me. Justice Douglas to issue the stay; and the power of this Court to decide, in this proceeding, the question preserved by the stay and the vacation of the stay.
Mb. Justice Douglas had power to issue the stay. No one has disputed this, and we think the proposition is indisputable.
Stays are part of the “traditional equipment for the administration of justice.” Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 316 U. S. 4, 9-10 (1942). The individual Justices of this Court have regularly issued them, and the exercise of that power is vital to the proper functioning of our jurisdiction.
Confronted with the question of the applicability of the Atomic Energy Act, Mr. Justice Douglas wrote:
“I have serious doubts whether this death sentence may be imposed for this offense except and unless a jury recommends it. The Rosenbergs should have an opportunity to litigate that issue.
“I will not issue the writ of habeas corpus. But I will grant a stay effective until the question of the applicability of the penal provisions of § 10 of the Atomic Energy Act to this case can be determined by the District Court and the Court of Appeals, after which the question of a further stay will be open to the Court of Appeals or to a member of this Court in the usual order.” (See post, p. 321.)
After hearing argument on this question, we did not entertain the serious doubts which Mr. Justice Douglas had.
We turn next to a consideration of our power to decide, in this proceeding, the question preserved by the stay. It is true that the full Court has made no practice of vacating stays issued by single Justices, although it has entertained motions for such relief. But reference to this practice does not prove the nonexistence of the power; it only demonstrates that the circumstances must be unusual before the Court, in its discretion, will exercise its power.
The power which we exercised in this case derives from this Court’s role as the final forum to render the ultimate answer to the question which was preserved by the stay.
Thus Mr. Justice Douglas, in issuing the stay, did not act to grant some form of amnesty or last-minute reprieve to the defendants; he simply acted to protect jurisdiction over the case, to maintain the status quo until a conclusive answer could be given to the question which had been urged in the defendants’ behalf. In the exercise of our jurisdiction to decide the question which was preserved for decision, it lay within our power to bring the new claim before us and examine its merits without further delay. In considering this question, the Court carried out the limited purpose for which Mr. Justice Douglas issued the stay.
The existence of our power was clear, and so also, we think, was the necessity for its exercise. Yet it was urged at argument that the Court, as a matter of discretion if not of power, should refrain from immediately deciding the merits of the issue which had been preserved by the stay. Indeed, the reasons for refusing, as a matter of practice, to vacate stays issued by single Justices are obvious enough. Ordinarily the stays of individual Justices should stand until the grounds upon which they have issued can be reviewed through regular appellate processes.
In this case, however, we deemed it proper and necessary to convene the Court to consider the Attorney General's urgent application. Mb. Justice Douglas denied the petition for habeas corpus. His grant of a stay called for initiation of a new proceeding in the District Court. It followed hard on the heels of our orders denying a rehearing, denying a further stay and denying a motion for leave to file a petition for habeas corpus in which a stay was requested. The stay issued by Mb. Justice Douglas was based, of course, on a new claim — a question which had not been considered in any prior proceeding.
This Court has the responsibility to supervise the administration of criminal justice by the federal judiciary. This includes the duty to see that the laws are not only enforced by fair proceedings, but also that the punishments prescribed by the laws are enforced with a reasonable degree of promptness and certainty. The stay which had been issued promised many more months of litigation in a case which had otherwise run its full course.
The question preserved for adjudication by the stay was entirely legal; there was no need to resort to the fact-finding processes of the District Court; it was a question of statutory construction which this Court was equipped to answer. We decided that a proper administration of the laws required the Court to consider that question forthwith.
This brought us to the merits. Our decision was summarized in our per curiam opinion. We held that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 did not displace the Espionage Act. We held that this issue raised no doubts of such magnitude as to require further proceedings before execution of the District Court’s original mandate — a mandate which had been affirmed on appeal and sustained thereafter despite continuous collateral attack.
More complete statements of the reasons for our decision are set forth in the opinions of Mr. Justice Jackson and Mr. Justice Clark. We need not reiterate here what has been said in those opinions. It is enough to add that, in our view, the ultimate decision was clear. Accordingly, we vacated the stay.
Per Curiam.
We convened a Special Term of the Court to consider an application by the Attorney General (1) to review the stay of execution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, granted by Mr. Justice Douglas on June 17, 1953, or (2) for reconsideration and reaffirmance of this Court’s order in No. 1, Misc., June 15 Special Term, 1953, Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, petitioners, v. Wilford L. Denno, Warden of Sing Sing Prison, denying a stay, ante, p. 271.
The Acting Solicitor General agrees and we do not doubt that Mr. Justice Douglas had power to issue the stay in these proceedings. There is no dispute that a stay should issue only if there is a substantial question to be preserved for further proceedings in the courts.
The question which has been and now is urged as being substantial is whether the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, 42 U. S. C. § 1810 (b) (2), (3), rendered the District Court powerless to impose the death sentence under the Espionage Act of 1917, 50 U. S. C. §§ 32 (a), 34, under which statute the indictment was laid.
Although this question was raised and presented for the first time to Mr. Justice Douglas by counsel who have never been employed by the Rosenbergs, and who heretofore have not participated in this case, the full Court has considered it on its merits.
We think the question is not substantial. We think further proceedings to litigate it are unwarranted. A conspiracy was charged and proved to violate the Espionage Act in wartime. The Atomic Energy Act did not repeal or limit the provisions of the Espionage Act. Accordingly, we vacate the stay entered by Mr. Justice Douglas on June 17,1953.
We are entering this order in advance of the preparation of full opinions which will be filed with the Clerk.
Stay granted by Mr. Justice Douglas vacated.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
is of opinion that the questions raised for the first time yesterday before the full Court by the application of the Attorney General are complicated and novel. He believes that, in order to enable the Court to adjudicate these issues upon adequate deliberation, this application should be disposed of only after opportunity has been afforded to counsel for both sides to make an adequate study and presentation. In due course, Mr. Justice Frankfurter will set forth more specifically the grounds for this position.
By Mr. Justice Jackson,
whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Burton, Mr. Justice Clark, and Mr. Justice Minton join.
This stay was granted upon such legal grounds that this Court cannot allow it to stand as the basis upon which lower courts must conduct further long-drawn proceedings.
The sole ground stated was that the sentence maybe governed by the Atomic Energy Act of August 1, 1946, instead of by the earlier Espionage Act. The crime here involved was commenced June 6, 1944. This was more than two years before the Atomic Energy Act was passed. All overt acts relating to atomic energy on which the Government relies took place as early as January 1945.
The Constitution, Art. I, § 9, prohibits passage of any ex post jacto Act. If Congress had tried in 1946 to make transactions of 1944 and 1945 offenses, we would have been obliged to set such an Act aside. To open the door to retroactive criminal statutes would rightly be regarded as a most serious blow to one of the civil liberties protected by our Constitution. Yet the sole ground of this stay is that the Atomic Energy Act may have retrospective application to conspiracies in which the only overt acts were committed before that statute was enacted.
We join in the opinion by Mr. Justice Clark and agree that the Atomic Energy Act does not, by text or intention, supersede the earlier Espionage Act. It does not purport to repeal the earlier Act, nor afford any grounds for spelling out a repeal by implication. Each Act is complete in itself and each has its own reason for existence and field of operation. Certainly prosecution, conviction and sentence under the law in existence at the time of the overt acts are not improper. It is obvious that an attempt to prosecute under the later Act would in all probability fail.
This stay is not and could not be based upon any doubt that a legal conviction was had under the Espionage Act. Application here for review of the Court of Appeals decision affirming the conviction was refused, 344 U. S. 838, and rehearing later denied, 344 U. S. 889.
Later, responsible and authorized counsel raised, among other issues, questions as to the sentence, and an application was made for stay until they could be heard. The application was referred to the full Court, with the recommendation that the full Court hold immediate hearing and as an institution make a prompt and final disposition of all questions. This was supported by four Justices and failed for want of one more, Mr. Justice Douglas recording his view that “there would be no end served by hearing oral argument on the motion for a stay.” 345 U. S. 989.
Thus, after being in some form before this Court over nine months, the merits of all questions raised by the Rosenbergs’ counsel had been passed upon, or foreclosed by denials. However, on this application we have heard and decided (since it had been the ground for granting the stay) a new contention, despite the irregular manner in which it was originally presented.
This is an important procedural matter of which we disapprove. The stay was granted solely on the petition of one Edelman, who sought to appear as “next friend” of the Rosenbergs. Of course, there is power to allow such an appearance, under circumstances such as incapacity of the prisoner or isolation from counsel, which make it appropriate to enable the Court to hear a prisoner’s case. But in these circumstances the order which grants Edel-man standing further to litigate this case in the lower courts cannot be justified.
Edelman is a stranger to the Rosenbergs and to their ease. His intervention was unauthorized by them and originally opposed by their counsel. What may be Edel-man’s purpose in getting himself into this litigation is not explained, although inquiry was made at the bar. It does not appear that his own record is entirely clear or that he would be a helpful or chosen champion. See Edelman v. California, 344 U. S. 357.
The attorneys who appear for Edelman tell us that for two months they tried to get the authorized counsel for the Rosenbergs to raise this issue but were refused. They also inform us that they have eleven more points to present hereafter, although the authorized counsel do not appear to have approved such issues.
The Rosenbergs throughout have had able and zealous counsel of their own choice. These attorneys originally thought this point had no merit and perhaps also that it would obscure the better points on which they were endeavoring to procure a hearing here. Of course, after a Justice of this Court had granted Edelman standing to raise the question and indicated that he is impressed by its substantiality, counsel adopted the argument and it became necessary for us to review it. They also shared their time and the counsel table with the Edelman lawyers thus admitted as attorneys-at-large to their case. The lawyers who have ably and courageously fought the Ro-senbergs’ battle throughout then listened at this bar to the newly imported counsel make an argument which plainly implied lack of understanding or zeal on the part of the retained counsel. They simply had been elbowed out of the control of their case.
Every lawyer familiar with the workings of our criminal courts and the habits of our bar will agree that this precedent presents a threat to orderly and responsible representation of accused persons and the right of themselves and their counsel to control their own cases. The lower court refused to accept Edelman’s intrusion but by the order in question must accept him as having standing to take part in, or to take over, the Rosenbergs’ case. That such disorderly intervention is more likely to prejudice than to help the representation of accused persons in highly publicized cases is self-evident. We discountenance this practice.
Vacating this stay is not to be construed as indorsing the wisdom or appropriateness to this case of a death sentence. That sentence, however, is permitted by law and, as was previously pointed out, is therefore not within this Court’s power of revision. 344 U. S. 889, 890.
Mr. Justice Clark,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Reed, Mr. Justice Jackson, Mr. Justice Burton, and Mr. Justice Minton join.
Seven times now have the defendants been before this Court. In addition, The Chief Justice, as well as individual Justices, has considered applications by the defendants. The Court of Appeals and the District Court have likewise given careful consideration to even more numerous applications than has this Court.
The defendants were sentenced to death on April 5, 1951. Beginning with our refusal to review the conviction and sentence in October 1952, each of the Justices has given the most painstaking consideration to the case. In fact, all during the past Term of this Court one or another facet of this litigation occupied the attention of the Court. At a Special Term on June 15, 1953, we denied for the sixth time the defendants’ plea. The next day an application was presented to Mr. Justice Douglas, contending that the penalty provisions of the Atomic Energy Act governed this prosecution; and that, since the jury did not find that the defendants committed the charged acts with intent to injure the United States nor recommend the imposition of the death penalty, the court had no power to impose the sentence of death. After a hearing Mr. Justice Douglas, finding that the contention had merit, granted a stay of execution. The Court convened in Special Term to review that determination. Cf. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U. S. 1 (1942).
Human lives are at stake; we need not turn this decision on fine points of procedure or a party’s technical standing to claim relief. Nor did Mr. Justice Douglas lack the power and, in view of his firm belief that the legal issues tendered him were substantial, he even had the duty to grant a temporary stay. But for me the short answer to the contention that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 may invalidate defendants’ death sentence is that the Atomic Energy Act cannot here apply. It is true that § 10 (b) (2) and (3) of that Act authorizes capital punishment only upon recommendation of a jury and a finding that the offense was committed with intent to injure the United States. 60 Stat. 755, 766, 42 U. S. C. § 1810 (b) (2), (3). (Notably, by that statute the death penalty may be imposed for peacetime offenses as well, thus exceeding in harshness the penalties provided by the Espionage Act.) This prosecution, however, charged a wartime violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 under which these elements are not prerequisite to a sentence of death. Where Congress by more than one statute proscribes a private course of conduct, the Government may choose to invoke either applicable law: “At least where different proof is required for each offense, a single act or transaction may violate more than one criminal statute.” United States v. Beacon Brass Co., 344 U. S. 43, 45 (1952); see also United States v. Noveck, 273 U. S. 202, 206 (1927); Gavieres v. United States, 220 U. S. 338 (1911). Nor does the partial overlap of two statutes necessarily work a pro tanto repealer of the earlier Act. Ibid. “It is a cardinal principle of construction that repeals by implication are not favored. When there are two acts upon the same subject, the rule is to give effect to both if possible.... The intention of the legislature to repeal ‘must be clear and manifest.’... It is not sufficient... ‘to establish that subsequent laws cover some or even all of the cases provided for by [the prior act]; for they may be merely affirmative, or cumulative, or auxiliary.’ There must be ‘a positive repugnancy between the provisions of the new law, and those of the old.’ ” United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 198 (1939). Otherwise the Government when charging a conspiracy to transmit both atomic and non-atomic secrets would have to split its prosecution into two alleged crimes. Section 10(b)(6) of the Atomic Energy Act itself, moreover, expressly provides that § 10 “shall not exclude the applicable provisions of any other laws...,” an unmistakable reference to the 1917 Espionage Act. Therefore this section of the Atomic Energy Act, instead of repealing the penalty provisions of the Espionage Act, in fact preserves them in undiminished force. Thus there is no warrant for superimposing the penalty provisions of the later Act upon the earlier law.
In any event, the Government could not have invoked the Atomic Energy Act against these defendants. The crux of the charge alleged overt acts committed in 1944 and 1945, years before that Act went into effect. While some overt acts did in fact take place as late as 1950, they related principally to defendants’ efforts to avoid detection and prosecution of earlier deeds. Grave doubts of unconstitutional ex post facto criminality would have attended any prosecution under that statute for transmitting atomic secrets before 1946. Since the Atomic Energy Act thus cannot cover the offenses charged, the alleged inconsistency of its penalty provisions with those of the Espionage Act cannot be sustained.
Our liberty is maintained only so long as justice is secure. To permit our judicial processes to be used to obstruct the course of justice destroys our freedom. Over two years ago the Rosenbergs were found guilty by a jury of a grave offense in time of war. Unlike other litigants they have had the attention of this Court seven times; each time their pleas have been denied. Though the penalty is great and our responsibility heavy, our duty is clear.
[Note: This opinion was filed July 16, 1953.]
195 F. 2d 583.
344 U. S. 838. The order noted that Mr. Justice Black was of the opinion that certiorari should be granted.
344 U. S. 889-890. The full text of the order reads:
“Motion for leave to file brief of Dr. W. E. B. Dubois and others, as amici curiae, denied. Petitions for rehearing denied. Memorandum filed by Mr. Justice FraNKfurter in No. 111. Mr. Justice Black adheres to his view that the petitions for certiorari should be granted.
“Mr. Justice FraNKfurter.
“Petitioners are under death sentence, and it is not unreasonable to feel that before life is taken review should be open in the highest court of the society which has condemned them. Such right of review was the law of the land for twenty years. By § 6 of the Act of February 6, 1889, 25 Stat. 655, 656, convictions in capital cases arising under federal statutes were appealable here. But in 1911 Congress abolished the appeal as of right, and since then death sentences have come here only under the same conditions that apply to "any criminal conviction in a federal court. (§§ 128, 238, 240 and 241 of the Judicial Code, 36 Stat. 1087, 1133, 1157.)
“The Courts of Appeals are charged by Congress with the duty of reviewing all criminal convictions. These are courts of great authority and corresponding responsibility. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was deeply conscious of its responsibility in this case. Speaking through Judge Frank, it said: 'Since two of the defendants must be put to death if the judgments stand, it goes without saying that we have scrutinized the record with extraordinary care to see whether it contains any of the errors asserted on this appeal.’ 195 F. 2d 583, 590.
“After further consideration, the Court has adhered to its denial of this petition for certiorari. Misconception regarding the meaning of such a denial persists despite repeated attempts at explanation. It means, and all that it means is, that there were not four members of the Court to whom the grounds on which the decision of the Court of Appeals was challenged seemed sufficiently important when judged by the standards governing the issue of the discretionary writ of certiorari. It also deserves to be repeated that the effective administration of justice precludes this Court from giving reasons, however briefly, for its denial of a petition for certiorari. I have heretofore explained the reasons that for me also militate against noting individual votes when a petition for certiorari is denied. See Chemical Bank & Trust Co. v. Group of Institutional Investors, 343 U. S. 982.
“Numerous grounds were urged in support of this petition for certiorari; the petition for rehearing raised five additional questions. So far as these questions come within the power of this Court to adjudicate, I do not, of course, imply any opinion upon them. One of the questions, however, first raised in the petition for rehearing, is beyond the scope of the authority of this Court, and I deem it appropriate to say so. A sentence imposed by a United States district court, even though it be a death sentence, is not within the power of this Court to revise.”
108 F. Supp. 798.
200 F. 2d 666.
345 U. S. 965. The full text of the order, Journal, May 25, 1953, p. 225, reads:
“Motions for leave to file briefs of National Lawyers Guild and Joseph Brainin et ah, as amici curiae denied. Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied. The order of the United States Court of Appeals of February 17, 1953, granting a stay of execution is vacated. Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Frankfurter referring to the positions they took when these cases were here last November, adhere to them. 344 U. S. 889. Mr. Justice Douglas is of the opinion the petition for certiorari should be granted.”
345 U. S. 989. The full text of the order reads:
“An application for stay of execution was filed herein on June 12, 1953. It was referred to Mr. Justice JacksoN, the appropriate Circuit Justice. Mr. Justice Jackson referred it to the Court for consideration and action, with the recommendation ‘that it be set for oral hearing on Monday, June 15, 1953, at which time the parties have agreed to be ready for argument.’
“Upon consideration of the recommendation, the Court declined to hear oral argument on the application.
“Mr, Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Burton, agreeing with Mr. Justice Jackson’s recommendation, believe that the application should be set for hearing on Monday, June 15, 1953.
“Thereupon, the Court gave consideration to the application for the stay, and denies it, Mr. Justice Burton joining in such denial.
“Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Jackson, believing that the application for a stay should not be acted upon without a hearing before the full Court, do not agree that the stay should be denied.
“Mr. Justice Black is of the opinion that the Court should grant a rehearing and a stay pending final disposition of the case. But since a sufficient number do not vote for a rehearing, he is willing to join those who wish to hear argument on the question of a stay.
“Mr. Justice Douglas would grant a stay and hear the case on the merits, as he thinks the petition for certiorari and the petition for rehearing present substantial questions. But since the Court has decided not to take the case, there would be no end served by hearing oral argument on the motion for a stay. For the motion presents no new substantial question not presented by the petition for certiorari and by. the petition for rehearing.”
345 U. S. 1003. The full text of the order, Journal, June 15, 1953, p. 250, reads:
“Petition for rehearing denied. Mr. Justice Frankfurter deems it appropriate to state once more that the reasons that preclude publication by the Court, as a general practice, of votes on petition for certiorari guide him in all cases, so that it has been his ‘unbroken practice not to note dissent from the Court’s disposition of petitions for certiorari.’ Chemical Bank Co. v. Investors, 343 U. S. 982; Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, 338 U. S. 912; Darr v. Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 227; Agoston v. Pennsylvania, 340 U. S. 844; Bondholders, Inc. v. Powell, 342 U. S. 921; Rosenberg v. United States, 344 U. S. 889, 345 U. S. 965. Partial disclosure of votes on successive stages of a certiorari proceeding does not present an accurate picture of what took place.
“Mr. Justice Black is of the opinion the petition for rehearing should be granted.”
346 U. S. 271. The full text of the order, Journal, June 15, 1953, p. 256, reads:
“The motion for leave to file petition for an original writ of habeas corpus is'denied. Mr. Justice Black dissents.
“Mr. Justice Frankfurter:
“ ‘The disposition of an application to this Court for habeas corpus is so rarely to be made by this Court directly that Congress has given the Court authority to transfer such an application to an appropriate district court. 28 U. S. C., § 2241. I do not favor such a disposition of this application because the substance of the allegations now made has already been considered by the District Court for the Southern District of New York and on review by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Neither can I join the Court in denying the application without more. I would set the application down for hearing before the full Court tomorrow forenoon. Oral argument frequently has a force beyond what the written word conveys.’ ”
Counsel for the Rosenbergs was aware of the existence of the Atomic Energy Act long before receiving the suggestion from counsel for Edelman. One argument, inter alia, advanced in the original certiorari petition, which was filed June 7, 1952, was that the sentence of death constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The requirement of the Atomic Energy Act of an intent to injure the United States as a prerequisite to the death penalty (42 U. S. C. § 1810 (b) (2) and (3) and § 1816) was cited in the petition in support of the cruel and unusual punishment argument. In the petition for certiorari, as well as in the petition for rehearing, filed October 28,1952, in regard to other contentions, counsel for the defendants cited Newman, Control of Information Eelating to Atomic Energy, 56 Yale L. J. 769. That article deals extensively with the relationship of sentences under the Atomic Energy Act to those under the Espionage Act.
The order denying a further stay, 346 U. S. 322, reads:
"Motion of the petitioners for a further
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 GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Arbitration Act requires courts to enforce private arbitration agreements. But like most laws, this one bears its qualifications. Among other things, § 1 says that "nothing herein" may be used to compel arbitration in disputes involving the "contracts of employment" of certain transportation workers. 9 U.S.C. § 1. And that qualification has sparked these questions: When a contract delegates questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator, must a court leave disputes over the application of § 1's exception for the arbitrator to resolve? And does the term "contracts of employment" refer only to contracts between employers and employees, or does it also reach contracts with independent contractors? Because courts across the country have disagreed on the answers to these questions, we took this case to resolve them.
I
New Prime is an interstate trucking company and Dominic Oliveira works as one of its drivers. But, at least on paper, Mr. Oliveira isn't an employee; the parties' contracts label him an independent contractor. Those agreements also instruct that any disputes arising out of the parties' relationship should be resolved by an arbitrator-even disputes over the scope of the arbitrator's authority.
Eventually, of course, a dispute did arise. In a class action lawsuit in federal court, Mr. Oliveira argued that New Prime denies its drivers lawful wages. The company may call its drivers independent contractors. But, Mr. Oliveira alleged, in reality New Prime treats them as employees and fails to pay the statutorily due minimum wage. In response to Mr. Oliveira's complaint, New Prime asked the court to invoke its statutory authority under the Act and compel arbitration according to the terms found in the parties' agreements.
That request led to more than a little litigation of its own. Even when the parties' contracts mandate arbitration, Mr. Oliveira observed, the Act doesn't always authorize a court to enter an order compelling it. In particular, § 1 carves out from the Act's coverage "contracts of employment of ... workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." And at least for purposes of this collateral dispute, Mr. Oliveira submitted, it doesn't matter whether you view him as an employee or independent contractor. Either way, his agreement to drive trucks for New Prime qualifies as a "contract[ ] of employment of ... [a] worker[ ] engaged in ... interstate commerce." Accordingly, Mr. Oliveira argued, the Act supplied the district court with no authority to compel arbitration in this case.
Naturally, New Prime disagreed. Given the extraordinary breadth of the parties' arbitration agreement, the company insisted that any question about § 1's application belonged for the arbitrator alone to resolve. Alternatively and assuming a court could address the question, New Prime contended that the term "contracts of employment" refers only to contracts that establish an employer-employee relationship. And because Mr. Oliveira is, in fact as well as form, an independent contractor, the company argued, § 1's exception doesn't apply; the rest of the statute does; and the district court was (once again) required to order arbitration.
Ultimately, the district court and the First Circuit sided with Mr. Oliveira. 857 F.3d 7 (2017). The court of appeals held, first, that in disputes like this a court should resolve whether the parties' contract falls within the Act's ambit or § 1's exclusion before invoking the statute's authority to order arbitration. Second, the court of appeals held that § 1' s exclusion of certain "contracts of employment" removes from the Act's coverage not only employer-employee contracts but also contracts involving independent contractors. So under any account of the parties' agreement in this case, the court held, it lacked authority under the Act to order arbitration.
II
In approaching the first question for ourselves, one thing becomes clear immediately. While a court's authority under the Arbitration Act to compel arbitration may be considerable, it isn't unconditional. If two parties agree to arbitrate future disputes between them and one side later seeks to evade the deal, §§ 3 and 4 of the Act often require a court to stay litigation and compel arbitration "accord[ing to] the terms" of the parties' agreement. But this authority doesn't extend to all private contracts, no matter how emphatically they may express a preference for arbitration.
Instead, antecedent statutory provisions limit the scope of the court's powers under §§ 3 and 4. Section 2 provides that the Act applies only when the parties' agreement to arbitrate is set forth as a "written provision in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce." And § 1 helps define § 2's terms. Most relevant for our purposes, § 1 warns that "nothing" in the Act "shall apply" to "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." Why this very particular qualification? By the time it adopted the Arbitration Act in 1925, Congress had already prescribed alternative employment dispute resolution regimes for many transportation workers. And it seems Congress "did not wish to unsettle" those arrangements in favor of whatever arbitration procedures the parties' private contracts might happen to contemplate. Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105, 121, 121 S.Ct. 1302, 149 L.Ed.2d 234 (2001).
Given the statute's terms and sequencing, we agree with the First Circuit that a court should decide for itself whether § 1's "contracts of employment" exclusion applies before ordering arbitration. After all, to invoke its statutory powers under §§ 3 and 4 to stay litigation and compel arbitration according to a contract's terms, a court must first know whether the contract itself falls within or beyond the boundaries of §§ 1 and 2. The parties' private agreement may be crystal clear and require arbitration of every question under the sun, but that does not necessarily mean the Act authorizes a court to stay litigation and send the parties to an arbitral forum.
Nothing in our holding on this score should come as a surprise. We've long stressed the significance of the statute's sequencing. In Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co. of America, 350 U.S. 198, 201-202, 76 S.Ct. 273, 100 L.Ed. 199 (1956), we recognized that " Sections 1, 2, and 3 [and 4] are integral parts of a whole.... [Sections] 1 and 2 define the field in which Congress was legislating," and §§ 3 and 4 apply only to contracts covered by those provisions. In Circuit City, we acknowledged that " Section 1 exempts from the [Act] ... contracts of employment of transportation workers." 532 U.S., at 119, 121 S.Ct. 1302. And in Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1, 10-11, and n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 852, 79 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984), we noted that "the enforceability of arbitration provisions" under §§ 3 and 4 depends on whether those provisions are "part of a written maritime contract or a contract 'evidencing a transaction involving commerce' " under § 2 -which, in turn, depends on the application of § 1's exception for certain "contracts of employment."
To be sure, New Prime resists this straightforward understanding. The company argues that an arbitrator should resolve any dispute over § 1's application because of the "delegation clause" in the parties' contract and what is sometimes called the "severability principle." A delegation clause gives an arbitrator authority to decide even the initial question whether the parties' dispute is subject to arbitration. Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. 63, 68-69, 130 S.Ct. 2772, 177 L.Ed.2d 403 (2010). And under the severability principle, we treat a challenge to the validity of an arbitration agreement (or a delegation clause) separately from a challenge to the validity of the entire contract in which it appears. Id., at 70-71, 130 S.Ct. 2772. Unless a party specifically challenges the validity of the agreement to arbitrate, both sides may be required to take all their disputes-including disputes about the validity of their broader contract-to arbitration. Ibid. Applying these principles to this case, New Prime notes that Mr. Oliveira has not specifically challenged the parties' delegation clause and submits that any controversy should therefore proceed only and immediately before an arbitrator.
But all this overlooks the necessarily antecedent statutory inquiry we've just discussed. A delegation clause is merely a specialized type of arbitration agreement, and the Act "operates on this additional arbitration agreement just as it does on any other." Id., at 70, 130 S.Ct. 2772. So a court may use §§ 3 and 4 to enforce a delegation clause only if the clause appears in a "written provision in ... a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce" consistent with § 2. And only if the contract in which the clause appears doesn't trigger § 1's "contracts of employment" exception. In exactly the same way, the Act's severability principle applies only if the parties' arbitration agreement appears in a contract that falls within the field §§ 1 and 2 describe. We acknowledged as much some time ago, explaining that, before invoking the severability principle, a court should "determine[ ] that the contract in question is within the coverage of the Arbitration Act." Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 395, 402, 87 S.Ct. 1801, 18 L.Ed.2d 1270 (1967).
III
That takes us to the second question: Did the First Circuit correctly resolve the merits of the § 1 challenge in this case? Recall that § 1 excludes from the Act's compass "contracts of employment of ... workers engaged in ... interstate commerce." Happily, everyone before us agrees that Mr. Oliveira qualifies as a "worker[ ] engaged in ... interstate commerce." For purposes of this appeal, too, Mr. Oliveira is willing to assume (but not grant) that his contracts with New Prime establish only an independent contractor relationship.
With that, the disputed question comes into clear view: What does the term "contracts of employment" mean? If it refers only to contracts that reflect an employer-employee relationship, then § 1's exception is irrelevant and a court is free to order arbitration, just as New Prime urges. But if the term also encompasses contracts that require an independent contractor to perform work, then the exception takes hold and a court lacks authority under the Act to order arbitration, exactly as Mr. Oliveira argues.
A
In taking up this question, we bear an important caution in mind. "[I]t's a 'fundamental canon of statutory construction' that words generally should be 'interpreted as taking their ordinary ... meaning ... at the time Congress enacted the statute.' " Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States, 585 U.S. ----, ----, 138 S.Ct. 2067, 2074, 201 L.Ed.2d 490 (2018) (quoting Perrin v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42, 100 S.Ct. 311, 62 L.Ed.2d 199 (1979) ). See also Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., 571 U.S. 220, 227, 134 S.Ct. 870, 187 L.Ed.2d 729 (2014). After all, if judges could freely invest old statutory terms with new meanings, we would risk amending legislation outside the "single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure" the Constitution commands. INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 951, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). We would risk, too, upsetting reliance interests in the settled meaning of a statute. Cf. 2B N. Singer & J. Singer, Sutherland on Statutes and Statutory Construction § 56A:3 (rev. 7th ed. 2012). Of course, statutes may sometimes refer to an external source of law and fairly warn readers that they must abide that external source of law, later amendments and modifications included. Id ., § 51:8 (discussing the reference canon). But nothing like that exists here. Nor has anyone suggested any other appropriate reason that might allow us to depart from the original meaning of the statute at hand.
That, we think, holds the key to the case. To many lawyerly ears today, the term "contracts of employment" might call to mind only agreements between employers and employees (or what the common law sometimes called masters and servants). Suggestively, at least one recently published law dictionary defines the word "employment" to mean "the relationship between master and servant." Black's Law Dictionary 641 (10th ed. 2014). But this modern intuition isn't easily squared with evidence of the term's meaning at the time of the Act's adoption in 1925. At that time, a "contract of employment" usually meant nothing more than an agreement to perform work. As a result, most people then would have understood § 1 to exclude not only agreements between employers and employees but also agreements that require independent contractors to perform work.
What's the evidence to support this conclusion? It turns out that in 1925 the term "contract of employment" wasn't defined in any of the (many) popular or legal dictionaries the parties cite to us. And surely that's a first hint the phrase wasn't then a term of art bearing some specialized meaning. It turns out, too, that the dictionaries of the era consistently afforded the word "employment" a broad construction, broader than may be often found in dictionaries today. Back then, dictionaries tended to treat "employment" more or less as a synonym for "work." Nor did they distinguish between different kinds of work or workers: All work was treated as employment, whether or not the common law criteria for a master-servant relationship happened to be satisfied.
What the dictionaries suggest, legal authorities confirm. This Court's early 20th-century cases used the phrase "contract of employment" to describe work agreements involving independent contractors. Many state court cases did the same. So did a variety of federal statutes. And state statutes too. We see here no evidence that a "contract of employment" necessarily signaled a formal employer-employee or master-servant relationship.
More confirmation yet comes from a neighboring term in the statutory text.
Recall that the Act excludes from its coverage "contracts of employment of ... any ... class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." 9 U.S.C. § 1 (emphasis added). Notice Congress didn't use the word "employees" or "servants," the natural choices if the term "contracts of employment" addressed them alone. Instead, Congress spoke of "workers," a term that everyone agrees easily embraces independent contractors. That word choice may not mean everything, but it does supply further evidence still that Congress used the term "contracts of employment" in a broad sense to capture any contract for the performance of work by workers .
B
What does New Prime have to say about the case building against it? Mainly, it seeks to shift the debate from the term "contracts of employment" to the word "employee." Today, the company emphasizes, the law often distinguishes between employees and independent contractors. Employees are generally understood as those who work "in the service of another person (the employer) under an express or implied contract of hire, under which the employer has the right to control the details of work performance." Black's Law Dictionary, at 639. Meanwhile, independent contractors are sometimes described as those "entrusted to undertake a specific project but who [are] left free to do the assigned work and to choose the method for accomplishing it." Id., at 888. New Prime argues that, by 1925, the words "employee" and "independent contractor" had already assumed these distinct meanings. And given that, the company contends, the phrase "contracts of employment " should be understood to refer only to relationships between employers and employees .
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Oliveira disagrees. He replies that, while the term "employment" dates back many centuries, the word "employee" only made its first appearance in English in the 1800s. See Oxford English Dictionary (3d ed., Mar. 2014), www.oed.com/view/Entry/61374 (all Internet materials as last visited Jan. 9, 2019). At that time, the word from which it derived, "employ," simply meant to "apply (a thing) to some definite purpose." 3 J. Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles 129 (1891). And even in 1910, Black's Law Dictionary reported that the term "employee" had only "become somewhat naturalized in our language." Black's Law Dictionary 421 (2d ed. 1910).
Still, the parties do share some common ground. They agree that the word "employee" eventually came into wide circulation and came to denote those who work for a wage at the direction of another. They agree, too, that all this came to pass in part because the word "employee" didn't suffer from the same "historical baggage" of the older common law term "servant," and because it proved useful when drafting legislation to regulate burgeoning industries and their labor forces in the early 20th century. The parties even agree that the development of the term "employee" may have come to influence and narrow our understanding of the word "employment" in comparatively recent years and may be why today it might signify to some a "relationship between master and servant."
But if the parties' extended etymological debate persuades us of anything, it is that care is called for. The words "employee" and "employment" may share a common root and an intertwined history. But they also developed at different times and in at least some different ways. The only question in this case concerns the meaning of the term "contracts of employment " in 1925. And, whatever the word "employee" may have meant at that time, and however it may have later influenced the meaning of "employment," the evidence before us remains that, as dominantly understood in 1925, a contract of employment did not necessarily imply the existence of an employer-employee or master-servant relationship.
When New Prime finally turns its attention to the term in dispute, it directs us to Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1, 13, 35 S.Ct. 240, 59 L.Ed. 441 (1915). There and in other cases like it, New Prime notes, courts sometimes used the phrase "contracts of employment" to describe what today we'd recognize as agreements between employers and employees. But this proves little. No one doubts that employer-employee agreements to perform work qualified as "contracts of employment" in 1925-and documenting that fact does nothing to negate the possibility that "contracts of employment" also embraced agreements by independent contractors to perform work. Coming a bit closer to the mark, New Prime eventually cites a handful of early 20th-century legal materials that seem to use the term "contracts of employment" to refer exclusively to employer-employee agreements. But from the record amassed before us, these authorities appear to represent at most the vanguard, not the main body, of contemporaneous usage.
New Prime's effort to explain away the statute's suggestive use of the term "worker" proves no more compelling. The company reminds us that the statute excludes "contracts of employment" for "seamen" and "railroad employees" as well as other transportation workers. And because "seamen" and "railroad employees" included only employees in 1925, the company reasons, we should understand "any other class of workers engaged in ... interstate commerce" to bear a similar construction. But this argument rests on a precarious premise. At the time of the Act's passage, shipboard surgeons who tended injured sailors were considered "seamen" though they likely served in an independent contractor capacity. Even the term "railroad employees" may have swept more broadly at the time of the Act's passage than might seem obvious today. In 1922, for example, the Railroad Labor Board interpreted the word "employee" in the Transportation Act of 1920 to refer to anyone "engaged in the customary work directly contributory to the operation of the railroads." And the Erdman Act, a statute enacted to address disruptive railroad strikes at the end of the 19th century, seems to evince an equally broad understanding of "railroad employees."
Unable to squeeze more from the statute's text, New Prime is left to appeal to its policy. This Court has said that Congress adopted the Arbitration Act in an effort to counteract judicial hostility to arbitration and establish "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). To abide that policy, New Prime suggests, we must order arbitration according to the terms of the parties' agreement. But often and by design it is "hard-fought compromise[ ]," not cold logic, that supplies the solvent needed for a bill to survive the legislative process. Board of Governors, FRS v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U.S. 361, 374, 106 S.Ct. 681, 88 L.Ed.2d 691 (1986). If courts felt free to pave over bumpy statutory texts in the name of more expeditiously advancing a policy goal, we would risk failing to "tak[e] ... account of" legislative compromises essential to a law's passage and, in that way, thwart rather than honor "the effectuation of congressional intent." Ibid. By respecting the qualifications of § 1 today, we "respect the limits up to which Congress was prepared" to go when adopting the Arbitration Act. United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 298, 90 S.Ct. 2117, 26 L.Ed.2d 608 (1970).
Finally, and stretching in a different direction entirely, New Prime invites us to look beyond the Act. Even if the statute doesn't supply judges with the power to compel arbitration in this case, the company says we should order it anyway because courts always enjoy the inherent authority to stay litigation in favor of an alternative dispute resolution mechanism of the parties' choosing. That, though, is an argument we decline to tangle with. The courts below did not address it and we granted certiorari only to resolve existing confusion about the application of the Arbitration Act, not to explore other potential avenues for reaching a destination it does not.
*
When Congress enacted the Arbitration Act in 1925, the term "contracts of employment" referred to agreements to perform work. No less than those who came before him, Mr. Oliveira is entitled to the benefit of that same understanding today. Accordingly, his agreement with New Prime falls within § 1's exception, the court of appeals was correct that it lacked authority under the Act to order arbitration, and the judgment is
Affirmed.
Justice KAVANAUGH took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
See, e.g., 3 J. Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles 130 (1891) (defining "employment" as, among other things, "[t]he action or process of employing; the state of being employed. The service (of a person). That on which (one) is employed; business; occupation; a special errand or commission. A person's regular occupation or business; a trade or profession"); 3 The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia 1904 (1914) (defining "employment" as "[w]ork or business of any kind"); W. Harris, Webster's New International Dictionary 718 (1st ed. 1909) (listing "work" as a synonym for "employment"); Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 329 (3d ed. 1916) (same); Black's Law Dictionary 422 (2d ed. 1910) ("an engagement or rendering services" for oneself or another); 3 Oxford English Dictionary 130 (1933) ("[t]hat on which (one) is employed; business; occupation; a special errand or commission").
See, e.g ., Watkins v. Sedberry, 261 U.S. 571, 575, 43 S.Ct. 411, 67 L.Ed. 802 (1923) (agreement between trustee and attorney to recover bankrupt's property); Owen v. Dudley & Michener, 217 U.S. 488, 494, 30 S.Ct. 602, 54 L.Ed. 851 (1910) (agreement between Indian tribe and attorneys to pursue claims).
See, e.g ., Lindsay v. McCaslin (Two Cases), 123 Me. 197, 200, 122 A. 412, 413 (1923) ("When the contract of employment has been reduced to writing, the question whether the person employed was an independent contractor or merely a servant is determined by the court as a matter of law"); Tankersley v. Webster, 116 Okla. 208, 210, 243 P. 745, 747 (1925) ("[T]he contract of employment between Tankersley and Casey was admitted in evidence without objections, and we think conclusively shows that Casey was an independent contractor"); Waldron v. Garland Pocahontas Coal Co., 89 W.Va. 426, 427, 109 S.E. 729 (1921) (syllabus) ( "Whether a person performing work for another is an independent contractor depends upon a consideration of the contract of employment, the nature of the business, the circumstances under which the contract was made and the work was done"); see also App. to Brief for Respondent 1a-12a (citing additional examples).
See, e.g., Act of Mar. 19, 1924, ch. 70, § 5, 43 Stat. 28 (limiting payment of fees to attorneys "employed" by the Cherokee Tribe to litigate claims against the United States to those "stipulated in the contract of employment"); Act of June 7, 1924, ch. 300, §§ 2, 5, 43 Stat. 537 -538 (providing same for Choctaw and Chickasaw Tribes); Act of Aug. 24, 1921, ch. 89, 42 Stat. 192 (providing that no funds may be used to compensate "any attorney, regular or special, for the United States Shipping Board or the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation unless the contract of employment has been approved by the Attorney General of the United States"). See also App. to Brief for Respondent 13a (citing additional examples).
See, e.g., Act of Mar. 10, 1909, ch. 70, § 1, 1909 Kan. Sess. Laws p. 121 (referring to "contracts of employment of auditors, accountants, engineers, attorneys, counselors and architects for any special purpose"); Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 4, § 4, 1909 Okla. Sess. Laws p. 118 ("Should the amount of the attorney's fee be agreed upon in the contract of employment, then such attorney's lien and cause of action against such adverse party shall be for the amount so agreed upon"); Act of Mar. 4, 1924, ch. 88, § 1, 1924 Va. Acts ch. 91 (allowing extension of "contracts of employment" between the state and contractors with respect to the labor of prisoners); App. to Brief for Respondent 14a-15a (citing additional examples).
See, e.g., Atlantic Transp. Co. v. Coneys, 82 F. 177, 178 (C.A.2 1897) ; Nyback v. Champagne Lumber Co., 109 F. 732, 741 (C.A.7 1901).
See Carlson, Why the Law Still Can't Tell an Employee When It Sees One and How It Ought To Stop Trying, 22 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 295, 309 (2001) (discussing the "historical baggage" of the term "servant"); Broden, General Rules Determining the Employment Relationship Under Social Security Laws: After Twenty Years an Unsolved Problem, 33 Temp. L.Q. 307, 327 (1960) (describing use of the term "employer-employee," in contradistinction to "master-servant," in the Social Security laws). Legislators searched to find a term that fully encompassed the broad protections they sought to provide and considered an "assortment of vague and uncertain terms," including " 'servant,' ... 'employee,' ... 'workman,' 'laborer,' 'wage earner,' 'operative,' or 'hireling.' " Carlson, 22 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L., at 308. Eventually " 'employee' prevailed, if only by default, and the choice was confirmed by the next wave of protective legislation-workers' compensation laws in the early years of the Twentieth Century." Id., at 309.
Black's Law Dictionary 641 (10th ed. 2014); see also P. Durkin, Release Notes: The Changes in Empathy, Employ, and Empire (Mar. 13, 2014) ("Over time" the meaning of several employ-related words have "reflect[ed] changes in the world of work" and their meaning "shows an increasingly marked narrowing"), online at https://public.oed.com/blog/march-2014-update-release-notes/.
See, e.g., 1 T. Conyngton, Business Law: A Working Manual of Every-day Law 302-303 (2d ed. 1920); Newland v. Bear, 218 App.Div. 308, 309, 218 N.Y.S. 81, 81-82 (1926) ; Anderson v. State Indus. Accident Comm'n, 107 Ore. 304, 311-312, 215 P. 582, 583, 585 (1923) ; N. Dosker, Manual of Compensation Law: State and Federal 8 (1917).
See, e.g., The Sea Lark, 14 F.2d 201 (W.D.Wash.1926) ; The Buena Ventura, 243 F. 797, 799 (S.D.N.Y.1916) ; Holt v. Cummings, 102 Pa. 212, 215 (1883) ; Allan v. State S.S. Co., 132 N.Y. 91, 99, 30 N.E. 482, 485 (1892) ("The work which the physician does after the vessel starts on the voyage is his and not the ship owner's").
Transportation Act of 1920, §§ 304, 307, 41 Stat. 456 ; Railway Employees' Dept., A.F. of L. v. Indiana Harbor Belt R. Co ., Decision No. 982, 3 R.L.B. 332, 337 (1922).
The Act provided for arbitration between railroads and workers, and defined "employees" as "all persons actually engaged in any capacity in train operation or train service of any description." Act of June 1, 1898, ch. 370, 30 Stat. 424. The Act also specified that the railroads would "be responsible for the acts and defaults of such employees in the same manner and to the same extent as if ... said employees [were] directly employed by it." Id., at 425. See Dempsey, Transportation: A Legal History, 30 Transp. L.J. 235, 273 (2003).
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.
Per Curiam.
The judgment is reversed. We are not bound by the California court’s contrary conclusion and hold that the incidence of the state and local sales taxes falls upon the national bank as purchaser and not upon the vendors. The national bank is therefore exempt from the taxes under former 12 U. S. C. § 548 (1964 ed.), which was in effect at the time here pertinent. First Agricultural Nat. Bank v. Tax Comm’n, 392 U. S. 339, 346-348 (1968).
Reversed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
Petitioners in this case incurred substantial costs defending, and then settling, third-party tort claims arising out of their performance of Government contracts. In this action under the Tucker Act, they sought to recover these costs from the Government on alternative theories of contractual indemnification or warranty of specifications provided by the Government. We hold that they may not do so.
When the United States had armed forces stationed in Southeast Asia in the 1960’s, it asked several chemical manufacturers, including petitioners Hercules Incorporated (Hercules) and Wm. T. Thompson Company (Thompson), to manufacture and sell it a specific phenoxy herbicide, code-named Agent Orange. The Department of Defense wanted to spray the defoliant in high concentrations on tree and plant life in order to both eliminate the enemy’s hiding places and destroy its food supplies. From 1964 to 1968, the Government, pursuant to the Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA), 64 Stat. 798, as amended, 50 U. S. C. App. § 2061 et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp. V), entered into a series of fixed-price production contracts with petitioners. The military prescribed the formula and detailed specifications for manufacture. The contracts also instructed the suppliers to mark the drums containing the herbicide with a 3-inch orange band with “[n]o further identification as to conten[t].” Lodging 30 (available in clerk’s office case file). Petitioners fully complied.
In the late 1970’s, Vietnam veterans and their families began filing lawsuits against nine manufacturers of Agent Orange, including petitioners. The plaintiffs alleged that the veterans’ exposure to dioxin, a toxic byproduct found in Agent Orange and believed by many to be hazardous, had caused various health problems. The lawsuits were consolidated in the Eastern District of New York and a class action was certified. In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, 506 F. Supp. 762, 787-792 (1980).
District Judge Pratt awarded petitioners summary judgment on the basis of the Government contractor defense in May 1983. In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, 565 F. Supp. 1263. Before the judgment was entered, however, the case was transferred to Chief Judge Weinstein, who withdrew Judge Pratt’s opinion, ruled that the viability of the Government contractor defense could not be determined before trial, and reinstated petitioners as defendants. See In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, 597 F. Supp. 740, 753 (1984).
In May 1984, hours before the start of trial, the parties settled. The defendants agreed to create a $180 million settlement fund with each manufacturer contributing on a market-share basis. Hercules’ share was $18,772,568; Thompson’s was $3,096,597. Petitioners also incurred costs defending these suits exceeding $9 million combined.
Petitioners want the United States to reimburse them for the costs of defending and settling this litigation. They attempted to recover first in District Court under tort theories of contribution and noncontractual indemnification. Having failed there, they each sued the Government in the United States Claims Court, invoking jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1491, and raising various claims sounding in contract. On the Government’s motions, the Claims Court granted summary judgment against petitioners and dismissed both complaints. Hercules, Inc. v. United States, 25 Cl. Ct. 616 (1992); Wm. T. Thompson Co. v. United States, 26 Cl. Ct. 17 (1992).
The two cases were consolidated for appeal and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed. 24 F. 3d 188 (1994). The court held that petitioners’ claim of implied warranty of specifications failed because petitioners could not prove causation between the alleged breach and the damages. The court explained that, had petitioners pursued the class-action litigation to completion, the Government contractor defense would have barred the imposition of tort liability against them. The Government contractor defense, which many courts recognized before the Agent Orange settlement, but which this Court did not consider until afterward, shields contractors from tort liability for products manufactured for the Government in accordance with Government specifications, if the contractor warned the United States about any hazards known to the contractor but not to the Government. Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., 487 U. S. 500, 512 (1988). Because the Court of Appeals believed petitioners could have availed themselves of this defense, the court held that, by settling, petitioners voluntarily assumed liability for which the Government was not responsible. It also rejected Thompson’s claim of contractual indemnification. Thompson had argued that the Government, pursuant to § 707 of the DPA, 50 U. S. C. App. § 2157 (1988 ed.), impliedly promised to indemnify Thompson for any liabilities incurred in performing under the DPA. Not persuaded, the court held that §707 did not create indemnification, but only provided a defense to a suit brought against the contractor by a disgruntled customer whose work order the DPA contract displaced. We granted certiorari, 514 U. S. 1049 (1995), and now affirm the judgment below but on different grounds.
We begin by noting the limits of federal jurisdiction. “[T]he United States, as sovereign, ‘is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued . . . and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.’ ” United States v. Testan, 424 U. S. 392, 399 (1976), quoting United States v. Sherwood, 312 U. S. 584, 586 (1941). Congress created the Claims Court to permit “a special and limited class of cases” to proceed against the United States, Tennessee v. Sneed, 96 U. S. 69, 75 (1878), and the court “can take cognizance only of those [claims] which by the terms of some act of Congress are committed to it,” Thurston v. United States, 232 U. S. 469, 476 (1914); United States v. Sherwood, supra, at 586-589. The Tucker Act confers upon the court jurisdiction to hear and determine, inter alia, claims against the United States founded upon any “express or implied” contract with the United States. 28 U. S. C. § 1491(a).
We have repeatedly held that this jurisdiction extends only to contracts either express or implied in fact, and not to claims on contracts implied in law. Sutton v. United States, 256 U. S. 575, 581 (1921); Merritt v. United States, 267 U. S. 338, 341 (1925); United States v. Minnesota Mut. Investment Co., 271 U. S. 212, 217 (1926); United States v. Mitchell, 463 U. S. 206, 218 (1983). Each material term or contractual obligation, as well as the contract as a whole, is subject to this jurisdictional limitation. See, e. g., Sutton, supra, at 580-581 (refusing to recognize an implied agreement to pay the fair value of work performed because the term was not “express or implied in fact” in the Government contract for dredging services); Lopez v. A. C. & S., Inc., 858 F. 2d 712, 714-715, 716 (CA Fed. 1988) (a Spearin warranty within an asbestos contract must be implied in fact).
The distinction between “implied in fact” and “implied in law,” and the consequent limitation, is well established in our cases. An agreement implied in fact is “founded upon a meeting of minds, which, although not embodied in an express contract, is inferred, as a fact, from conduct of the parties showing, in the light of the surrounding circumstances, their tacit understanding.” Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 592, 597 (1923). See also Russell v. United States, 182 U. S. 516, 530 (1901) (“[T]o give the Court of Claims jurisdiction the demand sued on must be founded on a convention between the parties — ‘a coming together of minds’”). By contrast, an agreement implied in law is a “fiction of law” where “a promise is imputed to perform a legal duty, as to repay money obtained by fraud or duress.” Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., supra, at 597.
Petitioners do not contend that their contracts contain express warranty or indemnification provisions. Therefore, for them to prevail, they must establish that, based on the circumstances at the time of contracting, there was an implied agreement between the parties to provide the undertakings that petitioners allege. We consider petitioners’ warranty-of-specifications and contractual-indemnification claims in turn.
The seminal case recognizing a cause of action for breach of contractual warranty of specifications is United States v. Spearin, 248 U. S. 132 (1918). In that case, Spearin had contracted to build a dry dock in accordance with the Government’s plans which called for the relocation of a storm sewer. After Spearin had moved the sewer, but before he had completed the dry dock, the sewer broke and caused the site to flood. The United States refused to pay for the damages and annulled the contract. Spearin filed suit to recover the balance due on his work and lost profits. This Court held that “if the contractor is bound to build according to plans and specifications prepared by [the Government], the contractor will not be responsible for the consequences of defects in the plans and specifications.” Id., at 136. From this, petitioners contend the United States is responsible for costs incurred in defending and settling the third-party tort claims.
Neither the warranty nor Spearin extends that far. When the Government provides specifications directing how a contract is to be performed, the Government warrants that the contractor will be able to perform the contract satisfactorily if it follows the specifications. The specifications will not frustrate performance or make it impossible. It is quite logical to infer from the circumstance of one party providing specifications for performance that that party warrants the capability of performance. But this circumstance alone does not support a further inference that would extend the warranty beyond performance to third-party claims against the contractor. In this case, for example, it would be strange to conclude that the United States, understanding the herbicide’s military use, actually contemplated a warranty that would extend to sums a manufacturer paid to a third party to settle claims such as are involved in the present action. It seems more likely that the Government would avoid such an obligation, because reimbursement through contract would provide a contractor with what is denied to it through tort law. See Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U. S. 666 (1977).
As an alternative basis for recovery, Thompson contends that the context in which the Government compelled it to manufacture Agent Orange constitutes an implied-in-fact agreement by the Government to indemnify for losses to third parties. The Government required Thompson to produce under authority of the DPA and threat of civil and criminal fines, imposed detailed specifications, had superior knowledge of the hazards, and, to a measurable extent, seized Thompson’s processing facilities. Under these conditions, petitioner contends, the contract must be read to include an implied agreement to protect the contractor and indemnify its losses. We cannot agree.
The circumstances surrounding the contracting are only relevant to the extent that they help us deduce what the parties to the contract agreed to in fact. These conditions here do not, we think, give rise to an implied-in-fact indemnity agreement. There is also reason to think that a contracting officer would not agree to the open-ended indemnification alleged here. The Anti-Deficiency Act bars a federal employee or agency from entering into a contract for future payment of money in advance of, or in excess of, an existing appropriation. 31 U. S. C. § 1341. Ordinarily no federal appropriation covers contractors’ payments to third-party tort claimants in these circumstances, and the Comptroller General has repeatedly ruled that Government procurement agencies may not enter into the type of open-ended indemnity for third-party liability that petitioner Thompson claims to have implicitly received under the Agent Orange contracts. We view the Anti-Deficiency Act, and the contracting officer’s presumed knowledge of its prohibition, as strong evidence that the officer would not have provided, in fact, the contractual indemnification Thompson claims. In an effort to avoid the Act’s reach, Thompson argues that the Anti-Deficiency Act is not applicable to an implied-in-fact indemnity because such an indemnification is “judicially fashioned” and is “not an express contractual provision.” Brief for Petitioners 41. However, “[t]he limitation upon the authority to impose contract obligations upon the United States is as applicable to contracts by implication as it is to those expressly made.” Sutton, 256 U. S., at 580 (opinion of Brandeis, J.).
When Thompson contracted with the United States, statutory mechanisms existed under which a Government contracting officer could provide an indemnity agreement to specified classes of contractors under specified conditions. See, e. g., 50 U. S. C. § 1431 (1988 ed., Supp. V) (permitting the President, whenever he deems it necessary to facilitate national defense, to authorize Government contracting without regard to other provisions of law regulating the making of contracts; in 1958, the President, in Executive Order No. 10789, delegated this authority to the Department of Defense, provided that the contracts were “within the limits of the amounts appropriated and the contract authorization therefor” and “[pjroper records of all actions taken under the authority” were maintained; in 1971, the President amended the Order to specify the conditions under which indemnification could be provided to defense contractors); 10 U. S. C. § 2354 (1956 statute authorizing indemnification provisions in contracts of a military department for research or development); 42 U. S. C. § 2210 (indemnity scheme, first enacted in 1957, for liability arising out of a limited class of nuclear incidents, described in Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 63-67 (1978)). These statutes, set out in meticulous detail and each supported by a panoply of implementing regulations, would be entirely unnecessary if an implied agreement to indemnify could arise from the circumstances of contracting. We will not interpret the DPA contracts so as to render these statutes and regulations superfluous. Cf. Astoria Federal Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 112 (1991).
We find unpersuasive Thompson’s argument that §707 of the DPA reveals Congress’ intent to hold harmless manufacturers for any liabilities which flow from compliance with an order issued under the DPA. Thompson reads the provision too broadly. The statute plainly provides immunity, not indemnity. By expressly providing a defense to liability, Congress does not implicitly agree that, if liability is imposed notwithstanding that defense, the Government will reimburse the unlucky defendant. We think Thompson’s reliance on Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic S. S. Corp., 350 U. S. 124 (1956), is likewise misplaced; there, in an action between private parties, we held that the stevedore was liable to the shipowner for the amount the latter paid in damages to an injured employee of the former. Here Thompson claims a breach of warranty by its customer, not by its seller and supplier.
Perhaps recognizing the weakness of their legal position, petitioners plead “simple fairness,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 3, and ask us to “redress the unmistakable inequities,” Brief for Petitioners 40. Fairness, of course, is in many respects a comparative concept, and the fact that the veterans who claimed physical injury from the use of Agent Orange could not recover against the Government, see Feres v. United States, 340 U. S. 135 (1950), considerably weakens petitioners’ equitable appeal. But in any event we are constrained by our limited jurisdiction and may not entertain claims “based merely on equitable considerations.” United States v. Minnesota Mut. Investment Co., 271 U. S., at 217-218.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Nearly 800 plaintiffs decided to “opt out” of the certified class and to proceed with their claims independent of the class action. After the class action settled, the defendant manufacturers sought and received summary judgment against these plaintiffs. The District Court found that the opt-out plaintiffs failed to present credible evidence of a causal connection between the veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange and their alleged injuries and that the Government contractor defense barred liability. In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, 611 F. Supp. 1223 (1985). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, but solely on the basis of the Government contractor defense. In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, 818 F. 2d 187, 189 (1987), cert. denied sub nom. Krupkin v. Dow Chemical Co., 487 U. S. 1234 (1988).
The District Court dismissed the claims, In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, supra, and the Second Circuit affirmed. The appeals court found first that Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U. S. 666 (1977), precluded such recovery and second that “well-established principles of tort law” would not recognize contribution and indemnity where the underlying claims that settled “were without merit.” In re “Agent Orange” Product Liability Litigation, supra, at 207.
Thompson also raised in its amended complaint a claim under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, but subsequently abandoned that claim while still in the Claims Court. Wm. T. Thompson Co. v. United States, 26 Cl. Ct. 17, 22, n. 6 (1992).
Justice Breyer’s dissent does not distinguish between, or separately address, the warranty-of-specifieations and contractual-indemnification claims. The dissent further observes that petitioners “also set forth” a third “much more general fact-based claim.” Post, at 436. This third claim, we believe, is indistinguishable from the contractual-indemnification claim that Thompson (but not Hercules) has raised, and which we address. To the extent that it differs from a claim for contractual indemnification, we decline to consider it; such a claim was neither presented to the Court of Appeals nor argued in the briefs to this Court.
Under the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982, the newly created Claims Court inherited substantially all of the trial court jurisdiction of the Court of Claims. 96 Stat. 25. In 1992, Congress changed the title of the Claims Court and it is now the United States Court of Federal Claims. Federal Courts Administration Act of 1992, 106 Stat. 4506. Because the most recent change went into effect after that court rendered its decision in this case, we shall refer to it as the Claims Court throughout this opinion.
Justice Breyer asserts, post, at 440, that “the majority ... implies] that a 1960’s contracting officer would not have accepted an indemnification provision because of Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U. S. 666 (1977).” The case is cited not for such an implication, but to provide added support for our decision not to extend the warranty-of-specification claim beyond performance. Although we decided Stencel after the formation of the Agent Orange contracts, we observed in that opinion that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1964 had adopted the position we would hold in Stencel, and that decisions inconsistent with that view began to arise in the Circuits only in 1972. Stencel, 431 U. S., at 669, n. 6 (citing United Air Lines, Inc. v. Wiener, 335 F. 2d 379,404 (CA9 1964), and Barr v. Brezina Constr. Co., 464 F. 2d 1141, 1143-1144 (CA10 1972)). Therefore, when the contracts at issue were drafted, Wiener at the very least suggested that the Government would not be liable under a tort theory.
Hercules did not plead contractual indemnification in its complaint or raise the claim in the Court of Appeals. Indeed, in the Claims Court, Hercules expressly disavowed having raised any contractual-indemnification claim. Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss and for Summary Judgment in No. 90-496, p. 55 (“Hercules’ claims for relief all are based on breaches of contractual duties; they are not claims that the Government has impliedly or expressly agreed to indemnify Hercules for open-ended liabilities”).
Justice Breyer argues that the record before us does not permit us to find, as we do, that the conditions asserted do not support the inference that the contracting parties had a meeting of the minds and in fact agreed that the United States would indemnify. If Justice Breyer is suggesting that the petitioners need further discovery to develop claims alleged in the complaints and not to some unarticulated third claim, see n. 4, supra; post, at 436), we believe his plea for further discovery must necessarily apply only to Thompson’s contractual-indemnification claim; we hold in this case that the Spearin claims made by both petitioners do not extend to postperformance third-party costs as a matter of law. See supra, at 425. In any event, Justice Breyer fails to explain what facts are needed, or might be developed, which would place a court on remand in a better position than where we sit today. We take all factual allegations as true and still find them inadequate. In addition, we are skeptical that any material information regarding these 30-year-old transactions remains undisclosed, yet still discoverable. Hercules, and presumably Thompson, had access to all discovery materials (including thousands of documents and scores of depositions) produced during the Agent Orange class-action litigation. See Motion of United States for a Protective Order Staying Discovery in No. 90-496 (Cl. Ct.), pp. 1, 3-4, n. 1.
The Anti-Deficiency Act, 31 U. S. C. § 1341, provides:
“(a)(1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not—
“(A) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation;
“(B) involve either government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law.”
With one peculiar exception that the Comptroller General expressly sanctioned, “the accounting officers of the Government have never issued a decision sanctioning the incurring of an obligation for an open-ended indemnity in the absence of statutory authority to the contrary.” In re Assumption by Government of Contractor Liability to Third Persons— Reconsideration, 62 Comp. Gen. 361, 364-365 (1983). Justice Breyer finds our reliance on the Comptroller General problematic because of a Comptroller General opinion that finds capped indemnity agreements not improper. Post, at 437-438. But the Anti-Deficiency Act applies equally to capped indemnification agreements. We do not suggest that all indemnification agreements would violate the Act, cf. infra, at 428-429 (citing statutes that expressly provide for the creation of indemnity agreements); the Act bars agreements for which there has been no appropriation. We consider open-ended indemnification in particular because that is the kind of agreement involved in this case.
See, e. g., 48 CFR § 235.070 (1994) (specifying criteria for indemnification clauses in Department of Defense research and development contracts); §§ 252.235-7000 to 252.235-7001 (contract language to be used for indemnification under 10 U. S. C. §2354); 32 CFR §7-303.62 (1983) (contract language to be used for indemnification under 50 U. S. C. §§ 1431— 1435 (1988 ed. and Supp.V)).
Justice Breyer asserts that, by citing these statutes and regulations, “the majority implies that a contracting officer, in all likelihood, would not have agreed to an implicit promise of indemnity, for doing so would amount to a bypass of” the provisions. Post, at 436-437. We view the statutes and regulations, which cover different fields of Government contracting, not as implying what a contracting officer might have done with regard to the Agent Orange contracts, but as showing that a promise to indemnify should not be readily inferred.
Section 707 provides, in relevant part:
“No person shall be held liable for damages or penalties for any act or failure to act resulting directly or indirectly from compliance with a rule, regulation, or order issued pursuant to this Act... notwithstanding that any such rule, regulation, or order shall thereafter be declared by judicial or other competent authority to be invalid.” 50 U. S. C. App. §2157 (1988 ed.).
The United States urges us to interpret § 707 as only barring liability to customers whose orders are delayed or displaced on account of the priority accorded Government orders under § 101 of the DPA, which authorizes the President to require contractors to give preferential treatment to contracts “necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense.” 50 U. S. C. App. § 2071(a)(1) (1988 ed., Supp. V). We need not decide the scope of § 707 in this case because it clearly functions only as an immunity, and provides no hint of a further agreement to indemnify.
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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded that 38 U. S. C. § 2021 (b) (3), a provision of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974, does not require an employer to provide preferential scheduling of work hours for an employee who must be absent from work to fulfill his military reserve obligations. 613 F. 2d 641. We granted certiorari to consider the petitioner’s contention that an employer has a statutory duty to make work-scheduling accommodations for reservist-employees not made for other employees, whenever such accommodations reasonably can be accomplished. 449 U. S. 949.
I
In 1975 and 1976, the years pertinent to this litigation, the petitioner was a full-time employee in the respondent’s continuous process refinery in Lima, Ohio. The refinery was operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. To insure that the burdens of weekend and shift work would be equitably divided among its employees over the course of a year, the respondent scheduled its employees to work five 8-hour days in a row weekly, but in a different 5-day sequence each week. Under the respondent’s collective agreement with its union, however, an employee could, with .the acquiescence of his foreman and if the change did not require the payment of overtime, exchange shifts with another employee.
During the same period, the petitioner was a military reservist, and had to attend training with his unit one weekend a month and for two weeks each summer. On a number of weekends, the petitioner was required to attend training on days when he was scheduled to work at the refinery. Although the petitioner was able on four of these occasions to exchange shifts with other employees, he was unable to make such an exchange in most instances. The respondent provided him with leaves of absence to attend training, as 38 U. S. C. § 2024 (d) required it to do, but it did not pay him for the hours he did not work, nor did it take steps to permit him to make up those hours by working outside his normal schedule. When the petitioner was on a leave of absence and could not arrange a switch with another employee, the respondent would make arrangements to fill the vacancy created by the petitioner’s absence, arrangements often requiring the payment of overtime wages to the substitute.
In 1976, the petitioner brought this action against the respondent alleging that it had violated the provisions of 38 U. S. C. §§2021 (b)(3) and 2024(d). Noting that the first of these sections provides that an employer may not deny a military reservist in his employ any “incident or advantage of employment” because of the employee’s obligations to the Reserves, and finding that “being scheduled for a full forty hour week at the [respondent’s] refinery constitutes an incident or advantage of employment,” the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio granted summary judgment to the petitioner. 446 F. Supp. 616, 618, 619. The court awarded petitioner $1,086.72 for wages lost on those “work dates when an accommodation should have been made.” Id., at 619.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. 613 F. 2d 641. First, it determined that the respondent had met the requirements of § 2024(d). It noted that this section “guarantees terms and conditions of reemployment to reservists returning from inactive duty training,” but found that “[i]t does not, however, protect reservists from discrimination by their employers between training assignments.” Id., at 643-644.
Next, the Court of Appeals rejected the District Court’s interpretation of §2021 (b)(3). It held that this section “merely requires that reservists be treated equally or neutrally with their fellow employees without military obligations.” Id., at 646. The appellate court then concluded that the respondent had taken no discriminatory action that is proscribed by § 2021 (b)(3):
“The requirement of equal treatment was met in the present case. The parties agreed that appellee was regularly scheduled for forty-hour workweeks, as were his fellow employees. Further, Monroe was scheduled for weekend work in accordance with Sohio’s established practice of rotating shifts to insure that all employees would work approximately an equal number of weekend days. Finally, he was treated the same as his coworkers with regard to the right to exchange shifts with other employees.” Id., at 646.
II
This case presents the first occasion this Court has had to address issues arising from the statutory provisions, codified at 38 U. S. C. § 2021 et seq., specifically dealing with military reservists. We have, however, frequently interpreted the somewhat analogous statutory provisions entitling the returning regular veteran to reinstatement with his “seniority, status and pay” intact, 38 U. S. C. § 2021 (a), most recently in Coffy v. Republic Steel Corp., 447 U. S. 191, and Alabama Power Co. v. Davis, 431 U. S. 581.
A
Statutory re-employment rights for veterans date from the Nation’s first peacetime draft law, passed in 1940, which provided that a veteran returning to civilian employment from active duty was entitled to reinstatement to the position that he had left or one of “like seniority, status, and pay.” 38 U. S. C. § 2021 (a). In 1951, in order to strengthen the Nation’s Reserve Forces, Congress extended reinstatement rights to employees returning from training duty. See Pub. L. 51, ch. 144, § 1 (s), 65 Stat. 75, 86-87. Thereafter, the Reserve Forces Act of 1955, Pub. L. 305, ch. 665, § 262 (f), 69 Stat. 598, 602, provided that employees returning from active duty of more than three months in the Ready Reserve were entitled to the same employment rights as inductees, with limited exceptions. In 1960, these re-employment rights were extended to National Guardsmen, Pub. L. 86-632, 74 Stat. 467. See 38 U. S. C. § 2024 (c). In addition, a new section, now codified at 38 U. S. C. § 2024 (d), was enacted in 1960 to deal with problems faced by employees who had military training obligations lasting less than three months. This section provides that employees must be granted a leave of absence for training and, upon their return, be restored to their position “with such seniority, status, pay, and vacation” as they would have had if they had not been absent for training.
Section 2024 (d) closely paralleled 38 U. S. C. § 2021 (a), the latter section ensuring the reinstatement of regular veterans returning from active duty. But § 2024 (d) did not provide reservists with protection against discharges, demotions, or other discriminatory conduct once reinstated. Section 2021 (b)(2), on the other hand, provided regular veterans returning from active duty one year’s “protection . . . against certain types of discharges or demotions that might rob the veteran’s reemployment of its substance.” Oakley v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 338 U. S. 278, 285. The legislative history of § 2021 (b) (3) indicates that it was designed to provide similar protection to employee-reservists.
B
Section 2021 (b)(3) provides in pertinent part:
“Any person who [is employed by a private employer] shall not be denied retention in employment or any promotion or other incident or advantage of employment because of any obligation as a member of a Reserve component of the Armed Forces.”
The Senate Report on the bill that became §2021 (b)(3), stated that the purpose of the enactment was “to prevent reservists and National Guardsmen not on active duty who must attend weekend drills or summer training from being discriminated against in employment because of their Reserve membership . . . .” S. Rep. No. 1477, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 1-2 (1968). The Report explained that “[e]mployment practices that discriminate against employees with Reserve obligations have become an increasing problem in recent years. Some of these employees have been denied promotions because they must attend weekly drills or summer training and others have been discharged because of these obligations. . . . [T]he bill is intended to protect members of the Reserve components of the Armed Forces from such practices.” Id., at 2. The protection was to be accomplished by entitling reservists “to the same treatment afforded their coworkers not having such military obligations . . . .” Ibid.
The House Report announced the same motivation. The bill was described as providing “job protection for employees with obligations as members of a reserve component.” H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 3 (1968). The House Report elaborated as follows:
“Section (1) amplifies existing law to make clear that reservists not on active duty, who have a remaining Reserve obligation, whether acquired voluntarily or involuntarily, will nonetheless not be discriminated against by their employees [sic] soley [sic] because of such Reserve affiliation.
“It assures that these reservists will be entitled to the same treatment afforded their coworkers u)ithout such military obligation.
“The law does not now protect these reservists against discharge without cause, as it does with inductees and enlistees, who have 1-year protection, and initial active duty for training reservists, who have 6 months’ protection.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
The legislation was originally proposed by the Department of Labor. Accordingly, the testimony of Hugh W. Bradley, Director of the Office of Veterans’ Reemployment Rights of the Labor Department, who was the chief administration spokesman for the provision, is instructive. He described the relevant portions of the legislation to the House Committee on Armed Services:
“The first provision of the bill deals with a problem that has been increasingly difficult in the past few years. It is designed to enable reservists and guardsmen who leave their jobs to perform training in the Armed Forces, to retain their employment and to enjoy all of the employment opportunities and benefits accorded their coworkers who do not have military training obligations. The law does not now protect them against discharge without cause as it does inductees and enlistees, who have 1-year protection, and initial active duty for training reservists, who have 6 months’ protection.” 1966 House Hearings, at 5312 (emphasis added).
See also 1968 House Hearings, at 7471.
Testimony by Rear Admiral Burton H. Shupper, U. S. N., appearing on behalf of the Department of Defense, also reflected the purposes behind the enactment:
“The other aspect of H. R. 11509 is the provision that employees shall not be denied retention in employment or advantages of employment because of any obligation as a member of a Reserve component of the Armed Forces. After the Berlin and Cuba callups, we received information from our Reserve community that a significant number of reservists were receiving indications that opportunities for advancement and retention in civilian employment would favor those who appear to offer their employers more continuity of services, namely those in the Standby Reserve or those with no Reserve status. In fairness, we must emphasize that this reaction on the part of employers appears to be the exception not the rule and, we believe, is generally not based upon unpatriotic motives but rather on the competitive spirit of business.” 1966 House Hearings, at 5315.
The legislative history thus indicates that § 2021 (b)(3) was enacted for the significant but limited purpose of protecting the employee-reservist against discriminations like discharge and demotion, motivated solely by reserve status. Congress wished to provide protection to reservists comparable to that already protecting the regular veteran from “discharge without cause” — to insure that employers would not penalize or rid themselves of returning reservists after a mere pro forma compliance with § 2024 (d). And the consistent focus of the administration that proposed the statute, and of the Congresses that considered it, was on the need to protect reservists from the temptation of employers to deny them the same treatment afforded their co-workers without military obligations. The petitioner’s contention that his employer was obliged to provide work-schedule preferences not available to other employees must be considered against this legislative background.
C
The petitioner’s argument is that the respondent corporation was obligated to make special efforts to schedule his work hours so he would avoid any lost time by reason of his reserve obligations. He does not allege that the respondent singled him out unfairly, or in any other way discriminated against him vis-á-vis other employees in the scheduling of work. Indeed, the petitioner’s argument would require work-assignment preferences not available to any nonreservist employee at the respondent’s refinery.
The problem with the petitioner’s position is that there is nothing in § 2021 (b) (3) or its legislative history to indicate that Congress ever even considered imposing an obligation on employers to provide a special work-scheduling preference. Indeed, the legislative history, set out above, strongly suggests that Congress did not intend employers to provide special benefits to employee-reservists not generally made available to other employees. Congress, and the administration spokesman for the legislation, stated explicitly that reservists were to be entitled “to the same treatment afforded their coworkers not having such military obligations . . . .” S. Rep. No. 1477, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1968); see also H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 3 (1966); 1968 House Hearings, at 7471 (testimony of Hugh W. Bradley).
The strongest language culled by the petitioner from the legislative history to support his argument is a single passage in the 1966 House Report on H. R. 11509: “If these young men are essential to our national defense, then certainly our Government and employers have a moral obligation to see that their economic well being is disrupted to the minimum extent possible.” H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 3 (1966). But this generalized statement appears only in the 1966 House Report; it is not contained in either the House or the Senate Report that accompanied the bill as finally enacted in the 90th Congress. Compare ibid, with H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 3, 8 (1968), and S. Rep. No. 1477, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 3 (1968). Moreover, language in the same 1966 House Report specifically indicated that only a nondiscrimination measure was intended: “It should be noted that the only substantive changes in existing law relate to . . . the prohibition against employer discrimination against reservists who participate in the Reserve or National Guard programs.” H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1966).
It appears that the origin of the passage the petitioner relies on is a statement by Hugh W. Bradley before the House Committee in 1966. See 1966 House Hearings, at 5313. Yet this passage disappeared from Bradley’s presentation to both the House and Senate Committees in the subsequent Congress. See 1968 House Hearings, at 7471, 7472; 1968 Senate Hearings, at 2, 3. And in all three of his congressional appearances, Bradley made it abundantly clear that the purpose of the legislation was to protect employee reservists from discharge, denial of promotional opportunities, or other comparable adverse treatment solely by reason of their military obligations; there was never any suggestion of employer responsibility to provide preferential treatment. In any case, the language relied on by the petitioner hardly supports a finding that Congress intended §2021 (b)(3) to convert a generalized moral obligation into a specific legal duty.
D
Aside from a lack of support in legislative history, the petitioner’s argument suffers other flaws. While the present case involves absences for weekend duty, the statutory language is not so limited; it refers to “any obligation as a member of a Reserve component . . . .” Section 2021 (b)(3) has been applied, for example, to 2-week summer camps, Carney v. Cummins Engine Co., 602 F. 2d 763 (CA7); 6-week training sessions, Carlson v. New Hampshire Dept. of Safety, 609 F. 2d 1025 (CA1); and 2-month training sessions, Peel v. Florida Dept. of Transportation, 443 F. Supp. 451 (ND Fla.), aff’d, 600 F. 2d 1070 (CA5). Accordingly, there is no principled way of distinguishing between an employer’s obligation to make scheduling accommodations for weekends as opposed to, for example, annual 2-week training periods, or even longer periods of training or duty. And certainly there is nothing in the legislative history that would indicate Congress intended that reservists were to be entitled to all “incidents and advantages of employment” accorded during their absence to working employees, including regular time and overtime pay.
The petitioner concedes that it might be impossible, or at least unduly burdensome, to accommodate a reservist’s absences for periods as long as the mandatory 2-week summer training session. Perhaps for this reason, he attempts to limit the obvious implications of his theory by arguing that “the statute only requires an employer to take reasonable steps to accommodate the reservists.” But, as is true of the petitioner’s more general affirmative obligation theory, there is nothing in the statute or its history to support such a notion.
Indeed, a “reasonable accommodation” to employee-reservists because of missed worktime has already been made by Congress in § 2024 (d). There, Congress decided what allowance employers should make to reservists whose duties force them to miss time at work: provide them a leave of absence. If Congress had wanted to impose an additional obligation upon employers, guaranteeing that employee-reservists have the opportunity to work the same number of hours, or earn the same amount of pay that they would have earned without absences attributable to military reserve duties, it could have done so expressly. By contrast, there is no evidence that the Congress that enacted § 2021 (b)(3) showed any concern with the problem of missed work hours, let alone imposed any duty to “take reasonable steps to accommodate the reservists” in this or any other respect.
The petitioner makes no suggestion why his theory of “reasonable accommodation” should apply only to “incidents or advantages of employment,” and not to the other provisions of §2021 (b)(3): retention and promotion. Presumably, if it applies to one provision of the section, it should apply to them all. But if an employer could, for example, defend a denial of promotion to an employee-reservist because the promotion could not be “reasonably accommodated,” the protection afforded by § 2021 (b)(3) would clearly be reduced, if not altogether eliminated.
Finally, the petitioner suggests that §2021 (b)(3) must have the meaning he attributes to it, because the section would otherwise be of little significance. But the nondiscrimination requirements of the section impose substantial obligations upon employers. The frequent absences from work of an employee-reservist may affect productivity and cause considerable inconvenience to an employer who must find alternative means to' get necessary work done. Yet Congress has provided in § 2021 (b) (3) that employers may not rid themselves of such inconveniences and productivity losses by discharging or otherwise disadvantaging employee-reservists solely because of their military obligations.
Ill
This Court does not sit to draw the most appropriate balance between benefits to employee-reservists and costs to employers. That is the responsibility of Congress. If Congress desires to amend § 2021 (b) (3) to require special work-hour scheduling for military reservists where it is reasonably possible, it is free to do so. But we must deal with the law as it is.
The respondent did not deny the petitioner anything that he would have received had he not been a reservist; He was scheduled for 40 hours work a week, as all other employees in the refinery were. He was assigned the same burden of weekend and shift work as were his fellow employees. And he was allowed to exchange shifts in the manner accepted by his union and the respondent, just as all other employees were. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
There is an apparent intercircuit conflict on this issue. Compare the case under review with West v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 609 F. 2d 147 (CA5).
In oral argument, counsel for the respondent indicated that the petitioner was a member of the Ohio National Guard. This is not apparent in the record, but both Ready Reservists and National Guardsmen are equally entitled to the protection of 38 U. S. C. §2021 (b)(3). See S. Rep. No. 1477, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 1, 5 (1968); H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 3, 6 (1968).
Title 38 U. S. C. §2024 (d) provides in pertinent part:
“Any employee . . . shall upon request be granted a leave of absence by such person’s employer for the period required to perform active duty for training or inactive duty for training in the Armed Forces of the United States. Upon such employee’s release from a period of such active duty for training or inactive duty for training, . . . such employee shall be permitted to return to such employee’s position with such seniority, status, pay, and vacation as such employee would have had if such employee had not been absent for such purposes. . . .”
The Department of Justice represents the petitioner pursuant to 38 U. S. C. § 2022.
Section 2021 (b)(3) provides:
“Any person who holds a position described in clause (A) or (B) of subsection (a) of this section shall not be denied retention in employment or any promotion or other incident or advantage of employment because of any obligation as a member of a Reserve component of the Armed Forces.”
The petitioner does not urge here that he had to be paid for hours not worked.
There is no dispute that the respondent has complied with all relevant requirements of § 2024 (d). See n. 3, supra. This section compels employers to grant leaves of absence to employees who must attend reserve training, and entitles a reservist who has been absent for inactive reserve training to benefits upon his return, such as wage rates and seniority, which automatically would have accrued if he had remained in the continuous service of his employer. See Aiello v. Detroit Free Press, Inc., 570 F. 2d 145, 148 (CA6). It does not entitle a reservist to benefits that are conditioned upon work requirements demanding actual performance on the job. See ibid. See also Foster v. Dravo Corp., 420 U. S. 92. Thus, it is not contended that § 2024 (d) requires employers to pay absent reservists for hours not worked.
Before their recodification in 1974, the veterans’ re-employment rights provisions were codified at 50 U. S. C. App. § 459 (1970 ed.) (§ 9 of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967). See Coffy v. Republic Steel Corp., 447 U. S. 191, 194, n. 2.
Section 2021 (a) provides as follows:
“In the case of any person who is inducted into the Armed Forces of the United States under the Military Selective Service Act [50 U. S. C. App. §§451-473] (or under any prior or subsequent, corresponding law) for training and service and who leaves a position (other than a temporary position) in the employ of any employer in order to perform such training and service; and (1) receives a certificate described in section 9 (a) of the Military Selective Service Act [50 U. S. C. App. §459 (a)] (relating to the satisfactory completion of military service), and (2) makes application for reemployment within ninety days after such person is relieved from such training and service or from hospitalization continuing after discharge for a period of not more than one year—
“(A) if such position was in the employ of the United States Gov-eminent, its territories, or possessions, or political subdivisions thereof, or the District of Columbia, such person shall—
“(i) if still qualified to perform the duties of such position, be restored to such position or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay; or
“(ii) if not qualified to perform the duties of such position, by reason of disability sustained during such service, but qualified to perform the duties of any other position in the employ of the employer, be offered employment and, if such person so requests, be employed in such other position the duties of which such person is qualified to perform as will provide such person like seniority, status, and pay, or the nearest approximation thereof consistent with the circumstances in such person’s case;
“(B) if such position was in the employ of a State, or political subdivision thereof, or a private employer, such employee shall—
“(i) if still qualified to perform the duties of such position, be restored by such employer or the employer’s successor in interest to such position or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay; or
“(ii) [as in (A)(ii), supra, except for references to the 'employer’s successor in interest’].”
The bill that included what became 38 U. S. C. § 2021 (b) (3) was introduced in the 89th Congress. H. R. 11509, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1965). Hearings were held before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on Armed Services in February 1966. Hearings on H. R. 11509 before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on Armed Services, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1966) (hereafter 1966 House Hearings). The bill was favorably reported by the full Committee, H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. (1966), and was passed by the House on March 7, 1966, 112 Cong. Rec. 5016 (1966). No action, however, was taken on the measure by the Senate in the 89th Congress.
The bill was reintroduced in the 90th Congress. H. R. 1093, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967); S. 2561, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967). Hearings were again held before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee, on March 20, 1968. Hearings on H. R. 1093 before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on Armed Services, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1968) (hereafter 1968 House Hearings). The bill was favorably reported by the full Committee on April 24, 1968, H. R. Rep. No. 1303, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968), and initially passed by the House on May 6, 1968, 114 Cong. Rec. 11779 (1968). Hearings were held by the Senate Committee on Armed Services on July 25, 1968. Hearings on H. R. 1093 before Senate Committee on Armed Services, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968) (hereafter 1968 Senate Hearings). The bill was favorably reported by the Committee, S. Rep. No. 1477, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968), on July 26, 1968, and passed the Senate on July 29, 1968, 114 Cong. Rec. 24017 (1968). The Senate concurred in the House amendment. Id., at 24999. The bill was signed into law on August 17, 1968. Pub. L. 90-491, 82 Stat. 790.
The language of that portion of the bill which became §2021 (b)(3) was unchanged throughout its legislative consideration. There was no substantive discussion of the measure on the floor of either chamber. Accordingly, the key portions of the legislative history are the three hearings held on the proposed measure and the three Committee Reports.
This same purpose was reflected in. a statement in support of the legislation by Austin E. Kerby, the Director of the National Economic Commission of the American Legion:
“The American Legion feels very strongly that employees with reserve obligations who are members of the National Guard and the Reserves should not be denied retention in employment or promotional opportunities solely because of their participation in the Reserve Training Program. They should be afforded all the employment opportunities and benefits as those who do not have training obligations. The Reemployment Rights Statutes do not now protect National Guard members, and Reservists as it does inductees and enlistees, who have one-year protection, and initial active duty for training reservists who have six-months protection.
“H. R. 1093 [H. R. 11509 as reintroduced in the 90th Congress, see n. 10, supra] would add a new section, 9 (c)(3), under the reemployment provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act which would prevent discharge from employment without cause because of membership in the National Guard or Reserves, and would also prevent discrimination in such areas as promotion, training opportunities and pay increases.” 1968 Hearings, at 7477 (emphasis added).
One could argue, of course, that “protection . . . against certain types of discharges or demotions that might rob the veteran’s reemployment of its substance,” Oakley v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 338 U. S. 278, 285 (in reference to § 2021 (b) (2) but equally relevant here) amounts to preferential treatment. But this sort of treatment, clearly intended by the statute and its legislative history, is better understood as protection against discrimination that would not have occurred were it not for reserve obligations, than as preferential treatment accorded solely because of reserve status.
The legislative history is barren of any indication that Congress intended employers to compensate employees for work hours missed while fulfilling militar}? reserve obligations, which would of course amount to employee receipt of double compensation for such periods.
The Veterans’ Reemployment Rights Handbook, published by the Office of Veterans’ Reemployment Rights in 1970 and still in use today, notes that “[t]he law does not require the employer to' pay the employee for the time he is absent for military training duty, or even to make up the difference between his military pay and his regular earnings for that period. In this respect, of course, many employers have adopted voluntary policies or contractual obligations, or are subject to State statutes, which give reservists and guardsmen more than the statute [38 U. S. C. § 2021 et seq.] requires.” Id., at 113. And in the many examples in the Handbook addressed to typical problems an employer may confront because of employee military obligations, there is not so much as a hint that an employer has an obligation to adjust an employee’s work schedule to make up for time lost because of military obligations.
Section 403 of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974, Pub. L. 93-508, 88 Stat. 1594, for example, made specific revisions to the existing provisions of the veterans’ re-employment rights laws that impose explicit obligations upon employers with respect to certain disabled veterans of the Vietnam era. 38 U. S. C. §2012. See S. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1107, p. 34 (1974). See also S. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1240, p. 34 (1974); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1303, p. 34 (1974); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1435, p. 35 (1974). Cf. Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U. S. 397, 410-411.
We note that the collective agreement between the respondent and the petitioner’s union stated that it “defines the normal hours of work and shall not be construed as a guarantee of hours of work per day or per week or of days of work per week.”
Of course, nothing in this opinion prevents an employer from providing special scheduling accommodation to employee-reservists. See n. 14, 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 Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether the Constitution permits a court to enhance a defendant’s sentence under United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual §3C1.1 (Nov. 1989), if the court finds the defendant committed perjury at trial. We answer in the affirmative.
I
Respondent, Sharon Dunnigan, was charged in a single count indictment with conspiracy to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 846. After entering a plea of not guilty, she stood trial.
The case in chief for the United States consisted of five witnesses who took part in, or observed, respondent’s cocaine trafficking during the summer of 1988. The first witness was Freddie Harris, a cocaine dealer in Charleston, West Virginia. Harris testified that respondent traveled between Charleston and Cleveland, Ohio, numerous times during the summer in question to purchase cocaine for him. He further stated that either he or his associate John Dean accompanied respondent on several of these trips. Dean was the second witness, and he recounted his trips to Cleveland with respondent during the same period to purchase cocaine. He also described meetings with both respondent and Harris for the purpose of delivering cocaine.
Three more Government witnesses followed. Andre Charlton testified that respondent, at her own apartment, delivered several ounces of cocaine to Charlton and Harris. Charlton also attested to receiving cocaine from Dean which Dean said he and respondent had bought in Cleveland. Tammy Moore testified next. She described conversations during which respondent vouched for the high quality of the cocaine in Cleveland and suggested Moore accompany her on a trip to Cleveland. Then came the testimony of Wynema Brown, who repeated respondent’s admissions of trips to Cleveland to purchase cocaine for Harris. Brown also stated she saw cocaine powder at respondent’s apartment and witnessed respondent and her daughter convert the powder into crack cocaine for the daughter to sell. This ended the Government’s case in chief.
Respondent elected to take the stand and was the sole witness in her own defense. She denied all criminal acts attributed to her. She admitted going to Cleveland with Harris once but claimed it was for an innocent purpose, not to buy or sell cocaine. She admitted knowing John Dean but denied traveling with him to Cleveland. Last, she denied knowing that cocaine was brought into or sold from her apartment. On cross-examination, the Government questioned respondent regarding the testimony of the five prosecution witnesses. Respondent denied their inculpatory statements and said she had not possessed or distributed cocaine during the summer in question or at any other time. The Government also asked whether Edward Dickerson had been in her apartment or bought crack cocaine from her. Respondent answered no.
The defense rested, and the Government began its rebuttal with the testimony of Dickerson. He testified to purchasing crack cocaine from respondent on July 12, 1988, in a transaction monitored by law enforcement authorities. The Government also recalled Moore, who claimed respondent sold her crack cocaine about five times and provided cocaine powder to her and respondent’s daughter to convert into crack cocaine for resale. According to Moore, the money from the resale was paid over to respondent. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Respondent was sentenced pursuant to the United States Sentencing Guidelines. See United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual (Nov. 1989). Her base offense level was set at 22, and the Government requested that the base be increased by two offense levels under USSG §3C1.1, entitled “willfully obstructing or impeding proceedings,” because respondent perjured herself at trial. After arguments from both sides, the District Court ruled on the request:
“The court finds that the defendant was untruthful at trial with respect to material matters in this case. The defendant denied her involvement when it is clear from the evidence in the case as the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that she was involved in the conspiracy alleged in the indictment, and by virtue of her failure to give truthful testimony on material matters that were designed to substantially affect the outcome of the case, the court concludes that the false testimony at trial warrants an upward adjustment by two levels.” App. 29.
Based upon the enhanced offense level 24 and a criminal history category I, the District Court sentenced respondent to 51 months’ incarceration, which was at the low end of the Guidelines range.
Respondent appealed her sentence, and the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s decision to increase respondent’s offense level under USSG §3C1.1. 944 F. 2d 178 (CA4 1991). The Court of Appeals did not take issue with the District Court’s factual findings or rule that further findings were necessary to support a §3C1.1 enhancement. Instead, the court held that a §3C1.1 enhancement based on a defendant’s alleged perjury at trial would be unconstitutional. The court reasoned that “every defendant who takes the stand and is convicted [would] be given the obstruction of justice enhancement.” Id., at 183. Citing some of the incentives for an accused to elect not to testify, including the risk of impeachment by prior convictions, the court ruled that a mechanical sentencing enhancement for testifying was unconstitutional: “With an automatic §3C1.1 enhancement added to the ante, the defendant may not think testifying worth the risk.” Id., at 184.
Referring to United States v. Grayson, 438 U. S. 41 (1978), where we upheld a sentence increase based on an accused’s false testimony at trial, the Court of Appeals found that precedent distinguishable on two grounds. First, in Gray-son we justified the sentence increase as based on the District Court’s assessment of the defendant’s greater need for rehabilitation. Id., at 51-53. The Court of Appeals thought this justification was inapplicable, viewing the §3C1.1 enhancement as a punishment for obstructing justice without the time and expense of a separate perjury prosecution. 944 F. 2d, at 184. Second, the Grayson Court cautioned that “[n]othing we say today requires a sentencing judge to enhance, in some wooden or reflex fashion, the sentences of all defendants whose testimony is deemed false.” 438 U. S., at 55. According to the Court of Appeals, “[t]he guidelines supply precisely the ‘wooden or reflex’ enhancement disclaimed by the Court,” 944 F. 2d, at 184, and this rigidity “makes the §3C1.1 enhancement for a disbelieved denial of guilt under oath an intolerable burden upon the defendant’s right to testify in his own behalf,” id., at 185.
Over a dissent by four of its judges, the Court of Appeals declined to rehear the case en banc. 950 F. 2d 149 (CA4 1991). We granted certiorari. 504 U. S. 940 (1992).
II
A
Sentencing Guideline §3C1.1 states in full: “If the defendant willfully impeded or obstructed, or attempted to impede or obstruct the administration of justice during the investigation or prosecution of the instant offense, increase the [defendant’s] offense level by 2 levels.” USSG §3C1.1 (Nov. 1989). See also USSG §3C1.1 (Nov. 1992). Both parties assume the phrase “impede or obstruct the administration of justice” includes perjury, and the commentary to §3C1.1 is explicit in so providing. In pertinent part, the commentary states:
“This section provides a sentence enhancement for a defendant who engages in conduct calculated to mislead or deceive authorities or those involved in a judicial proceeding, or otherwise to willfully interfere with the disposition of criminal charges, in respect to the instant offense.
“1. The following conduct, while not exclusive, may provide a basis for applying this adjustment:
“(c) testifying untruthfully or suborning untruthful testimony concerning a material fact,... during a preliminary or grand jury proceeding, trial, sentencing proceeding, or any other judicial proceeding.” USSG §3C1.1, comment., n. 1(c) (Nov. 1989).
See also USSG 53C1.1, comment., n. 3(b) (Nov. 1992) (“The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples of the types of conduct to which this enhancement applies: . . . (b) committing, suborning, or attempting to suborn perjury”).
Were we to have the questioh before us without reference to this commentary, we would have to acknowledge that some of our precedents do not interpret perjury to constitute an obstruction of justice unless the perjury is part of some greater design to interfere with judicial proceedings, In re Michael, 326 U. S. 224, 228 (1945); Ex parte Hudgings, 249 U. S. 378, 383 (1919). Those cases arose in the context of interpreting early versions of the federal criminal contempt Btatute, which defined contempt, in part, as “misbehavior of any person ... as to obstruct the administration of justice.” 28 U. S. C. §385 (1940 ed.) (Judicial Code §268), derived from the Act of Mar. 2, 1831, Rev. Stat. § 725. See also 18 U. S. C. §401(1) (same).
In Hudgings and Michael, we indicated that the ordinary task of trial courts is to sift true from false testimony, so the problem caused by simple perjury was not so much an obstruction of justice as an expected part of its administration. See Michael, 326 U. S., at 227-228. Those cases, however, were decided against the background rule that the contempt power was to be confined to “‘the least possible power adequate’ ” to protect “the administration of justice against immediate interruption of its business.” Id., at 227 (quoting Anderson v. Dunn, 6 Wheat. 204, 231 (1821)). In the present context, on the other hand, the enhancement provision is part of a sentencing scheme designed to determine the appropriate type and extent of punishment after the issue of guilt has been resolved. The commission of perjury is of obvious relevance in this regard, because it reflects on a defendant’s criminal history, on her willingness to accept the commands of the law and the authority of the court, and on her character in general. Even on the assumption that we could construe a sentencing guideline in a manner inconsistent with its accompanying commentary, the fact that the meaning ascribed to the phrase “obstruction of justice” differs in the contempt and sentencing contexts would not be a reason for rejecting the Sentencing Commission’s interpretation of that phrase. In all events, the Commission’s interpretation is contested by neither party to this case.
In determining what constitutes perjury, we rely upon the definition that has gained general acceptance and common understanding under the federal criminal perjury statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621. A witness testifying under oath or affirmation violates this statute if she gives false testimony concerning a material matter with the willful intent to provide false testimony, rather than as a result of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory. See § 1621(1); United States v. Debrow, 346 U. S. 374, 376 (1953); United States v. Norris, 300 U. S. 564, 574, 576 (1937). This federal definition of perjury by a witness has remained Unchanged in its material respects for over a century. See United States v. Smull, 236 U. S. 405, 408, and n. 1 (1915) (tracing history of § 1621’s predecessor, Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 321, § 125, 35 Stat. 1111). It parallels typical state-law definitions of perjury, see American Law Institute, Model Penal Code §241.1 (1985); 4 C. Torcía, Wharton’s Criminal Law § 601 (14th ed. 1981), and has roots in the law dating back to at least the Perjury Statute of 1563, 5 Eliz. I, ch. 9, see Gordon, The Invention of a Common Law Crime: Perjury and the Elizabethan Courts, 24 Am. J. Legal Hist. 145 (1980). See also 1 Colonial Laws of New York, 1664-1719, ch. 8, pp. 129-130 (reprinting “An Act to prevent wilfull Perjury,” enacted Nov. 1, 1683).
Of course, not every accused who testifies at trial and is convicted will incur an enhanced sentence under §3C1.1 for committing perjury. As we have just observed, an accused may give inaccurate testimony due to confusion, mistake, or faulty memory. In other instances, an accused may testify to matters such as lack of capacity, insanity, duress, or self-defense. Her testimony may be truthful, but the jury may nonetheless find the testimony insufficient to excuse criminal liability or prove lack of intent. For these reasons, if a defendant objects to a sentence enhancement resulting from her trial testimony, a district court must review the evidence and make independent findings necessary to establish a willful impediment to, or obstruction of, justice, or an attempt to do the same, under the perjury definition we have set out. See USSG §6A1.3 (Nov. 1989); Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 32(c)(3)(D). See also Burns v. United States, 501 U. S. 129, 134 (1991). When doing so, it is preferable for a district court to address each element of the alleged perjury in a separate and clear finding. The district court’s determination that enhancement is required is sufficient, however, if, as was the case here, the court makes a finding of an obstruction of, or impediment to, justice that encompasses all of the factual predicates for a finding of perjury. See App. 29 (“The court finds that the defendant was untruthful at trial with respect to material matters in this case. [B]y virtue of her failure to give truthful testimony on material matters that were designed to substantially affect the outcome of the case, the court concludes that the false testimony at trial warrants an upward adjustment by two levels” (emphasis added)). Given the numerous witnesses who contradicted respondent regarding so many facts on which she could not have been mistaken, there is ample support for the District Court’s finding.
B
We turn next to the contention that an enhanced sentence for the willful presentation of false testimony undermines the right to testify. The right to testify on one’s own behalf in a criminal proceeding is made explicit by federal statute, 18 U. S. C. §3481, and, we have said, it is also a right implicit in the Constitution, see Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U. S. 44, 51-53 (1987); Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U. S. 157, 164 (1986).
Respondent cannot contend that increasing her sentence because of her perjury interferes with her right to testify, for we have held on a number of occasions that a defendant’s right to testify does not include a right to commit perjury. Id., at 173; United States v. Havens, 446 U. S. 620, 626 (1980); Grayson, 438 U. S., at 54. Nor can respondent contend §3C1.1 is unconstitutional on the simple basis that it distorts her decision whether to testify or remain silent. Our authorities do not impose a categorical ban on every governmental action affecting the strategic decisions of an accused, including decisions whether or not to exercise constitutional rights. See Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U. S. 357, 365 (1978); McGautha v. California, 402 U. S. 183, 216-217 (1971); United States v. Knox, 396 U. S. 77, 82-83 (1969).
No doubt to avoid these difficulties, respondent’s argument comes to us in a different form. It is that §3C1.1 carries a risk that a district court will order enhancement even when a defendant’s testimony is truthful, either because the court acts without regard to the truth or makes an erroneous finding of falsity. That §3C1.1 creates such a risk, respondent claims, makes the enhancement unconstitutional. This argument does not survive scrutiny.
The concern that courts will enhance sentences as a matter of course whenever the accused takes the stand and is found guilty is dispelled by our earlier explanation that if an accused challenges a sentence increase based on perjured testimony, the trial court must make findings to support all the elements of a perjury violation in the specific case. And as to the risk of incorrect findings of perjury by district courts, that risk is inherent in a system which insists on the value of testimony under oath. To uphold the integrity of our trial system, we have said that the constitutionality of perjury statutes is unquestioned. Grayson, supra, at 54. See also Nix, supra, at 173-174; Havens, supra, at 626-627. The requirement of sworn testimony, backed by punishment for perjury, is as much a protection for the accused as it is a threat. All testimony, from third-party witnesses and the accused, has greater value because of the witness’ oath and the obligations or penalties attendant to it. Cf. G. Neil-son, Trial By Combat 5 (1891) (“A means of ensuring the truth in human testimony has been a thing desired in every age”).
Neither can we accept respondent’s argument that the §3C1.1 sentence enhancement advances only “the impermissible sentencing practice of incarcerating for the purpose of saving the Government the burden of bringing a separate and subsequent perjury prosecution.” Grayson, supra, at 53. A sentence enhancement based on perjury does deter false testimony in much the same way as a separate prosecution for perjury. But the enhancement is more than a mere surrogate for a perjury prosecution. It furthers legitimate sentencing goals relating to the principal crime, including the goals of retribution and incapacitation. See 18 U. S. C. § 3553(a)(2); Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 367 (1989). It is rational for a sentencing authority to conclude that a defendant who commits a crime and then perjures herself in an unlawful attempt to avoid responsibility is more threatening to society and less deserving of leniency than a defendant who does not so defy the trial process. The perjuring defendant’s willingness to frustrate judicial proceedings to avoid criminal liability suggests that the need for incapacitation and retribution is heightened as compared with the defendant charged with the same crime who allows judicial proceedings to progress without resorting to perjury.
Weighed against these considerations, the arguments made by the Court of Appeals to distinguish Grayson are wide of the mark. The court is correct that rehabilitation is no longer a goal of sentencing under the Guidelines. 28 U. S. C. § 994(k); Mistretta, supra, at 367. Our lengthy discussion in Grayson of how a defendant’s perjury was relevant to the potential for rehabilitation, however, was not meant to imply that rehabilitation was the only permissible justification for an increased sentence based on perjury. As we have said, the §3C1.1 enhancement serves other legitimate sentencing goals. Neither does our cautionary remark that the enhancement in Grayson need not be imposed “in some wooden or reflex fashion” compel invalidation of § 3C1.1, as the Court of Appeals believed. When contested, the elements of perjury must be found by the district court with the specificity we have stated, so the enhancement is far from automatic. And that the enhancement stems from a congressional mandate rather than from a court’s discretionary judgment cannot be grounds, in these circumstances, for its invalidation. See Chapman v. United States, 500 U. S. 453, 467 (1991); McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79, 92 (1986).
Upon a proper determination that the accused has committed perjury at trial, an enhancement of sentence is required by the Sentencing Guidelines. That requirement is consistent with our precedents and is not in contravention of the privilege of an accused to testify in her own behalf. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
CHIEF Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Numerous federal statutes allow courts to award attorney’s fees and costs to the “prevailing party.” The question presented here is whether this term includes a party that has failed to secure a judgment on the merits or a court-ordered consent decree, but has nonetheless achieved the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct. We hold that it does not.
Buekhannon Board and Care Home, Inc., which operates care homes that provide assisted living to their residents, failed an inspection by the West Virginia Office of the State Fire Marshal because some of the residents were incapable of “self-preservation” as defined under state law. See W. Va. Code §§16-5H-1, 16-5H-2 (1998) (requiring that all residents of residential board and care homes be capable of “self-preservation,” or capable of moving themselves “from situations involving imminent danger, such as fire”); W. Va. Code of State Rules, tit. 87, ser. 1, § 14.07(1) (1995) (same). On October 28, 1997, after receiving cease-and-desist orders requiring the closure of its residential care facilities within 30 days, Buekhannon Board and Care Home, Ine., on behalf of itself and other similarly situated homes and residents (hereinafter petitioners), brought suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of West ’Virginia against the State of West Virginia, two of its agencies, and 18 individuals (hereinafter respondents), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief that the “self-preservation” requirement violated the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 (FHAA), 102 Stat. 1619, 42 U. S. C. § 3601 et seq., and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 327, 42U.S.C. §12101 et seq.
Respondents agreed to stay enforcement of the cease-and-desist orders pending resolution of the case and the parties began discovery. In 1998, the West Virginia Legislature enacted two bills eliminating the “self-preservation” requirement, see S. 627,11998 W. Va. Aets 983-986 (amending regulations); H. R. 4200, II1998 W. Ya. Aets 1198-1199 (amending statute), and respondents moved to dismiss the ease as moot. The District Court granted the motion, finding that the 1998 legislation had eliminated the allegedly offensive provisions and that there was no indication that the West Virginia Legislature would repeal the amendments.
Petitioners requested attorney’s fees as the “prevailing party” under the FHAA, 42 U.S.C. § 3613(c)(2) (“[T]he court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party... a reasonable attorney’s fee and costs”), and ADA, 42 U. S. C. § 12205 (“[T]he court... , in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party ... a reasonable attorney’s fee, including litigation expenses, and costs”). Petitioners argued that they were entitled to attorney’s fees under the “catalyst theory,” which posits that a plaintiff is a “prevailing party” if it achieves the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct. Although most Courts of Appeals recognize the "catalyst theory,” the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected it in S-1 and S-2 v. State Bd. of Ed. of N. C., 21 F. 3d 49, 51 (1994) (en bane) (“A person may not be a ‘‘prevailing party* . . . except by virtue of having obtained an enforceable judgment, consent decree, or settlement giving some of the legal relief sought”). The District Court accordingly denied the motion and, for the same reason, the Court of Appeals affirmed in an unpublished, per curiam opinion. Judgt. order reported at 208 F. 3d 819 (CA4 2000).
To resolve the disagreement amongst the Courts of Appeals, we granted certiorari, 530 U. S. 1304 (2000), and now affirm.
In the United States, parties are ordinarily required to bear their own attorney’s fees — the prevailing party is not entitled to collect from the loser. See Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 247 (1975). Under this "American Rule,” we follow “a general practice of not awarding fees to a prevailing party absent explicit statutory authority.” Key Tronic Corp. v. United States, 511 U.S. 809, 819 (1994). Congress, however, has authorized the award of attorney’s fees to the “prevailing party” in numerous statutes in addition to those at issue here, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,78 Stat. 259,42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(k), the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975, 89 Stat. 402, 42 U. S. C. § 19732(e), and the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2641, 42 U. S. C. §1988. See generally Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1, 43-51 (1985) (Appendix to opinion of Brennan, J., dissenting).
In designating those parties eligible for an award of litigation costs, Congress employed the term “prevailing party,” a legal term of art. Black’s Law Dictionary 1145 (7th ed. 1999) defines “prevailing party” as “[a] party in whose favor a judgment is rendered, regardless of the amount of damages awarded <in certain cases, the court will award attorney’s fees to the prevailing party>. —Also termed successful party” This view that a “prevailing party” is one who has been awarded some relief by the court can be distilled from our prior cases.
In Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 758 (1980) (per curiam), we reviewed the legislative history of § 1988 and found that “Congress intended to permit the interim award of counsel fees only when a party has prevailed on the merits of at least some of his claims.” Our “[rjespect for ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail.” Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U. S. 755, 760 (1987). We have held that even an award of nominal damages suffices under this test. See Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 108 (1992).
In addition to judgments on the merits, we have held that settlement agreements enforced through a consent decree may serve as the basis for an award of attorney’s fees. See Maher v. Gagne, 448 U.S. 122 (1980). Although a consent decree does not always include an admission of liability by the defendant, see, e. g., id., at 126, n. 8, it nonetheless is a court-ordered “ehang[e] [in] the legal relationship between [the plaintiff] and the defendant.” Texas State Teachers Assn. v. Garland Independent School Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 792 (1989) (citing Hewitt, supra, at 760-761, and Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U. S. 1, 3-4 (1988) (per curiam)). These decisions, taken together, establish that enforceable judgments on the merits and court-ordered consent decrees create the “material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties” necessary to permit an award of attorney’s fees. 489 U.S., at 792-793; see also Hanrakan, supra, at 757 (“[I]t seems clearly to have been the intent of Congress to permit... an interlocutory award only to a party who has established his entitlement to some relief on the merits of his claims, either in the trial court or on appeal” (emphasis added)).
We think, however, the “catalyst theory” falls on the other side of the line from these examples. It allows an award where there is no judicially sanctioned change in the legal relationship of the parties. Even under a limited form of the “catalyst theory,” a plaintiff could recover attorney’s fees if it established that the “complaint had sufficient merit to withstand a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction or failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 27. This is not the type of legal merit that our prior decisions, based upon plain language and congressional intent, have found necessary. Indeed, we held in Hewitt that an interlocutory ruling that reverses a dismissal for failure to state a claim “is not the stuff of which legal victories are made.” 482 U. S., at 760. See also Hanrahan, supra, at 754 (reversal of a directed verdict for defendant does not make plaintiff a “prevailing party”). A defendant’s voluntary change in conduct, although perhaps accomplishing what the plaintiff sought to achieve by the lawsuit, lacks the necessary judicial imprimatur on the change. Our precedents thus counsel against holding that the term “prevailing party” authorizes an award of attorney’s fees without a corresponding alteration in the legal relationship of the parties.
The dissenters chide us for upsetting “long-prevailing Circuit precedent.” Post, at 622 (opinion of Ginsbukg, J.) (emphasis added). But, as Justice Scalia points out in his concurrence, several Courts of Appeals have relied upon dicta in our prior eases in approving the “catalyst theory.” See post, at 621-622; see also supra, at 608, n. 5. Now that the issue is squarely presented, it behooves us to reconcile the plain language of the statutes with our prior holdings. We have only awarded attorney’s fees where the plaintiff has received a judgment on the merits, see, e. g., Farrar, supra, at 112, or obtained a court-ordered consent decree, Maher, supra, at 129-130 — we have not awarded attorney’s fees where the plaintiff has secured the reversal of a directed verdict, see Hanrahan, 446 U.S., at 759, or acquired a judicial pronouncement that the defendant has violated the Constitution unaccompanied by “judicial relief,” Hewitt, supra, at 760 (emphasis added). Never have we awarded attorney’s fees for a nonjudieial “alteration of actual circumstances.” Post, at 638 (dissenting opinion). While urging an expansion of our precedents on this front, the dissenters would simultaneously abrogate the “merit” requirement of our prior cases and award attorney’s fees where the plaintiff’s claim “was at least colorable” and “not... groundless.” Post, at 627 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We cannot agree that the term “prevailing party” authorizes federal courts to award attorney’s fees to a plaintiff who, by simply filing a nonfrivolous but nonetheless potentially meritless lawsuit (it will never be determined), has reached the “sought-after destination” without obtaining any judicial relief. Post, at 634 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Petitioners nonetheless argue that the legislative history of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act supports a broad reading of “prevailing party" which includes the “catalyst theory.” We doubt that legislative history could overcome what we think is the rather clear meaning of “prevailing party” — the term actually used in the statute. Since we resorted to such history in Garland, 489 U.S., at 790, Maher, 448 U. S., at 129, and Hanrakan, supra, at 756-757, however, we do likewise here.
The House Report to § 1988 states that “[t]he phrase ‘prevailing party' is not intended to be limited to the victor only after entry of a final judgment following a full trial on the merits,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 7 (1976), while the Senate Report explains that “parties may be considered to have prevailed when they vindicate rights through a consent judgment or without formally obtaining relief,” S. Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 5 (1976). Petitioners argue that these Reports and their reference to a 1970 decision from the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Parham v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 433 F. 2d 421 (1970), indicate Congress' intent to adopt the “catalyst theory.” We think the legislative history cited by petitioners is at best ambiguous as to the availability of the “catalyst theory” for awarding attorney’s fees. Particularly in view of the “American Rule” that attorney’s fees will not be awarded absent “explicit statutory authority,” such legislative history is clearly insufficient to alter the accepted meaning of the statutory term. Key Tronic, 511 U.S., at 819; see also Hanrahan, supra, at 758 (“[0]nly when a party has prevailed on the merits of at least some of his claims ... has there been a determination of the ‘substantial rights of the parties,’ which Congress determined was a necessary foundation for departing from the usual rule in this country that each party is to bear the expense of his own attorney” (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 94-1558, at 8)).
Petitioners finally assert that the “catalyst theory” is necessary to prevent defendants from unilaterally mooting an action before judgment in an effort to avoid an award of attorney’s fees. They also claim that the rejection of the “catalyst theory” will deter plaintiffs with meritorious but expensive eases from bringing suit. We are skeptical of these assertions, which are entirely speculative and unsupported by any empirical evidence (e. g., whether the number of suits brought in the Fourth Circuit has declined, in relation to other Circuits, since the decision in S-l and S-2).
Petitioners discount the disincentive that the “catalyst theory” may have upon a defendant’s decision to voluntarily change its conduct, conduct that may not be illegal. “The defendants’ potential liability for fees in this kind of litigation can be as significant as, and sometimes even more significant than, their potential liability on the merits,” Evans v. Jeff D., 475 U.S. 717, 734 (1986), and the possibility of being assessed attorney’s fees may well deter a defendant from altering its conduct.
And petitioners’ fear of mischievous defendants only materializes in claims for equitable relief, for so long as the plaintiff has a cause of action for damages, a defendant’s change in conduct -will not moot the case. Even then, it is not clear how often courts will find a case mooted: “It is well settled that a defendant’s voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not deprive a federal court of its power to determine the legality of the practice” unless it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOG), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 189 (2000) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). If a case is not found to be moot, and the plaintiff later procures an enforceable judgment, the court may of course award attorney’s fees. Given this possibility, a defendant has a strong incentive to enter a settlement agreement, where it can negotiate attorney’s fees and costs. Cf. Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S., at 7 (“[M]any a defendant would be unwilling to make a binding settlement offer on terms that left it exposed to liability for attorney’s fees in whatever amount the court might fix on motion of the plaintiff” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).
We have also stated that “[a] request for attorney’s fees should not result in a second major litigation,” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424, 437 (1983), and have accordingly avoided an interpretation of the fee-shifting statutes that would have “spawnfed] a second litigation of significant dimension,” Garland, supra, at 791. Among other things, a “catalyst theory” hearing would require analysis of the defendant’s subjective motivations in changing its conduct, an analysis that “will likely depend on a highly faetbound inquiry and may turn on reasonable inferences from the nature and timing of the defendant’s change in conduct.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28. Although we do not doubt the ability of district courts to perform the nuaneed “three thresholds” test required by the “catalyst theory” — whether the claim was colorable rather than groundless; whether the lawsuit was a substantial rather than an insubstantial cause of the defendant's change in conduct; whether the defendant’s change in conduct was motivated by the plaintiff’s threat of victory rather than threat of expense, see post, at 627-628 (dissenting opinion)— it is clearly not a formula for “ready administrability.” Burlington v. Dague, 505 U.S. 557, 566 (1992).
Given the clear meaning of “prevailing party” in the fee-shifting statutes, we need not determine which way these various policy arguments cut. In Alyeska, 421 U.S., at 260, we said that Congress had not “extended any roving authority to the Judiciary to allow counsel fees as costs or otherwise whenever the courts might deem them warranted.” To disregard the clear legislative language and the holdings of our prior cases on the basis of such policy arguments would be a similar assumption of a “roving authority.” For the reasons stated above, we hold that the “catalyst theory” is not a permissible basis for the award of attorney’s fees under the FHAA, 42 U. S. C. § 3613(e)(2), and ADA, 42 U.S.C. §12205.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
The original complaint also sought money damages, but petitioners relinquished this daim on January 2,1998. See App. to Pet. for Cert. All.
The District Court sanctioned respondents under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 for failing to timely provide notice of the legislative amendment. App. 147.
See, e. g., Stanton v. Southern Berkshire Regional School Dist., 197 F. 3d 574, 577, n. 2 (CA1 1999); Marbley v. Bane, 57 F. 3d 224, 234 (CA2 1995); Baumgartner v. Harrisburg Housing Authority, 21 F. 3d 541, 546-550 (CA3 1994); Payne v. Board of Ed., 88 F. 3d 392, 397 (CA6 1996); Zinn v. Shalala, 35 F. 3d 273, 276 (CA7 1994); Little Rock School Dish v. Pulaski Cty. School Dish, #1,17 F. 3d 260, 263, n. 2 (CA8 1994); Kilgour v. Pasadena, 53 F. 3d 1007, 1010 (CA9 1995); Beard v. Teska, 31 F. 3d 942, 951-952 (CA10 1994); Morris v. West Palm Beach, 194 F. 3d 1203, 1207 (CA11 1999).
We have interpreted these fee-shifting provisions consistently, see Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433, n. 7 (1983), and so approach the nearly identical provisions at issue here.
We have never had occasion to decide whether the term “prevailing party” allows an award of fees under the “catalyst theory” described above. Dictum in Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 760 (1987), alluded to the possibility of attorney’s fees where “voluntary action by the defendant ... affords the plaintiff all or some of the relief... sought,” but we expressly reserved the question, see id., at 763 (“We need not decide the circumstances, if any, under which this ‘catalyst’ theory could justify a fee award”). And though the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit relied upon our decision in Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103 (1992), in rejecting the “catalyst theory,” Farrar “involved no catalytic effect.” Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 194 (2000). Thus, there is language in our cases supporting both petitioners and respondents, and last Term we observed that it was an open question here. See ibid.
However, in some circumstances such a “prevailing party” should still not receive an award of attorney’s fees. See Farrar v. Hobby, supra, at 115-116.
We have subsequently characterized the Maher opinion as also allowing for an award of attorney’s fees for private settlements. See Farrar v. Hobby, supra, at 111; Hewitt v. Helms, supra, at 760. But this dictum ignores that Maher only “held that fees may be assessed... after a case has been settled by the entry of a consent decree.” Evans v. Jeff D., 475 U.S. 717, 720 (1986). Private settlements do not entail the judicial approval and oversight involved in consent decrees. And federal jurisdiction to enforce a private contractual settlement will often be lacking unless the terms of the agreement are incorporated into the order of dismissal. See Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375 (1994).
Although the dissenters seek support from Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379 (1884), that case involved costs, not attorney’s fees. “[B)y the long established practice and universally recognized rule of the common law... the prevailing party is entitled to recover a judgment for costs,” id., at 387, but “the rule 'has long been that attorney’s fees are not ordinarily recoverable,”’ Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 257 (1975) (quoting Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U.S. 714, 717 (1967)). Courts generally, and this Court in particular, then and now, have a presumptive rule for costs which the Court in its discretion may vary. See, e. g., this Court’s Rule 43.2 (“If the Court reverses or vacates a judgment, the respondent or appellee shall pay costs unless the Court otherwise orders”). In Mansfield, the defendants had successfully removed the case to federal court, successfully opposed the plaintiffs’ motion to remand the case to state court, lost on the merits of the case, and then reversed course and successfully argued in this Court that the lower federal court had no jurisdiction. The Court awarded costs to the plaintiffs, even though they had lost and the defendants won on the jurisdictional issue, which was the only question this Court decided. In no ordinary sense of the word can the plaintiffs have been said to be the prevailing party here — they lost and their opponents won on the only litigated issue — so the Court’s use of the term must be regarded as a figurative rather than a literal one, justifying the departure from the presumptive rule allowing costs to the prevailing party because of the obvious equities favoring the plaintiffs. The Court employed its discretion to recognize that the plaintiffs had been the victims of the defendants’ legally successful whipsawing tactics.
Although the Court of Appeals in Parham awarded attorney’s fees to the plaintiff because his “lawsuit acted as a catalyst which prompted the [defendant] to take action . . . seeking compliance with the requirements of Title VII,” 433 F. 2d, at 429-430, it did so only after finding that the defendant had aeted unlawfully, see id., at 426 (“We hold as a matter of law that [plaintiff’s evidence] established a violation of Title VII”). Thus, consistent with our holding in Farrar, Parham stands for the proposition that an enforceable judgment permits an award of attorney’s fees. And like the consent decree in Maker v. Gagne, 448 U. S. 122 (1980), the Court of Appeals in Parham ordered the District Court to “retain jurisdiction over the matter for a reasonable period of time to insure the continued implementation of the appellee’s policy of equal employment opportunities.” 433 F. 2d, at 429. Clearly Parham does not support a theory of fee shifting untethered to a material alteration in the legal relationship of the parties as defined by our precedents.
Only States and state officers acting in their official capacity are immune from suits for damages in federal court. See, e. g., Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974). Plaintiffs may bring suit for damages against all others, including municipalities and other political subdivisions of a State, see Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | F | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
I
On August 16, 1974, Michael Gilletti, an undercover officer with the Philadelphia Narcotics Squad arranged a heroin “buy” with one Patricia McCafferty (from whom he had purchased narcotics before). McCafferty told him it would cost $115 “and we will go down to Mom Santana’s for the dope.”
Gilletti notified his superiors of the impending transaction, recorded the serial numbers of $110 (sic) in marked bills, and went to meet McCafferty at a prearranged location. She got in his car and directed him to drive to 2S11 North Fifth Street, which, as she had previously informed him, was respondent Santana’s residence.
McCafferty took the money and went inside the house, stopping briefly to speak to respondent Alejandro who was sitting on the front steps. She came out shortly afterwards and got into the car. Gilletti asked for the heroin; she thereupon extracted from her bra several glassine envelopes containing a brownish-white powder and gave them to him.
Gilletti then stopped the car, displayed his badge, and placed McCafferty under arrest. He told her that the police were going back to 2311 North Fifth Street and that he wanted to know where the money was. She said, “Mom has the money.” At this point Sergeant Pruitt and other officers came up to the car. Gilletti showed them the envelope and said “Mom Santana has the money.” Gilletti then took McCafferty to the police station.
Pruitt and the others then drove approximately two blocks back to 2311 North Fifth Street. They saw Santana standing in the doorway of the house with a brown paper bag in her hand. They pulled up to within 15 feet of Santana and got out of their van, shouting “police,” and displaying their identification. As the officers approached, Santana retreated into the vestibule of her house.
The officers followed through the open door, catching her in the vestibule. As she tried to pull away, the bag tilted and “two bundles of glazed paper packets with a white powder” fell to the floor. Respondent Alejandro tried to make off with the dropped envelopes but was forcibly restrained. When Santana was told to empty her pockets she produced $135, $70 of which could be identified as Gilletti's marked money. The white powder in the bag was later determined to be heroin.
An indictment was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania charging McCafferty with distribution of heroin, in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 841, and respondents with possession of heroin with intent to distribute in violation of the same section. McCafferty pleaded guilty. Santana and Alejandro moved to suppress the heroin and money found during and after their arrests.
The District Court granted respondents' motion. In an oral opinion the court found that “[t]here was strong probable cause that Defendant Santana had participated in the transaction with Defendant McCafferty.” However, the court continued:
“One of the police officers . . . testified that the mission was to arrest Defendant Santana. Another police officer testified that the mission was to recover the bait money. Either one would require a warrant, one a warrant of arrest under ordinary circumstances and one a search warrant.”
The court further held that Santana's “reentry from the doorway into the house” did not support allowing the police to make a warrantless entry into the house on the grounds of “hot pursuit,” because it took “hot pursuit” to mean “a chase in and about public streets.” The court did find, however, that the police acted under “extreme emergency” conditions. The Court of Appeals affirmed this decision without opinion.
II
In United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411 (1976), we held that the warrantless arrest of an individual in a public place upon probable cause did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Thus the first question we must decide is whether, when the police first sought to arrest Santana, she was in a public place.
While it may be true that under the common law of property the threshold of one's dwelling is “private,” as is the yard surrounding the house, it is nonetheless clear that under the cases interpreting the Fourth Amendment Santana was in a “public” place. She was not in an area where she had any expectation of privacy. “What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own house or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967). She was not merely visible to the public but was as exposed to public view, speech, hearing, and touch as if she had been standing completely outside her house. Hester v. United States, 265 U. S. 57, 59 (1924). Thus, when the police, who concededly had probable cause to do so, sought to arrest her, they merely intended to perform a function which we have approved in Watson.
The only remaining question is whether her act of retreating into her house could thwart an otherwise proper arrest. We hold that it could not. In Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 (1967), we recognized the right of police, who had probable cause to believe that an armed robber had entered a house a few minutes before, to make a warrantless entry to arrest the robber and to search for weapons. This case, involving a true “hot pursuit,” is clearly governed by Warden; the need to act quickly here is even greater than in that case while the intrusion is much less. The District Court was correct in concluding that “hot pursuit” means some sort of a chase, but it need not be an extended hue and cry “in and about [the] public streets.” The fact that the pursuit here ended almost as soon as it began did not render it any the less a “hot pursuit” sufficient to justify the warrantless entry into Santana's house. Once Santana saw the police, there was likewise a realistic expectation that any delay would result in destruction of evidence. See Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U. S. 30, 35 (1970). Once she had been arrested the search, incident to that arrest, which produced the drugs and money was clearly justified. United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973); Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 762-763 (1969).
We thus conclude that a suspect may not defeat an arrest which has been set in motion in a public place, and is therefore proper under Watson, by the expedient of escaping to a private place. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
An Officer Strohm testified that he recognized Santana, whom he had seen before. He also indicated that she was standing directly in the doorway — one step forward would have put her outside, one step backward would have put her in the vestibule of her residence.
It is not apparent on what grounds respondent Alejandro had standing to protest the seizures. However, the Government did not raise this issue below and consequently we do not reach it.
Warden was based upon the “exigencies of the situation,” 387 U. S., at 298, and did not use the term “hot pursuit” or even involve a “hot pursuit” in the sense that that term would normally be understood. That phrase first appears in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 16 n. 7 (1948), where it was recognized that some element of a chase will usually be involved in a “hot pursuit” case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented by this case is whether an injured seaman may recover punitive damages for his employer’s willful failure to pay maintenance and cure. Petitioners argue that under Miles v. Apex Marine Corp., 498 U. S. 19 (1990), seamen may recover only those damages available under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. § 30104. We disagree. Historically, punitive damages have been available and awarded in general maritime actions, including some in maintenance and cure. We find that nothing in Miles or the Jones Act eliminates that availability.
I
Respondent Edgar L. Townsend was a crew member of the Motor Tug Thomas. After falling on the steel deck of the tugboat and injuring his arm and shoulder, respondent claimed that petitioner Atlantic Sounding, the owner of the tugboat, advised him that it would not provide maintenance and cure. See 496 F. 3d 1282, 1283 (CA11 2007). “A claim for maintenance and cure concerns the vessel owner’s obligation to provide food, lodging, and medical services to a seaman injured while serving the ship.” Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc., 531 U. S. 438, 441 (2001).
Petitioners thereafter filed an action for declaratory relief regarding their obligations with respect to maintenance and cure. Respondent filed his own suit under the Jones Act and general maritime law, alleging negligence, unseaworthiness, arbitrary and willful failure to pay maintenance and cure, and wrongful termination. In addition, respondent filed similar counterclaims in the declaratory judgment action, seeking punitive damages for the denial of maintenance and cure. The District Court consolidated the cases. See 496 F. 3d, at 1283-1284.
Petitioners moved to dismiss respondent’s punitive damages claim. The District Court denied the motion, holding that it was bound by the determination in Hines v. J. A. LaPorte, Inc., 820 F. 2d 1187, 1189 (CA11 1987) (per curiam), that punitive damages were available in an action for maintenance and cure. The court, however, agreed to certify the question for interlocutory appeal. See 496 F. 3d, at 1284. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed with the District Court that Hines controlled and held that respondent could pursue his punitive damages claim for the willful withholding of maintenance and cure. 496 F. 3d, at 1285-1286. The decision conflicted with those of other Courts of Appeals, see, e. g., Guevara v. Maritime Overseas Corp., 59 F. 3d 1496 (CA5 1995) (en banc); Glynn v. Roy Al Boat Management Corp., 57 F. 3d 1495 (CA9 1995), and we granted certiorari, 555 U. S. 993 (2008).
II
Respondent claims that he is entitled to seek punitive damages as a result of petitioners’ alleged breach of their “maintenance and cure” duty under general maritime law. We find no legal obstacle to his doing so.
A
Punitive damages have long been an available remedy at common law for wanton, willful, or outrageous conduct. Under English law during the colonial era, juries were accorded broad discretion to award damages as they saw fit. See, e.g., Lord Townsend v. Hughes, 2 Mod. 150, 86 Eng. Rep. 994 (C. P. 1676) (“[I]n civil actions the plaintiff is to recover by way of compensation for the damages he hath sustained, and the jury are the proper judges thereof” (emphasis in original)); 1 T. Sedgwick, Measure of Damages §349, p. 688 (9th ed. 1912) (hereinafter Sedgwick) (“Until comparatively recent times juries were as arbitrary judges of the amount of damages as of the facts”). The common-law view “was that ‘in eases where the amount of damages was uncertain[,] their assessment was a matter so peculiarly within the province of the jury that the Court should not alter it.’” Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U. S. 340, 353 (1998) (quoting Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U. S. 474, 480 (1935); alteration in original).
The jury’s broad discretion to set damages included the authority to award punitive damages when the circumstances of the ease warranted. Just before the ratification of the Constitution, Lord Chief Justice Pratt explained: “[A] jury ha[s] it in [its] power to give damages for more than the injury received. Damages are designed not only as a satisfaction to the injured person, but likewise as a punishment to the guilty, to deter from any such proceeding for the future, and as a proof of the detestation of the jury to the action itself.” Wilkes v. Wood, Lofft 1, 18-19, 98 Eng. Rep. 489, 498-499 (C. P. 1763); see also Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 1, 25 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (“[P]unitive or ‘exemplary’ damages have long been a part of Anglo-American law”); Huckle v. Money, 2 Wils. 205, 207, 95 Eng. Rep. 768, 769 (C. P. 1763) (declining to grant a new trial because the jury “ha[s] done right in giving exemplary damages”).
American courts have likewise permitted punitive damages awards in appropriate cases since at least 1784. See, e. g., Genay v. Norris, 1 S. C. L. 6, 7 (C. P. and Gen. Sess. 1784) (approving award of “very exemplary damages” because spiking wine represented a “very wanton outrage”); Coryell v. Colbaugh, 1 N. J. L. 77 (1791) (concluding that a breach of promise of marriage was “of the most atrocious and dishonourable nature” and supported “damages for example’s sake, to prevent such offences in future” (emphasis in original)). Although some States elected not to allow juries to make such awards, the vast majority permitted them. See 1 Sedgwick §§352, 354, at 694, 700. By the middle of the 19th century, “punitive damages were undoubtedly an established part of the American common law of torts [and] no particular procedures were deemed necessary to circumscribe a jury’s discretion regarding the award of such damages, or their amount.” Haslip, supra, at 26-27 (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment).
This Court has also found the award of punitive damages to be authorized as a matter of common-law doctrine. In Day v. Woodworth, 13 How. 363 (1852), for example, the Court recognized the “well-established principle of the common law, that in actions of trespass and all actions on the case for torts, a jury may inflict what are called exemplary, punitive, or vindictive damages upon a defendant....” Id., at 371; see also Philadelphia, W., & B. R. Co. v. Quigley, 21 How. 202, 214 (1859) (“Whenever the injury complained of has been inflicted maliciously or wantonly, and with circumstances of contumely or indignity, the jury are not limited to the ascertainment of a simple compensation for the wrong committed against the aggrieved person”); Barry v. Edmunds, 116 U. S. 550, 562 (1886) (“[According to the settled law of this court, [a plaintiff] might show himself, by proof of the circumstances, to be entitled to exemplary damages calculated to vindicate his right and protect it against future similar invasions”).
B
The general rule that punitive damages were available at common law extended to claims arising under federal maritime law. See Lake Shore & Michigan Southern R. Co. v. Prentice, 147 U. S. 101, 108 (1893) (“[C]ourts of admiralty... proceed, in cases of tort, upon the same principles as courts of common law, in allowing exemplary damages... ”). One of this Court’s first cases indicating that punitive damages were available involved an action for marine trespass. See The Amiable Nancy, 3 Wheat. 546 (1818). In the course of deciding whether to uphold the jury’s award, Justice Story, writing for the Court, recognized that punitive damages are an available maritime remedy under the proper circumstances. Although the Court found that the particular facts of the case did not warrant such an award against the named defendants, it explained that “if this were a suit against the original wrong-doers, it might be proper to... visit upon them in the shape of exemplary damages, the proper punishment which belongs to such lawless misconduct.” Id., at 558; see also Barry, supra, at 563 (“In The Amiable Nancy, which was the case of a marine tort, Mr. Justice Story spoke of exemplary damages as The proper punishment which belongs to... lawless misconduct’ ” (citation omitted)).
The lower federal courts followed suit, finding that punitive damages were available in maritime actions for tortious acts of a particularly egregious nature. See, e. g., McGuire v. The Golden Gate, 16 F. Cas. 141, 143 (No. 8,815) (CC ND Cal. 1856) (“In an action against the perpetrator of the wrong, the aggrieved party would be entitled to recover not only actual damages but exemplary, — such as would vindicate his wrongs, and teach the tort feasor the necessity of reform”); Ralston v. The State Rights, 20 F. Cas. 201, 210 (No. 11,540) (DC ED Pa. 1836) (“[I]t is not legally correct... to say that a court cannot give exemplary damages, in a case like the present, against the owners of a vessel”); Boston Mfg. Co. v. Fiske, 3 F. Cas. 957 (No. 1,681) (CC Mass. 1820) (Story, J.) (“In cases of marine torts, or illegal captures, it is far from being uncommon in the admiralty to allow costs and expences, and to mulct the offending parties, even in exemplary damages, where the nature of the case requires it”). In short, prior to enactment of the Jones Act in 1920, “maritime jurisprudence was replete with judicial statements approving punitive damages, especially on behalf of passengers and seamen.” Robertson, Punitive Damages in American Maritime Law, 28 J. Mar. L. & Comm. 73, 115 (1997) (hereinafter Robertson); see also 2 Sedgwick §599b, at 1156 (“Exemplary damages are awarded in Admiralty, as in other jurisdictions”); 2 J. Sutherland, Law of Damages § 392, p. 1272 (4th ed. 1916) (“As a rule a court of equity will not award [punitive] damages, but courts of admiralty will...” (footnote omitted)).
C
Nothing in maritime law undermines the applicability of this general rule in the maintenance and cure context. See G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty § 6-13, p. 312 (2d ed. 1975) (hereinafter Gilmore & Black) (explaining that a seaman denied maintenance and cure “has a free option to claim damages (including punitive damages) under a general maritime law count”); Robertson 163 (concluding that breach of maintenance and cure is one of the particular torts for which general maritime law would most likely permit the awarding of punitive damages “assuming... the requisite level of blameworthiness”)- Indeed, the legal obligation to provide maintenance and cure dates back centuries as an aspect of general maritime law, and the failure of a seaman’s employers to provide him with adequate medical care was the basis for awarding punitive damages in cases decided as early as the 1800’s.
The right to receive maintenance and cure was first recognized in this country in two lower court decisions authored by Justice Story. See Harden v. Gordon, 11 F. Cas. 480 (No. 6,047) (CC Me. 1823); Reed v. Canfield, 20 F. Cas. 426 (No. 11,641) (CC Mass. 1832). According to Justice Story, this common-law obligation to seamen was justified on humanitarian and economic grounds: “If some provision be not made for [seamen] in sickness at the expense of the ship, they must often in foreign ports suffer the accumulated evils of disease, and poverty, and sometimes perish from the want of suitable nourishment.... [T]he merchant himself derives an ultimate benefit [because i]t encourages seamen to engage in perilous voyages with more promptitude, and at lower wages.” Harden, supra, at 483; see also Reed, supra, at 429 (“The seaman is to be cured at the expense of the ship, of the sickness or injury sustained in the ship’s service”).
This Court has since registered its agreement with these decisions. “Upon a full review... of English and American authorities,” the Court concluded that “the vessel and her owners are liable, in case a seaman falls sick, or is wounded, in the service of the ship, to the extent of his maintenance and cure, and to his wages, at least so long as the voyage is continued.” The Osceola, 189 U. S. 158, 175 (1903). Decisions following The Osceola have explained that in addition to wages, “maintenance” includes food and lodging at the expense of their ship, and “cure” refers to medical treatment. Lewis, 531 U. S., at 441; see also Gilmore & Black § 6-12, at 305-306 (describing “maintenance and cure” as including medical expenses, a living allowance, and unearned wages).
In addition, the failure of a vessel owner to provide proper medical care for seamen has provided the impetus for damages awards that appear to contain at least some punitive element. For example, in The City of Carlisle, 39 F. 807 (DC Ore. 1889), the court added $1,000 to its damages award to compensate an apprentice seaman for “gross neglect and cruel maltreatment of the [seaman] since his injury.” Id., at 809, 817. The court reviewed the indignities to which the apprentice had been subjected as he recovered without any serious medical attention, see id., at 810-812, and explained that “if owners do not wish to be mulct in damages for such misconduct, they should be careful to select men worthy to command their vessels and fit to be trusted with the safety and welfare of their crews, and particularly apprentice boys.” Id., at 817; see also The Troop, 118 F. 769, 770-771, 773 (DC Wash. 1902) (explaining that $4,000 was a reasonable award because the captain’s “failure to observe the dictates of humanity” and obtain prompt medical care for an injured seaman constituted a “monstrous wrong”).
D
The settled legal principles discussed above establish three points central to resolving this case. First, punitive damages have long been available at common law. Second, the common-law tradition of punitive damages extends to maritime claims. And third, there is no evidence that claims for maintenance and cure were excluded from this general admiralty rule. Instead, the pre-Jones Act evidence indicates that punitive damages remain available for such claims under the appropriate factual circumstances. As a result, respondent is entitled to pursue punitive damages unless Congress has enacted legislation departing from this common-law understanding. As explained below, it has not.
Ill
A
The only statute that could serve as a basis for overturning the common-law rule in this case is the Jones Act. Congress enacted the Jones Act primarily to overrule The Osceola, supra, in which this Court prohibited a seaman or his family from recovering for injuries or death suffered due to his employers’ negligence. To this end, the statute provides in relevant part:
“A seaman injured in the course of employment or, if the seaman dies from the injury, the personal representative of the seaman may elect to bring a civil action at law, with the right of trial by jury, against the employer. Laws of the United States regulating recovery for personal injury to, or death of, a railway employee apply to an action under this section.” 46 U. S. C. § 30104(a) (incorporating the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U.S. C. §§51-60).
The Jones Act thus created a statutory cause of action for negligence, but it did not eliminate pre-existing remedies available to seamen for the separate common-law cause of action based on a seaman’s right to maintenance and cure. Section 30104 bestows upon the injured seaman the right to “elect” to bring a Jones Act claim, thereby indicating a choice of actions for seamen — not an exclusive remedy. See Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language 798 (1913) (defining “elect” as “[t]o make choice of”); 1 Bouvier’s Law Dictionary 979 (8th ed. 1914) (defining “election” as “[c]hoice; selection”). Because the then-accepted remedies for injured seamen arose from general maritime law, see The Osceola, 189 U. S., at 175, it necessarily follows that Congress was envisioning the continued availability of those common-law causes of action. See Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis, 515 U. S. 347, 354 (1995) (“Congress enacted the Jones Act in 1920 to remove the bar to suit for negligence articulated in The Osceola, thereby completing the trilogy of heightened legal protections [including maintenance and cure] that seamen receive because of their exposure to the perils of the sea” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Stewart v. Dutra Constr. Co., 543 U. S. 481, 487 (2005) (describing the Jones Act as “removing] this bar to negligence suits by seamen”). If the Jones Act had been the only remaining remedy available to injured seamen, there would have been no election to make.
In addition, the only statutory restrictions expressly addressing general maritime claims for maintenance and cure were enacted long after the passage of the Jones Act. They limit its availability for two discrete classes of people: foreign workers on offshore oil and mineral production facilities, see § 503(a)(2), 96 Stat. 1955, codified at 46 U. S. C. § 30105(b), and sailing school students and instructors, § 204, 96 Stat. 1589, codified at 46 U. S. C. § 50504(b). These provisions indicate that “Congress knows how to” restrict the traditional remedy of maintenance and cure “when it wants to.” Omni Capital Int’l, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U. S. 97, 106 (1987). Thus, nothing in the statutory scheme for maritime recovery restricts the availability of punitive damages for maintenance and cure for those, like respondent, who are not precluded from asserting the general maritime claim.
Further supporting this interpretation of the Jones Act, this Court has consistently recognized that the Act “was remedial, for the benefit and protection of seamen who are peculiarly the wards of admiralty. Its purpose was to enlarge that protection, not to narrow it.” The Arizona v. Anelich, 298 U. S. 110, 123 (1936); see also American Export Lines, Inc. v. Alvez, 446 U. S. 274, 282 (1980) (plurality opinion) (declining to “read the Jones Act as sweeping aside general maritime law remedies”); O’Donnell v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 318 U. S. 36, 43 (1943) (“It follows that the Jones Act, in extending a right of recovery to the seaman injured while in the service of his vessel by negligence, has done no more than supplement the remedy of maintenance and cure... ”); Pacific S. S. Co. v. Peterson, 278 U. S. 130, 134, 138-139 (1928) (holding that the Jones Act “was not intended to restrict in any way the long-established right of a seaman to maintenance, cure and wages”).
Not only have our decisions repeatedly observed that the Jones Act preserves common-law causes of action such as maintenance and cure, but our case law also supports the view that punitive damages awards, in particular, remain available in maintenance and cure actions after the Act’s passage. In Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U. S. 527 (1962), for example, the Court permitted the recovery of attorney’s fees for the “callous” and “willful and persistent” refusal to pay maintenance and cure. Id., at 529-531. In fact, even the Vaughan dissenters, who believed that such fees were generally unavailable, agreed that a seaman “would be entitled to exemplary damages in accord with traditional concepts of the law of damages” where a “shipowner’s refusal to pay maintenance stemmed from a wanton and intentional disregard of the legal rights of the seaman.” Id., at 540 (opinion of Stewart, J.); see also Fiske, 3 F. Cas., at 957 (Story, J.) (arguing that counsel fees are awardable in “[cjourts of admiralty... not technically as costs, but upon the same principles, as they are often allowed damages in cases of torts, by courts of common law, as a recompense for injuries sustained, as exemplary damages, or as a remuneration for expences incurred, or losses sustained, by the misconduct of the other party”).
Nothing in the text of the Jones Act or this Court’s decisions issued in the wake of its enactment undermines the continued existence of the common-law cause of action providing recovery for the delayed or improper provision of maintenance and cure. Petitioners do not deny the availability of punitive damages in general maritime law, or identify any cases establishing that such damages were historically unavailable for breach of the duty of maintenance and cure. The plain language of the Jones Act, then, does not provide the punitive damages bar that petitioners seek.
B
Petitioners nonetheless argue that the availability of punitive damages in this case is controlled by the Jones Act because of this Court’s decision in Miles, 498 U. S. 19; see also post, at 428-429 (opinion of Alito, J.). In Miles, petitioners argue, the Court limited recovery in maritime cases involving death or personal injury to the remedies available under the Jones Act and the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), 46 U. S. C. §§ 30301-30306. Petitioners’ reading of Miles is far too broad.
Miles does not address either maintenance and cure actions in general or the availability of punitive damages for such actions. The decision instead grapples with the entirely different question whether general maritime law should provide a cause of action for wrongful death based on unseaworthiness. By providing a remedy for wrongful death suffered on the high seas or in territorial waters, the Jones Act and DOHSA displaced a general maritime rule that denied any recovery for wrongful death. See 498 U. S., at 23-34. This Court, therefore, was called upon in Miles to decide whether these new statutes supported an expansion of the relief available under pre-existing general maritime law to harmonize it with a cause of action created by statute.
The Court in Miles first concluded that the “unanimous legislative judgment behind the Jones Act, DOHSA, and the many state statutes” authorizing maritime wrongful-death actions supported the recognition of a general maritime action for wrongful death of a seaman. Id., at 24 (discussing Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U. S. 375 (1970), which overruled The Harrisburg, 119 U. S. 199 (1886)). Congress had chosen to limit, however, the damages available for wrongful-death actions under the Jones Act and DOHSA, such that damages were not statutorily available for loss of society or lost future earnings. See Miles, 498 U. S., at 21, 31-32. The Court thus concluded that Congress’ judgment must control the availability of remedies for wrongful-death actions brought under general maritime law, id., at 32-36.
The reasoning of Miles remains sound. As the Court in that case explained, “[w]e no longer live in an era when seamen and their loved ones must look primarily to the courts as a source of substantive legal protection from injury and death; Congress and the States have legislated extensively in these areas.” Id., at 27. Furthermore, it was only because of congressional action that a general federal cause of action for wrongful death on the high seas and in territorial waters even existed; until then, there was no general common-law doctrine providing for such an action. As a result, to determine the remedies available under the common-law wrongful-death action, “an admiralty court should look primarily to these legislative enactments for policy guidance.” Ibid. It would have been illegitimate to create common-law remedies that exceeded those remedies statutorily available under the Jones Act and DOHSA. See id., at 36 (“We will not create, under our admiralty powers, a remedy... that goes well beyond the limits of Congress’ ordered system of recovery for seamen’s injury and death”).
But application of that principle here does not lead to the outcome suggested by petitioners or the dissent. See post, at 425-426. Unlike the situation presented in Miles, both the general maritime cause of action (maintenance and cure) and the remedy (punitive damages) were well established before the passage of the Jones Act. See supra, at 409-414. Also unlike the facts presented by Miles, the Jones Act does not address maintenance and cure or its remedy. It is therefore possible to adhere to the traditional understanding of maritime actions and remedies without abridging or violating the Jones Act; unlike wrongful-death actions, this traditional understanding is not a matter to which “Congress has spoken directly.” See Miles, supra, at 31 (citing Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U. S. 618, 625 (1978)). Indeed, the Miles Court itself acknowledged that “[t]he Jones Act evinces no general hostility to recovery under maritime law,” 498 U. S., at 29, and noted that statutory remedy limitations “would not necessarily deter us, if recovery... were more consistent with the general principles of maritime tort law,” id., at 35. The availability of punitive damages for maintenance and cure actions is entirely faithful to these “general principles of maritime tort law,” and no statute casts doubt on their availability under general maritime law.
Moreover, petitioners’ contention that Miles precludes any action or remedy for personal injury beyond that made available under the Jones Act was directly rejected by this Court in Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. v. Garris, 532 U. S. 811, 818 (2001). That case involved the death of a harbor worker. Ibid. There, the Court recognized a maritime cause of action for wrongful death attributable to negligence although neither the Jones Act (which applies only to seamen) nor DOHSA (which does not cover territorial waters) provided such a remedy. Id., at 817-818. The Court acknowledged that “it will be the better course, in many cases that assert new claims beyond what those statutes have seen fit to allow, to leave further development to Congress.” Id., at 820. But the Court concluded that the cause of action at issue there was “new only in the most technical sense” because “[t]he general maritime law has recognized the tort of negligence for more than a century, and it has been clear since Moragne that breaches of a maritime duty are actionable when they cause death, as when they cause injury.” Ibid. The Court thus found that “Congress’s occupation of this field is not yet so extensive as to preclude us from recognizing what is already logically compelled by our precedents.” Ibid.
Because Miles presented no barrier to this endorsement of a previously unrecognized maritime cause of action for negligent wrongful death, we see no legitimate basis for a contrary conclusion in the present case. Like negligence, “[t]he general maritime law has recognized... for more than a century” the duty of maintenance and cure and the general availability of punitive damages. See Garris, supra, at 820; see also supra, at 409-414. And because respondent does not ask this Court to alter statutory text or “expand” the general principles of maritime tort law, Miles does not require us to eliminate the general maritime remedy of punitive damages for the willful or wanton failure to comply with the duty to pay maintenance and cure. “We assume that Congress is aware of existing law when it passes legislation,” Miles, supra, at 32, and the available history suggests that punitive damages were an established part of the maritime law in 1920, see supra, at 411-414.
It remains true, of course, that “[a]dmiralty is not created in a vacuum; legislation has always served as an important source of both common law and admiralty principles.” Miles, supra, at 24. And it also is true that the negligent denial of maintenance and cure may also be the subject of a Jones Act claim. See Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc., 287 U. S. 367 (1932). But the fact that seamen commonly seek to recover under the Jones Act for the wrongful withholding of maintenance and cure does not mean that the Jones Act provides the only remedy for maintenance and cure claims. Indeed, contrary to petitioners’ view that the Jones Act replaced in their entirety the remedies available at common law for maintenance and cure, the Cortes decision explicitly acknowledged a seaman’s right to choose among overlapping statutory and common-law remedies for injuries sustained by the denial of maintenance and cure. See id., at 374-375 (A seaman’s “cause of action for personal injury created by the statute may have overlapped his cause of action for breach of the maritime duty of maintenance and cure.... In such circumstances it was his privilege, in so far as the causes of action covered the same ground, to sue indifferently on any one of them”).
As this Court has repeatedly explained, “remedies for negligence, unseaworthiness, and maintenance and cure have different origins and may on occasion call for application of slightly different principles and procedures.” Fitzgerald v. United States Lines Co., 374 U. S. 16, 18 (1963); see also Peterson, 278 U. S., at 138, 139 (emphasizing that a seaman’s action for maintenance and cure is “independent” and “cumulative” from other claims such as negligence and that the maintenance and cure right is “in no sense inconsistent with, or an alternative of, the right to recover compensatory damages [under the Jones Act]”). See also Gilmore & Black § 6-23, at 342 (“It is unquestioned law that both the Jones Act and the unseaworthiness remedies are additional to maintenance and cure: the seaman may have maintenance and cure and also one of the other two”)- The laudable quest for uniformity in admiralty does not require the narrowing of available damages to the lowest common denominator approved by Congress for distinct causes of action. Although “Congress... is free to say this much and no more,” Miles, 498 U. S., at 24 (internal quotation marks omitted), we will not attribute words to Congress that it has not written.
IV
Because punitive damages have long been an accepted remedy under general maritime law, and because nothing in the Jones Act altered this understanding, such damages for the willful and wanton disregard of the maintenance and cure obligation should remain available in the appropriate case as a matter of general maritime law. Limiting recovery for maintenance and cure to whatever is permitted by the Jones Act would give greater pre-emptive effect to the Act than is required by its text, Miles, or any of this Court’s other decisions interpreting the statute. For these reasons, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc., is a wholly owned subsidiary of Weeks Marine, Inc., the other petitioner in this case.
Although punitive damages awards were rarely upheld on judicial review, but see Roza v. Smith, 65 F. 592, 596-597 (DC ND Cal. 1895); Gallagher v. The Yankee, 9 F. Cas. 1091, 1093 (No. 5,196) (DC ND Cal. 1859), that fact does not draw into question the basic understanding that punitive damages were considered an available maritime remedy. Indeed, in several cases in which a judgment awarding punitive damages was overturned on appeal, the reversal was based on unrelated grounds. See, e. g., The Margharita, 140 F. 820, 824 (CA5 1905); Pacific Packing & Nav. Co. v. Fielding, 136 F. 577, 580 (CA9 1905); Latchtimacker v. Jacksonville Towing & Wrecking Co., 181 F. 276, 278 (CC SD Fla. 1910).
Although these eases do not refer to “punitive” or “exemplary” damages, scholars have characterized the awards authorized by these decisions as such. See Robertson 103-105; Edelman, Guevara v. Maritime Overseas Corp.: Opposing the Decision, 20 Tulane Mar. L. J. 349, 351, and n. 22 (1996).
The dissent correctly notes that the handful of early cases involving maintenance and cure, by themselves, do not definitively resolve the question of punitive damages availability in such cases. See post, at 429-431 (opinion of Alito, J.). However, it neglects to acknowledge that the general common-law rule made punitive damages available in maritime actions. See supra, at 411-412. Nor does the dissent explain why maintenance and cure actions should be excepted from this general rule. It is because of this rule, and the fact that these early eases support — rather than refute — its application to maintenance and cure actions, see supra, at 413-414, that the pre-Jones Act evidence supports the conclusion that punitive damages were available at common law where the denial of maintenance and cure involved wanton, willful, or outrageous conduct.
In the wake of Vaughan, a number of lower courts expressly held that punitive damages can be recovered for the denial of maintenance and cure. See, e. g., Hines v. J. A. Laporte, Inc., 820 F. 2d 1187, 1189 (CA11 1987) (per curiam) (upholding punitive damages award of $5,000 for an “arbitrary and
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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In these consolidated cases, petitioners ask us to decide whether union signatory subcontracting clauses that are sought or negotiated in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship are protected by the construction industry proviso to §8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act (Act), 29 U. S. C. § 158(e). Such clauses bar subcontracting except to subcontractors who are signatories to agreements with particular unions. Petitioners also ask us to decide whether a union violates § 8(b)(4)(A) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (b)(4)(A), when it pickets to obtain a lawful subcontracting clause.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that subcontracting clauses sought or negotiated in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship are protected by the construction industry proviso even when not limited in application to particular jobsites at which both union and nonunion workers are employed. It further held that picketing to obtain such clauses does not violate § 8(b)(4)(A). See 654 F. 2d 1301 (1981) (en banc). We affirm the holding that the subcontracting clauses at issue here are protected by the construction industry proviso. Because we conclude that the Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction to consider the picketing question, we do not review that portion of its decision.
I
A
These cases arise out of two separate labor disputes. The first involves petitioner Woelke & Romero Framing, Inc. (Woelke), a framing subcontractor in the construction industry in southern California. From July 1974 to June 1977, Woelke was party to a collective-bargaining agreement with respondent United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (Carpenters). Shortly before this agreement was to expire, Woelke and Carpenters commenced bargaining for the purpose of negotiating a successor agreement. In August 1977, however, the parties reached an impasse over Carpenters’ demand for a union signatory subcontracting clause. This clause would have prohibited Woelke from subcontracting work at any construction jobsite “except to a person, firm or corporation, party to an appropriate, current labor agreement with the appropriate Union, or subordinate body signatory to this Agreement.” 1 App. 86.
In support of Carpenters’ demand for a subcontracting clause, two Carpenters locals picketed Woelke’s construction sites, causing some work stoppages. Woelke filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that the subcontracting clause violated § 8(e) of the Act, which proscribes secondary agreements between unions and employers — that is, agreements that require an employer to cease doing business with another party, in order to influence the labor relations of that party. Woelke argued that because the clause violated § 8(e), Carpenters’ picketing in support of that restriction violated § 8(b)(4)(A), 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(4)(A).
The Board agreed that the union signatory subcontracting clauses at issue were secondary in thrust. It ruled, however, that they were saved by the construction industry proviso to §8(e), which exempts agreements between a union and employer concerning work to be performed at a construction jobsite. The Board rejected Woelke’s contention that subcontracting clauses are sheltered by the proviso only if they are limited in application to particular jobsites at which both union and nonunion workers are employed. According to the Board, such clauses are lawful whenever they are sought or negotiated “in the context of a collective bargaining relationship.” Carpenters Local No. 944 (Woelke & Romero Framing, Inc.), 239 N. L. R. B. 241, 250 (1978), citing Connell Construction Co. v. Plumbers & Steamfitters, 421 U. S. 616 (1975). The Board further indicated that since the subcontracting clauses were lawful, picketing to obtain a subcontracting proposal was permitted under § 8(b)(4)(A). Carpenters Local No. 944, supra, at 251.
B
The second dispute concerns a collective-bargaining agreement between petitioner Oregon-Columbia Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, Inc. (Oregon AGC), and respondent Local 701 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, AFL-CIO (Engineers). Oregon AGC is an association of approximately 200 construction industry employers in Oregon and southwest Washington. Since 1960, the contract between Oregon AGC and the Engineers has contained a subcontracting clause prohibiting Oregon AGC from subcontracting construction jobsite work to “any person, firm or company who does not have an existing labor agreement with the [Engineers] Union covering such work.” 2 App. 9-10; see id., at 12. In addition, the agreement authorized Engineers to take “such action as they deem necessary,” including strikes and other economic self-help, to enforce awards obtained through the grievance and arbitration process on matters covered by the agreement. Id., at 10.
In April 1977, petitioner Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (Pacific Northwest), a member of Oregon AGC, filed unfair labor practice charges, asserting that the contract between the Oregon AGC and the Engineers violated §8(e). Relying on the same reasoning employed in Carpenters Local No. 944, the Board held that the union signatory subcontracting clauses, standing alone, would be protected by the construction industry proviso. International Union of Operating Engineers, Local No. 701 (Pacific Northwest Chapter of Associated Builders & Contractors, Inc.), 239 N. L. R. B. 274, 277 (1978). With one member dissenting, however, it decided that the provision of the contract permitting the union to enforce the subcontracting clause was not protected by the proviso. Id., at 276.
C
Woelke, Oregon AGC, and Pacific Northwest all sought review of the Board’s orders in the Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit panel consolidated the cases and reversed the Board’s decisions. It reasoned that the proviso was designed solely to minimize friction between union and nonunion workers employed at the same jobsite. Thus, the proviso shelters subcontracting clauses “only where a collective bargaining relationship exists and even then only when the employer or his subcontractor has employees who are members of the signatory union at work at some time at the jobsite at which the employer wishes to engage a nonunion subcontractor.” 609 F. 2d 1341, 1347 (1979) (three-judge panel). Because it found that the clauses were unlawful, it did not reach the questions whether picketing or striking either to obtain or enforce a valid subcontracting clause was lawful. Id., at 1351.
At respondents’ request, the cases were reheard en banc. The en banc panel decided to enforce the Board’s orders in their entirety. 654 F. 2d 1301 (1981). The majority held that union signatory subcontracting clauses are protected so long as they are sought or negotiated in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship. Id,., at. 1322. It further held that economic pressure may be used to obtain a subcontracting agreement, but that it may not be employed to enforce a subcontracting agreement. Id., at 1323-1324.
Woelke, Oregon AGC, and Pacific Northwest asked this Court to review the conclusion that the subcontracting agreements sought by respondents are protected by the construction industry proviso. Woelke also asked this Court to decide whether unions violate § 8(b)(4)(A) when they picket to obtain lawful subcontracting clauses. We granted certiorari. 454 U. S. 814 (1981).
H
>
Section 8(e), which was added to the Act by the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act, Pub. L. 86-257, 73 Stat. 543-544, 29 U. S. C. § 158(e), states:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for any labor organization and any employer to enter into any contract or agreement, express or implied, whereby such employer ceases or refrains or agrees to cease or refrain from handling, using, selling, transporting or otherwise dealing in any of the products of any other employer, or to cease doing business with any other person, and any contract or agreement entered into heretofore or hereafter containing such an agreement shall be to such extent unenforceable and void.”
The union subcontracting clauses at issue here fall within the general prohibition of § 8(e); they require the general contractor to boycott the services of nonunion subcontractors in order to influence the labor relations policies of the subcontractor. The construction industry proviso to § 8(e) states, however, that
“nothing in this subsection (e) shall apply to an agreement between a labor organization and an employer in the construction industry relating to the contracting or subcontracting of work to be done at the site of the construction, alteration, painting, or repair of a building, structure, or other work.”
Thus, the question we must answer here is whether the union signatory subcontracting clauses sought or obtained by respondent unions are protected by this proviso.
Read literally, the proviso would seem to shelter the subcontracting agreements — it expressly states that § 8(e) does not apply to agreements that limit the contracting of construction site work. In Connell Construction Co. v. Plumbers & Steamfitters, 421 U. S., at 628, however, this Court warned that § 8(e) “must be interpreted in light of the statutory setting and the circumstances surrounding its enactment.” In that case, the Court decided that the proviso did not exempt subcontracting agreements that were not sought or obtained in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship, even though they were covered by the plain language of the statute. The Court reasoned that Congress did not intend to authorize such agreements.
The subcontracting clauses at issue here were sought or negotiated in the context of collective-bargaining relationships. Petitioners argue, however, that we should further confine the scope of the proviso. They contend that Congress designed the proviso to solve the problems that arise when union and nonunion workers are employed at the same jobsite. Thus, it should be interpreted to protect only those agreements that are limited in application to construction projects where both union and nonunion workers are employed.
After examining the construction industry proviso “in light of the statutory setting and the circumstances surrounding its enactment,” Connell Construction Co., supra, at 628, we conclude that it should not be confined as petitioners suggest. The legislative history of § 8(e) and the construction industry proviso clearly indicates that Congress intended to protect subcontracting clauses like those at issue here.
B
Prior to 1959, there were gaps in the existing protections against secondary boycotts. In Carpenters v. NLRB, 357 U. S. 93 (1958) (Sand Door), this Court held that a union could not engage in strikes or other concerted activity to enforce “hot cargo” agreements — agreements that required employers to boycott the goods or services of another party with whom the union had a dispute. However, Sand Door indicated that employers and unions were free to enter into hot cargo agreements, and that compliance was lawful so long as it was voluntary. Id., at 108.
Section 8(e), which prohibits hot cargo agreements, was designed to eliminate the loophole created by the Sand Door decision. See Connell Construction Co., supra, at 628. See also National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612, 634 (1967). The provision represents a compromise between bills reported out by the Senate and House. The Senate bill would have outlawed hot cargo agreements only in the trucking industry. 105 Cong. Rec. 6556 (1959), 2 NLRB, Legislative History of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, pp. 1161— 1162 (1959) (Leg. Hist.). The legislation proposed by the House — the Landrum-Griffin bill — was much broader. It made it an unfair labor practice for any labor organization and any employer to enter into an agreement whereby the employer agrees to “cease doing business with any other person.” H. R. 8400, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., § 705(b)(1) (1959), 1 Leg. Hist. 683. The Conference Committee decided to adopt the House bill. However, the Senate conferees insisted on a proviso that exempted hot cargo agreements in the garment industry, and also agreements relating to work to be done at the site of a construction project. 105 Cong. Rec. 17899 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1432.
The legislative history contains several references to the construction industry proviso. After noting that the proviso extends only to work to be performed at the site of the construction, the Conference Report states:
“The committee of conference does not intend that this proviso should be construed so as to change the present state of the law with respect to the validity of this specific type of agreement relating to work to be done at the site of the construction project or to remove the limitations which the present law imposes with respect to such agreements. Picketing to enforce such contracts would be illegal under the Sand Door case (Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. NLRB, 357 U. S. 93 (1958)). To the extent that such agreements are legal today under section 8(b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, the proviso would prevent such legality from being affected by section 8(e).” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 1147, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 39 (1959), 1 Leg. Hist. 943 (emphasis added).
Senator John F. Kennedy, who was chairman of the Conference Committee, provided a similar explanation during subsequent congressional debate.
“The first proviso under new section 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act is intended to preserve the present state of the law with respect to picketing at the site of a construction project and with respect to the validity of agreements relating to the contracting of work to be done at the site of the construction project.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17900 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1433.
Senator Kennedy also said:
“The Landrum-Griffin bill extended the ‘hot cargo’ provisions of the Senate bill, which we applied only to Teamsters, to all agreements between an employer and a labor union by which the employer agrees not to do business with another concern. The Senate insisted upon a qualification for the clothing and apparel industries and for agreements relating to work to be done at the site of a construction project. Both changes were necessary to avoid serious damage to the pattern of collective bargaining in these industries.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17899 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1432.
Other legislators expressed similar views. They emphasized that the final bill would not change the law with respect to construction site subcontracting agreements. See 105 Cong. Rec. 18128 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1715 (remarks of Rep. Barden); 105 Cong. Rec. 18135 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1721 (remarks of Rep. Thompson); 105 Cong. Rec. 19849 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1823 (postenactment memorandum by Sen. Dirksen); 105 Cong. Rec. 19772 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1858 (post-enactment memorandum by Sen. Goldwater).
These statements reveal that Congress wished “to preserve the status quo” regarding agreements between unions and contractors in the construction industry. National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn., supra, at 637. To the extent that subcontracting agreements were part of the pattern of collective bargaining in the construction industry, and lawful, Congress wanted to ensure that they remained lawful. Given this expression of legislative intent, we can determine whether the clauses challenged in these cases are within the scope of the proviso — or whether petitioners’ narrow interpretation of the proviso is appropriate — by examining Congress’ perceptions regarding the status quo in the construction industry.
There is ample evidence that Congress believed that union signatory contract clauses of the type at issue here were part of the pattern of collective bargaining in the construction industry. Comments made by Senator Kennedy clearly indicate that he believed broad subcontracting agreements were legal in 1959:
“Agreements by which a contractor in the construction industry promises not to subcontract work on a construction site to a nonunion contractor appear to be legal today. They will not be unlawful under section 8(e). The proviso is also applicable to all other agreements involving undertakings not to do work on a construction project site with other contractors or subcontractors regardless of the precise relation between them.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17900 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1433.
Senator Kennedy’s views were shared by other legislators. Senator Curtis, testifying before the Senate Labor Committee, stated that broad subcontracting agreements were not illegal, and were used “extensively” by the building trades unions. Labor-Management Reform Legislation: Hearings on S. 505, S. 748, S. 76, S. 1002, S. 1137, and S. 1311 before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 752 (1959) (Senate Hearings). The House Labor Committee heard similar testimony. Representatives of an employer and an independent union complained that employers and unions could lawfully enter into subcontracting clauses, and that, as a result, employers whose employees had selected another union were denied any opportunity to compete for construction jobs. They described agreements very similar to those at issue here. Labor-Management Reform Legislation: Hearings on H. R. 3540, H. R. 3302, H. R. 4473, and H. R. 4474 before a Joint Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 2363 (1959) (statement of Howard Lane) (House Hearings); id,., at 2365-2366 (statement of Edward M. Carlton).
Petitioners argue that Congress’ perception of the status quo was inaccurate. According to petitioners, subcontracting clauses were not extensively used in the construction industry prior to 1959, and neither the Board nor the courts had ruled that such clauses were lawful. However, “the relevant inquiry is not whether Congress correctly perceived the then state of the law, but rather what its perception of the state of the law was.” Brown v. GSA, 425 U. S. 820, 828 (1976). In any event, Congress’ belief that subcontracting agreements were common and lawful was accurate.
The Board and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had upheld broad subcontracting clauses. See Associated General Contractors of America, Inc. (St. Maurice, Helmkamp & Musser), 119 N. L. R. B. 1026 (1957), review denied and enf’d sub nom. Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3 v. NLRB, 105 U. S. App. D. C. 307, 266 F. 2d 905, cert. denied sub nom. St. Maurice, Helmkamp & Musser v. NLRB, 361 U. S. 834 (1959). Significantly, petitioners are unable to point to any pre-1959 cases in which a subcontracting agreement was found to be unlawful because it was not limited to particular jobsites at which the signatory union workers were employed.
A report published in 1961, which examined “the prevalence and characteristics of subcontracting provisions in effect in 1959 in the construction industry,” indicates that broad subcontracting agreements were quite common. Lunden, Subcontracting Clauses in Major Contracts, 84 Monthly Lab. Rev. 579 (1961). The study examined 155 construction contracts, covering 700,000 construction workers, and found that 444,000 of those workers were employed under contracts with subcontracting provisions. Id., at 582. The most frequent requirement, found in more than 50 major contracts, obligated contractors to subcontract work only to subcontractors who would apply all the “terms and conditions” of the master agreement. Id., at 715-716. The Lunden report does not describe a single agreement that limited the applicability of a subcontracting restriction to jobsites at which both union and nonunion workers were employed.
In short, Congress believed that broad subcontracting clauses similar to those at issue here were part of the pattern of collective bargaining prior to 1959, and that the Board and the courts had found them to be lawful. This perception was apparently accurate. Thus, endorsing the clauses at issue here is fully consistent with the legislative history of § 8(e) and the construction industry proviso.
r — H HH H-l
Petitioners attach little significance to the legislative history we have just described. Instead, they focus on congressional references to this Court’s decision in NLRB v. Denver Building & Construction Trades Council, 341 U. S. 675 (1951) (Denver Building Trades), which they believe support their narrow interpretation of the proviso. They also contend that if the clause is interpreted to protect any subcontracting agreements sought or obtained in the context of a collective-bargaining agreement, unions will have a potent organizational weapon. However, neither of these arguments compels the adoption of a restricted interpretation of the proviso.
A
Petitioners contend that Congress adopted the construction industry proviso primarily because it wanted to overrule this Court’s decision in Denver Building Trades, supra. That case held that picketing a general contractor’s entire project in order to protest the presence of a nonunion subcontractor is an illegal secondary boycott. According to petitioners, Congress disliked the Denver Building Trades rule because it might lead to uneasy employee relationships on the jobsite: if union workers were forced to work alongside nonunion workers, friction might result. Given this congressional purpose, the proviso should be interpreted as permitting only those subcontracting agreements that are designed to reduce friction at particular jobsites.
Petitioners are correct in suggesting that the decision in Denver Building Trades contributed to Congress’ decision to adopt the construction industry proviso. See Connell Construction Co., 421 U. S., at 629. At the time Congress was considering the proper scope of § 8(e), it had before it several proposals that would have effectively overruled the Denver Building Trades decision. See, e. g., § 702(d) of H. R. 8342, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (1959), 1 Leg. Hist. 752-753 (Elliot bill). “It was partly in this frame of reference that the [construction industry] proviso to Section 8(e) was written.” 105 Cong. Rec. 20005 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1861 (remarks of Rep. Kearns).
It is clear, however, that those who wished to overrule Denver Building Trades were concerned about more than the possibility of jobsite friction. Critics of Denver Building Trades complained that contractors and subcontractors working together on a single construction project are not the sort of neutral parties that the secondary boycott provisions were designed to protect. They pointed out that the Denver Building Trades rule denied construction workers the right to engage in economic picketing at their place of employment. And they emphasized that the employees of various subcontractors have a close community of interest, and that the wages and working conditions of one set of employees may affect others. In fact, as the Court of Appeals noted, the problem of jobsite friction between union and nonunion workers received relatively little emphasis. See 654 F. 2d, at 1319.
The proviso helps mitigate the impact of the Denver Building Trades decision: although it does not overrule the ban on picketing, it confirms that construction industry unions may enter into agreements that would prohibit the subcontracting of jobsite work to nonunion firms. However, petitioners’ argument — that the proviso was intended primarily as a response to Denver Building Trades, and that it should therefore be interpreted as protecting only those clauses designed to prevent jobsite friction — rests on faulty premises. As we have already shown, see supra, at 654-661, the proviso was not designed solely as a response to the Denver Building Trades problem. And even as a response to Denver Building Trades, the proviso is only partly concerned with jobsite friction.
B
Petitioners further contend that if the subcontracting clauses at issue here are approved, the unions will have a powerful organizing tool. Subcontractors will not be able to obtain work unless their employees are represented by the union. Thus, they will force their employees to become members of the union. In effect, the subcontracting clauses will create a “top-down” pressure for unionization; they will take the representation decision out of the hands of the employees and place it in the hands of the employers.
It is undoubtedly true that one of the central aims of the 1959 amendments to the Act was to restrict the ability of unions to engage in top-down organizing campaigns. See Connell Construction Co., supra, at 632 (discussing legislative history). It is also true that secondary subcontracting agreements like those at issue here create top-down organizing pressure. However, even if the agreements were limited in application to jobsites at which both union and nonunion workers were employed, there would be some topdown organizing effect. Such pressure is implicit in the construction industry proviso. The bare assertion that a particular subcontracting agreement encourages top-down organizing pressure does not resolve the issue we confront in these cases: how much top-down pressure did Congress intend to tolerate when it decided to exempt construction site projects from §8(e)? As we have already explained, we believe that Congress endorsed subcontracting agreements obtained in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship— and decided to accept whatever top-down pressure such clauses might entail. Congress concluded that the community of interests on the construction jobsite justified the top-down organizational consequences that might attend the protection of legitimate collective-bargaining objectives.
The top-down organizing effect of subcontracting clauses sought or obtained in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship is limited in a number of ways by other provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. A subcontractor cannot be subjected to unlimited picketing to force it into a union agreement without regard to the wishes of its employees. See 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(7)(C). An additional safeguard is provided by § 8(f), 29 U. S. C. § 158(f), which authorizes unions and employers in the construction industry to enter into collective-bargaining agreements, even though the employees of that employer have not designated the union as their lawful bargaining representative. When a union obtains a subcontracting clause from a general contractor, subcontractors frequently attempt to ensure that they remain eligible for work by entering into a § 8(f) agreement—known as a prehire agreement — with the union. If they do so, however, § 8(f) expressly states that their employees may challenge the union’s representative status by filing an election petition with the Board. And the subcontractors themselves, if they do not have a stable work force among whom the union has secured a majority, may be free to repudiate the agreement at any project on which the union has not demonstrated that it represents a majority of their employees. See NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U. S. 335 (1978); Giordano Construction Co., 256 N. L. R. B. 47, 47-48, 107 LRRM 1164, 1165-1166 (1981).
Despite petitioners’ assertions to the contrary, nonunion employees are not frozen out of the job market by subcontracting agreements. Even where construction unions successfully negotiate collective-bargaining agreements that require both general contractors and subcontractors to obtain their labor from union hiring halls, the union must refer both members and nonmembers to available jobs. 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(3), 158(b)(2). In addition, Courts of Appeals have suggested that the obligations of union membership that may be required under union security clauses after seven days are limited to the normal financial obligations of membership.
Finally, since the Denver Building Trades rule remains in effect, employees working for firms with whom a construction union has a primary dispute are protected against secondary picketing designed to force them off their current job. And as the Court of Appeals held in these cases, even where construction unions have negotiated secondary clauses that are sheltered by the proviso, they may not enforce them by picketing or other forms of concerted activity. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 1147, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 39 (1959), 1 Leg. Hist. 943; 105 Cong. Rec. 19772 (1959), 2 Leg. Hist. 1858 (postenactment memorandum of Sen. Goldwater).
IV
Petitioner Woelke asks us to reverse the Court of Appeals’ holding that unions do not violate § 8(b)(4)(A) when they picket to obtain a subcontracting clause sheltered by the construction industry proviso. However, the Court of Appeals was without jurisdiction to consider that question. The issue was not raised during the proceedings before the Board, either by the General Counsel or by Woelke. Thus, judicial review is barred by § 10(e) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 160(e), which provides that “[n]o objection that has not been urged before the Board... shall be considered by the court, unless the failure or neglect to urge such objection shall be excused because of extraordinary circumstances.” See De troit Edison Co. v. NLRB, 440 U. S. 301, 311-312, n. 10 (1979); Garment Workers v. Quality Mfg. Co., 420 U. S. 276, 281, n. 3 (1975); NLRB v. Ochoa Fertilizer Corp., 368 U. S. 318, 322 (1961).
The § 10(e) bar applies even though the Board held that the picketing was not banned by § 8(b)(4)(A). See Carpenters Local No. 944, 239 N. L. R. B., at 251. Woelke could have objected to the Board’s decision in a petition for reconsideration or rehearing. The failure to do so prevents consideration of the question by the courts. See Garment Workers v. Quality Mfg. Co., supra, at 281, n. 3.
Because the Court of Appeals lacks jurisdiction to review objections that were not urged before the Board, we do not reach the question whether the picketing was lawful. Instead, we vacate that portion of the Court of Appeals’ judgment that relates to this issue, and remand with instructions to dismiss.
V
We hold that the construction industry proviso to § 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act ordinarily shelters union signatory subcontracting clauses that are sought or negotiated in the context of a collective-bargaining relationship, even when not limited in application to particular jobsites at which both union and nonunion workers are employed. This interpretation of the proviso is supported by its plain language, as well as the legislative history. Thus, we affirm the decision below, insofar as it holds that the clauses at issue here were sheltered by the proviso. We further hold that the Court of Appeals was without jurisdiction to decide whether a union violates § 8(b)(4)(A) when it pickets to obtain a lawful subcontracting clause. We vacate that portion of the judgment below, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The proposed clause provides in full:
“The Contractor agrees that neither he nor any of his subcontractors on the jobsite will subcontract any work to be done at the site of construction, alteration, painting or repair of a building, structure or other work (including quarries, rock, san[d] and gravel plants, asphalt plants, ready-mix concrete plants, established on or adjacent to the jobsite to process or supply materials for the convenience of the Contractor for jobsite use) except to a person, firm or corporation, party to an appropriate, current labor agreement with the appropriate Union, or subordinate body signatory to this Agreement.” 1 App. 86.
The expiring contract contained a union signatory subcontracting clause that was similar in effect. Id., at 28.
Section 8(b)(4)(A) prohibits coercing “any employer or selfemployed person to join any labor or employer organization or to enter into any agreement which is prohibited by section 8(e).”
The clause provides in full:
“Employers shall not contract any work covered by this Agreement to be done at the site of the construction, alteration, painting, or repair of a building, structure, or other work to any person, firm or company who does not have an existing labor agreement with the Union covering such work.” 2 App. 9-10.
The Board reasoned that the use of self-help measures would violate § 8(b)(4)(B) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(4)(B). That section makes it an unfair labor practice for a union to force any person to “cease doing business with any other person.”
Petitioner Oregon AGC was technically a respondent in the Board proceeding. However, it supported the position taken by Pacific Northwest.
The only other Court of Appeals to confront this question reached the same conclusion. See Donald Schriver, Inc. v. NLRB, 204 U. S. App. D. C. 4, 25, 635 F. 2d 859, 880 (1980), cert. denied, 451 U. S. 976 (1981), petition for rehearing pending, No. 80-1257.
None of the petitioners sought review of the Court of Appeals’ decision that economic pressure may not be used to enforce subcontracting agreements.
In Connell, the Court was confronted with a novel and apparently foolproof organizational tactic: “stranger” picketing aimed at pressuring employers with whom the union had no collective-bargaining relationship, and whose employees it had no interest in representing, into signing union signatory subcontracting agreements. Because there was no recognitional objective to the picketing, it did not violate § 8(b)(7), 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(7). And because the subcontracting clause appeared to be protected by the construction industry proviso, the picketing was arguably not prohibited by § 8(b)(4)(A), 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(4)(A), which bans picketing to secure agreements made unlawful by § 8(e). The Court concluded, however, that the protection of the proviso “extends only to agreements in the context of collective-bargaining relationships.” Connell Construction Co. v. Plumbers & Steamfitters, 421 U. S., at 633. In these cases, we decide a question left unresolved in Connell: the extent to which the proviso shelters agreements sought or obtained within the context of a collective-bargaining relationship.
Since the proviso was added to § 8(e) at the Senate conferees’ insistence, and since Senator Kennedy was chairman of the Senate conferees, his explanation of the clause is entitled to substantial weight.
The employer and union representatives who testified before the House Labor Committee, as well
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | G | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner United Savings Association of Texas seeks review of an en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, holding that petitioner was not entitled to receive from respondent debtor, which is undergoing reorganization in bankruptcy, monthly payments for the use value of the loan collateral which the bankruptcy stay prevented it from possessing. In re Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 808 F. 2d 363 (1987). We granted certiorari, 481 U. S. 1068 (1987), to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals regarding application of §§361 and 362(d)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U. S. C. §§361 and 362(d)(1) (1982 ed. and Supp. IV). Compare Grundy Nat. Bank v. Tandem Mining Corp., 754 F. 2d 1436, 1440-1441 (CA4 1985); In re American Mariner Industries, Inc., 734 F. 2d 426, 432-435 (CA9 1984); see also In re Briggs Transp. Co., 780 F. 2d 1339, 1348-1351 (CA8 1985).
I
On June 29, 1982, respondent Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., executed a note in the principal amount of $4,100,000. Petitioner is the holder of the note as well as of a security interest created the same day in an apartment project owned by respondent in Houston, Texas. The security interest included an assignment of rents from the project. On March 4, 1985, respondent filed a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U. S. C. § 101 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. IV), in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.
On March 18, 1985, petitioner moved for relief from the automatic stay of enforcement of liens triggered by the petition, see 11 U. S. C. § 362(a), on the ground that there was lack of “adequate protection” of its interest within the meaning of 11 U. S. C. § 362(d)(1). At a hearing before the Bankruptcy Court, it was established that respondent owed petitioner $4,366,388.77, and evidence was presented that the value of the collateral was somewhere between $2,650,000 and $4,250,000. The collateral was appreciating in value, but only very slightly. It was therefore undisputed that petitioner was an undersecured creditor. Respondent had agreed to pay petitioner the postpetition rents from the apartment project (covered by the after-acquired property clause in the security agreement), minus operating expenses. Petitioner contended, however, that it was entitled to additional compensation. The Bankruptcy Court agreed and on April 19, 1985, it conditioned continuance of the stay on monthly payments by respondent, at the market rate of 12% per annum, on the estimated amount realizable on foreclosure, $4,250,000 — commencing six months after the filing of the bankruptcy petition, to reflect the normal foreclosure delays. In re Bear Creek Ministorage, Inc., 49 B. R. 454 (1985) (editorial revision of earlier decision). The court held that the postpetition rents could be applied to these payments. See id., at 460. Respondent appealed to the District Court and petitioner cross-appealed on the amount of the adequate protection payments. The District Court affirmed but the Fifth Circuit en banc reversed.
We granted certiorari to determine whether undersecured creditors are entitled to compensation under 11 U. S. C. § 362(d)(1) for the delay caused by the automatic stay in foreclosing on their collateral.
II
When a bankruptcy petition is filed, § 362(a) of the Bankruptcy Code provides an automatic stay of, among other things, actions taken to realize the value of collateral given by the debtor. The provision of the Code central to the decision of this case is § 362(d), which reads as follows:
“On request of a party in interest and after notice and a hearing, the court shall grant relief from the stay provided under subsection (a) of this section, such as by terminating, annulling, modifying, or conditioning such stay—
“(1) for cause, including the lack of adequate protection of an interest in property of such party in interest; or
“(2) with respect to a stay of an act against property under subsection (a) of this section, if—
“(A) the debtor does not have an equity in such property; and
“(B) such property is not necessary to an effective reorganization.”
The phrase “adequate protection” in paragraph (1) of the foregoing provision is given further content by § 361 of the Code, which reads in relevant part as follows:
“When adequate protection is required under section 362 ... of this title of an interest of an entity in property, such adequate protection may be provided by—
“(1) requiring the trustee to make a cash payment or periodic cash payments to such entity, to the extent that the stay under section 362 of this title . . . results in a decrease in the value of such entity’s interest in such property;
“(2) providing to such entity an additional or replacement lien to the extent that such stay . . . results in a decrease in the value of such entity’s interest in such property; or
“(3) granting such other relief... as will result in the realization by such entity of the indubitable equivalent of such entity’s interest in such property.”
It is common ground that the “interest in property” referred to by § 362(d)(1) includes the right of a secured creditor to have the security applied in payment of the debt upon completion of the reorganization; and that that interest is not adequately protected if the security is depreciating during the term of the stay. Thus, it is agreed that if the apartment project in this case had been declining in value petitioner would have been entitled, under § 362(d)(1), to cash payments or additional security in the amount of the decline, as § 361 describes. The crux of the present dispute is that petitioner asserts, and respondent denies, that the phrase “interest in property” also includes the secured party’s right (suspended by the stay) to take immediate possession of the defaulted security, and apply it in payment of the debt. If that right is embraced by the term, it is obviously not adequately protected unless the secured party is reimbursed for the use of the proceeds he is deprived of during the term of the stay.
The term “interest in property” certainly summons up such concepts as “fee ownership,” “life estate,” “co-ownership,” and “security interest” more readily than it does the notion of “right to immediate foreclosure.” Nonetheless, viewed in the isolated context of § 362(d)(1), the phrase could reasonably be given the meaning petitioner asserts. Statutory construction, however, is a holistic endeavor. A provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme — because the same terminology is used elsewhere in a context that makes its meaning clear, see, e. g., Sorenson v. Secretary of Treasury, 475 U. S. 851, 860 (1986), or because only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law, see, e. g., Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U. S. 41, 54 (1987); Weinberger v. Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., 412 U. S. 609, 631-632 (1973); Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307-308 (1961). That is the case here. Section 362(d)(1) is only one of a series of provisions in the Bankruptcy Code dealing with the rights of secured creditors. The language in those other provisions, and the substantive dispositions that they effect, persuade us that the “interest in property” protected by § 362(d)(1) does not include a secured party’s right to immediate foreclosure.
Section 506 of the Code defines the amount of the secured creditor’s allowed secured claim and the conditions of his receiving postpetition interest. In relevant part it reads as follows:
“(a) An allowed claim of a creditor secured by a lien on property in which the estate has an interest... is a secured claim to the extent of the value of such creditor’s interest in the estate’s interest in such property,. . . and is an unsecured claim to the extent that the value of such creditor’s interest ... is less than the amount of such allowed claim. . . .
“(b) To the extent that an allowed secured claim is secured by property the value of which ... is greater than the amount of such claim, there shall be allowed to the holder of such claim, interest on such claim, and any reasonable fees, costs, or charges provided for under the agreement under which such claim arose.”
In subsection (a) of this provision the creditor’s “interest in property” obviously means his security interest without taking account of his right to immediate possession of the collateral on default. If the latter were included, the “value of such creditor’s interest” would increase, and the proportions of the claim that are secured and unsecured would alter, as the stay continues — since the value of the entitlement to use the collateral from the date of bankruptcy would rise with the passage of time. No one suggests this was intended. The phrase “value of such creditor’s interest” in § 506(a) means “the value of the collateral.” H. R. Rep. No. 95-595, pp. 181, 356 (1977); see also S. Rep. No. 95-989, p. 68 (1978). We think the phrase “value of such entity’s interest” in §361(1) and (2), when applied to secured creditors, means the same.
Even more important for our purposes than § 506’s use of terminology is its substantive effect of denying undersecured creditors postpetition interest on their claims — just as it denies oversecured creditors postpetition interest to the extent that such interest, when added to the principal amount of the claim, will exceed the value of the collateral. Section 506(b) provides that “[t]o the extent that an allowed secured claim is secured by property the value of which ... is greater than the amount of such claim, there shall be allowed to the holder of such claim, interest on such claim.” (Emphasis added.) Since this provision permits postpetition interest to be paid only out of the “security cushion,” the undersecured creditor, who has no such cushion, falls within the general rule disallowing postpetition interest. See 11 U. S. C. § 502(b)(2). If the Code had meant to give the undersecured creditor, who is thus denied interest on his claim, interest on the value of his collateral, surely this is where that disposition would have been set forth, and not obscured within the “adequate protection” provision of § 362(d)(1). Instead of the intricate phraseology set forth above, § 506(b) would simply have said that the secured creditor is entitled to interest “on his allowed claim, or on the value of the property securing his allowed claim, whichever is lesser.” Petitioner’s interpretation of § 362(d)(1) must be regarded as contradicting the carefully drawn disposition of § 506(b).
Petitioner seeks to avoid this conclusion by characterizing § 506(b) as merely an alternative method for compensating oversecured creditors, which does not imply that no compensation is available to undersecured creditors. This theory of duplicate protection for oversecured creditors is implausible even in the abstract, but even more so in light of the historical principles of bankruptcy law. Section 506(b)’s denial of postpetition interest to undersecured creditors merely codified pre-Code bankruptcy law, in which that denial was part of the conscious allocation of reorganization benefits and losses between undersecured and unsecured creditors. “To allow a secured creditor interest where his security was worth less than the value of his debt was thought to be inequitable to unsecured creditors.” Vanston Bondholders Protective Committee v. Green, 329 U. S. 156, 164 (1946). It was considered unfair to allow an undersecured creditor to recover interest from the estate’s unencumbered assets before unsecured creditors had recovered any principal. See id., at 164, 166; Ticonic Nat. Bank v. Sprague, 303 U. S. 406, 412 (1938). We think it unlikely that § 506(b) codified the pre-Code rule with the intent, not of achieving the principal purpose and function of that rule, but of providing over-secured creditors an alternative method of compensation. Moreover, it is incomprehensible why Congress would want to favor undersecured creditors with interest if they move for it under § 362(d)(1) at the inception of the reorganization process — thereby probably pushing the estate into liquidation — but not if they forbear and seek it only at the completion of the reorganization.
Second, petitioner’s interpretation of § 362(d)(1) is structurally inconsistent with 11 U. S. C. § 552. Section 552(a) states the general rule that a prepetition security interest does not reach property acquired by the estate or debtor postpetition. Section 552(b) sets forth an exception, allowing postpetition “proceeds, product, offspring, rents, or profits” of the collateral to be covered only if the security agreement expressly provides for an interest in such property, and the interest has been perfected under “applicable non-bankruptcy law.” See, e. g., In re Casbeer, 793 F. 2d 1436, 1442-1444 (CA5 1986); In re Johnson, 62 B. R. 24, 28-30 (CA9 Bkrtcy. App. Panel 1986); cf. Butner v. United States, 440 U. S. 48, 54-56 (1979) (same rule under former Bankruptcy Act). Section 552(b) therefore makes possession of a perfected security interest in postpetition rents or profits from collateral a condition of having them applied to satisfying the claim of the secured creditor ahead of the claims of unsecured creditors. Under petitioner’s interpretation, however, the undersecured creditor who lacks such a perfected security interest in effect achieves the same result by demanding the “use value” of his collateral under § 362. It is true that § 506(b) gives the oversecured creditor, despite lack of compliance with the conditions of § 552, a similar priority over unsecured creditors; but that does not compromise the principle of § 552, since the interest payments come only out of the “cushion” in which the oversecured creditor does have a perfected security interest.
Third, petitioner’s interpretation of § 362(d)(1) makes nonsense of § 362(d)(2). On petitioner’s theory, the under-secured creditor’s inability to take immediate possession of his collateral is always “cause” for conditioning the stay (upon the payment of market rate interest) under § 362(d)(1), since there is, within the meaning of that paragraph, “lack of adequate protection of an interest in property.” But § 362(d)(2) expressly provides a different standard for relief from a stay “of an act against property,” which of course includes taking possession of collateral. It provides that the court shall grant relief “if . . . (A) the debtor does not have an equity in such property [i. e., the creditor is undersecured]; and (B) such property is not necessary to an effective reorganization.” (Emphasis added.) By applying the “adequate protection of an interest in property” provision of § 362(d)(1) to the alleged “interest” in the earning power of collateral, petitioner creates the strange consequence that § 362 entitles the secured creditor to relief from the stay (1) if he is under-secured (and thus not eligible for interest under § 506(b)), or (2) if he is undersecured and his collateral “is not necessary to an effective reorganization.” This renders § 362(d)(2) a practical nullity and a theoretical absurdity. If § 362(d)(1) is interpreted in this fashion, an undersecured creditor would seek relief under § 362(d)(2) only if his collateral was not depreciating (or it was being compensated for depreciation) and he was receiving market rate interest on his collateral, but nonetheless wanted to foreclose. Petitioner offers no reason why Congress would want to provide relief for such an obstreperous and thoroughly unharmed creditor.
Section 362(d)(2) also belies petitioner’s contention that undersecured creditors will face inordinate and extortionate delay if they are denied compensation for interest lost during the stay as part of “adequate protection” under § 362(d)(1). Once the movant under § 362(d)(2) establishes that he is an undersecured creditor, it is the burden of the debtor to establish that the collateral at issue is “necessary to an effective reorganization.” See § 362(g). What this requires is not merely a showing that if there is conceivably to be an effective reorganization, this property will be needed for it; but that the property is essential for an effective reorganization that is in prospect. This means, as many lower courts, including the en banc court in this case, have properly said, that there must be “a reasonable possibility of a successful reorganization within a reasonable time.” 808 F. 2d, at 370-371, and nn. 12-13, and cases cited therein. The cases are numerous in which § 362(d)(2) relief has been provided within less than a year from the filing of the bankruptcy petition. And while the bankruptcy courts demand less detailed showings during the four months in which the debtor is given the exclusive right to put together a plan, see 11 U. S. C. §§ 1121(b), (c)(2), even within that period lack of any realistic prospect of effective reorganization will require § 362(d)(2) relief.
III
A
Petitioner contends that denying it compensation under § 362(d)(1) is inconsistent with sections of the Code other than those just discussed. Petitioner principally relies on the phrase “indubitable equivalent” in § 361(3), which also appears in 11 U. S. C. § 1129(b)(2)(A)(iii). Petitioner contends that in the latter context, which sets forth the standards for confirming a reorganization plan, the phrase has developed a well-settled meaning connoting the right of a secured creditor to receive present value of his security — thus requiring interest if the claim is to be paid over time. It is true that under § 1129(b) a secured claimant has a right to receive under a plan the present value of his collateral. This entitlement arises, however, not from the phrase “indubitable equivalent” in § 1129(b)(2)(A)(iii), but from the provision of § 1129(b)(2)(A)(i)(II) that guarantees the secured creditor “deferred cash payments ... of a value, as of the effective date of the plan, of at least the value of such [secured claimant’s] interest in the estate’s interest in such property.” (Emphasis added.) Under this formulation, even though the undersecured creditor’s “interest” is regarded (properly) as solely the value of the collateral, he must be rendered payments that assure him that value as of the effective date of the plan. In § 361(3), by contrast, the relief pending the stay need only be such “as will result in the realization... of the indubitable equivalent” of the collateral. (Emphasis added.) It is obvious (since §§361 and 362(d)(1) do not entitle the secured creditor to immediate payment of the principal of his collateral) that this “realization” is to “result” not at once, but only upon completion of the reorganization. It is then that he must be assured “realization ... of the indubitable equivalent” of his collateral. To put the point differently: similarity of outcome between § 361(3) and § 1129 would be demanded only if the former read “such other relief ... as will give such entity, as of the date of the relief, the indubitable equivalent of such entity’s interest in such property.”
Nor is there merit in petitioner’s suggestion that “indubitable equivalent” in §361(3) connotes reimbursement for the use value of collateral because the phrase is derived from In re Murel Holding Corp., 75 F. 2d 941 (CA2 1935), where it bore that meaning. Murel involved a proposed reorganization plan that gave the secured creditor interest on his collateral for 10 years, with full payment of the secured principal due at the end of that term; the plan made no provision, however, for amortization of principal or maintenance of the collateral’s value during the term. In rejecting the plan, Murel used the words “indubitable equivalence” with specific reference not to interest (which was assured), but to the jeopardized principal of the loan:
“Interest is indeed the common measure of the difference [between payment now and payment 10 years hence], but a creditor who fears the safety of his principal will scarcely be content with that; he wishes to get his money or at least the property. We see no reason to suppose that the statute was intended to deprive him of that in the interest of junior holders, unless by a substitute of the most indubitable equivalence.” Id., at 942.
Of course Murel, like § 1129, proceeds from the premise that in the confirmation context the secured creditor is entitled to present value. But no more from Murel than from § 1129 can it be inferred that a similar requirement exists as of the time of the bankruptcy stay. The reorganized debtor is supposed to stand on his own two feet. The debtor in process of reorganization, by contrast, is given many temporary protections against the normal operation of the law.
Petitioner also contends that the Code embodies a principle that secured creditors do not bear the costs of reorganization. It derives this from the rule that general administrative expenses do not have priority over secured claims. See §§ 506(c), 507(a). But the general principle does not follow from the particular rule. That secured creditors do not bear one kind of reorganization cost hardly means that they bear none of them. The Code rule on administrative expenses merely continues pre-Code law. But it was also pre-Code law that undersecured creditors were not entitled to post-petition interest as compensation for the delay of reorganization. See supra, at 373; see also infra, at 381.' Congress could hardly have understood that the readoption of the rule on administrative expenses would work a change in the rule on postpetition interest, which it also readopted.
Finally, petitioner contends that failure to interpret § 362 (d)(1) to require compensation of undersecured creditors for delay will create an inconsistency in the Code in the (admittedly rare) case when the debtor proves solvent. When that occurs, 11 U. S. C. § 726(a)(5) provides that postpetition interest is allowed on unsecured claims. Petitioner contends it would be absurd to allow postpetition interest on unsecured claims but not on the secured portion of undersecured creditors’ claims. It would be disingenuous to deny that this is an apparent anomaly, but it will occur so rarely that it is more likely the product of inadvertence than are the blatant inconsistencies petitioner’s interpretation would produce. Its inequitable effects, moreover, are entirely avoidable, since an undersecured creditor is entitled to “surrender or waive his security and prove his entire claim as an unsecured one.” United States Nat. Bank v. Chase Nat. Bank, 331 U. S. 28, 34 (1947). Section 726(a)(5) therefore requires no more than that undersecured creditors receive postpetition interest from a solvent debtor on equal terms with unsecured creditors rather than ahead of them — which, where the debtor is solvent, involves no hardship.
B
Petitioner contends that its interpretation is supported by the legislative history of §§361 and 362(d)(1), relying almost entirely on statements that “[s]ecured creditors should not be deprived of the benefit of their bargain.” H. R. Rep. No. 95-595, at 339; S. Rep. No. 95-989, at 53. Such generalizations are inadequate to overcome the plain textual indication in §§ 506 and 362(d)(2) of the Code that Congress did not wish the undersecured creditor to receive interest on his collateral during the term of the stay. If it is at all relevant, the legislative history tends to subvert rather than support petitioner’s thesis, since it contains not a hint that § 362(d)(1) entitles the undersecured creditor to postpetition interest. Such a major change in the existing rules would not likely have been made without specific provision in the text of the statute, cf. Kelly v. Robinson, 479 U. S. 36, 47 (1986); it is most improbable that it would have been made without even any mention in the legislative history.
Petitioner makes another argument based upon what the legislative history does not contain. It contends that the pre-Code law gave the undersecured creditor relief from the automatic stay by permitting him to foreclose; and that Congress would not have withdrawn this entitlement to relief without any indication of intent to do so in the legislative history, unless it was providing an adequate substitute, to wit, interest on the collateral during the stay.
The premise of this argument is flawed. As petitioner itself concedes, Brief for Petitioner 20, the undersecured creditor had no absolute entitlement to foreclosure in a Chapter X or XII case; he could not foreclose if there was a reasonable prospect for a successful rehabilitation within a reasonable time. See, e. g., In re Yale Express System, Inc., 384 F. 2d 990, 991-992 (CA2 1967) (Chapter X); In re Nevada Towers Associates, 14 Collier Bankr. Cas. (MB) 146, 151-156 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SDNY 1977) (Chapter XII); In re Consolidated Motor Inns, 6 Collier Bankr. Cas. (MB) 18, 31-32 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ND Ga. 1975) (same). Thus, even assuming petitioner is correct that the undersecured creditor had an absolute entitlement to relief under Chapter XI, Congress would have been faced with the choice between adopting the rule from Chapters X and XII or the asserted alternative rule from Chapter XI, because Chapter 11 of the current Code “replaces chapters X, XI and XII of the Bankruptcy Act” with a “single chapter for all business reorganizations.” S. Rep. No. 95-989, at 9; see also H. R. Rep. No. 95-595, at 223-224. We think § 362(d)(2) indicates that Congress adopted the approach of Chapters X and XII. In any event, as far as the silence of the legislative history on the point is concerned, that would be no more strange with respect to alteration of the asserted Chapter XI rule than it would be with respect to alteration of the Chapters X and XII rule.
Petitioner’s argument is further weakened by the fact that it is far from clear that there was a distinctive Chapter XI rule of absolute entitlement to foreclosure. At least one leading commentator concluded that “a Chapter XI court’s power to stay lien enforcement is as broad as that of a Chapter X or XII court and that the automatic stay rules properly make no distinctions between the Chapters.” Countryman, Real Estate Liens in Business Rehabilitation Cases, 50 Am. Bankr. L. J. 303, 315 (1976). Petitioner cites dicta in some Chapter XI cases suggesting that the undersecured creditor was automatically entitled to relief from the stay, but the-courts in those cases uniformly found in addition that reorganization was not sufficiently likely or was being unduly delayed. See, e. g., In re Briec of America, Inc., 4 Collier Bankr. Cas. (MB) 34, 39-40 (Bkrtcy. Ct. MD Fla. 1975); In re O. K. Motels, 1 Collier Bankr. Cas. (MB) 416, 419-420 (Bkrtcy. Ct. MD Fla. 1974). Moreover, other Chapter XI cases held undersecured creditors not entitled to foreclosure under reasoning very similar to that used in Chapters X and XII cases. See In re Coolspring Estates, Inc., 12 Collier Bankr. Cas. (MB) 55, 60-61 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ND Ind. 1977); In re The Royal Scot, Ltd., 2 Bankr. Ct. Dec. (CRR) 374, 376-377 (Bkrtcy. Ct. WD Mich. 1976); In re Mesker Steel, Inc., 1 Bankr. Ct. Dec. (CRR) 235, 236-237 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SD Ind. 1974). The at best divided authority under Chapter XI removes all cause for wonder that the alleged departure from it should not have been commented upon in the legislative history.
The Fifth Circuit correctly held that the undersecured petitioner is not entitled to interest on its collateral during the stay to assure adequate protection under 11 U. S. C. § 362(d)(1). Petitioner has never sought relief from the stay under § 362(d)(2) or on any ground other than lack of adequate protection. Accordingly, the judgment of the Fifth Circuit is
Affirmed.
See, e. g., In re Findley, 76 B. R. 547, 555 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ND Miss. 1987) (6½ months); In re Efcor, Inc., 74 B. R. 837, 843-845 (Bkrtcy. Ct. MD Pa. 1987) (4½ months); In re Belton Inns, Inc., 71 B. R. 811, 818 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SD Iowa 1987) (1 year); In re Louden, 69 B. R. 723, 725-726 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ED Mo. 1987) (10 months); In re Playa Development Corp., 68 B. R. 549, 556 (Bkrtcy. Ct. WD Tex. 1986) (7½ months); In re Cablehouse, Ltd., 68 B. R. 309, 313 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SD Ohio 1986) (11½ months); In re Pacific Tuna Corp., 48 B. R. 74, 78 (Bkrtcy. Ct. WD Tex. 1985) (9 months); In re Development, Inc., 36 B. R. 998, 1005-1006 (Bkrtcy. Ct. Haw. 1984) (6 months); In re Boca Development Associates, 21 B. R. 624, 630 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SDNY 1982) (7½ months); In re Sundale Associates, Ltd., 11 B. R. 978, 980-981 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SD Fla. 1981) (5 months); In re Clark Technical Associates, Ltd., 9 B. R. 738, 740-741 (Bkrtcy. Ct. Conn. 1981) (9 months).
See, e. g., In re Anderson Oaks (Phase I) Limited Partnership, 77 B. R. 108, 109, 110-113 (Bkrtcy. Ct. WD Tex. 1987) (“immediately after the bankruptcy filings”); In re New American Food Concepts, Inc., 70 B. R. 254, 262 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ND Ohio 1987) (3 months); In re 6200 Ridge, Inc., 69 B. R. 837, 843-844 (Bkrtcy. Ct. ED Pa. 1987) (3 months); In re Park Timbers, Inc., 58 B. R. 647, 651 (Bkrtcy. Ct. Del. 1985) (2 months); In re Bellina’s Restaurants II, Inc., 52 B. R. 509, 512 (Bkrtcy. Ct. SD Fla. 1985) (1 month); In re Anchorage Boat Sales, Inc., 4 B. R. 635, 641 (Bkrtcy. Ct. EDNY 1980) (4 months); In re Terra Mar Associates, 3 B. R. 462, 466 (Bkrtcy. Ct. Conn. 1980) (2 months).
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 Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a sordid three-sided case. The Government charged all of the defendants with conspiring to defraud by depriving it of the faithful services of an Army officer. 18 U. S. C. § 88, 35 Stat. 1096. The defendant Radovich, the officer in question, admits receipt of money from the other defendants and admits the questioned actions but denies the conspiracy, claiming the others induced him to accept a bribe. The defendants Bayer admit payment of the money but claim they were victims of extortion by Radovich. The jury found all guilty but recommended “the highest degree of clemency for all three defendants.” The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. We granted the Government’s petition for certiorari.
The principal facts are admitted and it is contested inferences which are decisive of the issue of guilt. None of the defendants testified. It would serve no purpose to review the evidence in detail. It justifies finding as follows:
The Bayer brothers were manufacturers of yarn and thread and bore good names in their circle. Samuel had three sons in the service. One of them, Martin, with Melvin Usdan, a nephew of both Bayers, was involved in this case. Martin’s health had not been robust. These two boys enlisted in the Air Corps on the day which Samuel had learned was the last on which a volunteer could select the branch in which to serve. They were almost immediately assigned as file clerks at Mitchel Field, Long Island. In January 1943, at a night club, Elias Bayer picked up the acquaintance of two officers stationed there. They were interested in obtaining uniforms at wholesale. The Bayers eventually aided them and others to obtain uniforms and paid for them, though they claim to have understood that the officers were to pay for them. The acquaintance extended to other officers, and there was considerable entertainment. In April 1943 replacement of men in clerical positions by Women’s Army Corps personnel was impending and one Col. Jacobson requested a transfer of these two boys with the effect, as Samuel understood it, of assuring them a year’s assignment at Mitchel Field. Jacobson was given a dinner at the Waldorf and presented with four new automobile tires.
This transfer placed the two boys under command of Radovich. By July there were rumors that the officers were receiving gifts from the Bayers and Radovich told Samuel that the boys would have to be transferred. Samuel wanted them kept at Mitchel Field. Radovich made a transfer from his unit to the medical detachment at the same field, which at first was disapproved, and then he accomplished it by an exchange of personnel. After the transfer was made, Samuel paid Radovich some $1,900 or $2,000.
In August 1943 the boys were again transferred, to a unit of airborne engineers for overseas duty. Both Bayers were greatly concerned about this and besought their friends among the officers to prevent it. Radovich had gone. He had joined an Air Commando group with high priority on personnel. But he several times talked with Captain Pepper, in charge of personnel, about transferring these boys from the overseas service to Air Transport Command for service only in continental United States. This could not be done. Then Radovich proposed to use his unit’s higher priority to requisition the boys for it, to drop them as surplus, and thereupon to have them transferred to the Air Transport Command for domestic service. Pepper agreed this might be done. Radovich told Pepper it was “worth his while” to get it done and he would see that doing it was worth Pepper’s while.
On November 22, 1943 Radovich requisitioned the transfer of the boys to his unit, to report November 25. Almost at once he also requested that they be transferred out of his unit and to Air Transport Command. This was effected shortly. Elias Bayer and one of name unknown to the record then delivered $5,000 to Radovich, who sent Pepper $500. Pepper testified that he destroyed the check.
The Government from these facts and other evidence draws, as did the jury, the inference of conspiracy. The Bayers say they were victims of extortion and there is evidence that Radovich used the transfer to his own unit, one of extremely dangerous mission for which these boys had neither training nor aptitude, to force money out of the Bayers. Radovich denies the conspiracy and pleads certain court-martial proceedings as a bar.
The issue as to whether the Bayers tempted Radovich with a bribe or Radovich coerced them with threats is one with evidence and inferences both ways. Radovich was a gallant and skillful flier and explained his conduct thus: “I was going overseas on a very hot job and didn’t expect to come back, had the wife and the baby, figured I might just as well take care of them.” The Bayers were persons of some means, thoroughly frightened at the prospect of service for these boys in combat areas, and ready to use their means to foster the boys’ safety. Whether they were victims of extortion or voluntary conspirators was for the jury to say, and the reversal does not rest on any inadequacy of proof. The grounds of reversal by the Court of Appeals raise for our consideration four questions of law.
1. The Bayers assigned as error the trial judge’s charge as to conspiracy. The Court of Appeals unanimously said, “There is no question but that this charge was an accurate, albeit brief, statement of the law.” But a majority thought that “the statement was so cryptic as to be difficult to understand, if not to be actually misleading to a jury of laymen,” while one Judge thought it “a welcome relief from much judicial verbosity.” We are not certain whether a reversal as to the Bayers would have been rested on this criticism of the charge alone. We do not consider objection to the charge to amount to reversible error. Once the judge has made an accurate and correct charge, the extent of its amplification must rest largely in his discretion. The trial judge, in the light of the whole trial and with the jury before him, may feel that to repeat the same words would make them no more clear, and to indulge in variations of statement might well confuse. How far any charge on technical questions of law is really understood by those of lay background would be difficult to ascertain, but it is certainly more evident in the living scene than in a cold record. In this case the jury asked a rereading of the charge on conspiracy. After repeating his instruction, the court inquired of the jury whether anything about it was not clear, or whether there was anything which they desired to have amplified. Nothing was suggested, although inquiry was made as to other matters. While many judges would have made a more extended charge, we think the trial court was within its area of discretion in his brevity.
2. The Bayers won reversal on another ground. After the jury had been out about four hours, it returned for instructions and asked to have parts of the summations of counsel read. The court declined to read parts. It was at this point that counsel for the Bayers asked to reopen the case and to put in evidence a long distance call slip from telephone company records. It was the memorandum of a call on November 24, 1943, from one we assume to be Radovich, spelled on the ticket “Ravish,” from Arlington, Virginia, to Bayer’s number in New York. The ticket tended to corroborate Samuel Bayer’s secretary who testified to receiving such a call and who was the Bayers’ chief witness on the subject of extortion. It also tended to contradict a Government witness. The matter had become of importance because of the District Attorney’s argument that the Bayers’ witness falsified her story. The court had already, at respondents’ request, after the jury had been instructed, told them that a check of the Bayers’ records showed a collect-call from Washington that day, but on request of counsel for Radovich the court had also stated that the record did not show who made the call. We will assume that the proffered evidence was relevant, corroborative of the Bayers’ contentions, and had the offer been timely and properly verified, its exclusion would have been prejudicial error.
But the item of evidence was disputed. The District Attorney had not seen the slip and did not admit the interpretation Bayer’s counsel put upon it. Counsel for Radovich objected. To have admitted it over his objection might well have been prejudicial to him. The trial court had already, as he admitted, and as Radovich’s counsel charged, given the Bayers the benefit of an irregular conveyance of information to the jury about the call which had not been regularly proved. Moreover, defendants offered no witness to authenticate the slip. As the trial court pointed out to counsel, his proposal was merely to hand to the jury “an unverified memorandum from the telephone company.” Even during the trial such an offer, with no foundation in testimony and against objection, would have been inadequate. To have admitted it with no witness to identify or support it would have cut off all cross-examination by both the Government and Radovich, and cross-examination would not have been unreasonable concerning a slip in which the Bayers wished Arlington to be taken as equivalent to Washington and “Ravish” to identify Radovich. The evidence, if put in after four hours of deliberation by the jury, would likely be of distorted importance. It surely would have been prejudicial to the Government, for the District Attorney would then have had no chance to comment on it, summation having been closed. It also would have been prejudicial to the other defendant, Radovich, who, with no chance to cross-examine or to comment, would be confronted with a new item of evidence against him. The court seems to have faced a dilemma, either to grant a mistrial and start the whole case over again or to deny the Bayers’ request. Certainly a defendant who seeks thus to destroy a trial must bring his demand within the rules of proof and do something to excuse its untimeliness.
Not only was the proffer of the evidence technically deficient, but no excuse for the untimeliness of the offer appeared. It is true, no doubt, that counsel was surprised at the argument made by the District Attorney which would have been less effective had this evidence been in. But Miss Solomon, an employee of defendants and, hence, an interested witness, was left to carry the burden of proving extortion without the corroboration of the testimony of her employer-defendants. This was defendants’ right, but it should have been apparent that every bolster to her credibility would be important. It is well known that the telephone companies keep such records and they seem to have been easily obtained when asked for. We do not consider it reversible error to refuse to let this un-sworn, unverified slip be put into evidence four hours after the case had been submitted to the jury. The judgment of reversal as to the Bayers was, in our opinion, erroneous.
3. Radovich’s case raises additional questions. The first concerns the receipt in evidence of his confession of March 15 and 17,1945. In absence of the jury, the Court heard testimony before admitting it and thereafter most of it was repeated before the jury. The proof against Rado-vich largely rested on the confession.
After service of distinction in Burma, Radovich, then 24 years of age, was ordered to report to Mitchel Field. Upon arrival on August 9,1944, he was placed under arrest and confined in the psychopathic ward in the station hospital. Here, for some time, he was denied callers, communication, comforts and facilities which it is needless to detail. Charges for court-martial were not promptly served on him as said to be required by the 70th Article of War, nor was he taken before a magistrate for arraignment on any charges preferred by civil authorities. Military charges were finally served on May 30, 1945. Meanwhile, under such restraint, he made a first confession on September 5 or 6, 1944. Without more, we will assume this confession to be inadmissible under the rule laid down in McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, and Anderson v. United States, 318 U. S. 350. But this confession was neither offered nor received in evidence.
A second confession made to Agent Flynn of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on March 15 and 17, 1945 was received, however, and the Court of Appeals has held it to be “patently the fruit of the earlier one” and equally inadmissible, citing Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385; Nardone v. United States, 308 U. S. 338.
At the time of this confession Radovich was still at Mitchel Field, but only under “administrative restrictions,” which meant that he could not depart the limits of the base without leave. Flynn testified that Radovich had a number of conversations with F. B. I. agents. He had volunteered some facts not in the original statement and the' meeting of March was to incorporate the whole story in one statement. Flynn warned him his statement might be used against him. Radovich requested the original statement and read it before making the second. The March statement is labeled a “supplementary” statement and is “basically” the same as the earlier one but went into more detail. The District Attorney refused to produce the first statement, which was not offered in evidence, and the court sustained him, having examined the statement and found no material conflict between them.
Of course, after an accused has once let the cat out of the bag by confessing, no matter what the inducement, he is never thereafter free of the psychological and practical disadvantages of having confessed. He can never get the cat back in the bag. The secret is out for good. In such a sense, a later confession always may be looked upon as fruit of the first. But this Court has never gone so far as to hold that making a confession under circumstances which preclude its use, perpetually disables the confessor from making a usable one after those conditions have been removed. The Silverthorne and Nardone cases, relied on by the Court of Appeals, did not deal with confessions but with evidence of a quite different category and do not control this question. The second confession in this case was made six months after the first. The only restraint under which Radovich labored was that he could not leave the base limits without permission. Certainly such a limitation on the freedom of one in the Army and subject to military discipline is not enough to make a confession voluntarily given after fair warning invalid as evidence against him. We hold the admission of the confession was not error. Cf. Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596.
4. Lastly, we must consider whether the court-martial proceedings instituted against Radovich bar this prosecution on the ground of double jeopardy. Radovich was tried and, on June 29, 1945, convicted by court-martial of violating the 95th and 96th Articles of War, 10 U. S. C. §§ 1567, 1568, 41 Stat. 806-807. The offense charged and found was that of conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman, and of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline and of a nature to bring discredit upon the military service. As to each offense, the specifications set forth receipt of the same payments of money from the Bayers for effecting the same transfers that are involved in this indictment. Radovich’s plea in bar was overruled by the trial court upon the ground that the conspiracy charged in the indictment was not the same offense as that under the Articles of War. The Court of Appeals disapproved this ground but left the issue of double jeopardy to be decided after retrial because of doubt meanwhile raised about the status of the military judgment.
The Court of Appeals thought the identity of the specifications in the court-martial proceedings and the offense charged in the indictment, and the likelihood that the military court did not distinguish carefully between the passing of the money and the arrangement to that end, required the plea in bar to be sustained under Grafton v. United States, 206 U. S. 333. In that case a soldier on guard duty in the Philippines shot and killed two Filipinos. He was tried by court-martial on charge of homicide and acquitted. A prosecuting attorney of the Islands then filed in Provincial Court a charge of “assassination” on identical facts. This Court found not merely the evidence but the offense charged to be identical in everything but name, and held retrial of the same offense in Philippine Courts to constitute double jeopardy.
But here we think the District Court correctly ruled that the two charges did not accuse of identical offenses. The indictment is for conspiring and we have but recently reviewed the nature of that offense. Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U. S. 640. Its essence is in the agreement or confederation to commit a crime, and that is what is punishable as a conspiracy, if any overt act is taken in pursuit of it. The agreement is punishable whether or not the contemplated crime is consummated. But the same overt acts charged in a conspiracy count may also be charged and proved as substantive offenses, for the agreement to do the act is distinct from the act itself. Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U. S. 640, 644. In the court-martial proceedings, Radovich alone was accused. No conspiracy was alleged and the specification was confined to Radovich’s receipt of money for effecting transfers. This was a substantive offense on his part under the Articles of War. The agreement with others to commit it constituted a separate offense, although among the overt acts proved to establish the conspiracy were the same payments and transfers. Both offenses could be charged and conviction had on each. The plea in bar was properly overruled.
This conclusion makes it unnecessary to decide whether the disapproval of the court-martial judgment for errors in trial and without ordering retrial creates a status for the military judgment such that in no event would it be available to bar this prosecution.
The judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals is reversed and that of the District Court is affirmed.
United States v. Bayer, 156 F. 2d 964.
329 U. S. 706.
156 F. 2d at 967.
156 F. 2d at 970.
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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves the validity of a method used by Maryland, in the administration of an aspect of its public welfare program, to reconcile the demands of its needy citizens with the finite resources available to meet those demands. Like every other State in the Union, Maryland participates in the Federal Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program, 42 U. S. C. § 601 et seq. (1964 ed. and Supp. IV), which originated with the Social Security Act of 1935. Under this jointly financed program, a State computes the so-called “standard of need” of each eligible family unit within its borders. See generally Rosado v. Wyman, ante, p. 397. Some States provide that every family shall receive grants sufficient to meet fully the determined standard of need. Other States provide that each family unit shall receive a percentage of the determined need. Still others provide grants to most families in full accord with the ascertained standard of need, but impose an upper limit on the total amount of money any one family unit may receive. Maryland, through administrative adoption of a “maximum grant regulation,” has followed this last course. This suit was brought by several AFDC recipients to enjoin the application of the Maryland maximum grant regulation on the ground that it is in conflict with the Social Security Act of 1935 and with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A three-judge District Court convened pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2281, held that the Maryland regulation violates the Equal Protection Clause. 297 F. Supp. 450. This direct appeal followed, 28 U. S. C. § 1253, and we noted probable jurisdiction, 396 U. S. 811.
The operation of the Maryland welfare system is not complex. By statute the State participates in the AFDC program. It computes the standard of need for each eligible family based on the number of children in the family and the circumstances under which the family lives. In general, the standard of need increases with each additional person in the household, but the incre-merits become proportionately smaller. The regulation here in issue imposes upon the grant that any single family may receive an. upper limit of $250 per month in certain counties and Baltimore City, and of $240 per month elsewhere in the State. The appellees all have large families, so that their standards of need as computed by the State substantially exceed the maximum grants that they actually receive under the regulation. The appellees urged in the District Court that the maximum grant limitation operates to discriminate against them merely because of the size of their families, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They claimed further that the regulation is incompatible with the purpose of the Social Security Act of 1935, as well as in conflict with its explicit provisions.
In its original opinion the District Court held that the Maryland regulation does conflict with the federal statute, and also concluded that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. After reconsideration on motion, the court issued a new opinion resting its determination of the regulation’s invalidity entirely on the constitutional ground. Both the statutory and constitutional issues have been fully briefed and argued here, and the judgment of the District Court must, of course, be affirmed if the Maryland regulation is in conflict with either the federal statute or the Constitution. We consider the statutory question first, because if the appellees’ position on this question is correct, there is no occasion to reach the constitutional issues. Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346-347 (Brandeis, J., concurring); Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U. S. 449.
I
The appellees contend that the maximum grant system is contrary to §402 (a) (10) of the Social Security Act, as amended, which requires that a state plan shall
“provide . . . that all individuals wishing to make application for aid to families with dependent children shall have opportunity to do so, and that aid to families with dependent children shall be furnished with reasonable promptness to all eligible individuals.”
The argument is that the state regulation denies benefits to the younger children in a large family. Thus, the appellees say, the regulation is in patent violation of the Act, since those younger children are just as “dependent” as their older siblings under the definition of “dependent child” fixed by federal law. See King v. Smith, 392 U. S. 309. Moreover, it is argued that the regulation, in limiting the amount of money any single household may receive, contravenes a basic purpose of the federal law by encouraging the parents of large families to “farm out” their children to relatives whose grants are not yet subject to the maximum limitation.
It cannot be gainsaid that the effect of the Maryland maximum grant provision is to reduce the per capita benefits to the children in the largest families. Although the appellees argue that the younger and more recently arrived children in such families are totally deprived of aid, a more realistic view is that the lot of the entire family is diminished because of the presence of additional children without any increase in payments. Cf. King v. Smith, supra, at 335 n. 4 (Douglas, J., concurring). It is no more accurate to say that the last child's grant is wholly taken away than to say that the grant of the first child is totally rescinded. In fact, it is the family grant that is affected. Whether this per capita diminution is compatible with the statute is the question here. For the reasons that follow, we have concluded that the Maryland regulation is permissible under the federal law.
In King v. Smith, supra, we stressed the States’ “undisputed power,” under these provisions of the Social Security Act, “to set the level of benefits and the standard of need.” Id., at 334. We described the AFDC enterprise as “a scheme of cooperative federalism,” id., at 316, and noted carefully that “[t]here is no question that States have considerable latitude in allocating their AFDC resources, since each State is free to set its own standard of need and to determine the level of benefits by the amount of funds it devotes to the program.” Id., at 318-319.
Congress was itself cognizant of the limitations on state resources from the very outset of the federal welfare program. The first section of the Act, 42 U. S. C. § 601 (1964 ed., Supp. IV), provides that the Act is
“For the purpose of encouraging the care of dependent children in their own homes or in the homes of relatives by enabling each State to furnish financial assistance and rehabilitation and other services, as jar as practicable under the conditions in such State, to needy dependent children and the parents or relatives with whom they are living to help maintain and strengthen family life and to help such parents or relatives to attain or retain capability for the maximum self-support and personal independence consistent with the maintenance of continuing parental care and protection . . . .” (Emphasis added.)
Thus the starting point of the statutory analysis must be a recognition that the federal law gives each State great latitude in dispensing its available funds.
The very title of the program, the repeated references to families added in 1962, Pub. L. 87-543, § 104 (a)(3), 76 Stat. 185, and the words of the preamble quoted above, show that Congress wished to help children through the family structure. The operation of the statute itself has this effect. From its inception the Act has defined “dependent child” in part by reference to the relatives with whom the child lives. When a “dependent child” is living with relatives, then “aid” also includes payments and medical care to those relatives, including the spouse of the child’s parent. 42 U. S. C. § 606 (b) (1964 ed., Supp. IV). Thus, as the District Court noted, the amount of aid “is . . . computed by treating the relative, parent or spouse of parent, as the case may be, of the 'dependent child’ as a part of the family unit.” 297 F. Supp., at 455. Congress has been so desirous of keeping dependent children within a family that in the Social Security Amendments of 1967 it provided that aid could go to children whose need arose merely from their parents’ unemployment, under federally determined standards, although the parent was not incapacitated. 42 U. S. C. § 607 (1964 ed., Supp. IV).
The States must respond to this federal statutory concern for preserving children in a family environment. Given Maryland’s finite resources, its choice is either to support some families adequately and others less adequately, or not to give sufficient support to any family. We see nothing in the federal statute that forbids a State to balance the stresses that uniform insufficiency of payments would impose on all families against the greater ability of large families — because of the inherent economies of scale — to accommodate their needs to diminished per capita payments. The strong policy of the statute in favor of preserving family units does not prevent a State from sustaining as many families as it can, and providing the largest families somewhat less than their ascertained per capita standard of need. Nor does the maximum grant system necessitate the dissolution of family bonds. For even if a parent should be inclined to increase his per capita family income by sending a child away, the federal law requires that the child, to be eligible for AFDC payments, must live with one of several enumerated relatives. The kinship tie may be attenuated but it cannot be destroyed.
The appellees rely most heavily upon the statutory requirement that aid “shall be furnished with reasonable promptness to all eligible individuals.” 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a)(10) (1964 ed., Supp. IV). But since the statute leaves the level of benefits within the judgment of the State, this language cannot mean that the “aid” furnished must equal the total of each individual’s standard of need in every family group. Indeed the appellees do not deny that a scheme of proportional reductions for all families could be used that would result in no individual’s receiving aid equal to his standard of need. As we have noted, the practical effect of the Maryland regulation is that all children, even in very large families, do receive - some aid. We find nothing in 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (10) (1964 ed., Supp. IY) that requires more than this. So long as some aid is provided to all eligible families and all eligible children, the statute itself is not violated.
This is the view that has been taken by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), who is charged with the administration of the Social Security Act and the approval of state welfare plans. The parties have stipulated that the Secretary has, on numerous occasions, approved the Maryland welfare scheme, including its provision of maximum payments to any one family, a provision that has been in force in various forms since 1947. Moreover, a majority of the States pay less than their determined standard of need, and 20 of these States impose máximums on family grants of the kind here in issue. The Secretary has not disapproved any state plan because of its maximum grant provision. On the contrary, the Secretary has explicitly recognized state maximum grant systems.
Finally, Congress itself has acknowledged a full awareness of state maximum grant limitations. In the Amendments of 1967 Congress added to § 402 (a) a subsection, 23:
“[The State shall] provide that by July 1, 1969, the amounts used by the State to determine the needs of individuals will have been adjusted to reflect fully changes in living costs since such amounts were established, and any máximums that the State imposes on the amount of aid paid to families will have been proportionately adjusted.” 81 Stat. 898, 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (23) (1964 ed., Supp. IV). (Emphasis added.)
This specific congressional recognition of the state maximum grant provisions is not, of course, an approval of any specific maximum. The structure of specific máxi-mums Congress left to the States, and the validity of any such structure must meet constitutional tests. However, the above amendment does make clear that Congress fully recognized that the Act permits maximum grant regulations.
For all of these reasons, we conclude that the Maryland regulation is not prohibited by the Social Security Act.
II
Although a State may adopt a maximum grant system in allocating its funds available for AFDC payments without violating the Act, it may not, of course, impose a regime of invidious discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Maryland says that its maximum grant regulation is wholly free of any invidiously discriminatory purpose or effect, and that the regulation is rationally supportable on at least four entirely valid grounds. The regulation can be clearly justified, Maryland argues, in terms of legitimate state interests in encouraging gainful employment, in maintaining an equitable balance in economic status as between welfare families and those supported by a wage-earner, in providing incentives for family planning, and in allocating available public funds in such a way as fully to meet the needs of the largest possible number of families. The District Court, while apparently recognizing the validity of at least some of these state concerns, nonetheless held that the regulation “is invalid on its face for overreaching,” 297 F. Supp., at 468 — that it violates the Equal Protection Clause “[b]ecause it cuts too broad a swath on an indiscriminate basis as applied to the entire group of AFDC eligibles to which it purports to apply . . . .” 297 F. Supp., at 469.
If this were a case involving government action claimed to violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, a finding of “overreaching” would be significant and might be crucial. For when otherwise valid governmental regulation sweeps so broadly as to impinge upon activity protected by the First Amendment, its very overbreadth may make it unconstitutional. See, e. g., Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479. But the concept of “overreaching” has no place in this case. For here we deal with state regulation in the social and economic field, not affecting freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and claimed to violate the Fourteenth Amendment only because the regulation results in some disparity in grants of welfare payments to the largest AFDC families. For this Court to approve the invalidation of .state economic or social regulation as “overreaching” would be far too reminiscent of an era when the Court thought the Fourteenth Amendment gave it power to strike down state laws “because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.” Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 488. That era long ago passed into history. Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726.
In the area of economics and social welfare, a State does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the classifications made by its laws are imperfect. If the classification has some “reasonable basis,” it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification “is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.” Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78. “The problems of government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations — illogical, it may be, and unscientific.” Metropolis Theatre Co. v. City of Chicago, 228 U. S. 61, 69-70. “A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.” McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 426.
To be sure, the cases cited, and many others enunciating this fundamental standard under the Equal Protection Clause, have in the main involved state regulation of business or industry. The administration of public welfare assistance, by contrast, involves the most basic economic needs of impoverished human beings. We recognize the dramatically real factual difference between the cited cases and this one, but we can find no basis for applying a different constitutional standard. See Snell v. Wyman, 281 E. Supp. 853, aff’d, 393 U. S. 323. It is a standard that has consistently been applied to state legislation restricting the availability of employment opportunities. Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U. S. 464; Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552. See also Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603. And it is a standard that is true to the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal courts no power to impose upon the States their views of what constitutes wise economic or social policy.
Under this long-established meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, it is clear that the Maryland maximum grant regulation is constitutionally valid. We need not explore all the reasons that the State advances in justification of the regulation. It is enough that a solid foundation for the regulation can be found in the State’s legitimate interest in encouraging employment and in avoiding discrimination between welfare families and the families of the working poor. By combining a limit on the recipient’s grant with permission to retain money earned, without reduction in the amount of the grant, Maryland provides an incentive to seek gainful employment. And by keying the maximum family AFDC grants to the minimum wage a steadily employed head of a household receives, the State maintains some semblance of an equitable balance between families on welfare and those supported by an employed breadwinner.
It is true that in some AFDC families there may be no person who is employable. It is also true that with respect to AFDC families whose determined standard of need is below the regulatory maximum, and who therefore receive grants equal to the determined standard, the employment incentive is absent. But the Equal Protection Clause does not require that a State must choose between attacking every aspect of a problem or not attacking the problem at all. Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61. It is enough that the State’s action be rationally based and free from invidious discrimination. The regulation before us meets that test.
We do not decide today that the Maryland regulation is wise, that it best fulfills the relevant social and economic objectives that Maryland might ideally espouse, or that a more just and humane system could not be devised. Conflicting claims of morality and intelligence are raised by opponents and proponents of almost every measure, certainly including the one before us. But the intractable economic, social, and even philosophical problems presented by public welfare assistance programs are not the business of this Court. The Constitution may impose certain procedural safeguards upon systems of welfare administration, Goldberg v. Kelly, ante, p. 254. But the Constitution does not empower this Court to second-guess state officials charged with the difficult responsibility of allocating limited public welfare funds among the myriad of potential recipients. Cf. Steward Mach. Co. v. Davis, 301 U. S. 548, 584-585; Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619, 644.
The judgment is reversed.
[For Appendix, see post, p. 488.]
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT
The following was the schedule for determining subsistence needs, exclusive of rent, at the time this action was brought. Md. Manual of Dept, of Pub. Welfare, pt. II, Rule 200, Sched. A, p. 27:
STANDARD FOR DETERMINING COST OF SUBSISTENOE NEEDS
Modification of standard for cost
Other schedules set the estimated cost of shelter in the various counties in Maryland. See id., Sched. B — Plan A, p. 29; Sched. B— Plan B, p. 30. The present schedules, which are substantially the same, appear in the Md. Manual of Dept, of Social Services, Rule 200, pp. 33, 35.
49 Stat. 620, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §§301-1394 (1964 ed. and Supp. IV).
Maryland Ann. Code, Art. 88A, § 44A et seq. (1969 Repl. Vol.).
The schedule for determining subsistence needs is set forth in an Appendix to this opinion.
The regulation now provides:
“B. Amount — The amount of the grant is the resulting amount of need when resources are deducted from requirements as set forth in this Rule, subject to a maximum on each grant from each category:
“1. $250 — for local departments under any ‘Plan A’ of Shelter Schedule
“2. $240 — for local departments under any 'Plan B' of Shelter Schedule
“Except that:
“a. If the requirements of a child over 18 are included to enable him to complete high school or training for employment (III-C-3), the grant may exceed the maximum by the amount of such child's needs.
“b. If the resource of support is paid as a refund (VI-B-6),. the grant may exceed the maximum by an amount of such refund. This makes consistent the principle that the amount from public assistance funds does not exceed the maximum.
“c. The maximum may be exceeded by the amount of an emergency grant for items not included in a regular monthly grant. (VIII)
“d. The maximum may be exceeded up to the amount of a grant to a person in one of the nursing homes specified in Schedule D, Section a.
“3. A grant is subject to any limitation established because of insufficient funds.”
Md. Manual of Dept, of Social Services, Rule 200, § X, B, p. 23, formerly Md. Manual of Dept, of Pub. Welfare, pt. II, Rule 200, § VII, 1, p. 20.
In addition, ÁFDC recipients in Maryland may be eligible for certain assistance in kind, including food stamps, public housing, and medical aid. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 1396 et seq. (1964 ed., Supp. IV); 7 U. S. C. §§ 1695-1697. The applicable provisions of state and federal law also permit recipients to keep part of their earnings from outside jobs. 42 U. S. C. §§ 630-644 (1964 ed., Supp. IV); Md. Manual of Dept, of Social Services, Ride 200, §VI, B (8) (c)(2). Both federal and state law require that recipients seek work and take it if it is available. 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (19) (F) (1964 ed., Supp. IV); Md. Manual of Dept, of Social Services, Rule 200, § III (D) (1) (d).
Both opinions appear at 297 F. Supp. 450.
The prevailing party may, of course, assert in a reviewing court any ground in support of his judgment, whether or not that ground was relied upon or even considered by the trial court. Compare Langnes v. Green, 282 U. S. 531, 538, with Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co., 282 U. S. 555, 567-568. As the Court said in United States v. American Ry. Exp. Co., 265 U. S. 425, 435-436: “[lit is likewise settled that the appellee may, without taking a cross-appeal, urge in support of a decree any matter appearing in the record, although his argument may involve an attack upon the reasoning of the lower court or an insistence upon matter overlooked or ignored by it. By the claims now in question, the American does not attack, in any respect, the decree entered below. It merely asserts additional grounds why the decree should be affirmed.” When attention has been focused on other issues, or when the court from which a case comes has expressed no views on a controlling question, it may be appropriate to remand the case rather than deal with the merits of that question in this Court. See Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co. v. Flowers, 330 U. S. 464, 468; United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 88. That is not the situation here, however. The issue having been fully argued both here and in the District Court, consideration of the statutory claim is appropriate. Bondholders Committee v. Commissioner, 315 U. S. 189, 192 n. 2; H. Hart & H. Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1394 (1953). See also Jaffke v. Dunham, 352 U. S. 280.
64 Stat. 550, as amended, 76 Stat. 185, 81 Stat. 881, 42 U. S. C. § 602 (a) (10) (1964 ed., Supp. V).
42 U. S. C. §606 (a) (1964 ed., Supp. IV) provides:
“The term ‘dependent child’ means a needy child (1) who has been deprived of parental support or care by reason of the death, continued absence from the home, or physical or mental incapacity of a parent, and who is living with his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother, stepsister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew', or niece, in a place of residence maintained by one or more of such relatives as his or their own home, and (2) who is (A) under the age of eighteen, or (B) under the age of twenty-one and (as determined by the State in accordance with standards prescribed by the Secretary) a student regularly attending a school, college, or university, or regularly attending a course of vocational or technical training designed to fit him for gainful employment.”
The Act also covers children who have been placed in foster homes pursuant to judicial order or because they are state charges. 42 TJ. S. C. § 608 (1964 ed., Supp. IV).
42 U. S. C. § 606 (a) (1964 ed., Supp. IV), supra, n. 8, formerly § 406, 49 Stat. 629, as amended, § 321, 70 Stat. 860. See also S. Rep. No. 628, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 16-17 (1935).
The Maryland Dept, of Social Services, Monthly Financial and Statistical Report, Table 7 (Nov. 1969), indicates that 32,504 families receive AFDC assistance. In the Maryland Dept, of Social Services, 1970 Fiscal Year Budget, the department estimated that 2,537 families would be affected by the removal of the maximum grant limitation. It thus appears that only one-thirteenth of the AFDC families in Maryland receive less than their determined need because of the operation of the maximum grant regulation. Of course, if the same funds were allocated subject to a percentage limitation, no AFDC family would receive funds sufficient to meet its determined need.
42 U. S. C. § 606 (a) (1964 ed., Supp. IV), n. 8, supra.
The State argues that in the total context of the federal statute, reference to “eligible individuals” means eligible applicants for AFDC grants, rather than all the family members whom the applicants may represent, and that the statutory provision was designed only to prevent the use of waiting lists. There is considerable support in the legislative history for this view. See H. R. Rep. No. 1300, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 48, 148 (1949); 95 Cong. Rec. 13934 (1949) (remarks of Rep. Forand). And it is certainly true that the statute contemplates that actual payments will be made to responsible adults. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 605. For the reasons given above, however, we do not find it necessary to consider this argument.
See HEW Report on Money Payments to Recipients of Special Types of Public Assistance, Oct. 1967, Table 4 (NCSS Report D-4). See also Hearings on H. R. 5710 before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 118 (1967).
HEW, State Máximums and Other Methods of Limiting Money Payments to Recipients of Special Types of Public Assistance, Oct. 1962, p. 3:
“When States are unable to meet need as determined under their standards they reduce payments on a percentage or flat reduction basis .... These types of limitations may be used in the absence of, or in conjunction with, legal or administrative máximums. A maximum limits the amount of assistance that may be paid to persons whose determined need exceeds that maximum, whereas percentage or flat reductions usually have the effect of lowering payments to most or all recipients to a level below that of determined need.”
See also HEW Interim Policy Statement of May 31, 1968, 33 Fed. Reg. 10230 (1968); 45 CFR §233.20 (a)(2)(h), 34 Fed. Reg. 1394 (1969).
’The provisions of 42 U. S. C. § 1396b (f) (1964 ed., Supp. IV), also added by the Amendments of 1967, 81 Stat. 898, a.re consistent with this view. That section provides that no medical assistance shall be given to any family that has a certain level of income. The section, however, makes an exception, 42 II. S. C. § 1396b (f) (1) (B) (ii) (1964 ed., Supp. IV):
“If the Secretary finds that the operation of a uniform maximum limits pajonents to families of more than one size, he may adjust the amount otherwise determined under clause (i) to take account-of families of different sizes.”
These provisions have particular significance in light of the Administration’s initial effort to secure a law forcing each State to pay its full standard of need. See Rosado v. Wyman, supra.
This recognition of the existence of state máximums is not new with the Amendments of 1967. In reporting on amendments to the Social Security Act in 1962, 76 Stat. 185, the Senate committee referred to “States in which there is a maximum limiting the amount of assistance an individual may receive.” S. Rep. No. 1589, S7th Cong., 2d Sess., 14 (1962).
Cf. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, where, by contrast, the Court found state interference with the constitutionally protected freedom of interstate travel.
It is important to note that there is no contention that the Maryland regulation is infected with a racially discriminatory purpose or effect such as to make it inherently suspect. Cf. McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184.
See Developments in the Law — Equal Protection, 82 Harv. L. Rev. 1065, 1082-1087.
The present federal minimum wage is $52-$64 per 40-hour week, 29 U. S. C. §206 (1964 ed., Supp. IV). The Maryland minimum wage is $46-$52 per week, Md. Ann. Code, Art. 100, § 83 (Supp. 1969).
It appears that no family members of any of the named plaintiffs in the present case are employable.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
On December 14, 1951, petitioner, John S. Service, was discharged by the then Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, from his employment as a Foreign Service Officer in the Foreign Service of the United States. This case brings before us the validity of that discharge.
At the time of his discharge in 1951, Service had been a Foreign Service Officer for some sixteen years, during ten of which, 1935-1945, he had served in various capacities in China. In April 1945, shortly after his return to this country, Service became involved in the so-called Amerasia investigation through having furnished to one Jaffe, the editor of the Amerasia magazine, copies of certain of his Foreign Service reports. Two months later, Service, Jaffe and others were arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act, but the grand jury, in August 1945, refused to indict Service. He was thereupon restored to active duty in the Foreign Service, from which he had been on leave of absence since his arrest, and returned to duty in the Far East.
From then on Service’s loyalty and standing as a security risk were under recurrent investigation and review by a number of governmental agencies under the provisions of Executive Order No. 9835, establishing the President’s Loyalty Program, and otherwise. He was accorded successive “clearances” by the State Department in each of the years 1945, 1946 and 1947, and a fourth clearance in 1949 by that Department’s Loyalty Security Board, which, however, was directed by the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission, when the case was examined by it on “post-audit,” to prefer charges against Service and conduct a hearing thereon. This was done, and on October 6, 1950, after extensive hearings, the Department Board concluded that “reasonable grounds do not exist for belief that... Service is disloyal to the Government of the United States...,” and that “... he does not constitute a security risk to the Department of State.” These findings were approved by the Deputy Under Secretary of State, acting pursuant to authority delegated to him by the Secretary. Again, however, the Loyalty Review Board, on post-audit, remanded the case to the Department Board for further consideration. Such consideration was had, this time under the more stringent loyalty standard established by Executive Order No. 10241, amending the earlier Executive Order No. 9835, and again the Department Board,, on July 31, 1951, decided favorably to Service. This determination was likewise approved by the Deputy Under Secretary. However, on a further post-audit, the Loyalty Review Board decided to conduct a new hearing itself, which resulted this time in the Board’s finding that there was a reasonable doubt as to Service’s loyalty, and in its advising the Secretary of State, on December 13, 1951, that in the Board’s opinion Service “should be forthwith removed from the rolls of the Department of State” and that “the Secretary should approve and adopt the proceedings” had before the Board. On the same day the Department notified Service of his discharge, effective at the close of business on the following day.
The authority and basis upon which the Secretary acted in discharging petitioner are set forth in an affidavit later filed by Mr. Acheson in the present litigation, in which he states:
“2. On December 13, 1951,1 received a letter from the Chairman of the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission submitting to me that Board's opinion, dated December 12,1951, in the case of John S. Service, a Foreign Service officer of the Department of State and the plaintiff in this action.
“3. On that same day I considered what action should be taken in the light of the opinion of the Loyalty Review Board, recognizing that whatever action taken would be of utmost importance to the administration of the Government Employees Loyalty Program. I understood that the responsibility was vested in me to make the necessary determination under both Executive Order No. 9835, as amended, and under Section 103 of Public Law 188, 82d Congress, as to what action to take.
“4. Acting in the exercise of the authority vested in me as Secretary of State by Executive Order 9835, as amended by Executive Order 10241, and also by Section 103 of Public Law 188, 82d Congress (65 Stat. 575, 581), I made a determination to terminate the services of Mr. Service as a Foreign Service Officer in the Foreign Service of the United States.
“5. I made that determination solely as the result of the finding of the Loyalty Review Board and as a result of my review of the opinion of that Board. In making this determination, I did not read the testimony taken in the proceedings in Mr. Service’s case before the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission. I did not make any independent determination of my own as to whether on the evidence submitted before those boards there was reasonable doubt as to Mr. Service’s loyalty. I made no independent judgment on the record in this case. There was nothing in the opinion of the Loyalty Review Board which would make it incompatible with the exercise of my responsibilities as Secretary of State to act on it. I deemed it appropriate and advisable to act on the basis of the finding and opinion of the Loyalty Review Board. In determining to terminate the employment of Mr. Service, I did not consider that I was legally bound or required by the opinion of the Loyalty Review Board to take such action. On the contrary, I considered that the opinion of the Loyalty Review Board was merely an advisory recommendation to me and that I was legally free to exercise my own judgment as to whether Mr. Service’s employment should be terminated and I did so exercise that judgment.”
Section 103 of Public Law 188, 82d Congress, upon which the Secretary thus relied, was the so-called McCarran Rider, first enacted as a rider to the Appropriation Act for 1947, which provided:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of... any other law, the Secretary of State may, in his absolute discretion,... terminate the employment of any officer or employee of the Department of State or of the Foreign Service of the United States whenever he shall deem such termination necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States...
Similar provisions were re-enacted in each subsequent appropriation act until 1953.
After an attempt to secure further administrative review of his discharge proved unsuccessful, petitioner brought this action, in which he sought a declaratory judgment that his discharge was invalid; an order directing the respondents to expunge from their records all written statements reflecting that his employment had been terminated because there was a reasonable doubt as to his loyalty; and an order directing the Secretary to reinstate him to his employment and former grade in the Foreign Service, with full restoration of property rights and payment of accumulated salary.
While cross-motions for summary judgment were pending before the District Court, this Court rendered its decision in Peters v. Hobby, 349 U. S. 331, holding that under Executive Order No. 9835, the Loyalty Review Board had no authority to review, on post-audit, determinations favorable to employees made by department or agency authorities, or to adjudicate individual cases on its own motion. On the authority of that decision, the District Court declared the finding and opinion of the Loyalty Review Board respecting Service to be a nullity, and directed the Civil Service Commission to expunge from its records the Board’s finding that there was reasonable doubt as to his loyalty. But since petitioner’s removal rested not only upon Executive Order No. 9835, as amended, but also upon the McCarran Rider, the District Court sustained petitioner’s discharge as a valid exercise of the “absolute discretion” conferred upon the Secretary by the latter provision, and granted summary judgment in favor of respondents in all other respects. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 98 U. S. App. D. C. 268, 235 F. 2d 215, and this Court granted certiorari, 352 U. S. 905, because of the importance of the questions involved to federal administrators and employees alike.
Petitioner here attacks the validity of the termination of his employment on two separate grounds: First, he contends that the Secretary’s exercise of discretion was invalid since the findings and opinion of the Loyalty Review Board, upon which alone the Secretary acted, were void, because they were rendered without jurisdiction and were based upon procedures assertedly contrary to due process of law. Even conceding that the Secretary’s powers under the McCarran Rider were such that he was not required to state the grounds for his decision, petitioner urges, his decision cannot stand because he did in fact rely upon grounds that are invalid. See Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80; Perkins v. Elg, 307 U. S. 325. Second, petitioner contends that the Secretary’s action is subject to attack under the principles established by this Court’s decision in Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260, namely, that regulations validly prescribed by a government administrator are binding upon him as well as the citizen, and that this principle holds even when the administrative action under review is discretionary in nature. Regulations relating to “loyalty and security of employees” which had been promulgated by the Secretary, petitioner asserts, were intended to govern discharges effected under the McCarran Rider as well as those effected under Executive Order No. 9835, as amended, and because those regulations were violated by the Secretary in this case, so petitioner claims, his dismissal by the Secretary cannot stand. Since, for reasons discussed hereafter, we have concluded that petitioner’s second contention must be sustained, we do not reach the first.
The questions to which we address ourselves therefore are as follows: (1) Were the departmental Regulations here involved applicable to discharges effected under the McCarran Rider? and (2) Were those Regulations violated in this instance? We do not understand the respondents to dispute that the principle of Accardi v. Shaughnessy, supra, is controlling, if we find that the Regulations were indeed applicable and were violated. We might also add that we are not here concerned in any wise with the merits of the Secretary’s action in terminating the petitioner’s employment.
I.
We think it is not open to serious question that the departmental Regulations upon which petitioner relies were applicable to McCarran Rider discharges as well as to those effected pursuant to the Loyalty-Security program. The terms of the Regulations, the fact that the Department itself proceeded in this very case under those Regulations down to the point of petitioner’s discharge, representations made by the State Department to Congress relating to its practices under the McCarran Rider, and the announced wish of the President to the effect that McCarran Rider authority should be exercised subject to procedural safeguards designed to protect “the personal liberties of employees,” all combine to lead to that conclusion. We also think it clear that these Regulations were valid, so far as their validity is put in issue by the respondents in this case.
A. The Regulations.
When the Department’s proceedings against the petitioner, which resulted in the “clearances” of October 6, 1950, and July 31, 1951, were begun, the Regulations in effect were those of March 11, 1949, entitled “Regulations and Procedures relating to Loyalty and Security of Employees, U. S. Department of State.” Section 391 stated the “Authority and General Policy” of the Regulations in three subsections. Subsection 391.1 stated that it was “highly important to the interests of the United States that no person be employed in the Department who is disloyal or who constitutes a security risk.” Subsection 391.2 stated that so far as the Regulations related to the handling of loyalty cases, they were promulgated in accordance with Executive Order No. 9835, which had recognized the “necessity for removing disloyal employees from the Federal service and for refusing employment therein to disloyal persons,” and the “obligation to protect employees and applicants from unfounded accusations of disloyalty.” Subsection 391.3 referred to the language of the McCarran Rider, noting that the Secretary of State had been granted by Congress the right, in his absolute discretion, “to terminate the employment of any officer or employee of the Department of State or of the Foreign Service of the United States whenever he shall deem such termination necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States.” “In the exercise of this right,” the subsection concluded, “the Department will, so far as possible, afford its employees the same protection as those provided under the Loyalty Program.” And, as we shall see hereafter, the Regulations made no provision for action by the Secretary himself, under the McCarran Rider or otherwise, except following unfavorable action in the employee's case by the Department Loyalty Security Board, after full hearing before that Board on the charges against him, and approval of the Board's action by the Deputy Under Secretary.
In May and September 1951, prior to the time of petitioner’s discharge, the Regulations were revised, and the amended § 391 provided even more explicitly than the original that the procedures and standards established were intended to govern exercise of the authority granted by the McCarran Rider. After stating in the first subsection that the Regulations were adopted to implement the Department’s policy that “no person be employed in the Department who is disloyal or who constitutes a security risk,” the section continues in the next two subsections to state in effect that the Regulations relating to the handling of loyalty cases were promulgated in accordance with Executive Order No. 9835, and that those relating to security cases were promulgated under the authority of the Act of August 26, 1950 and the McCarran Rider. The phrase “so far as possible,” in reference to McCarran Rider authority, was deleted. The Regulations thus drew upon all the sources of authority available to the Secretary with reference to such cases, and purported to set forth definitively the procedures and standards to be followed in their handling.
B. The Administrative Proceedings in this Case.
The administrative proceedings held in petitioner’s case were unquestionably conducted on the premise that the Regulations were applicable in this instance. The charges were based on the Regulations, and a copy of the Regulations was sent to Service along with the letter of charges. The hearing was scheduled under § 395 of the 1949 Regulations. In its opinion exonerating Service, the Department Board noted, following the Regulations, that “the issues here are (1) loyalty, and (2) security risk.” The Board’s favorable recommendations came twice before the Deputy Under Secretary for review under §§ 395.6 and 396.7 of these Regulations, and were approved by him. Later, before the Civil Service Commission’s Loyalty Review Board, an additional charge was added to the Department’s original charges by stipulation of the parties, and the stipulation expressly referred to §§ 392.2 and 393.1a of the Regulations. Indeed, at no time during any of the administrative proceedings in this case was there any suggestion that the Regulations were not applicable to the entire proceedings and binding upon all parties to the case.
C. The Department’s Representations to Congress.
In the spring of 1950, the Department of State submitted to an investigating subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a comprehensive report on the procedures and standards used by the Department in dealing with employee loyalty and security problems. After describing the procedures utilized by the Department in the early post-war period, the report continued as follows:
.. The policy of the Department prior to the passage of the McCarran rider was that if there was reasonable doubt as to an employee’s loyalty, his employment was required to be terminated. The McCarran rider freed the hands of the Department in making this policy effective. Basically any reasonable doubt of an employee’s loyalty if based on substantial evidence was to be resolved in favor of the Government. After enactment of the McCarran rider the Department did not contemplate that the legislation required or that the people of this country would countenance the use of ‘Gestapo’ methods or harassment or persecution of loyal employees who were American citizens on flimsy evidence or hearsay and innuendo. The Department proceeded to develop appropriate procedures designed to implement fully and properly the authority granted the Department under the McCarran rider.
“The McCarran rider... was the first of a series of provisions included in each subsequent appropriation act which authorized the Secretary of State in his absolute discretion to ‘terminate the employment of any officer or employee of the Department of State or of the Foreign Service of the United States whenever he shall deem such termination necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States.’ Accordingly, effective during the 1947 fiscal year, and each fiscal year thereafter, the Department considered the McCarran rider as an additional standard for dealing with security problems in the Department.... In [its] considered view the McCarran rider was subject to procedural limitations. The McCarran rider was not interpreted as permitting reckless discharge or the exercise of arbitrary whims.
“The President’s loyalty order of March 21, 1947, prescribed a comprehensive set of standards governing the executive branch as a whole. It was deemed applicable to the Department of State, as well as to other agencies. The unique powers conferred on the Department as a result of continuous reenactment of the McCarran rider led the Department to promulgate regulations which would encompass its duties and powers both under the Executive order and under the McCarran rider.”
D. The President’s Letter.
That the policy of the Secretary to subject his plenary powers under the McCarran Rider to procedural limitations was deliberately adopted, and rested on decisions taken at the highest level, is evidenced by a letter dated September 6, 1950, from President Truman to the Secretary of State, which was made a part of the record below. In that letter, the President advised the Secretary that he had just approved H. R. 7786, the General Appropriation Act, 1951, 64 Stat. 595, 768, § 1213 of which re-enacted the McCarran Rider for the current fiscal year. The President continued:
“I am sure you will agree that in exercising the discretion conferred upon you by Section 1213, every effort should be made to protect the national security without unduly jeopardizing the personal liberties of the employees within your jurisdiction. Procedures designed to accomplish these two objectives are set forth in Public Law 733,81st Congress, which authorizes the summary suspension of civilian officers and employees of various departments and agencies of the Government, including the Department of State.
“In order that officers and employees of the Department of State may be afforded the same protection as that afforded by Public Law 733, it is my desire that you follow the procedures set forth in that law in carrying out the provisions of section 1213 of the General Appropriations Act.”
In view of the terms of the Regulations, the course of procedure followed by the Department, and the background materials we have noted, we think that there is no room for doubt that the departmental Regulations for the handling of loyalty and security cases were both intended and considered by the Department to apply in this instance. We cannot accept either of the respondents’ present arguments to the contrary. The first argument, as put by the District Court, whose language was adopted by the Court of Appeals, is:
“... It was not the intent of Congress that the Secretary of State bind himself to follow the provisions of Executive Order 9835 in dismissing employees under Public Law 188. This power of summary dismissal would not have been granted the Secretary of State by the Congress if the Congress was satisfied that the interests of this country were adequately protected by Executive Order 9835.”
We gather from this that the lower courts thought that the Secretary was powerless to bind himself by these Regulations as to McCarran Rider discharges based on loyalty or security grounds. We do not think this is so. Although Congress was advised in unmistakable terms that the Secretary had seen fit to limit by regulations the discretion conferred upon him, see pp. 377-378, supra, it continued to re-enact the McCarran Rider without change for several succeeding years. Cf. Labor Board v. Gullett Gin Co., 340 U. S. 361, 366; Fleming v. Mohawk Co., 331 U. S. 111, 116. Nor do we see any inconsistency between this statute and the effect of the Regulations upon the Secretary under Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260, already discussed, pp. 372-373, supra. Accardi, indeed, involved statutory authority as broad as that involved here.
The respondents’ second argument is that the Regulations refer explicitly to discharges based on loyalty and security grounds, but make no reference to discharges deemed “necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States” — the sole McCarran Rider standard — and hence were not applicable to such discharges. But, as has already been demonstrated, both the Regulations and their historical context show that the Regulations were applicable to McCarran Rider discharges, at least to the extent that they were based on loyalty or security grounds, and we do not see how it could seriously be considered, as the respondents now seem to urge, that Service was not discharged on such grounds. The Secretary’s affidavit, and also the Department’s formal notice to Service of his discharge, both of which, among other things, refer to Executive Order No. 9835 as well as to the McCarran Rider as authority for the Secretary’s action, unmistakably show that the discharge was based on such grounds.
We now turn to the question whether the manner of petitioner’s discharge was consistent with the Department’s Regulations.
II.
Preliminarily, it must be noted that the parties are in dispute as to which of the two sets of Regulations — those of 1949 or those of 1951 — is applicable to petitioner’s case, assuming, as we have held, that one or the other must govern. The departmental proceedings against petitioner were begun and were conducted under the 1949 Regulations. However, prior to petitioner’s discharge in December 1951, the revised Regulations of May and September 1951 had become effective, and it is under those Regulations, the respondents say, that Service’s discharge must be judged. On the other hand, the petitioner contends that the 1949 Regulations remained applicable to his case, since he was not advised of the existence of the 1951 Regulations until after his discharge had been accomplished and the present court proceedings had been commenced. However, it is unnecessary for us to make a choice between the two sets of Regulations, for we find the manner in which petitioner was discharged to have been inconsistent with both.
A. The 1949 Regulations.
In terms of the 1949 Regulations, the vice we find in petitioner’s discharge is that the Secretary had no right to dismiss the petitioner for loyalty or security reasons unless and until the Deputy Under Secretary, acting upon the findings of the Department’s Loyalty Security Board, had recommended such dismissal. In other words, the Deputy Under Secretary in this instance having approved the findings of the Loyalty Security Board favorable to petitioner, the Secretary, consistently with these Regulations, could not, without more, dismiss the petitioner.
The basis for this conclusion will appear from a consideration of the procedural scheme established by the 1949 Regulations relating to loyalty and security cases. In outline that scheme involved the following procedural steps:
(1). The filing of charges, upon notice to the employee involved, accompanied by adequate factual details as to their basis, and a statement as to the employee’s work and pay status pending further action.
(2) A hearing on such charges, if requested by the employee, before the Department’s Loyalty Security Board, whose determination, together with the record of the hearings, were then to be forwarded to the Deputy Under Secretary for review.
(3) Upon such review the Deputy Under Secretary was empowered (i) to return the case to the Board for further investigation or action; (ii) to decide in favor of the employee, and to so notify him in writing; or (iii) to decide against the employee, and to notify him of his right to appeal to the Secretary within 10 days thereafter.
(4) In the event of such an appeal, the Secretary was empowered (i) to decide favorably to the employee, and to so notify him in writing; or (ii) to decide against the employee, and to notify him of such decision, and further, in a loyalty case, of his right to appeal to the Loyalty Review Board within 20 days thereafter.
(5) If, upon such an appeal, the Loyalty Review Board decided adversely to the employee and made an “advisory” recommendation to the Secretary that the employee should be removed from employment under the applicable loyalty standards, the Department was to take prompt administrative action to that end. On the other hand if the Board decided favorably to the employee the Secretary was empowered (i) to restore the employee to duty and “close the case”; (ii) to permit the employee to resign; or (iii) to terminate his employment under the authority conferred by the McCarran Rider “or other appropriate authority.”
From this survey, three things appear as to the'handling of loyalty and security cases under the 1949 Regulations which are of significance in this case. First, following the decision of the Deputy Under Secretary upon a determination of the Department Loyalty Security Board, there was to be an appeal to the Secretary only if the Deputy’s action had been adverse to the employee. In other words, under these Regulations the action of the Deputy Under Secretary, if favorable to the employee, was to be final, the Secretary reserving to himself power to act further only if his Deputy’s action was unfavorable to the employee. Second, there was likewise an appeal to the Loyalty Review Board from the Secretary’s decision only if his action was adverse to the employee. Again, in other words, a decision of the Secretary favorable to the employee was to be final, and immune from further action by the Loyalty Review Board on post-audit, a rule since confirmed by our decision in Peters v. Hobby, supra. Third, the Secretary reserved the right to deal with such a case under his McCarran Rider authority, outside the Regulations, only in instances where, upon an employee’s appeal to the Loyalty Review Board from an unfavorable decision by the Secretary, the decision of that body was favorable to the employee.
Granted, as the respondents argue, that these Regulations gave the petitioner (a) no right of appeal to the Secretary from the Deputy Under Secretary’s favorable decision, and (b) no right of appeal at all from the action of the Loyalty Review Board, it does not follow, as the respondents then argue, that the Secretary was free to dismiss the petitioner. For, as has already been observed, the Regulations left the Secretary functus officio with respect to such cases once the Deputy Under Secretary had made a determination favorable to the employee. So here when the Deputy Under Secretary approved the Loyalty Security Board’s action of July 31, 1951, clearing the petitioner, under these Regulations the case against Service was closed. Hence Service’s subsequent discharge by the Secretary must be deemed to have been in contravention of these 1949 Regulations. The situation under the 1949 Regulations was thus closely analogous to that which obtained in Accardi v. Shaughnessy, supra. There, the Attorney General bound himself not to exercise his discretion until he had received an impartial recommendation from a subordinate board. Here, the Secretary bound himself not to act at all in cases such as this, except upon appeal by employees from determinations unfavorable to them. We see no relevant ground for distinction.
B. The 1951 Regulations.
A similar conclusion must be reached if the 1951 Regulations are deemed applicable to petitioner’s case. Section 393.1 of those Regulations provides:
“The standard for removal from employment in the Department of State under the authority referred to in section 391.3 shall be that on all the evidence reasonable grounds exist for belief that the removal of the officer or employee involved is necessary or advisable in the interest of national security. The decision shall be reached after consideration of the complete file, arguments, briefs, and testimony presented.” (Emphasis added.)
The “authority referred to in section 391.3,” as we have already noted, included the McCarran Rider. In light of the former Secretary’s affidavit there is no room for dispute that no attempt was made to comply with this section of the Regulations, as indeed the respondents’ brief virtually concedes.
The respondents argue that this provision was not violated in petitioner’s case because “the only decision to which Section 393.1 relates is that the removal of the officer or employee involved is ‘necessary or advisable in the interest of national security,’ ” the standard laid down in the Act of August 26, 1950, and that “[njothing in this section purports to prescribe the procedure to be followed in determining that removal is ‘necessary or advisable in the interests of the United States,’ ” the standard contained in the McCarran Rider. But since § 391.3, which is incorporated by reference into § 393.1, specifically subjected the exercise of the Secretary’s McCarran Rider authority, in such cases as this, to the operation of the 1951 Regulations, it seems clear that the necessary effect of § 393.1 was to subject the exercise of that authority to the substantive standards prescribed by that section, namely, those established by the Act of August 26, 1950, and also to the procedural requirements that such cases must be decided “on all the evidence” and “after consideration of the complete file, arguments, briefs, and testimony presented.” The essential meaning of the section, in other words, was that the Secretary’s decision was required to be on the merits. While it is of course true that under the McCarran Rider the Secretary was not obligated to impose upon himself these more rigorous substantive and procedural standards, neither was he prohibited from doing so, as we have already held, and having done so he could not, so long as the Regulations remained unchanged, proceed without regard to them.
It being clear that § 393.1 was not complied with by the Secretary in this instance, it follows that under the Accardi doctrine petitioner’s dismissal cannot stand, regardless of whether the 1951, rather than the 1949, Regulations are deemed applicable in his case.
For the foregoing reasons the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed, and the case remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Clark took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Act of June 15, 1917, c. 30, 40 Stat. 217, as amended.
12 Fed. Reg. 1935.
Hearings before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations on the Department of State Appropriation Bill for 1950, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. 298.
See Peters v. Hobby, 349 U, S. 331, 339-348, for a discussion of the then-existing “post-audit” procedure.
See pp. 382-386 and note 16, infra.
This action was based on “supplementary information... received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the nature of which does not appear in the record.
16 Fed. Reg. 3690.
The essence of the Loyalty Review Board's action, and its relation to the prior departmental proceedings with respect to Service, are summarized in the State Department’s press release of December 13, 1951, as follows:
“The Department of State announced today that the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission has advised the Department that this Board has found a reasonable doubt as to the loyalty of John Stewart Service, Foreign Service Officer.
“Today’s decision of the Loyalty Review Board is based on the evidence which was considered by the Department’s Board and found to be insufficient on which to base a finding of ‘reasonable doubt’ as to Mr. Service’s loyalty or security. Copies of the Opinions of both Boards are attached.
“The Department of State’s Loyalty Security Board, on July 31, 1951, had reaffirmed its earlier findings that Service was neither disloyal nor a security risk, and the case had been referred to the Loyalty Review Board for post-audit on September 4, 1951. The Loyalty Review Board assumed jurisdiction of Mr. Service’s case on October 9, 1951.
“The Chairman of the Loyalty Review Board in today’s letter to the Secretary (full text attached) noted:
“ ‘The Loyalty Review Board found no evidence of membership in the Communist Party or in any organization on the Attorney General’s list on the part of John Stewart Service. The Loyalty Review Board did find that there is a reasonable doubt as to the loyalty of the employee, John Stewart Service, to the Government of the United States, based on the intentional and unauthorized disclosure of documents and information of a confidential and non-public character within the meaning of subparagraph d of paragraph 2 of Part V, “Standards,” of Executive Order No. 9835, as amended.’
“The Opinion of the Loyalty Review Board stressed the points made above by the Chairman — that is, it stated that the Board was not required to find and did not find Mr. Service guilty of disloyalty, but it did find that his intentional and unauthorized disclosure of confidential documents raised reasonable doubt as to his loyalty. The State Department Board while censoring [sic] Mr. Service for indiscretions, believed that the experience Mr. Service had been through as a result of his indiscretions in 1945 had served to make him far more than normally security conscious. It found also that no reasonable doubt existed as to his loyalty to the Government of the United States. On this point the State Department Board was reversed.
“The Chairman of the Loyalty Review Board has requested the Secretary of State to advise the Board of the effective date of the separation of Mr. Service. This request stems from the provisions of Executive Orders 9835 and 10241 — which established the President’s Loyalty Program — and the Regulations promulgated thereon. These Regulations are binding on the Department of State.
“The Department has advised the Chairman of the Loyalty Review Board that Mr. Service’s employment has been terminated.”
65 Stat. 581.
60 Stat. 458.
See 61 Stat. 288, 62 Stat. 315, 63 Stat. 456, 64 Stat. 768, 65 Stat. 581, 66 Stat. 555. All of these provisions are referred to in this opinion as “the McCarran Rider.”
The District Court’s opinion is unreported. Actually, the Secretary could be considered to have power to discharge petitioner as he did only by virtue of the McCarran Rider. Petitioner was an officer in the Foreign Service of the United States, and as such was entitled to the protection of the Foreign Service Act of 1946, as amended. 22 U. S. C. § 801 et seq. That statute authorizes the Secretary of State to separate officers from the Foreign Service “for unsatisfactory performance of duty,” id,., § 1007, or for “misconduct or malfeasance,” id., § 1008. However, under both sections, an officer may not be separated without a hearing before the Board of the Foreign Service established by § 211 of the Act, 22 U. S. C. § 826, and his unsatisfactory performance of duty or misconduct must be established at that hearing. No such hearing was ever afforded petitioner. Executive Order No. 9835 did not vest any additional authority in the heads of administrative agencies to discharge employees. It merely established new standards and procedures for effecting discharges under whatever independent legal authority existed for those discharges. Cf. Cole v. Young, 351 U. S. 536, 543-544. The only statutory provision which could be deemed to authorize the Secretary to dismiss petitioner without observance of the provisions of the Foreign Service Act was therefore the Mc-Carran Rider. The latter provision thus was an indispensable supplement to the Department’s authority if it was to proceed against petitioner under the Loyalty-S
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 O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention makes air carriers liable for injuries sustained by a passenger “if the accident which caused the damage so sustained took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.” We granted certiorari, 469 U. S. 815 (1984), to resolve a conflict among the Courts of Appeals as to the proper definition of the word “accident” as used in this international air carriage treaty.
rH
On November 16, 1980, respondent Valerie Saks boarded an Air France jetliner in Paris for a 12-hour flight to Los Angeles. The flight went smoothly in all respects until, as the aircraft descended to Los Angeles, Saks felt severe pressure and pain in her left ear. The pain continued after the plane landed, but Saks disembarked without informing any Air France crew member or employee of her ailment. Five days later, Saks consulted a doctor who concluded that she had become permanently deaf in her left ear.
Saks filed suit against Air France in California state court, alleging that her hearing loss was caused by negligent maintenance and operation of the jetliner’s pressurization system. App. 2. The case was removed to the United States District Court for the Central District of California. After extensive discovery, Air France moved for summary judgment on the ground that respondent could not prove that her injury was caused by an “accident” within the meaning of the Warsaw Convention. The term “accident,” according to Air France, means an “abnormal, unusual or unexpected occurrence aboard the aircraft.” Id., at 9. All the available evidence, including the postflight reports, pilot’s affidavit, and passenger testimony, indicated that the aircraft’s pressurization system had operated in the usual manner. Accordingly, the airline contended that the suit should be dismissed because the only alleged cause of respondent’s injury — normal operation of a pressurization system — could not qualify as an “accident.” In her opposition to the summary judgment motion, Saks acknowledged that “[t]he sole question of law presented ... by the parties is whether a loss of hearing proximately caused by normal operation of the aircraft’s pressurization system is an ‘accident’ within the meaning of Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention . . . .” Id., at 30. She argued that “accident” should be defined as a “hazard of air travel,” and that her injury had indeed been caused by such a hazard.
Relying on precedent which defines the term “accident” in Article 17 as an “unusual or unexpected” happening, see DeMarines v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, 580 F. 2d 1193, 1196 (CA3 1978), the District Court granted summary judgment to Air France. See also Warshaw v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 442 F. Supp. 400, 412-413 (ED Pa. 1977) (normal cabin pressure changes are not “accidents” within the meaning of Article 17). A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 724 F. 2d 1383 (1984). The appellate court reviewed the history of the Warsaw Convention and its modification by the 1966 Montreal Agreement, a private agreement among airlines that has been approved by the United States Government. Agreement Relating to Liability Limitations of the Warsaw Convention and the Hague Protocol, Agreement CAB 18900, 31 Fed. Reg. 7302 (1966), note following 49 U. S. C. App. § 1502. The court concluded that the language, history, and policy of the Warsaw Convention and the Montreal Agreement impose absolute liability on airlines for injuries proximately caused by the risks inherent in air travel. The court found a definition of “accident” consistent with this history and policy in Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Dec. 7, 1944, 61 Stat. 1180, T. I. A. S. No. 1591, 15 U. N. T. S. 295; conformed to in 49 CFR §830.2 (1984): “an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked . . . .” 724 F. 2d, at 1385. Normal cabin pressure changes qualify as an “accident” under this definition. A dissent agreed with the District Court that “accident” should be defined as an unusual or unexpected occurrence. Id., at 1388 (Wallace, J.). We disagree with the definition of “accident” adopted by the Court of Appeals, and we reverse.
Air France is liable to a passenger under the terms of the Warsaw Convention only if the passenger proves that an “accident” was the cause of her injury. MacDonald v. Air Canada, 439 F. 2d 1402 (CA1 1971); Mathias v. Pan Am World Airways, Inc., 53 F. R. D. 447 (WD Pa. 1971). See 1 C. Shawcross & K. Beaumont, Air Law ¶ VII(147) (4th ed. 1984); D. Goedhuis, National Airlegislations and the Warsaw Convention 199 (1937). The narrow issue presented is whether respondent can meet this burden by showing that her injury was caused by the normal operation of the aircraft’s pressurization system. The proper answer turns on interpretation of a clause in an international treaty to which the United States is a party. “[Tjreaties are construed more liberally than private agreements, and to ascertain their meaning we may look beyond the written words to the history of the treaty, the negotiations, and the practical construction adopted by the parties.” Choctaw Nation of Indians v. United States, 318 U. S. 423, 431-432 (1943). The analysis must begin, however, with the text of the treaty and the context in which the written words are used. See Maximov v. United States, 373 U. S. 49, 53-54 (1963).
A
Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention establishes the liability of international air carriers for harm to passengers. Article 18 contains parallel provisions regarding liability for damage to baggage. The governing text of the Convention is in the French language, and we accordingly set forth the French text of the relevant part of Articles 17 and 18 in the margin. The official American translation of this portion of the text, which was before the Senate when it ratified the Convention in 1934, reads as follows: .
“Article 17
“The carrier shall be liable for damage sustained in the event of the death or wounding of a passenger or any other bodily injury suffered by a passenger, if the accident which caused the damage so sustained took place on board the aircraft or in the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking.
“Article 18
“(1) The carrier shall be liable for damage sustained in the event of the destruction or loss of, or of damage to, any checked baggage or any goods, if the occurrence which caused the damage so sustained took place during the transportation by air.” 49 Stat. 3018-3019.
Two significant features of these provisions stand out in both the French and the English texts. First, Article 17 imposes liability for injuries to passengers caused by an “accident,” whereas Article 18 imposes liability for destruction or loss of baggage caused by an “occurrence.” This difference in the parallel language of Articles 17 and 18 implies that the drafters of the Convention understood the word “accident” to mean something different than the word “occurrence,” for they otherwise logically would have used the same word in each article. See Goedhuis, supra, at 200-201; M. Milde, The Problems of Liabilities in International Carriage by Air 62 (Caroline Univ. 1963). The language of the Convention accordingly renders suspect the opinion of the Court of Appeals that “accident” means “occurrence.”
Second, the text of Article 17 refers to an accident which caused the passenger’s injury, and not to an accident which is the passenger’s injury. In light of the many senses in which the word “accident” can be used, this distinction is significant. As Lord Lindley observed in 1903:
“The word ‘accident’ is not a technical legal term with a clearly defined meaning. Speaking generally, but with reference to legal liabilities, an accident means any unintended and unexpected occurrence which produces hurt or loss. But it is often used to denote any unintended and unexpected loss or hurt apart from its cause; and if the cause is not known the loss or hurt itself would certainly be called an accident. The word ‘accident’ is also often used to denote both the cause and the effect, no attempt being made to discriminate between them.” Fenton v. J. Thorley & Co., [1903] A. C. 443, 453.
In Article 17, the drafters of the Warsaw Convention apparently did make an attempt to discriminate between “the cause and the effect”; they specified that air carriers would be liable if an accident caused the passenger’s injury. The text of the Convention thus implies that, however we define “accident,” it is the cause of the injury that must satisfy the definition rather than the occurrence of the injury alone. American jurisprudence has long recognized this distinction between an accident that is the cause of an injury and an injury that is itself an accident. See Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Ins. Co., 291 U. S. 491 (1934).
While the text of the Convention gives these two clues to the meaning of “accident,” it does not define the term. Nor is the context in which the term is used illuminating. See Note, Warsaw Convention — Air Carrier Liability for Passenger Injuries Sustained Within a Terminal, 45 Ford. L. Rev. 369, 388 (1976) (“The language of Article 17 is stark and undefined”). To determine the meaning of the term “accident” in Article 17 we must consider its French legal meaning. See Reed v. Wiser, 555 F. 2d 1079 (CA2), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 922 (1977); Block v. Compagnie Nationale Air France, 386 F. 2d 323 (CA5 1967), cert. denied, 392 U. S. 905 (1968). This is true not because “we are forever chained to French law” by the Convention, see Rosman v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 34 N. Y. 2d 385, 394, 314 N. E. 2d 848, 853 (1974), but because it is our responsibility to give the specific words of the treaty a meaning consistent with the shared expectations of the contracting parties. Reed, supra, at 1090; Day v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 528 F. 2d 31 (CA2 1975), cert, denied, 429 U. S. 890 (1976). We look to the French legal meaning for guidance as to these expectations because the Warsaw Convention was drafted in French by continental jurists. See Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, The United States and the Warsaw Convention, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 497, 498-500 (1967).
A survey of French cases and dictionaries indicates that the French legal meaning of the term “accident” differs little from the meaning of the term in Great Britain, Germany, or the United States. Thus, while the word “accident” is often used to refer to the event of a person’s injury, it is also sometimes used to describe a cause of injury, and when the word is used in this latter sense, it is usually defined as a fortuitous, unexpected, unusual, or unintended event. See 1 Grand Larousse de La Langue Franchise 29 (1971) (defining “accident” as “Evénement fortuit et fácheux, causant des dommages corporels ou materiels”); Air France v. Haddad, Judgment of June 19,1979, Cour d’appel de Paris, Premiere Chambre Civile, 1979 Revue Frangaise de Droit Aérien 327, 328, appeal rejected, Judgment of February 16, 1982, Cour de Cassation, 1982 Bull. Civ. I 63. This parallels British and American jurisprudence. See Fenton v. J. Thorley & Co., supra; Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Ins. Co., supra; Koehring Co. v. American Automobile Ins. Co., 353 F. 2d 993 (CA7 1965). The text of the Convention consequently suggests that the passenger’s injury must be caused by an unexpected or unusual event.
B
This interpretation of Article 17 is consistent with the negotiating history of the Convention, the conduct of the parties to the Convention, and the weight of precedent in foreign and American courts. In interpreting a treaty it is proper, of course, to refer to the records of its drafting and negotiation. Choctaw Nation of Indians v. United States, 318 U. S., at 431. In part because the “travaux preparatoires” of the Warsaw Convention are published and generally available to litigants, courts frequently refer to these materials to resolve ambiguities in the text. See Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Franklin Mint Corp., 466 U. S. 243, 259 (1984); Maugnie v. Companie Nationale Air France, 549 F. 2d 1256 (CA9 1977); Fothergill v. Monarch Airlines, Ltd., [1980] 2 All E. R. 696 (H. L.).
The treaty that became the Warsaw Convention was first drafted at an international conference in Paris in 1925. The protocol resulting from the Paris Conference contained an article specifying: “The carrier is liable for accidents, losses, breakdowns, and delays. It is not liable if it can prove that it has taken reasonable measures designed to pre-empt damage . . . .” The protocol drafted at Paris was revised several times by a committee of experts on air law, and then submitted to a second international conference that convened in Warsaw in 1929. The draft submitted to the conference stated:
“The carrier shall be liable for damage sustained during carriage:
“(a) in the case of death, wounding, or any other bodily injury suffered by a traveler;
“(b) in the case of destruction, loss, or damage to goods or baggage;
“(c) in the case of delay suffered by a traveler, goods, or baggage.” International Conference on Air Law Affecting Air Questions, Minutes, Second International Conference on Private Aeronautical Law, October 4-12, 1929, Warsaw 264-265 (R. Horner & D. Legrez trans. 1975).
Article 22 of this draft, like the original Paris draft, permitted the carrier to avoid liability by proving it had taken reasonable measures to avoid the damage. Id., at 265. None of the early drafts required that an accident cause the passenger’s injury.
At Warsaw, delegates from several nations objected to the application of identical liability rules to both passenger injuries and damage to baggage, and the German delegation proposed separate liability rules for passengers and baggage. Id., at 36. The need for separate rules arose primarily because delegates thought that liability for baggage should commence upon delivery to the carrier, whereas liability for passengers should commence when the passengers later embark upon the aircraft. Id., at 72-74 (statements of French, Swiss, and Italian delegates). The Reporter on the Preliminary Draft of the Convention argued it would be too difficult to draft language specifying this distinction, and that such a distinction would be unnecessary because “Article 22 establishes a very mitigated system of liability for the carrier, and from the moment that the carrier has taken the reasonable measures, he does not answer for the risks, nor for the accidents occur[r]ing to people by the fault of third parties, nor for accidents occur[r]ing for any other cause.” Id., at 77-78 (statement of Reporter De Vos). The delegates were unpersuaded, and a majority voted to have a drafting committee rework the liability provisions for passengers and baggage. Id., at 83.
A few days later, the drafting committee proposed the liability provisions that became Articles 17 and 18 of the Convention. Article 20(1) of the final draft contains the “necessary measures” language which the Reporter believed would shield the carrier from liability for “the accidents occur[r]ing to people by the fault of third parties” and for “accidents occur[r]ing for any other cause.” Nevertheless, the redrafted Article 17 also required as a prerequisite to liability that an accident cause the passenger’s injury, whereas the redrafted Article 18 required only that an occurrence cause the damage to baggage. Although Article 17 and Article 18 as redrafted were approved with little discussion, the President of the drafting committee observed that “given that there are entirely different liability cases: death or wounding, disappear-anee of goods, delay, we have deemed that it would be better to begin by setting out the causes of liability for persons, then for goods and baggage, and finally liability in the case of delay.” Id., at 205 (statement of Delegate Giannini) (emphasis added). This comment at least implies that the addition of language of causation to Articles 17 and 18 had a broader purpose than specification of the time at which liability commenced. It further suggests that the causes of liability for persons were intended to be different from the causes of liability for baggage. The records of the negotiation of the Convention accordingly support what is evident from its text: A passenger’s injury must be caused by an accident, and an accident must mean something different than an “occurrence” on the plane. Like the text of the Convention, however, the records of its negotiation offer no precise definition of “accident.”
Reference to the conduct of the parties to the Convention and the subsequent interpretations of the signatories helps clarify the meaning of the term. At a Guatemala City International Conference on Air Law in 1971, representatives of many of the Warsaw signatories approved an amendment to Article 17 which would impose liability on the carrier for an “event which caused the death or injury” rather than for an “accident which caused” the passenger’s injury, but would exempt the carrier from liability if the death or injury resulted “solely from the state of health of the passenger.” International Civil Aviation Organization, 2 Documents of the International Conference on Air Law, Guatemala City, ICAO Doc. 9040-LC/167-2, p. 189 (1972). The Guatemala City Protocol of 1971 and the Montreal Protocols Nos. 3 and 4 of 1975 include this amendment, see S. Exec. Rep. No. 98-1 (1983), but have yet to be ratified by the Senate, and therefore do .not govern the disposition of this case. The statements of the delegates at Guatemala City indicate that they viewed the switch from “accident” to “event” as expanding the scope of carrier liability to passengers. The Swedish Delegate, for example, in referring to the choice between the words “accident” and “event,” emphasized that the word “accident” is too narrow because a carrier might be found liable for “other acts which could not be considered as accidents.” See International Civil Aviation Organization, 1 Minutes of the International Conference on Air Law, ICAO Doc. 9040-LC/167-1, p. 34 (1972). See also Mankiewicz, Warsaw Convention: The 1971 Protocol of Guatemala City, 20 Am. J. Comp. L. 335, 337 (1972) (noting that changes in Article 17 were intended to establish “strict liability”).
In determining precisely what causes can be considered accidents, we “find the opinions of our sister signatories to be entitled to considerable weight.” Benjamins v. British European Airways, 572 F. 2d 913, 919 (CA2 1978), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 1114 (1979). While few decisions are precisely on point, we note that, in Air France v. Haddad, Judgment of June 19, 1979, Cour d’appel de Paris, Premiere Chambre Civile, 1979 Revue Franchise de Droit Aérien, at 328, a French court observed that the term “accident” in Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention embraces causes of injuries that are fortuitous or unpredictable. European legal scholars have generally construed the word “accident” in Article 17 to require that the passenger’s injury be caused by a sudden or unexpected event other than the normal operation of the plane. See, e. g., O. Riese & J. Lacour, Précis de Droit Aérien 264 (1951) (noting that Swiss and German law require that the damage be caused by an accident, and arguing that an accident should be construed as an event which is sudden and independent of the will of the carrier); 1 C. Shawcross & K. Beaumont, Air Law ¶ VII(148) (4th ed. 1984) (noting that the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s definition of accident accords with some English definitions and “might well commend itself to an English court”). These observations are in accord with American decisions which, while interpreting the term “accident” broadly, Maugnie v. Compagnie Nationale Air France, 549 F. 2d, at 1259, nevertheless refuse to extend the term to cover routine travel procedures that produce an injury due to the peculiar internal condition of a passenger. See, e. g., Abramson v. Japan Airlines Co., 739 F. 2d 130 (CA3 1984) (sitting in airline seat during normal flight which aggravated hernia not an “accident”), cert. pending, No. 84-939; MacDonald v. Air Canada, 439 F. 2d 1402 (CA5 1971) (fainting while waiting in the terminal for one’s baggage not shown to be caused by an “accident”); Scherer v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 54 App. Div. 2d 636, 387 N. Y. S. 2d 580 (1976) (sitting in airline seat during normal flight which aggravated thrombophlebitis not an “accident”).
Ill
We conclude that liability under Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention arises only if a passenger’s injury is caused by an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger. This definition should be flexibly applied after assessment of all the circumstances surrounding a passenger’s injuries. Maugnie, supra, at 1262. For example, lower courts in this country have interpreted Article 17 broadly enough to encompass torts committed by terrorists or fellow passengers. See Evangelinos v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 550 F. 2d 152 (CA3 1977) (en banc) (terrorist attack); Day v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 528 F. 2d 31 (CA2 1975) (en banc) (same), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 890 (1976); Krystal v. British Overseas Airways Corp., 403 F. Supp. 1322 (CD Cal. 1975) (hijacking); Oliver v. Scandinavian Airlines System, 17 CCH Av. Cas. 18,283 (Md. 1983) (drunken passenger falls and injures fellow passenger). In cases where there is contradictory evidence, it is for the trier of fact to decide whether an “accident” as here defined caused the passenger’s injury. See DeMarines v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, 580 F. 2d 1193 (CA3 1978) (contradictory evidence on whether pressurization was normal). See also Weintraub v. Capitol International Airways, Inc., 16 CCH Av. Cas. 18,058 (N. Y. Sup. Ct., 1st Dept., 1981) (plaintiff’s testimony that “sudden dive” led to pressure change causing hearing loss indicates injury was caused by an “accident”). But when the injury indisputably results from the passenger’s own internal reaction to the usual, normal, and expected operation of the aircraft, it has not been caused by an accident, and Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention cannot apply. The judgment of the Court of Appeals in this case must accordingly be reversed.
We recognize that any standard requiring courts to distinguish causes that are “accidents” from causes that are “occurrences” requires drawing a line, and we realize that “reasonable [people] may differ widely as to the place where the line should fall.” Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, 270 U. S. 230, 241 (1926) (Holmes, J., dissenting). We draw this line today only because the language of Articles 17 and 18 requires it, and not because of any desire to plunge into the “Serbon-ian bog” that accompanies attempts to distinguish between causes that are accidents and injuries that are accidents. See Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Ins. Co., 291 U. S., at 499 (Cardozo, J., dissenting). Any injury is the product of a chain of causes, and we require only that the passenger be able to prove that some link in the chain was an unusual or unexpected event external to the passenger. Until Article 17 of the Warsaw Convention is changed by the signatories, it cannot be stretched to impose carrier liability for injuries that are not caused by accidents. It remains “[o]ur duty. . . to enforce the . . . treaties of the United States, whatever they might be, and . . . the Warsaw Convention remains the supreme law of the land.” Reed, 555 F. 2d, at 1093.
Our duty to enforce the “accident” requirement of Article 17 cannot be circumvented by reference to the Montreal Agreement of 1966. It is true that in most American cases the Montreal Agreement expands carrier liability by requiring airlines to waive their right under Article 20(1) of the Warsaw Convention to defend claims on the grounds that they took all necessary measures to avoid the passenger’s injury or that it was impossible to take such measures. Because these “due care” defenses are waived by the Montreal Agreement, the Court of Appeals and some commentators have characterized the Agreement as imposing “absolute” liability on air carriers. See Lowenfeld & Mendelsohn, 80 Harv. L. Rev., at 599. As this case demonstrates, the characterization is not entirely accurate. It is true that one purpose of the Montreal Agreement was to speed settlement and facilitate passenger recovery, but the parties to the Montreal Agreement promoted that purpose by specific provision for waiver of the Article 20(1) defenses. They did not waive other provisions in the Convention that operate to qualify liability, such as the contributory negligence defense of Article 21 or the “accident” requirement of Article 17. See War-shaw, 442 F. Supp., at 408. Under the Warsaw Convention as modified by the Montreal Agreement, liability can accordingly be viewed as “absolute” only in the sense that an airline cannot defend a claim on the ground that it took all necessary measures to avoid the injury. The “accident” requirement of Article 17 is distinct from the defenses in Article 20(1), both because it is located in a separate article and because it involves an inquiry into-the nature of the event which caused the injury rather than the care taken by the airline to avert the injury. While these inquiries may on occasion be similar, we decline to employ that similarity to repeal a treaty provision that the Montreal Agreement on its face left unaltered.
Nor can we escape our duty to enforce Article 17 by reference to the equation of “accident” with “occurrence” in Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation. The definition in Annex 13 and the corresponding Convention expressly apply to aircraft accident investigations, and not to principles of liability to passengers under the Warsaw Convention. See B. Cheng, The Law of International Air Transport 106-165 (1962).
Finally, respondent suggests an independent ground supporting the Court of Appeals’ reversal of the summary judgment against her. She argues that her original complaint alleged a state cause of action for negligence independent of the liability provisions of the Warsaw Convention, and that her state negligence action can go forward if the Warsaw liability rules do not apply. Expressing no view on the merits of this contention, we note that it is unclear from the record whether the issue was raised in the Court of Appeals. We leave the disposition of this claim to the Court of Appeals in the first instance. See Hoover v. Ronwin, 466 U. S. 558, 574, n. 25 (1984).
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.
Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air, Oct. 12, 1929, 49 Stat. 3000, T. S. No. 876 (1934), note following 49 U. S. C. App. § 1502.
“Article 17
“Le transporteur est responsable du dommage survenu en cas de mort, de blessure ou de toute autre lésion corporelle subie par un voyageur lorsque l’accident qui a causé le dommage s’est produit á bord de l’aéronef ou au cours de toutes opérations d’embarquement et de débarquement.
“Article 18
“(1) Le transporteur est responsable du dommage survenu en eas destruction, perte ou avarie de bagages enregistrés ou de marchandises lorsque l’événement qui a causé le dommage s’est produit pendant le transport aérien.” 49 Stat. 3005 (emphasis added).
Article 36 of the Convention recites that it is drawn in French. Id., at 3008.
See, e. g., M. LeGrand, Dictionnaire Usuel de Droit 8 (1931) (defining “accident” as “Evénement fortuit et malheureux qui ouvre á la victime, soit par suite de l’imprévoyance ou de la négligence d’une personne, soit en vertu du ‘risque professionel,’ droit á une réparation pécuniaire”).
“Le transporteur est responsable des accidents, pertes, avaries et retards. II n’est pas responsable s’il prouve avoir pris les mesures raisonnables pour éviter le dommage . . . .” [1925 Paris] Conférence Internationale de Droit Privé Aérien 87 (1936).
See Report of the Second Session, International Technical Committee of Legal Experts on Air Questions (1927); Report of the Third Session, International Technical Committee of Legal Experts on Air Questions (1928).
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 Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue raised by this appeal is the constitutionality of the occupational tax provisions of the Revenue Act of 1951, which levy a tax on persons engaged in the business of accepting wagers, and require such persons to register with the Collector of Internal Revenue. The unconstitutionality of the tax is asserted on two grounds. First, it is said that Congress, under the pretense of exercising its power to tax has attempted to penalize illegal intrastate gambling through the regulatory features of the Act (26 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 3291) and has thus infringed the police power which is reserved to the states. Secondly, it is urged that the registration provisions of the tax violate the privilege against self-incrimination and are arbitrary and vague, contrary to the guarantees of the Fifth Amendment.
The case comes here on appeal, in accordance with 18 U. S. C. § 3731, from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where an information was filed against appellee alleging that he was in the business of accepting wagers and that he willfully failed to register for and pay the occupational tax in question. Appellee moved to dismiss on the ground that the sections upon which the information was based were unconstitutional. The District Court sustained the motion on the authority of our opinion in United States v. Constantine, 296 U. S. 287. The court reasoned that while “the subject matter of this legislation so far as revenue purposes is concerned is within the scope of Federal authorities,” the tax was unconstitutional in that the information called for by the registration provisions was “peculiarly applicable to the applicant from the standpoint of law enforcement and vice control,” and therefore the whole of the legislation was an infringement by the Federal Government on the police power reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment. United States v. Kahriger, 105 F. Supp. 322, 323.
The result below is at odds with the position of the seven other district courts which have considered the matter, and, in our opinion, is erroneous.
In the term following the Constantine opinion, this Court pointed out in Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U. S. 506, at 513 (a case involving a tax on a “limited class” of objectionable firearms alleged to be prohibitory in effect and “to disclose unmistakably the legislative purpose to regulate rather than to tax”), that the subject of the tax in Constantine was “described or treated as criminal by the taxing statute.” The tax in the Constantine case was a special additional excise tax of $1,000, placed only on persons who carried on a liquor business in violation of state law. The wagering tax with which we are here concerned applies to all persons engaged in the business of receiving wagers, regardless of whether such activity violates state law.
The substance of respondent’s position with respect to the Tenth Amendment is that Congress has chosen to tax a specified business which is not within its power to regulate. The precedents are many upholding taxes similar to this wagering tax as a proper exercise of the federal taxing power. In the License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 462, the controversy arose out of indictments for selling lottery tickets and retailing liquor in various states without having first obtained and paid for a license under the Internal Revenue Act of Congress. The objecting taxpayers urged that Congress could not constitutionally tax or regulate activities carried on within a state. P. 470. The Court pointed out that Congress had “no power of regulation nor any direct control” (5 Wall., at 470, 471) over the business there involved. The Court said that, if the licenses were to be regarded as by themselves giving authority to carry on the licensed business, it might be impossible to reconcile the granting of them with the Constitution. P. 471.
“But it is not necessary to regard these laws as giving such authority. So far as they relate to trade within State limits, they give none, and can give none. They simply express the purpose of the government not to interfere by penal proceedings with the trade nominally licensed, if the required taxes are paid. The power to tax is not questioned, nor the power to impose penalties for non-payment of taxes. The granting of a license, therefore, must be regarded as nothing more than a mere form of imposing a tax, and of implying nothing except that the licensee shall be subject to no penalites under national law, if he pays it.” Id., at 471.
Appellee would have us say that, because there is legislative history indicating a congressional motive to suppress wagering, this tax is not a proper exercise of such taxing power. In the License Tax Cases, supra, it was admitted that the federal license “discouraged” the activities. The intent to curtail and hinder, as well as tax, was also manifest in the following cases, and in each of them the tax was upheld: Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533 (tax on paper money issued by state banks); McCray v. United States, 195 U. S. 27, 59 (tax on colored oleomargarine); United States v. Doremus, 249 U. S. 86, and Nigro v. United States, 276 U. S. 332 (tax on narcotics); Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U. S. 506 (tax on firearms); United States v. Sanchez, 340 U. S. 42 (tax on marihuana).
It is conceded that a federal excise tax does not cease to be valid merely because it discourages or deters the activities taxed. Nor is the tax invalid because the revenue obtained is negligible. Appellee, however, argues that the sole purpose of the statute is to penalize only illegal gambling in the states through the guise of a tax measure. As with the above excise taxes which we have held to be valid, the instant tax has a regulatory effect. But regardless of its regulatory effect, the wagering tax produces revenue. As such it surpasses both the narcotics and firearms taxes which we have found valid.
It is axiomatic that the power of Congress to tax is extensive and sometimes falls with crushing effect on businesses deemed unessential or inimical to the public welfare, or where, as in dealings with narcotics, the collection of the tax also is difficult. As is well known, the constitutional restraints on taxing are few. “Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity.” License Tax Cases, supra, at 471. The remedy for excessive taxation is in the hands of Congress, not the courts. Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533, 548. Speaking of the creation of the Bank of the United States, as an instrument for carrying out federal fiscal policies, this Court said in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 423:
“Should Congress, in the execution of its powers, adopt measures which are prohibited by the constitution ; or should Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government; it would become the painful duty of this tribunal, should a case requiring such a decision come before it, to say that such an act was not the law of the land. But where the law is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of the objects entrusted to the government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity, would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department, and to tread on legislative ground. This court disclaims all pretensions to such a power.”
The difficulty of saying when the power to lay uniform taxes is curtailed, because its use brings a result beyond the direct legislative power of Congress, has given rise to diverse decisions. In that area of abstract ideas, a final definition of the line between state and federal power has baffled judges and legislators.
While the Court has never questioned the above-quoted statement of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the McCulloch case, the application of the rule has brought varying holdings on constitutionality. Where federal legislation has rested on other congressional powers, such as the Necessary and Proper Clause or the Commerce Clause, this Court has generally sustained the statutes, despite their effect on matters ordinarily considered state concern. When federal power to regulate is found, its exercise is a matter for Congress. Where Congress has employed the taxing clause a greater variation in the decisions has resulted. The division in this Court has been more acute. Without any specific differentiation between the power to tax and other federal powers, the indirect results from the exercise of the power to tax have raised more doubts. This is strikingly illustrated by the shifting course of adjudication in taxation of the handling of narcotics. The tax ground in the Veazie Bank case, supra, recognized that strictly state governmental activities, such as the right to pass laws, were beyond the federal taxing power. That case allowed a tax, however, that obliterated from circulation all state bank notes. A reason was that “the judicial cannot prescribe to the legislative departments of the government limitations upon the exercise of its acknowledged powers.” Id., at 548. The tax cases cited above in the third preceding paragraph followed that theory. It is hard to understand why the power to tax should raise more doubts because of indirect effects than other federal powers.
Penalty provisions in tax statutes added for breach of a regulation concerning activities in themselves subject only to state regulation have caused this Court to declare the enactments invalid. Unless there are provisions extraneous to any tax need, courts are without authority to limit the exercise of the taxing power. All the provisions of this excise are adapted to the collection of a valid tax.
Nor do we find the registration requirements of the wagering tax offensive. All that is required is the filing of names, addresses, and places of business. This is quite general in tax returns. Such data are directly and intimately related to the collection of the tax and are "obviously supportable as in aid of a revenue purpose.” Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U. S. 506, at 513. The registration provisions make the tax simpler to collect.
Appellee’s second assertion is that the wagering tax is unconstitutional because it is a denial of the privilege against self-incrimination as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Since appellee failed to register for the wagering tax, it is difficult to see how he can now claim the privilege even assuming that the disclosure of violations of law is called for. In United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259, defendant was convicted of refusing to file an income tax return. It was assumed that his income “was derived from business in violation of the National Prohibition Act.” Id., at 263. “As the defendant’s income was taxed, the statute of course required a return. See United States v. Sischo, 262 U. S. 165. In the decision that this was contrary to the Constitution we are of opinion that the protection of the Fifth Amendment was pressed too far. If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all.” 274 U. S., at 263. '
Assuming that respondent can raise the self-incrimination issue, that privilege has relation only to past acts, not to future acts that may or may not be committed. 8 Wigmore (3d ed., 1940) § 2259c. If respondent wishes to take wagers subject to excise taxes under § 3285, supra, he must pay an occupational tax and register. Under the registration provisions of the wagering tax, appellee is not compelled to confess to acts already committed, he is merely informed by the statute that in order to engage in the business of wagering in the future he must fulfill certain conditions.
Finally, we consider respondent’s contention that the order of dismissal was correct because a conviction under the sections in question would violate the Due Process Clause because the classification is arbitrary and the statutory definitions are vague. The applicable definitions are 26 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 3285 (b), (d) and (e). The arbitrariness is said to arise from discrimination because some wagering activities are excluded. The Constitution does not require that a tax statute cover all phases of a taxed or licensed business. Respondent predicates vagueness of the statute upon the use, in defining the subject of the tax, of the description “engaged in the business” of wagering and “usually” in § 3285 (b)(2). We have no doubt the definitions make clear the activities covered and excluded.
Reversed.
26 TJ.S.C. (Supp. V) § 3285:
“(a) Wagers.
“There shall be imposed on wagers, as defined in subsection (b), an excise tax equal to 10 per centum of the amount thereof.
“ (d) Persons liable for tax.
“Each person who is engaged in the business of accepting wagers shall be liable for and shall pay the tax under this subchapter on all wagers placed with him. Each person who conducts any wagering pool or lottery shall be liable for and shall pay the tax under this subchapter on all wagers placed in such pool or lottery.
“(e) Exclusions from tax.
“No tax shall be imposed by this subchapter (1) on any wager placed with, or on any wager placed in a wagering pool conducted by, a parimutuel wagering enterprise licensed under State law, and. (2) on any wager placed in a coin-operated device with respect to which an occupational tax is imposed by section 3267.”
26 U.S.C. (Supp. V) § 3290:
“A special tax of $50 per year shall be paid by each person who is liable for tax under subchapter A or who is engaged in receiving wagers for or on behalf of any person so liable.”
26 U.S. C. (Supp. V) § 3291:
“ (a) Each person required to pay a special tax under this subchapter shall register with the collector of the district—
“ (1) his name and place of residence;
“(2) if he is liable for tax under subchapter A, each place of business where the activity which makes him so liable is carried on, and the name and place of residence of each person who is engaged in receiving wagers for him or on his behalf; and
"(3) if he is engaged in receiving wagers for or on behalf of any person liable for tax under subchapter A, the name and place of residence of each such person.”
26 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 3294:
“(a) Failure to pay tax.
“Any person who does any act which makes him liable for special tax under this subchapter, without having paid such tax, shall, besides being liable to the payment of the tax, be fined not less than $1,000 and not more than $5,000.
“(c) Willful violations.
“The penalties prescribed by section 2707 with respect to the tax imposed by section 2700 shall apply with respect to the tax imposed by this subchapter.”
United States v. Smith, 106 F. Supp. 9 (D. C. S. D. Cal.); United States v. Nadler, 105 F. Supp. 918 (D. C. N. D. Cal.); United States v. Forrester, 105 F. Supp. 136 (D. C. N. D. Ga.); United States v. Robinson, 107 F. Supp. 38 (D. C. E. D. Mich.); United States v. Arnold, Jordan, and Wingate, No. 478 (D. C. E. D. Va.), September 18, 1952; United States v. Penn, No. 2021 (D. C. M. D. N. C.), May 1952; Combs v. Snyder, 101 F. Supp. 531 (D. D. C.), affirmed, 342 U. S. 939.
There are suggestions in the debates that Congress sought to hinder, if not prevent, the type of gambling taxed. See 97 Cong. Rec. 6892:
“Mr. HOFFMAN of Michigan. Then I will renew my observation that it might if properly construed be considered an additional penalty on the illegal activities.
“Mr. COOPER. Certainly, and we might indulge the hope that the imposition of this type of tax would eliminate that kind of activity.” 97 Cong. Rec. 12236: “If the local official does not want to enforce the law and no one catches him winking at the law, he may keep on winking at it, but when the Federal Government identifies a law violator, and the local newspaper gets hold of it, and the local church organizations get hold of it, and the people who do want the law enforced get hold of it, they say, ‘Mr. Sheriff, what about it? We understand that there is a place down here licensed to sell liquor.’ He says, ‘Is that so ? I will put him out of business.’ ”
One of the indicia which appellee offers to support his contention that the wagering tax is not a proper revenue measure is that the tax amount collected under it was $4,371,869, as compared with an expected amount of $400,000,000 a year. The figure of $4,371,869, however, is relatively large when it is compared with the $3,501 collected under the tax on adulterated and process or renovated butter and filled cheese, the $914,910 collected under the tax on narcotics, including marihuana and special taxes, and the $28,911 collected under the tax on firearms, transfer and occupational taxes. (Summary of Internal Revenue Collections, released by Bureau of Internal Revenue, October 3, 1952.)
But see the argument for defendant in the Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 30.
McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 424, upheld the creation of a bank under the necessary and proper clause. Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533, 548, depends partly on the alternate ground of the federal power to provide money for circulation. In re Rapier, 143 U. S. 110, the use of the mails by papers that advertised the Louisiana Lottery was barred. The Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, approved the same result through the commerce power. That power was enough to bar transportation of pictures of prize fights, Weber v. Freed, 239 U. S. 325; to seize contraband eggs after shipment had ended, Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 45, 56; and to bar transportation of women for immoral purposes, Caminetti v. United States, 242 U. S. 470. While in United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 68, 73, a use of a tax for regulation was disapproved, an enactment that resulted in regulation under the Commerce Clause met judicial favor. Mulford v. Smith, 307 U. S. 38, 47; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111. Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44, 67, and Trusler v. Crooks, 269 U. S. 475, based on taxation, held taxes that regulated the grain markets were unconstitutional as an interference with state power. In Chicago Board of Trade v. Olsen, 262 U. S. 1, regulations based on the Commerce Clause were upheld. The departure from this line of decisions in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U. S. 251, was reversed in United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 115-124, where we said:
“Whatever their motive and purpose, regulations of commerce which do not infringe some constitutional prohibition are within the plenary power conferred on Congress by the Commerce Clause.” Id., at 115. “The power of Congress over interstate commerce ... extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce or the exercise of the power of Congress over it as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.” Id., at 118.
United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U. S. 394, 402; United States v. Doremus, 249 U. S. 86; Linder v. United States, 268 U. S. 5; Nigro v. United States, 276 U. S. 332.
Cf. New York v. United States, 326 U. S. 572, 582, 587-588.
Cf. McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat., at 422.
Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 34, 38; Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44, 63, 70; United States v. Constantine, 296 U. S. 287.
But see Linder v. United States, 268 U. S. 5, 18; Trusler v. Crooks, 269 U. S. 475.
26 U. S. C. § 2011 et seq., require registration by tobacco manufacturers, dealers and peddlers of the “name, or style, place of residence, trade, or business, and the place where such trade or business is to be carried on.” 26 U. S. C. § 2810 requires the possessor of distilling apparatus to register “the particular place where such still or distilling apparatus is set up . . . the owner thereof, his place of residence . . . .” See also 26 Ü. S. C. § 3270.
Cf. Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, 590; Shapiro v. United States, 335 U. S. 1, 35; see E. Fougera & Co. v. City of New York, 224 N. Y. 269, 281, 120 N. E. 642, 644.
These defenses are open under the demurrer to facts alleged in the indictment and the judgment of dismissal although the opinion of the District Court relied only upon usurpation of state police power by the federal enactment. United States v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., 299 U. S. 304, 330. Compare United States v. Beacon Brass Co., 344 U. S. 43.
26 U. S. C. (Supp. V) § 3285:
“(b) Definitions.
“For the purposes of this chapter—
“(1) The term ‘wager’ means (A) any wager with respect to a sports event or a contest placed with a person engaged in the business of accepting such wagers, (B) any wager placed in a wagering pool with respect to a sports event or a contest, if such pool is conducted for profit, and (C) any wager placed in a lottery conducted for profit.
“(2) The term lottery’ includes the numbers-game, policy, and similar types of wagering. The term does not include (A) any game of a type in which usually (i) the wagers are placed, (ii) the winners are determined, and (iii) the distribution of prizes or other property is made, in the presence of all persons placing wagers in such game, and (B) any drawing conducted by an organization exempt from tax under section 101, if no part of the net proceeds derived from such drawing inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.”
Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U. S. 548, 584.
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 Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA or Act), 81 Stat. 602, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq., forbids discriminatory preference for the young over the old. The question in this case is whether it also prohibits favoring the old over the young. We hold it does not.
I
In 1997, a collective-bargaining agreement between petitioner General Dynamics and the United Auto Workers eliminated the company’s obligation to provide health benefits to subsequently retired employees, except as to then-current workers at least 50 years old. Respondents (collectively, Cline) were then at least 40 and thus protected by the Act, see 29 U. S. C. § 631(a), but under 50 and so without promise of the benefits. All of them objected to the new terms, although some had retired before the change in order to get the prior advantage, some retired afterwards with no benefit, and some worked on, knowing the new contract would give them no health coverage when they were through.
Before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) they claimed that the agreement violated the ADEA, because it “discriminate^ against them]... with respect to... compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of [their] age,” § 623(a)(1). The EEOC agreed, and invited General Dynamics and the union to settle informally with Cline.
When they failed, Cline brought this action against General Dynamics, combining claims under the ADEA and state law. The District Court called the federal claim one of “reverse age discrimination,” upon which, it observed, no court had ever granted relief under the ADEA. 98 F. Supp. 2d 846, 848 (ND Ohio 2000). It dismissed in reliance on the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Hamilton v. Caterpillar Inc., 966 F. 2d 1226 (1992), that “the ADEA ‘does not protect... the younger against the older,’ ” id., at 1227 (quoting Karlen v. City Colleges of Chicago, 837 F. 2d 314, 318 (CA7), cert, denied sub nom. Teachers v. City Colleqes of Chicago, 486 U. S. 1044 (1988)).
A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed, 296 F. 3d 466 (2002), with the majority reasoning that the prohibition of § 623(a)(1), covering discrimination against “any individual... because of such individual’s age,” is so clear on its face that if Congress had meant to limit its coverage to protect only the older worker against the younger, it would have said so. Id., at 472. The court acknowledged the conflict of its ruling with earlier cases, including Hamilton and Schuler v. Polaroid Corp., 848 F. 2d 276 (1988) (opinion of Breyer, J.), from the First Circuit, but it criticized the cases going the other way for paying too much attention to the “hortatory, generalized language” of the congressional findings incorporated in the ADEA. 296 F. 3d, at 470. The Sixth Circuit drew support for its view from the position taken by the EEOC in an interpretive regulation. Id., at 471.
Judge Cole, concurring, saw the issue as one of plain meaning that produced no absurd result, although he acknowledged a degree of tension with O’Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U. S. 308 (1996), in which this Court spoke of age discrimination as giving better treatment to a “ ‘substantially younger’ ” worker. 296 F. 3d, at 472. Judge Williams dissented in preference for Hamilton and the consensus of the federal courts, thinking it “obvious that the older a person is, the greater his or her needs become.” 296 F. 3d, at 476.
We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict among the Circuits, 538 U. S. 976 (2003), and now reverse.
II
The common ground in this case is the generalization that the ADEA’s prohibition covers “discrimination]... because of [an] individual’s age,” 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1), that helps the younger by hurting the older. In the abstract, the phrase is open to an argument for a broader construction, since reference to “age” carries no express modifier and the word could be read to look two ways. This more expansive possible understanding does not, however, square with the natural reading of the whole provision prohibiting discrimination, and in fact Congress’s interpretive clues speak almost unanimously to an understanding of discrimination as directed against workers who are older than the ones getting treated better.
Congress chose not to include age within discrimination forbidden by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, § 715, 78 Stat. 265, being aware that there were legitimate reasons as well as invidious ones for making employment decisions on age. Instead it called for a study of the issue by the Secretary of Labor, ibid., who concluded that age discrimination was a serious problem, but one different in kind from discrimination on account of race. The Secretary spoke of disadvantage to older individuals from arbitrary and stereotypical employment distinctions (including then-common policies of age ceilings on hiring), but he examined the problem in light of rational considerations of increased pension cost and, in some cases, legitimate concerns about an older person’s ability to do the job. Wirtz Report 2. When the Secretary ultimately took the position that arbitrary discrimination against older workers was widespread and persistent enough to call for a federal legislative remedy, id., at 21-22, he placed his recommendation against the background of common experience that the potential cost of employing someone rises with age, so that the older an employee is, the greater the inducement to prefer a younger substitute. The report contains no suggestion that reactions to age level off at some point, and it was devoid of any indication that the Secretary had noticed unfair advantages accruing to older employees at the expense of their juniors.
Congress then asked for a specific proposal, Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966, §606, 80 Stat. 845, which the Secretary provided in January 1967, 113 Cong, Rec, 1377 (1967); see also Public Papers of the Presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson, Vol. 1, Jan. 23, 1967, p. 37 (1968) (message to Congress urging that “Opportunity... be opened to the many Americans over 45 who are qualified and willing to work”). Extensive House and Senate hearings ensued. See Age Discrimination in Employment: Hearings on H. R. 3651 et al. before the General Subcommittee on Labor of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967) (hereinafter House Hearings); Age Discrimination in Employment: Hearings on S. 830 and S. 788 before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967) (hereinafter Senate Hearings). See generally EEOC v. Wyoming, 460 U. S. 226, 229-233 (1983).
The testimony at both hearings dwelled on unjustified assumptions about the effect of age on ability to work. See, e. g., House Hearings 151 (statement of Rep. Joshua Eilberg) (“At age 40, a worker may find that age restrictions become common.... By age 45, his employment opportunities are likely to contract sharply; they shrink more severely at age 55 and virtually vanish by age 65”); id., at 422 (statement of Rep. Claude Pepper) (“We must provide meaningful opportunities for employment to the thousands of workers 45 and over who are well qualified but nevertheless denied jobs which they may desperately need because someone has arbitrarily decided that they are too old”); Senate Hearings 34 (statement of Sen. George Murphy) (“[A]n older worker often faces an attitude on the part of some employers that prevents him from receiving serious consideration or even an interview in his search for employment”). The hearings specif-ieally addressed higher pension and benefit costs as heavier drags on hiring workers the older they got. See, e. g., House Hearings 45 (statement of Norman Sprague) (Apart from stereotypes, “labor market conditions, seniority and promotion-from-within policies, job training costs, pension and insurance costs, and mandatory retirement policies often make employers reluctant to hire older workers”). The record thus reflects the common facts that an individual’s chances to find and keep a job get worse over time; as between any two people, the younger is in the stronger position, the older more apt to be tagged with demeaning stereotype. Not surprisingly, from the voluminous records of the hearings, we have found (and Cline has cited) nothing suggesting that any workers were registering complaints about discrimination in favor of their seniors.
Nor is there any such suggestion in the introductory provisions of the ADEA, 81 Stat. 602, which begins with statements of purpose and findings that mirror the Wirtz Report and the committee transcripts. Id., § 2. The findings stress the impediments suffered by “older workers... in their efforts to retain... and especially to regain employment,” id., § 2(a)(1); “the [burdens] of arbitrary age limits regardless of potential for job performance,” id., § 2(a)(2); the costs of “otherwise desirable practices [that] may work to the disadvantage of older persons,” ibid.; and “the incidence of unemployment, especially long-term unemployment^ which] is, relative to the younger ages, high among older workers,” id., § 2(a)(3). The statutory objects were “to promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment; [and] to help employers and workers find ways of meeting, problems arising from the impact of age on employment.” Id., § 2(b).
In sum, except on one point, all the findings and statements of objectives are either cast in terms of the effects of age as intensifying over time, or are couched in terms that refer to “older” workers, explicitly or implicitly relative to “younger” ones. The single subject on which the statute speaks less specifically is that of “arbitrary limits” or “arbitrary age discrimination.” But these are unmistakable references to the Wirtz Report’s finding that “[ajlmost three out of every five employers covered by [a] 1965 survey have in effect age limitations (most frequently between 45 and 55) on new hires which they apply without consideration of an applicant’s other qualifications.” Wirtz Report 6. The ADEA’s ban on “arbitrary limits” thus applies to age caps that exclude older applicants, necessarily to the advantage of younger ones.
Such is the setting of the ADEA’s core substantive provision, § 4 (as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 623), prohibiting employers and certain others from “discriminat[ionj... because of [an] individual’s age,” whenever (as originally enacted) the individual is “at least forty years of age but less than sixty-five years of age,” § 12, 81 Stat. 607. The prefatory provisions and their legislative history make a case that we think is beyond reasonable doubt, that the ADEA was concerned to protect a relatively old worker from discrimination that works to the advantage of the relatively young.
Nor is it remarkable that the record is devoid of any evidence that younger workers were suffering at the expense of their elders, let alone that a social problem required a federal statute to place a younger worker in parity with an • older one. Common experience is to the contrary, and the testimony, reports, and congressional findings simply confirm that Congress used the phrase “discrimination]... because of [an] individual’s age” the same way that ordinary people •in common usage might speak of age discrimination any day of the week. One commonplace conception of American society in recent decades is its character as a “youth culture,” and in a world where younger is better, talk about discrimination because of age is naturally understood to refer to discrimination against the older.
This same, idiomatic sense of the statutory phrase is confirmed by the statute’s restriction of the protected class to those 40 and above. If Congress had been worrying about protecting the younger against the older, it would not likely have ignored everyone under 40. The youthful deficiencies of inexperience and unsteadiness invite stereotypical and discriminatory thinking.about those a lot younger than 40, and prejudice suffered by a 40-year-old is not typically owing to youth, as 40-year-olds sadly tend to find out. The enemy of 40 is 30, not 50. See H. R. Rep. No. 805, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 6 (1967) (“[T]estimony indicated [40] to be the age at which age discrimination in employment becomes evident”). Even so, the 40-year threshold was adopted over the objection that some discrimination against older people begins at an even younger age; female flight attendants were not fired at 32 because they were too young, ibid. See also Senate Hearings 47 (statement of Sec’y Wirtz) (lowering the minimum age limit “would change the nature of the proposal from an over-age employment discrimination measure”). Thus, the 40-year threshold makes sense as identifying a class requiring protection against preference for their juniors, not as defining a class that might be threatened by favoritism toward seniors.
The federal reports are as replete with cases taking this position as they are nearly devoid of decisions like the one reviewed here. To start closest to home, the best example is Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U. S. 604 (1993), in which we held there is no violation of the ADEA in firing an employee because his pension is about to vest, a basis for action that we took to be analytically distinct from age, even though it would never occur without advanced years. Id., at 611-612. We said that “the very essence of age discrimination [is] for an older employee to be fired because the employer believes that productivity and competence decline with old age,” id., at 610, whereas discrimination on the basis of pension status “would not constitute discriminatory treatment on the basis of age [because t]he prohibited stereotype [of the faltering worker] would not have figured in this decision, and the attendant stigma would not ensue,” id., at 612. And we have relied on this same reading of the statute in other cases. See, e. g., O’Connor, 517 U. S., at 313 (“Because the ADEA prohibits discrimination on the basis of age... the fact that a replacement is substantially younger than the plaintiff is a... reliable indicator of age discrimination”); Western Air Lines, Inc. v. Criswell, 472 U. S. 400, 409 (1985) (“[T]he legislative history of the ADEA... repeatedly emphasize[s that] the process of psychological and physiological degeneration caused by aging varies with each individual”). While none of these cases directly addresses the question presented here, all of them show our consistent understanding that the text, structure, and history point to the ADEA as a remedy for unfair preference based on relative youth, leaving complaints of the relatively young outside the statutory concern.
The Courts of Appeals and the District Courts have read the law the same way, and prior to this case have enjoyed virtually unanimous accord in understanding the ADEA to forbid only discrimination preferring young to old. So the Seventh Circuit held in Hamilton, and the First Circuit said in Schuler, and so the District Courts have ruled in cases too numerous for citation here in the text. The very strength of this consensus is enough to rule out any serious claim of ambiguity, and congressional silence after years of judicial interpretation supports adherence to the traditional view.
III
Cline and amicus EEOC proffer three rejoinders in favor of their competing view that the prohibition works both ways. First, they say (as does Justice Thomas, post, at 602-605) that the statute’s meaning is plain when the word “age” receives its natural and ordinary meaning and the statute is read as a whole giving “age” the same meaning throughout. And even if the text does not plainly mean what they say it means, they argue that the soundness of. their version is shown by a colloquy on the floor of the Senate involving Senator Yarborough, a sponsor of the bill that became the ADEA. Finally, they fall back to the position (fortified by Justice Scalia’s dissent) that we should defer,to the EEOC’s reading of the statute. On each point, however, we think the argument falls short of unsettling our view of the natural meaning of the phrase speaking of discrimination, read in light of the statute’s manifest purpose.
A
The first response to our reading is the dictionary argument that “age” means the length of a person’s life, with the phrase “because of such individual’s age” stating a simple test of causation: “discrimination]... because of [an] individual’s age” is treatment that would not have occurred if the individual’s span of years had been longer or shorter. The case for this reading calls attention to the other instances of “age” in the ADEA that are not limited to old age, such as 29 U. S. C. § 623(f), which gives an employer a defense to charges of age discrimination when “age is a bona fide occupational qualification.” Cline and the EEOC argue that if “age” meant old age, § 623(f) would then provide a defense (old age is a bona fide qualification) only for an employer’s action that on our reading would never clash with the statute (because preferring the older is not forbidden).
The argument rests on two mistakes. First, it assumes that the word “age” has the same meaning wherever the ADEA uses it. But this is not so, and Cline simply misemploys the “presumption that identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.” Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433 (1932). Cline forgets that “the presumption is not rigid and readily yields whenever there is such variation in the connection in which the words are used as reasonably to warrant the conclusion that they were employed in different parts of the act with different intent.” Ibid.; see also United States v. Cleveland Indians Baseball Co., 532 U. S. 200, 213 (2001) (phrase “wages paid” has different meanings in different parts of Title 26 U. S. C.); Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U. S. 337, 343-344 (1997) (term “employee” has different meanings in different parts of Title VII). The presumption of uniform usage thus relents when a word used has several commonly understood meanings among which a speaker can alternate in the course of an ordinary conversation, without being confused or getting confusing.
“Age” is that kind of word. As Justice Thomas (posé, at 603) agrees, the word “age” standing alone can be readily understood either as pointing to any number of years lived, or as common shorthand for the longer span and concurrent aches that make youth look good. Which alternative was probably intended is a matter of context; we understand the different choices of meaning that lie behind a sentence like “Age can be shown by a driver’s license,” and the statement, “Age has left him a shut-in.” So it is easy to understand that Congress chose different meanings at different places in the ADEA, as the different settings readily show. Hence the second flaw in Cline’s argument for uniform usage: it ignores the cardinal rule that “[statutory language must be read in context [since] a phrase ‘gathers meaning from the words around it.’ ” Jones v. United States, 527 U. S. 373, 389 (1999) (quoting Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U. S. 303, 307 (1961)). The point here is that we are not asking, an abstract question about the meaning of “age”; we are seeking the meaning of the whole phrase “discriminate... because of such individual’s age,” where it occurs in the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. § 623(a)(1). As we have said, social history emphatically reveals an understanding of age discrimination as aimed against the old, and the statutory reference to age discrimination in this idiomatic sense is confirmed by legislative history. For the very reason that reference to context shows that “age” means “old age” when teamed with “discrimination,” the provision of an affirmative defense when age is a bona fide occupational qualification readily shows that “age” as a qualification means comparative youth. As context tells us that “age” means one thing in § 623(a)(1) and another in § 623(f), so it also tells us that the presumption of uniformity cannot sensibly operate here.
The comparisons Justice Thomas urges, post, at 608-612, to McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976), and Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75 (1998), serve to clarify our position. Both cases involved Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., and its prohibition on employment discrimination “because of [an] individual’s race... [or] sex,” §2000e-2(a)(1) (emphasis added). The term “age” employed by the ADEA is not, however, comparable to the terms “race” or “sex” employed by Title VII. “Race” and “sex” are general terms that in every day usage require modifiers to indicate any relatively narrow application. We do not commonly understand “race” to refer only to the black race, or “sex” to refer only to the female. But the prohibition of age discrimination is readily' read more narrowly than analogous provisions dealing with race and sex. That narrower reading is the more natural one in the textual setting, and it makes perfect sense because of Congress’s demonstrated concern with distinctions that hurt older people.
B
The second objection has more substance than the first, but still not enough. The record of congressional action reports a colloquy on the Senate floor between two of the legislators most active in pushing for the ADEA, Senators Javits and Yarborough. Senator Javits began the exchange by raising a concern mentioned by Senator Dominick, that “the bill might not forbid discrimination between two persons each of whom would be between the ages of 40 and 65.” 113 Cong. Rec. 31255 (1967). Senator Javits then gave his own view that, “if two individuals ages 52 and 42 apply for the same job, and the employer selected the man aged 42 solely... because he is younger than the man 52, then he will have violated the act,” and asked Senator Yarborough for his opinion. Ibid. Senator Yarborough answered that “[t]he law prohibits age being a factor in the decision to hire, as to one age over the other, whichever way [the] decision went.” Ibid.
Although in the past we have given weight to Senator Yarborough’s views on the construction’ of the ADEA because he was a sponsor, see, e. g., Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio v. Betts, 492 U. S. 158, 179 (1989), his side of this exchange is not enough to unsettle our reading of the statute. It is not merely that the discussion was prompted by the question mentioned in O’Connor v. Consolidated Coin Caterers Corp., 517 U. S. 308 (1996), the possibility of a 52-year-old suing over a preference for someone younger but in the over-40 protected class. What matters is that the Senator’s remark, “whichever way [the] decision went,” is the only item in all the 1967 hearings, reports, and debates going against the grain of the common understanding of age discrimination. Even from a sponsor, a single outlying statement cannot stand against a tide of context and history, not to mention 30 years of judicial interpretation producing no apparent legislative qualms. See Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 118 (1980) (“[Ojrdinarily even the contemporaneous remarks of a single legislator who sponsors a bill are not controlling in analyzing legislative history”).
C
The third objection relies on a reading consistent with the Yarborough comment, adopted by the agency now charged with enforcing the statute, as set out at 29 CFR § 1625.2(a) (2003), and quoted in full, n. 1, supra. When the EEOC adopted § 1625.2(a) in 1981, shortly after assuming administrative responsibility for the ADEA, it gave no reasons for the view expressed, beyond noting that the provision was carried forward from an earlier Department of Labor regulation, see 44 Fed. Reg. 68858 (1979); 46 Fed. Reg. 47724 (1981); that earlier regulation itself gave no reasons, see 33 Fed. Reg. 9172 (1968) (reprinting 29 CFR §860.91; rescinded by 46 Fed. Reg. 47724 (1981)).
The parties contest the degree of weight owed to the EEOC’s reading, with General Dynamics urging us that Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134 (1944), sets the limit, while Cline and the EEOC say that § 1625.2(a) deserves greater deference under Chevron U S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). Although we have devoted a fair amount of attention lately to the varying degrees of deference deserved by agency pronouncements of different sorts, see United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218 (2001); Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U. S. 576 (2000), the recent cases are not on poirit here. In Edelman v. Lynchburg College, 535 U. S. 106, 114 (2002), we found no need to choose between Skidmore and Chevron, or even to defer, because the EEOC was clearly right; today, we neither defer nor settle on any degree of deference because the Commission is clearly wrong.
Even for an agency able to under Chevron, deference to its statutory interpretation is called for only when the devices of judicial construction have been tried and found to yield no clear sense of congressional intent. INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 446-448 (1987) (citing Chevron, supra, at 843, n. 9). Here, regular interpretive method leaves no serious question, not even about purely textual ambiguity in the ADEA. The word “age” takes on a definite meaning from being in the phrase “discrimination]... because of such individual’s age,” occurring as that phrase does in a statute structured and manifestly intended to protect the older from arbitrary favor for the younger.
IV
We see the text, structure, purpose, and history of the ADEA, along with its relationship to other federal statutes, as showing that the statute does not mean to stop an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
29 CFR § 1625.2(a) (2003) (“[I]f two people apply for the same position, and one is 42 and the other 52, the employer may not lawfully turn down either one on the basis of age, but must make such decision on the basis of some other factor”). We discuss this regulation at greater length, infra, at 599-600.
That report found that “[e]mployment discrimination because of race is identified... with... feelings about people entirely unrelated to their ability to do the job. There is no significant discrimination of this kind so far as older workers are concerned. The most closely related kind of discrimination in the non-employment of older workers involves their rejection because of assumptions about the effect of age on their ability to do a job when there is in fact no basis for these assumptions.” Report of the Secretary of Labor, The Older American Worker: Age Discrimination in Employment 2 (June 1965) (hereinafter Wirtz Report) (emphasis in original).
See also House Hearings 449 (statement of Rep. James A. Burke) (“Discrimination arises for [the older job seeker] because of assumptions that are made about the effects of age on performance”); Senate Hearings 179 (statement of Dr. Harold L. Sheppard) (“[0]ne of the underlying conditions for this upward trend in unemployment rates for a given group of so-called older workers over a period of time... is related to the barrier of age discrimination”); id., at 215 (statement of Sen. Harrison A. Williams) (“ ‘Unfavorable beliefs and generalizations about older persons have grown up and have been translated into restrictive policies and practices in hiring new employees which bar older jobseekers from employment principally because of age’ ” (quoting earlier report of Senate Special Committee on Aging)).
In 1978, Congress changed the upper age limit to 70 years, Pub. L. 95-256, §3(a), 92 Stat. 189, and then struck it entirely in 1986, Pub. L. 99-592, § 2(c)(1), 100 Stat. 3342. The President transferred authority over the ADEA from the Department of Labor to the EEOC in 1978. Reorg. Plan No. 1 of 1978, 5 U. S. C. App. § 2, p. 206. Congress has also made other changes, including extending the ADEA to government employees (state, local, and federal), Pub. L. 93-259, 88 Stat. 74-75 (amending 29 U. S. C. § 630(b) and adding § 633a), and clarifying that it extends, with certain exceptions, to employee benefits, Pub. L. 101-433, 104 Stat. 978 (amending among other provisions 29 U. S. C. §630(i)).
Justice Thomas, post, at 606-613 (dissenting opinion), charges our holding with unnaturally limiting a comprehensive prohibition of age discrimination to “the principal evil that Congress targeted,” post, at 607, which he calls inconsistent with the method of McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976) (the Title VII prohibition of discrimination because of race protects whites), and Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75 (1998) (the Title VII prohibition of discrimination because of sex protects men from sexual harassment by other men). His objection is aimed at the wrong place. As we discuss at greater length infra, at 596-598, we are not dealing here with a prohibition expressed by the unqualified use of a term without any conventionally narrow sense (as “race” or “sex” are used in Title VII), and are not narrowing such a prohibition so that it covers only instances of the particular practice that induced Congress to enact the general prohibition. We hold that Congress expressed a prohibition by using a term in a commonly understood, narrow sense (“age” as “relatively old age”). Justice Thomas may think we are mistaken, post, at 603-606, when we infer that Congress used “age” as meaning the antithesis of youth rather than meaning any age, but we are not making the particular mistake of confining the application of terms used in a broad sense to the relatively narrow class of cases that prompted Congress- to address their subject matter.
See Lawrence v. Irondequoit, 246 F. Supp. 2d 150, 161 (WDNY 2002) (following Hamilton), Greer v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 85 FEP Cases 416, 419 (SDNY 2001) (noting unanimity of the courts); Dittman v. General Motors Corp.-Delco Chassis Div., 941 F. Supp. 284, 286-287 (Conn. 1996) (alternative holding) (following Hamilton)', Parker v. Wakelin, 882 F. Supp. 1131, 1140 (Me. 1995) (“The ADEA has never been construed to permit younger persons to claim discrimination against them in favor of older persons”); Wehrly v. American Motors Sales Corp., 678 F. Supp. 1366, 1382 (ND Ind. 1988) (following Karlen v. City Colleges of Chicago, 837 F. 2d 314, 318 (CA7), cert. denied sub nom. Teachers v. City Colleges of Chicago, 486 U. S. 1044 (1988)). The only case we have found arguably to the contrary is Mississippi Power & Light Co. v. Local Union Nos. 605 & 985, IBEW, 945 F. Supp. 980, 985 (SD Miss. 1996), which allowed a claim objecting to a benefit given to individuals between 60 and 65 and denied to those outside that range, without discussing Hamilton or any of the other authority holding that the plaintiffs under 60 would lack a cause of action.
Congress has not been shy in revising other judicial constructions of the ADEA. See Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio v. Betts, 492 U. S. 158, 167-168 (1989) (observing that the 1978 amendment to the ADEA “changed the specific result” of this Court’s earlier case of United Air Lines, Inc. v. McMann, 434 U.S. 192 (1977)); H. R. Rep. No. 101-664, pp. 10-11, 34 (1990) (stating that Congress in 1978 had also disapproved McMann’s reasoning, and that with the 1990 amendments it meant to overrule Betts as well).
It gets too little credit for relenting, though. “The tendency to assume that a word which appears in two or more legal rules, and so in connection with more than one purpose, has and should have precisely the same scope in all of them, runs all through legal discussions. It has all the tenacity of original sin and must constantly be guarded against.” Cook, “Substance” and “Procedure” in the Conflict of Laws, 42 Yale L. J. 333, 337 (1933). The passage has become a staple of our opinions. See United States v. Cleveland Indians Baseball Co., 532 U. S. 200, 213 (2001); NationsBank of N. C., N. A. v. Variable Annuity Life Ins. Co., 513 U. S
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. Chief Justice Vinson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The constitutionality of the strike vote provision of the Michigan labor mediation law is before us in this case. Appellants struck against Chrysler Corporation in May, 1948, without conforming to the prescribed state procedure. The strike was called to enforce demands for higher wages, and it was conducted peacefully. To enjoin possible criminal prosecution, appellants instituted this suit in the state courts, contending that the statute violated the Due Process and Commerce Clauses of the Federal Constitution. The trial court upheld their contentions but the Michigan Supreme Court reversed. 325 Mich. 250, 38 N. W. 2d 421 (1949). We find no need to discuss the due process point, inasmuch as we hold that the court below erred in its decision on the commerce power.
Congress has not been silent on the subject of strikes in interstate commerce. In the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. III) § 141, Congress safeguarded the exercise by employees of “concerted activities” and expressly recognized the right to strike. It qualified and regulated that right in the 1947 Act. It established certain prerequisites, with which appellants complied, for any strike over contract termination or modification. § 8 (d). These include notices to both state and federal mediation authorities; both did participate in the negotiations in this case. In provisions which did not affect appellants, Congress forbade strikes for certain objectives and detailed procedures for strikes which might create a national emergency. §§ 8 (b) (4), 206-210. None of these sections can be read as permitting concurrent state regulation of peaceful strikes for higher wages. Congress occupied this field and closed it to state regulation. Plankinton Packing Co. v. Wisconsin Board, 338 U. S. 953 (1950); La Crosse Telephone Corp. v. Wisconsin Board, 336 U. S. 18 (1949) ; Bethlehem Steel Co.y. New York Labor Board, 330 U. S. 767 (1947); Hill v. Florida, 325 U. S. 538 (1945).
Even if some state legislation in this area could be sustained, the particular statute before us could not stand. For it conflicts with the federal Act. The Michigan law calls for a notice given “In the event the parties . . . are unable to settle any dispute” to be followed by mediation, and if that is unsuccessful, by a strike vote within twenty days, with a majority required to authorize a strike. Under the federal legislation, the prescribed strike notice can be given sixty days before the contract termination or modification. § 8 (d). The federal Act thus permits strikes at a different and usually earlier time than the Michigan law; and it does not require majority authorization for any strike. This requirement of approval by a majority of the employees was contained in the Bill which passed the House of Representatives; but the Act as finally adopted deliberately refrains from imposing the prerequisite of majority approval in each of its references to strike votes. §§ 203 (c), 209 (b)-210.
Finally, the bargaining unit established in accordance with federal law may be inconsistent with that required by state regulation. Though the unit for the Michigan strike vote cannot extend beyond the State’s borders, the unit for which appellant union is the federally certified bargaining representative includes Chrysler plants in California and Indiana as well as Michigan. Chrysler Corp., 42 N. L. R. B. 1145 (1942). Without question, the Michigan provision conflicts with the exercise of federally protected labor rights. A state statute so at war with federal law cannot survive. Plankinton Packing Co. v. Wisconsin Board, 338 U. S. 953 (1950); La Crosse Telephone Corp. v. Wisconsin Board, 336 U. S. 18 (1949); Bethlehem Steel Co. v. New York Labor Board, 330 U. S. 767 (1947); Hill v. Florida, 325 U. S. 538 (1945).
Auto. Workersv. Wisconsin Board, 336 U.S. 245 (1949), upon which Michigan principally relies, was not concerned with a traditional, peaceful strike for higher wages. The employees’ conduct there was “a new technique for bringing pressure upon the employer,” a “recurrent or intermittent unannounced stoppage of work to win unstated ends.” Id. at 249, 264. That activity we regarded as “coercive,” similar to the sit-down strike held to fall outside the protection of the federal Act in Labor Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., 306 U. S. 240 (1939), and to the labor violence held to be subject to state police control in Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin Board, 315 U. S. 740 (1942). In the Wisconsin Auto. Workers case, we concluded that the union tactic was “neither forbidden by federal statute nor was it legalized and approved thereby.” 336 U. S. at 265. “There is no existing or possible conflict or overlapping between the authority of the Federal and State Boards, because the Federal Board has no authority either to investigate, approve or forbid the union conduct in question. This conduct is governable by the State or it is entirely ungoverned.” Id. at 254. Clearly, we reaffirmed the principle that if “Congress has protected the union conduct which the State has forbidden . . . the state legislation must yield.” Id. at 252. That principle is controlling ^ere‘
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Douglas concurs in the result.
Mich. Stat. Ann. (Cum. Supp. 1949) §§ 17.454 (1) et seq.; Mich. Comp. Laws, 1948, §§ 423.1 et seq. At the time of appellants’ strike, the pertinent provisions of the law read as follows:
"Sec. 9. No strike or lockout shall take place or be put into effect until and unless each of the steps have been taken and the requirements complied with as provided in this act.
“1. In the event the parties thereto are unable to settle any dispute, the employees or their representative, in the case of impending strike, or the employer or his agent, in the case of an impending lockout, shall serve notice upon the board of such dispute together with a statement of the issues involved. . . . not less than 10 days before the strike or lockout is to become effective, or in ease of an industry affected with a public interest or a public utility or hospital, said notice shall be so served not less than 30 days before the strike or lockout is to become effective.
“2. Upon receipt of such notice it shall be the duty of the board to exercise the powers herein granted to effect a settlement of such dispute by mediation between the parties. Prior to the calling of an election as provided hereinafter, it shall be the duty of each of the parties to such dispute to actively and in good faith participate in the mediation thereof. . . .
“Sec. 9a. In the event that it becomes apparent to the board that there is no reasonable probability of settlement of such dispute by mediation and that further efforts to that end would be without avail, there shall be held in the case of any impending strike, an election upon such issue which election shall be conducted and supervised by the board. In the event either party to said dispute notifies the board in writing . . . that in the opinion of such party, further efforts to settle such dispute by mediation would be without avail, it shall be the duty of the board to cause an election to be held within 10 days of the receipt of such notice unless it is not practical to hold such election within said period, in which event said election shall be held within 20 days of receipt of such notice .... Every employee in the bargaining unit shall be entitled to vote in such election and in order to authorize a strike under the provisions of this act, a majority of all employees in such bargaining unit must vote in favor of such action.”
In 1949, the last requirement was amended to read, “a majority of all employees casting valid ballots must vote in favor of such action.” This change is not material to our decision.
The court below held that appellants’ acts “rendered [them] subject to threatened criminal prosecution . . . .” 325 Mich, at 254, 38 N. W. 2d at 422. See § 22. We are of course bound by this interpretation of the state law.
See §§ 7, 2 (3), 13 of both Acts; H. R. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 59 (1947); S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 28 (1947); statement of Senator Taft, 93 Cong. Rec. 3835 (1947), which includes the following: “That means that we recognize freedom to strike when the question involved is the improvement of wages, hours, and working conditions, when a contract has expired and neither side is bound by a contract. . . . We have considered the question whether the right to strike can be modified. I think it can be modified in cases which do not involve the basic question of wages, prices, and working conditions. ... So far as the bill is concerned, we have proceeded on the theory that there is a right to strike and that labor peace must be based on free collective bargaining. We have done nothing to outlaw strikes for basic wages, hours, and working conditions after proper opportunity for mediation.”
Congress created a new federal agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, to assist in the peaceful settlement of disputes. §§ 202-204.
H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. §2 (11) (B) (vi) (h) (1947). The legislative history demonstrates that this proposal was rejected on the merits, and not because of any desire to leave the states free to adopt it. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 34r-35 (1947); testimony of Governor Stassen, Hearings before Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on S. 55 and S. J. Res. 22, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 562-65, 572-78, 586-89 (1947).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | J | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Acting pursuant to the mandate of its newly revised state constitution, the Virginia General Assembly enacted statutes apportioning the State for the election of members of its House of Delegates and Senate. Two suits were brought challenging the constitutionality of the House redistricting statute on the grounds that there were impermissible population variances in the districts, that the multimember districts diluted representation, and that the use of multimember districts constituted racial gerrymandering. The Senate redistricting statute was attacked in a separate suit, which alleged that the city of Norfolk was unconstitutionally split into three districts, allocating Navy personnel “home-ported” in Norfolk to one district and isolating Negro voters in one district. Three three-judge district courts were convened to hear the suits pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §§ 2281 and 2284. The suits were consolidated and heard by the four judges who variously made up the three three-judge panels.
The consolidated District Court entered an interlocutory order that, inter alia, declared the legislative reapportionment statutes unconstitutional and enjoined the holding of elections in electoral districts other than those established by the court's opinion. Howell v. Mahan, 330 F. Supp. 1138, 1150 (ED Va. 1971). Appellants, the Secretary of the State Board of Elections and its members and the city of Virginia Beach, have appealed directly to this Court from those portions of the court's order, invoking our jurisdiction under 28 IT. S. C. § 1253.
I
The statute apportioning the House provided for a combination of 52 single-member, multimember, and floater delegate districts from which 100 delegates would be elected. As found by the lower court, the ideal district in Virginia consisted of 46,485 persons per delegate, and the maximum percentage variation from that ideal under the Act was 16.4% — the 12th district being overrepresented by 6.8% and the 16th district being underrepresented by 9.6%. The population ratio between these two districts was 1.18 to 1. The average percentage variance under the plan was ±3.89%, and the minimum population percentage necessary to elect a majority of the House was 49.29%. Of the 52 districts, 35 were within 4% of perfection and nine exceeded a 6% variance from the ideal. With one exception, the delegate districts followed political jurisdictional lines of the counties and cities. That exception, Fairfax County, was allotted 10 delegates but was divided into two five-member districts.
Relying on Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, 394 U. S. 526 (1969), Wells v. Rockefeller, 394 U. S. 542 (1969), and Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964), the District Court concluded that the 16.4% variation was sufficient to condemn the House statute under the “one person, one vote” doctrine. While it noted that the variances were traceable to the desire of the General Assembly to maintain the integrity of traditional county and city boundaries, and that it was impossible to draft district lines to overcome unconstitutional disparities and still maintain such integrity, it held that the State proved no governmental necessity for strictly adhering to political subdivision lines. Accordingly, it undertook its own redistricting and devised a plan having a percentage variation of slightly over 10% from the ideal district, a percentage it believed came “within passable constitutional limits as ‘a good-faith effort to achieve absolute equality. Kirkpatrick v. Preisler . . . .” Howell v. Mahan, 330 F. Supp., at 1147-1148.
Appellants contend that the District Court’s reliance on Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, supra, and Wells v. Rockefeller, supra, in striking down the General Assembly’s reapportionment plan was erroneous, and that proper application of the standards enunciated in Reynolds v. Sims, supra, would have resulted in a finding that the statute was constitutional.
In Kirkpatrick v. Preisler and Wells v. Rockefeller, this Court invalidated state reapportionment statutes for federal congressional districts having maximum percentage deviations of 5.97% and 13.1% respectively. The express purpose of these cases was to elucidate the standard first announced in the holding of Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1 (1964), that “the command of Art. I, § 2, that Representatives be chosen ‘by the People of the several States’ means that as nearly as is practicable one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” Id., at 7-8 (footnotes omitted). And it was concluded that that command “permits only the limited population variances which are unavoidable despite a good-faith effort to achieve absolute equality, or for which justification is shown.” Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, supra, at 531. The principal question thus presented for review is whether or not the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment likewise permits only “the limited population variances which are unavoidable despite a good-faith effort to achieve absolute equality” in the context of state legislative reapportionment.
This Court first recognized that the Equal Protection Clause requires both houses of a bicameral state legislature to be apportioned substantially on a population basis in Reynolds v. Sims, supra. In so doing, it suggested that in the implementation of the basic constitutional principle — equality of population among the districts- — more flexibility was constitutionally permissible with respect to state legislative reapportionment than in congressional redistricting. Id., at 578. Consideration was given to the fact that, almost invariably, there is a significantly larger number of seats in state legislative bodies to be distributed within a State than congressional seats, and that therefore it may be feasible for a State to use political subdivision lines to a greater extent in establishing state legislative districts than congressional districts while still affording adequate statewide representation. Ibid. Another possible justification for deviation from population-based representation in state legislatures was stated to be:
“[T]hat of insuring some voice to political subdivisions, as political subdivisions. Several factors make more than insubstantial claims that a State can rationally consider according political subdivisions some independent representation in at least one body of the state legislature, as long as the basic standard of equality of population among districts is maintained. Local governmental entities are frequently charged with various responsibilities incident to the operation of state government. In many States much of the legislature’s activity involves the enactment of so-called local legislation, directed only to the concerns of particular political subdivisions. And a State may legitimately desire to construct districts along political subdivision lines to deter the possibilities of gerrymandering. . . .” Id., at 580-581.
The Court reiterated that the overriding objective in reapportionment must be “substantial equality of population among the various districts, so that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the State.” Id., at 579.
By contrast, the Court in Wesberry v. Sanders, supra, recognized no excuse for the failure to meet the objective of equal representation for equal numbers of people in congressional districting other than the practical impossibility of drawing equal districts with mathematical precision. Thus, whereas population alone has been the sole criterion of constitutionality in congressional redistricting under Art. I, § 2, broader latitude has been afforded the States under the Equal Protection Clause in state legislative redistricting because of the considerations enumerated in Reynolds v. Sims, supra. The dichotomy between the two lines of cases has consistently been maintained. In Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, for example, one asserted justification for population variances was that they were necessarily a result of the State's attempt to avoid fragmenting political subdivisions by drawing congressional district lines along existing political subdivision boundaries. This argument was rejected in the congressional context. But in Abate v. Mundt, 403 U. S. 182 (1971), an apportionment for a county legislature having a maximum deviation from equality of 11.9% was upheld in the face of an equal protection challenge, in part because New York had a long history of maintaining the integrity of existing local government units within the county.
Application of the “absolute equality” test of Kirkpatrick and Wells to state legislative redistricting may impair the normal functioning of state and local governments. Such an effect is readily apparent from an analysis of the District Court’s plan in this case. Under Art. VII, §§ 2 and 3 of Virginia’s Constitution, the General Assembly is given extensive power to enact special legislation regarding the organization of, and the exercise of governmental powers by, counties, cities, towns, and other political subdivisions. The statute redistricting the House of Delegates consistently sought to avoid the fragmentation of such subdivisions, assertedly to afford them a voice in Richmond to seek such local legislation.
The court’s reapportionment, based on its application of Kirkpatrick and Wells, resulted in a maximum deviation of slightly over 10%, as compared with the roughly 16% maximum variation found in the plan adopted by the legislature. But to achieve even this limit of variation, the court’s plan extended single and multimember districts across subdivision lines in 12 instances, substituting population equality for subdivision representation. Scott County, for example, under the Assembly’s plan was placed in the first district and its population of 24,376 voted with the 76,346 persons in Dickinson, Lee, and Wise Counties for two delegates. The district thus established deviated by 8.3% from the ideal. The court transferred five of Scott County’s enumeration districts, containing 6,063 persons, to the contiguous second district composed of the city of Bristol, and Smyth and Washington Counties, population 87,041. Scott County’s representation was thereby substantially reduced in the first district, and all but nonexistent in the second district. The opportunity of its voters to champion local legislation relating to Scott County is virtually nil. The countervailing benefit resulting from the court’s readjustment is the fact that the first district’s deviation from the ideal is now reduced to 1.8%.
The city of Virginia Beach saw its position deteriorate in a similar manner under the court-imposed plan. Under the legislative plan, Virginia Beach constituted the 40th district and was allocated three delegates for its population of 172,106. The resulting underrepresen-tation was cured by providing a floterial district, the 42d, which also included portions of the cities of Chesapeake and Portsmouth. Under the court’s plan, the 42d district was dissolved. Of its 32,651 persons that constituted the deviation from the ideal for the 40th district, 3,515 were placed in the 40th, and 29,136 were transferred to Norfolk’s 39th district. The 39th district is a multimember district that includes the 307,951 persons who make up the population of the city of Norfolk. Thus, those Virginia Beach residents who cast their vote in the 39th district amount to only 8.6% of that district’s population. In terms of practical politics, Virginia Beach complains that such representation is no representation at all so far as local legislation is concerned, and that those 29,136 people transferred to the 39th district have in that respect been effectively disenfranchised.
We conclude, therefore, that the constitutionality of Virginia’s legislative redistricting plan was not to be judged by the more stringent standards that Kirkpatrick and Wells make applicable to congressional reapportionment, but instead by the equal protection test enunciated in Reynolds v. Sims, supra. We reaffirm its holding that “the Equal Protection Clause requires that a State make an honest and good faith effort to construct districts, in both houses of its legislature, as nearly of equal population as is practicable.” 377 U. S., at 577. We likewise reaffirm its conclusion that “[s]o long as the divergences from a strict population standard are based on legitimate considerations incident to the effectuation of a rational state policy, some deviations from the equal-population principle are constitutionally permissible with respect to the apportionment of seats in either or both of the two houses of a bicameral state legislature.” Id., at 579.
The asserted justification for the divergences in this case — the State’s policy of maintaining the integrity of political subdivision lines — is not a new one to this Court. In Davis v. Mann, 377 U. S. 678, 686 (1964), it was noted:
“Because cities and counties have consistently not been split or divided for purposes of legislative representation, multimember districts have been utilized for cities and counties whose populations entitle them to more than a single representative . . . . And, because of a tradition of respecting the integrity of the boundaries of cities and counties in drawing district lines, districts have been constructed only of combinations of counties and cities and not by pieces of them. . . .”
The then-existing substantial deviation in the apportionment of both Houses defeated the constitutionality of Virginia’s districting statutes in that case, but the possibility of maintaining the integrity of political subdivision lines in districting was not precluded so long as there existed “such minor deviations only as may occur in recognizing certain factors that are free from any taint of arbitrariness or discrimination.” Roman v. Sincock, 377 U. S. 695, 710 (1964).
We are not prepared to say that the decision of the people of Virginia to grant the General Assembly the power to enact local legislation dealing with the political subdivisions is irrational. And if that be so, the decision of the General Assembly to provide representation to subdivisions qua subdivisions in order to implement that constitutional power is likewise valid when measured against the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The inquiry then becomes whether it can reasonably be said that the state policy urged by Virginia to justify the divergences in the legislative reapportionment plan of the House is, indeed, furthered by the plan adopted by the legislature, and whether, if so justified, the divergences are also within tolerable limits. For a State's policy urged in justification of disparity in district population, however rational, cannot constitutionally be permitted to emasculate the goal of substantial equality.
There was uncontradicted evidence offered in the District Court to the effect that the legislature's plan, subject to minor qualifications, “produces the minimum deviation above and below the norm, keeping intact political boundaries. . . .'' (Defendants’ Exhibit 8.) That court itself recognized that equality was impossible if political boundaries were to be kept intact in the process of districting. But it went on to hold that since the State “proved no governmental necessity for strictly adhering to political subdivision lines,” the legislative plan was constitutionally invalid. Howell v. Mahan, supra, at 1140. As we noted above, however, the proper equal protection test is not framed ha terms of “governmental necessity,” but instead in terms of a claim that a State may “rationally consider.” Reynolds v. Sims, supra, at 580-581.
The District Court intimated that one reason for rejecting the justification for divergences offered by the State was its conclusion that the legislature had not in fact implemented its asserted policy, “as witness the division of Fairfax County.” Howell v. Mahan, supra, at 1140. But while Fairfax County was divided, it was not fragmented. And had it not been divided, there would have been one ten-member district in Fairfax County, a result that this Court might well have been thought to disfavor as a result of its opinion in Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, 692 (1971). The State can scarcely be condemned for simultaneously attempting to move toward smaller districts and to maintain the integrity of its political subdivision lines.
Appellees argue that the traditional adherence to such lines is no longer a justification since the Virginia constitutional provision regarding reapportionment, Art, II, § 6, supra, n. 1, neither specifically provides for apportionment along political subdivision lines nor draws a distinction between the standards for congressional and legislative districting. The standard in each case is described in the “as nearly as is practicable” language used in Wesberry v. Sanders, supra, and Reynolds v. Sims, supra. But, as we have previously indicated, the latitude afforded to States in legislative redistricting is somewhat broader than that afforded to them in congressional redistricting. Virginia was free as a matter of federal constitutional law to construe the mandate of its Constitution more liberally in the case of legislative redistricting than in the case of congressional redistricting, and the plan adopted by the legislature indicates that it has done so.
We also reject the argument that, because the State is not adhering to its tradition of respecting the boundaries of political subdivisions in congressional and State Senate redistricting, it may not do so in the case of redistricting for the House of Delegates. Nothing in the fact that Virginia has followed the constitutional mandate of this Court in the case of congressional redistricting, or that it has chosen in some instances to ignore political subdivision lines in the case of the State Senate, detracts from the validity of its consistently applied policy to have at least one house of its bicameral legislature responsive to voters of political subdivisions as such.
We hold that the legislature’s plan for apportionment of the House of Delegates may reasonably be said to advance the rational state policy of respecting the boundaries of political subdivisions. The remaining inquiry is whether the population disparities among the districts that have resulted from the pursuit of this plan exceed constitutional limits. We conclude that they do not.
The most stringent mathematical standard that has heretofore been imposed upon an apportionment plan for a state legislature by this Court was enunciated in Swann v. Adams, 385 U. S. 440 (1967), where a scheme having a maximum deviation of 26% was disapproved. In that case, the State of Florida offered no evidence at the trial level to support the challenged variations with respect to either the House or Senate. Id., at 446. The Court emphasized there that “the fact that a 10% or 15% variation from the norm is approved in one State has little bearing on the validity of a similar variation in another State.” Id., at 445. We, therefore, find the citations to numerous cases decided by state and lower federal courts to be of limited use in determining the constitutionality of Virginia’s statute. The relatively minor variations present in the Virginia plan contrast sharply with the larger variations in state legislative reapportionment plans that have been struck down by previous decisions of this Court. See, e. g., Reynolds v. Sims, supra; Swann v. Adams, supra; and Kilgarlin v. Hill, 386 U. S. 120 (1967).
Neither courts nor legislatures are furnished any specialized calipers that enable them to extract from the general language of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment the mathematical formula that establishes what range of percentage deviations is permissible, and what is not. The 16-odd percent maximum deviation that the District Court found to exist in the legislative plan for the reapportionment of the House is substantially less than the percentage deviations that have been found invalid in the previous decisions of this Court. While this percentage may well approach tolerable limits, we do not believe it exceeds them. Virginia has not sacrificed substantial equality to justifiable deviations.
The policy of maintaining the integrity of political subdivision lines in the process of reapportioning a state legislature, the policy consistently advanced by Virginia as a justification for disparities in population among districts that elect members to the House of Delegates, is a rational one. It can reasonably be said, upon examination of the legislative plan, that it does in fact advance that policy. The population disparities that are permitted thereunder result in a maximum percentage deviation that we hold to be within tolerable constitutional limits. We, therefore, hold the General Assembly’s plan for the reapportionment of the House of Delegates constitutional and reverse the District Court’s conclusion to the contrary. We also affirm Weinberg v. Prichard et al., No. 71-444, held pending this disposition.
II
The General Assembly divided the State into 40 single-member senatorial districts. Under the plan, a portion of the city of Virginia Beach was added to the city of Norfolk and the entire area was divided into three single-member districts, which the court below found conformed almost ideally, numerically, to the “one person, one vote” principle. But all naval personnel “home-ported” at the U. S. Naval Station, Norfolk, about 36,700 persons, were assigned to the Fifth Senatorial District because that is where they were counted on official census tracts. It was undisputed that only about 8,100 of such personnel lived aboard vessels assigned to the census tract within the Fifth District. The court had before it evidence that about 18,000 lived outside the Fifth District but within the Norfolk and Virginia Beach areas that, if true, indicated a malapportionment with respect to such personnel. Lacking survey data sufficiently precise to permit the creation of three single-member districts more closely representing the actual population, the court corrected the disparities by establishing one multimember district composed of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Districts, encompassing the city of Norfolk and a portion of Virginia Beach. Howell v. Mahan, supra.
Appellants charge that the District Court was not justified in overturning the districts established by the General Assembly since the Assembly validly used census tracts in apportioning the area and that the imposition by the court of a multimember district contravened the valid legislative policy in favor of single-member districts. We conclude that under the unusual, if not unique, circumstances in this case the District Court did not err in declining to accord conclusive weight to the legislative reliance on census figures. That court justifiably found that with respect to the three single-member districts in question, the legislative plan resulted in both significant population disparities and the assignment of military personnel to vote in districts in which they admittedly did not reside. Since discriminatory treatment of military personnel in legislative reapportionment is constitutionally impermissible, Davis v. Mann, supra, at 691, we hold that the interim relief granted by the District Court as to the State Senate was within the bounds of the discretion confided to it.
Application of interim remedial techniques in voting rights cases has largely been left to the district courts. Reynolds v. Sims, supra, at 585. The courts are bound to apply equitable considerations and in Reynolds it was stated that “[i]n awarding or withholding immediate relief, a court is entitled to and should consider the proximity of a forthcoming election and the mechanics and complexities of state election laws . . . .” Ibid.
The court below was faced with severe time pressures. The reapportionment plans were first forwarded to the Attorney General on March 1, 1971. By April 7, these three cases had been filed and consolidated. The first hearing was scheduled for May 24, but on May 7, the Attorney General interposed his objections pursuant to the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the May 24 hearing was largely devoted to arguing about the effect of such objections and after that hearing, the court directed the cases to be continued until June 15. It also postponed the primary elections, which had been set for June 8, until September 14. The cases were finally heard on June 16, and the court’s interlocutory order was entered on July 2, just two weeks prior to the revised July 16 filing deadline for primary candidates.
Prior to the time the court acted, this Court had handed down Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124 (1971), recognizing that multimember districts were not per se violative of the Equal Protection Clause. The court conscientiously considered both the legislative policy and this Court’s admonition, in Connor v. Johnson, supra, that in fashioning apportionment remedies, the use of single-member districts is preferred. But it was confronted with plausible evidence of substantial malapportionment with respect to military personnel, the mandate of this Court that voting discrimination against military personnel is constitutionally impermissible, Davis v. Mann, supra, at 691-692, and the fear that too much delay would have seriously disrupted the fall 1971 elections. Facing as it did this singular combination of unique factors, we cannot say that the District Court abused its discretion in fashioning the interim remedy of combining the three districts into one multimember district. We, therefore, affirm the order of that Court insofar as it dealt with the State Senate.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part.
Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Article II, § 6, of the Revised Virginia Constitution provides:
“Members of the House of Representatives of the United States and members of the Senate and of the House of Delegates of the General Assembly shall be elected from electoral districts established by the General Assembly. Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory and shall be so constituted as to give, as nearly as is practicable, representation in proportion to the population of the district. The Genferal Assembly shall reapportion the Commonwealth into electoral districts in accordance with this section in the year 1971 and every ten years thereafter.
“Any such reapportionment law shall take effect immediately and not be subject to the limitations contained in Article IV, Section 13, of this Constitution.”
Va. Code. Ann. § 24.1-12.1 (Supp. 1972).
Va. Code Ann. § 24.1-14.1, as amended by c. 246, Acts of Assembly, June 14, 1971.
The reapportionment statutes were originally passed on March 1, 1971. On May 7, 1971, the Attorney General of the United States, acting pursuant to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, interposed objections to both the House and the Senate plans. Objections to the House plan were based on the use of five multimember districts in certain metropolitan areas. Between his interposition, and the trial of these cases, this Court decided Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124 (1971), and the Attorney General’s objections to the House plan were subsequentty withdrawn. The objection of the Senate plan was cured by the amendment contained in c. 246, supra, n. 3.
The Court initially noted probable jurisdiction in the related case of Thornton v. Prichard, No. 71-563. This appeal primarily involved the question of whether or not the multimember districts had a discriminatory effect on the rights of Negro voters under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, supra, n. 4, as well as under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. On appellant’s own motion, this appeal was dismissed, 409 U. S. 802.
These are the figures found by the District Court. Appellee DuVal argues that another method of computatión involving Virginia’s floterial districts results in a maximum deviation of 23.6%. The State and the city of Virginia Beach disputed that the deviation for the district relied on by DuVal for his figure was as much as claimed. The lower court made no finding on that dispute, concluding that the 16.4% variation was “sufficient to condemn the plan.” 330 F. Supp. 1138, 1139-1140. We decline to enter this imbroglio of mathematical manipulation and confine our consideration to the figures actually found by the court and used to support its holding of unconstitutionality.
In Connor v. Williams, 404 U. S. 549 (1972), we expressly reserved decision on this issue.
The lower court concluded that its spread was only slightly over 7%, but in its arithmetic it did not consider two counties because of their asserted isolation from the remainder of the State. Howell v. Mahan, 330 F. Supp. 1138, 1147 n. 8.
Appellees also contend that it is clear the State has abandoned its traditional adherence to political subdivision boundaries since it provided in the reapportionment statute that districts shall not change even though boundaries do as a result of annexation, for example. The short answer is that the General Assembly had the dual goal of maintaining such lines and providing for population equality. Reapportionment was only constitutionally required every 10 years between redistricting, and it was the Assembly’s decision that if during the 10 years between redistricting one of its goals should conflict with the other, the one based on known population variances should prevail. Such a determination does not render constitutionally defective an otherwise valid plan.
In this companion case, appellant Weinberg challenges the order of the District Court insofar as it sustains the validity of the 22d and 23d districts established in the House of Delegates apportionment statute. He argues that in court-ordered reapportionment, this Court ought to exercise its supervisory power to require more equality than would be required from legislative reapportionment. He also contends that the method of computation of floterial district deviations utilized by the District Court was erroneous. Since the House of Delegates apportionment statute is constitutional, and since the deviation for the 23d district under appellant’s method of computation is only 3.9%, substantially lower than the approximately 16% deviation today upheld, we affirm those portions of the judgment appealed from in No. 71-444.
Such personnel were attached to ships “home-ported” at Norfolk and they were enumerated in Census Tract 000999, a location encompassing a series of ship piers. They were counted that way in accordance with instructions from the Director of the Bureau of the Census, George H. Brown. All ship commanders were directed to obtain an enumeration of all personnel assigned to their ships. Specifically his instructions provided that ship commanders were to: “Include all married personnel in the enumeration even though they may be home with their families on 1 April. Wives of personnel assigned to vessels will be instructed not to include their husbands when they complete their census forms.”
Thus, even though Navy personnel assigned to ships “home-ported” at Norfolk might have lived outside the Fifth Senatorial District with their wives and families, for census purposes they were assigned to that District.
The legislative use of this census enumeration to support a conclusion that all of the Navy personnel on a ship actually resided within the state senatorial district in which the ship was docked placed upon the census figures a weight that they were not intended to bear. The Navy itself used as a “rule of thumb” an estimate that 50% of such personnel occupied housing units on shore.
The District Court found that the remaining 10,000 lived off the base but within the Fifth Senatorial District.
We note that the order appealed from is interlocutory and the lower court has retained jurisdiction. There is nothing in its order to prevent the Virginia General Assembly from enacting an apportionment plan for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Districts which differs from that ordered by the court but is nonetheless consistent with constitutional requirements.
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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